SEO FAQ (or why you shouldn't hire an SEO "expert") - <AUTHOR> http://powazek.com/posts/2101

<comment><USER4> _But I use SEO for good.

Then you're called a Web Developer. Good web development includes using proper formatting (like putting headlines in H tags) and understanding how the web works, search engines included. Valid code also has the side-effect of making your pages more accessible for your users, which is the point. Making your pages more accessible to robots is for robots._

I've been trying to put that idea into words for a while. I visit a lot of forums and freelance sites to prowl for good work, and I see many discussions about page rank, inbound links, three-way links, hosting pages on different IP's to get more PR juice for all of them, etc etc.

It just seems like it's a backwards way of going about things, like building a super highway to a place you hope there may be a city in the future.

Good development of a good service and spreading the word about it is what's needed to get customers.

Just an aside...

 _Did you just quit smoking or something?

Yes._

I just quit cold turkey.. it sucks. Wish I'd never smoked in the first place.

<comment><USER5> "Good development of a good service and spreading the word about it is what's needed to get customers."

That's a touch simplistic. Spread the word where? To whom? How?

The issue of getting customers is so complicated that we are all here, reading, learning and coming up with ideas to be a success.

What is "needed" to get customers varies by market, by demographic, by expected return, by quality of product etc etc.

To be a success, a site needs to serve a customer base and then MARKET TO THAT GROUP. SEO may be imperfect, but what SE have is every demographic, identifying themselves clearly, by the keywords they use. Missing out on that traffic is just crazy.

<comment><USER6> " _Good development of a good service and spreading the word about it is what's needed to get customers._ "

SEO is the catch all term for "spreading the word" on the internet (I do some SEO) - we don't limit it to search engine baiting (!) there is a lot more to it.

One can see things very simply - a bit of widget bait, an active forum, a good product, these can all create great inflows of PR and visitors. Then of course you've to optimise your landing pages, ...

SEO is built into the sites I design/write but there's always more one can do. Good inlinks go a long way.

If you build a store away from civilisation and just wait for customers - <USER3> may have an awesome enough product and enough capital to sit it out. But, sending a few flyers, issuing a press release, having promotions, a TV advert, some on-street ads, etc. are all going to help.

Ditto building a website - if you build it and your product is awesome I think it'll get out there eventually (probably as a copycat site by someone who pays for some SEO!?!) but using some PPC, gathering good inlinks, being part of an authority link community, getting blog coverage, getting diggs, etc. are all going to help.

Good web dev does include _some_ SEO. But SEO is too big a field for a web developer to do properly by themselves, a web dev team would have an SEO. Like expecting builders to have painter-decorators, if you want _trompe-loeil_ rather than a slap of magnolia then you're going to need a dedicated expert.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Bah! What dross.

This is the same BS that gets spewed about everything "If you have a great product, you don't need marketing", "If you're a great writer, you don't need an editor" etc etc

A web designer / developer is someone who builds web pages and/or sites. They can be good designers, bad, indifferent. They can know some SEO, none, or all of it. They can focus on server code, front end code or both, again to varying degrees.

But SEO != web designer is simple to prove: if I rank 10000000 for a term, the web designer still did his job :)

Whether this mythical "you" needs to hire an SEO expert or not depends on so many things.

And lastly this comment is just bizarre: "Social media is rapidly becoming much more important than Google." Seriously? Really? The $$ made from a Social Media click > an SEO click? Seriously dude, you need to get you some Google analytics and an ecommerce site.

Social Media is to SEO what a park is to a mall. People may prefer parks, they may prefer having fun, but when they want to buy, they go to the mall, and most smart businesses would surely rather be situated in the mall.

<comment><USER7> The point is that there are only two ways to "optimize" your site: 1) hire a better designer and 2) game the ranking algorithms. The latter is what SEO "experts" do. From the search engine's perspective, they want their ranking to accurately match which site is most useful and relevant to their user. The ideal search engine, once things like location are discounted (a brilliantly designed site offering a useful service too far away from me is a bad search result) _is_ going to rank on how good the site actually is.

<comment><USER6> So is, say, a better onsite link structure, an optimised description on each page, SERP indented listing, ... (1) or (2).

I suppose you wouldn't hire a UI expert for a GUI program either?

 _a brilliantly designed site offering a useful service too far away from me is a bad search result_

How far is too far? Depends what you're buying right? That's a complex algo. How about if you happen to be travelling there anyway? How does the SE know? What if it's the only place in your country that sells it, would you go further now?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I recall some time ago that the concept of SEM/SEO-based marketing had actually become somewhat unnecessary - the major search engines (ie: Google) were working to deliberately curtail the demand for such services in the first place.

Say, by developing tech that actually gives you what you were searching for, and not what you were lead into reading via various search "hacks."

I dunno. Seems cheaper, to me, to get a decent web dev at market rates than a verbose "SEO expert" at inflated worth.

<comment><USER6> And how do Google curtail demand? By adding complexity to the algos that compile the SERPs ... and what do we need SEOs for? To decompile the complexity in the algos used by the SEs. Google add brand weightings, my ranks go down and sales are through the floor, do I say "oh well I'm not a brand I'll just quit" or "how do I show Google I'm still worth ranking"?

When I go to a restaurant I like to have the barman to make my drinks and the to chef cook for me. The barman is cheaper(!) but he tends to cook worse than the chef and his repertoire sucks.

<comment><USER8> Except that, if we take your restaurant staff analogy seriously, you're actually bribing the bartender to get the chef to put your product on the menu.

Depending on the product or service your offering, the traditional (if time- consuming) direct outreach to the intended audience may still be better than hiring the services of an SEO "expert."

<comment><USER6> _the traditional (if time-consuming) direct outreach to the intended audience may still be better_

If by better you mean something involving a smaller ROI, then I guess you're right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm not really in favor of SEO in that it seems to be a zero-sum proposition (if ten companies hire ten SEO "experts" to get the number one position... nine of them aren't going to get what they wanted). Also, it's not about building new stuff, creating new wealth, but more about (in the non-evil cases) repackaging something that already exists. That's not really my cup of tea.

<comment><USER10> That depends entirely on what you're doing. If you're competing for #1 on [credit cards], yep, its a zero-sum game and most people will lose. SEO is about so much more than just winning on one term, though. (Do we say marketing is a zero-sum game because There Can Be Only One, e.g., pizza shop for any given delivery?)

Concrete examples:

1) Over 25% of searches are globally unique, and the results for these are often suboptimal. (Google has a very good handle on what [credit cards] there are, but does not necessarily know a [good class activity for Halloween].) Proper SEO for your site to target those things is mostly just about getting links and writing your onpage content better, and creates value for the searcher.

2) Content creation is a core SEO strategy and is a source of new wealth.

This was the #1 page for [biology bingo] three years ago:

<http://www.biologycorner.com/worksheets/blankbingo.html>

(Its a blank bingo template which says "biology" on it. Yaaaay.)

This is the #1 page for [biology bingo] for most searchers now:

<http://www.bingocardcreator.com/bingo-cards/biology>

There are 43 activities there created by a teacher to mesh well with common lesson plans (people really like the Parts of A Cell one for whatever reason), and an option to tweak any of them to exactly what you need for your lesson. Those 43 activities have helped teach well in excess of 80,000 students. And they all exist because I saw SEO value in creating new stuff.

<comment><USER9> > 2) Content creation is a core SEO strategy and is a source of new wealth.

Could be, but are "SEO experts" actually _doing_ the content creation?

You should not be paying someone more than 5$ an hour to tell you to "create good stuff". Like the article says, most of this isn't hard to figure out. Did you have to hire an SEO expert to get your biology page built?

Also, marketing is about much more than just 'selling stuff'. It's about identifying potential customers, understanding their needs, and shaping the direction of development to meet those needs.

<comment><USER10> I did not hire an SEO expert for the same reason I did not hire a programmer.

(More broadly I think that most people should not hire "SEO experts" because any one you are able to afford is less competent than you need, but that is another discussion altogether.)

There are many people around these parts who think SEO is useless, dirty, dirty-and-useless, or totally obvious. Those people could benefit enormously from broadening their perspectives a little bit.

For example: I have over 700 bingo activities. I suppose they could have been posted chronologically, like a blog, or alphabetically, like a directory. They aren't -- they're "siloed" into categories, with each category being thematically coherent, and category pages linking to related activities and activities linking to related categories. That is sort of the tip of the information architecture iceberg for my site. It has clear usability and SEO benefits. (If you're looking at Parts of a Cell bingo right now, you're rather more likely to be interested in other Biology bingo activities than Japanese culture bingo.) You might think this is obvious, and indeed, it is that special kind of obvious that no one in my niche bothers to do.

There is also an algorithm for promotion of popular content. (If you took a quick gander around my site right now, you'd notice nearly every page links to a Halloween bingo activity. That is not an accident.) Does "build good stuff" imply to you "You should probably make the link graph on your website dynamically change in response to market conditions and analytics data, because that will maximize conversions and also deliver great SEO benefits"? No, thats just solid SEO -- a bit of marketing, a bit of usability, a bit of tech, and a bit understanding how to play an important game whose umpire makes unquestionable calls according to a rulebook only they can read.

<comment><USER9> Everything you are pointing out as "SEO" seems to either not really be the same thing the "SEO experts" are selling or actually is nearly "totally obvious" to anyone in the web business. I think the only thing I've ever really seen that struck me as "real work that is non obvious" connected with SEO was A/B testing.

Once again, trotting out Halloween specials in October is not something you need to hire an SEO expert for.

> unquestionable calls according to a rulebook only they can read.

That's something else that bugs me about the whole "SEO expert" business. They're on the same playing field as you are, and since Google changes and adapts as well, "years of experience" don't really count for a lot.

No one is questioning the value of paying some attention to this stuff - <USER3> ignore it at your own peril if you operate on the web. What people find dubious are the "SEO experts" who sell that and only that. If someone's a good web developer, they're going to be able to tell you the same stuff anyway, and probably add more value elsewhere to boot. And all of this commentary is ignoring the genuinely shady operators who have also taken to using the "SEO" moniker, who further muddy the waters.

<comment><USER6> _Once again, trotting out Halloween specials in October is not something you need to hire an SEO expert for._

If you're trotting them out in October you're about five years too late if you're aiming at the top spot on Google. You need those pages to gather authority; part of that is from longevity, partly from past inlinks you've gathered, your linkbait for halloween last year ..... Reuse a page created for "Halloween 2009" from several years ago - which pages looks most authoritative, the one created in Oct 2009 about the subject along with 2 Million others or the one that is 5 years old and has established inlinks perhaps from .edu sites, perhaps one hop from pages with millions of "halloween" inlinks. Oh but your competitor has "halloween2009.com", oh well.

A/B testing is easier than knowing what to test especially if you need to keep ahead of competitors _and_ ontrack with the changes to the search, discovery and marketing environment online.

I don't find the answers to questions like "how much should I spend on getting a higher listing, I'm top 10 now, what's the ROI", "how can I get my competitors indented SERPs links removed", "how can I get a second top 10 listing", "does PR scuplting work", "should I tweet to improve my blog's visibility, what sales return will I expect", "how can I optimise my landing page", "will a shallower link structure increase CTR, revenue?", "will that outlink hurt me? help?", "what's the most important ranking factor?" etc. that obvious.

I must be a klutz.

Oh and do you think years of experience as a tailor will help one make good suits? Every customer is a different size ...

<comment><USER9> Your honor, I present exhibit A, and rest my case.

<comment><USER6> If one were selling halloween crap to simply try and exploit a calendar date I don't think one need be too high and mighty about optimising ones search position.

There is more than one company selling stuff for halloween. The top spot on Google gets 85% of the entire SE traffic (say). Remind me why one guy selling crappy plastic tridents, witch masks and pumpkin shaped buckets deserves to get all that traffic and the other guys don't?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think people are splitting hairs between SEO and SEM. SEO is what good web developers should have done. It's proper formatting, crawler accessibility, et cetera.

SEM, on the other hand, is link-building, keyword targeting, PPC campaigns, _quality content_ , et cetera. Basically, anything designed to manipulate behavior towards visiting your site.

SEO is perfectly understandable as a legitimate business provided it is services defined as above. It's just about making sure that the technical aspects of your site are in order. Still, I believe that this segment is shrinking, as search engines are getting better at understanding the sites and developers are getting better at optimizing their sites in the first place.

SEM is where the debate should be taking place. For lack of a better definition, SEM is about 'tricking' people into visiting your site, or otherwise 'gaming' the system. Those words might not be the best, but I hope their point is taken. (Note: 'Trick' could be read 'manipulate' or 'encourage'.) Quality content 'tricks' people into visiting your site. Link- bait titles 'trick' people into clicking. Back-links 'trick' Google into ranking you higher, which in turn 'tricks' others into clicking on your results more.

Point of order: I am not a professional web developer, and I don't sell or know personally anyone who sells any sort of SEO/SEM services.

<comment><USER12> Huh? SEM can be as simple as running an ad campaign. People search stuff, and click on your ad instead of a result. Is that a trick?

If you lack a better definition, try "sponsored demand fulfillment". It isn't an industry that started with the internet.

<comment><USER11> I'm not sure what your point is. 'Trick' could be read as manipulation. An ad campaign could be considered a form of manipulation. The advertiser is manipulating the behavior of the viewer by convincing them to take action. It's driving users to your site because of something off-site.

With my post above I really just wanted to say that the broad term 'SEO' would be better divided based on the type of work done. SE Optimization is on-site. SE Marketing is off-site. I think the current definitions are too broad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > This article is linkbait/SEO.

> Just because something attracts a lot of links doesn't mean it was linkbait. > This is my personal site, where I talk

> about things I'm passionate about. That's all I did here.

Shades of Bill Hicks there.

<comment><USER14> Bill Hicks on Marketing: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDW_Hj2K0wo>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> _You're just looking for work/promotion/love. Please, God, no. I've got two clients that keep me busy full time right now, and I work on Fray when I should be sleeping. I have no reason to promote this site. I make no money from it. And I'm married, thanks._

I like that bit, especially with the links to "fray" a couple, diverse anchors and then the big landing page button "buy or subscribe" on the Fray.com page. I don't believe he's naive enough to think this is not gaining him rankings for Fray.

From what I can see he's saying we don't need SEOs, we need webdesigners to do SEO and SEOs should do webdesign. I guess he likes one person to do everything for him rather than have experts do what they are expert at.

SEO is self selective, want to be top of Google? Google for "SEO", the top guy knows how to get the top position better than anyone else! For me in the UK that guy is below Wikipedia (surprise!) but has Wikipedia style site-spotlight links and so he's up to date too ... wonder what black hat stuff he's doing ...

<comment><USER15> You could make that same comment about his commercial links to _anything_ he says. Derek is pretty famous. I don't think he needs to stir up controversy to get attention. But even if he wasn't, this comment is almost content-free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The argument that web designers, web developers etc. should understand everything related to their work is fine at a small scale eg. creating a personal blog/small website. But it's a stretch to say that nobody should focus on just one area.

To be an expert at something normally requires that you specialize in that area. For a start-up you need to be a jack-of-all-trades but as a company grows it makes sense to have staff that specialize in different areas.

My background is in pay-per-click marketing and a lot of companies do very well managing their own Adwords campaigns. But for large companies or small companies that don't want to deal with learning a new skill, the cost of hiring/outsourcing to someone who specializes in that is justified by the time saved and the improved ROI. This applies to SEO as well but also to any area where the work involved has a significant impact on the business.

<comment><USER17> Except that you're a drop-in replacement for an existing middleman -- the broadcast/print media ad-agency. Companies weren't really doing the low-level management of their ad campaigns before.

SEO is a bit more of a novelty, especially since the 'SEO professionals' aren't middlemen between you and Google.

<comment><USER16> Point taken. Perhaps a more appropriate analogy is the PR industry. I know the PR industry gets almost as much criticism as SEO. But the argument that we shouldn't use specialists in whatever field because we could do it ourselves is very damaging. Here's another example. If I run a coffee shop and 50% of my customers are walk-ins from the street, it makes sense for me to hire a sign- writer to attract more people. Even though my coffee might be the same as always I get more customers because people can find my shop. I could paint the sign myself but hiring an expert to do it will likely pay for itself. If I run a website and 50% of my customers come from search engines then it makes sense to invest an appropriate amount in making sure those customers can find me. If I have a small site, that investment might be of my time or I could outsource it. So the important thing is that we need to invest in what brings new customers. If you think that an SEO professional doesn't deliver enough value that's a perfectly valid decision but I think it's a big mistake to extend this to not investing in SEO itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Bullshit. I have an astrology site (moon calendar) that is now not even among the first 10 pages of Google search results for the main keyword. Believe me when I say that most of the results that show up before my site are decidedly _not_ better than my moon calendar. SEO has nothing to do with it?

I did all the web development things properly (certainly all the headings and what not - I even have RSS feeds and a Twitter bot, and of course sitemap and so on). It didn't help.

To get an impression (all in German): this is my site <http://mondhandy.de> and this is a typical search result from the Google top 10: <http://www.bunkahle.com/astrolog/mocal.cgi>

Edit: I even have a widget that people can include on their blogs, though admittedly it could be prettier.

<comment><USER6> I looked for 10seconds tops at the two pages .. first thing, they "mondkalendar" have keywords in title first, you have your domain, switch that around. Yes it matters. Yes I'm sure there are more "obvious" things too.

<http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors?2009> [http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-web-developers-seo-cheat- shee...](http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-web-developers-seo-cheat-sheet)

Yes I do SEO, no I don't work for SEOmoz.

<comment><USER18> Thanks - I don't know if I should invest more energy in that site, but maybe I'll try the title rewrite :-(

<comment><USER6> I don't think that alone is worth too much, those links should see you right for 95% of what's possible.

<comment><USER18> Hm, didn't find much else that I had missed, but thanks.

I must admit to one mistake, though: at one time I entered the site in some web catalogs. I guess I'll try to get it out there again, which might become difficult.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> As an SEO "expert" I take exception to this post, Yes there are a lot of bad companies out there selling snake oil, just like there are in most (all?) industries. That does not mean that all SEO companies are evil and it certainly doesn't mean that all SEO techniques don't work. Lots of people spout the "content is king" mantra, and while i'd agree content is the most important part of a website, you could have the best content in the world, but without SEO, how are people going to find your content and link to it? Unlike the author, most people can't afford to wait 10 years for their site to become popular. The fact is, to get to the top of the results pages you generally need a lot of links, and link building is HARD. This is why every major company has an in house SEO team or hires an agency - because SEO is one of the most effective ways to increase your ROI.

<comment> brown9-2 "you could have the best content in the world, but without SEO, how are people going to find your content and link to it?"

By following common sense, good design, and doing some research and reading about Google's suggestions to web developers.

You shouldn't have to hire someone to tell you what you can find out for free.

Also, you registered just to make this post?

<comment><USER20> I could find out for free how to do a lot of things. Make my own whisky, fix my car. However I'm not a distiller or a mechanic so I leave those tasks to people who know what to do without having to read a manual every time. Someone who also knows what not to waste time on(meta tags for example which for some reason still seem to feature high in all entry level seo step lists).

<comment><USER21> No, it's Google's job to help people find things. That's what it does. SEO exists to game Google into placing your site higher in results. I make something, like some small open-source software, put it on GitHub, and it shows up as the first result on Google _within hours_ if you are searching specifically for something like it. I didn't have to hire a SEO.

<comment><USER20> And it is SEOs job to help Google find things. I'm not going to deny blackhat SEO exists like I wouldn't deny blackhat developers exist but you can't tarnish the whole profession because of your ignorance of the actual role of a whitehat SEO professional.

It shows up in hours on github because github has a lot of authority. It shows up high on google because I'm guessing you're searching for pretty long keyword strings. So if your ok with people finding your code when they search for "ruby gem for mysql connections" thats cool you don't need to hire an SEO professional. Hell you never need to hire an SEO professional. But if you want someone who knows more about it to help you with making sure Google and yahoo and bing can find your information then you can.

I really don't get the hatred on this site for SEO in general. I'm not an SEO professional myself but I know quite a few and now a days most people in the profession that are active and well known are all above board. They help you structure your information to make it easier to find and help you build relationships with other sources of traffic. Hardly evil stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Interesting tidbit on the flickr page he links to: _"Google can customize your search results based on location, recent search activity and/or other, logged out or not.... Adding &pws=0 to your query turns of personalization."_

</comment><comment><USER23> I worked in another industry that got regulated and watched the cycle.

It's clear to me that if you do SEO you will eventually need to be certified by a neutral body.

You will notice regardless of industry that it's only 5% of the bad actors (black hats) that cause 95% of the problems.

A certification process forces these guys to clean up their act or move on. Social network consulting anyone ;<)?

</comment><comment><USER24> If you don't like paying your mechanic, you can learn to fix your own car. That doesn't mean he/she is ripping you off.

<comment><USER13> But that's not how it is now, isn't it.

An seo is not a mechanic that fixes your car, an seo is a person that will lead lots of people to your store (so they say) because everybody else is also hiring hustlers (so they say).

They don't fix anything that was broken before they arrived on the scene, but once one person starts misbehaving in this way everybody else that's purely in it for the money will have to follow suit.

<comment><USER24> But you're not understanding SEO, are you.

I do SEO consulting in addition to web design and development consulting. And most of what I do in this area is exactly that: fixing what's broken.

Almost all sites we encounter have one or more of the following problems:

      - Content that is unreachable by crawlers
      - Improperly used HTML tags, or lack of semantic tags in general
      - Poorly designed, or non-existant, information architecture
      - Lack of meta descriptions, alternate text, etc

And almost all sites we review could benefit from:

      - Keyword research and targeting
      - Load time optimization
      - Internal linking optimization
      - Content creation
      - Link building

How exactly you equate that with hustling is beyond me.

<comment><USER13> It's hustling because you can only have 10 sites in the first 10 spots for any keyword or combination.

By selling services to party 'A' you can temporarily upset the balance, which then immediately gives you a new customer in parties B through to infinity because they all would like to be in that 'top' spot.

So, the 'scarcity' of the positions on the first few pages for any given set of keywords are what drives that whole market with all of these clueless companies shelling out tons of money for something that only benefits the SEO and the temporary holders of those 10 slots.

I'ts like with lawyers, stoke the fight, everybody loses but the lawyers win.

It's a classical example of an arms race.

btw, the funniest thing you can do when an SEO approaches you is ask them if they have a website, then type 'SEO services' in to google and see if they come up in the first 10 results, if not (and that's a 99% chance) enjoy hearing them squirming to explain why not.

<comment><USER25> While I'm fairly sympathetic to your overall perspective, your last point is simply not persuasive at all. As a former SEO, I'd have had no problem comfortably answering that question, and any squirming would be entirely in your own smug imagination.

First, 'SEO services' isn't self-evidently the most important keyword phrase in the industry. Why pick that one? That's just a gotcha.

Second, SEO is extremely competitive. The agencies on the first page for high profile SEO-related keyword phrases charge at least several hundreds of dollars per hour in consulting fees. Most businesses can't afford that.

Third, incumbency is a huge advantage for placement in competitive SERPs, both by itself and because it implies the accumulation of important ranking factors you can't just gin up at a moment's notice. (Don't read too much into that though. There are plenty of opportunities for less competitive phrases and a long campaign can build up to more competitive terms.)

<comment><USER13> > Why pick that one? That's just a gotcha.

Because it is _the_ set of keywords that any SEO would like to be found under.

> Second, SEO is extremely competitive.

ANY business is extremely competitive, not just SEO, why do you think SEO is some kind of magical special case ?

> Third, incumbency is a huge advantage for placement in competitive SERPs, > both by itself and because it implies the accumulation of important ranking > factors you can't just gin up at a moment's notice.

That we agree on for the most part. I've seen relative newcomers do some amazing stuff, without SEO simply by getting their users energized. There isn't any SEO strategy that will work as well for you as a couple of hundred thousand uses creating buzz for you.

> There are plenty of opportunities for less competitive phrases

That's the low hanging fruit though.

> a long campaign can build up to more competitive terms.

And that is where we agree again, but most SEOs are people making very large promises that they find hard to fulfill. The whole industry has an extremely bad reputation because of this, and it's not just a 'few bad apples' either.

I'm sure there are 'good' SEOs, just like there are 'good' lawyers, but for the most part I wouldn't want to be associated with any of that stuff.

Search engines are for the most part doing everything they can to look at the web through an SEO neutral lens.

Fixing stuff that is obviously broken is fine with me, but don't get me started on 'link building'.

Gaming the system is where I draw the line and there isn't an SEO out there that wouldn't game the system given half a chance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> i did audience acquisition at a large established media company and in the span of about a year helped increase their traffic from natural(as opposed to paid) search over 90%.

now i'm a web analyst at a large retail site and at least 1/8 of orders is directly attributed to natural search traffic on a last touch and many more on a less direct attribution window.

if you don't think natural search is a marketing channel that needs attention, great- it'll leave more opportunity for the the rest of us.

</comment><comment><USER27> "And after less than 24 hours, my post about SEO is the ninth Google result for 'SEO'."

Is it just me, but when I did a google search for 'SEO', it seems that his position is ~40...

<comment><USER28> Google pushes new results to the top, then they slowly fall off. In certain cases, anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I have to say it, this guy is a smug asshole. Right or wrong about seo; his writing is smug.</comment>


I (socmoth) will send your doge coins if you want to try them for the first time - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/pm/status/434440997104140288 <comment><USER2> One thing that I've seen that's a problem with this kind of thing (whether given out by humans or faucets), is _what people can do_ once they get the coins. You're probably not giving them enough to buy anything with them, so what do they do? Just hold them?

If I gave you 0.01 Serbian Dinar, what would you do with it? Maybe look at it, and say that it's cool.

What do people get out of faucets? Just publicity?

<comment><USER3> I think the first Bitcoin faucet was giving out 5 bitcoin to each person. That was before it had any significant monetary value though. I'm not sure what Bitcoin itself got out of that, but if those people held onto those 5 Bitcoin, they would have the opportunity to exchange them for money several years down the road.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about the typo. Sadly the update button does not appear to let me update the title.

Trying to get more people to actually try out crypto currencies, rather than blog about them.

<comment><USER3> Are you still giving out Dogecoin? I just got a wallet: DGgMNwtx8mXAzqYh1twxKirkniPtNFo82X (I don't use Twitter)

Thanks in advance.</comment></comment>


Spotify to directly list shares in its IPO - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/business/media/spotify-ipo.html <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16485975](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16485975)

</comment><comment><USER3> >Spotify will, as expected, pursue a direct listing of its shares, an unusual process in which no new stock is issued — and therefore no money is raised.

What's the point of having an IPO if it doesn't raise money?

<comment><USER4> Allows the stock owners liquidate in public market</comment></comment>


Kepler telescope identifies ancient solar system - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-birmingham-31002598

<comment><USER2> It would be interesting to find out whatthe relative abundance of elements is in a system like that. It's materials will have been through fewer generations of stars, so I'd expect heavier elements to be less abundant than in our system but I've no idea how much less and whether that might limit the possibility of the evolution of life.

<comment><USER3> The metallicity is listed as -0.55 [1].

Metallicity is on a logarithmic scale [2], so that's about 58% as many heavy elements as our solar system.

That seems freakishly high for a star that old. That might be the only reason it has planets at all. There aren't any heavy elements to make planets with in most stars that age.

[1] [http://exoplanet.eu/catalog/kepler-444_c/](http://exoplanet.eu/catalog/kepler-444_c/) [2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallicity](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallicity)</comment></comment>


Man Vs. (The Government) Machine - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/16/iterations-man-vs-the-government-machine/ <comment><USER2> > "...The other side of this coin is that, right now, government regulation > that overreaches to the point of suppressing an individual's ability to earn > a living wage is the political equivalent of playing with fire.

> "...Perhaps this is why many of the startups listed above (and their > investors) have begun to form relationships with local and national > politicians, have actively participated in panels nationwide with public > officials and commissioners, have hired former politicians and policy > analysts to help them anticipate these collisions and actively participate > in the lawmaking itself to keep the interests of these startups in mind.

This slo-mo, corrupt, `due process' of 'panels', 'lobby-ing up', 'relationships with local and national politicians' is antithetical to the intense focus and already too many hats to wear, required of a start-up.

I'll bet its the '...political equivalent of playing with fire' side of the coin.</comment>


Performance of nnn vs. ls - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jarun/nnn/wiki/performance <comment><USER2> Seems like running `ls` takes twice as long as running `nnn`, but I wonder how long it takes to type each...

        $ ipython
        In [1]: %time input()
        ls
        Wall time: 324 ms
        Out[1]: 'ls'

        In [2]: %time input()
        nnn
        Wall time: 711 ms
        Out[2]: 'nnn'

In other words, `nnn` takes twice as long (on my setup, including a qwerty keyboard and my fingers and muscle memory) and it's on the same order of magnitude as running them, so I guess they're more or less equal.

This is all tongue in cheek, but my point is that the important optimization is of user productivity and not of runtime, and in that respect as far as I'm aware `Total Commander` on Windows and its open source plugin-compatible clone `doublecmd` that runs on both Windows and Linux are far superior to anything else in the market. Don't let the Windows-3.11 reminiscent design scare you, with Total Commander you'll be as productive doing complex file operations as those vim masters are doing complex text transformations, and you won't ever be able to go back to any other file manager.

edit: I misread, actually typing them is a decimal order of magnitude slower than running them on 2083 files.

<comment><USER3> I alias 'ls' to 'd' when I'm setting up an environment.

<comment><USER4> Do you mean that you have an alias like this:

      alias d='ls'

Or is there a program called `d` that is a faster version of `ls` that you're aliasing `ls` to?

<comment><USER3> Just an alias. I figure I could use a single letter command for something I do like 1/3 of the time on the commandline, especially since it's on the opposite hand from the enter key.

ls is actually pretty well optimized for an QWERTY layout already so it's not a big win, but it's something I've been doing for 25 years now so the habit is well ingrained.

Usually the alias is now:

      alias d="ls -F --color=auto"

on Linux systems.

<comment><USER5> Why not just use a console file manager, like mc?

<comment><AUTHOR> `nnn` is a console file manager.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just before this made it to the front page, I happened to see this toot about slow ls: [https://ubuntu.social/@Simon/102054773088776436](https://ubuntu.social/@Simon/102054773088776436)

I'm curious if that would make a difference.

<comment><AUTHOR> For reference, from the system where the numbers were taken:

         $ echo $LS_COLORS

         $

LS_COLORS wasn't set. The readings were taken for ls default performance.

<comment><USER7> LS_COLORS mustn't be set for colors to be used. If you unset it the default color schema will be used.

There was an article about this posted to HN a week ago [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19761159](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19761159)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A comparison to exa[0] would be interesting as well

[0] [https://github.com/ogham/exa](https://github.com/ogham/exa)

<comment><AUTHOR> I am on a much faster system right now. From 2 sample runs of each, ls is consistently way (~5 times) faster than exa:

exa:

        run1:
        0.03user 0.02system 0:00.11elapsed 56%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 8672maxresident)k
        208inputs+0outputs (1major+1333minor)pagefaults 0swaps

        run2:
        0.04user 0.00system 0:00.13elapsed 42%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 8560maxresident)k
        0inputs+0outputs (0major+1310minor)pagefaults 0swaps

ls:

        run1:
        0.00user 0.01system 0:00.02elapsed 69%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 3812maxresident)k
        0inputs+0outputs (0major+303minor)pagefaults 0swaps

        run2:
        0.01user 0.00system 0:00.02elapsed 62%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 3840maxresident)k
        0inputs+0outputs (0major+305minor)pagefaults 0swaps

<comment><USER9> How about lsd? [https://github.com/Peltoche/lsd](https://github.com/Peltoche/lsd)

<comment><AUTHOR> lsd:

        run1:
        0.03user 0.04system 0:00.16elapsed 50%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 4884maxresident)k
        0inputs+0outputs (0major+4635minor)pagefaults 0swaps

        run2:
        0.02user 0.05system 0:00.10elapsed 77%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 4920maxresident)k
        0inputs+0outputs (0major+4635minor)pagefaults 0swaps

        run3:
        0.03user 0.04system 0:00.14elapsed 58%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 4936maxresident)k
        0inputs+0outputs (0major+4635minor)pagefaults 0swaps

<comment><USER9> I went ahead and ran the tests myself, using hyperfine. In fact, I reproduced the benchmark described on the lsd README directly, except using `ls -FG` instead of colorls.

      Benchmark #1: lsd -la /etc/*
        Time (mean ± σ):      34.2 ms ±   0.9 ms    [User: 18.7 ms, System: 13.0 ms]
        Range (min … max):    32.9 ms …  37.6 ms

      Benchmark #2: ls -FG /etc/*
        Time (mean ± σ):       7.1 ms ±   0.3 ms    [User: 3.2 ms, System: 3.4 ms]
        Range (min … max):     6.4 ms …   8.9 ms

      Benchmark #3: exa -la /etc/*
        Time (mean ± σ):      24.7 ms ±   1.2 ms    [User: 19.3 ms, System: 25.4 ms]
        Range (min … max):    23.3 ms …  33.3 ms

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm not surprised there are a bunch of optimizations which could be made to "ls". On a related note, I once looked at source code for "rm" (specifically "rm -rf") and was surprised how inefficient it seemed. Not sure if it has changed since, but it would stat files before deleting and do various permissions checks - things that could be accomplished by just letting the kernel try to do the delete and then checking the status code. That ought to be faster 99% of the time.

<comment><AUTHOR> There are several aspects of `rm` which seemed safer rather than re-writing the defensive logic. Though, it can be done in the code without any dependency, I agree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> _> no floating point arithmetic_

Does it really makes things faster? I cannot find enough motivation to test it myself, but after I've read Abrash's Black Book, I got impression that floating point operations are at least as fast as operations on integers and in some cases they are faster.

While I see reasons to not use FPU, I believe that speed is not among of them. At least on x86 where a fast hardware implementation of floating point numbers exists.

<comment><AUTHOR> numbers here: [https://github.com/jarun/nnn/pull/84](https://github.com/jarun/nnn/pull/84)

<comment><USER11> Thank you. It seems have nothing to do with speed of computation, difference in speed caused by formatting inside snprintf. If I'm right, it explains why integers are faster in your case and slower in the Black Book.

<comment><AUTHOR> > It seems have nothing to do with speed of computation, difference in speed > caused by formatting inside snprintf

Both the versions have snprintf. Please share your numbers without snprintf.

<comment><USER11> > Both the versions have snprintf.

Yes, but with different format strings.

It is obvious isn't it? There are just 2 FPU operations in coolsize_f, while coolsize_i have a bunch of 'if'. It just cannot be that the speed difference is due to FPU operations. It must be somewhere in snprintf.

But if you asked, I tried to test my assumptions.

tl;dr:

\- seems that measuring is wrong somehow

\- in any case formatting in snprinf is much slower than calculations itself

Numbers for test "as is" are:

        Timing 500000 iterations
        F time 0.151318
        I time 0.064491

Then I changed:

        - snprintf(size_buf, 12, "%.*Lf%c", i, size + rem * div_2_pow_10, U[i]);
        + snprintf(size_buf, 12, "%" PRId64 "%c", size + rem * div_2_pow_10, U[i]);

This way I just replaced floating point formatting, with integer formatting. It broke all tests of course, but it doesn't matter for our test: all the calculations are the same and we are measuring them.

The numbers are:

        Timing 500000 iterations
        F time 0.056365
        I time 0.064846

Now coolsize_f is faster. But it somehow strange, because I expected coolsize_f to be even more faster in this case (coolsize_i conditionally uses longer format string).

Then I removed all the snprintfs (in case of coolsize_f I just commented them out with FPU operations; in case of coolsize_i I commented out the if around snprintf):

         Timing 500000 iterations
         F time 0.012604
         I time 0.007449

Now coolsize_f has just while-loop, and coolsize_i has this loop and a bunch of 'if's. But coolsize_f is slower, wtf? I did look closer and found one difference between loops:

        if (rem >= 512) ++size;

Seems it is a costly operation when inside of loop.

But then I hit a strangeness. I tried to make coolsize_f to show the same timings as coolsize_i or lower. I removed this 'if' inside of 'while', I discovered that type of rem is long double (so it was converted to int for bitwise & and then back to long double?) and changed it to int. And nevertheless I see the difference:

        Timing 500000 iterations
        F time 0.010668
        I time 0.007448

WTF? I changes the order of tests in test_relative_speed, so the coolsize_i tested before coolsize_f:

        srand48(17);
        gettimeofday(&t0, NULL);

        for(i = 0; i < n; i++)
            coolsize_i(lrand48());

        gettimeofday(&t1, NULL);
        timediff(&ti, &t1, &t0);

        srand48(17);
        gettimeofday(&t0, NULL);

        for(i = 0; i < n; i++)
            coolsize_f(lrand48());

        gettimeofday(&t1, NULL);
        timediff(&tf, &t1, &t0);

and viola:

        Timing 500000 iterations
        F time 0.006025
        I time 0.011848

I don't know how to explain it. n seems to be large enough to make any caching effects to be small and insignificant. Maybe it has something to do with compilator being too clever and removing "useless" code? But why the changing of order of time measures makes any difference? It needs more testing.

edit: formatting

<comment><AUTHOR>
        Timing 500000 iterations
        F time 0.006025
        I time 0.011848

Expected, right? First you called `coolsize_i(lrand48())` and then `coolsize_f(lrand48())`? In your results F should be I and I should be F.

In all your tests the F version is slower, as per my expectation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I just downloaded `nnn` from apt and I am not seeing this performance at all. `ls` is blazingly faster than `nnn` on this machine. I am seeing a speedup over `ranger`, but both are taking quite a while for a directory with 196388 files in it.

      time /usr/bin/nnn -S /local

      /usr/bin/nnn -S /local  0.04s user 0.36s system 15% cpu 2.503 total

      time /usr/bin/ranger /local

      /usr/bin/ranger /local  0.31s user 0.02s system 12% cpu 2.667 total

      time /bin/ls /local

      /bin/ls /local  0.00s user 0.00s system 86% cpu 0.002 total

Perhaps this is related to the `$LS_COLORS` environment variable, as discussed in a few other comments? It is set on this machine.

      echo $LS_COLORS

      no=00:fi=00:di=34:ow=34;40:ln=35:...<many more entries>...:*.sqlite=34:

<comment><AUTHOR> The version available on apt is older. The performance numbers are from master. I am on a device with SSD now and `nnn` master consistently gives a better performance in 3 runs.

Here are the numbers I see with $LS_COLORS set to:

        ex=00:su=00:sg=00:ca=00:

        nnn (still shows dir colors as it's designed to):
        0.00user 0.00system 0:00.01elapsed 33%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 3420maxresident)k
        0inputs+0outputs (0major+319minor)pagefaults 0swaps

        ls (no colors):
        0.00user 0.01system 0:00.02elapsed 60%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 3724maxresident)k
        0inputs+0outputs (0major+297minor)pagefaults 0swaps

And going deeper, with the same $LS_COLORS, see the difference in the number of calls (no wonder `nnn` outperforms `ls`):

        $ time strace -c /usr/local/bin/nnn /usr/bin | wc -l
        % time     seconds  usecs/call     calls    errors syscall
        </comment></comment><comment> </comment><comment>----- </comment><comment>----- </comment><comment>--- </comment><comment>--- </comment><comment></comment><comment>----
         82.55    0.004592           2      1988           newfstatat
          8.47    0.000471         118         4           getdents
          2.82    0.000157           3        58         1 stat
          1.89    0.000105         105         1           inotify_add_watch
          1.64    0.000091           9        10           brk
          1.33    0.000074           5        15           close
          0.23    0.000013           1        14           openat
          0.18    0.000010           3         4           write
          0.18    0.000010           0        22         2 ioctl
          0.13    0.000007           0        15           fstat
          0.13    0.000007           1        14           mmap
          0.13    0.000007           7         1           inotify_rm_watch
          0.11    0.000006           1         8           read
          0.11    0.000006           6         1         1 unlink
          0.07    0.000004           4         1           sysinfo
          0.05    0.000003           3         1           lseek
          0.00    0.000000           0         2           lstat
          0.00    0.000000           0        10           mprotect
          0.00    0.000000           0         1           munmap
          0.00    0.000000           0         9           rt_sigaction
          0.00    0.000000           0         9         7 access
          0.00    0.000000           0         1           execve
          0.00    0.000000           0         1           arch_prctl
          0.00    0.000000           0         1           inotify_init1
        </comment><comment> </comment><comment>----- </comment><comment>----- </comment><comment>--- </comment><comment>--- </comment><comment></comment><comment>----
        100.00    0.005563                  2191        11 total
        0.03user 0.01system 0:00.06elapsed 74%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 3424maxresident)k
        2968inputs+0outputs (7major+541minor)pagefaults 0swaps
        0

        $ time strace -c ls -l /usr/bin | wc -l
        % time     seconds  usecs/call     calls    errors syscall
        </comment><comment> </comment><comment>----- </comment><comment>----- </comment><comment>--- </comment><comment>--- </comment><comment></comment><comment>----
         32.03    0.004882           2      1989           lstat
         30.42    0.004636           2      1989      1989 lgetxattr
         22.45    0.003421           2      1548      1548 getxattr
          6.57    0.001002           2       442           readlink
          6.15    0.000938         235         4           getdents
          0.45    0.000068           2        33         5 openat
          0.43    0.000066           6        11           munmap
          0.31    0.000047           1        34           close
          0.30    0.000045           1        40           mmap
          0.26    0.000040           2        17           lseek
          0.20    0.000031           1        30           fstat
          0.10    0.000015           4         4         4 connect
          0.09    0.000014           3         5           brk
          0.07    0.000011           3         4           socket
          0.07    0.000010           0        31           write
          0.06    0.000009           9         1           mremap
          0.03    0.000005           0        17           read
          0.00    0.000000           0        20           mprotect
          0.00    0.000000           0         2           rt_sigaction
          0.00    0.000000           0         1           rt_sigprocmask
          0.00    0.000000           0         2         2 ioctl
          0.00    0.000000           0        12        12 access
          0.00    0.000000           0         1           execve
          0.00    0.000000           0         2         2 statfs
          0.00    0.000000           0         1           arch_prctl
          0.00    0.000000           0         1           futex
          0.00    0.000000           0         1           set_tid_address
          0.00    0.000000           0         1           set_robust_list
          0.00    0.000000           0         1           prlimit64
        </comment><comment> </comment><comment>----- </comment><comment>----- </comment><comment>--- </comment><comment>--- </comment><comment></comment><comment>----
        100.00    0.015240                  6244      3562 total
        0.04user 0.06system 0:00.09elapsed 114%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 3676maxresident)k
        0inputs+0outputs (0major+521minor)pagefaults 0swaps
        1989

<comment><USER4> Very cool. Do you know what the timeline is for getting the contents of master into the version packaged for apt?

On the topic of `ls` making many more syscalls than `nnn`, its interesting that `nnn` is using the `newfstatat` syscall. Is that capturing the information that the `lstat`, `lgetxattr`, and `getxattr` syscalls are getting for `ls`? If so, will that potentially limit this speed up to architectures that make use of the newer `newfstatat` syscall?

<comment><AUTHOR> To get the last release: [https://github.com/jarun/nnn/issues/217#issuecomment-4692263...](https://github.com/jarun/nnn/issues/217#issuecomment-469226327)

I am not sure when I will make the next release. I need to make sure it's stable enough through testing and that would take a while.

> newfstatat

Don't think so. For the basic info ls/nnn shows in the list mode, extended attributes are not strictly required.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> That's nice; _ls_ was fast enough for my personal use more than twenty years ago.

I don't have that many more files to list today, just some vastly larger ones.

Speaking of twenty years ago, that's about when some of the most stubborn programmers had quit the habit of using shifts instead of multiplies, and embraced floating-point.

<comment><AUTHOR> `nnn` is not a replacement of `ls`, it's a file manager. This is a comparison of the speed while listing. Turned out we don't need floating point for a file manager, so we left that for some other useful work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This seems pretty cool, but why does the source code have to be contained within a single 4000 line file[0]? I'm fairly ignorant of the design patterns used in Linux tool development, but it seems like splitting this into a few more files could make the code a little easier to understand/maintain.

[0] [https://github.com/jarun/nnn/blob/master/src/nnn.c](https://github.com/jarun/nnn/blob/master/src/nnn.c)

<comment><USER14> I believe the concept of nnn is that all the source code is contained in one file. If you wish to add extensions onto nnn, you can then write a c file and include it in nnn.c

<comment><AUTHOR> Extensions are (mostly) POSIX-compliant shell scripts (though they can be compiled binaries also). I have (kind of) explained in the main thread the reason I never felt the need of re-factoring the code into multiple files.

<comment><USER14> Ah, it was shell scripts I was thinking of.

For the record, the concept makes since to me. I moved from ranger to nnn a while back, and the performance improvement that nnn provides really shows.

Thanks for all the hard work!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the compliment!

The plugin-based mechanism fits perfectly with the fundamental design to keep the core file manager lean and fast, by delegating repetitive (but not necessarily file manager-specific) tasks to the plugins.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Without variance information, the numbers reported are pretty meaningless. A single run doesn't make a benchmark.

<comment><USER16> I'll give a quick plug for hyperfine [0], which makes running a series of benchmarks really easy.

[0]: [https://github.com/sharkdp/hyperfine](https://github.com/sharkdp/hyperfine)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I would be nice to use some of these techniques to speed up * (wildcard) in bash

<comment><USER2> Not sure they're relevant? * doesn't sort or filter by metadata, and since it's all strings touched only once I guess there's not much in the name of data structures to not paragraph-align?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> What's the use case where you need 'ls' to be fast?

<comment><USER19> Interactive

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> timing should be amortized, when `nnn` (or similar) is on you have state and can think and operate infinitely faster

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely! I personally use xfce4-terminal is drop-down mode to preserve my contexts over days.</comment></comment>


8 strains of the coronavirus are circling the globe - <AUTHOR> https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/03/27/scientists-track-coronavirus-strains-mutation/5080571002/ <comment><USER2> Nextstrain site they are discussing here: [https://nextstrain.org/ncov](https://nextstrain.org/ncov)

Note that I'm sure that's great for SEO but the "8 strains" figure from the headline is pretty non-informative here.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can someone help inform me better: I heard there are no significant mutations yet, but I also heard there are 2 "strains": S-cov and L-cov, where S-cov is a more recent and less dangerous variation.

Is this right?</comment>


Robinhood Crypto – Invest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies - <AUTHOR> https://crypto.robinhood.com/ <comment><USER2> Something about Robinhood just makes me uneasy - clearly their main target market is the small retail investor who is sensitive to a $7/trade fee, but the low friction, mobile-first no fee stock trading experience they've created mostly serves to encourage bad investor behavior i.e. emotional, irrational day trading among people who can least afford it.

Now they are "democratizing" margin trading (Robinhood Gold), options trading, and crypto...no professional investor who actually knows what he/she is doing is going to be served well by a mobile trading app - this is a play for the mostly uneducated retail investor (and small minority of knowledgable retail traders) who has no idea what they're getting into when they buy a call option in X or trade btc on margin.

I remember seeing on their social a now deleted tweet that read "Trade fast, die young." Ugh.

<comment><USER3> I think Robinhood does a great job of giving young traders the experience and knowledge of what actual trading is like before they're managing really meaningful amounts of money. College kids trading $500 on Robinhood are going to become 30 year olds who have a much better sense of how markets work and how emotion affects their own trading than college kids who are just instructed to give all their savings to mutual funds. I think RH has a niche and potential to really change things provided they don't do too much to incentivize dangerous behavior (like the deleted tweet).

<comment><USER4> Maybe, except the college kids who just give all their money to mutual funds will make more money. The day-traders won't "learn how markets work," they'll learn how to lose money by making dumb trades based on less information than their counterparties. They won't learn anything, aaaannnnyyyyything, of actual value.

<comment><USER5> College kid who started trading in RH a while ago here. After reading some basic investment books from authors like Peter Lynch, Taleb, and What Jim Paul, decided to get some experience in the markets. Invested a little saved and since then made a decent return, better than if that money was in a bank. So far, I'm doing better than the large-company mutual funds after 3 years, but as I've been reading, that's probably good luck.

It's been an interesting experiment that gave me incentives to learn more about financial markets, which I otherwise would not have touched. However, I started by reading and knowing a little bit, so I won't touch crypto trading until I know more.

<comment><USER6> > Invested a little saved and since then made a decent return, better than if > that money was in a bank. So far, I'm doing better than the large-company > mutual funds after 3 years, but as I've been reading, that's probably good > luck.

The only thing you should be comparing yourself against is the s&p500, if you haven't beaten that, then you're down.

Also, the markets have been in an unprecedented bull run. Everything you've learned will be useless once the tide turns

<comment><USER7> I believe the unprecedented bull run is also a contributor to Robinhood's success. Most of your mobile app day traders are going to drop off when the market turns bearish.

<comment><USER8> I think many young people don't understand this. They just think it's guaranteed returns at this point with the amazing market and btc, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Invest in Bitcoin & other cryptocurrencies

> Cryptocurrencies, stocks, ETFs, and options are now available side by side — > all easily accessible in one app. Managing your investments just got even > easier.

There is a dangerous theme of companies aimed at millennials that misappropriate Bitcoin (etc) as an investment, when it is just glorified currency exchange speculation. Blurring these lines obscures the real-world value created through actual investments.

<comment><USER10> I buy bitcoin, it changes in value, I cash out, I now have a different amount of money than I put in. How is that not an investment?

<comment><USER11> I put money down on a blackjack table, play a hand, win, and cash out with more money than I put in. How is that not an investment?

<comment><USER12> A better question might be: How is anything an investment? If the stock market is priced efficiently, it is as much a gamble as Bitcoin. The stock market is of course not perfectly efficient, but it is likely extremely efficient relative to the knowledge of your average retail investor. Which means that buying Bitcoin or other cryptos is no more a gamble than any stock market investment with a similar volatility.

<comment><USER13> What separates investing from gambling is the expected return for everyone is greater than zero.

AKA buy stock at 100$ and sell it at 100$ does not mean you broke even. You could have gotten 10$ in dividends. Now that positive may be small and some people may lose money, but that's allowed as long as the expected returns end up positive.

Bitcoin's can't have a net positive return because they only way to add money into the system is via coin buyers. Further because of transaction costs it's inherently negative sum.

<comment><USER14> What about stocks with no dividends (which constitutes the vast majority)? By your definition, only dividend investing and rental property investing is true investing.

I'm not disagreeing with you. In fact I almost agree with you, but your argument fails for most stocks.

<comment><USER15> Stocks with no dividends have some probability of paying a dividend (or doing a buyback) in the future. If you could prove that a company will never pay a dividend or do a buyback then its value would be zero.

<comment><USER16> What about Berkshire Hathaway? They said they wouldn't pay dividends.

<comment><USER15> You don't know they never will forever. Buffet will die someday and his successor might decide to pay a dividend.

<comment><USER14> this is turning to a very insane argument.. So if Buffet signs a iron clad legal contract that says no dividends ever for the duration of his company, it means the stock is worth 0?

<comment><USER15> If such a thing were possible, then yes, it would.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I would be extremely wary about trusting robinhood now. I have a stock account with them and back in October I used their new feature to transfer stocks from other brokerages. However, there was never any selection for _which_ stocks you wanted to transfer so it transferred all of them without confirmation. After 4 back and forth support emails each taking multiple days to hear back on I finally gave up with them and got Vanguard to transfer some of the stocks back. Robinhood responded by deactivating my account until the transfer was complete, which it did a week later. Here I am mid January still waiting for my account to be reopened after creating a new support ticket for them to respond to.

</comment><comment><USER18> Related, kinda:

Robinhood seems to be pulling in a lot of different directions and there's all these "early access" features that never seem to actually, well, launch.

I've now signed up for:

* Web access (otherwise it's mobile-only)

* Options trading

* And now, cryptocurrency trading (because why not)

and I haven't gotten access to any of them yet, even though Robinhood for web has been in "early access" for quite awhile now.

So I signed up for this, but I have very little faith that I'll get access any time soon (even with the vague promise of early February).

<comment><USER19> I'm really confused about why web access hasn't launched yet? Would think that is the easiest of them all and entirely in their own fate. Options and crypto seem like much more complicated endeavors but a website, ffs.

<comment><USER20> people will not spend more money trading on a website. not having one is an inconvenience. options and crypto are more places for people to put their money

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm disappointed in Robinhood. They've done great work making equity investment approachable to people who are traditionally alienated by it. Their mission, "[...] to democratize the American financial system." caries fantastic social value and generates a lot of good will for them.

Entering cryptocurrencies IMO runs counter to that mission. It's a cash grab which will expose their users to poorly-understood risks and will likely not put anyone on a more stable financial footing.

<comment><USER9> > It's a cash grab which will expose their users to poorly-understood risks > and will likely not put anyone on a more stable financial footing.

That's already the case. Their entire user-base is comprised of naive stock market investors. If they really wanted to bring about a more stable financial footing for their users they would just offer dressed-up ETFs.

<comment><USER21> Point taken, investing in individual stocks may very well not be helping anyone.

<comment><USER22> I take it you didn't buy amazon 10 years ago for a 1600% return?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think the feature makes lots of sense for Robinhood from a business perspective, but I cannot see the majority of Robinhood users fully understanding the risks of buying cryptocurrencies as an investment. It feels similar penny stocks and late-90s tech IPOs in that the price is driven primarily by uncertainty/unknowability in outcome and hype from recent returns.

Also I'm curious if Robinhood Gold (Robinhood's version of margin accounts) will work here, letting people easily borrow money to buy cryptocurrencies. This seems particularly dangerous for a product targeting small/layman investor.

<comment><USER24> I agree that margin trading on Cryptocurrencies is extremely risky and not fully understood by the majority of people doing it. I am very anxious to see what will happen in the long term since so many people hopped on the bandwagon in the past 2 months and I believe a quite large portion of them went into credit card debt to do it. I have been telling people I know personally that I thought Coinbase allowing the use of credit cards to purchase was asinine, and I am curious to see what will happen.

Capitol One is now blocking all coinbase transactions, and Chase is now running them as cash advances, so the credit card companies are aware. I think there may be a large amount of CC defaults due to cryptocurrency "investors" realizing they are in over their heads in the coming months.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I wonder what the thinking behind the name is. It seems like a bad idea to entrust your money to a startup that is named for someone who's famous for "stealing from the rich".

<comment><USER26> If you have any branding ideas for "stealing from the poor" that will get those poor to use it, I'm all ears.

<comment><USER27> Payday Lending

[http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/fact- sheet...](http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/fact- sheets/2016/01/payday-loan-facts-and-the-cfpbs-impact)

"annual percentage rates averaging 391 percent." (That's not a typo)

"Average borrowers earn about $30,000 per year"

"Most borrowers pay more in fees than they originally received in credit "

"each year, spending $9 billion on loan fees. "

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Here is a thing about Robinhood: it does advertising in ineligible countries, apps are allowed to be downloaded, profiles must be filled in down to the last field and only then there is a message saying that you're not allowed to use the app because it's unavailable (really?) in your country. Guerilla data collection at its finest.

</comment><comment><USER29> As a very happy user of Robinhood financial, this really does look exciting. If you've not used robinhood, and have a little interest in investing, I've found their simple interface to be very nice to use relative to the more heavy weight options I've had experience with (etrade, schwab, fidelity).

I didn't see how their crypto offering would allow me to transfer my wallet from Coinbase to them, do I create a new wallet, and then send money from one to another? If so it's unfortunate that I'd need to incur transaction fees to onboard.

<comment><USER30> The main draw for me is no commission fees on virtually any stock or ETF.

Although I did just try to buy SPXH (S&P500 + Volatility Hedge) and for some mysterious reason it was "not available for trading on Robinhood", even though it's an ETF with a not-miniscule AUM ($50M). I pinged their support about this, and it took them over a week to get back to me to ask what type of security SPXH is.

<comment><USER31> $50M _is_ a minuscule AUM for any ETF, especially one meant for trading (volatility hedged vehicles are not good for buy and hold). Institutional investors, Hedge funds, etc will not touch such an illiquid fund.

<comment><USER30> I mean, in the big-time institutional scheme, I understand that. But from what I've read, $10M is where a fund gets in danger of being delisted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Coinbase (aka GDAX) is extremely profitable, making couple million per day in fees.

Evey piece of this pie is sweet, so we will probably see more serious legit US-based players on this market of casual crypto trading for housewives.

<comment><USER33> Coinbase bought GDAX. GDAX fee structure is different from Coinbase. Coinbase is geared towards consumers and they take bigger fees for buying. GDAX is geared toward professionals and take way less fees for buying and selling.

<comment><USER34> Coinbase built GDAX, used to be called Coinbase Exchange.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This is it. Margin trading on Bitcoin for unsophisticated retail investors. Here we go...

<comment><USER36> ..doesn't bitfenix already facilitate margin trading for cryptocurrencies, which (even worse) uses Tether?

<comment><USER35> My point is that things like Bitfinex are far, far from being mainstream consumer iPhone apps. Combined with the massive credit bubble we are in (any warm body with a 600+ credit score can easily get tens of thousands of dollars in credit cards within an hour right now), this is precisely how speculative bubbles run out of control and crash the economy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> If any one interested in building your trading bot here is open api spec for robinhood. [https://github.com/sabareeshkkanan/robinhood](https://github.com/sabareeshkkanan/robinhood)

<comment><USER38> You should put better documentation. It's useless without instruction

<comment><USER39> I found it useful, it's a good start. Perhaps if you had more context about the toolset you would not find the lack of documentation the thing to comment on. Also, there are better ways to engage in communication than leading with negativity.

<comment><USER38> Where's the negativity?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> So who is responsible for Robinhood's orderbook? Are they partnering with an existing exchange to fulfill market/limit orders? Are they simply paying for the trading fees on behalf of users?

If Robinhood isn't posting their orderbook, why would anyone trust that there are no fees or commissions when they could bake their costs directly into the price? There's no market regulation (a la Reg NMS) for cryptocurrencies, so who's to say that the user isn't getting screwed on price and allowing Robinhood to take their cut?

But if they are partnering with an exchange, why pick one over the other? Who will pay for the withdrawal/transaction fees?

<comment><USER41> > so who's to say that the user isn't getting screwed on price and allowing > Robinhood to take their cut?

Are you referring to market orders? I don't understand this. If I place a limit order for 1 share at $20. And the order gets filled at this price; where do you think Robinhood is taking a cut? I think the strategy you mention could be possible with market orders however.

<comment><USER40> Well for one, cryptocurrencies (at their current prices) can be divided much greater than simply "1 share". I'm saying that the price that Robinhood sets is dependent on orderbook price which they control.

Example: you buy $20 USD worth of BTC on Robinhood. They give you 0.001750 BTC.

But on other exchanges, you would have received 0.001812 BTC instead. The differing price of BTC between exchanges gives them their "commission/fee".

The lack of transparency in pricing gives them the advantage in exchange for retail consumer confusion over "zero fees".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Facebook messenger doesn't let me share that url to friends. What the hell.

<comment><USER35> Why would you ever want to visit a website that Zuckerberg doesn't approve of?

Dump that evil spyware, and tell your friends to as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Is there a UK equivalent for Robinhood? Would be extremely keen to give it a go.

<comment><USER44> Bux? Allows trading a bunch of European and US CFDs. Also allows buying CFDs on Bitcoin. Unfortunately not on any other cryp currencies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Wooo this is awesome! Robinhood gets it :) I already use Robinhood for trading, so this would be a one stop shop. Plus the fact that it integrates with TurboTax means there's zero work to pay taxes on trades. Keeping track of the taxes is my biggest hassle trading crypto.

Hey Robinhood if you're reading I'd like

BTC, ETH, LTC, XMR, DOGE, XRP, XLM, XEM

<comment><USER46> GRLC!

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> This is amazing! I have been following robinhood for years, can't wait to move my bitcoin away from coinbase

<comment><USER48> I'd put money on their backend being something such as CoinBase...

<comment><USER34> They are listing like 16 coins/tokens, so it has to be more than just Coinbase/GDAX.

<comment><USER49> They are launching tracking options for 16 coins and actual trading only for Bitcoin and Ethereum. So it might be a while before you see all 16 on Robinhood.

<comment><USER34> Oh my bad...misread that then. Probably GDAX in that case, now that Coinbase is offering custodial services I wonder if they aren't just using that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Unrelated to cryptocurrencies, did Robinhood ever managed to roll ability to trade US stocks outside US? From this [1] (almost tree years ago), looks like they started with Australia, but that is it.

Anyone can suggest sane brokerage with API access allowing trading US stocks, ETFs or options for non-US citizens, with minimal deposit? I'm aware of Ameritrade; how about other alternatives?

[1] [http://blog.robinhood.com/news/2015/5/4/onward](http://blog.robinhood.com/news/2015/5/4/onward)

</comment><comment><USER51> My assumption here is that by "no-commissions" they mean that they're only making the bid/ask spread on transactions as a market maker?

<comment><USER52> I don't think they are making the market themselves, but my understanding is they are paid for order flow from those who do. I can only imagine the data is worth quite a bit too, assuming their EULA allows them to sell it.

<comment><USER51> Ah interesting. So they can't front-run their own clients, but they can sell the data to others who will? ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> It will be interesting to see if Robinhood understands this market completely.

For one, Coinbase has a lot of trouble with KYC and fake accounts. Now they have to come up with innovative ways to stop it.

Two, this market can be very demanding. Stuff like delayed payments etc are instantly noticed.

</comment><comment><USER54> It will be interesting to see how they allow people to fund their accounts. With their traditional investments, they have to follow tradional rules with respect to credit. But a more "accessible" and leveraged model like Coinbase, would be a stark departure from their normal modes of operation.

</comment><comment><USER55> How are they transferring the BTC to your wallet without paying the network/mining/transaction fees?

<comment><USER56> My guess is if you want to withdraw it off Robinhood you'll have to pay a standard network fee (Robinhood isn't taking a cut of that). They don't charge fees for trading, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Nice TRON-esque theme. TRON as in the classic arcade game/movie not the TRON crypto currency.

<comment><USER58> I didn't even know that was a distinction that now had to be made.

<comment><USER59> I actually thought it was referring to TRON the cryptocurrency before reading the whole comment so there's that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Does anyone know what happens in the event that a brokerage like robinhood fails? Are the assets insured by a federal agency or is it wiser to switch my portfolio to another broker?

<comment><USER61> All of the assets you have in Robinhood aren't actually held by Robinhood; they're held by Apex, which is a huge firm that many companies use. If Robinhood goes down, your assets are still with them and there'd be some reasonable way to transfer them to another brokerage.

If Apex goes down, which is vastly more unlikely, Federal SIPC insurance kicks in up to $500,000.

<comment><USER62> Exactly true for stocks, but I don't think Apex or any equities clearinghouse is clearing cryptocurrencies (exception: clearport for CME futures). So we're left guessing as to whose balance sheet holds the crypto assets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> (Pure speculation warning) I was wondering why they were taking so long to put out their options trading and web UI. I wonder if this had something to do with it.

<comment><USER63> Hopefully, this isn't a sign that Robinhood is going downhill. I really enjoy the "zero fee" stock trading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Anybody know if you're able to transfer your cryptocurrency on Coinbase to Robinhood? In theory, I could avoid Coinbase's fees for selling.

<comment><USER65> You already can. Just move that stuff over to GDAX (also owned by Coinbase, and free to transfer over) and place a limit sell order.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Well, just hours after receiving an email from Robinhood for early access the waiting list was already 255k people. Join the line!

</comment><comment><USER67> Andddd still not available in the UK. Exactly as it was the last time I looked into Robinhood (probably around a year ago).

</comment><comment><USER33> Coinbase 1 billion revenue in 2017 is going to dive in 2018 with Robinhood offering something better.

</comment><comment><USER68> "Corner the market, then raise the price. Simple economics" \- Walter White #breakingbad

</comment><comment><USER69> does anyone know what is their revenue model? i found this in wikipedia: "The company makes money from interest earned on customers' cash balances and margin lending."

is that possible in cyrpto currency?

</comment><comment><USER70> It's not available for my country, Italy... Just why?

</comment><comment><USER53> Wasn't there a crypto robinhood called cobinhood already?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16119362](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16119362)

<comment><USER71> Its based in Asia and its shady. So Robinhood is much needed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> BULLISH

</comment><comment> loup-vaillant The web page reads: "Invest in Bitcoin & other cryptocurrencies".

Can someone change the title to better match the web page? "Crypto" is a bit confusing without "currency".

<comment><USER73> The domain is crypto.robinhood.com and the website title is "Robinhood Crypto".

Title is perfectly accurate.

<comment><USER74> I was expecting a new cryptographic library and/or algorithm, and was looking forward to 33 highly technical comments about how it compared to ECDSA or something.

I suppose I should've known better.

<comment><USER73> Yeah not saying it's a good choice on their part as it helps perpetuate the conflation between crypto and crypt-currency.

Unfortunately this will be another case of literally/figuratively.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> Has anyone else noticed that there is no documentation about withdrawing funds? It looks like you can only buy and hold within the app.

Seems a bit pointless unless you're strictly interested in day trading and don't actually care about crypto.

If this is true, that means these are cash settled and they might not actually be backed by any assets. That idea is scary and I would avoid it.

</comment><comment><USER26> Buy incrementally, hold. If all markets are tanking, cash to USD, wait for the blood bath to be over. Otherwise you are gambling.

Accessible crypto is going to be a disaster simply because of unregulated markets. My friends get shakey when they lose $100 in the market, this is going to be "Weak Hands: The App". Or "Taking Candy From A Baby: The App".

I had to lose ~$200k over the course of a couple months and only after then I started really getting into the swing of things and started making good money while also making it back. It took all that to realize that if I _didn 't_ day trade my yields would have been much much higher. Day trading is hard, don't do it unless you really truly know what you're doing. Reading crap about market psychology and fractals and fibonacci this and wave theory that is all trash and does not make you a trader.

Here come the 'I lost my life savings' rants by people with weak hands. Regular people + unregulated market = blood bath.

<comment> FLUX-YOU >Reading crap about market psychology and fractals and fibonacci this and wave theory that is all trash and does not make you a trader.

 _reads crap about Tether propping up bitcoin price, without audits despite claims of USDT backed by USD_

 _immediately realize you 're regular people and invest nothing in cryptocurrencies_

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> "

<comment><USER77> It can be short for either. Don't be a language prescriptivist, it's a fight you can't win.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> If anyone is interested, my company is working on an investment advisor for cryptocurrencies (and stocks):

[https://projectpiglet.com/](https://projectpiglet.com/)

It works _very well_ for short-term trading on cryptocurrencies, still waiting to release the longer term strategy (buy and hold is honestly a great choice). We've just started revewing some of the results (since we launched last week), and we're already up stagaring amounts:

[https://blog.projectpiglet.com/2018/01/30-weekly-returns- usi...](https://blog.projectpiglet.com/2018/01/30-weekly-returns-using- piglet/)

Not to say it'll always be that way...

<comment><USER78> Anyone trading with a rangebound bot will have made money in the last two weeks with these stagnant prices. The heavy regret for me set in later when my rangebound bot sold Litecoin and Ethereum before they tripled.

<comment><USER48> Use the code: pigletbeta3 for 6 months free access, provided you give feedback at least once a month.

It doesn't have that same issue you describe.

<comment><USER79> Cool, I'll check it out

<comment><USER48> Note: It is in Beta, and we have limited data. Thus, expect a work in progress.

Right now we need funds to continue development and add more data. So we will be charging if you don't provide feedback - so please help us improve! :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Style Guide for NASA History Authors and Editors - <AUTHOR> https://history.nasa.gov/styleguide.html <comment><USER2> > Define frequently used acronyms upon first usage. Try to avoid excessive use > of acronyms, which is a plague of bureaucratic writing and speech.

e.g.:

> The space shuttle system consists of four primary elements: an orbiter > spacecraft, two solid rocket boosters (SRBs), an external tank (ET) to house > fuel and oxidizer, and three space shuttle main engines (SSMEs). The shuttle > can transport payloads into near Earth orbit 100 to 312 nm above the Earth. > Payloads are carried in a bay 15 feet in diameter and 60 feet long. Major > system requirements are that the orbiter and the two SRBs be reusable.([0], > 1.1-1)

NASA really loves acronyms.

[0]:[https://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/pdf/390651main_shuttle_...](https://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/pdf/390651main_shuttle_crew_operations_manual.pdf)</comment>


Clever Cloud, a European Platform as a Service - <AUTHOR> http://www.clever-cloud.com/en/

<comment><USER2> Why are you not using https on a page where I'm supposed to enter my password? I see it's submitting to a https URL but it stills feels a bit weird to not run everything with https especially in that field.

<comment><USER3> SSL certificate already ordered :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Infinite Scalability

You come across as a little overconfident

<comment><USER5> [http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2004-02-04/](http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2004-02-04/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I cannot find any information about where they run their infrastructure. It might be important for legal reasons and might be a differentiator.

It looks very similar to heroku.

It's not clear how the load is computed and how the scaling decisions are made.

<comment><USER3> Our servers are based near Paris, in two Tiers 4+ DC. But we are pretty close to open a point of presence in North America :)

Load is computed on two metrics: CPU and RAM, scaling events are triggered when one of this metrics is aboce 85%.

<comment><USER6> Thank you for the response! I'm actually very interested in this kind of products, it might look like there is already choice in this area, but I don't think so; there is still space for doing something different and better.

I'd have thousands of questions, but I guess I'll just focus on this:

* Over how much time are the load metrics computed? For how long do they have to go above 85% to trigger a scale?

* Do you compute the average load across all scalers? Or some percentile?

* Can these parameters be tuned ? Can the load and the scaling decisions be seen (a part from the bill?)

* Assuming other bottlenecks (like IO), you won't notice high CPU or RAM load, but you would notice a spike in response time. Do you allow, or have any plans, to include other metrics in the scaler or to allow customers to export custom metrics?

* Do you allow to spawn long running background processes. If yes, how does it interact with the CPU load based scaling?

ADDED:

* Can the user add placement constraints when deploying an app in multiple DCs ? Can the scalers themselves span multiple DCs in the same region. If not do you plan offering access to configuring loadbalancers to serve traffic to multiple app instances serving as a single logical app?

<comment><USER7> * Over how much time are the load metrics computed? For how long do they have to go above 85% to trigger a scale?

=> all metrics are computed in the more appropriate interval for each, and we improve this continuously. Main metrics are computed each 15 seconds today. We take the up scaling decision quickly, and we downscale less quickly, but this is very reactive.

* Do you compute the average load across all scalers? Or some percentile?

=> Across scaler and only one, we try to avoid false positive by an infinite loop ;-) (and it works) I never remind a customer unhappy of this feature.

* Can these parameters be tuned ? Can the load and the scaling decisions be seen (a part from the bill?)

=> you can manage how many you want to spent, it's important. But you can discuss with support to tune all of this.

* Assuming other bottlenecks (like IO), you won't notice high CPU or RAM load, but you would notice a spike in response time. Do you allow, or have any plans, to include other metrics in the scaler or to allow customers to export custom metrics?

=> Many metrics are watch, I/O included. And we will add an API to get metrics in the future

* Do you allow to spawn long running background processes. If yes, how does it interact with the CPU load based scaling?

=> Yes you can do it

* Can the user add placement constraints when deploying an app in multiple DCs ? Can the scalers themselves span multiple DCs in the same region. If not do you plan offering access to configuring loadbalancers to serve traffic to multiple app instances serving as a single logical app?

=> Yep, all of this is in the task list for future region.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Saw many errors popping up on browser console. Fix them - make them welcoming. Always increases confidence in the product.

<comment><USER7> ok, we will do it

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> So, this listens to commits to master, but doesn't have any testing between a merge and a deploy?

<comment><USER7> We will lanch something cool ASAP about that ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I can't see how the DB services are priced. Do you need an extra host for the DB?

<comment><USER7> There is free shared DB service + in a few weeks a new DbaaS for dedicated instances

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I cannot wait until we get through this video background fad...

</comment><comment><USER12> This looks 3x as expensive as Digital Ocean. What am I missing?

<comment><USER3> Well, DO is an IaaS, wich is different of a PaaS.

CC manage the entire software stack with auto-scalability and even app- crashing (auto restart).

Basically, the level of service is not the same, that's why the prices are different :)

<comment><USER12> I was looking at the 'solo' package. The cheapest one. Doesn't look to offer more than the server itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Fix the spelling mistakes on your landing page.

<comment><USER3> Oh, thanks. Where is it?

<comment><USER14> In the section "We want you to be a happy developer", infrastructure is misspelled, as well as 'enough' in the "Smart and Industrialized Cloud" section.

<comment><USER3> Fixed!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Cocorico !

</comment><comment><USER16> what is it with the elephant?

<comment><USER7> local thing [http://www.lesmachines-nantes.fr/en/machines-de-l-ile/the- gr...](http://www.lesmachines-nantes.fr/en/machines-de-l-ile/the-grand- elephant/)</comment></comment>


Mars trip to use astronaut poo as radiation shield - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23230-mars-trip-to-use-astronaut-poo-as-radiation-shield.html <comment><USER2> I suppose it is a silly question but how long can water be exposed to radiation before no longer being drinkable?

(that is the shielding _before_ it is turned into the other kind of shielding)

<comment><USER3> Indefinitely. The kind of radiation that causes breeding of hazardous isotopes in local materials is neutron radiation, which is comparatively rare in interplanetary space because free neutrons have a half-life of only 15 minutes. The biggest source of danger in space is high energy proton radiation. Neutrons can, and are, produced in secondary reactions from particle radiation but the flux isn't a sufficient concern to worry about "activation" of materials like water.

Exposure to ionizing radiation can cause formation of free radicals as well as peroxides which could be a concern but the particle fluxes are too low to be a serious concern. At the levels of radiation where it would be a concern the crew would have been exposed to lethal levels of radiation many times over, even with meters worth of water shielding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That headline title.

But then again, why is this needed? Won't they be getting plenty of radiation soon as they're outside the o-zone layer? Does our normal method of radiation shielding decay over time, or something?

(Total layman here, curious)

<comment><USER5> There are two kinds of radiation in space: cosmic rays, and solar flares.

The water and food, and "the stuff water and food turns into over the course of a trip" as the joke goes, are very useful as a "storm shelter" against a solar flare. If one comes up and the crew is not shielded like this against the solar flare, they will die within a day or two.

Cosmic rays are very hard to effectively shield against. They don't stop for much, including people, but there are so many of them that you are bound to take a dose. Right now the best way to deal with it, for temporary trips in space, is probably just to deal with it: accept the 1% or 2% rise in cancer risk, and make up for it with superior health care once they are back on Earth.

<comment><USER2> Dead within a day or two of a solar flare !?

Honestly I had no idea it was so active up there.

<comment><USER5> _If_ you get a solar flare, you're going to die quickly.

Solar flare particles are very eager to find something to interact with. But flip side of that it only takes a few inches (IIRC) of water, or a watery substance, to absorb them.

Cosmic rays, on the other hand, are likely to pass right through the entire spacecraft without interacting with anything. The problem is that there are so many of them that, by chance, some will decide to stop inside your body and dance on your DNA. It takes something like a planet to really completely block them.

<comment><USER3> Even a single meter of water is enough to protect against the bulk of the damage from all common radiation in interplanetary space except perhaps the most powerful and infrequent of solar flares.

I don't know where you get the idea that it takes an entire planet to protect you from solar flares or cosmic rays, that's very wrong, solar flares are not that penetrating. In fact, on Earth almost all particle radiation from solar flares (and from cosmic rays) is stopped by the upper atmosphere.

Edit: added additional clarification.

<comment><USER5> A simple atmosphere will protect you from flares. I think even Mars's very thin atmosphere would be enough to save you.

I brought up a planet only for the fact that you would need something really really big to block all cosmic rays. I did not mean to imply it was necessary. People on Earth are hit from cosmic rays from "above" as part of our background radiation.

<comment><USER3> Atmospheres help but only somewhat. The radiation exposure on Mars' surface is still much, much higher than on the surface of Earth, enough to warrant taking extra precautions to lessen exposure (such as placing regolith filled sand bags on top of habitats).

Also, to be precise people aren't hit by primary cosmic rays on Earth but by secondary cosmic rays, the particle debris from high energy protons and nuclei colliding with atoms in the upper atmosphere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Another silly question, we don't use magnetic fields for deflecting radiation because we can build only weak magnets?

(just idea, electricity comes from solar panels/"nuke plants" and is probably only non ending resource in space.)

A burst from capacitors for powerful electromagnet, could be future?

edit: found answer from comments: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5315143>

</comment><comment><USER7> So why can't they have manually powered televisions to pick up TV and watch something on the craft? Since Earth has been broadcasting for so long, shouldn't there be TV broadcasts at the range of Mars that they could pick up and watch? If it's powered by some sort of exercise machine, it'd also assist with the muscle atrophy, no?

</comment><comment><USER8> Brings new meaning to "I'll be on the poop deck"? (come on, it couldn't be resisted)

More seriously, it's an interesting idea and it solves a couple issues... storage, overall travel weight, and shielding. Interesting.

<comment><USER9> This would be a great Start Trek episode.

"Shields are down to 10%, Captain!"

"All hands report to the poop deck!"

<comment><AUTHOR> That's epic!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Water and nutrients from the poop may need to be recycled, certainly for deep space missions. Using it as a rad-shield would help to keep it sterile while in storage.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> They certainly can't go into space unshielded, so human waste & water will only be the secondary/tertiary shields.

</comment><comment><USER11> Hooooorrrray! I can finally be useful in the space!</comment>