He Says He Invented Bitcoin and Is Suing Those Who Doubt Him - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-19/who-invented-bitcoin-a-series-of-court-cases-could-shed-light <comment><USER3> It would be so easy. If CSW signed a message with Satoshi's private key, it would be enough to prove that he is Satoshi (or at least had access to Satoshi in a way nobody else had).

But no, he's going the legal route for some strange reasons and it doesn't seem he's convincing the judge.

I have no clue what he intends to do. Maybe he got so into his role that he really believes now to be Satoshi?

<comment><USER4> My cynical guess is that he doesn't have the private key, but wants to use legal methods (court cases, registering copyrights for documents, etc) as a means of establishing himself as Satoshi.

Once established he'll launch a court case requiring a hard fork of the blockchain to "recover" Satoshi's coins, because they are after all his, and profit ... assuming he doesn't crack the truecrypt password first.

<comment><USER5> Except he probably won't be able to create a hard fork; if my understanding of crypto / bitcoin is correct, he needs a majority of miners to go with it, and given that the Bitcoin is international that's going to be very difficult.

<comment><USER6> You don't need a majority of miners to create a hard fork, you just need any amount. What you need a majority for is to get the chain to adopt your version of history without hard-forking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Too bad this piece doesn't link to the article containing hard evidence of numerous frauds:

[https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/op-ed-how-many- wrongs-m...](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/op-ed-how-many-wrongs-make- wright)

Imagine how easy it would be to prove his claim of being Satoshi: a signed message using the private key from the genesis block or any of the first few dozen blocks.

After all, he did say he would provide cryptographic proof. Instead what he produced was technobabble designed to mislead the ill-informed.

So instead, this performance artist goes around suing people for pointing out the obvious truth.

For the technically minded, here's one summary of one of Wright's signature frauds:

[https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/81115/if- someone...](https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/81115/if-someone- wanted-to-pretend-to-be-satoshi-by-posting-a-fake-signature-to-defrau)

<comment><USER8> Addition: goes around suing people for pointing out the obvious truth.. in the UK. Where the defendants have to prove he is not Satoshi, as opposed to the US where he would have to prove he is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nah. All the evidence points to it being me: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5692317](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5692317) :-)

<comment><USER10> You should sue him

<comment><USER9> No, that's what fake Satoshi would do. Real Satoshi wouldn't.

<comment><USER10> And how better to hide your identity than ruling yourself out as a fake?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If he sends me a bitcoin from one of Satoshi's wallets I'll believe him. 10 bitcoins and I'll believe him even more.

</comment><comment><USER12> Meta: when did this clickbait formulation of headlines become the norm even for serious, reputable news?

I still find it grating, and avoid articles headlined this way.

<comment><USER13> Is there something wrong with the title?

<comment><USER14> It's clickbait, because it's deliberately vague.

The natural human response is to to click through to find out who 'He' refers to, even if they have no other interest in the story.

Bloomberg could just as easily have written 'Craig Wright' instead.

<comment><USER13> I'm pretty sensitive to crappy headlines but I really don't think including the guy's name or not would make a huge difference here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> He's just a scam artist who wants media coverage to further his scams.

<comment><USER16> Australians don't use the word 'neat' and Satoshi did.

<comment><USER16> Satoshi was American

</comment></comment></comment><comment> k-ian Creator of anarchist cryptographic money resorts to using the law against his enemies? hmmmmm...

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm confused why somebody would claim to possess an immense fortune (Satoshi's blocks are currently worth ~$10B) without being able to verify and/or access that fortune.

Congrats. Now you have a huge target on your back. Watch your step and sleep with one eye open for the rest of your life.

But go try to borrow money, and the bank will ask, "Why don't you just... use some of your fortune."

<comment><USER18> > But go try to borrow money, and the bank will ask, "Why don't you just... > use some of your fortune."

Actually banks are much more likely to lend you money the more money you have.

The ones with no money, they're the ones who have a hard time.

<comment><USER17> Yes, I get that. You're limited by the collateral you can put against the loan.

But they won't accept a pinky swear that you own the collateral. They want proof.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If only there were a way to cryptographically prove ownership of some of the early Bitcoins...

I'm not quite convinced that going to the courts with libel suits really follows the cypherpunk ethos.

</comment><comment><USER20> Media keeps complimenting this guy as subtext - he's considered a _super_ villain, or a _brilliant_ scam artist. Which part of his playbook is impressive in any way?

<comment><USER21> Having the time and money to sue people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Wasn't there some artical on hn earlier about how Paul le roux might have been the inventor? And this Craig guy having worked with him before?I think it got taken down, was that not legit?

<comment><USER16> One of the guys had a name a bit like satoshi and one of the guys had a name a bit like nakamoto. That's all I can remember.

<comment><USER22> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20115607](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20115607)

I'm not sure if this is conspiracy though cause it was buried down pretty quickly

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Can everyone just stop giving him attention?

<comment><USER24> Yes. This is very petty. I'm ignoring these threads from now on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> From all that I've read about the founding of Bitcoin, my guess would be that it was the guy in the wheelchair who died before bitcoin got really big. I forget his name, but he was involved early on in crypto, he was a white guy, not Japanese. Everything points towards the guy being dead.

<comment><USER26> My money is on Paul Le Roux. He is a pragmatic programmer who wrote encryption software for Windows in the 90s and in the 2000s he had a real need to move money around outside the traditional systems. Bitcoin was scrappy windows software as well like E4M. A lot of academics, open source activists and hacker purists would never write their software for Windows. Le Roux's writing style is similar, his attitude, streak for innovation, and timeline all kind of fit for a possible Satoshi candidate. He also had a real motive to be anonymous and release the software anonymously unlike many other candidates.

<comment><USER27> Paul Le Roux is a promising candidate except for one thing: by 2009 he was running his crime empire branching in pretty much every direction possible.

Would he have had time to write the software and also kick back to play the part of Satoshi?

It would be interesting to compare the coding style in E4M and original BTC software.

PS. Fascinating series of articles on Paul Le Roux: [https://magazine.atavist.com/the- mastermind](https://magazine.atavist.com/the-mastermind)

<comment><USER26> I think so. If you look at the total amount of code, his total emails and forum posts - there really isn't much. I wouldn't put it past him as a side project given his past. Also most of the code was done by the beginning of 2009 and he stopped posting at the end of 2010. It wasn't until 2012 he was arrested. Given that he was already wealthy and didn't need the attention - <USER2> had good reason to stay anonymous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> IIRC, English defamation law puts the burden of proof on the defence, who once accused must prove they didn't defame, so many conmen throughout history have tried to use it to their advantage such as David Irving vs Penguin Books.

</comment><comment><USER29> Im the real Satoshi, I won't prove it with a signature, check out my startup.

</comment><comment><USER30> >> They said he gave a private demonstration of a special digital signature used by Satoshi Nakamoto.

Can someone explain what this "private demonstration of a special digital signature" was, exactly?

</comment><comment><USER31> Ah yes. If you're wrong, be the loudest person in the room until everyone gives up the fight and leaves, then declare yourself the winner.

</comment><comment><USER32> Probably trying to trigger a vanity reaction. I'll doubt Satoshi will fall in the trap, but I could be wrong of course.

</comment><comment><USER33> The inventor of Bitcoin doesn't need to "prove" he invented it and also he did not want to be known.

</comment><comment><USER13> So what is this guy's end game?

Is this just an ego play or does he plan to make money off this claim?

<comment><USER34> He forked Bitcoin and is trying to convince people his fork is actually the real Bitcoin, so yeah it's a money grab.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> He should team up with the guy who "invented" email.

</comment><comment><USER36> hopefully this fraudster's lawsuits end with him in jail.

</comment><comment><USER37> TLDR: It's Craig Wright again, move along...

</comment><comment><USER38> I met and know Satoshi, and he is not CW. This is all I will say about this.

</comment><comment><USER39> I'm no expert on crypto and usually get talked at by a mate about it.

But didn't this chap have child porn uploaded to his coin or something because his data storage was so big?

therefore anyone who uses it is effectivly distributing child porn.

</comment><comment><USER40> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20115607](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20115607)

Satoshi Nakamoto = Craig Wright (wrote white paper) + Paul Le Roux (who created Encryption 4 Masses aka E4M, and TrueCrypt)</comment>


Ask HN: Any goal setting sites? - <AUTHOR>

Can anyone recommend a site for following and mesuring goals? <comment><USER2> <http://43things.com> not sure about if you can measure the goals.

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://www.bubbletimer.com>

disclaimer: my partner wrote the app.

</comment><comment><USER4> <http://www.joesgoals.com/>

</comment><comment><USER5> I use Google Docs Spreadsheet with a few custom formulas.</comment>


Show HN: Inference GUIs for 12 SoTA ML models - <AUTHOR> http://gradiohub.com <comment><USER2> It's great OP. Maybe you can expand into other SoTAs like in [https://paperswithcode.com/sota](https://paperswithcode.com/sota)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Some of the models we put up have thousands of stars on GitHub and yet still no interface. You'd have to set up dependencies/etc and sometimes even write your own code, just for _inference_. Never understood why people who release state-of-the-art pretrained models don't release a way to use or try them on a new input.

</comment><comment><USER3> this is very cool! I have been reading about ml for a couple of years but have never played with it before. Really appreciate it! Shared with friends and family too :)

(I'm not a scientist/programmer)

<comment><AUTHOR> So awesome to hear! If you have any feedback on how to make your experience better, would love to hear it. :)</comment></comment>


A Scientist Attended a Flat Earth Convention.  What They Learnt - <AUTHOR> http://www.iflscience.com/space/a-scientist-attended-a-flat-earth-convention-heres-what-they-learnt/all/ <comment><USER2> The article had an interesting title, but the actual text quickly descended into comparing hard science like physics with soft sciences like political science and sociology.

Basically, if you're a flat earther you're pro brexit and trump. Because "experts" in political science said brexit and trump are bad and you ignored them, you must also be the type of person who ignores hard facts.

It's a subtle (or not so subtle) put down for anyone who's politics is right of left.</comment>


How to Break the Trust of Your customers in Just One Day - Lessons Learned - <AUTHOR> http://davidhauser.com/post/1306089659/how-to-break-the-trust-of-your-customers-in-just-one <comment><USER3> So lets do some math:

From <http://chargify.com/blog/why-we-changed-our-pricing/>:

"Grasshopper Group has been supporting Chargify for 15 months, and Chargify is now supporting 3,000 merchants - again, the large majority of whom are paying $0."

And from the linked article:

"We should have shared the data we collected for over a year that demonstrated quite clearly to us that only 0.9% of customers were paying us at all, and that there was a direct correlation between those that did not pay anything and a high volume of support requests."

3000 merchants total * .009 paying = 27 paying merchants

Now, these numbers could be off in several ways, but even if they're off by an order of magnitude (and I doubt they are) - ouch!

So many lessons to be learned from this:

\- Freemium's applicability is so over-rated. I couldn't be happier that we've had a (cheap) pay-to-play structure at Spreedly since the beginning. Personally I think freemium should _always_ be a strategy introduced post- profitability, never before.

\- It's been said many times, but I'll say it again: the "overnight success" is a myth. Most businesses take 2-5 years to reach any kind of profitability. Selling to startups? Better keep that in mind.

\- Capital infusion causes market distortion. Not saying that's a bad thing, but it's worth recognizing. Spreedly noticed a definite drop-off in signups when Chargify came out, and why not - wouldn't you take the free option vs. Spreedly's pay to play? And wasn't that some great marketing they poured a lot of money in to? And yet their free option and their marketing were only possible due to the Grasshopper Group's investment.

\- Put that all together and you end up with this: you've got to keep your burn low until you find your product/market fit _and_ your scalable sales model. Or you've got to have a sugar daddy. Or you've got to win the investment lottery. Spreedly is still alive because we've only allowed costs to grow as we're able to handle them - that's the nature of the bootstrapped startup, hard as it can be at times.

One more bit of math: if my numbers above are correct, Spreedly has 6x as many paying customers as Chargify. And we've had zero outside investment. And, painfully, we're still not ramen profitable. But: we have a pivot in the works that will blow the doors off of what we've done to date (and it doesn't involve raising prices on existing customers - promise!). So stay tuned - <USER2> space is just starting to get interesting.

Oh, and if you're an angel investor: we'd love to have some capital to use to distort the market in our favor for a change :-)

<comment><USER4> I'm fairly certain that 3000 merchants are active merchants, and 0.9% is out of global accounts, including inactive merchants. I could be wrong, however. =)

<comment><USER3> Perhaps - I have no internal knowledge of Chargify's numbers beyond what they've posted publicly. Even if they have 30000 global accounts, though, and it's 0.9% out of that - makes me think twice about freemium.

<comment><USER4> No doubt. My experience in the processing world jives with what they are saying though. The biggest problems are the smallest customers, usually the ones that aren't earning you anything. Granted, keep in mind that they are focused on B2B. I think they could have handled it better, but I think they made the right call.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _Over the past year, we discovered that the customer that never paid had the highest support load. Once we made the announcement about the price change, the same applied to complaining about Chargify across multiple public channels. Those customers that were working on a hobby business, or just something they were not investing in significantly, seemed to have the time to tweet all day long, post multiple negative comments on every possible channel available, and shout the loudest._

This is _exactly_ what I mean when I talk about pathological customers. You will get to deal with them, too, if you try to be the cheap option in your market.

<comment><USER6> I think you're really pre-judging your customers in a bad way here.

You don't have pathological customers, what you have is a large number of people who instead of paying hard currency for a service will trade time as their currency.

What this means is that a good number of those who stay on the free side of the freemium model are in fact willing to pay. Just not with cash. What they're willing to do is to spend time to learn your service, to participate in your forums, and in any way that is required to get their free service.

When you only expect, want, and cater for the customers who have hard currency you will of course piss off the time-as-a-currency crowd if you've already grabbed them.

Then it should come as no surprise when those pissed off people use their time against you.

I'm not saying that's a reasonable response. But it's certainly to be expected. The best thing to do is to work out how to use the time-as-a- currency crowd to your advantage. Instead of ditching them in a price-hike, ask them to do something for you. Maybe they have to participate in support forums to help others getting on board in return for the service? Maybe they have to just promote your service on their site?

My point is simply that it's naive to ignore this very large set of customers, and even more naive to act in ways that will piss them off if you've already constructed a freemium model that attracted them.

<comment><USER5> _You don't have pathological customers, what you have is a large number of people who instead of paying hard currency for a service will trade time as their currency._

This is the exact opposite of my experience. Pathological customers use the service less, spend less time reading the words on the screen, spend less time exploring or reading the documentation and more time asking me questions (in, often, the rudest possible fashions), ask me questions like (I kid you not) "It says that every card will be different. Does that mean every card will be the same? Cuz that would suck.", etc etc.

<comment><USER7> You're both right.

Patrick, I'm sure you get lots of awful customers. You're targeting not-very- technical people, and when you do lots of SEO/AdWords to get as many people in the door as possible, you'll bring in a lot of good customers and a lot of bad customers.

But I don't think Chargify has that many. Of course they had a few, but for the most part, I doubt that those free customers suck; they just aren't making money _yet_.

But a lot of companies that don't know if they'll ever make $49/month when they start writing their payment code turn into valuable customers.

You need to look no farther than Bingo Card Creator. Would you have been comfortable locking yourself in to paying $49/month so that you could save time writing payment logic when you first started? I doubt it. But today, a billing system that enticed you with a free plan would be extremely happy that that got you to sign up.

The real issue I see for Chargify is that I don't know what their target market is now. They basically have to get new apps, since existing apps will already have something that works. But now they're limiting themselves to new apps with owners that are confident in their success. You're not going to pay $50/month for billing on something that you're just hoping will bring you a few hundred dollars a month, even though some of those apps turn into many thousands a month.

<comment><USER8> " But now they're limiting themselves to new apps with owners that are confident in their success. You're not going to pay $50/month for billing on something that you're just hoping will bring you a few hundred dollars a month"

I agree fully. And the first plan is actually $99 month, not $50. $99 as the cheapest option is really pushing it in my opinion.

They are offering existing customers are $39 plan, which I think is fair enough for a starting business for the support you need when you're getting setup. I don't understand why they don't just offer this plan to the public as well though.

<comment><USER9> I think chargify could get a long way with a $5-10/mo 10 customers max plan. Just enough for developers to get their feet wet, with a nice paywall to keep out the non-serious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Reading that it looks like there will be more lessons to be learned shortly.

If any of you ever does something like this and you make a 'bad' move, revert. Simple. Make a step back and think things over for a long time before changing direction again, assuming that you are not about to go out of business buy yourself some time. It takes a long time to build up a reputation you can lose it in a heartbeat.

Chargify has made a huge step in the right direction by dropping their price to $40 / month but if they had started out with announcing a $0 to $40 increase that would have been just as a big a problem reputation wise. A contract you made should never be broken like this, especially not retro- actively with the people that signed up under the original terms. New terms apply to new customers, especially such dramatic changes.

Of course if you have customers that you can't make any kind of payback on then you will have to do something about them (assuming they're pulling you under). But to change direction 180 degrees from your previous 'pitch' overnight is not good and this new revised plan is still not going to undo the damage.

My plan of action would be:

      - stop the influx of new customers at the 'free' plan by
        changing the tos: free for 6 months, then pay

      - measure the effect of that and if it is good reduce the
       'free' period

      - if it is free, no support other than the public
        documentation + a forum

      - if you want support you will have to sign up for the
        paid plan

I'm fairly sure that users would overwhelmingly agree that that is a reasonable proposition, and even though in the long run the effect would be much the same the change would be one that you could explain easily.

Disclaimer: I've been operating a freemium website for a long time that went through the free to premium step during the .com crash, we solved it by selling our customers new features that were not in the site before and we made sure that the 'free' users pay us back with content. There always is a way out if you look for it hard enough.

<comment><USER11> I second the "free for ___ months" then pay strategy. If a customer can't see the value in your offering after a few months of using it, they probably never will.

On the other hand, if you just charge customers off the bat, there are many people who can't overcome the activation energy of pulling out a credit card and will leave your site. I've come across quite a few services where even if they charged a penny, I'd probably pass just b/c I don't want to give you my credit card without knowing how useful your service really is.

<comment><USER9> Chargify customers are strongly locked in because Chargify stores CC data.

<comment><USER12> Chargify does not store the CCs it is stored with the gateway so you can use that data again. This is said a number of times on the site.

<comment><USER9> Useful to know. Thanks for the clarification.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> One lesson-not-learned seems to be 'when taking responsibility for a big cock- up, try to minimize or omit blaming others'.

It's perfectly believable that free customers were an unsustainable burden or that the press (and its consumers) love disaster stories. These things are also perfectly fine things to write about. But the timing is awful - do you really want to be calling your customers a bunch of loud whiners with too much time on their hands just days after everyone on the net was calling you ham- handed and tone-deaf in customer-relations matters?

</comment><comment><USER14> To paraphrase what I think are his main points:

\- Our free customers are really bad for our business. They complain a lot in really visible ways, they make up a lot of our support burden, and they never end up paying us anyway.

\- Once we figured this out, we decided we don't want them as customers.

\- We gave all our free customers an option to start to paying. Those that aren't willing to pay we don't care about.

\- OMG!!1! What a shit storm this created. All those free customers that we don't care about sure complain a lot when you screw them, way more than they used to. This really sucks, and makes us look really bad. Oh, and fuck you tech crunch for covering Square and not us, and then kicking us when we're down.

\- Boy, I really wish we'd sugar coated getting rid of all those pesky free customers so they didn't complain so damn much.

I see a lot of remorse for the outcome and lack of sugar coating, but not a lot of remorse for the actual underlying action. When you build something people rely on, and then take it away from your most vocal userbase, what exactly do you expect the outcome to be?

</comment><comment><USER15> First off, I had high hopes for chargify as I had chatted with Lance on a few occasions and he comes off as a great guy. But David here comes off as a total ass. He literally stated that only 99.1% of their users are free users, and then proceeded to rip on free users like crazy. I can understand the pain of servicing free users. I have 10+ messages/questions a day from free users and they often are rude or incredulous. That doesn't mean I can say "all you people who bug tested our software, reported deficiencies and helped ensure our service doesn't suck, go take a hike!".

Just because you got your use out of the free customers (their time dealing with your buggy early release software) doesn't mean you can jettison them. You have to ease them into a new pricing system, stop future people from being free, etc.

</comment><comment><USER16> Am I the only one who felt the whole post has some "free users are jerks" attitude?

<comment><USER17> In many cases they are. We offer a few free WordPress plugins that get us some very interesting emails. You'd really be surprised at the level of entitlement some people have when you offer something for free. On the other hand, paying clients really respect their time and our time.

I'm not saying it's all their fault. It's your responsibility (as someone who chooses freemium as a business model) to make sure you don't allow them to be jerks to you. That means putting limits on how much resources you allocate to supporting them and having clear revenue channels that allow you to make your revenue goals.

Still, many freeloaders can be plain jerks at times.

<comment><USER18> There should be a "This is free, stop and think about that" equivalent to LMGTFY that you (and others) can use as a response.

<comment><USER19> Just to work with your theme, perhaps I could suggest:

      LRMGFY ?

The endearingly sensitive _Low Rent Motherfucker Go Fuck Yourself_ ? I don't think that'd get too many happy Tweeters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> At the beginning I was upset, because this price increased arrived the day after I decided to integrate Chargify in an service we are building.

But I was wrong. If you really think that in 6 months your application for which you need a billing system, can't at least cover the cost of a latte per day... maybe you should stop right now and don't waste your time with it. Do you need more than 6 months because of any reason? Fine, that means you will have to give up your Startbucks habits for a while. If you don't trust your product to ever reach those 50 customers that would make you into a paying customer, why would Chargify?

</comment><comment><USER21> This post looks like posturing to me. It's saturated with thinly-veiled animosity toward the free users. I'm sure he's sorry it all happened, but it's not clear he actually feels bad about any free users left in the lurch. The internet is a social place, and good will may as well be a form of currency. There have been lots of times that liking a company has pushed me into paying customer mode, when I would have otherwise been a "freeloader".

</comment><comment><USER22> What David seems to forget is the following:

1) Free customers DO PAY for Chargify, just not to them directly. It cost us several days of development time + testing to integrate with them.

2) You lost trust because you weren't fair. Change the prices and grandfather existing users. If the free customers fail, you will not need to support them for that long.

Your pricing policy is = "you pay X/mo. until we raise it"

This post reaffirms my choice to leave Chargify and investigate the alternatives: <http://recurly.com> <http://spreedly.com>, <http://cheddargetter.com> & <http://FreshBooks.com>

For the record, I understand why they are raising prices, I cannot understand how anyone could trust them again.

<comment><USER23> The cost of development/testing is the same for customers that pay as it is for those who do not. Additionally, that cost is one you'd use no matter the processor you'd use, so your first point seems a bit disingenuous.

<comment><USER22> True. When the prices are substantially raised you are forced to 1) pay the price or 2) re-integrate. So the cost in the my first point is actually doubled.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sounds like he's trying to have his cake and eat it too. Many of these loud obnoxious protesters were probably the same ones who were singing your company's praises early on.

<comment><USER24> But, that and a nickel gets ya...

<comment><USER25> Viral marketing. Even without the nickel. Don't underestimate the value.

<comment><USER24> What's "viral" about giving your stuff away for free and hoping that the freeloaders will end up being a net win? Aren't we just talking about word-of- mouth marketing? Doesn't that work mostly when the words travel among paying mouths? Are you sure you aren't just putting a 2.0-ey spin on a simple problem?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Regarding nobody using Freemium... couldn't it be that those merchants running freemium services only send Chargify their paid user information? There's no reason they can't. You could have 10,000 free users and only tell Chargify about your 50 paying users when they've upgraded and you need to start managing subscriptions for them.

</comment><comment><USER27> Another approach to 'grandfathering' is to announce an "end of life" for a service and give customers notice of, for example, a year. Chargify might have been better served to "end of life" their free service, making it available to current customers for another year and closing it to new customers.

</comment><comment><USER28> This was visible a mile off. Indeed, ZenDesk did the same recently and it caused a huge uproar.

Grandfathering existing customers seems like the only logical path if you really want to hike costs of a subscription.

<comment><USER29> I'm really surprised by this as well. These mistakes were _exactly_ the same ones that ZenDesk made. Obviously they didn't take the time to learn from that particular fiasco. Had they paid attention to ZenDesk's problems, they would have avoided almost all the problems they had.

As a counter example, I signed up for Backupify during their beta. I recently checked their site and saw that their free plan is fairly limited, but my account shows I'm at the premium level, which currently has a monthly fee, though I pay nothing. They grandfathered in my account without even telling me there was a pricing change. In other words, only new customers were affected, not existing customers. There was no uproar because it didn't really affect existing customers.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I should add this is in relation to Chargify's recent pricing change. Can only do so much with an 80 character title.

<comment><USER30> Suggestion: "Lessons learned from Chargify's recent pricing change"

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Alternate title: how to get to HN front page three times in a week.

</comment><comment><USER32> These mistakes are so obvious that I'm starting to believe that some of these companies do it on purpose so they can get a tonne of PR, make things right, then look like the "hey, we fucked up because we're human but we fixed it quickly because we love our customers" companies that we hear about all the time these days.

</comment><comment><USER33> There is nothing wrong with a company charging for their services. They have to make money somehow. If you are going to make a large change like this set it up with information tell customers give them lead time, and let them easily make the choice. Bottom line if you have a product that is worth it, charge for it.

</comment><comment><USER34> You should also consider the timing of the announcement. This pricing change was made on a Monday morning - people are already grumpy from returning to their regular work week but it also was a "special" Monday as it was a holiday for some. Thanksgiving for all Canadians and Columbus Day I believe for some (all?) Americans. You potentially affected numerous holiday brunches with the timing of your pricing changes.

NOTE: I haven't used your company before but it seems like it would be useful so I'll certainly consider it if I'm in need of this type of service in the future.

</comment><comment><USER35> I thought it was a good post, and didn't come across poorly at all (though the comments seem to differ).

Perhaps it's because I didn't follow any of this yesterday, so this is the first I am reading of it.

</comment><comment><USER36> This story repeats every month with a different company. I haven't been following Chargify, but my first thought on seeing this headline was "don't tell me they didn't grandfather their existing customers". Sure enough, wading through a huge mea culpa about not communicating well enough, there it is.

</comment><comment><USER37> I thought this was going to be about todays Mint.com episode: [http://satisfaction.mint.com/mint/topics/why_did_you_receive...](http://satisfaction.mint.com/mint/topics/why_did_you_receive_blank_emails_from_stage_mini_mint_com_late_tuesday_night)

</comment><comment><USER38> The value of free users is the potential word-of-mouth that can reach other users who could potentially become paying users. Isn't that the point of offering and supporting a free service?

</comment><comment><USER39> This mistake and subsequent lesson learned has been documented time and time again--why do companies still have the oversight to alienate customers like this?

</comment><comment><USER40> I totally understand the move to get rid of the free plan but I still see no explanation for doubling the price of the 50-500 user plan.</comment>


Ask HN: Looking for the startup that's working on a video platform for bots - <AUTHOR> I ran into a link about a month back of a startup that was building what looked like a twitch for IoT bots.  They had a bunch of tools for streaming from raspberry pi, etc, and sold kits.  I've been looking all morning for it to no avail, does it ring a bell to anyone? <comment><AUTHOR> Found it! [https://letsrobot.tv](https://letsrobot.tv)</comment>


The myth of science as a public good - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_PVI6V6o-4&sns=em

<comment><USER2> OK, I was sceptical until the Q&A (about 45 minutes in), when he is asked about blue-sky research. His answer - private companies and foundations do a lot of blue-sky research (think Bell Labs), and governments are actually pretty lousy about doing it as they only care about economic growth (and the next election). It would be nice if it was expanded a bit though.

Towards the end, he also points out that patents in pharmaceuticals are acceptable, because of the costs of regulatory compliance. If 99% of your costs are getting FDA approval (which are needed, to stop drug companies pushing ineffective and dangerous quack treatments), then the patent is needed to protect you.</comment>


Delivering the Windows 8 Release Preview - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/05/31/delivering-the-windows-8-release-preview.aspx <comment><USER2> I hate the fact that there is a windows store. I know this is the bandwagon everyone appears to be jumping on, but I still hate the idea that software we buy on computers we own is going through a gatekeeper.

<comment><USER3> As a linux user with an Android phone and a healthy fear of Microsoft, I think the Windows Store is probably the best thing in the world for end-user computing coming out of Microsoft today. They are catching up to the package managers that Linux users have taken for granted over the last couple decades. They are catching up to the centralized update system and offering improved security.

I haven't owned a Microsoft product in many years, but the store is, to me, one of the best moves they've made...like, ever. Not sure what possible disadvantage there is to having it.

<comment><USER2> If it were just a package manager then I would be fine. However this is like a linux distro saying that if any program wants to use X then it will need to be installed via the package manager and must be approved by their rules, and by the way you can't install 3rd party apps that compete with our apps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This "my desktop should be a tablet OS as well" situation is boggling my mind.

I'm an avid Apple user, and I'm not a fan of the direction Lion went, and the continued direction Mountain Lion is going. I use a notebook because I want a notebook: a keyboard for easy terminal usage and more efficient browser hunting, a mouse or touchpad for manageable selection tools, drawing, etc. I don't think I've ever pressed F4 (Launchpad, I think it's called?) on purpose, especially when Alfred or even Spotlight do the exact same thing much faster.

Windows took this in a stranger direction: let's make it two completely different experiences, but make the unifier the most difficult thing in the world to find. I haven't played with this release yet (played with the previous 8 preview), but if there's an easy switch button (probably is the Windows key), I'm all ears. Otherwise, let's move on. I'm not quite sure who they're targeting here.

The Chromebook/box announcement that came recently is, I think, the most interesting take. Seems like Google's idea was to build Ice Cream Sandwich with the desktop in mind. But here, we lose real apps. I'll tunnel and use Vim when I need to, but Sublime is too powerful for me to pass on. If I want to play Diablo 3 or Portal, forget about it. Then again, Google's looking at a completely different market than OS X or Windows 8.

<comment><USER5> No surprise it's boggling your mind if you haven't used it. If you want to stay in desktop mode, you can, with the minor exception of having a start menu that displays more stuff and takes up one monitor worth of space.

Windows key brings you to the start screen or from the start screen back to the app (or desktop) you were viewing. Winkey + D displays the desktop.

<comment><USER6> I think the reason why they force their Metro UI on people is to warm them up to the whole way it works, so that in the long run some people might even buy Windows phones.

I hope they get it right. Would love to see Windows becoming a true alternative to Android (if its not such a walled garden as crApples).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The ISO-versions (which appear to be a bit hidden this time) can be found here: <http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/iso>

</comment><comment><USER7> I must say that I am a bit disappointed with the decision to include Flash in this release. Not only will it delay it's death, but it also seems pretty anticompetitive unless other companies are also allowed to release plugins for Metro-IE10.

<comment><USER8> The fact they didn't include Flash was a great feature IMHO. It's sad they've restored it.

<comment><USER9> I'm pretty sure that the flash is embedded, and that it will only run on white-listed sites, which I think defaults to the same list as the compatibility view... and its purpose is more for flash interactive sites, not necessarily video since that can be replaced by the video element

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Still no Start button?

<comment><USER11> No, in fact, hell no!

[http://www.winsupersite.com/article/windows8/microsoft- windo...](http://www.winsupersite.com/article/windows8/microsoft- windows-8-businesses-143238)

"Related to this second point is information I've received that Microsoft has been furiously ripping out legacy code in Windows 8 that would have enabled third parties to bring back the Start button, Start Menu, and other software bits that could have made this new OS look and work like its predecessor. In fact, I've seen that several well-known UI hacks that worked fine with the Windows 8 Consumer Preview are no longer functional in the coming Release Preview. And those with hopes that Microsoft would allow businesses, at least, to boot directly to the desktop should prepare for disappointment. That feature not only isn't happening, it's being removed from Windows Server 12 (Windows 8's stable mate) as well."

<comment><USER12> It is the server change that really pounds home how completely screwed up Microsoft is now. They're so committed to their tablet operating system -- so desperate to bet the entire company on it -- _that they're forcing it on their server operating system_. It really trumps even my worst expectations of Microsoft's Apple-initiated insantiy.

<comment><USER13> Why would you need a start button on a server system? What kind of system administrator are you?

<comment><USER14> ... a Windows sysadmin?

<comment><USER13> ... without a keyboard?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I dislike the direction Microsoft is going with this "open dialog" scheme.

"We've talked in depth about building Windows 8, including the features, the designs, and the background behind these. We've done so in over 70 posts totaling over 500 pages if printed out and 34 videos totaling over 90 minutes"

It's like, if you asked people what they wanted in a car, they would have said a faster horse.

This is going to a huge kitchen-skin, designed-by-a-committee disaster.

<comment><USER16> They managed to turn a file manager into something like [http://cache.lifehacker.com/assets/images/17/2011/08/xlarge_...](http://cache.lifehacker.com/assets/images/17/2011/08/xlarge_ribbon- explorer-windows-8.jpg) when something like [http://www.muktware.com/sites/default/files/images/applicati...](http://www.muktware.com/sites/default/files/images/applications/Nautilus_0.jpg) would work just as well. Yuck.

<comment><USER17> People who talk trash about the ribbon simply have no idea how average people use their computers. There is immense value for most people by having available functions _in your face_. If an option is hidden, only the most adventurous users will ever find it. UIs should be functional first and pretty second.

<comment><USER16> I thought it was pretty well established that average people don't like a huge number of buttons and widgets and colors and icons shoved in their face, particularly if most of them are rarely used. People get confused and overwhelmed easily.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> LOL! This is the first version of windows where I had to google how to shut down my virtual machine. I felt like a complete idiot! Easy to use? Come on...

Every time I see it I picture my father in front of a computer running windows 8, scratching his head :))

<comment><USER19> Exactly this! Win+i is the shortcut btw ;)

People are going to bitch and moan about this - with good reason - forever.

My other peeve is that you can type in to Win7 search start menu for everything, but in metro start menu, you type 'sound' for example, it doesn't appear, you have to select 'settings' first.

Otherwise, love the new design, super snappy too, but that could always be the fresh install smell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm going to give it an honest unbiased try over the weekend on a desktop touch screen Sony I have lying around. Im hoping that it's better than the consumer preview.

This is the moment i choose my future platform.

<comment><USER21> Current hardware may not fully support the Windows 8 touch experience. Why color your experience with old hardware?

More details here:

[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/03/28/touch- hardware...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/03/28/touch-hardware-and- windows-8.aspx)

I'm personally looking for something like the Ideapad Yoga,

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6jnrRRAcZc&hd=1](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6jnrRRAcZc&hd=1)

My 5 year old Sony ultraportable still runs well with Windows 8, but have to move on. Might get a Windows RT tablet(maybe Nokia's) along with it, but I barely use the HP Touchpad with Android I have, so that's there.

<comment><USER20> It does support the full experience. Look up Sony vpcj1.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I just installed Consumer Preview (March 1 2012 version) day ago, will install this one today.

My first observation - to code/debug any Metro apps, you need two monitors.

<comment><USER19> Definitely! Although, I've found <http://www.splashtop.com/win8> to be really useful for testing apps on an iPad

<comment><USER22> Oh! That's wonderful idea :) - I've been running splashtop on all of my devices + machines. Didn't thought about it though!</comment></comment></comment>


Easier UI Reasoning with Unidirectional Dataflow and Immutable Data - <AUTHOR> http://open.bekk.no/easier-reasoning-with-unidirectional-dataflow-and-immutable-data

<comment><USER2> Meta: I trust you much more than I trust the author, so it would make much sense to me if you would write a line about the article before linking it, in the style of early tumblelogs/anarchaia ;) I guess that's Twitter now?

Of course that would imply more work to you, which isn't good... I'm just rambling.

I also have to consider if you're submitting this "ironically" (say, look at the great efforts this guy went through to avoid using Clojurescript). So now I will have to open your Twitter account, go past a few days searching if you have also linked this post with your take on it!

Oh, the confusion!</comment>


Ask HN: reCaptcha isn't stopping spam, what should I do? - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys, I recently built a small posting site and put it up on a previously used url that I had to test it.  Within a few hours I had dozens of spam posts.  So I installed reCaptcha and tested it (to make sure it was working) and then cleaned all the spam out.
But even with reCaptcha installed, I am still getting dozens of spam posts a day still.  Is there a better solution?  I have looked into akismet and mollom but I am not wanting to subject post content to third parties.  Is there a better captcha system?
I also have included a form field hidden from the user to catch bots but I do not think it is very effective.
Thanks for the help <comment><USER2> One time tested approach for me is to very precisely measure how long the fastest human could fill out a specific form in ms (must be done per form, and must consider browser autofilling). Then, include an encrypted timestamp value as a hidden field value on said form and check that:

1) The form was recently submitted (i.e. you cannot submit forms from two hours ago). Done well with another approach I take, this also catches bots that try to resubmit already cracked form instances. This is a bigger issue than you might give it credit for. Often they will crack a form instance by hand and then submit variations of fields they care to spam in programatically. Crack once by hand, submit spam 10000 times automatically therafter.

2) That the delta between receiving the form submission and when it was generated is greater than how long the fastest human would take.

It has a throttling effect to spamming (if nothing else), in addition to preventing most programatic spam. It is also nice that it does not depend on client-side javascript that can be tampered with. Used in combination with some other approaches, I have several sites that serve millions of users a year that all but remove the need for captchas (contact me if you are interested).

<comment><AUTHOR> I was thinking about this, but the form submission could honestly take less than a second by a person since all you have to do is type a comment. (Thinking of someone posting 'lol') to code. I have had users complain when they can't post fast enough (generally when two or more are in a vivid discussion) and always end up turning off the "wait between posts" check for forums like vB, xF, phpBB, etc..

Do bots submit instantly? Would just inserting a timestamp with javascript fix it?

<comment><USER2> It has worked for me with forms that take less than 1000ms. For simple one field forms, they typically have a reasonable length requirement on my platforms (e.g. 32 characters). Things that fit in less than that length are typically things that should be tags (e.g. funny, insightful, etc). Trying this 32 char minimum myself just typing jibberish gets me over the minimum needed time to detect bots.

<comment><AUTHOR> I see... that makes sense... I will have to check with some of my user base and see how they feel about this

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've had a lot of success by including a field called email in my form, hiding it with css so humans cannot see it, and whenever a submission/login request/post is received, I merely check to see if the email field has been set.

If so, I know it wasn't a human that submitted the post - they could not see it - whilst automated spam tools seemingly cannot resist entering something in that field. I emailed suspect postings to myself with IP address info to add them to an IP block-list later, but showed them a fake "success" page or a "your post has been selected for moderation" page. The latter turned out to be more effective as it resulted in fewer repeated attempts.

I removed the annoying reCaptcha code altogether as a test, and never had to reinstate it. Real users hated the reCaptcha thing anyhow.

<comment><AUTHOR> User's hating the captcha has been my biggest fear with this. I will definitely look into the hidden email field as well. That seems more user friendly. Do you hide the element with css or some other way?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is the spam very specifically targeted at your site? If not, just implement your own very simple captcha system and see if they can handle that.

Spammers generally use captcha solving APIs which map to humans in low-wage countries. They pay ~$2/1000 solved captchas (a few years ago, not sure what it's like now.)

If you're not a specific target, changing your captcha might be enough to no longer easily be a victim of such a service without changes to the spammer software.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am not sure how to tell if it targeting the site. I will look into creating another captcha to see if that will help

<comment><USER4> Perhaps as an experiment try "enter the first character of your post/comment". That would kill any remote human captcha solvers (since they don't actually know the post content), and likely require some rewriting of the spamming software, assuming that is automated.

Of course, this is not a long term perfect solution against motivated adversaries, but it's a way to see how the current spammers work.

Another: Add a keydown handler to your message-textarea and log (to a hidden form field) how many key presses are being used per post. If the spam software is setting the content field programmatically, you then know how to detect them.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is a great idea... much simpler than I had imagined. I will implement this tomorrow to base off results from today

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hi Prefinem,

Include a small piece of Javascript that sets a hidden field in your form to some password when the page loads.

Then, when the form is posted, verify on the server that that field has been set to the password.

This should get rid of most of your spam. The reason it works is that you are being hit with spam from a program called "Xrumer", which doesn't emulate the Javascript of the pages it interacts with. It simple brute forces the forms on every single page it finds, and solves their captchas too. However, even the simplest Javascript will stop it from working.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks nekitamo! I will try this after a change I will do tomorrow morning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You can change an action of the form using Javascript (ie. [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2701041/how-to-set- form-a...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2701041/how-to-set-form-action- through-javascript)). Spam robots don't emulate Javascript. Users with no Javascript will see the message "This action requires Javascript".

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem is you would lose the ability for users to post this way. Seems strange to cut out a percentage (albeit probably very small) of users to stop spam

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Would you be willing to share the link?

Also, was there any significant reduction in the spam posts after installing reCaptcha?

<comment><AUTHOR> There was reduction. Like I said, I had several dozen in a few hours, and then it went to about several dozen in a day...

The link is [http://wtpaf.com](http://wtpaf.com)

FYI, I have cleared out everything just a few minutes ago while working on the site.

<comment><USER7> Captcha seems to be working fine. Normally, you don't see bot bypassing it that easily. Can you record the user-agent for each submission?

<comment><AUTHOR> I can... I will start doing that and let you know what I see</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Twitter Shadowbans Viral Tweets - <AUTHOR> https://reclaimthenet.org/how-twitter-shadowbans-viral-tweets/ <comment><USER2> Now if only they could shadowban _actually_ bad content, like the countless cryptocurrency scams in reply to Elon Musk's tweets.</comment>


MessagePack - Extremely efficient object serialization library - <AUTHOR> http://msgpack.sourceforge.net/ MessagePack is a binary-based efficient object serialization library. It enables to exchange structured objects between many languages like JSON. But unlike JSON, it is very fast and small.<p>Typical small integer (like flags or error code) is saved only in 1 byte, and typical short string only needs 1 byte except the length of the string itself <comment><USER2> Why not just use Avro if you want a packed encoding system that's schema- bound, or Fudge if you want one that's schema free and self-describing?

Link to Avro: <http://hadoop.apache.org/avro/> Link to Fudge: <http://www.fudgemsg.org/> Couldn't do hyperlinks for some reason. Perhaps because I'm a moron.

</comment><comment><USER3> I recommend ASN.1 PER over any of the myriad byte-aligned no-schema formats that waste bits on ranges of values and entire types you aren't sending. But this is better than some other formats I've seen.

<comment><USER4> isn't ASN.1 proprietary? i wanted to implement it once and found i had to pay someone for specs.

is that wrong? if not, i think many people would prefer something more open (more implementations; less likely to die from lack of support)

[edit: sorry, i am talking rubbish here. they are all linked from here, for example: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Syntax_Notation_One>

i have no idea why i thought they were closed. has the ITU policy changed recently?]

<comment><USER5> The specs were definitely closed last time when I checked (about 6 months ago).

Still don't think this old telecom technology is superior compared to modern serialization tools like Protocol Buffers.

<comment><USER6> _old_ and _modern_ do not mean anything in programming world. C is _old_ \- doesn't mean it's better or worse than _modern_ languages. Could you rephrase it in terms of features we can actually compare? I prefer to rely on "old telecom technology" many times, since it's meant to be as close as possible to 100% reliability ( _telecom_ being the keyword, not _old_ ).

<comment><USER5> I agree that _old_ and _modern_ are not very appropriate terms when comparing technologies. However I didn't mean to express an objective statement in my comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I bet gzipped JSON compares favorably for larger objects, though, and has the advantage of not being a new protocol. The fact that it supports Haskell and Perl with proper hackagedb / cpan modules is nice, however. Very rare for web 2.0 stuff.

<comment><USER8> I don't understand why JSON would get faster for larger types. Anyway a 524 byte type is already fairly large.

<comment><USER7> No, the compression algorithms begin to behave as well as hand-optimized binary protocols as the message size increases, because the constant overhead for mapping away the redundancy becomes a small percentage of the overall message.

<comment><USER8> But if just building the JSON representation already takes more time than the binary protocol, I can't see how adding gzip to it is going to make it faster.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Very interesting, though I'll take more of a look later on. The speed test does seem a little contrived, as it's for one case, and it looks [briefly] like some of the gains are due to greater specificity of primitive types.

</comment><comment><USER8> Why does their graph show the JSON bar as twice as tall as protocol buffers when it's not even 50% slower.

<comment><USER6> PB takes 0.47s, JSON takes 1.2s. JSON is 2.55 times slower, so it's over 2 times higher... Not sure where the problem is.

<comment><USER8> The label for the JSON column on <http://msgpack.sourceforge.net/> is "0.68 sec" and the label on the PB column is "0.47sec". So, yes, if the times were what you claimed, the graph would be fine, but according to the graph they were not.

<comment><USER6> I think we're hitting some browser cache issue. Could you try force-reloading everything? My graph shows the numbers I mentioned above. Maybe the old version showed something different (if I wget the image without any caching, I still get MP: 0.11s, PB: 0.47s, JSON: 1.2s)

<comment><USER8> Browser cache it is. After a reload the number shows as 1.2.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tell me why I suck - <AUTHOR> http://injekt.net/blog/tell-me-why-i-suck

<comment><USER2> Companies won't do it because they fear being taken to court for discrimination. When hiring we were specifically advised by our legal team _not_ to tell people why they were unsuccessful. It doesn't matter how careful you are, anything you say can be leapt upon by an unsuccessful candidate and used as an excuse to drag you to court claiming that they were discriminated against. This is especially true in these days of "No Win, No Fee" lawyers.

Sometimes, of course, the prospective candidate really has no skills at all in the required areas. I'm reminded of the Tom Lehrer quotation:

      " ... one of the many fine things one has to admit
        is the way that the army has carried the American
        democratic ideal to its logical conclusion in the
        sense that not only do they prohibit discrimination
        on the grounds of race, creed, and color, but also
        on the grounds of ability. "

But I'd love to tell people why they were unsuccessful. I'd love to give them the opportunity to learn, to grow, to improve, or in some cases simply to say "Well, I guess we weren't a good fit."

However, the age of litigation prevents me from doing that. And I'm not allowed to say "Sorry" either, because that could be taken as an admission of culpability.

(edited to add the Lehrer quotation)

<comment><USER3> Also, for real, about 8 out of 10 people take it badly. I've tried it. It just doesn't work.

Why don't you ask for it though? A quick reply: "I'd love to hear why I was rejected, won't take it badly, but as an opportunity to learn". Don't make them do all the work.

<comment><USER4> Good point but I would say don't bother asking. The answer will be useless to you because you can't trust its authenticity. Only people inside the company will know the real reason and perhaps not even there.

<comment><USER3> If someone would ask me, I'd tell them honestly. Never happened though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a tech employer, I can tell you the top 3 reasons why it's hard to provide the feedback you seek:

1) Many times it's not that you're lacking in any manner, it's just that there's someone that suited the position better. It's like dating - if you reject someone because someone better came into your life, what do you tell the other person? Usually it goes "it's not you, it's me...".

2) Sometimes I don't know what I'm looking for until I look. Then I get responses and realize I'm looking for the wrong thing. Then when I say no, again, it's not because of you, it's because of me. Sounds like dating again.

3) Finally, connections and personal relationships help. If I don't know you from Jack Adam, then it's hard to provide any sort of useful feedback if I don't have that much useful feedback. If we had a relationship, then I could give you some sort of advice on what would be a better fit for you, make a recommendation to someone else.

Instead of asking "what went wrong", maybe you might want to ask "is there anyone you can recommend or do you think that something / someone else might be a better fit"? You never know whomever else we might know in the space that's hiring. And while we might have found for ourselves a great mate, that doesn't mean you're not dating material. Perhaps we have just the right fix-up for you. Or maybe not.

Just one additional perspective.

<comment><USER6> _Usually it goes "it's not you, it's me..."._

Yes but in life as in dating, I'd like to know why I'm not a match.

Knowing the posting was inaccurate for what you're looking for is better than wondering why one got turned down for what seemed a perfect fit.

 _Instead of asking "what went wrong", maybe you might want to ask "is there anyone you can recommend or do you think that something / someone else might be a better fit"?_

I really like this idea, I guess I never considered this as a possibility before. Nothing to lose by asking, though.

<comment><USER7> I think in many cases, like in relationships, it's intangible. The hired candidate just "clicked" with the interviewer(s). Also mentioned earlier, anyone who has a referral from a current (competent) employee is going to be greatly preferred over any candidate that nobody knows. The first two jobs I had after college I got on my own, everything since then has at least partly involved a referral.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In the many interviews I've had to do last year, I'd say a rejection notice is a start. In far too many cases the company simply ignores you. I've gotten to second and third interviews and thought I was doing quite well. Only to never hear from them again. Just sending out a notice would have at least prevented me from wondering.

Knowing why... would be nice, but it's understandleable why companies avoid it. From a purely human perspective it's hard disappointing people and letting them down. People don't like giving other people bad news. Especially if they don't know you. There's no way to tell how the person receiving it is going to react. It's easier to just be as polite as you can about it and keep your resons to yourself.

I hate wondering, but that's just part of the process. I've interviewed with a company where I blew past the technical interview. When I came in to meet with the CEO and do the social bit... well I thought I did alright, but I just never heard back from them again. I've wondered a thousand times what I might've said that would turn them off from a perfectly good candidate such as myself. I'll just have to live without knowing and I think it might be better that way anyway. It might be that the CEO just didn't get a good gut feeling about it, maybe I made a bad joke, maybe someone that works there recommended a friend... who knows? This stuff can be really, painfully arbitrary. It's best not to fret about it and keep your head up.

</comment><comment><USER9> Things are both simpler and more complicated in the UK.

Simpler because the rules are quite clear (and very fair) and more complex because company managers tend to make up extreme rules that are way beyond what is necessary.

Job application disputes are not settled in a standard court, they go to an employment tribunal instead and are decided by one judge and two independent lay-member volunteers (often councillors, trade-unionists, clergy, business leaders etc).

For a case to be heard there would almost certainly have had to be discrimination on the grounds of disability, race, sex, age, sexual orientation, religion or belief. While some serious degree of "bad-process" might make it it would be unlikely to be successful.

Apart from blatant discrimination, tribunals mostly look for consistency in how workers are treated. So if you tell one candidate why they weren't successful there is an argument that all must be told. A simple way round this is to wait to be asked and only reply to those candidates that ask.

Sadly, UK companies seem to be un-necessarily paranoid about this and I have heard management claim all sorts of reasons why reasonable openness cannot be practiced during the job-interview process.

Generally, though, UK tribunals tend towards doing the _right_ thing from my experience. In the 2 tribunals I have been present at, both sided with the company (as they should have). Both had a trade unionist on the tribunal.

I do think that companies have a moral duty to tell applicants why they were unsuccessful if _they got as far as an interview_ , even if it is just to say "there was a better candidate on the day". They have made a commitment to the candidate and the candidate has reciprocated by turning up to be interviewed.

Companies should do the right thing rather than fear litigation.

<comment><USER10> I've had plenty of feedback from interviews from UK companies without receiving one piece of actionable advice.

To be fair, it was quite clear that I didn't want to work at some of those companies and if I'd have been asked to give _them_ feedback I'd have phrased my disinterest in similarly brief and diplomatic terms which wouldn't have told them much they didn't already know or weren't inclined to disagree strongly with.

Even if the tribunals are inclined to side with the companies, companies' fears are still well placed. A perfectly reasonable "unfortunately we didn't think you had the appropriate experience for the job" can become possible evidence that they were concealing discrimination should the company subesquently hire someone similarly lacking in experience but _in every other way perfectly suited to the role_. Companies seldom announce their decisions to reject a candidate are based on racism, sexism, homophobia etc even when they are.

<comment><USER9> I think it could benefit companies to ask for feedback from interviewees.

My top interview tip is to always interview the company back. You may end up spending the next 3 or more years there - you have to be sure its a good fit, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Discomfort.

As a former hiring manager I can tell you I once tried to give feedback.

There was no threatened litigation, nothing like that at all.

But it resulted in the guy trying to argue the points I made, convince me that he should still get the gig. I tried to be polite and explain clearly our reasoning -- but he just kept pushing. I nearly had to hang up on him to get him off the phone.

At that point I decided whenever I needed to turn someone down I would be as quick and opaque as possible. Since then I never had a problem. Better yet, have HR do it for you.

</comment><comment><USER12> 1\. There is no position. We're just "feeling out" the marketplace.

2\. There is no position. This was a headhunter building his database.

3\. We were planning to promote from within, but HR made us post the position anyway. We didn't read or respond to any of the resumes.

4\. We already had the perfect candidate, but HR made us post the position anyway. We didn't read or respond to any of the resumes.

5\. We posted the position as required by HR, but when an executive saw it on the intranet, he made us hire his son/nephew/family friend. We didn't read or respond to any of the resumes.

5\. We were planning to hire someone, but by the time the resumes started arriving, the perfect candidate presented himself. We didn't read or respond to any of the resumes.

6\. We were planning to hire someone, but the budget was cut. We didn't read or respond to any of the resumes.

7\. We got 1,200 resumes in 2 days so HR ran them through a filter with almost no correlation to potential suitability for the job. Your resume didn't get through the filter. Next time, add buzzwords from the ad.

8\. Your resume made it through the HR filter, but we only had time to read 20% of them. Yours wasn't pretty enough.

9\. Your resume didn't stick out in a field of many that did stick out. You probably should have some kick-ass differentiator FRONT AND CENTER.

10\. We read many great resumes. Yours was substandard compared to many of them for one or more of many possible reasons. Have 5 friends proofread it and give you brutally honest feedback for next time.

11\. Your resume sucked but you don't. Find 5 friends. See #10.

12\. You interviewed well, but someone else absolutely kicked ass. We loved him/her. Tough break for you, I guess.

13\. You didn't interview well, but we can't really put our finger on it and don't have time to respond. Tough break.

14\. You interviewed well and are still under consideration. But we are waiting on corporate for 27 other things. You'll probably find another job before we get back to you.

15\. You really do suck. (No you don't. Chances are the process never got this far.)

<comment><USER13> There are actually courses/books on how to spot the faux job ads (forced by HR policy, worker's council, ...).

<comment> mkr-hn Any recommendations? It would save me a lot of time if I could spend a little money and read a book to save the hours wasted on applying for junk offers.

<comment><USER14> I think the total time spent reading the book and evaluating the job would be more than knocking out a quick cover letter and sending it off with your CV

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> When I have hired people, I have always offered to explain the reasons for rejection, when I turned people down. The ones that opted in, I have given an answer. This way, I don't have to spend time on telling people why I turned them down if they don't really care.

The thing is - It's quite hard to give that kind of feedback. A great deal of the assertion of candidates ultimately comes down to instinct. That's hard to qualify. Besides, you want to be very careful about your wording, so it usually takes up a lot of time to write even a few paragraphs back to a candidate.

<comment><AUTHOR> I totally agree. I guess it's limited to the cases where you feel you can help the candidate with further job searching

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> America has an extremely litigious society. I won't tell you why you suck, because if I do you'll find a way to sue me.

<comment><AUTHOR> A very good point. It's actually the UK, but to be honest.. The same can be said in most countries nowadays

<comment><USER17> I hope not, I hope this trend stop. It's ridiculous that you can get sued for everything these days.

<comment><USER18> Unfortunately, it won't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is great article. I recently was to an interview with a company and thought the interview went great. They even told me they had been looking for a candidate since August. To my dismay one week after the interview I received a similar email. No reason, just the "we looked at your credentials and those of other applicants and have decided to continue with other applicants". Funny thing is the job is still posted and probably will be for another 6 months.

What I don't understand is that if company x has been looking to fill a position for 6 months is company x just too picky or have too high expectations of a new applicant?

I really have to agree with this that companies should at least give some additional reason for the turn down instead of the typical form letter. You as an applicant spent a lot of time working on your resume and interviewing skills the least the company could do is let you know why they wont be offering a jab.

Just my two cents...

<comment><USER20> One of the things I found interesting about Google's process was that everyone had input on their tracking system. Thus even when a person was a 'good fit' if there was someone in the company who had worked at the same company/time as the candidate, and suggested that the company pass, that carried a huge amount of force.

When ever I recommended someone I would check to see what the other folks that knew them added into the 'mix' if there was someone who clearly had an axe to grind (hey it happens) I'd try to talk to them one on one and figure out if it was a 'real' issue or just a past injustice that was motivating the down vote.

Sometimes it was warranted, there are good people who just don't fit with a company's culture. Sometimes it wasn't. One manager suggested that even if it was just sour grapes between the candidate and the employee it was a 'good signal' because the candidate burned their bridges willingly. (Although I'm a firm believer that people mature and change over time, not everyone subscribes to that philosophy either)

Be nice, be courteous, if they turn you down move on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> "I suck" is not a productive line of thought and potential employers will never give you feedback what you suck at. If you're sending out a large number of job applications and resumes, it might be a good idea to incorporate some basic testing methods. Try out different combinations of CVs, different tones, different vocabularies. Maybe there is a simple reason for all the rejections that can be fixed with some minor adjustments. For example, you might be giving too much or too little information on your CV. Perhaps you're applying at the wrong companies or for the wrong position. The point being, if you received so many _fuck-off_ letters, there is probably something systemically wrong here, and chances are you can use a combination of quality assurance and data analysis to find out what it is.

</comment><comment><USER22> One problem with telling someone why you didn't hire them is that most (yes, most) people will disagree with you. "No, you're wrong I really do know [skill X], and have experience with [technology Y]". (Uhm, no you don't, otherwise I'd have hired you). Or, "but I gave you a good answer!" (wrong again.) At best these are dead-end arguments that leave both parties frustrated. At worst you end up in a courtroom, as others have mentioned.

So, you want to know what you did wrong? Maybe it's that you didn't develop a good enough rapport with your interviewer to show you knew how to listen to them and "take a hint". Next time, be sure to checkin with the person you're talking to by asking things like, "does that answer your question", and "do you want me to go into more detail".

And it's great that you're looking for feedback, but why are you whining about not getting it after the fact when you could just ask for it in the interview? When an interviewer asks you a question, do your best to answer it and if you're not sure how you've done, just frickin' ask! "What do you think? Is that a good solution", or, "That's how I'd tackle it. What would you do?" Demonstrate that you know where your weaknesses are and that you have genuine interest in improving your skillset/knowledge/whatever.

One of the most important qualities I look for in people I work with is self- awareness of how they're perceived. People who lack this are a pain in the ass to manage. In the extreme, they're self-entitled primadonnas who are impossible to give feedback to. But even in moderation, this is problematic. Yes, I know you don't think copy/pasting code is all that bad, or that you're l33t-speak documentation is readable enough... but it's not. Don't make me argue with you about it.

</comment><comment><USER23> Have you tried asking?

I've done this in the past with jobs for which I was not accepted. Some were happy to, some weren't, but where they did it was useful.

And as an employer now, I'm generally happy to share useful feedback. But I'll usually only bother if the candidate asks me. This is at least partly because - as RiderOfGiraffes alludes to, there are legal issues involved, and I have to think very hard about how I word a reply to make sure it stays within the bounds of relevant laws. And I'm happy to do that if the candidate asked after it - but not if they've expressed no interest.

(fwiw, this is in the UK)

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not really happening at the moment, I'm a freelance developer now. But after having a discussion with a friend going through the same trouble, I had the question.

I probably didn't ask as much as I should/could have, I possibly asked 5-10% of employers, and when I had either no response or a negative 'you didnt suit our needs', I guess I just gave up. I think it's extremely dependent of the company, and surprisingly the person you're dealing with directly inside the company.

<comment><USER24> It's not too late.

What's the harm in something like: " _Hey, remember me? I once applied here and wasn't hired, but I really like your company and I was wondering if you have any advice to make me a stronger applicant for future openings_ "

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I was once not hired for a job i applied for (during the interview i was cross questioned a bit like an interrogation but a lot like i had done something wrong and this was my trial!), after the interview, his assistant was really kind and said to me,"really sorry about, that is my bosses confrontation style ..." then i was told they would like to see me again!

But after some thought (1 second), i just wanted not to go back again ... so maybe meaningful feedback to the interviewer/company would be useful too ...

</comment><comment><USER26> "Tell Me Why I Suck" could be a great anonymous "3 words"-style service...People post their resumes, cover letters, and people can give anonymous feedback on why they suck.

<comment><USER27> A friend and I built <http://failin.gs> with the mindset of vanilla anonymous feedback but were surprised when a lot of people started using their profile as a forum for feedback on their artwork and other hobbies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think all these explanation of fear of legal ramifications and how it's hard to provide feedback are just covers.

Employers and/or recruiters don't provide any reason because the the minimum that they have to do to let you know that you are not accepted is to tell you no. They are not bounded in any ways to do more than that. Telling you why means they have to think, to sit down and write more than a sentence. It's easier to just give a canned answer and send it out.

All the outer explanation of legal ramification, hard to provide feed back, it's just smoke screen to cover the most basic human nature to be lazy. Period.

Personally I've had good feedback 1 in every 50 application I sent. I've always proactively asked for feedback when I can and I think I've probably had 3 good feedbacks so far. One went as far as buying me lunch and explain the decision to me while another invited me back to his office where we sat down and chatted for quite a bit.

It's not that you suck, it's just human nature. Most of us are a lazy bunch.

</comment><comment><USER29> Telling candidates why they are not a good fit is not the company job, it's your job as a candidate to figure out why you are not a good fit. Also it would open them to some liability, which is something that anyone prefers to avoid.

I sometimes made interviews with potential candidates, and if you do it at a time you'll learn that it's really not something personal. I just say this, so that you know that you don't suck actually. Most companies are looking for someone who know their stuff (surprisingly hard to find ) AND is nice (someone you can work with ).

If you do the two above thing for a long enough time, have a good CV, ideally some personal project to show, you'll land up a good job in the end.

</comment><comment><USER30> Even small companies get many applicants.

Think about it this way. You are vying with 30 - 40 other people for one spot.

Failure should not be a surprise. Especially when there is no way to clearly differentiate the best from the top 10%.

</comment><comment><USER31> There's also the fact that there's multiple candidates for one position. You might have been a good choice, but someone else had more experience, or another diferential.

</comment><comment><USER32> Just a thought.

Maybe it is not who sucks.

But rather the first person in line receiving and reviewing your profile who has the crab mentality thinking that this person seems so good that s/he may change the way how business is done.

And let's accept it. A lot of these front end people dislike change. A lot of them have the same repertoire of outdated processes in hiring and looking for people who would be a good fit in their organization.

</comment><comment><USER33> Getting no feedback sucks. I wrote about this last year [1]. Now Google is somewhat of a special case because it's a highly desirable place to work and very large so you have issues of scale [2].

Sometimes I read posts like this and someone will say "I sent out X hundred resumes" and my response is always "really?". It always strikes me that if that's what you're doing, you're doing something wrong.

Let me explain. I contracted in Australia for some years (where I'm from) and also in the UK (London) for several years. Contracting in London is a soul- destroying experience and there is an industry in dire need of regulation but I digress.

Contracting is possibly the worst and most depressing form of looking for work because you in many ways are at the bottom of the totem pole. You may earn a lot but you pay for that. Companies will generally treat you as replaceable (which you are).

But in the course of much job-seeking I've spoken to many recruiters and some have given me the lowdown on what they do (including the shady practices). But the thing that stuck out the most for me was they all say they can throw out 90-95% of the resumes (CVs actually) they receive within seconds of receiving. This is a combination of them being bad but, more interestingly, the person just isn't suited for the job. Like not even remotely. Basically people take a shotgun approach of applying for everything. If you're a C++ programmer living in Leeds you end up applying for an Oracle DBA position in Reading. I'm not kidding.

I've generally had a reasonable success rate with both getting interviews and getting the job at that point. One reason for this I think is not that I'm some super candidate but that I really target which jobs I go after as being something I'm particularly interested in or something I'm particularly well- suited for.

Part of it too is understanding the process and this varies from place to place.

So in the UK for example you want to deal with only a handful of recruiting agencies. There are many fly-by-night operations who are either harvesting CVs or just hoping to get lucky. Filling one candidate a month can keep a small operation afloat.

So if applying for a job with a bank in London there are three filters you have to make it through:

1\. The recruiter. The recruiter may be limited in the number of CVs they can submit (eg 2). Even if they don't submit you they'll often tell you they will, which is why it's important to find one you can trust. Trust but verify;

2\. HR. This is in my experience the biggest impediment to filling jobs. HR know _nothing_ about programming so they'll word scan your CV/resume based on buzzwords. So you need to fill your CV with buzzwords, particularly those for the job. This can often mean catering your CV on a per-job basis. Some may not like this because it's more work (which it is) but that's the point: target high-probability jobs. The problem is that a buzzword-filled CV is actually a red flag to anyone technically competent;

3\. Hiring Manager: if you make it this far, with UK banks at least, you'll be in a pile of up to 10 CVs generally speaking. Rarely will a hiring manager interview all candidates. They might pick 2-4 they like, screen them by phone and go down to 2-3 onsite interviews. Or they might just interview people until they find someone they like (very common in my experience) so, if you ever have a choice of interview slot, pick the earliest one. Cancel anything else. You can lose a job simply by choosing a slot on the second day and never being seen.

So to return to the issue of feedback: it's even worse with recruiters in the picture. The hiring manager may give feedback to the recruiter (but generally won't; they're too busy). But even if they do the chances of the recruiter passing it along, unless you have a very good relationship with them, is almost zero. At the point you didn't get the job, they lose interest in you until the next job they can shop you for comes up.

Recruitment as it stands now is a disaster but won't really change until companies (who have the money) sign on to changing it. The feedback loop isn't there to inform them of how they're not getting the best result out of this (if they even care). Bear in mind that the person running the team you would potentially work for may be as frustrated by this process as you the candidate are.

Google again is a special case here. We're large enough that we have our own recruiters. I can't imagine how horrid the situation would be if we outsourced recruitment. Of course not everyone can do that but not everyone needs to I guess.

The process here is scrutinized (and criticized) quite a lot so is subject to gaming. So please don't take my comments to mean the process here is perfect. It isn't. But I have a hard time figuring out how it could be done better on the same scale. Every large company will be selective in some way, just to limit the deluge of applicants to manageable levels.

Other commentors have likened recruitment to dating and it's an apt analogy IMHO. A lot of recruitment comes down to chemistry between those doing the hiring and the candidate. If the interviewer likes you then you're in a much better position. So you can be technically well-suited for something but just not a great "culture fit".

There can be luck involved here too. It can depend on who interviews you, other factors (maybe an interviewer is just having a bad day; maybe you are). I think it's important not to dwell on the feedback and rejection for too long. Try and just move on to the next thing.

[1]: <http://www.cforcoding.com/2010/07/my-google-interview.html>

[2]: [http://screamable.com/google-received-over-75000-job- applica...](http://screamable.com/google-received-over-75000-job-applications- worldwide-in-just-one-week.html)

</comment><comment><USER34> Not sure where you are looking but there has been no lack of jobs for software developers where I am located. If you can code Java in Dallas you can slip and fall into a 6 figure salary. I guess I am spoiled but the ideas of sending out "Hundreds" of resumes seems foreign to me.</comment>


Top Chess Culture Shocks: Expat Student Champs in the U.S. Tell All - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/expat/2015/04/28/top-10-chess-culture-shocks-expat-student-champs-in-the-u-s-tell-all/

<comment><USER2> > _" The major U.S. tournaments are usually held in either Hilton or Sheraton > hotel ballrooms...in Canada, chess tournaments are often held in church > basements, schools, community centers, etc., resulting in a large group of > people crammed into a small, dark and over-heated space."_

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that in the US, tournaments are _also_ "often" held in church basements and schools. Most often, in fact. Where else are all the small tournaments to be held?

As far as major tournaments, the Canadian Open last year was at the Montreal Fairmont, which is a beautiful venue.

The idea that someone gets "chess culture shock" between Canada and the US is absurd.

<comment><USER3> A lot of this article is absurd... I've been playing for 15+ years in the US and I've never had someone think that what I did was checkers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> They should probably note that UTD does not have a football team, so the cheerleaders wouldn't cheer at all for them. Though we do have a nice chess team and cheerleaders for them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Where and when do chess cheerleaders cheer?</comment></comment>


A site that collects all your "read later" lists in one place - <AUTHOR> http://mortenjust.com/2010/08/19/introducing-donefeed-a-master-reading-list/

<comment><USER2> I keep thinking Instapaper and this service could do more with this valuable "items to read" data. This information has infinite value: they know what I'm going to be like (read) in the next few days (future).

Of course it makes the implementation more complicated, but it could also make the site invaluable. At least, show reviews from other people who read the same links, track "hot" and top rated links (because people just put too much stuff in their reading list and have to filter it anyway, they might as well help each other sorting what is more important).

More complicated things would be: automatically separating links in clusters (categories), telling me some link is no longer valid (some info only has value when new), detecting friends as "people who read (or like) the same stuff, etc.

Right now those sites have little more value than a txt file (or Org-mode), and that makes me frown.

<comment><USER3> Exactly!

Knowing that somebody actually read/watched/listened to... something is very valuable, and I havent seen anybody create a reading list that leverages that data.

I dont consider an rss reader as a reading list, i consider a reading list as a hand picked list.

We need a digg/instapaper and i think donefeed can be it.

Discalimer: I coded donefeed.</comment></comment>


The WWI Starch Solution for Denmark (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2012nl/jul/lessons.htm <comment><USER2> > "Our principal foods were bran bread, barley porridge, potatoes, greens, > milk and some butter. Pork production was very low; hence the farmers ate > all the pork they raised, and the people of the cities and towns got little > or no pork. Beef was so costly that only the rich could afford to buy it in > sufficient amount."

This makes sense, as opposed to what the meat industry is currently[0]. It encourages deforestation for growing feed (and to a lesser extent grazing) and requires significantly more energy to produce, process and store than cereals or most edible things. Yet, often meat in a supermarket is as cheap as the economically (in the holistic sense of the word) cheap products.

The way I see it, this phenomena is caused by oil prices not accounting for the inevitable running out of oil[1]. The way we are going right now, you'd say we have a source of unending nourishment[2].

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_p...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_production) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil#Discoveries](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil#Discoveries) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornucopian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornucopian)

<comment><USER3> Isn't oil just getting more and more expensive to find and extract? We won't "run out" of it, it'll just become too expensive to use as fuel eventually.

<comment><USER4> Yet oil is cheaper now than it was ten years ago, in raw dollars (before even factoring for inflation). The technology to extract oil keeps getting better.

<comment><USER5> There is a finite amount of oil in the world.

<comment><USER6> There is a finite amount of everything in the world. What's special about oil?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Brilliant macro-structural/societal breakdown of why we should consume less animal protein.

<comment><USER8> Why less? No animal protein consumption is necessary for optimal human health at all.

<comment><USER7> Prohibition seldomly succeeds. But yes, I would not mind it dropping to zero if alternatives are 100% doable (glycoproteins contained in beans needs LOTS of processing before they stop affecting gastrointestinal health (many indigenous tribes have ways to threat pulses that work but we tend to ignore the problem completely from industrial perspective) and things like soy has oestrogenic properties which can be bad news in the long run). Quorn is a "new" protein which has better profile than soy and relatively little allergenic potential.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In the 1990s, the USDA food pyramid recommended people base their diet on breads and starchy foods (note the base of the original food pyramid). Over the last twenty years, they have backed away from this recommendation. While most Americans eat too much meat, it turns out that eating too much starch isn't an improvement. The current USA recommendation appears to be "eat more fruits and vegetables" ( choosemyplate.gov ).

But since this recommendation came with a change in the graphic used (from a rainbow pyramid to a plate) people focused on the graphic and missed the new dietary advice.

<comment><USER10> It's kinda apples and oranges here though. The USA of 1990-2017 (and beyond) is overall wealthy and doesn't really need to think about its citizens starving. WW1 Denmark had slightly different set of health issues.

I don't think this is being presented as a sort of solution to any health issues the USA might have

<comment><USER9> You have a point. I just didn't want anybody reading this and thinking "I should eat like that." Modern nutritionists say that a high starch diet isn't a good idea.

<comment><USER10> Ahh I see - it's a good point so worth making anyway

<comment><USER10> (your point i meant!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great article. I've read a different figure for blockage deaths in Germany in WWI. After factoring in the notion that most deaths from malnutrition end with a disease that healthy people could fight off, the figure was 11 million, believe it or not. In part because nutrition was badly understood (the shrewd Mikkel Hindhede aside), and many popular erzatz foods were unhealthy or not food at all.

The same is true of Vietnam War American prisoners, they actually had longer lifespans than average (whereas the truly starved prisoners from WWII Hong Kong had much shorter lives.) This may in part because the Vietnamese prison did not include artificial light, however.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is from [2012]...

When I was in teh college, I certainly didn't get enough protein, on account of my unconventional diet. I later figured out that protein deficiency was certainly the cause of the oddly-clear urine I experienced during those years.

This article does have a good point about the wastefulness of growing grain crops for animal feed. Pigs and chickens are better fed kitchen scraps and spoiled fruit/food. Cattle are better grazed on hillsides that are not suitable for mechanical agriculture.

I think potatoes are much better starches for humans to eat than grains.

<comment><USER13> > When I was in teh college, I certainly didn't get enough protein

Did you try? Or were you just ignorantly eating ramen every day?

Getting enough protein shouldnt be hard, even on a tiny budget, if you just know what you are doing.

> I think potatoes are much better starches for humans to eat than grains.

Thats what tfa said.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > "Our principal foods were bran bread, barley porridge, potatoes, greens, > milk and some butter

Nearly every Dane lives within an hour walk from the ocean and even from the center of the country you are only 70km to the ocean. How is fish not _the_ principal food, especially during war time.

This omission is so glaring that it undermines the credibility of the article.

<comment><USER15> The north sea was a warzone, fishing ships were highly likely to be attacked and sunk.

The entire reason there was a food shortage was that the allies were attacking any ships leaving/approaching the european mainland. Thats what a blocade IS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> if the worst drought in 1/2 a century occurred in 2012, then why is that a trend upward if a worse one was in 1962?

</comment><comment><USER17> Please add (2012) to the title.

<comment><USER18> Well, the article focusses on 1917... Was still interesting and valuable though.</comment></comment>