A beginner's guide to getting started in the cryptocurrency world - <AUTHOR> https://blog.goodaudience.com/a-beginners-guide-to-getting-started-in-the-cryptocurrency-world-69c50516be71 <comment><USER3> I'm currently reading Digital Gold by Nathaniel. As I progress, its clearer that bitcoin might or might not be a great economic tool but its an awesome case study in game theory. I think the real innovation of Satoshi (whether he intended it or not) is to keep the players (how ever big or small they are) chained up to the eco system. At every level of new expansion, new players (usually bigger than current ones) join in the game and gets entrapped in the net. Then the game uses these players's strength to pull it self forward. There are real risks to bitcoin at points of these expansions. My guess is that if too strong players join at a time when the net is not yet ready for them, there is a risk that they break free of the net and destroy bitcoin. Here too game theory comes to its rescue. Assuming the net is not strong enough at any given time, there is little chance that the whole thing attracts stronger players. This is why I believe bitcoin has better chances of success than other crypto currencies. Its a constantly evolving monster that will gobble up everything eventually (Isn't it beautiful :))

<comment><USER4> I haven't read the book, but this 2013 paper from Princeton economists Kroll, Davey, and Felten [1] describes the game theory that keeps strong players from destroying the network (aka a 51% or "goldfinger" attack):

"It is often asserted (for example, in the Bitcoin white paper [22]) that a cartel can double-spend Bitcoins. In a strict sense, this is true: a cartel can spend a Bitcoin by paying it to a player Alice, receiving goods or services, and then shifting the consensus choice of history to a branch where that coin is instead paid to a different player Bob...

Bitcoins have value because people are willing to trade them for goods and services. If players were unwilling to accept Bitcoins for trade or unwilling to spend Bitcoins for fear of having their payments nullified, the value of Bitcoins would diminish significantly as players lost confidence in the system...

Worse, because players are encouraged to generate a new identity for each transaction and because identities are not linked to any side information, players cannot easily determine whether a proffered payment is coming from the double-spending cartel or an honest user.

A rational player should refuse to accept any payments when there is a significant threat of double-spending. As a cartel must outmine the entire Bitcoin network and thus outspend the entire Bitcoin network for as long as it would remain a cartel, we believe it is very unlikely that a cartel could double-spend enough to recover the cost of the attack."

The question at this stage, with the price of Bitcoin so high, is if this rationale still holds. What if a cartel were able to double spend one (or multiple) of the big 40 "whale" Bitcoin accounts before destroying the entire network? The one-time billion dollar theft could offset the cost of putting together the computing power to pull off a 51% attach, especially if the cartel assembled that power maliciously through a botnet.

[1] [http://www.econinfosec.org/archive/weis2013/papers/KrollDave...](http://www.econinfosec.org/archive/weis2013/papers/KrollDaveyFeltenWEIS2013.pdf)

<comment><USER5> You cannot build a botnet large enough to out-hash the army of dedicated ASICs that's responsible for todays' Bitcoin hash rate. Not even a botnet that merges all personal computers in the world would be able to do that - <USER2> are just that much faster.

But - some miners and mining pool operators are rumored to be among the bigger Bitcoin whales themselves. They already own (or at least control) a large part of the ASIC hashing power. None of them is even close to 51% today, but then you also don't really need 51% to pull off a double-spend attack, 30-40% should do it, as long as you pull that hashing power from the legit network at the same time. A cartel made up of the top miners and mining pool owners should be able to comfortably reach this critical mass of hash power. So effectively it comes down to whether they assume that it's better for them financially to continue supporting the networks' health or to pull a one-time heist, destroying the networks' credibility in the process. For the moment, the former seems to be still true. But nobody knows for sure whether that may change some day...

<comment><USER6> Especially as financial motivation is not the only reason for pulling that off. Currently majority of the miners are based in China. What happens if state orders them to approve a transaction of their choosing?

EDIT: I am not saying this is a probable threat, but there are some risks associated with Bitcoin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Having been introduced to cryptocurrencies the technical route, I'd never really been exposed to the brand of hype in these Andreas Antonopoulos videos before. I guess I've never watched a televangelist either, but I imagine this would be the equivalent.

This piece of bullshit in particular stood out to me:

> Where were you when libor was fixed? Where were you when gold markets were > fixed? When high-frequency traders used front-running...

It's odd that he uses these examples to support the "trustless" blockchain architecture, because blockchain does nothing to improve any of these. The opposite is true: it makes it far easier to manipulate markets because all transactions are anonymous, censorship-proof, and it's impossible to recover funds from bad actors.

Not having to trust a central authority for the ledger does nothing to prevent collusion or frontrunning in markets. From what I've seen, cryptocurrency markets are constantly being manipulated in ways that are both unethical and illegal.

> Bitcoin vs Ethereum is like Sharks vs Lions...

He claims that Bitcoin specializes in ways that Ethereum does not, but this isn't true: effectively, Bitcoin is a subset of Ethereum. He claims that Ethereum "scales 10x worse" than Bitcoin, but I don't know where he got that number from: the reality is more nuanced, but by any practical measure, Ethereum is already better-equipped to scale and the protocol is actively evolving (as opposed to Bitcoin's, which is immutable as long as its community remains as toxic as it currently does).

If he means the size of the full blockchain, in practice Ethereum implements compression techniques that make it much more compact--the Bitcoin blockchain is currently at about 100gb, while the uncompressed "archival" version of Ethereum is at 300gb but the standard compressed version only requires about 15gb.

In terms of transaction throughput, Bitcoin has a stupid hard limit of 1mb per 10mins of data, and so Ethereum far outscales it in that regard. If you hear the term "lightning network" as a counterargument, you can ignore it: the lightning network doesn't yet exist, and when it does, it will have several practical problems, including that it requires onchain scaling to work[1].

[1] [http://cowpig.github.io/bitcoin/cryptocurrency/2017/06/24/Se...](http://cowpig.github.io/bitcoin/cryptocurrency/2017/06/24/Segwit- and-Lightning-Network/)

<comment><USER8> Seems you've bought into Roger Ver's snake oil. 1mb limit isn't stupid, it's what creates the fee market which makes spamming the blockchain very costly and keeps blockchain size in check. Already you wouldn't be able to sync the ethereum chain from genesis block, I can still do that on raspberry pi node in less than two weeks. Whether the limit should be upped is still a question up for debate but the reason it wasn't yet is because there was no consensus about it and contentious hardforks are dangerous.

<comment><USER7> > Seems you've bought into Roger Ver's snake oil.

I've heard this a few times online despite not really knowing anything about Roger Ver. I am capable of coming to logical conclusions on my own.

> 1mb limit isn't stupid, it's what creates the fee market which makes > spamming the blockchain very costly and keeps blockchain size in check.

Very costly in the sense that an individual Bitcoin transaction curently costs about $20, an order of magnitude more than my bank transfers cost.

> Already you wouldn't be able to sync the ethereum chain from genesis block, > I can still do that on raspberry pi node in less than two weeks.

I literally synced the Ethereum chain on my laptop last weekend.

> Whether the limit should be upped is still a question up for debate

This is only true if you are using the phrase "up for debate" in the sense that smoking being bad for you is up for debate, or that we should do something about climate change is up for debate, or that net neutrality is up for debate: there are powerful self-interested actors for whom the obvious conclusion is expensive.

<comment><USER8> > Very costly in the sense that an individual Bitcoin transaction curently > costs about $20

you've cherry-picked the exact point in time when due to various factors ("civil war" between bitcoin and bitcoin cash supporters, propaganda campaigns, price rally) transaction fees are at their peak. if you look at the graph - [https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#all](https://jochen- hoenicke.de/queue/#all) you'll realize that for majority of this year transaction fees were well below 50c. this is what happens if you blindly believe the echo chamber.

besides, i'm not convinved all and every transaction belong on the chain. chain provides bunch of very strong guarantees that no other system in the world provides - it's ridiculous to claim that those guarantees are not worth anything.

> I literally synced the Ethereum chain on my laptop last weekend.

lol, nope. let me guess, `geth --fast`? well, i suggest you go read up on what `--fast` means. i challenge you to try syncing from the genesis block.

> This is only true if you are using the phrase "up for debate" in the sense > that smoking being bad for you is up for debate

no, it is literally up for debate. there is a multitude of bottlenecks involved in having a healthy blockchain and a network around it, they are all affected by bumping the blocksize in non-trivial ways through secondary and tertiary effects. and it's not even obvious we can handle the primary effect of growing blockchain and utxo set - that quite literally leads to centralization of full nodes via making it prohibitively expensive to run it which runs against one of the core tenets of bitcoin itself.

<comment><USER7> > you've cherry-picked the exact point in time...

I picked this number because it's what I paid yesterday

> lol, nope. let me guess, `geth --fast`? well, i suggest you go read up on > what `--fast` means. i challenge you to try syncing from the genesis block.

I used Parity, and instead of suggesting I "go read up on" something I already understand, maybe you'd be more convincing if you made an argument as to why the difference should matter (it doesn't).

> bunch of broad, abstract claims

I can't argue with any of those because you didn't provide any reasoning or facts to address.

<comment><USER8> > I picked this number because it's what I paid yesterday

right, so you got unlucky and now you're sad, i get it. just don't start misrepresenting what's actually happening.

> the rest

there is plenty written on both scaling and checkpointing/snapshotting, seems you've picked your side, don't see the point spending my sunday evening convincing you of anything. time will tell.

<comment><USER9> > there is plenty written on both scaling and checkpointing/snapshotting,

Not the op, but I'd be interested in seeing sources. I haven't made up my mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't get how one can be a self-proclaimed "HODLer" and also preach about how cryptocurrency is the future of money. Assets you can reasonably call "currency" and assets you speculatively buy and hold seem like fundamentally incompatible categories. BTC or something like it may indeed be the future of currency, but that certainly won't happen until the current speculative mania reaches some kind of equilibrium.

<comment><USER11> What the HODL meme stands for not selling your BTC for fiat. It is somewhat misleading since spending BTC (which is not the same as selling) is definitely not "holding" in any sense. The intent is telling the new users not to succumb to fear and sell on drops but stay strong in their belief in the technology.

<comment><USER12> Spending BTC is fundamentally the same as selling.

<comment><USER13> Yes, you're of course true - in the literal sense. The intended meaning is to not sell for fiat.

<comment><USER14> Or, to be more precise, not sell for fiat because of mistrust in long term bitcoin value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is how you know a bubble is coming, when you start seeing articles like this. It's starting to feel like 1999.

<comment> etr-strike For the first time in history people can decide which characteristics they desire in their money.

People look at bitcoin and see money that can be sent anywhere without needing approval from anyone. They can store their money themselves. They can program their money. They know the supply of their money can't discretely change underneath them.

Some people are opting to change their dollars to btc. Some are opting to hedge a small amount into this new system in case recent monetary experiments explode. Some people are speculating (as they do in forex markets today).

Just because more people want to explore this brave new world doesn't mean it's a bubble.

<comment><USER15> I'm not knocking the concept of cryptocurrencies as a whole, just like I would never knock the Internet as a whole. However, I would say that a lot of people speculating with stars in their eyes without understanding the underlying technology makes me wonder when a market correction event is going to happen.

Currently on my Facebook feed there is a kid I know who is a tech support agent but now posting pictures as a "Bitcoin daytrader" and now offering classes on the subject. There is another girl who is a model for rap videos in Detroit and she posts screenshots of Bitcoin prices to show how well off she is now. I've read about hackers walking away with millions of dollars in a cryptorobbery (now a real thing). The next thing is an Ocean's 11 sequel where George Clooney and Brad Pitt pull off a cryptoheist.

I think the real innovation is blockchain and that there will be a major cryptocurrency to rise out of one of the smaller markets. I get the feeling (just a hunch) that Bitcoin will be lycos/altavista/yahoo that will inspire a Google. Maybe that company already exists (Ethereum?), maybe not.

<comment><USER16> Probably not. Currency isn't a search engine. It's a fundamental piece of an efficient economy. There's a reason we went to fiat currencies. I like a lot of things about bitcoin actually. I want to see an energy based currency evolve (without the actual expenditure of energy). That currency can basically be a formula that calculates value based on energy consumption and output. I think something like that would allow for a more sustainable economy.

Electricity Backed Currency: [https://papers.ssrn.com/soL3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1802166](https://papers.ssrn.com/soL3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1802166)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is there a cryptocurrency out there that doesn't hand outsize rewards to early adopters? I feel like I could get much more excited about something like that.

<comment><USER6> I don't think so - that wouldn't make sense. Any cryptocurrency's survival depends on early adopters, so it makes sense to award them. Note that their risk is higher too. Don't believe that? Join them. :)

<comment><USER18> That is cool and all, but if bitcoin was ever even close to being "mainstream" you can bet your ass there would be a bazillion articles, FB posts, tweets, etc from people who do _not_ like the idea of being locked out of the economy unless they buy "the future of money" from a relative handful of early adopters. Such an idea is, to be blunt, complete horseshit. The idea that every person on earth needs to first purchase Bitcoin from a handful of early adopters in order to continue to participate in the economy is flat out loony- toon nuts. No matter how Bitcoin evangelists try to frame it, it's just not gonna happen.

Don't think that the lack of discussion about this means it isn't an issue. It is a _massive_ , _massive_ showstopper to Bitcoin adoption. The reason you don't see more people talking about this is because Bitcoin is absolutely nowhere near becoming the default currency used by anybody. Much easier to beat up on all the other massive technical flaws in Bitcoin...

<comment><USER19> I am not sure that long term BTC will actually replace USD or another government backed currency. I think it would take a LOT for that to happen. If that does happen then that means the value of the USD and every other currency will decline at the same time as the value of BTC increases which could lead to a global financial collapse.

That said, if it were to happen, I don't think you will have to buy bitcoin from a handful of early adopters. It is more likely that your employer would start paying you in Bitcoin when it becomes inevitable. Those same early adopters who hold a lot of the wealth will likely use their wealth to invest in startups/charities/companies/etc. the same way as entrepreneurs and rich people do today.

<comment><USER20> and from where would they get the bitcoin?

<comment><USER19> I meant that early bitcoin investors will invest in companies and put money into various organizations which will then be paid out to their employees.

For existing companies, they would need to purchase, but if a significant portion of US dollars moves into bitcoin then it is likely every company would start having to hold a portion of their cash in bitcoin as a hedge long before it actually overtakes the dollar.

<comment><USER21> Which magnifies their wealth. You don't invest in companies to distribute your wealth to the people. You invest in order to make more money.

Capital tends towards centralization, not equitable distribution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I got into bitcoin in the early days. I'll spare you my whining about how I could have been a millionaire, but I eventually wrote it off. Now, many years later, I remember my reasoning, and to some degree it still stands.

Anonymity is the killer feature of a currency.

This is why right now I am keeping an eye on Monero more than anything.

<comment><USER23> >Anonymity is the killer feature of a currency.

How is Bitcoin any more anonymous than cash?

<comment><USER24> He meant Monero not Bitcoin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Good summary for hackers, but I wanted to raise one point:

 _No, seriously, please read it! The Bitcoin white paper should be required reading before anyone is allowed to interact with this technology._

What the fuck no. If you want to build something yeah maybe, but this is exactly what's _wrong_ with cryptocurrencies at the moment - it's somewhere in between a cult and a club for insiders. This is why we have shitty wallet software and lots of existential uncertainty, rather than products that regular people can use with confidence _without needing to understand how they work_.

You don't require kids to read Adam Smith on the fundamentals of fiat currency before they learn how to buy candy. But when you go to the Bitcoin Website you're offered some 10 different wallets and told to 'educate yourself' with hardly any further help.

This approach is extremely exclusionary. When you write a beginner's guide, your job is not to mint a new cryptocurrency expert, it's to help someone understand why they might want to use cryptocurrency, get a wallet, put something in it, and complete a transaction (eg by getting them started with some low-risk variant like DogeCoin).

I've been following Bitcoin since shortly after it got started and the biggest hurdle to cryptocurrency adoption is the 'secret handshake' mentality that aspires to make a special currency for people in the know for private advantage, rather than offering simple, reliable, and accessible tools to people who need an alternative to the official economy (as much because of poverty or social exclusion as ideology). All people need to know about cryptocurrency theory is that it's secure, whether or not it's private, and how volatile it is.

<comment><USER26> It's not a good summary for hackers. It tells you sweet nothing about how Bitcoin actually works in practice. Where's the information on SegWit or the block size or in practice how the protocol works? Nowhere.

It's a hash together of what the author has seen on Bitcoin and thinks is cool.

It's an attempt to convince an idiot that's it's really complicated and they should BUY BUY BUY HODL HODL.

It's a terrible article and Bitcoin is a terrible mix of core developers who are innovating crazy solutions on top of crypto with spurious documentation, server farms run on cheap electricity in various places of a disreputable nature and college kids investing their student loans on internet money. Plus, now, a small amount of the general public who read an article or two and are playing the high stakes casino tables with their savings/rainy day money.

<comment><USER25> Well I'm OK with it for hackers in terms of citing the original white paper and so on. It doesn't promote itself as anything other than introductory piece. But I take your point about it not really meeting anyone's needs well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Here's a much better primer: [https://prestonbyrne.com/2017/12/08/bitcoin_ponzi/](https://prestonbyrne.com/2017/12/08/bitcoin_ponzi/) The Problem with Calling Bitcoin a "Ponzi Scheme" Much shorter and by the time you finish you will have a firm knowledge of what to do with crypto"currencies".

<comment><USER28> Interesting read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> No, _here_ is the current best guide to cryptocurrencies:

[https://www.amazon.com/Attack-50-Foot-Blockchain- Contracts-e...](https://www.amazon.com/Attack-50-Foot-Blockchain-Contracts- ebook/dp/B073CPP581)

</comment><comment><USER30> Bitcoin in a nutshell: A small group of companies decide the price of bitcoin arbitrary, the price is not backed by real money or a commodity but thin air. The price is not even decided by supply and demand.

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm afraid, when you read about something in the news, it is already too late to "getting started", meaning investment related activities. Imho after each word , of course.

<comment><USER32> It's gone up in price by a factor of 21 this year. What are you even talking about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Getting a wallet always felt like the biggest issue. I looked at Ethereum very early on before it caught on, but the wallet situation for that and zcash is so overwhelming and confusing, especially since a multiplier of 0 for a hacked wallet defeats the purpose.

At this point, a wallet for my iPhone that I can back up to say iCloud (accepting the risk that comes with that) and that isn't going to get wiped by accident due to a patch would probably be ideal.

I remember trying to get into bitcoin by signing up for Mt Gox, and we all know how that went. "iPhone-hosted" seems like the ideal thing, but I don't know if there's something like that?

<comment><USER34> I'm in the process of writing up an article that explains what I think is the best way currently: using a wallet supporting BIP32, 39 and 44.

A hardware wallet like Trezor or Ledger are the most user friendly ways to do this right now, but yes, to the average user it's a steep learning curve.

<comment><USER35> Bought a Trezor. Wish I could reverse my decision. While secure and works great, their dev team is not the most responsive and they are showing no inclination of supporting other ALT coins / crypto platforms like NEO. At least, Ledger Nano has supporting NEO and is looking to add support to other ALT coins.

Not fun when you plunk down a hundred dollars to realize that you have to buy another device once you start getting interested in other ALT coins.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I like Bitcoin except for the Proof of Work part. It has led to an arms race which causes tons of electricity to be wasted around the world.

I think the only reason for Proof of Work is to make it seem like "mining" is some expensive activity. But it doesn't have to be. It's a bit silly, actually.

In practice, PoW just winds up "electing" the next miner who you hope will compile all the transactions they see into a block. That's a single point of failure, they can charge inordinate fees, they can be DDoSed, and so on.

<comment><USER26> I love how mining is essentially transaction clearing but nobody calls it that because it might sound like there was actually just a proxy for financial system at the bottom.

Miners are just another form of payment system like Visa. You have to pay them transaction fees to process your payment. Sometimes it's reasonable, sometimes it's insane.

Bitcoin has solved exactly zero problems.

<comment><USER37> The benefit is the miners are fungible. If one miner wants to enforce unusually high fees or restrictions on what kinds of transactions can be sent (such as which countries can send funds between each other, etc), then it just means that if that miner mines a block, some transactions have to wait an extra block to get mined by a miner without those extra restrictions. And it will be more profitable for that miner because of the extra transaction fees, so in practice miners don't impose extra limits.

<comment><USER36> And how many extra blocks will they have to wait when a cartel of mining pools controls most of the hashrate?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I've had multiple non-tech friends coming up to me and asking for my judgement regarding crypto currencies and whether they should invest in Bitcoin now.

I asked them whether they invest in managed funds, stocks, foreign currencies and whether they go to the casino. If they answer with four times "no", then I tell them to hold back on the pure greed/fomo/speculation/hype.

</comment><comment><USER39> Also note that coinmarketcap lists for every token, which markets (i.e. exchanges) have it. Example for Cardano (ADA): [https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/cardano/#markets](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/cardano/#markets)

</comment><comment><USER40> I love it from the perspective as a gamble. However, I get myself stuck on how difficult it is to get cash out of bitcoin.

I wonder if the price pressure is due to that.

<comment><USER5> I recently pulled out my initial investment by using Kraken (in EUR via SEPA bank transfer, so my experiences only apply to that), and it was super-easy and fast. Deposits usually took 2 days to clear; the withdrawals took just one business day until they showed up on my bank account. So it was even faster to get money out of it than to get it in.

Kraken's trading engine is utter crap, but as an on- or off-ramp for fiat it seems to be worthwhile. I guess for USD it should work just as well, though GDAX/Coinbase seems to be the most-used on/off-ramp there.

<comment><USER40> In Canada I'm having a harder time to find a liquid exchange to go back to CAD.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> The article links to a guide on how to mine Ethereum on your PC, is it really viable to do this these days?

<comment><USER34> If you already have a GTX 1060 or RX 470 and above, then yes you can probably still turn a small profit. However if you are looking to invest, it's probably going to more profitable to buy coins than to buy mining hardware (at least for ETH).

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Great starter guide, i also like to recommend the getting started page in the Reddit [https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/) thread.

As people have already pointed out there are some things @aantonop says that aren't true like that bitcoin doesn't suffer from pump and dumps or front running, often exchanges not only run their own front running market making bots that get priority if they are the same price as other orders in the orderbook, but there are massive scandals without transparency & truth like the whole tether debacle, no one knows so you can assume the worst...

Extreme volatility right now to checkout our live forecasts/charts for pro traders: [https://bitbank.nz](https://bitbank.nz) currently based on poloniex data.

We also have a referral program where you can earn .003 BTC every paying user.

Theres also an API/bulk data for those technical HN types so you can build HFT systems on our platform.

<comment><USER43> > the getting started page in the Reddit > [https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/) > thread.

That page is actually [https://bitcoin.org/en/getting- started](https://bitcoin.org/en/getting-started) and has nothing to do with Reddit.

Even the FAQ videos are heavily, heavily biased towards the /r/bitcoin mantra/meme "hodl! hodl!" position.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> It's all good and what not but how do you buy bitcoin without either giving away all sorts of private information about you to a website or having to meet strangers?

<comment><USER45> You can use a Bitcoin ATM: [https://coinatmradar.com/](https://coinatmradar.com/)

Warning, the exchange rates and/or fees tend to be exorbitant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> More guidance here too "It's Not About the ICO, It's About the Trading Vehicle" [https://medium.com/@gaetanconsulting/its-not-about-the- ico-i...](https://medium.com/@gaetanconsulting/its-not-about-the-ico-it-s- about-the-trading-vehicle-38fa3425e9e3)

</comment><comment><USER47> "a beginners guide to buying while I pump and dump"

</comment><comment><USER48> I'll go ahead and plug my project (which just hit 100 stars on GitHub): [https://github.com/brndnmtthws/optimal-buy- gdax](https://github.com/brndnmtthws/optimal-buy-gdax)

It's a tool for buying from GDAX, which if used correctly will result in close to 0 in fees paid to Coinbase/GDAX (it's the same entity).

<comment><USER49> Cool! I've been looking for something that does just this

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> No mention of monero? To me that's a glaring omission in a beginners guide.

<comment><USER18> Hyping Monero won't make Bitcoin go up in price. That's why it isn't included in the beginners guide...

<comment><USER50> This statement completely makes no sense to me. I was not "hyping" monero but merely noting it's absence in a beginners guide to CC. Nor do I own bitcoin or care what that bubble does.

<comment><USER51> You got your parent comment wrong. He was not accusing you of hyping monero. Instead, he was accusing the author of the article of trying to inflate the bubble. Notably, parent thought monero would not fit in the narrative of the author.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I think the current Bitcoin hype cycle is ultimately going to be damaging to the future of the sector as a whole. Bitcoin's capability to actually be used as it was supposed to be is currently a terrible joke, and thousands of people who couldn't grasp the most basic concepts about it even if they tried are throwing large amounts of money at something they don't understand at all. The current state of Bitcoin tech is so far behind what the hype would have you believe.

The number of posts from people who delusionally believe Bitcoin is a sure thing, "safer than a savings account", and has nowhere to go but up has increased exponentially in recent weeks.. along with posts from people taking out loans to "invest".

That's going to leave a bad taste in the mouths of many new 'adopters' (speculators) when the rate of incoming greater fools slows down and the market takes a massive downturn.

This won't end well.

</comment><comment><USER53> As much as the elitist HR folk like to showcase the shortcomings of bitcoin, fact is that bitcoin is so much better than gold and fiat, which can be mass printed, or have you money blocked in the bank, how it happened in argentina and Greece, Cyprus, where people got a 40% haircut on their deposits over 100k, (check the inflation now in Turkey 13%) the money in the bank, you don't own them, bitcoin is at core a movement against banks, the whole argument against bitcoin is like the people were saying cars are so much worse than horses, because there are no paved roads, you need gas, maintenance, are noisy, can't scale, etc.

<comment><USER54> > you money blocked in the bank, how it happened in argentina and Greece, > Cyprus, where people got a 40% haircut on their deposits over 100k

Ok, how does bitcoin solve a scenario where, bear with me, a country starts blocking the internet? Something which happened during Egypt revolution:

[https://www.accessnow.org/five-years-later-the-internet- shut...](https://www.accessnow.org/five-years-later-the-internet-shutdown- that-rocked-egypt/)

<comment><USER55> You'll still have 100% of your money instead of 60% in this example, and even if the entire local internet infrastructure was destroyed you could just take a flight out of the country with your bitcoin wallet on a USB stick.

<comment><USER56> How are you paying for that flight?

<comment><USER55> With local currency, literally nobody has significant BTC holdings such that they'd be impacted by a measure only targeting >$100K account balances, and not enough local cash to buy a plane ticket.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Review my startup, crowdsavvy.com - <AUTHOR>

Long story short, just launched a company, CrowdSavvy. CrowdSavvy is a mobile app tool that enables developers to proactively engage with users with survey questionnaires via an iPhone (coming soon, Android!) SDK. Think PollDaddy for mobile.
The idea came from my mobile consulting business as numerous clients would launch a mobile product and then ask  "What do people think about my app?", "How should I prioritize my feature enhancements", and the very basic "Who are my users?"
At which point, they were forced to either hunt and peck iTunes, blogs, and review sites or go the expensive route of focus groups, research teams, etc. Our aim is to allow both small and large developers better access to their users, with an end goal of making smarter decisions based on data instead of guesswork.
I am looking for feedback on product/market fit. For example, Do you find this product valuable/Are you interested in including it in your app? If not, what is missing?
We have posted a quick video tour since our product requires a bit more tooling to setup* than others due to its B2B and developer focus: http://crowdsavvy.com/take-a-tour/
In return for your time and effort, I am committing to create some thought-provoking articles along the lines of OK Cupid's blog, highlighting mobile data trends we have been able to uncover.  Not as sexy as dating, but hopefully enticing to this audience.
Thank you for taking the time to read this.
-Brian
http://crowdsavvy.com/
*Actually, it only takes 6 lines of code <comment><USER2> I don't mean to flood the comments here, but I figure each concept deserves it's own thread so others can add.

The concept seems promising, and could be a step closer to pulling in users to provide feedback. You earned my respect for having South Park characters in your about page :)

<comment><AUTHOR> By any chance are you in the mobile space? Your feedback seems to be on the fence around the value of the product. What would help tip the scales?

<comment><USER2> I'm not in the mobile space, and I do like the idea of the product, although it sounds a tad intrusive for a web app, but I don't know...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> My first thought after looking at it was: "What exactly do you do?" I know it's well explained, but I should know within a few seconds. I agreed with antidaily since it says what it is.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting... I am going to have to setup some a/b testing or just a quick email to a larger group to see how this plays out across a larger data set.

As a separate question: When you hit the page, does the copy below the Ask / Learn/ Win columns help or is it either

a) not helpful text b) your eye didn't even go there

<comment><USER2> It's helpful, but secondary. By the time my eyes get there, I should be thinking "How does this compare to other products" or "Will this work with my application" not "What the heck is this?" I do think the columns and text are helpful though.I think a better one-liner and tagline would be sufficient in the top portion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Technical error: I can't see plans or pricing, no matter if I select the red or blue pill so to speak (sign up or cancel).

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep. The reason is we are actually in beta mode right now. More interested in finding early adopters and proving utility than making a quick buck. However at some point we will likely turn on a subscription billing service, then that page will become more relevant.

Hope that helps explain what is going on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> clickable <http://crowdsavvy.com/>

kill "Your customers are..." and replace it with "Customize in-app surveys"

good luck. nice idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi there. Any reason why you feel that would be a good change?

Here is my thinking (So you can see where I am coming from). It is better to articulate the end-goal, or what the client will get in return from using the product, instead of articulating the functional way it goes about to achieve that goal.

You think differently. Any thoughts or experiences on why that may be a better approach?

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> The stock photography is a real turn off for me.</comment>


A story about an angry carrot and a floating point fairy - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ruslans.com/2014/12/a-story-about-angry-carrot-and-floating.html?m=1

<comment><USER2> An amusing tale about the perils of floating point arithmetic, with no happy ending but many possible solutions.</comment>


Rails references - <AUTHOR>

I'm have a few web applications I'm trying to develop and I have been told Ruby on Rails is the tool to use.  What references (free would be nice) would ya'll recommend?  My programming experience has been limited to scientific analysis and simulation. <comment><USER2> Try Ruby in Your Browser - <http://tryruby.hobix.com/>

Why's Poignant Guide to Ruby - <http://poignantguide.net/ruby/>

Offical Ruby on Rails Guides - <http://guides.rubyonrails.org/>

</comment><comment><USER3> if you are new to programming you should read these two books (not free i'm afraid):

Design Patterns in Ruby (Addison-Wesley Professional Ruby… by Russ Olsen

The Art of Rails (Programmer to Programmer) by Edward Benson

</comment><comment><USER4> Agile Web Development with Rails, 3rd Edition</comment>


Show HN: Deploy Machine Learning Models with Django - <AUTHOR> https://www.deploymachinelearning.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> The source code from the tutorial is available at [https://github.com/pplonski/my_ml_service](https://github.com/pplonski/my_ml_service)

This tutorial shows how to create web service in Python and Django to serve multiple Machine Learning models. It is different (more advanced) from most of the tutorials available on the internet:

\- it keeps information about many ML models in the web service. There can be several ML models available at the same endpoint with different versions. What is more, there can be many endpoint addresses defined.

\- it stores information about requests sent to the ML models, this can be used later for model testing and audit.

\- it has tests included for ML code and server code.

\- it can run A/B tests between different versions of ML models.

</comment><comment><USER2> Deploying machine learning models with Django, I've tried this many times. But I liked it [https://deployplace.com/](https://deployplace.com/) more, and I advise everyone. Who doubts or knows nothing about it. You can ask me. I will help you.</comment>


Brands Advertising on TikTok in 2020 - <AUTHOR> https://jungletopp.com/advertising-on-tiktok/ <comment><AUTHOR> There has been quite an increase of Brands Advertising on TikTok. We've rounded up the best ones featured all from around the World.</comment>


Gamified Life: Habits Meets SNES - <AUTHOR> http://kck.st/XoA3Yg

<comment><USER2> Maybe I missed the point, but isn't it too easy to cheat here? I could add 40 fake ToDos each day and mark them as done. No need for them to be fake actually... I could just add eat, breathe, walk, think, work, exist, etc.

I know the point of motivation boosters is that you won't cheat because you want to improve yourself, but there are users who will cheat and that'll make the level system bogus. The most motivated users who do their homework and never cheat will lose in front of the least motivated users who never do their homework and cheat.

Am I wrong?

<comment><AUTHOR> Two things. (1) I plan to mitigate cheating where possible, for example hindering rapid-click. (2) Some players will play solo (in which you'd just be cheating yourself), and others will play in parties. I'm going to make party- building "manual", almost like a LAN party - you actually enter their user ids, and you can only have 5. No "auto-select from facebook". This way, you'll only choose close friends. The goal is for the party system to be an accountability partnership, and biggest-loser challenges amongst friends don't cheat on their weight checkins. So yes you can cheat, but due to the nature of the application I'm not worried about people _actually_ cheating. (There won't be any global high score)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the explanation, those look like good solutions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is there an underlying story / quest that your little guy progresses through as he gets stronger? I always thought that the story component is what helped make those old rpg's great. Obviously it would defeat the purpose if you spent too much time in the game vs. actually getting real life stuff done. But I think there can be a good balance where the "grinding" aspects of the rpg are replaced with productive life activities.

I think I would rather fund that development activity than an android front end.

<comment><AUTHOR> possibility, I'll bounce that around & keep it on my mind grapes

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hasn't this already been done with Epic Win[1]?

Is anyone able to explain the differences between the two beyond cosmetics?

[1] - <http://www.rexbox.co.uk/epicwin/>

<comment><AUTHOR> EW is badge-based, and iPhone only. This will be traditional SNES-style, highly social, and web first - then cross-device mobile.

In all honesty, I didn't know about EW when I built this. When I saw EW after finishing the website, I thought "God damn it! Effing spot on, too" and walked home dejected. But their Android app has been long in the works, there won't be web, and in all honesty - I want something REALLY rpg. My goal with Habit is to push as many possible traditional RPG features into the app, starting with a 5-person party system, healing and all (see <http://goo.gl/TvPTg>)

<comment><USER5> -1 for web-based interface. What I want is to use it off-line (why, oh why, do I need to have Internet everywhere for everything?) and have off-line access to data (e.g. to plot myself something for fun or insight).

<comment><AUTHOR> well web app is already built, and the Kickstarter's for native mobile app. no need to use the web app if you don't want to.

But the reason I chose web first is (1) easy access to all platforms, (2) plug into web services and hooks. Eg, there's the Chrome extension (<http://goo.gl/gze94>) where you lose HP for surfing reddit, facebook, etc. Pomodoro plugin, and future integration with Pivotal, Asana, etc. Integration is easier on the web.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Should the U.S. Government Buy a Drug Company to Save Money? - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/03/17/520430944/should-the-u-s-government-buy-a-drug-company-to-save-money <comment><USER2> A purchase of Gilead's two cures for Hepatitis C would directly improve the lives of 3 million Americans who live with it at a much lower cost than what we'll pay for Interferon and liver transplants. As a bonus, most of these 3 million people voted for Donald Trump as president, coming from rural areas where IV drug use is high.

Why hasn't The Donald gone and scored this easy political win? This is about as easy as it gets, big cost savings, literally saving millions of lives, it'd easily be like Nixon with the EPA, a memorable positive legacy that would last for decades if not centuries afterward.</comment>


Akamai's State of the Internet: Q1 2015 Report - <AUTHOR> http://www.stateoftheinternet.com/resources-connectivity-2015-q1-state-of-the-internet-report.html <comment><USER2> The report is available for download without sign-up on Akamai's community site: [https://community.akamai.com/docs/DOC-2245](https://community.akamai.com/docs/DOC-2245)

<comment><USER3> The link says "Q1 2015 SOTI report - FINAL.pdf", but the footer in the report says "The State of the Internet / Q4 2014".

I wonder what is in error.

<comment><USER4> The footer is in error. Even after proofreading it a million times, we missed that. I'll get it fixed ASAP -- thanks for catching it!

(Disclosure: I'm the editor of the report.)

<comment><USER5> Thanks for doing a consistently great job with this report -- it's a huge value to the Internet as a whole.

<comment><USER4> You're welcome. I love working on it, and it's been a bigger success than I ever imagined.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> U.S. beats out all the big European countries (U.K., France, Germany, and Italy) for average speed, with speeds slightly faster than the U.K. and almost double that of Italy.

Since telecommunications construction policy in the U.S. is almost entirely a local issue, it's also illustrative to compare U.S. states with countries of comparable density. Delaware, which is somewhat less dense than the U.K., would be #2 were it a country. Virginia, which is 1/3 the density of the U.K., would be #3. Utah and North Dakota also make surprising showings.

<comment><USER7> Frankly, I'm quite surprised by the average connection speed values. For Portugal, they report 9.2Mbps, while you can't even get a <10Mbps connection nowadays - the slowest broadband package I could find was 20Mbps. Even the 4G connections are faster than 10Mbps.

<comment><USER6> These are actual, not advertised speeds.

<comment><USER7> According to a study (granted, from 2010) by our regulator, actual speeds were 65%+ of advertised speeds for all except one (relatively minor) operator, and in my anecdotal experience, they haven't degraded - I usually get 25-29mbps out of my 30mbps connection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This implies the US has about the 15th fastest consumer broadband average.

I'd prefer to have a median speed to go by, but can anyone speak to whether the US coming in around #15 is an improvement or decline?

<comment><USER9> It really depends where you are in the country.

The top ten US states all beat out the 10th best countries in all or nearly all categories.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Direct link: [http://www.stateoftheinternet.com/downloads/pdfs/2015-q1-sta...](http://www.stateoftheinternet.com/downloads/pdfs/2015-q1-state- of-the-internet-report.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER11> I wish there is a global movement to define Broadband by 2020. Anything with a connection speed below 10Mbps shouldn't be called broadband so we can actively get rid of ADSL tech. We move to either VDSL2, G.Fast, or any other FTTx technology.

We still have far too many companies around the world selling so called Broadband servcies at redicously low speed. Unwilling to invest and upgrade. Property Market or Management office not willing to let them in unless some money to bribe.

With such movement we can finally say, does this property have broadband? Hence a effect on the value of such property.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is off-topic to the content, but I find it... interesting... that a State of the Internet report is a downloadable PDF (behind a registration, no less).

<comment><USER13> It's a lead-generation technique. Interesting content -> capture leads -> send content -> qualify leads -> sell</comment></comment>


The Fall of Groupon: Is the Daily-Deals Site Running Out of Cash? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/08/the-fall-of-groupon-is-the-daily-deals-site-running-out-of-cash/243863/

<comment><USER2> The competition for most outlandish criticism of Groupon is getting really boring. All of these articles ignore the same basic facts.

Groupon is spending a huge amount on customer acquisition. They've stated numerous times that this is a short-term competitive play, to try to create as much of an advantage as possible to counteract the dozens of clones by building up their brand awareness and subscriber list. The idea that they are a ponzi scheme or the next Madoff because they are choosing a fast-growth strategy is absurd. I might disagree that this is a smarter strategy than growing more slowly, but this doesn't prove that they're insolvent or something. Existing customers don't stop spending after one purchase, so the idea that they have to spend on acquisition in order to make money to cover operating costs is nonsense. They have total control over how much they spend on customer acquisition, and at a certain point will have to slow down. Again, you can disagree with their strategy, but there's no scam here.

Likewise, there is no evidence that any majority of businesses who work with Groupon, or customers who purchase Groupons, are overwhelmingly dissatisfied with the value they get. Tons of business still agree to run groupons every day, including businesses that have run groupons many times. Obviously, it's not a great experience for everyone, and I'm not even arguing that in the long term this model will do well. But to say that Groupon doesn't do anything or provides no value just isn't backed up by any credible evidence, at least that's been present in all these threads.

Boston is not Groupon's oldest or largest market. And the numbers in that article are to be expected, and aren't really "troubling" as the BI article's source states. Groupon is spending money to acquire more subscribers because the initial trove of low-hanging fruit has already been acquired. They're trying to keep a big market from rival companies, so they're going after people who are more difficult to acquire (and obviously therefor less likely to spend). Anyone who expects these more difficult acquisitions to spend the same amount per user as people who found their way to Groupon more easily is ridiculous.

I'm not arguing that Groupon isn't overvalued, or that their model doesn't have problems. But the arguments that Groupon is a scam or not a real business or that they're going to have to close up shop any day now range from unsophisticated to dishonest.

<comment><USER3> None of this "land grab" reasoning answers my concern I raised earlier ( <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2870094> )... how is Groupon going to defend their landgrab? There are NO BARRIERS in this market, as far as anyone can explain to me.

I'd love to hear any reasonable argument as to how Groupon will defend it's ground. It's not like the big boys (Google: Offers, Amazon: LivingSocial) are ignoring the space either.

<comment><USER4> I can tell you for sure: no one I've ever met is remotely loyal to Groupon. Groupon is viewed as, at best, a deal – at worst, an off-target annoyance.

There are no meaningful barriers to entry. Margins will tend to zero in the face of competition. Users have no lasting connection to Groupon's web presence. Every new model propose by Groupon further erodes its original appeal: false scarcity. Meanwhile, there's a war for customer acquisition, with spending up to $40 per user, when it should be closer to $2.50.

Anyone who gave this market a serious look saw these issues coming a thousand miles away.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well its a good thing $810M of their $946M round paid out the founders and early investors. Now no one but the late round VC's and the 5000 employees get stuck holding the bag if this thing implodes.

This is the problem with those early payouts (I don't mind these in theory but this case was egregious). There's not a lot of incentive anymore for the people running the company to do anything but what they're currently doing. They've already had their exit.

<comment><USER6> 100% correct and it really makes me wonder what the late round VCs were thinking. The only I can come up with is pure greed - willing to take an enormous risk for future IPO (above and beyond typical VC risk)

<comment><USER7> Well, If we're wildly speculating, we could also imagine kick-backs and money laundering.

I know nothing of Groupon's financing. I know Digital Sky was a large, late investor in Facebook. And they are controlled by a Russian oligarch.

Wealthy criminals are sometimes willing to invest in unprofitable businesses to launder money, buy influence and hope that a bigger fool will follow them.

<comment><USER8> If Yuri Milner is the Russian mafia money man. He is f*cked. Most of his investments are going to implode in a double dip recession, and bring down the rest of Silicon Valley elites.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If the owners didn't take ~700 million of the table from the last rounds of founding, groupon would be in a better financial situation than they are today.

<comment><USER10> If they didn't, they may not have had a second chance.

<comment><USER11> Which underscores one of the main problems. If the founders didn't think they were going to have a second chance, why should anybody else?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This article is kind of a yawner. No new information and not exactly the magazine I would go to for this topic. I don't really understand the final paragraph which suggests a $6b exit might have been favorable to a $10-25b exit.

Groupon-hate is tired. More interesting is a bull case: <http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=2904187>

</comment><comment><USER13> I just don't see how Groupon, as it currently operates, is going to make money. And I wonder how well its IPO is going to go, now that they have had to admit that they are losing money.

</comment><comment><USER14> Ultimately for Groupon if these articles begin to intensify in frequency and ambition (wait for the first one to use bankruptcy in its title), then they stand a fairly good chance of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

</comment><comment> mkr-hn Groupon has a huge mailing list and a lot of demographic data. A company like Pepsi or Home Depot could pay $0.10 per e-mail to send a coupon out to 10 million people. That's $1m, and there are enough companies with that in their marketing budget to make it viable. What matters is whether or not Groupon realizes what they have.

</comment><comment><USER15> The business model of Groupon is eerily similar to that of the US. Use current cash/bonds to fund payables and hope that it doesn't get out of control. For the US it already has but at least the US can raise the debt ceiling and print more money... something that Groupon can not do.

<comment><USER3> The analogy also fails because the USG has weaponry (spending more than everyone else in the world combined) and Groupon does not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The problem with all of these analysises is that they focus on rather meaningless things. Lots of companies operate with bigger debt than assets, as long you have incoming cash you can just get a bridging loan against it.

What profitability comes down to is what the lifetime value of a user (in this case we have two types of users, consumers and providers) is and the cost of acquiring a user.

Nothing else really matters, focusing on the accounting of how a company is handling raising money or managing it's cashflow isn't really that relevant in the long term. Sure it adds risk that the company might have cashflow problems in the short term, but it's the price you pay for agressive growth and presumably the investors are happy with it.

People seem to forget that you could have said the same thing about Amazon, in the early days it was losing money hand over fist because it was using investor money to subsidize product sales. Amazon gambled on the high LTV of customers and it paid off hugely for them.

<comment><USER17> Let's stop with the Amazon analogy. Yes, Groupon, like early-day-Amazon, is bleeding cash on customer acquisition. It ends there.

Amazon was building a retail infrastructure and they succeeded in providing value to their customers.

Groupon is busy spending truckloads of cash on luring businesses into their pyramid scheme, while founders and early-stage VCs are cashing in.

Pray tell how either customers or businesses are benefiting from Groupons. Is Groupon providing them with some service that I cannot duplicate tomorrow? Are they building some secret infrastructure that no one knows about? Follow the money, and you will see that no such thing exists.

Groupon is a fraud, and it's time we call it the way it is.

<comment><USER16> I'd like to see you build a global local salesforce tomorrow. Groupon's infrastructure isn't technological but rather operational and human resource based, something which is actually much harder to duplicate than technology.

It's likely the reason that Google wanted to buy them isn't for daily deals, but the fact that they've got a huge salesforce with expertise in selling to local businesses.

Local business ad spend in the US alone is a $100bn dollar market, only a tiny percentage of which is spent online at the moment, but the only way to reach this audience is direct sales. And that's something that google doesn't have the people infrastructure for.

<comment><USER18> "I'd like to see you build a global local salesforce tomorrow."

I don't need to build a global local salesforce for Groupon to be in serious trouble. Hundreds of people can build local salesforces in their own area, and the aggregate will cause Groupon trouble.

It's a bit of a different criticism that what most people are making, but I'm not seeing a big advantage to Groupon centralizing vs. hundreds of fast-moving much smaller competitors. There's hardly any economies of scale to speak of, the market in question is effectively made of people who have minimal "brand loyalty" pretty much by definition, even if every other criticism made is false I still have a hard time seeing an outcome in which Groupon actually own the national local market, precisely because "national local market" is basically an oxymoron. Even if they don't collapse under their weight, they'll still be pecked to death by hundreds of hungry budgies.

<comment><USER16> Marketing has significant economies of scale, a nationwide marketing campaign tends to cost a lot less per customer acquired than a local one.

It's very possible to own the national local market, good examples of this are Craigslist and (historical college-period) Facebook.

<comment><USER18> Most people badly misunderstand economies of scale. It doesn't mean that things just keep getting cheaper and cheaper and cheaper the bigger you get. Generally you get the most per thing benefit at the bottom, and as you scale up the gain levels off. A company may make 50 million things a year but not actually get any significant per thing savings over what they could get at 1 million things per year.

Sure, there are marketing economies of scale. But they don't scale indefinitely, and by the time you're advertising to a state or at _most_ a region of this country, you've captured them all, or as close to all as makes no difference. I don't see a huge win for Groupon here.

Craigslist owns its market at this point solely because nobody will beat its price, and as for Facebook's _permanent_ dominance (because that's the topic at hand, not a transient dominance, Groupon already has that but they won't be profitably unless they can continue that dominance for quite a while), call me again in three years, OK? Let's see where G+, Facebook, and probably at least one other competitor by then stand.

<comment><USER16> I disagree on both accounts, even in manufacturing scaling has it's limits. Being able to mass produce can't infinitely reduce costs, sooner of later you'll hit a barrier (cost of natural or human resource) which can't be reduced.

Secondly no-one has permanent dominance in anything, how many market leaders from 100 years ago are still leaders today ? - it's purely a case of how long you can hold dominance for.

<comment><USER18> You disagree with both points, then reiterate them? Read moar, plz.

<comment><USER16> I misread your comment

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "Groupon must spend to grow, but must continue growing to cover its operational expenditures"

I believe some of Charles Ponzi's companies also suffered from these kinds of structural problems, luckily Ponzi like Mason was able to exit his position in the company through follow on investors before the issues started to seriously affect the valuation of the company.

<comment><USER20> It really stretches the term to call this a "Catch 22". Since it hardly fits that metaphor and "Ponzi Scheme" matches that definition exactly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Did groupon start in chicago or boston. The article says boston, but I thought it was chicago ...

<comment><USER12> Groupon is based in Chicago and Chicago was indeed its first market. Boston, it's second market, gets cited frequently because Groupon itself spotlights it as an example market, possibly because it's a broader proxy than Chicago would be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> it's increasingly clear that groupon is essentially a ponzi scheme with some graphic design. can't wait for the post mortem documentary a la "the smartest guys in the room".

<comment><USER12> Groupon's cash flow is just like any other business: it buys merchandise (coupons) from vendors (on a net 60 basis), marks it up and sells it to consumers. How is that a ponzi scheme? I think you might be confused since many news outlets are making it sound like today's Groupon buyer's are funding yesterday's vendors in some sort of mischievous way. But that's how all businesses work.

<comment><USER22> if groupon is losing money on every customer, adding more customers actually exacerbates the cash flow problem, and every time those customers buy a deal, groupon goes farther in the hole. they use the cash to pay their oldest debts but eventually there will be a reckoning.

it's unfathomable to me that it would be an attractive investment.

<comment><USER23> For how many years did Amazon lose money on every customer? Land grabs WORK. I'm not convinced that it will here, or that Groupon is a good investment at its current valuation... But the idea that a retail voucher business can't be self-sustaining seems kinda silly. Groupon has 42% gross margins in 2011 q1 ( _UP_ 6% from the previous quarter).

<comment><USER24> _For how many years did Amazon lose money on every customer?_

Fewer than most people think. Consider the financial model of a (successful) grocery store ostensibly losing a penny on each transaction. If you're clever, you can make plenty of money by arranging your contract terms carefully.

<comment><USER23> 6 years is the answer to my rhetorical question, if you're curious. Groupon is less than halfway to that point, and has much higher gross margins than Amazon did at the time (and about 2x what Amazon has right now).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I hope they can do an IPO, and short it, along with Demand Media. You gotta invest in what you know.

<comment><USER26> Demand Media was a great short...until the borrow cost went through the roof (same problem with LinkedIn). Did not want to cover that but didn't have much of a choice. This was before options were available on DMD.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> In a federal prison somewhere, Andy Fastow mutters "...amateurs".

<comment><USER28> Groupon actually reminds me more of Value America:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_America>

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Andrew Mason will not fail. Look at people behind companies not just at the box. Or you may follow the Michael Dell path when Steve just came back at Apple and Dell said: "Shut down the company and give the money left back to the shareholder. You don't have chances to succeed". 1998 circa.

</comment><comment><USER30> I remember this happening 5 years ago, but instead of a bunch of salesmen frantically searching for businesses to pitch couponing to, it was mortgage brokers pitching exotic loans to home buyers.

I'll go out on a limb and guess that most of Groupon's sales team consists of ex-mortgage brokers and washed-up real estate agents.

</comment><comment><USER31> I wrote a little about this:

 _Another way to respond to this critique: Groupon could have theoretically solved this problem by adopting faster payment plans for merchants. That would make theirs a worse business with lower cash flow, but it would help their PR (and perhaps their valuation). It's counterintuitive that Groupon could make their business worse but make their valuation better—it depends on whether their share price is, at the margin, determined by the skeptics or the believers._

( <http://www.digital-dd.com/hp-immaterial-usability-users/> )

<comment><USER32> I don't understand, from Blodget: ". "As of June 30, Groupon had $680 million in current liabilities -- bills the company has to pay,".... "Meanwhile, Groupon only had $376 million of current assets with which to pay them." "

If they pay their merchants faster, where would they get the money?

I just checked at Wikipedia, and,

"A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to separate investors, not from any actual profit earned by the organization, but from their own money or money paid by subsequent investors. "

It kind of sounds like existing merchants "Daily Deals" are being paid by new merchants. Because this isn't really an "investment" per se, I guess it's not illegal - but right about now I'd be a little cautious if I were a small business engaging with group on - at least determine what level of protection I have.

<comment><USER12> Calling this a ponzi scheme is a mistake. If you consider coupons merchandise and Groupon getting net 60 day terms it's just like any other retailer.

<comment><USER33> No, paying off earlier investors with later investor's money is a Ponzi scheme.

<comment><USER12> Are you referring to the last funding round where a portion of the financing went to shareholders? That's not uncommon and I'm not really sure where you would draw the line. There's a buyer and seller on every stock transaction.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is Golang mature enough for FinTech startups? - <AUTHOR> We would love to get your thoughts on GoLang in 2016. The language has spectacular speed and it is fun to work with but we're wondering whether to brave an entire FinTech site with it. Our backup is Rails. I've noticed that Revel and other frameworks in Go have lost steam, due to React, Angular, and Ember replacing the frond end. But that has its upsides and downsides too. Go and React would make a nice pair, but we may have to reinvent the wheel to protect against many attack vectors  that are already taken care of by Rails. Then there is hiring and on-boarding on a less-standard architecture. Yet that speed is so tempting.
Braintree had some objections in 2013: https://www.braintreepayments.com/blog/gotchas-irritants-and-warts-in-go-web-development/
From a functionality standpoint, the site will be processing Stripe and/or Dwolla & Braintree; holding user profiles with private and public views; We'll do CloudFlare, SSL (DigiCert or CF), and Postgres in the back. We'll need to take care of CSRF, injections, user validations, OFAC checking etc. What do you guys think?
If you or someone you know has done GoLang for FinTech, would you be willing to chat? <comment><USER2> TL;DR Yes, but as someone else mentioned, the real question isn't if Go is suitable for Fintech, but if it's suitable for your team and the specific problem you are trying to solve.

I work for a startup called Mondo - we're building a full-stack bank and currently it's almost entirely in Go. However, this is a function of our architecture - we provide an API which our apps and frontend (some using react) communicate with. Behind this API are >100 microservices which comprise our application, and Go works exceptionally well for this type of architecture, as it excels at network services.

In your case it seems that you're building a web application, so Rails is going to be easier to build out a prototype, hire for, and has taken care of a huge number of your concerns already at a framework level. There is of course nothing stopping you from splitting out functionality later into smaller Go based applications, but I doubt at this point speed of code execution should really be a concern - if you're building a new company you need speed of product execution, no?

Regarding functionality, Go will do everything you're asking for: \- CSRF can be handled with middlewares like Gorilla's CSRF package: [http://www.gorillatoolkit.org/pkg/csrf](http://www.gorillatoolkit.org/pkg/csrf) \- Postgres with the standard database package, or other packages on top \- Third party APIs such as Stripe/Dwolla/Braintree will be fine \- If you're looking at integrating with other (older) parts of the global financial network (eg. is there an OFAC checking service with a nice API?), then you may find other languages would be easier for these tasks. In our case we may end up abstracting some of these with services in other languages that already have libraries to interact with these systems, and then providing a nice internal API our services can interact with.

So, Rails has a huge number of framework level features which may help you move faster as you develop your product. But, yes, Go is perfect for Fintech applications, we're building a bank and love it.

<comment><USER3> Would you mind sharing more about your microservices, what languages/frameworks you're using there? And if you deviated from Go for specific reasons or more just personal preference of the engineer creating the service?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It sounds like you are building a transactional CRUD webapp that doesn't need to scale all that much, for a startup where the team already has a bunch of experience with Rails, which IMO, has the best ecosystem for webapps available (and I'm not a huge Rails fan.) And the main reason you are looking at Golang is because of performance improvements, even though it doesn't have a great ecosystem yet, never mind a solid webapp framework, and the team doesn't have much experience with it? Is that right?

Having written and maintained a large Rails app from the ground up, and done some small projects in Golang, I think you'll be extremely dissatisfied with all of the extra work you'll find yourself doing, which really takes away from the time of actually getting your product in your users hands.

When coming from Rails, most other options will have speed that is tempting. If it were me and I were in your position and wanted to avoid Rails I'd pick Java/JVM for its speed, ecosystem and its fit in to fintech. But that's me. Or just use Rails and rewrite it in the new shiny if and when performance becomes a problem.

<comment><USER3> My startup's experience was similar. Our core is an Angular app to a Django backend API.

Django and Rails are roughly the same level of maturity.

The approach that's worked best for us is to keep all of the business logic and CRUD-y stuff in this Django base, then spin out dedicated microservices in the special cases e.g. CPU-bound tasks. I think most startups end up with a similar architecture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why not Java? It's more powerful, mostly faster, has superb tooling, high quality libraries for just about everything, tons of very experienced developers, etc.

<comment><USER3> In startups it's easier to hire devs for JavaScript/Ruby/Python over Java/C#/etc.

Particularly look at the orange bars in the graph "Programming Languages" on [1] which is based on data from AngelList.

1: [http://codingvc.com/which-technologies-do-startups-use-an- ex...](http://codingvc.com/which-technologies-do-startups-use-an-exploration- of-angellist-data)

<comment><USER5> It really depends. Outside of SV there are 10x as many skilled Java/C# developers.

In the FinTech world most of the developers with deep domain knowledge will know Java/C++.

Of course it really depends on what the OPs startup is trying to do.

<comment><USER3> Your point is definitely correct. And the post I linked uses data worldwide not just in the bay.

In fact even in my city (Cincinnti, OH) there are more Java developers than any other language, but they are mostly in corporate jobs.

So here still there are less Java developers _working in startups_ compared to other languages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I work in a FinTech startup and most of our components are written in Elixir and are in production. We are very happy with it. So I would say atleast consider Elixir and Phoenix. It's as performant as Golang, it's even better in some cases and it's a better language than Golang imo.

</comment><comment><USER7> A caveat to start with, I am __not __a front-end guy (though i program golang backend infrastructure all day /every day)...but I think the question of whether golang is mature enough for fintech and if golang is a good choice as an early language for you are orthogonal.

In the domains that golang excels in, it is much more mature than its age. Things like security, memory use, serving network daemons etc. it is great. I would be happy to advocate for it in environments that require a "mature" stack.

But if what you want to do, is rapidly take data from a user and put it into a database, over the internet, I'd say it is a pretty bad choice. Especially if you already have rails experience. Rails is purpose built for that use case and it is (from what i hear) good at it.

</comment><comment><USER8> Rust/django user here, but ... its 2016, micoservices has been invented long time ago, so use best tool for the job. As for other things: SSL can be terminated by AWS/nginx/whatever, so no need to worry about that. Every ORM I've worked with, regardless of the language, makes injections thing of the past, for non-db things few type definitions solve the problem too (rust has advantage here due to sane type system). CSRF can be solved by middleware + few hooks in right places, not a big deal. Yes, you will need occasionally dig into golang libs and frameworks to add a feature that existed in rails, so really this comes to balance between long-term performance gains and short- term convenience. With really large space between those two.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'd strongly recommend that you at least consider using Elixir [0] instead. Especially since you're coming from Ruby/Rails and you're looking at the frameworks, Phoenix [1] will get you 80% there.

Instead of me listing all the nice things about Elixir which you can read about online, feel free to send me an email with any questions regarding usage in production. I've been using it for some time and I'm very happy with it.

[0] [http://elixir-lang.org/](http://elixir-lang.org/)

[1] [http://www.phoenixframework.org/](http://www.phoenixframework.org/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Looking into it and setting up a sandbox. From a performance standpoint, how does Phoenix stack up against Rails or Node.js for you? I'm looking at benchmarks [http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r12&hw=p...](http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r12&hw=peak&test=json&l=2idxs) and, while there are advantages, it doesn't seem to stand out.

<comment><USER9> IIRC there were some issues in how Phoenix was configured for the techempower benchmarks, I expect that it will have much better results in the next one.

You may want to look at these benchmarks also:

[https://github.com/mroth/phoenix-showdown](https://github.com/mroth/phoenix- showdown)

[https://gist.github.com/omnibs/e5e72b31e6bd25caf39a](https://gist.github.com/omnibs/e5e72b31e6bd25caf39a)

Here is a post about using 2 million active websockets connections in Phoenix: [http://www.phoenixframework.org/blog/the-road- to-2-million-w...](http://www.phoenixframework.org/blog/the-road-to-2-million- websocket-connections)

From my experience, Rails and Phoenix speed isn't comparable. Even in development mode (with code-reloading etc) Phoenix is much faster than a production Rails server. I've also replaced three Node.js servers with one Elixir server which did the same work with less memory and CPU usage, but I'm aware that most rewrites have a similar story, so I won't claim that this is enough proof.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you are relying only on a framework for things like CRSF protection and do not understand how to avoid these pitfalls on a fundamental level then you have bigger problems.

Having said that I think I would choose your solution based on your teams skills. If they are comfortable with golang there is no reason it could not be made to work.

But as long as you understand how the table is set and the trade offs I don't think it matters. Golang is going to have less batteries included but it has other advantages too. If it's worth it is really a question of speed of code execution vs speed of writing code.

<comment><AUTHOR> Our previous startup was with Rails and we did hit performance bottlenecks, even without Payments being involved. Consumers are very sensitive to speed, so that plays a big role in the decision as well. Team skills are adjustable - the founders are technical and the team is being built up hereafter. The big question is does GoLang still have any inherent issues that may conflict with the expected reliability of a financial company - is the Braintree objection out of date?

<comment><USER11> you'd have to explain more about what you're doing, but i'm sure go is fine. i'm also sure rails is fine.

i can't speak for the first two points, but those seem simple enough to avoid with tests, really. most issues are.

the third issue is something you have to decide on. i'm sure the tooling around go is much better than it was three years ago, but you're not going to have everything in a pretty package like you do rails.

honestly the choice is probably inconsequential, unless you have some actual reason why the language choice matters for your application (which it almost always doesn't).

also if you're in fintech and doing bitcoin, i've heard the node ecosystem has the most BTC support, so that's a consideration</comment></comment></comment>


The Profile of the Ideal Software Developer - <AUTHOR> https://elbear.com/the-profile-of-the-ideal-software-developer.html <comment><USER2> This is missing a giant piece: in what context?

Is this for "business" software? Scientific? Crypto?

There's an old saying: Good, Fast or Cheap, pick any two. That might be relevant to drag racing (the context in which I heard it first) and irrelevant for software, but the underlying lesson, that there's inherent tension between different conceptions of "ideal" should not be lost. Picking a context for "ideal", making that explicit, and then acknowledging that compromises are necessary is necessary. Any other path will leave everyone wondering how they're going to make necessary compromises in one aspect of "ideal", without getting in trouble.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the input. I guess I was looking for the qualities that would apply to all those areas you mentioned. In the same way that systems theory is an abstraction that hovers above many different areas of human knowledge. However, I didn't make that explicit.

Your point for compromises is very important. It's important, because you have to compromise on your way to this ideal that I wrote about.</comment></comment>


The top secret rules that allow the NSA to use US data without a warrant - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/20/fisa-court-nsa-without-warrant

<comment><USER2> [http://archive.org/details/jfks19610427](http://archive.org/details/jfks19610427)

I think this is a very relevant speech to this current issue, and if you have 20 minutes take a listen.</comment>


Programming in 1969: An interview with a pioneer – my mum - <AUTHOR> http://www.ilikebigbits.com/2019_07_08_programming_in_1969.html <comment><USER2> My dad was recruited out of college to write code. Upon showing up for work, he was told they'd ordered the computer but it wouldn't arrive for another six months. In the meantime, They'd arranged time on another computer (one of only two in the state) so he'd spend the day writing and then he and another guy would load up their punch cards and drive an hour each night to load the other computer and test the code. At one point they had an intern managing the hundreds of cards representing the software they were writing. They came in one morning and he joyously informed them he had decided it would be better to sort the thousand plus cards by color.

<comment><USER3> Richard Feynman told a story that when he was at Los Alamos during WW2, he was put in charge of the nascent computing group using the brand new IBM computers to run physics calculations. The army recruited a bunch of high school math whiz kids to handle all the punch card loading and running the machines, and Feynman was in charge of the kids.

Eventually the pressure from Feynman to keep up the pace of calculation was so great that the kids, keeping track of program progress in their heads, would yell at him anytime he came into the computer room to ask a question because it meant losing track and having to restart the programs which were many, many cards. This meant losing days of precious time if they had to start over or if a program broke.

Finally the kids got so stressed debugging (and failing to debug) these long running programs that they devised a way to run multiple programs at alongside each other by color coding the punch cards, and then recording break points in the programs when they failed. This allowed them to keep the machines always running with one kid in charge the different variants of the programs they were running.

<comment><USER4> There were computers with punch cards and programs during WW2? I thought the first programmable computer was ENIAC (post-war)

<comment><USER5> These were semi-automatic calculators, the punch cards were all data. The problem with distracting the workers was that they were mostly responsible for _enacting_ the program!

[http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/34/3/FeynmanLosAlamos.h...](http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/34/3/FeynmanLosAlamos.htm) , search for IBM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Another computing history story from Sweden:

Once when I was young (in the 80s) I found a roll of paper with punched holes in them in our family's home. It turned out that my dad had taken a course in "automatic data management" while studying economics at Lund University, Sweden some time around 1963 or so. A course assignment had been to create a few programs in ALGOL. (I got that part because he had kept the course book.)

I spent so much time trying to decode this roll of punched tape. My dad wasn't of much help. He didn't really understand why I was so excited about this. Eventually I managed to decode the roll of paper, probably after getting some kind of character set guide; I don't really remember. I wish I still had this tape of punched paper... I do remember it was really exciting to write out the ALGOL program in clear text as I painstaikingly decoded the punched tape.

I was that kid who was really into computing, but so starved of input, in the middle of nowhere.

I think his exercises were run on:

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

"BESK (Binär Elektronisk SekvensKalkylator, Swedish for "Binary Electronic Sequence Calculator") was Sweden's first electronic computer, using vacuum tubes instead of relays. It was developed by Matematikmaskinnämnden (Swedish Board for Computing Machinery) and for a short time it was the fastest computer in the world. The computer was completed in 1953 and in use until 1966."

or

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMIL_(computer)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMIL_\(computer\))

<comment><USER7> I did the same with my mum's stacks of paper tape PL/I programs. At one point I tried to build an automated reader that would interface with my BBC B, but that took me longer than transcribing by hand did.

I remember being surprised at the time just how quickly I learned to read papertape, just having the tape in my left hand with my thumb at the current position and writing the character with my right hand, shimmy the tape, next character

<comment><USER6> Neat! I was going through this during a few years after I had just gotten a handed down ZX81 from a relative some time around 1984, at the age of 7 or so. I still remember that this relative sold the computer to my parents for 400 SEK (~$40). Pretty good "investment" in my career, I've gotta say.

(They also, while not being super well paid as municipal workers also sprung for two more computers for me - one 8086 PC in ~89 and one 80486 PC in ~93. So thankful. These things were so expensive back then, probably at least 1.5x a monthly salary after taxes.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Towards the end of the Cold War, my dad was a military man on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain. As a consequence, I was a military brat, attending a "military" preschool. These were tough times, and even paper was at a premium, so one of the parents used to bring lots and lots of printouts that kids could use to draw on the other side. One day it stopped abruptly, and we had no more paper to draw on.

Years later I learned that those printouts came from air defense systems, and counterintelligence was involved in our little tragedy.

<comment><USER9> Both sides of the curtain were the wrong side... for all sorts of reasons. e.g. most the state structure of Nazi Germany just continued to exist undisturbed in post-war West Germany; while in the east the Russians conducted a rather brutal purge/execution campaign.

<comment><USER10> German here. Before the comment gets misunderstood, after WW2 West Germany became a democracy, it was no longer a Nazi state. What the commenter is probably talking about is, that a lot of the administration officials from Nazi Germany would still work in the democratic Germanys administration in various roles. Some of them definitely were Nazis and should not have had a place in any official job, others were just people doing their job under the old and new government.

<comment><USER9> The National Socialist party was outlawed; and a few of its top officials were sentenced to death or prison terms. But - it was "no longer a Nazi state" in a somewhat superficial sense. It stopped being a Nazi state because a foreign occupier threw them out of power, not because it had undergone a deep internal social process.

As for "just doing your job" \- that's actually rather complex. If you were delivering mail or sweeping the streets then, obviously, you have nothing to answer for. But what if you were, say ,a high-level municipal official in a town where the Jewish population was rounded up under your watch? What if you were a police officer? A judge? A manager in Deutche Reichsbahn (the state railway service)? A department manager in a government ministry? A faculty member in a university from which subversives and undesirable-race people were cleansed? It's not as simple as just doing your job.

I'm not preaching to _ph_ here, just emphasizing that for a lot of people, they were industriously pushing forward the Nazi state, and then at some point the flags changed, the ideology changed, the rhetoric changed and now we were all "no longer Nazis".

<comment><USER10> It stopped being a Nazi state. As I wrote, yes, there were too many people left in administration, who played to too important role in Nazi Germany, the example you name is a very good one. But it also is very difficult to judge in each case until you can prove the guilt of a person. So a lot of Nazis managed to go unnoticed. But Germany was a functioning democracy ever since.

I am so picky on that point, because saying "Nazi Germany just continued to exist" is very likely to give people, who are not familiar with Germany the wrong impression[1]. Nazi Germany did not continue to exist. There is a lot of valid criticism how society dealt with the Nazi regime, but it was (as a regime) in the past.

[1] Some months ago, an American friend of mine was surprised to learn that the whole continental Europe does drive to the right.

<comment><USER9> I didn't claim it remained a Nazi state, but that the transition was superficial.

My point is, that - unfortunately - there isn't such a unbridgeable chasm between a Capitalist democracy and a Fascist autocracy as people would like to imagine. Ruling elites can turn the dial this way or that way without that much change, even on the level of top personnel and organizational structures.

If faced with significant social upheaval, or other structural threats, many democracies would very likely turn more authoritarian, more nationalist, more racist, more corporatist - would become Fascistic. In fact, they do.

<comment><USER8> > unbridgeable chasm between a Capitalist democracy and a Fascist autocracy

Exactly. Alas, that's what we're seeing in Eastern Europe right now. Hungary being the best example, Poland also though luckily slightly less so. I wouldn't call it Fascism specifically, more like conservative authoritarianism, but still.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > The four of us made a dating program where you would input men and women and > their traits, and then generate a good matching between them with an > algorithm of our own invention.

Could this be the very first "dating app"?! Amazing.

<comment><USER12> Nope! This is an area where software, society and gender overlap, so it's been getting a fair bit of attention, most notably by Professor Marie Hicks: [https://adanewmedia.org/2016/10/issue10-hicks/](https://adanewmedia.org/2016/10/issue10-hicks/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Great story.

My somewhat similar one: In the early '50s my mother took the one and only computer class her university offered. At one point a guy from the local defense contractor comes in (!) and essentially offers everyone in the class with a half-decent grade a job at the end of the year. She took them up on it and that's how she got into computers. She also claims she used to manually bootstrap a computer using toggle switches to initiate a loader and then feed it punch cards (when not in use, kept in a card-catalog cabinet like libraries used to have). I guess I shouldn't doubt it too much. She did used to bring old (some used!) punch cards home from work for us kids to play with. I suppose they must have been clearing out obsolete equipment and systems.

<comment><USER14> "I guess I shouldn't doubt it too much."

How ELSE would you do it, on a machine with no ROM? We always had to manually enter one instruction into memory to start up the card reader to read the bootstrap card. (This was long before the PDP-11's that others have mentioned.)

"She did used to bring old (some used!) punch cards home from work for us kids to play with. I suppose they must have been clearing out obsolete equipment and systems."

Old used punch cards were far more prevalent than new ones ... every time you type a line into your computer and then delete or correct it, that's equivalent to having an old punch card.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> What's interesting is that although the difference between computers of the 1960s and those we have today is greater than the difference between, say, a horse and a fighter jet, the principles of controlling (programming) them are still the same...

<comment><USER8> Do you mean the difference in power? I still find horses and fighter jets more different than early and modern computers.

<comment><USER16> Likely speed and user-visible complexity. A horse has a really basic interface.

<comment><USER8> Not the debugging interface though :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Slight eyebrow-raise at "pioneer" - my mum was a programmer in 1956. She tells me they didn't have enough RAM to fit the whole program in. Nothing changes.

<comment><USER18> My mom was also a programmer in the 1950s. She tells about one CPU where you could use patch cords to change the meaning of the opcodes. My mind boggles.

<comment><USER19> One of my tutors at uni would get us to do presentations on old papers. I remember one that described a novel very early GUI system. They built the hardware by basically wiring two machines together at the bus level (one was essentially the graphics card), and adding a bunch of additional instructupions using TTL logic chips, it was immensely impressive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> My mum ran the computing department in the Education Faculty at a university in Australia from 1976. I was 6 years old then and would 'help' her at work during school holidays and sometimes when I was ill.

My fond memories included:

\- Discovering the paper tape machine.

\- Writing stories on the card punch machine, one line per card.

\- Pressing buttons on the massive card sorting machine when noone was looking.

\- Walking to the Computer Centre to pick up the output of my mum's previous day's coding. If she was lucky, there was a thick stack of fanfold paper in her pigeonhole. If not, just a couple of pages with the error message.

\- Around 1978, playing with her HP RPN calculator. It had an inbuilt reader for programs on small magnetic strips. I typed in the example Moon Lander program from the manual and spent a few hours figuring out how much thrust was needed to land without crashing.

\- Some time around 1979 they got a computer with a video display and a lightpen. And a 300 baud acoustic coupler.

</comment><comment><USER21> > We created the programs, and once they were completed and tested we handed > them off. Others were responsible for maintaining them, we just wrote new > ones!

OMG! when have we stopped doing that?

<comment><USER22> If you ever find out, please share. I'd also love to hand most of my code to other people and never see it again.

<comment><USER23> Start from a data model you don't understand and use/write objects that force your data into expected results. Make sure everybody involved sees a working version

Writing this way is time consuming but ensures nobody including you wants to maintain it or add features.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The photo of the flowchart template - it must have been the 80s when my mum got one of these and gave it to me, but by then it was in a plastic wrapper rather than a paper one. I guess everyone doing a IBM course got one.

<comment><USER25> That stencil and the instructions are so cool—so well designed! So clear and concise and useful. Seems like it would still be useful today, ~50 years later. Nice job IBM. Loved this interview.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This sentence made me smile: _"We also used to serve cake on punch cards, so they were quite versatile."_

When my dad went to high school in the town of Skövde, Sweden he visited Volvo and they also served cake on punch cards there :)

</comment><comment><USER9> Most striking sentence:

> I needed the salary to get my own apartment.

Just think that with the starting salary of a non-academically-trained employee (in a desirable position, but still) - you could reasonably buy your own apartment.

<comment><USER27> I don't think it meant buying an apartment, but being able to rent one on her own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I too owned that IBM reference card, which I have since scanned and discarded, and I still have that flowchart stencil.

</comment><comment><USER28> These are all great stories. I wonder what everyone is doing now near the end of your careers.

</comment><comment><USER29> Wow I love this domain name.</comment>


Hello World Fuck you - <AUTHOR> http://www.codenstuff.info/2016/02/11/changing-the-world/ <comment><USER2> That was a beautifully honest blog post that shows a glimpse into the souls of a lot of software engineers. It will probably get caught in the wash because it doesn't follow the optimistic, mostly-pc, mostly-fake, ethos of hacker news, but I'm glad you put it out to the world and will be looking out for part two.</comment>