My biggest frustration with Google AdWords - <AUTHOR> http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/01/26/my-biggest-frustration-with-google-adwords/ <comment><USER3> It also has to do with how much money you give them.

I sell firearm accessories. When I launched my site, I put about $300 in my AdWords account and started to advertise for magazines, scopes, handguards, etc.

My ads were pulled rather quickly, yet other gun dealers are allowed to advertise:

<http://www.google.com/search?q=magpul+pmag> <http://www.google.com/search?q=rifle+scopes> <http://www.google.com/search?q=ar15+handguard>

Thats my biggest frustration with AdWords.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I have heard that 95% of their revenues come from the top 5% of customers. I spend about $10k/month on ads and still get shitty service, and long review times. I do know people that buy $250k+/month, and their ads don't even get reviewed, and they have a personal customer service rep.

<comment><USER5> Ads may get auto approved but they are still reviewed sooner or later. On top of that, absolutely all pages get reviewed, if not initially by human reviewers then by Google's crawlers. We spend $xxx,xxx on Google each month, it pays for us to know intimately how their systems work. They're watching us and we're watching them.

<comment><USER4> There is still a huge difference between declining all ads unless they are explicitly approved, and having people explicitly disapprove ads.

I know the rules quite well, have never had an ad disapproved, but the process is just frustratingly slow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've also voiced this frustration with Google. I have software which helps middle school kids learn to organize and write essays. I get lumped in with essay farms (thus, requiring review) _every fucking time I change one little thing_ in my ads.

I told someone at Google the following (I actually got someone to answer the damn phone- a number that showed up in Google search results for Google's phone number): I shop at a grocery store that allows me to take a hand-held upc scanner and scan and pay for my own groceries _on my honor_. Occasionallly there is a spot-check: my checkout/payment interaction will halt and someone will come over and scan _n_ items in my bags (0< _n_ <U) and then let me proceed (not sure what happens if they find something I didn't scan in my bags). The longer I shop there without incident, the less frequent my spot- checks seem to be.

This is great for all involved. Why can't Google do the same thing? They've reviewed _every ad_ , and after 3 years they've never had a issue. Seems like they should give me the benefit of the doubt and let the ads run (and check on them if they feel the need). I've proved myself and never had an ad rejected.

This bothers me so much that I really hate doing business with Google. I've made it a priority to make Google obsolete in my next launch. Well, except that they own everything else on the web, too...

<comment><USER7> The difference is the risk. If you steal (or "forget" to scan) a pack of noodles then the grocery store loses maybe one dollar.

If an inappropriate ad gets through it could (potentially) lead to a major PR disaster for Google.

Whereas you being unhappy with the product or the process really makes no difference to Google, since they are the only game in town.

(For the record I'm really not "defending" them; I just try to understand their incentives).

<comment><USER8> That's the biggest problem of all: although they may have improved in the past few years, Google's filters to keep out scam sites aren't even borderline adequate anyway.

Google "HYIP" and click on one of the ads if you want to find a website to help you give your money to criminals operating Ponzi schemes. Now granted, a lot of people searching for implausibly high yield investment plans are aware of the rules of the shady game they're getting into, but they really ought to be triggering more filters and failing more manual reviews than bingo card creation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Incidentally, so that I don't earn a reputation as Resident Google Critic: I love Google, I think they've created more value for more people than any company in history, and but for Google I would still be a cog in the machine at a Japanese megacorp. I just don't think they are infallible, and in particular I have learned that their PR is as likely to be accurate as any other megacorp's is.

<comment><USER10> For what it's worth, there are several people in Google who will use your article to argue that we could improve our customer service/user support in different ways. I pinged one of them on Twitter and I'll pass this article around within Google.

Here's my personal opinion: I think the idea of paid inclusion had a deep influence on Google--we really didn't like the idea of paying to be in Google's index, because it meant that Google's incentives would be misaligned (not indexing pages would lead to revenue). I think that some people might have had the same worries about paid user/customer support (messing things up such that people had to call us would lead to revenue). That might sound crazy, but back in 2000 I saw quite a few companies that almost seemed to make deliberately bad software so that they could overcharge on support contracts. [Of course, there's the notion that Google tries to be scalable as well.] In my personal opinion, if anyone had the notion "we don't want to be paid for support, because that means our incentives are misaligned" in the early days, that notion is outdated and should be re-examined. Just my personal take.

I know the teams that support users and advertisers work really hard to scale and that it's a tricky problem.

<comment><USER7> > I know the teams that support users and advertisers work really hard to > scale

If the examples given in the original article are true, esp. the fact that when one copies an ad to a different category, without changing anything, the copied ad has to be manually approved again, then it doesn't look like scaling is a concern.

But I think part of the problem is that ad-copy approval is a "ACB": ass- covering business. Kind of like the TSA.

If something gets through, you need to be able to show that you did anything you could to prevent it, and it's really not your fault.

ACBs don't care for efficiency: what they want is documentation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've said this multiple times before, but it warrants repeating. Customer care is Google's Achilles' heel. I'm mostly OK with them having little support for free products, but when there are thousands of dollars on the line with AdWords or AdSense I expect them to step up their game.

I'm convinced that offering prompt customer service for these two services alone would lead them to make far more money than they'd have invested in it.

Frustrated customers can become competitors at times. Google has been lucky thanks to its virtual monopoly on search (tough from a technical standpoint) and ads (tough from a business standpoint), but they need to be careful. Technology has a habit of changing things quickly.

<comment><USER12> Is there a business opportunity in here somewhere?

Can someone sell 3rd-party support for Google? I know it sounds crazy, but there has to be a way to "arbitrage" their lack of support. In a sense, that's what SEO consultants are: they know how to make things happen despite Google's obscurity.

Any better ideas?

<comment><USER13> Its already happening in Google Apps. Technically Google provides free support and phone support if you pay $50/year but if you signup with a reseller they also provide support and usually have a contact at Google for any issue they can't resolve.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Surprisingly, Facebook is kicking Google's ass on this.

If you spend a decent amount on Facebook, you will get a rep you can email any time and get back a response from a real human. They can expedite the approval of your ads and will even retroactively approve ads that were disapproved by mistake.

<comment><USER15> I believe the minimum spend for this service (Account Executive) is $10,000 per month.

Google also assigns account managers at similar spending levels.

However, I have to agree the Facebook's account managers are _far_ more helpful than Google's. They have more authority to re-approve ads that have been denied, and they seem to understand their own rules better than their counterparts at Google. YMMV.

<comment><USER16> It's definitely not $10k per month. I spend an order of magnitude more than that and don't have an account exec with Google. The actual phone number for customer support does appear in my account - unfortunately the article we are commenting on neatly sums up my experience with "customer support" as well.

If only I could turn an roi with facebook.

<comment><USER17> In the UK I think it is about 20k per month

<comment><USER18> Far less. Most I ever spent was around 3k/mo and I had an account exec I could call up on the phone. They were extremely knowledgeable about ad approval, rules, etc

They actually also got my account reinstated when google accidentally blocked my whole Google acct.

Also never seen an ad under review for more than a couple of hours.

The OP experience is an edge case due to gambling etc

<comment><USER17> How recent was this?

At the start of January they reduced the number of accounts who have individual reps.

However, I work for an agency; the support model might be different for individual advertisers

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I really believe this as a result of the engineering culture issue at Google. "There is a solution to the problem of naughty ads, so move on to the next problem."

As a product manager, I can think of many ways to improve this process for the people who pay for the Googleplex and, at the same time, decrease the support burden, but those kinds of things are not "fun" engineering tasks, and when engineers get to choose their projects, you better make your project fun.

As I'm laying the foundation for my company (with the one engineer I've got working for me) while playing CTO and Product Manager, I'm spending a lot of time thinking about culture and how to build a company that can attract great talent while still getting the really annoying things done that come with polishing a product (something that I don't think Google or Facebook do very well at all). Suggestions welcome. :)

<comment><USER20> > build a company that can attract great talent while still getting the really > annoying things done that come with polishing a product

Pay well. I've seen some really top guys in finance work with some really awful management because the money was just too good to say no to. Until, of course, the bonuses stopped coming in. Then they all left. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm not convinced that "Do no evil" applies to Google's handling of advertisers. I've seen it happen that some small company will get its ads banned, and all Google will say is Google isn't sure the company is legitimate. The company makes no headway getting it resolved--until they go hire expensive advertising consultants to manage their Google campaigns, and the consultants have not trouble getting Google to review and reverse the ban within a day or two.

<comment><USER22> My biggest frustration with Google's motto is that it is _not_ "Do no evil" ...but that it should be.

Their motto is "Don't be evil." I'm sure it wasn't an intentional weasel, but it does allow a lot of weasel/wiggle room, as in: I could not in good conscience call the whole outfit 'evil' - but I worry about some of its specific behaviors/policies having evil effects. [/rant]

<comment><USER23> Don't be evil?

"Being less bad is not being good." - William McDonough in Cradle to Cradle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Well I tried running some adwords on the 'display network'. I've tried at various times over the years with this and always abandoned it as a festering pit of spam and fraud.

I decided to try it out again, in case things had improved somewhat. And before I knew it, I had a couple of conversions. There was also a lot of 50% CTR rates for obvious spam farm sites. So I excluded all of those and upped the budget.

And I got a few more conversions. Some really odd ones too - from myspace.com and other sites that I would think my customers have no business being on (or being on and in a purchasing mood, to be more accurate). But then I compared actual sales with analytics and other information. While my adwords account was reporting 'conversions' my sales were actually not showing these conversions.

Now I might have the conversion code wrong (doubtful, it's just a copy/paste) but something tells me varios spammers have worked out ways to make some of your ads show conversions to stop being excluded from the list.

Whatever the reason, it's switched off again. Traffic and sales show no ill effects.

So I'm back to my original hypotheses : the display network is a festering pit of scammers and money wasting.

<comment><USER9> I was of a similar mind several years ago. Can I suggest that you try Conversion Optimizer? I have my occasional issues with Google, but that product is everything they do right in a little packet of joy with a bow on top. It virtually completely solved my issues with the Content Network.

I have end-to-end tracking on my conversions these days and I can verifiably trace ~25% of sales to trials started immediately after a visit from an ad on the Content Network.

The network certainly _is_ a hive of scum and villainy, but they give options for not doing much business with that portion of it.

P.S. I cannot speak authoritatively for your conversion code, but I'd suspect you're seeing the effects of residual conversions where someone comes in from myspace.com, then later searches via brand name, and you're crediting the brand search but not myspace.

<comment><USER24> The conversions code is the standard adwords conversion javascript, added to the final 'thanks for your order' page.

I would agree with you about the myspace thing- but I ended up with 5 or 10 of these bogus conversions, all on pretty low total clicks (I'm talking 10's of clicks resulting in a conversion). My best referral partners don't go anywhere near those sorts of numbers. In other words, one case makes a fluke (and myspace is highly visited, so I can agree with your theory) but after a couple of rare cases, you start to invoke the law of unlikely statistics in your head and say 'wait a minute...'

Here are some stats:

domain___cl_impr__CTR__ACPC_Cost_Cv_Co/Cv_CvRate

xqno.com 13 1,138 1.14% $0.64 $8.33 2 $4.16 15.38%

There's more like this. Some have 1 click, 3 impressions and a 100% conversion rate. No way is that going to happen more than once in a very long time, yet my adwords account has about 5 of these. And none of the conversions shows up in analytics.

Anything that was giving me numbers like that- you'd say 'yeah, go for it'. But I could find no actual conversions in analytics for that domain.

Looking at that domain we see a Url shortener with one google ad at the bottom. Just knowing my other referral rates and conversion rates for highly- relevant sites, makes me believe firmly that these stats are just plain wrong.

<comment><USER25> Assuming your site is small enough that they don't optimize to beat you specifically, the best way to defeat any kind of automatic spamming is to make your site unique in some trivial way.

Even if it would take them almost no effort for them to change their tools to spam you, they won't bother if you're too small for them to notice.

<comment><USER24> Not sure what you're saying here. What I'm witnessing is click-fraud. It would seem like nobody is stupid enough to run 1000 clicks on my ad on their site, but they seem to nickel and dime each advertiser - a click here, a click there, nothing that couldn't be disproven. There seems to be a lot of work needed to wade through the display network. I don't know how the false conversions happen. It would seem to me they have found a way.

<comment><USER25> I was talking about spotting the fake conversions. If you're using the standard code, it might be worth seeing if you can make it slightly non- standard enough that any standard way of faking it won't work.

But maybe that requires something on Google's end; I haven't looked at it so I can't say.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Last time I actually talked to a human at Google, they said you needed to spend $10k per month to get actual customer service...

I find my ads get in and out of purgatory much faster than yours - <USER2> always less than 24 hours. Bingo must really freak them out.

<comment><USER6> There are keyword triggers- you probably avoid them. I know groups whose ads fly in minutes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This leaked data from June 2010 gives some interesting insight into the distribution of AdWords account sizes... [http://searchengineland.com/googles- top-adwords-advertisers-...](http://searchengineland.com/googles-top-adwords- advertisers-leaked-document-reveals-advertising-dollars-49918)

I work on accounts of varying sizes, approaching $1M/month. At that level, we have access to a handful of dedicated reps who quickly fix issues like this when they arise (in addition to weekly support meetings and a handful of other nice-to-haves.) The smaller accounts I work on barely get any attention, so I can sympathize.

That being said, the established accounts I've seen don't have these types of issues. (Even some of the smaller accounts I work on don't run into holdups often at all.) I suspect it has less to do with budget and more to do with some sort of trust built up over time and the frequency with which you make changes to your account (if you make frequent changes without causing problems, you are given more leeway, maybe?) Casual observations on my part, but something I've noticed.

</comment><comment><USER25> There are several flaws inherent in trying to scale things by having the computer gather all your data from people.

Solving them almost invariably requires more people, but some can be avoided if you're more careful about what you measure and how you measure it (i.e. making sure you know what the hell is actually going on, rather than staring at spreadsheets of disembodied numbers removed from any context).

* The "best performing" systems are those with the fewest problems, right? But you can get rid of problems in two ways: by solving them, and by making it difficult or impossible for people to complain.

* You only hear about problems from the people who complain. Remove their ability to complain (or make it hard for them to reach anyone) and you'll never know about the problems. The tie-in with my first point should be obvious.

* A broken complaints system that allows few complaints will "perform better" than any other systems (in terms of having fewer trouble reports that get through) and will get selected for, unless you have people who know what the hell is going on.

* When you make people select their problems from a list, you won't get anything not on the list. Sure, maybe you have an "other" field, but sometimes people will just select one of the options even if it's the wrong one. In that vein, your _default_ selection should be some kind of "unknown/other" because unless people make a choice, you can't assume that they intentionally selected anything.

I could go on and on, sadly, because I have a lot of experience seeing this sort of thing go on, even though I've done my best to prevent certain industrial QC processes from feeding total and utter garbage data to managers who see the production floor only when giving tours to prospective customers.

</comment><comment><USER28> Have you tried facebook? 3 yrs ago, when I first started out as an affiliate marketer, 90% of my ad spend was in adwords. At this point, my ad spend has tilted obscenely in facebook's favor over adwords.

I remember the hours I used to spend optimising my adwords. But not any more. I spend less than 5% of that time on adwords now. By xmas of this year, it should be down to 0.

</comment><comment><USER29> I hope someone's applying to YC with a customer service startup designed specifically to serve Google's customers. You can guarantee Google won't jump in to compete and if you get traction, they might buy you.

<comment><USER30> Without a very good connection to google customer service that doesn't stand much chance though, so where are they going to get their access?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> AdSense has similar customer support issues too. A legal challenge to Google got a near-instant response. [0]

[0] [http://searchengineland.com/remember-that-adsense- publisher-...](http://searchengineland.com/remember-that-adsense-publisher- that-sued-google-won-well-he-lost-20663)

</comment><comment><USER12> Just go to Facebook, their ads work better anyway: [http://blog.fairsoftware.net/2010/07/22/facebook-ads- crush-g...](http://blog.fairsoftware.net/2010/07/22/facebook-ads-crush-google- adwords-for-the-founder-conference/)

A little bit of competition always helps improve customer service.

<comment><USER9> I have tried advertising on Facebook. If you want, I'll break out my stats and do a blog post about it. Let me spoil the conclusion to that blog post: I got substantially more out of it when I paid them $140 for virtual cowboy goods than when I paid them $140 for ads.

<comment><USER6> Agreed. Facebook is where teachers go when they're _not_ thinking about teaching.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Another thing which is pretty stupid is the API charges, given that using the API in general would allow people to make more ad spend it just doesn't make sense to me, given the amount of free API's they have.

<comment><USER6> I'm not familiar with these- but I apologize for the accidental/clumsy downvote from my iPhone. I must have dragged my thumb across the down arrow on my way to the reply button on this app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> This isn't a problem unique to small, new, or contentious term advertisers.

I've had ads stuck in review for days, and I say this as someone waiting for his google adwords team to arrive and buy him drinks.

</comment><comment><USER34> I'll add my anecdotal case. I created a $30 AdWords campaign last month for the first time ($1/day maximum), more as an experiment and for learning than anything. After a few days I received an email from Google asking "How did we do?".

I filled out a form saying I wasn't happy since almost all traffic I was getting was having a 0 second visit time on my site, when the search terms were very specific and matching perfectly with the topic of my web site. It was hard for me to believe that everybody who searched for those terms and click on my add didn't even check any other page so I suspected fraud. A person (it seems; it was signed with a name) answered explaining the situation in a long and informative email, he also ran a fraud report just in case.

So in my case AdWords doesn't seem to work out but I got quick and good support from a person at Google when I'm just spending $30 in a "campaign".

</comment><comment><USER35> In general I agree, AdWords (and indeed other Google products) could improve its customer service.

But I also know, having worked for several years at Google, that the volume of requests is enormous. Many of them come from advertisers less honest than you, and dealing with them takes time.

</comment><comment><USER36> My biggest frustration with Adwords is that when you create a new campaign, Google sets ad serving to "optimize" rather than "rotate." This means Google gradually shows higher performing ads more often, which would appear to be helpful. But they do it before an ad split-test reaches statistical significance (which screws up proper A/B testing).

When you copy an existing campaign to create a new one, they even go so far as to switch that setting from "rotate" to "optimize" on the newly created campaign. And with the Desktop Editor there's no interface to change ad serving settings.

I'm sure it's profitable for them to have "optimize" set as the default. I just wish they'd allow users who are knowledgeable to select "rotate" without hassle.

</comment><comment><USER32> Another issue for those that rely on adwords for traffic, in certain countries brands are able to use their trademarks to prevent certain keywords being bid upon at all, for example this recently happened the keyword "chanel".

It's possible many would argue that this is fair enough, but what happens when someone gets Google to bad a fairly common work or something the relates directly to another product.

</comment><comment><USER37> "I would be strongly tempted to take my business to vibrant competitive offerings. Sadly, Google is pretty much the only game in town"

There _has_ to be a way to change that, and it might not be from a direct attack on AdWords, or even PPC.

</comment><comment><USER38> Perfect example of why it's always a bad decision to put all your hope in the Google machine. There are lots of other places to do ads (MSN, Facebook, LinkedIn). Use them. Don't be dependent on just one source of traffic.

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm not sure on the any changes to destination url's result in having to be reviewed again. I have frequently modified tracking parameters in the url without incident.

<comment><USER39> I've seen exactly the opposite. Remember that everything that has destination URLs in AdWords is immutable -- when you edit a keyword's destination URL, or a text ad, you'll see in the URL and in the API that the primary key of the entity is different -- and with every new entity, the google adbot kicks into gear (without any bandwidth throttling decency, btw, so watch out for that, too...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> My biggest frustration with Adwords is trying work out their damn api from the sparse and confusing documentation they provide.

</comment><comment><USER29> Why doesn't Google hire people to fix their existing cash cow product, instead of trying to copy Groupon?

<comment><USER41> The entire point of trying to copy Groupon is that they want to diversify their revenue stream, rather than relying on a single cash cow. Defending the cash cow at the expense of future growth would be a short-sighted strategy.

I agree that they should devote more resources to fixing this problem, but I would rather those resources come from more established underperforming products, rather than new opportunities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> So the next step in the approval process(after contacting support) is write a blog post about it? :)

</comment><comment><USER43> To quote myself, yesterday: ( <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2140893> )

      It's really easy to get customer service from G. They provide, free, to each
      customer their famous "fuck off and die while we totally ignore you" brand of
      customer service that has propelled them to the very bottom of JD Power Customer
      Service Surveys.

      Or, you can have a blog with huge reach and bitch on that, whence Matt Cutts
      will swoop out of the sky to cover up their fuckups. viz slow email and
      Gabriel Weinberg.

      So the real question is if you complain on the internet, how many people hear
      you?  Honestly, letting G get their hands on anything that's critical to your
      life seems an enormous mistake, unless it wouldn't be a big problem for you
      if your phone stops working.

What a perfect example -- Patrick is going for the "have enough readers that G gets embarrassed when you bitch" customer service plan. The only problem is most of us don't have that many readers.

<comment><USER44> Have you considered what Google does with money they save by not employing a team of tens of thousands of customer support personnel? They pass it on to you. In the form of more AdSense earnings, lower cost to advertisers, more money for R&D to improve ad targeting.

Of course there's the corporate 767, but that's chump change compared to what they pay publishers each year and how Adwords has enabled small businesses world-wide.

<comment><USER9> _Have you considered what Google does with money they save by not employing a team of tens of thousands of customer support personnel?_

It makes no difference to me whether they use it to improve AdWords, maintain their 35% margins, buy their own airline, employ brilliant PhDs, give free massages and chocolate icecream to everyone, or underwrite non-profitable products like everything Google does which isn't search/AdSense. All I want is for the thing that I pay money for to work. I'm practically begging for them to take my money.

<comment><USER44> And I'm practically begging them to leave your money on the table so I can get paid more Adsense money and get charged less Adwords money.

<comment><USER45> The obvious answer is for Google to charge for support plans, like AWS.

E.g., $100/month for up to 3 hours of support a month with 4 hour response time, $500/month for up to 10 hrs/month with 15 minute response times, etc.

<comment><USER46> They have similar plans in the Enterprise segment. For integrating GMail and Google docs with your website, and for building your own custom apps for the same.

<comment><USER47> I'd like information/opinions anyone has to share on the real availability and quality of that support.

And what qualifies as "Enterprise"? If you've 15 Google Apps seats and are paying your $50/year/seat, do you actually get useful responses in a timely manner?

(It seems those dollar amounts would be well below anything "Enterprise". But I figure the multiple-thousand-seat clients are getting support from somewhere. Maybe this means the small fish who pay, can actually get some level of response?)

<comment><USER48> I had 3 paid seats (now 11) when I contacted Google support regarding a hosted Apps account. I received a response fairly quickly (within a few hours), a response and resolution within 10 minutes of replying to the initial support email follow-up, and I continued to have a discussion and further support responses from the same person over the next few days.

So I'd say absolutely that my $150 bought me a name and a face and good support.

They also have phone support, but I have not used it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Can't disagree...</comment>


Show HN: Bubblin – Bandcamp for books - <AUTHOR> https://bubblin.io <comment><USER2> I couldn't find any info on your page regarding the royalties model that you're going to use. How much of a cut are you going to take? Is it going to be closer to amazon's 70% or closer to bandcamp's 15%?

Why do you have the restriction to original work and public domain work "with your own take"? For me, personally, that's a bit disappointing, since I work largely on digital reproductions of public domain work leaving it "as is".

One of my leisure time pursuits is to find interesting old books on cavalry, making them into high-quality reflowable e-books. It's a lot of work. I sometimes have to find multiple originals in libraries and antiquarian bookstores if there isn't a single original available in a good enough condition. Then I type them in multiple times to make sure there are no typos. I scan & vectorize the graphics. Then I produce nice reflowable EPUBs and ensure compatibility with a wide range of hardware. That kind of thing is hard work, and yet that sort of work is probably not protectable by copyright. It's been a personal frustration of mine that platforms for bookselling are often so uninviting towards that kind of content. -- It would be pretty easy for me to take a work like that and make it into an edition "with commentary", but, honestly, I'd much rather allow these works to shine in their original glory.

<comment><USER3> > One of my leisure time pursuits is to find interesting old books on cavalry, > making them into high-quality reflowable e-books.

That's so cool! Is there any chance you're willing to share those epub's? I'm a private Archivist/Data Hoarder and would love to get my hands on those files just to keep them safe.

Feel free to contact me, my email is on my profile.

<comment><USER2> I'll definitely share the EPUBs. My current plan is roughly as follows:

I'll create a Facebook group to serve as a "reading club" and publish the fulltext in a bit-by-bit fashion to the group as Facebook documents, maybe also to Bubblin at zero price. I like the idea of being able to link directly to individual pages within the Bubblin-based ebook. The usefulness of this feature depends a bit on how good the previews look that Facebook would end up extracting for those links. For people who want a more proper book experience there will be a ZIP file available for download with a printable PDF and an EPUB. I'll make that bundle available for purchase using a service similar to gumtree but better geared for the German market.

My hope would be that, through these purchases, I can recoup some of the costs that went into the production of those works. After the reading club is through, or when I've made enough money to break even, whichever comes first, I'll upload the EPUB for free to Amazon, project gutenberg, archive.org, wikisource, wikimedia commons, and whatever other platform I can think of. I'll also upload the scanned source material to achive.org. I can send it to you as well, if you'd like, once I get to that stage.

The baseline strategy here would be to just upload to Kindle Direct Publishing and put a price tag on it. But if I did that, then Amazon would stand to benefit from my efforts more than either I or the general public would, and it would probably not get the material as much circulation. So that's what I'm trying to avoid by doing things this way.

<comment><USER4> I've been designing a new business model that is a positive sum game for all players.

I'm sick of these rent seeking fee grabbing antiquated ideas prevailing just because "that's how it's always been done"

I truly respect your efforts and wouldn't comment here if I didn't think I had a way to improve that process for you. Please email me if you're interested in hearing more. Email is username at gmail.

Looking forward to hopefully hearing from you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From a user's perspective: The main point of Bandcamp is that you actually own what you buy. No DRM, no additional charge for lossless, properly tagged, including cover art, everything in a perfectly normal ZIP anybody can use and nobody can take away from you again. That is why Bandcamp was so refreshing when it started, and that is why I buy my music there whenever possible. As far as I can see, this site is nothing like that.

<comment><USER6> Exactly, and LeanPub already covers the analogous use case for books fairly well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I read all the time on my iPad. Sorry for the negative feedback, but I don't think I would use this. If there's no pdf/ePub download that I can put into a reader of my choice, see alongside my other downloaded books, take anywhere with me, categorise, highlight, bookmark, skip around in, etc, then it's not for me, and it's not like Bandcamp. On the iPad there is no friction with downloading such files to a reader app - it's one or two clicks - so I'm not sure why that is the reason given for no providing it.

Also, the font is simply gigantic, I felt like I was back in primary school! I couldn't discover how to resize it, if that is possible.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why do you need to download explicitly when your book is already offline using a service-worker? Serious question.

<comment><USER7> Because my reading apps can do more than the website's reader can. Because then I own the file and the website cannot simply take it down. Because of all the reasons I listed originally.

Basically - is this site selling itself as Bandcamp for books, which means 'hardcore' readers can discover new and interesting 'indie' books and do what they want with them in whatever format they want, or is it selling itself as a fancy reading app with animations and things (which imo appeals more to casual readers/children, and the giant font also gives off that impression)? It is trying to be both - or is clearly the latter but has been posted here as the former - and that seems conflicted. You simply can't make me believe that I am MORE free by being locked into one reading app vs downloading a file! :)

<comment><AUTHOR> > my reading apps can do more…

What are the top three features on an app that you find so unique and useful that web can't offer it?

<comment><USER4> I've got to commend you for actively responding to feedback in an unbiased way.

Some seem not to gel with the wording you've used for your website, but you've put lots of work in and your passion and honesty show through the feedback and responses you're providing.

Bravo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am a huge fan of bandcamp, I buy most of my music because I can download the FLAC files and put them on my streaming server. I was rather disappointed that instead of providing polished, DRM free ebook files but went with a web based version that I cannot transfer to my ebook reader.

I would be more than happy to not only pay the authors but also for the work that you guys do by providing nice clean files.

There is another small thing that bugs me. Why did you choose to emulate books in your reader even down to turning pages? IMHO this is rather unnecessary, just presenting the book like a long article with well done typography would have been enough. (the reason, again IMHO, that ebook readers have virtual pages is that their displays are to slow to have smooth scroll)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd never read Harry Potter and Prisoner of Azkaban like an article or a PDF file. No one will. This way I can… at least my nephew will.

We've discussed this subject at length over here:

[https://bubblin.io/concerns](https://bubblin.io/concerns)

Thanks!

<comment><USER9> I read a little of what you link. I have a concern: you are ignoring the current state of the market and hoping your new standard will be adopted. I have an eInk reader that is about 10 years old. It is serviceable. I put most of my eBooks on that for reading.

I won't consider a service that doesn't have the epub format. The first thing I do (before buying an eBook anywhere) is check to see if I can get it on my e-reader. I already have to jump through hoops to get my Amazon purchases onto it.

I won't use your service because it doesn't have what I need. And there are many people like me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The entire point of bandcamp, for me, is FLAC downloads.

There was already a comment about how there aren't epub downloads. So this is hardly the "Bandcamp for books." More like the "Spotify for books" I would think.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Spotify for books

Interesting. I think we're drawing from both Spotify and Bandcamp here somewhat. Overall, since there are differences between how/why we consume music vs. how and what we do with books so there will be differences in final implementation of Bubblin eventually and we might just sit closer to Spotify then.

We had to start somewhere, and Bandcamp for Books wasn't a bad place to begin with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Had a read of the FAQ and it doesn't seem like its for me. I prefer my books as epub so they work nicely on my ereader. I also require that they be able to be downloaded as files so I can store them on my hdd and they are safely archived so if the original seller pulls them offline or the website shuts down I will always have access to them.

This services feels more like a longer form blog platform tbh but good luck and I hope others find use in it.

<comment><USER12> > prefer my books as epub so they work nicely on my ereader. I also require > that they be able to be downloaded as files

hi Sonica, CTO & cofounder here.

i'm sure there are a number of nuggets in the epub standard to pick up! it's just that it is too much friction for people to download a file, navigate to the file on the disk and wait for it to open before they can start reading the book.

we do have a dry no-javascript no-frills mode for books on Bubblin right now, if that helps. we've written an essay [1] discussing some of these concerns and will be happy to engage/implement in a more accommodating fashion.

[1] [https://bubblin.io/concerns](https://bubblin.io/concerns)

<comment><USER13> Really? People who are about to spend a good amount of hours reading a book thinks it's a bother to wait two minutes for a file to download? Using any kind of modern system you'll have a standard download location and a "Open with..." dialog with the default app for a given file type selected, and most epub-capable apps will remember the recently used files so you don't have to.

This smells more like a "we don't want to" instead of "we can't"...

<comment><USER14> Seem reasonable to me. Most people probably don't have an ebook reader installed, and would struggle to find one and install it. The site could point to one, but that essentially means they become responsible for supporting it.

Personally, I'd also prefer an epub, but I'm not the average user.

<comment><USER15> The average user prefers something that works on an ereader.

<comment><USER14> I don't think that's true, few people read ebooks in ereaders: [http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/09/01/book- reading-2016/pi_2...](http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/09/01/book- reading-2016/pi_2016-09-01_book-reading_0-04/)

<comment><USER5> Maybe. But the people who have dedicated ereaders are usually those who read a lot and are passionate about quality ebooks. I'm sick of buying ebooks at Amazon, jumping through hoops only to get it onto my Kobo, and then find it has weird style sheets and plain wrong formatting, which I then have to fix via Calibre. This is just nuts. Combine this with the fact that only a tiny fraction of what I've paid went to the author, I would _love_ if there was something like "Bandcamp for ebooks". I think this might very well work out, and I also think that many authors would jump onto this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > Welcome to Bandcamp of books, comics and magazines!

I'd be wary of using that phrase directly on your home page. That's definitely making use a of trademark you don't own - seems like a quick path to some legal trouble with bandcamp?

</comment><comment><USER17> Looks nice :-) What are you planning for the future? I'd like to take a lot of notes and get a nice overview for future review / a lot of learning features.

Any thoughts on adding discussions?

I'd also like you to add a lot of essays ;-)

Bug report: I verified my email, but it still tells me to do so. (Using on Macbook, validated from iPhone, so different device)

<comment><AUTHOR> Discussions are our next milestone, so yes! I think it will be good to share our roadmap somewhere on the site. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It all looks really cool but can you please clarify 1) licensing -- all your git projects say "license TBD" for many months. 2) clarify the selling options - 3) If I want to publish a book on my own site, why do I need to authenticate to bubblin.io 4) what is your accessibility story?

</comment><comment><USER19> I love the ES6 book, crisp and clear

The ui seems considered and polished, works good on mobile for me

</comment><comment><USER20> Quick UI/UX note: You should remove the border around the titles until you hover over them, way more pleasing on the eye and less "in your face"!

</comment><comment> rafael-rinaldi I'm glad to see you're using my code for the book hover states: [https://codepen.io/rafaelrinaldi/pen/LEYyKZ](https://codepen.io/rafaelrinaldi/pen/LEYyKZ)

If possible can you just mention it somewhere, or just buy me a coffee instead: [https://buymeacoff.ee/rinaldi](https://buymeacoff.ee/rinaldi)

<comment><USER12> I've added Codepen's MIT License [0] to your name to credit you correctly at the right spot on our CSS. New build will be rolled out in a couple of hours so kindly check back again.

If however you're still uncomfortable about us using this experiment without a coffee, do let me know and we'll remove it from Bubblin completely. Just kidding, we'll sponsor you a coffee as well ;-)

[0] [https://blog.codepen.io/legal/licensing/](https://blog.codepen.io/legal/licensing/)

<comment> rafael-rinaldi Doesn't bother me at all I am genuinely happy to see it being used.

Good luck with the product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> How do I find any new books there? I don't mind the classics yet I feel curious about what do indie writers write today.

</comment><comment><USER22> What does "bandcamp" refer to? Is that another webapp or are you comparing the bookreader to a summer camp?

<comment><USER23> [https://bandcamp.com/](https://bandcamp.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Interesting that they go whole hog with the tournament model where everything is based on the hustle and luck.

[https://www.demontfortliterature.com/](https://www.demontfortliterature.com/) takes the opposing approach where they hire authors for a stable salary.

</comment><comment><USER25> Explain to the folks at home what Bandcamp is

</comment><comment><USER26> How can one go about authoring a book on your platform? It's not the same old EPUB, is it?

<comment><AUTHOR> We have a code playground for authoring, so it's almost like frontend development on each page of your book. Here'a quick tutorial if you're up for it:

[https://bubblin.io/docs/tutorial](https://bubblin.io/docs/tutorial)

\m/

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN!

Meet Bubblin Superbooks, a social book reader for web. It's _iPad first_ and all the books (mostly public domain samples) work offline too using a service worker.

Hope you like it! :-)

Good/bad, all feedback is very welcome!

<comment><USER27> I like the idea. The site is well-done and I'll definitely revisit...however...I wanted to ask about some of the comments in the FAQ, specifically:

> Files are about encoding those rotten ideals and force > them on the > society.

> So why should e-books be files at all?

Well, without some kind of common format, you would need a browser always in order to reliably view a book. Browsers are pretty awful on e-readers...so you're basically forced to read a book from your phone or tablet through a browser with this concept.

Another problem is that unless the books are embeddable HTML, it's easy to imagine that your Bubblin formatting would not work well if I try to self- publish to say, my personal blog. So am I not just trading one proprietary file format for proprietary HTML/CSS/JS markup?

I like the vision. E-books can be so much more than they currently are and it would be neat to see more rich visualization and interactivity inside of reading experiences.

<comment><AUTHOR> > …unless the books are embeddable HTML, it's easy to imagine that your > Bubblin formatting would not work well if I try to self-publish to say, my > personal blog. So am I not just trading one proprietary file format for > proprietary HTML/CSS/JS markup?

That is correct. At a very high-level we'd ultimately need to spec out a web standard to support books natively on web to avoid one proprietary format from another; like the video tag perhaps.

For now (though it is still unfinished, raw and very very early) we have a sister project called Bookiza.js [0] that let's you publish a Superbook on your own website using markdown or haml. :-)

[0] [https://bookiza.io](https://bookiza.io)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I love your website by the way. If I want to read 1984 on EPUB I will just download it from Guttenberg or something but if I am reading it in browser I will certainly use your service. I really don't know what all that negative feedback is about. Of course, that doesn't mean we should turn into a producthunt-like shilling party with fake positive comments, you guys need to criticize without passing negative feelings to the authors. It's really depressing to work months on something and then when you show it to people they start complaining about things that aren't in your product's scope in the first place.

<comment><USER12> Thank you! I'm glad you like it. :-)</comment></comment>


PGP and Nylas - <AUTHOR> https://www.nylas.com/blog/pgp/ <comment><USER2> Hey all! I work at Nylas and was one of the two primary authors of this plugin. Any and all feedback and/or feature requests are welcome, either here or on N1's open-source Github repository! [https://github.com/nylas/N1](https://github.com/nylas/N1)

</comment><comment><USER3> One question: does it support inline as well as mime?

<comment><USER2> In its current form, it actually supports inline but not PGP/MIME. It proved simpler for us to protect an inline PGP encrypted block than to implement a PGP/MIME parser.

<comment><USER4> Is PGP/MIME planned? I find it less intrusive and IIUC it can encrypt more of the message.

<comment><USER5> Yep, it's one of the places we'd love to extend this plugin too.

We'd also love help building this open source component since we're not 100% crypto experts. Its' really important to get this right!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Rise of the Creative Class Worked a Little Too Well - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-10-27/rise-of-the-creative-class-worked-a-little-too-well <comment> rm_-rf_slash Before industrialization, land that mattered was farmland. Then as industrialization took hold, urban land became more important as the grouping of people together allowed for economies of scale in manufacturing. But then the petrochemical revolution put things in reverse, as people could live anywhere and travel by car. Suddenly, open space was economically desirable, as it made more sense to build a factory in super-cheap Nowheresville, Arkansas than crowded, expensive Philadelphia.

But the rise in global supply chains - the shipping container in particular - meant that it makes more sense to build just about everything in a few massive hubs (Shenzhen as the prime example), and then ship things all around the world, at a much cheaper rate than if the widget or smartphone were made at home. Likewise for services, like IT and finance, it makes much more sense for all of these professionals to work together in the same places, which is why a handful of cities are crushing the Information Age while hundreds of other towns and cities are either dying slowly or are on life support (higher education economy, tax-break-driven manufacturing, etc)

Will we see the same resurgence of sprawl as followed the petrochemical revolution? I'm not sure. Remote work has its niches but I couldn't imagine a serious major company like Google or IBM existing without a lot of corporate real estate and proximate workers. And as I've argued elsewhere on HN, today's professionals have professional needs: doctors, lawyers, teachers, all things they expect to have within their area. Rural areas and even small to medium sized cities have trouble competing for the best-in-class services that the upper echelons of professionals demand (and given that this class is both responsible for and generally the beneficiary of globalization, that makes it very hard to say that, say, Rochester, NY could become the next great tech hub (a decent tech hub perhaps, but no Silicon Valley) without a LOT more to attract the highest end professional class.

Maybe self-driving cars (personally I predict RVs) will be able to make sprawl great again, but even then it would still be a concentration around a (albeit larger) major metropolitan area.

Urban/rural was the most important divide of the 19th-20th centuries. It looks like it will continue throughout the 21st.

<comment><USER2> Google, Amazon (for example), are building large work centers in desirable places to work, which are raising the cost of living of everyone else in the town that may not have a six figure income. Google is moving to Boulder, CO as we speak; Denver was on the shortlist for Amazon.

It's the same problem with kicking out artists in a dilapidated warehouse area, and moving in boring professionals to live in lofts built on the same foundations: your renewed neighborhood loses all the reasons it was appealing. In Boulder already you cannot really afford living in town with a service industry job, but people who want to work in Google also want to go out and have a beer after work. Those service industry workers need to commute into town, which is time-consuming, adds expense, worsens traffic, and lowers their quality of life.

<comment><USER3> > kicking out artists in a dilapidated warehouse area, and moving in boring > professionals

So artists are wonderful, interesting people, and professionals are boring and unappealing? Wow.

<comment><USER4> Speaking as a boring professional, yes, artists may be insufferable in plenty of ways, but boring they are not and their presence is important for establishing and growing a local culture, whereas professionals are good for growing an economy and both are needed for a healthy, vibrant city.

<comment><USER3> I know some artists, and many of them are definitely boring :-) Just because someone decides to be an artist and sticks seashells on a model house doesn't make them interesting. And why would, for example, playing a trumpet well make you intrinsically more interesting than mastering complex mathematics?

I'd rather have lunch with the mathematician. In fact, Feynman is at the top of the list of people I'd like to have lunch with, and it's not about his bongo drum playing.

(P.S. I learned to play the trumpet in my youth.)

<comment><USER4> Because most people can relate to music on an emotional level better than they can relate to complex mathematics.

It sounds like you know some pretty terrible artists, though. I mean, seashells on a model house?

PS. Feynman is Feynman for a reason.

<comment><USER5> People who only relate on an emotional level and don't appreciate intellectual complexity are - wait for it - boring.

<comment><USER4> You said only, not me. Great art is heavy on intellectual complexity.

<comment><USER3> The Beatles made some of the greatest music in history, but "she loves you yeah yeah yeah" is a mite lacking in intellectual complexity.

<comment><USER4> You're going to bring up the Beatles, and not bring up Tomorrow Never Knows or Blue Jay Way or anything off of Sgt. Pepper?

And all art has a wide expanse between commercially available and popular, and the avant garde, and within that range is another range between simplicity and complexity.

Art also encompasses film, fiction, the visual arts, music. All of which have a massive range of intellectual importance and depth.

No offense, but I feel as though you're showing your ignorance much more than proving your point.

<comment><USER3> > All of which have a massive range

Of course they do. I'm merely challenging your claim "Great art is heavy on intellectual complexity." There's no doubt at all that "She Loves You" is a great song. Personally, I prefer the earlier Beatles tunes rather than Sgt Pepper. Perhaps you could quote from the latter some lyrics that have deep meaning to you?

I also greatly enjoy Led Zeppelin, have every album, even cover albums, but am under no illusions about the intellectual complexity of "squeeze my lemon".

<comment><USER4> There are great examples of lyricism in music. There are great examples of production. There are great examples of musicianship. And there are great examples of songwriting. Each has varying levels of complexity.

Nobody celebrates Led Zeppelin for their lyricism, but I think you knew that already.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does anyone have the book? I noticed in the chart they measured 'San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward' which would be the northern half of the bay area that does not include the Santa Clara valley (aka Silicon Valley). I'm wondering if there was a measurement for the 'Redwood City - San Jose - Fremont' southern half of the bay area.

<comment><USER7> The San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward MSA[0] contains San Mateo and Alameda Counties, so Redwood City and Fremont are included.

Santa Clara County is not included, however.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Jose-San_Francisco- Oakland...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Jose-San_Francisco- Oakland,_CA_Combined_Statistical_Area)

<comment><USER6> That is awesome, it lead me eventually to discover the San Jose-Sunnyvale- Santa Clara MSA (which is the 'other' side of the Bay) and this comparison site ([https://datausa.io/profile/geo/san-jose-sunnyvale-santa- clar...](https://datausa.io/profile/geo/san-jose-sunnyvale-santa-clara-ca- metro-area/?compare=san-francisco-oakland-fremont-ca-metro-area))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Don't worry. Programming is becoming a blue collar job.

Being an "electrician" in 1880 was a big deal, the high technology job of its day. By 1920 it was a union blue collar job. That's programming.

<comment><USER3> An electrician in 1880 did a lot of design work. One of 1920 (and today) does it by rote - they just follow canned rules and procedures already worked out. It's all coded into regulations, too, so there's little flexibility.

An electrical engineer, on the other hand, does design work.

<comment><USER9> Could nt that happen to programming as well ?

<comment><USER3> I'm in the compiler business. Compilers handle an increasing amount of routine programming tasks, but programmers respond to that by making more complex programs, so the creative input needed by programmers is about the same.

<comment><USER9> What do you think about the API ification of things because of AWS or Google Spanner database . Everything is abstracted away so you're just gluing things together.

Its not AI but it turns even complex projects into things that anyone can learn to do in months . I can't imagine this remaining so well paying in such circumstances.

<comment><USER10> The complex design work goes into creatively gluing these APIs together to form _new_ product categories. If you don't need to spend time worrying how to fit bits on disk, you can spend that mental energy searching for and solving problems that would've been too complex without the APIs.

Smart programmers move up the value chain as needed so that they're still doing work that can't be done easily with an existing product.

<comment><USER9> Good point .

So that begs the question , what are some of the things that are right now higher up the value chain ?

<comment><USER3> Writing a better compiler :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The author raises good points which are hard to disagree with. I'm troubled by the decision to choose the odd and seemingly arbitrary "95-20 ratio" though, instead of a more typical 80-20.

Does anybody know what these graphs look like at 80-20?

<comment><USER12> Wouldn't gini be better than either of those?

<comment><USER13> Or a straight up power-law curve fit, which is what those are both (implicitly) based upon.

<comment><USER12> Really? I thought that Gini is equally applicable to any type of underlying curve.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My ex-girlfriend bought this book for me and it was one of the red flags that led me to break up with her. I still love her very much, but this gesture made it so evident she could not understand me. Forgive me father/HN.

</comment><comment><USER15> This article made me curious about something, statistic wise, with inequality.

Imagine we have a kingdom of a million workers and one king. Inequality would be mostly invisible. Unless you compare yourself to the king (and who would dare do such a thing..), you're doing pretty well - or at least as well as average. But now let's imagine the king wants to modernize his land. So he starts developing and training people. And now we have 1 king, 50,000 skilled experts, and 950,000 workers. Well there's not _that_ many of those skilled workers, so they must still be pretty special. It seems kind of unfair, but things are still pretty decent.

And now imagine the king trains another 50,000 experts and grants 10,000 of the already existing experts vast tracts of land. Now we have 900,000 workers, 90,000 experts, and 10,000 lords. Now inequality is starting to feel very real. There are lots of these guys and they don't seem to be anything special. How is it that they're doing so well, while the majority struggles?

I think we can say that the king's actions have greatly benefited society. Yet there's a strange paradox. As benefit, and privilege, comes to more and more people - it seems ever more unfair for those yet to benefit themselves. And now imagine by the time our hypothetical skilled individuals start to become the majority. It would begin to seem something beyond fair. As we start to see things like there being only 200,000 workers left, they would start to see their situation as more and more desperate. Indeed they would start to seem to be a sort of slave caste.

A quick search for information to try to see if this is indeed what is happening yielded this [1] study which seems to lend some credence to this possibility. In particular they examined the percent of individuals in each income group, based on real incomes. These showed that the middle class has been substantially chiseled out (shrinking from 38.8% to 32% of the population) but that alone is disingenuous. What's happening to every class's population? Here are their data for this specific question:

\- Change in share of each class as a percent of US population. 1979 -> 2014

\-----

\- Rich: 0.1% -> 1.8%

\- Upper Middle Class: 12.9% -> 29.4%

\- Middle Class: 38.8% -> 32%

\- Lower Middle Class: 23.9% -> 17.1%

\- Poor or Near-Poor: 24.3% -> 19.8%

\-----

This seems incredibly positive at a glance, but this change in demographics has indeed resulted in very large measurable changes in inequality. In particular in 1979 the bottom 3 economic classes controlled 70% of all income, with the upper class and rich controlling the remaining 30%. Today those numbers have practically swapped. The lower 3 classes control 37% of all income to 63% for the rich and upper middle class. Though, on the other hand, the top groups have also more than doubled in size.

One other issue I noticed is that the study (at least at a somewhat intensive glance) did not seem to meaningfully consider that many things critical to the growth and health of the lower classes, such as education and housing, have inflated in price far beyond nominal inflation rates. So real income measurements can be quite misleading. Nonetheless, I'm not sure why but I had not strongly considered this before. This article emphasizing the inequality as more of a changing of demographics than an existing demographic making themselves even richer was what brought it to mind.

[1] - [https://www.urban.org/research/publication/growing-size- and-...](https://www.urban.org/research/publication/growing-size-and-incomes- upper-middle-class)

<comment><USER16> I have thought something similar as well. If you have one Bill Gates and everyone else making $80k, then Bill Gates has a pretty low upper limit on consumption of scarce assets, and thus goods and services are not bid up. But when a larger and larger number of people make more than their peers, then you start to have a bidding war for scarce goods (ex: housing, education, etc). Hats what you have in the Bay Area. More people than ever making more money than ever before, while supply hasn't increased to keep up.

This is something that my typical SF tech peer does not seem to grasp. Relative compensation vs your economic competitors (other knowledge workers in the Bay) matters much more than your absolute pay when considering your ability to afford the good life in a supply constrained environment.

<comment><USER3> Industries that have government heavily involved in (health care, education, housing) have seen huge runups in prices. Ones government is not involved in (such as software) have seen precipitous price declines.

<comment><USER17> I would not describe government as heavily involved in health care. The prices you see rising are from lack of meaningful competition and transparency allowing providers and insurance companies to dictate prices virtually arbitrarily and certainly irrationally to the consumer using the services.

Meanwhile, government is the only meaningful access many have to healthcare and education.

<comment><USER3> About half of health care spending in this country is done by the government. That's heavily involved by any metric. Secondly, the amount of regulation of it is very, very heavy.

The price rises are due to this. See

[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/09/how- ame...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/09/how-american- health-care-killed-my-father/307617/)

Note how prices for Lasik eye surgery, which has little government involvement, have trended down dramatically.

<comment><USER17> While that may be true, the causal link between government spending and high prices is unclear. The vast majority of waste I see getting healthcare myself is the absolutely massive cost of dealing with insurance itself. This is an industry (billing!) that employs vast numbers of people. I think it's much more likely the high costs are an effect of ludicrously poor price transparency and the unsustainable healthcare practices that this sustains. At worst, government regulation exacerbates this; I think you'd be hard pressed to demonstrate it's the primary cause.

Either way, we need price transparency before people start acting rationally, and government regulation of irrational spending is going to be wasteful. Price transparency would make the promise of single payer (government) healthcare actually sustainable for a populace; without it, you're just making the healthcare industry richer without actually providing a proportionate amount of care to the public.

<comment><USER3> It's the primary cause. See the article I linked to. Government payments, subsidies, regulations, and tax policy all act to distort market incentives.

<comment><USER17> Hmm, I suppose we have different standards for evidence.

<comment><USER3> Why have software prices trended to zero, in spite of the desires of their capitalist creators to make it as expensive as possible?

<comment><USER17> Well, I'd assume price competition. (I appreciate the response!) How can you expect prices to improve if you can't shop around?

<comment><USER3> Shopping around in health care is greatly restricted by government policy. Tax policy, for example, is why health insurance tends to be tied to your employer, unlike car insurance. The supply of MDs is closely controlled and restricted by the AMA in order to drive up prices.

See "Competition and Monopoly" by Frecht.

The supply of drugs is heavily restricted by patents and the FDA. See "Regulation of Pharmaceutical Innovation" by Peltzman.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Parts of East London were always there, but remained in the shadows, underdeveloped and relatively cheaply priced compared to the west and central areas. Everyone waited for others to make the area trendy, they needed someone else to socially validate and approve the area before they then came en-masse. They demanded new expensive bakeries, tweeted their delight with the distressed decor coffee shop, and simply purred about the expensive butcher. Then at some point later, those some people went on to complain the area had become gentrified. One day even the hipsters and shiny people will be priced out, and maybe the area will change again, but the original locals, who had business and family for generations there, were never asked about any of this, and the remaining few still don't have a voice.</comment>


An open-source web platform for the new President of France - <AUTHOR> https://symfony.com/blog/an-open-source-web-platform-for-the-new-president-of-france <comment><USER2> Wow, the modern PHP community is on fire! I had no idea. I basically rage- quitted PHP years ago, after repeatedly inheriting a series of Wordpress wrecks.

Just curious, how does a PHP application handle server side rendering? By shelling out to a headless browser? What if the content is so personalized that server side caching isn't helpful, is it still viable to SSR a React client?

<comment><USER3> Same here, I left PHP during the early 5.x releases. Unfortunately, I inherited some Symfony applications recently. Unfortunately, because the whole stack is terribly slow and held together by an insane amount of YAML and XML configuration files. Add "annotations" (that are parsed out of doc blocks and compiled into another bunch of PHP files) to the soup and party like it's 1998. That pile of classes you end up with will serve quite some traffic behind a good caching layer, typically in the shape of a well configured Varnish instance. Needless to say that runnig this on your own machine during development will not exactly give you the excitement of working on a fast, modern platform. Rest assured, "print_r() and die()" is still a thing.

Besides that, memory management is mediocre; just DON'T do long running processes with PHP. You want to enable a module? Good luck finding the right php.ini. Keeping a persistent connection pool to a database or similar is generally hard and intransparent, due to the fact that each instance serves exactly one request, but hey, at least PHP "automatically recovers" from errors...

I left for good.

<comment><USER4> > Unfortunately, I inherited some Symfony applications recently. > Unfortunately, because the whole stack is terribly slow and held together by > an insane amount of YAML and XML configuration files. Add "annotations" > (that are parsed out of doc blocks and compiled into another bunch of PHP > files) to the soup and party like it's 1998.

That sounds like a wrong configuration and/or architecture. Symfony is in my experience fast if you follow the best practices.

Maybe you should find out the bottlenecks before you blame Symfony.

> just DON'T do long running processes with PHP.

We run long-running workers just fine.

> You want to enable a module? Good luck finding the right php.ini.

That depends on your OS. In Debian/Ubuntu you just run phpenmod module and restart the service.

I don't know... Your criticism seems to stem from not looking at the issues closely, or maybe you were stuck in a really old, abandoned system. But that woukd have been ugly regardless of language.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's fun reading backend setups for different types of organizations.

The author mentions having no budget, but then lists several third party resources in building the site.

Can the author or anyone else guesstimate what costs were involved in building to scale and if the DDOS attacks spiked their bills?

Also, is a containerized deployment the defacto procedure for apps in 2017?

<comment><USER6> I'm sorry, the accounting is meant to be public, but I can't find it. It might be too early, or google is failing me.

On a related note, the total budget for the candidates had to be less than 17M€ all included before the first round (then they could spend 5.6M€ more for the second round). A lot of that goes into organizing rallies.

edit: I guess they are meant to be here [http://www.cnccfp.fr/index.php?art=584](http://www.cnccfp.fr/index.php?art=584)

<comment><USER7> Accounting breakdown for the 2017 election is not yet available, apparently. This page list accounting breakdown for the 2012 and 2007 presidential elections: [http://www.cnccfp.fr/index.php?art=720](http://www.cnccfp.fr/index.php?art=720)

I also would be curious to know the production and operating costs for a website of this kind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This was a fantastic read, thanks for sharing.

Was the Kubernetes cluster necessary/useful for this sort of architecture? I'm asking as someone who has basically no experience with Kubernetes, but I'm familiar with the rest of the pieces.

>As any other high-profile web site, we were the target of some attacks coordinated and carried out by powerful organizations. Most of the attacks were of brute-force nature and the aim was to take the web site down rather than infiltrate it.

I'm surprised that the attacks were just brute-force attacks. Assuming state actors wanted to compromise Macron's site you'd think they'd have more to throw at it.

Also, I wonder if the security implications of open sourcing your code change if you think you will be targeted by state actors. Generally the advice is open source leads to more secure code as more eyes on the code == more exploits found and fixed. Do we make an exception to this advice when dealing with state actors, or does it hold?

Phrased another way, do any

<comment><USER9> Kubernetes was the key part in our development process: it gave us the flexibility, stability and scalability required to handle million of users while still deploying multiple times per day.

At the beginning of the campaign, we had only one node in the cluster, as we thought it would be enough. However, while it was enough most of the time, it had issues under DDoS attacks: as the node was the only one, it was the master node of Kubernetes and when it overloaded, Kubernetes crashed.

To avoid this, we used three smaller nodes instead, to avoid having a node overloaded leading to the whole system crashing. Kubernetes handled the following attacks really well with this setup, and it did not cost more for us.

About the attacks: they threw more at us (XSS, SQL injections, etc.) but most of these attacks were still automated. Perhaps have they tried something even more subtle, but I doubt it: they prefered to hack emails :) .

I have to admit making the project open-source was a quite difficult decision: I really wanted it, but I also knew we would be potential targets of powerful organizations. We decided to do it because in the end, the argument you stated was stronger: open source does lead to more secure, stable and quality code, and this project showed it. Note also that we didn't advertise much on this project during the campaign, so perhaps was it not clear for potential hackers that the code was open.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hopefully, our new government won't be hostile to open source projects started under them. I would be happy if I could send pull requests to one of many institutional websites, rotten to the bone, we have today.

And it's also refreshing to see them using google cloud and github !

</comment><comment><USER11> Laravel has brought me back to php land [https://laravel.com/](https://laravel.com/) its a great framework for rapid web app development :D

</comment><comment><USER12> He also wrote this project with PHP / Symfony a few years ago: [https://github.com/ungdev/EtuUTT](https://github.com/ungdev/EtuUTT)

</comment><comment><USER13> Wow, this sites supports spamming which is illegal regarding european law.

[https://github.com/EnMarche/en- marche.fr/blob/master/src/App...](https://github.com/EnMarche/en- marche.fr/blob/master/src/AppBundle/TonMacron/InvitationProcessor.php)

Got one of this email that was oblviously sent by a member of "enmarche" in bulk the mail address domain was pointing on an obviously cybersquatted domain in .fr which is illegal on this TLD (fr law)

So they are proud to have made a tool obviously usable for commiting felony.

Our president supports infringing the laws.

That's the reason, I think ethic and liability should become a must in software industry. You cannot say, I ignored it would happen and it is not my fault.</comment>


Handling Negative Emotions with Brain Training - <AUTHOR> http://skillcookbook.com/regulate-negative-emotions/ <comment><USER2> Interesting. I find the main point of concentration meditation to be to disregard non-relevant stimuli (ie not my breath) and continually bring back attention to the predetermined focus point. This could be building the strength of the executive function in the meditator's brain. There is already an obvious benefit to a regular meditation practice, as evidence by the growing amounts of research into its effects.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah! There's strong evidence to support gray matter increase in the prefrontal cortex, which would also support executive function improvement.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you name your servers? - <AUTHOR>

Just curious - do you name your boxes randomly, or do you have a set of constraints?<p>(Aside: we name boxes randomly, and just named our newest box Watson :) <comment><USER2> Unfortunately, I am at the mercy of our IT in server naming, and they come up with the weirdest names, e.g. my machine is called ganada.

A good approach I've heard would be to use Google Sets: enter a few terms and see if you have enough consistent names to support your future server needs.

</comment><comment><USER3> We usually name our stuff with the following very boring format:

[Server Role]-[#][d/t/p]

On the plus side its easy to maintain, easy to remember, and easy to explain to new hires.

</comment><comment><USER4> [http://serverfault.com/questions/45734/the-coolest-server- na...](http://serverfault.com/questions/45734/the-coolest-server-names)</comment>


HTML visualization of first Prelude from Bach's Cello Suites - <AUTHOR> http://www.baroque.me/ HTML visualization of first Prelude from Bach's Cello Suites <comment><USER2> This is pretty brilliant. I haven't looked at the code yet, but I wonder how hard it would be to pull the Flash out and do it all in HTML 5 and JS? Browser support for audio is improved recently.</comment>


Bitcoin 'Misery Index' - <AUTHOR> https://www.investopedia.com/news/bitcoins-misery-index-predicts-20000-year/ <comment><USER2> Color me silly, but this only works assuming BC goes up in the long run. With this assumption, if it went down for some time, likelyhood going up increases.

Proving theorem by assuming thesis.

Flawed to say the least.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is pretty light on details. How is the "misery index" calculated?

<comment><USER4> Looks like it's just another data-mined modification of Relative Strength Index (RSI) applied to bitcoin.

Here is the wikipedia on RSI: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_strength_index](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_strength_index)

Some variations of RSI factor in volatility which this guy's Bitcoin version appears to do.

Worth saying here, there is no empirical evidence for indexes indicators like these or the million other versions of it to have any basis in reality for predicting price movement reliably. Pretty obvious Bitcoin markets in 2011 were nothing like Bitcoin markets in 2017. Said another way "Sometimes I trade bitcoin but I only buy on Tuesdays, my best friend only buys bitcoins on Thursdays, and my performance trading Bitcoin is better than my friend's. So Tuesdays are the best time to buy Bitcoin, see previous sentence for evidence why". Also this article from investopedia appears to be another sponsored marketing content not a journalism article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What is technical analysis doing on HN?</comment>


Too easy to get down-votes when commenting - <AUTHOR> Hacker News should have a system where down-votes only count half as much as up-votes.  The problem is, let's say you have an issue where the community is 60% 'opposed' and 40% 'for'. going against the grain means you will always have a net-negative vote count. <comment><USER2> > The problem is, let's say you have an issue where the community is 60% > 'opposed' and 40% 'for'. going against the grain means you will always have > a net-negative vote count.

No, it doesn't. Numerous threads on hotly contested issues have substantive comments taking opposing sides and neither having net-negative scores.

They also tend to have unsubstantiated comments on opposing sides, both sides having negative scores. Popularity of the idea presented probably has some contribution to score, but it's not the dominant factor by a long shot.

</comment><comment><USER3> I just think most of the community is well aware that downvotes are not for 'opposition', but rather for things that do not contribute to discussion.

Then again, I am totally speculating.

<comment><USER4> But there are still people who use it as "I disagree" button, and even those who use it as a retaliation of sorts (I was (still am?) targeted by such an individual; sadly, HN's contact mail is hosted on Gmail, which likes to mark smaller servers as spam, so my contact try never got a response).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why do you care about votes [whether up, down, or sideways]?

At the end of the day it's only people being "wrong on the internet"

</comment><comment><USER6> The fastest way to get down voted is to reply to any post which is even slightly political with anything other than a leftist bent. (^:

In my opinion, down voting should require responding. If something is worthy of a down vote then surely it worthy of rebuttal as well.

<comment><USER7> I feel this oft-repeated argument is a canard, whose strength is mostly from its repetition. One sign of such things is hyperbole such as "even slightly", "anything other than'. Hyperbole, to me, is a substitute for a lack of substantive argument. I recently posted something that is 'leftist' and I think it's down to -4 (which is fine).

I'd look at it serious if there was some data, however.

EDIT: De-inflammatorization</comment></comment>


We Turned Down YC - <AUTHOR> https://victor.pont.is/article/no-yc <comment><USER2> There's an offhand comment about the first remote demo day failing - is that true? And what does a demo day failing mean? Were companies unable to raise money, and if so, is that because of the macroenvironment or the new remote setup? Fundraising on demo day is a _huge_ part of the draw for startups, and a failure of that is a pretty big deal. Is there any more information on what happened?

</comment><comment><USER3> (Also) Accountability — Write a weekly update. Post projects to [https://pioneer.app/](https://pioneer.app/)</comment>


No U.S. tech company went public in Q1 2016 - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/652261/the-market-for-tech-ipos-hasnt-been-this-awful-since-the-great-recession/ <comment> awinter-py Traditionally (before the 90s) stock index growth was driven by retirement investment, which is driven by demographics (more workers or richer workers). Recently, most dollars added to public exchanges come from corporate buybacks (companies seeking to go private).

The only disadvantage to private investment is liquidity. Otherwise, it's way better to be non-public (less hostile takeovers, less activist investors, less regulations, less mandatory transparency, less managing for 1Q instead of 5Y).

This feels like more evidence for a tipping point between capital and labor.

<comment><USER3> Buybacks are driven solely by a desire to appease shareholders by increasing earnings per share in a seemingly risk-averse manner. However, buybacks tend to only happen when the valuation is already sky high. Only a handful of companies have the discipline to buy back stock when the valuation is low and pursue a secondary when it's high.

<comment><USER4> So all the people who make the buyback decisions are paid in stock. It is in their own self interest to buy back as much stock as possible, and inflate the per share price, right?

<comment><USER3> In the short run, yes; but companies live and die by decisions about the medium run.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> According to the FT it is simply part of a greater trend.

"This is a sign of US strength, not weakness. In many countries going public may be the only way to raise permanent capital, and banks the only way to finance investments, but the US has a sprawling venture capital industry, deal-hungry private equity firms, relatively healthy banks, a private placement market that is the envy of many other countries, and the most vibrant corporate bond market on the planet."

[http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/534b5560-f7d1-11e5-96db- fc683...](http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/534b5560-f7d1-11e5-96db- fc683b5e52db.html)

[https://www.google.com/search?q=IPO+market+decrepit+as+going...](https://www.google.com/search?q=IPO+market+decrepit+as+going+public+loses+its+allure)

<comment><USER6> Not sure if I'd classify that as a strength though. All it indicates is that there's a lot of wealth concentration.

<comment><USER7> Agreed. The idea that it is a strength smells a lot like trickle-down economics.

<comment><USER8> FT writers are such free market fundamentalists they make WSJ writers look like Bernie Sanders supporters.

<comment><USER9> That's really not true. The FT is pretty varied but there is a lot of market criticism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's said that the Sarbanes–Oxley Act's requirements for publicly traded companies made going public less desirable for many concerns, and this has resulted in fewer public offerings over the last 14 years.

<comment><USER11> I've thought for a while that SarbOx created the unicorn. In the end all it accomplished was to exclude the public from the best growth stocks.

The problem with SarbOx is complexity, overhead, and ambiguity. It would have been possible to fix some of the excesses of revenueless dot.coms by adding a few simple criteria, but instead we added a ton of burden and made public markets undesirable.

I've also wondered if SarbOx might not have been a factor in real estate hyperinflation by driving capital away from stock markets. It's gotta go somewhere.

<comment><USER3> SOX also created the going-private branch of banking/PE and served as a full employment act for accountants.

<comment><USER11> So in other words it was a "work making" handout to the financial industry. Bravo.

<comment><USER3> It also made the industry a lot more honest. The shenanigans you hear about these days pale in comparison to what people got away with during the 90s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Almost all of last year's tech IPOs went down.[1] Some, way down.

       Twitter:      -32%
       LinkedIn:     -44%
       Pure Storage: -28%
       Square:        -4%

With numbers like that, overpriced "unicorns" know they'd have to IPO at a huge discount from their exaggerated valuations.

This is a bubble, popping.

[1] [http://www.renaissancecapital.com/news/tech-sector-sell- off-...](http://www.renaissancecapital.com/news/tech-sector-sell-off- sends-2015-ipos-below-issue-challenges-2016-tech-38154.html)

<comment><USER13> LinkedIn has been public since 2011. Twitter since 2013. These are not recent IPOs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Well, Senseonics went public in Q1 2016. [http://www.senseonics.com/](http://www.senseonics.com/)

</comment><comment><USER15> SEC should just introduce a new class of IPO's for accredited investors that allows private companies to get liquidity without being public.

<comment><USER16> You do realize that you are asking the SEC to create a class of "Special investors" that would have special rules. This is a horrible and undemocratic idea.

<comment><USER17> That already exists, right now. He was using sarcasm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Funding was flat in Europe in Q1 if you exclude Spotify.

[http://tech.eu/features/9202/european-tech- funding-q1-2016/](http://tech.eu/features/9202/european-tech-funding-q1-2016/)

<comment><USER19> Why would you exclude Spotify?

<comment><USER20> It's just an outlier to the trend. So "exclude" in this case is just a qualifier to the statement and doesn't reflect an actual desire to treat the company differently.

<comment><USER21> Okay, but the fundamental thing that differentiates startups is that outliers dominate the results and change their aggregate properties. You might as well say that Scuzzball Fire Insurance honored all of its obligations, except the few houses that burned down.

<comment><USER22> Spotify's an integral part of the entertainment industry, there's little point treating it as anything other than an oddity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is this indicative of a lack of faith in the banking industry?

Speculative investments are on a steep decline as well, with many folks buying into plain-jane savings accounts with sub-1% rates of return rather than more exotic financial tools.

Will we see reforms to woo them back, or is the Federal government generally unconcerned (other than paying lip-service to the banks)?

<comment><USER24> The last years/decades have made pretty clear that the financial sector will happily screw over their customers whenever they can. No wonder who are not financial experts prefer safe investment where they at least don't lose money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Looking at the graph it sure looks just like normal fluctuation.

<comment><USER26> The mortgage derivative crash of 08 was more than a mere fluctuation, but I follow your logic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Market saturation. Lets wait for quantum computing and wetware programming.

</comment><comment><USER28> Solution

1\. Regulate market capitalization of corporations

2\. Tax corporate revenues, not profits

<comment><USER29> Taxing revenue would cause massive consolidation. Right now you might have a farmer sell their crop to a wholesaler, who then organizes it along with the output from other farmers and sells it on to the supermarket who in turn sells it to you. If you taxed revenues rather than profits, you'd end up taxing the total value of the goods 3 times rather than 1.

Ultimately, those companies would all merge or be bought out until they were one company to just pay taxes once.

<comment><USER30> I don't disagree. But it's curious that the gov't taxes corporations' profits and individuals' revenues.

<comment><USER31> "gov't taxes corporations' profits and individuals' revenues"

Say what? As I understand it, a basic theme of income taxation for me as an individual in the USA, and indeed most (perhaps all?) western countries is that if I buy something for B and sell it for S, I get taxed for S-B income. And as I understand it, that basic theme really is the way that it works for a lot of businesspeople, though they may need to be quite careful to jump through certain hoops (particular kinds of recordkeeping e.g.) to ensure that it works that way reliably. And it is roughly the way it works for individuals not ordinarily considered businesspeople when they buy and sell things like residences and securities, although it's sometimes wrapped up in extra weirdness like special real estate tax categories and short term vs. long term security capital gains.

What country or countries are you referring to?

Or are you just referring to the fact that employees employment expenses are not as eligible for deduction as many business expenses, securities transactions, and real estate transactions? (And, um, bringing in "corporations" for some rhetorical reason that I can't fathom?) That would make it roughly true to say "taxes business profits but taxes labor revenues." But to characterize that as "gov't taxes corporations' profits and individuals' revenues" seems more nearly false.

Also, that _is_ a radically different tax treatment of labor revenues and business revenues, but you don't explain what you find particularly curious about that. For good or for ill, radically different economic policy treatment of labor revenues and business revenues is pretty widespread, not limited to tax policy. E.g., consider how business monopolistic collusion to restrict supply is broadly forbidden even when the collusion is wholly voluntary, while labor unions are not just allowed to collude voluntarily to restrict the supply of labor but supported in actively preventing rivals from providing a supply of labor.

<comment><USER30> > That would make it roughly true to say "taxes business profits but taxes > labor revenues."

You've put it much better than I did. What I find curious (and insulting) is that the government effectively values my time and energy at $0.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Pretty standard practice to delay IPOs during a chilly market. We delayed IPO from summer 2011 to winter 2011 at my previous employer for this reason (remember the debt ceiling crisis nonsense?)

<comment><USER33> Chilly market? We're less than 100 points off the all time high in SPX (which was set last year). You could say the bull run is in its last stages, but it's far from chilly.

<comment><USER34> Though as another another article today mentioned [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11419281](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11419281) much of the SPX is driven by companies buying back their own shares out of profits. It may be chillier for loss making unicorns that can't do that - <USER2> Box etc.</comment></comment></comment>


Current location/maps APIs are inadequate to build tracking features - <AUTHOR> https://blog.hypertrack.io/2016/10/12/location-maps-inadequate/ <comment><USER2> This isn't so much a blog post as it is an advertisement.

</comment><comment><USER3> This API seems... creepy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Device OS grants access to location only with user permission and lets them know when it is continuous. What am I missing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Give it time.</comment>


What is the absolute cheapest way to process credit cards online - <AUTHOR>

What is the cheapest way to process credit cards online? I've used Paypal & Stripe. At the lowest level, Stripe is a better deal (no redirect). Paypal forces you to redirect the user to Paypal, process the payment, then redirect back to your site. In 2012, this is just crazy - which is why Stripe is doing so well. For the same fee, your users stay on your site (2.9% + 30¢)
However this clearly isn't the cheapest option.
In the top post on HN, another user mentioned: "get a merchant account through a bank and authorize.net ." However I am wondering if this is still the best option.
HN - what is the absolute cheapest way to process credit cards online? <comment><USER2> Keep in mind, a merchant account is going to cost you monthly fees for the account + payment gateway (like, $50-60/mo, atleast). Plus a deposit. Plus a credit check. Plus several day wait. Plus nasty APIs.

In the end, you might save a little bit, but likely not much since you're still processing without the card being present. If you're doing enough sales for .007% to be big difference, it's worth it. Otherwise- how much is your time and frustration worth? Even on a million dollars in revenue, .007% is only $7000.

IMO, Stripe is the holy grail for most startups.

<comment><USER3> I don't agree with you at all. We started out using PayPal which has a really similar fee schedule to Stripe ($30/month, swipe fee, 2.9% of the total etc.) One of my cofounders did some research and we switched over to Authorize where after some negotation we get 1.7% transaction fee, $20/month for the account and then $99 up front.

That 1.2% we are saving made up for the labor cost of doing the switch and the cost of the application fee within the first few days. We are now saving enough money that we may be able to bring on an extra person before the end of the year.

<comment><USER4> _We started out using PayPal which has a really similar fee schedule to Stripe ($30/month, swipe fee, 2.9% of the total etc.)_

Stripe doesn't have a monthly fee at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Whichever involves the least amount of developer time to integrate.

</comment><comment><USER6> Not trying to be smart here but the term "cheapest" cannot just be evaluated in terms of short term money. You also need to look at factors such as ease of setup, long term overhead costs, customer service headache etc. Considering all these together, Stripe seems to be doing pretty well compared to their customers.

</comment><comment><USER7> There are so many APIs for Auth.net, and its the cheapest way to process cards.

</comment><comment><USER8> I often stick to things like PayPal or strype - they're pretty cheap, considering you don't need to deposit $5k safety deposits on account openings, etc. They also take care of the security, etc for you.

</comment><comment><USER9> Stripe just offered a $250 per month fee.

I think they win.</comment>