The Anatomy of an Entrepreneur (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://www.kauffman.org/research-and-policy/the-anatomy-of-an-entrepreneur.aspx

<comment><USER2> Having a supporting spouse, a couple of kids and a mortgage are enormously motivating so this should come as no surprise. My first real business success happened roughly a year after my first child was born and I think that the biggest factor there was that having a kid made me realize that playtime was over. Nothing tells you to get serious as much as a tiny person that is utterly dependent on you for their every need.

The HN illusion is that all successful people are in their low 20's and make billions (ok, that's a bit much but you get the idea), the reality is that they are the outliers and that your chances of finding success by some measure is higher later in life.

But those are not the average applicants to YC.

Beware of seeing everything through a HN/YC colored lens, there is a far larger world out there with an untold number of paths to success, HN is a great community, YC an awesome program if you fit their target demographic but these are not at all the only options.

<comment><USER3> "this should come as no surprise"? To me, the 60% figure seems like an invertible fact.[1]

Imagine the article said, "75% of successful entrepreneurs are single." People would post comments similar to yours, but with other rationalizations for why the fact is true. "This isn't surprising. Single people have more free time." "This shouldn't come as a surprise. Single people don't have to worry about providing for a family." "This doesn't surprise me. Single people can take more risks."

We like to project an unsurprised, unperturbed, and confident attitude. But thinking "I knew it all along" can be dangerous.

The number of hindsight-biased comments _do_ surprise me a little. I expect more from our community. The world is complicated, and our minds can't model it accurately all the time. Paradoxically, we should expect to be surprised.

1\. See <http://lesswrong.com/lw/im/hindsight_devalues_science/>

<comment><USER2> > The number of hindsight-biased comments do surprise me a little.

We all comment from our own experience, and as such these are anecdotal bits of evidence rather than hard data. Not every HN post starts out with a double blind study over a statistically significant portion of the population with splits per level of affluence and further splits to offset for geographic diversity.

> I expect more from our community.

Sorry to disappoint you.

A community is the sum of its individuals, and slightly larger than that if you're lucky with the communities that you are part of. As such the way to improve on the status quo is to lead by example.

Looking around me at the 100's of business people that I have contact with the vast majority (much larger than the 60% quoted here) of people with some level of success is in a relationship and a not-so-vast majority (but still substantial) have kids and are living a relatively steady life.

For me the young kid that strikes it big is the exception, and as such I am not particularly surprised by this outcome.

It would be much more surprising to me if the opposite were the case, your '75% of successful entrepreneurs are single' example would _really_ turn my head because it goes directly against my personal experience.

That's not hindsight, it is just reasoning from available data and I see absolutely nothing wrong with that.

We should expect to be surprised, but that does not mean that we have to actively twist available data so that we're surprised all the time.

Sometimes a result is simply what is to be expected and I firmly believe this is one of those. But I can see how to some people here this comes as a surprising result because of the echo chamber aspect of being focused solely on a single community, especially one that contains a pretty substantial bias because of the company sponsoring that community.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't understand people's issue with this statistic. It's not implying causality of any form.

It's simply saying: "the common idea that the only successful entrepreneurs are workaholic young singles working days and nights is actually a misconception. Proof: 60% of successful entrepreneurs are married with children."

That's not bad statistics, it's completely helpful, if nothing else for confirming a suspicion you may have had anyways.

Bad statistics would be saying "so in order to be more successful as an entrepreneur, get married and have a kid."

</comment><comment><USER5> I would be cautious about drawing conclusions about startups from this study. Startups are such a small subset of newly founded businesses that unless a study is very careful about how they select their sample, they're likely to get mostly ordinary businesses. And judging from what the people who did this study say about how they selected their sample (see page 8), it sounds like that's what happened. They say they "extracted randomized records by region." Randomization is not the way to select a population who by definition are outliers.

<comment><USER6> >Randomization is not the way to select a population who by definition are outliers.

How should the study have been conducted? It is not obvious to me why selecting a random sample is not representative.

<comment><USER5> I wasn't suggesting they should have conducted the study differently, just that if they sampled businesses generally rather than startups specifically, their conclusions about entrepreneurs don't necessarily apply to startup founders.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is in-line with my own experience as a 37 year old founder (married, one child).

The biggest hurdle is "lack of willingness or ability to take risks" and the biggest advantage is "Professional networks". Most often, this is reversed if you are a young founder.

</comment><comment><USER8> 60% had atleast one child when they were founding their first company, but that doesnt tell if they were still happily married after a few stressfull years of running their companies.

<comment><USER9> I've run two companies, have 3 children and have been happily married for 15 years. It wholly depends who you and your spouse are and how much time you put aside for your family. Your family are more important than any business venture - that's the key to success. Also don't base any relationship on financial benefits - many a time we've had literally nothing to this point we had to eat on 12GBP a week for a couple of months and put every bill off and that's not been a problem because we're good company for each other without any tangible items to amuse us.

<comment><USER8> That is superb and i didnt want to imply that its not possible with my comment! There are a lot of factors in play and it can all work out very well!

That being said, i started my first real company when i was 6 years into a strong relationship. 2 years later the relationship is gone and the company failed to catch on. I dont regret it and am still motivated to start new things, if anything this only made me stronger but it was very tough going through it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The survey included 5 high growth industries: aerospace, defense, computing, electronics, and health care. For me, personally, the only industry I am concerned about is computing. Including datapoints from outside my industry muddies the water. ...making it difficult for me to extract anything useful out of this study.

For example, starting an aerospace or defence business might be easy if you have the right contacts - just win a government contract. ...something which is probably more likely to happen for older married men.

<comment><USER11> Does it really make a difference anyway? If it were 70% for the computer field, would you rush out and marry someone and get her pregnant as soon as possible? Or if it were better to be single, would you sit your wife and kids down and explain to them that to maximize your chances of success, they're being "downsized"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I see a lot of folks jumping to explain away this article. My opinion is that a lot of the HN crowd believe that they are disruptors, bucking the trends. As a 35 year old married guy in Houston, reading HN tends to give me the idea that if I'm not in my early 20s and willing to drop it all and move to SF and work for at least 1/2 of market rate for a funded company building a social product that focuses on traction as opposed to revenue ... then my ship has sailed. Articles like this are a nice reality check.

</comment><comment><USER13> Kauffman wonk reports make me want to stab my eyes out.

But while you're here learn about the awesome entrepreneur who created the Kauffman Foundation, which is now the largest organization dedicated to the advancement of entrepreneurship ($2bn endowment) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ewing_Marion_Kauffman>

</comment><comment><USER14> I suspect there's no causation relationship between the two.

I remember reading some time ago (no link, sorry) that older, more experienced, wealthier and better connected entrepreneurs will on average outperform the stereotypical 19 year old college dropout that we on HN love to talk about. It just so happens that as you move towards the 40s and 50s you are very likely to get married and have children, but they themselves are not the cause of your success.

</comment><comment><USER15> Most Entrepreneurs are married - i guess is because they tend to marry first(the teen-age effect) and later on in life start up with some business; also i guess they have successful business(60% as above) as they tend to devote more time to business than family later in life.

I would seriously like to know:

1) How many entrepreneurs start up a serious business first and then get married - Do they prefer girl-friends over a wife ???

2) Having got married - are they able to devote the same time to their business

3) Are they able to devote equally good time for children, wife and parents(when they fall sick)

4) Are children, wife and parents happy with these entrepreneurs

5) Do these Entrepreneurs always have a supporting wife and supporting children OR are have their wives and children compromised on their own personal life for the success of the entrepreneur

Professional life and Personal life are two different things.. when you combine both; they together make up "Life" - or what accounts to as "Time of one's life"; and when one talks about both together; what one implicitly is talking about is one's "Happiness".

6) So, After 25+ years into entrepreneurship does the entrepreneur repent on having wasted life(time) OR is really happy thinking only about their business achievements.

7) How many such entrepreneurs having 25+ years of experience are truly happy with their professional life as well as personal life(wife, children, parents, friends). do we have any such numbers.

</comment><comment><USER16> If you can not make a relationship works. How the hell are you going to be able to direct people, or drive a project?

<comment><USER17> The biggest challenge in marriage is managing the external expectations. The shape of a marriage is strongly defined by social pressures and there is little room for personal problem solving within that framework.

Business, on the other hand, is all about unique problem solving. Eccentric ideas that lead to success are celebrated and considered genius. It would be quite easy to believe someone could thrive in this environment while failing in marriage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Here is the document (2009) they are summarizing: [http://www.kauffman.org/uploadedfiles/researchandpolicy/thes...](http://www.kauffman.org/uploadedfiles/researchandpolicy/thestudyofentrepreneurship/anatomy%20of%20entre%20071309_final.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER19> > Nearly 70 percent were married when they became entrepreneurs, and nearly 60 > percent had at least one child, challenging the stereotype of the > entrepreneurial workaholic with no time for a family.

The question is if that's more or less than the national average.

<comment><USER20> "Although only 51 percent of American adults are currently married, 72 percent have been married at least once." [1]

Tricky number. Roughly three out of four of people get married, but as we know half of those marriages end in divorce. The number of entrepreneurial americans is "somewhere in there" (within +-1 std) so I think it's safe to call it a push.

About 0.34% of people start businesses, a small enough sample that it's hard to draw any sweeping conclusions [2]. It's probably safe to say that starting a business doesn't have a serious impact on the prior or posterior probability of marriage.

[1] [http://www.livescience.com/17462-record-number-americans- unm...](http://www.livescience.com/17462-record-number-americans- unmarried.html)

[2] [http://www.inc.com/news/articles/201103/entrepreneurial- rate...](http://www.inc.com/news/articles/201103/entrepreneurial-rate-highest- in-15-years.html)

<comment><USER21> > but as we know half of those marriages end in divorce.

I'm not sure that's true actually. My feeling is that there are "serial divorces" who have 5+ failed marriages and drive the numbers way up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> That would be more meaningful if they provided us the anatomy of entrepreneurs in general, successful and unsuccessful. Then we would be able to find out if there is a correlation (not causality) between being married with children and being a successful entrepreneur.

</comment><comment><USER23> Just because you have wife and kids doesn't mean much.

How much quality time can you afford to spend with them if you are trying to build a successful business at the same time?

What I found interesting was: "Founders tended to be middle-aged—40 years old on average—when they started their first companies.".

I always thought that starting a new company was driven by the fire of youth, but it seems like it is mid-life crisis that may also be responsible in many cases.

<comment><USER24> _How much quality time can you afford to spend with them if you are trying to build a successful business at the same time?_

The flip side of that is that older folk are more likely to have had the time to learn the most effective ways to manage their own time, had the opportunity to get the kinks out of managing people, delegating tasks, hiring people, etc. Makes it a lot easier to get the space for quality time (and, indeed, realise that quality time is _necessary_ for you to be the most productive in anything but the very short term).

So, for me anyway, the answer is "quite a bit thank you" (Helped by the fact that we run the business together ;-)

 _I always thought that starting a new company was driven by the fire of youth, but it seems like it is mid-life crisis that may also be responsible in many cases._

Or maybe it's having more experience in judging whether something is likely to be successful or not. I was _much_ less nervous starting a new company this year than I was the last time in 1999. Large chunks of the fear go away with the addition of experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> 40% of Successful Entrepreneurs are NOT Married with Children

</comment><comment><USER26> > [...] nearly 60 percent had at least one child, challenging the stereotype > of the entrepreneurial workaholic with no time for a family.

Well, this has to be compared with the number of people in their 40 that are married w/ children. And I wouldn't be surprised if this number was above 60%.

</comment><comment><USER27> I think the correlation is like this:

It is more older than younger entrepreneurs that have reached success and are considered successful. And we know that it is more older that are married and have children.

BTW: I am 30, happily married and with 2 children.

</comment><comment><USER28> I find it hilarious that all of these articles feel they need to explain how to be successful, and how to grow a startup.

Nobody wants to believe that the real secret is absolute determination, dedication, and a lot of hard work. It just can't be that simple!

</comment><comment><USER29> That is really a good news for every married man, mostly for those who think, life is more thought after marriage.

</comment><comment><USER30> For anyone reading this saying "That's not me" just remember... YOU ARE NOT A STATISTIC

</comment><comment><USER31> Isn't that the average for the general population? I guess entrepreneurs are human too.

</comment><comment><USER32> Only 60%? 60% isn't really that high of a number to make a point here.

<comment><USER24> _Only 60%? 60% isn't really that high of a number to make a point here._

Depends on what the reader's preconceptions are :-)

I know I encounter a fair share of idiots who think I'm too old to start a new company in the tech sector because I'm in my forties.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I need a child. Anyone got a spare one for me? :-)

<comment><USER34> Does this also apply to women?

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> What percentage of people who are not successful entrepreneurs but fit the other criteria i.e. middle or upper-class background, 40 years-old on average, high academic performance, are married and with children? Is it more or less than 60%?

<comment><USER36> Substantially less. Four year degrees alone upper bound that at about 20~25% of the population, depending on what age cohort you use. As you add additional constraints the intersection only ever gets smaller.

<comment><USER37> The question could be phrased better, but the gist is: (number of married with children) / (number of members) in the population of ``middle or upper-class background, 40 years-old on average, high academic performance''. I.e., does being an entrepreneur correlate positively or negatively with having children, among the mentioned group.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> 60% of pilots wear grey socks. Wearing grey socks makes it more likely you'll be a pilot.

Nothing to see here, move along.

<comment><USER39> If there was a widespread hunch that wearing grey socks is detrimental to a pilot's job, then that would indeed be newsworthy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> And how many cheat on their wife ? come it doesnt mean anything.

CORRELATION never means CAUSALITY , are we on a serious site or on the daily mail ?

<comment><USER21> [http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2012/10/correlation_does_not_imply_causation_how_the_internet_fell_in_love_with_a_stats_class_clich_.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> SO WHAT ? these numbers are pointless. I get it, they're trying to say that entrepreneurs are not unwashed hardened singles with no chance at a meaningful family life. I think this is misguided on so many levels.

1- Marriage is not an end goal for everybody. Sorry. Actually, the proliferation of divorces, close to 50 % despite the extremely high barrier of exit from that transaction should give you an idea. That's not even taking _affairs_ into the equation.

2- So is having children, not that there is anything wrong with having kids. but the notion that not having kids is missing out on anything is false.

The essence of entrepreneurship is disruption, it's time our social norms evolve from their 50s fantasies & catch up with the reality of modern life.

<comment><USER2> > The essence of entrepreneurship is disruption

No, it really isn't. It's about getting $Y out for every $X in where Y > X, and doing that in a sustainable and preferably an ethical manner.

Disruption is the exception, not the rule in entrepreneurship, and success is simply (Y/X) * volume processed * lifespan of project. Some would even say that success is the net cumulative effect on society but that's a lot harder to measure. You could for instance make this about jobs created or amount donated to charity or something like that but most people simply use the formula above or some variation on it.

<comment><USER41> I beg to disagree. I think you're conflating entrepreneurship with business.

an entrepreneur would only assume the rather significant risk if the likelihood of payout (as denoted by your clever equations)is high enough. in a capitalistic society such as ours with millions of established businesses that would entail either 1 of these two options.

1- Make the way things are done normally, better. (Fedex vs USPS)

2-Do a completely new different thing (Facebook.) Both options are disruptive, although at different levels.

<comment><USER2> > I think you're conflating entrepreneurship with business.

And I think you're conflating competition with disruption.

Entrepreneurship and business go hand in hand, you can't have the one without the other. Someone that risks their personal fortune to open a hamburger stand by your definition is not an entrepreneur, by my definition he or she is. And that's before we look at the possible futures where that hamburger stand ends up as a chain of stores because he innovated on quality or was exceptional in service.

Disruption is not Fedex vs USPS, it's not Facebook competing with myspace for eyeballs. Disruption is AirBNB threatening the established interests in the hospitality industry, napster making record execs very worried and EasyJet causing increased blood pressure with all their fat cat competitors.

Disruption by definition can only come when a market is established, but it is definitely not a prerequisite for entrepreneurship or running a successful business.

<comment><USER41> I duly note that you don't think that either Facebook or Fedex are disruptive. by that definition of _disruption_ , sure. Entrepreneurship is not disruptive. I rest my case</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Centralized place for community-driven collections of RegExp patterns - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/RegExps

<comment><AUTHOR> See the `/meta` repo and the issues. It isn't only JS oriented.</comment>


A One Man Army On a Mission To Destroy The Cyberlocker Market - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/one-man-army-on-a-mission-to-destroy-the-cyberlocker-market-120705/ <comment><USER2> Interesting article. I didn't realize how publishing companies like Megaupload made money, but thinking of them as "FileLockers" makes sense.</comment>


Ask HN: Can remote workers be more than just individual contributors? - <AUTHOR> I know from my own experience that remote work is a great fit for people who largely work independently or in collaboration with a small number of team members.<p>But what about when it comes to leading teams, or departments, or whole companies?  I'd like to hear from people who have done that successfully as remote workers, either with a fully remote or mixed workforce.  What challenges did you face, and how did you overcome them? <comment><USER2> Collaboration cost and incentive mis alignment. I.e. how do you reward or figure out success

Trust is the biggest factor, easier to trust token work to be done by remote team, how do you get to a remote control founder?</comment>


Show HN: Book Cheaply - Don't buy textbooks you don't need (side project) - <AUTHOR>

In short, Rate My Professor for books.
http://www.bookcheaply.com/
As a college student I bought many textbooks that I never used.  I could have saved significant amounts of money if I had some sort of website where I could find out if the book was necessary for my courses.  Out of that frustration, Book Cheaply was born.
I currently only have two schools, Grand Valley State University(GVSU) and Grand Rapids Community College(GRCC).  I'm already starting to rank pretty high on Google for queries like: <instructor name> gvsu, or <instructor name> <some course> gvsu, which makes me feel pretty good.  I also just got my first unsolicited reviews (4!) on Book Cheaply today.
That being said, my design is pretty bad.  I'm a developer with zero design chops, so I just tried to make how to use the site as obvious as possible.  It's also hosted on an underpowered shared vps on DreamHost.
Any feedback would be appreciated and I'd be happy to answer any questions.  Thanks! <comment><USER2> Love the site. One small thing:

The title says: "Save Money. Don't buy textbooks that you don't need" and immediately after, there´s the search bar.

This is confusing because, generally, when a title is followed by a search or button or whatever, the title tends to be the Call to Action to the following element (in this case, the search bar).

Having said this, having a negative word: "Don´t..." tells me to NOT do something when you clearly want me to search for something.

Hope this helps.

<comment><USER3> I agree. Instead, you can say something like "We help you buy books that you really need" or "Buy textbooks that you need"

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Having gone through undergrad and law school I can relate to both the high cost of books and remember certain books that were never opened. Costing sometimes $100 for a single student, savings really add up when your talking about classes of 30, 50 or 100's of students.

I would have used this service if it was reliable, but if I ever had a bad experience - book was needed- I might not return.

One thought, next to the amazon hard back offer a digital version for various platforms (kindle, apple, android, ect...)

<comment><AUTHOR> I agreed about the rating reliability thing. I'm hoping that if I have enough reviews for a given course+instructor that it will mitigate some of that risk.

Good idea on the digital version. I'm also going to be integrating with Chegg soon for rentals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great idea. Your design is pretty solid btw. Only problem might be your name. It's not catchy, it sounds like a place to buy books cheap, when its a place to find out if you need the book. Excellent execution and integration with Amazon, you will be making money from day one even if its meager.

<comment><USER6> I agree. Without the description, I would have thought it was a site to book cheap flights/travel. That being said, as a grad student myself and having paid thousands out of pocket over the course of my educational career for books, this looks like it will be a great resource. Come to UConn! BTW, your layout looks great; don't worry about it!

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm hoping to start expanding to some of the larger/more popular schools within the next few months. Thanks for checking it out!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why not add way more schools to choose from? It is difficult to get 99% of schools, but scraping the first 80% is pretty easy.

Great idea. Great start. Keep going with it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm trying to slowly scale up. Adding schools is easy enough, but I also need to get all of their departments, their instructors, and their courses. All this info can be gathered by scraping, but format varies greatly on a per school basis. I also want to get reviewed seeded on a per school basis before I move on to the next one. I allow the users to add most of that info, but the more info they have to enter the higher the barrier to entering a book rating is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Clickable: <http://www.bookcheaply.com> selecting url on tablets (specially on the ipad) is hell.

</comment><comment><USER9> Should be very useful. AbeBooks (<http://www.abebooks.com/>) also offers cheaper alternatives.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good find. They have an affiliate program so I'll look in to integrating with them as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great idea, may I suggest that somehow, people could add links to free resources that can, in a sense, replace the book.

<comment><AUTHOR> Are you suggesting an option to add a few different links to Wikipedia or a similar resources that were used instead of the book? If I understand you correctly, I like that idea a lot.

<comment><USER8> Exactly, a lot of books are replaceable by freely available books, websites, etc.</comment></comment></comment>


"Auction Site" Swoopo got $44800 for a $2500 computer. See comments for explanation - <AUTHOR> http://www.swoopo.com/auction.html?aid=166988 The Way swoopo works: Users pay 75 cents per bid to use swoopo. Penny auctions start with a product at $0 then each bid increases the item price by one cent. Bidding at the last second won't help because it resets the timer to 10, 15 or 20.<p>$44800 computer: 58950 bid were placed, at 75 cents each that's $44212.50 + the final price $589.50 for a total of $44802<p>I researched the site a bit and generated some statistics including the top 20 biggest consumer fails / swoopo wins, the above being the most profit they've made. http://blog.jimmyr.com/Auction_site_Swoopo_a_scam_or_a_bargain__13_2009.php <comment><USER2> I find this morally dubious for the same reasons as SwellJoe -- it's an awful gamble, even by the standards of slot machines or government lotteries.

I hope competition and education can drive their take down to the level of other money-based game operators. For example, what if there were an alternative where the max collected on any item was capped at 2X retail?

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks like the system is guaranteed to make money on at least some items... for example:

[http://www.swoopo.com/auction.html?cm_re=Homepage-_- Grid-_-1...](http://www.swoopo.com/auction.html?cm_re=Homepage-_- Grid-_-1%2f5%2fLink&aid=177443)

See the "15" image next to the countdown? Mouseover that, and it tells you that the 10 second countdown for this item will not trigger until the bid has gotten up to $64.70. Doesn't take a genius to figure out that the house will win this one (if not all of them).

</comment><comment><USER4> I built a site like this for a client a couple years ago. They were hoping to use it to raise money for charity. They paid me for the work but never operated the site.

<comment><USER5> i'll pay you for the site again.

<comment><USER4> If you're serious, I can contact the original client and see about IP. My email is this screen name @gmail.com.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What do you think is critical mass for making something like this profitable?

And how do you scale something like this that seems to require 1 db call per user per second minimum? Is this something memcached would be good for? (I don't really know much about it yet)

I'm interested b/c I made a little clone that I'd like to turn into . . . something, maybe a facebook app: www.dealbattles.com. It's a Ruby/sinatra app right now that uses JQuery .post and .load to display the counters and update based on bids. You can't really use it right now because buying credits is tied to my paypal sandbox acct.

If anyone's interested in helping, I'm listening.

<comment><USER7> Do you not have any ethical qualms about taking advantage of the mentally retarded like this?

I can't holler at the Swoopo folks about it, since I don't know them. But, you're right here, so I feel compelled to be judgmental. I don't do that very often. Generally speaking, I think just about anything goes (porn, gambling, soft drugs like pot, etc., as long as you're only selling to adults). But taking advantage of the least intelligent and the most desperate to save money is just nasty.

<comment><USER8> You don't have to be "retarded" to fall for something like this. The poster clearly is quite intelligent. He also thinks he knows how to beat the system. Behold the system in all its perfidious majesty: if there are two people in the world smart enough to beat it, it will take everyone for all they are worth.

The smartest man I have ever known, who will one day cure cancer, once described to me in all earnestness how the double-your-bet-after-you-lose strategy was flawless. (Relatedly: He also was a fan of penny stocks.)

<comment><USER9> Did you point out that the double-your-bet-after-you-lose strategy breaks down once you hit the upper betting limit?

<comment><USER10> Or when you run out of reserves, which is inevitable in the long run.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The Way swoopo works: Users pay 75 cents per bid to use swoopo. Penny auctions start with a product at $0 then each bid increases the item price by one cent. Bidding at the last second won't help because it resets the timer to 10, 15 or 20.

$44800 computer: 58950 bid were placed, at 75 cents each that's $44212.50 + the final price $589.50 for a total of $44802

I researched the site a bit and generated some statistics including the top 20 biggest consumer fails / swoopo wins, the above being the most profit they've made. [http://blog.jimmyr.com/Auction_site_Swoopo_a_scam_or_a_barga...](http://blog.jimmyr.com/Auction_site_Swoopo_a_scam_or_a_bargain__13_2009.php)

<comment><USER11> yeah, this is not the first time swoopo has come up here.

<comment><USER8> I liked the discussion on "Profitable Until Deemed Illegal":

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=395970></comment></comment></comment>


WebODM – A free, extendable application and API for drone image processing - <AUTHOR> https://www.webodm.org <comment><AUTHOR> Maintainer here, happy to answer questions!</comment>


NYC tech startup Clarifai raises $30M to unlock AI for every developer - <AUTHOR> http://blog.clarifai.com/announcing-30-million-reasons-to-be-thankful/#.WA9oNuErIW8 <comment><USER2> Congratulations! I'm a Clarifai user and have been very happy with their service, API (both Python and Go), and their supports. They recently added customized training feature which I use to train my own model. Keep it up!!!

</comment><comment><USER3> Great software idea! Customization to your needs~</comment>


JavaScript library for the visualization of statistical distributions - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/richarddmorey/stat-distributions-js <comment><USER2> The actual interesting link is here: [http://learnbayes.org/demo/stat- distributions-js/distributio...](http://learnbayes.org/demo/stat- distributions-js/distributionTable.html) (a table of distributions).

</comment><comment><USER3> Please:

(1) Yes, in probability, _distributions_ are crucial concepts.

(2) In practice, for random variables taking real number values, usually can't know the distribution. For random variables taking vector values of dimension over, say, three, essentially never can know the distribution.

(3) The main approach in practice is to use the classic limit theorems, especially the law of large numbers and the central limit theorem, to let us know at most only a little about the distributions.

(4) More generally, we have to work nearly always knowing few or no details about the distributions.

Looking at some _histograms_? For a first-cut, sometimes maybe okay.

Looking at pictures of distributions? Nearly useless.

<comment><USER2> For Bayesian modeling making assumptions about distributions is crucial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very nice! One thing that would make it easier to see how the distribution behaves would be to have a number of common parameter choices as presets for each distribution, like the Wikipedia pages often do.

At least, that is what I would find useful when picking a distribution to use for random inputs. It's also what bugs me about every documentation of C++11's <random> header I've found---they're great if you know which distribution you need, but picking one (when you have the freedom to choose) is hard. Of course, that isn't the job of a language reference, and this could be the tool for that.

</comment><comment><USER5> If I could send two things back in time to aid my undergrad physics self in his studies, it would be this and [http://acko.net/blog/how-to-fold-a-julia- fractal/](http://acko.net/blog/how-to-fold-a-julia-fractal/) (which is as close to an intuition about complex numbers as I've every seen written to a screen).

Really useful and cool. Thanks.</comment>


Rails Has Turned Me Into a Cannibalizing Idiot - <AUTHOR> http://wekeroad.com/2012/01/03/rails-has-turned-me-into-a-cannibalizing-idiot

<comment><USER2> Dupe: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3418601></comment>


Designing a database like an archaeologist - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/aosabook/500lines/blob/master/functionalDB/chapter.md <comment><USER2> > This mechanism, nicknamed "place oriented programming" by Rich Hickey [REF], > saves storage space but makes it impossible to retrieve the entire history > of a particular record. This design decision reflects the computer > scientist's perspective that 'history' is less important than the price of > its storage.

Funny, I don't recall that sentiment from any of my CSCI classes. Seems to me like this methodology has more to do with the fact that a 5 MB hard disk (for example) used to be the size of a washing machine than it does with whether or not the person writing the DBMS was a computer scientist.

<comment><USER3> Yes absolutely. But the question is why is this methodology still prevailed even though we are not constrained anymore by these limits?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Don't these already exist?

[http://www.datomic.com/](http://www.datomic.com/)

<comment><USER5> Seems to be an attempt at reimplementing at least parts of datomic as open source: [https://github.com/aosabook/500lines/tree/master/functionalD...](https://github.com/aosabook/500lines/tree/master/functionalDB)</comment></comment>


MyBitcoin.com: A Week After Vanishing With 25 K. BTC, Site Claims It Was Hacked - <AUTHOR> http://www.betabeat.com/2011/08/05/mybitcoin-disappeared-with-bitcoins/

<comment><USER2> "So there are no police, only private security guards. There are no "laws" per se, but most people deal with trade disputes through private "loser pays" arbitration courts. So contracts between organizations and people define what the "law" is. Murder, rape, and other violent crimes are basically non- existent, but when they do occur, communities typically ensure justice is swiftly dealt. You might call it vigilantism by community consensus. People don't take very kindly to murders, thieves, and rapists in their neighborhoods if you catch my drift. Since everyone is usually armed, robbing or hurting someone typically winds up like a gun store robbery today. The person attempting the crime gets gunned down rather swiftly or driven out of town by private security. Lord help them if they kill someone."

from [http://www.libertariannews.org/2011/06/29/man-from-the- futur...](http://www.libertariannews.org/2011/06/29/man-from-the-future- shares-his-story/)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's as if the people running these major trading sites could learn from WordPress on how to secure them better.

<comment><USER4> Hard to tell if this was about securing the site or just shady owners swindling noobs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> We call this "Libertarian education in action".

We've replaced the regulated marketplaces you usually use with Folger's crystals, errr, a Libertarian paradise market where the only thing keeping Dmitri in Kazakhstan from stealing all your money is His Good Name And Reputation. Let's see if you notice.</comment>


Show HN: PRHero is a better UI for pull requests - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/colinjfw/prhero <comment><USER2> A bit of a tangent, but I'm loving seeing Monaco embedded in more projects like this.

Monaco is the editor from VS Code, extracted and officially supported as a standalone component to use elsewhere. Internally I think the extraction work is pretty complicated, and the setup isn't effortless, but the resulting user experience is excellent imo (much like VS code itself). This all looks great!

</comment><comment><USER3> This is something I have searched for before, but never found what I was looking for: gitlab support. Any plans to support that?

I didn't look at the code, but do you think it's something that's easy to add or would that require major refactoring?

<comment><USER4> I think as long as gitlab has a diff API and a file list API it would be pretty simple. Unfamiliar with their APIs though.

<comment><USER5> Just wanted to chime in and add following links from our documentation:

Get the diff of a commit - [https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/api/commits.html#get- the-diff-of-...](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/api/commits.html#get-the-diff-of- a-commit)

List repository tree - [https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/api/repositories.html#list- reposi...](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/api/repositories.html#list-repository- tree)

Repository files API - [https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/api/repository_files.html](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/api/repository_files.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> More comments, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21895943](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21895943)</comment>


Anker Just Launched Capsule 2 on Kickstarter and Fully Funded in Under 5 Minutes - <AUTHOR> http://crwd.cr/capsule2 <comment><USER2> This is actually ANKER's followup to the first projector they launched last year under the brand Nebula. They raised just above $1.2 mm USD. I'm actually a backer of their first project and my main complaints were the low resolution. But in this new version, they've both increased the resolution and battery life.

</comment><comment><USER3> This product is amazing, small yet powerful. An all-in-one source of entertainment in a size of a soda can. This is perfect for me since I love watching movies, I can watch a movie everywhere since it is very handy. A must-have gadget.

</comment><comment><USER4> I immediately forgot what a TV is. Hello Nebula! I can finally let other people watch with ease when I'm sharing something instead of our getting our heads clamped together just to watch my tiny cellphone screen.

</comment><comment><USER5> Very useful for a Mom like me having 3 energetic kids. We could now watch movies and play games anywhere especially even not at home. Can't wait to have one.

</comment><comment><USER6> Awesome Product! Great Entertainment on the go! An indispensable gadget for everyone who loves to travel and watch tv.

</comment><comment><USER7> Super excited for this product! The quality and the idea of me bringing this anywhere is so fascinating

</comment><comment><USER8> Reasonable quality being portable. Having this compact is a boon!

</comment><comment><USER9> A clear upgrade from its predecessor. The value for money here is insane.</comment>


AI-designed heat pumps consume less energy - <AUTHOR> https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-07/epfd-ahp070319.php <comment><USER2> Using a 200k rpm microturbine instead of pistons, which I imagine takes a fair bit of engineering to make it last long enough.

Interesting use of Symobic regression:

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

It seems there's a library in python, Distributed Evolutionary Algorithms in Python:

[https://github.com/DEAP/deap](https://github.com/DEAP/deap)</comment>


5 tests my next business idea will have to pass - Can you add more? - <AUTHOR>

I launched my most recent app - www.biznus.tv - few days back. The idea is to aggregate all the business related videos, compile the meta data and also generate more meta data and present to the users. I have been working on this idea for around 7-8 months now and in spite of providing a meaningful service, it is less likely to generate any meaningful revenue. (So you may ask why I picked this idea but I don't want to get into that and convert this post about me and my project. So I will leave that for some other time).
Learning from mistakes, I wanted to note down tests that my next idea is going to have to pass before I pick it up for execution.
1) Good is not good enough - Everyone have ideas. I have a lot of ideas - over 100 in my list. The next idea that I pick will have to be the one that I think makes most sense from business perspective. It sounds more like a common sense but I shamelessly acknowledge that I made the mistake of picking up some ideas in past that I thought were going to be 'quick ones' rather than 'best ones'. Not anymore, pick your best bet.
2) What's the problem? - If I cannot explain the problem, my idea is solving - I ain't doing it.
3) Show me the money - I am not building a next-generation-free_of_charge-consumer-space-social-media-web app as my next venture. In my opinion playing field is not level anymore. There a lot of big players. Players with venture money and super smart mentors. I am not saying its impossible, its just that chances of success are too slim. Like Felis Dennis says - "You may not necessarily want to be in a glamorous sector of any market, and they are often very crowded"
4) Where are the customers? - There should be a market for what you are building. What's the best way to validate that - What (What businesses) are going to be your competitors? Seth Godin says - "Competition validates you. It creates a category. It permits the sale to be this or that, not yes or no."
5) Validate the traffic from Google Keyword tool, compete.com and quantcast to make sure you get a feel of the market.
There are a lot of great articles from successful people, sharing experiences on how to be successful(http://jasonlbaptiste.com/startups/how-to-become-a-millionaire-in-three-years/) or how to execute an idea(http://jasonlbaptiste.com/featured-articles/how-to-go-from-idea-to-launching-with-paying-customers-in-8-steps/). The intent of the article above is to list tests you can run on the ideas in your pool of ideas and pick THE one that has higher chances of success.
What else do you do to make sure idea is worth executing? That it is worth spending 9-12 months of your life before you see the first dollar. <comment><USER3> Something that is tied to the "Where are the customers?" point - <USER2> mini-'interviews'. Sometimes direct competitors are tough to come up with, but asking people if they would use your product (or at least think about it) would make a pretty good case.

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely! There is more due deligence that needs to happen before you finally begin the execution but out of tens of ideas one may have which one should you pick to even discuss with the potential customers is what I was getting at.</comment></comment>


A safe Rust abstraction layer for native Node.js modules - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rustbridge/neon <comment><AUTHOR> previous -> [http://calculist.org/blog/2015/12/23/neon-node- rust/](http://calculist.org/blog/2015/12/23/neon-node-rust/)

<comment><USER2> and the HN discussion -> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10786411](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10786411)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> When should I use this?

Like, which sub set of modules are better as a native version and which sub set of these are better written in Rust?

<comment><USER4> As dietrichepp said parallel programming would be a good fit for Rust. See if this works for you.

[https://blog.rust-lang.org/2015/04/10/Fearless- Concurrency.h...](https://blog.rust-lang.org/2015/04/10/Fearless- Concurrency.html)

Edit: you could also do safer C/C++ interop with JS through Rust, if you want to use some legacy code.

<comment><USER5> FYI (or whoever can make the fix), the link titled "share stack frames" (to [http://static.rust- lang.org/doc/master/std/thread/fn.scoped....](http://static.rust- lang.org/doc/master/std/thread/fn.scoped.html)) on that page is dead.</comment></comment></comment>


Let's Run Lisp on a Microcontroller - <AUTHOR> http://dmitryfrank.com/blog/2016/0718_let_s_run_lisp_on_a_microcontroller <comment><USER2> This is a fun experiment, with well documented steps followed by the author. It'd certainly be a good example for getting started with hacking the ESP8266 even if someone isn't interested in implementing a LISP on such a constrained platform.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment. Fun it was indeed.

I was hoping to also write some small app in Lisp, but it turns out that there is too little memory, really. Probably I'll use DFScheme for some browser app. So it's like, "I'll program my MCU with the Lisp interpreter and some cool AI written in it... In fact, forget the MCU"</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where do I fit as a non-programmer in the tech world? - <AUTHOR>

Currently I'm working as an "Analyst" at a small (~15 person) software company where I'm doing a good portion of the non-programmer tasks. I file bug reports, test software changes, create demos, write scripts for our frontend, do some customer training, write the first cut of documentation for our tech writer, and handle customer support.
There's no real growth for me in this company because of the size so I've started to look elsewhere.
The question I've been struggling with is: How do I market myself? Where do I go from here? What would this job title translate to in another software company?
I do have a bit of scripting acumen but I wouldn't consider myself a programmer at all, nor would I want a programmer position. I've looked at training to become a DBA since I took a DB course in undergrad and enjoyed it, but I'm not sure where to start their either. Oracle University, O'Reilly School of Technology, Community college, Ed2Go? There are a ton of options out there.
I've enjoyed reading hacker news and I find the readership here to be very intelligent and helpful. So that being said, any ideas? <comment><USER2> Why tech?

What do you really want to do in your life?

Make stuff? Sell stuff? Turn people on to stuff? See things? Write about things?

What things to you find yourself doing when no one's paying you?

<comment><AUTHOR> > Why Tech?

I guess I've always enjoyed being around technology. I've been using computers as long as I've been around. As a kid in the mid 90s my brother and I used to install Debian on old powerpcs we had lying around the house for fun. I've built PCs from components for myself. I run Linux on the desktop. In college I took some tech courses (CS 101, Intro to Databases) and I always did enjoy automating repetitive tasks via scripting.

>What do you really want to do in your life?

I want to have a nice life with my fiancee, I guess. I like understanding things. I enjoy knowing something at the level that I can explain it very well as opposed to knowledge of something just at the level where I can use it.

At some level I do like creating things too, but I seem to have a very high inertia a lot of the time. I just end up thinking of ideas as opposed to implementing them. I love working with computers because software can things so easily when you just provide the idea.

>What things to you find yourself doing when no one's paying you?

I daydream. I listen to music. I think of new things to cook. I ride my bike around town. Maybe I'll complete some intro challenges on a site like codecademy for fun. I'll read HN, Slashdot. I've always been intrigued by the future of technological progress. I'm excited by google's self-driving cars.</comment></comment>


5 Gmail lessons from Petraeus affair - <AUTHOR> http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=C93404F4-C3E8-4DBF-A67B-D5A08B434117 <comment><USER2> So what is the most secure way of online communication, short of using Tor?

</comment><comment><USER3> Use PrivateSky - privatesky.me</comment>


Poll: Do you use a website monitoring service? - <AUTHOR>

I'm curious to know how many people use a monitoring service to notify you when something goes wrong with your website.<p>Just answer 'Yes' or 'No' and which service it is that you use. Thanks! <comment><USER2> I roll my own running Nagios on a cheap Linux VPS.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes DSLreports.com

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes: Pingdom

</comment><comment><USER5> yes

<comment><AUTHOR> What service are you using?</comment></comment>


Confirmed: Apple Watch Runs iOS - <AUTHOR> https://deallocatedobjects.com/posts/confirmed-apple-watch-runs-ios <comment><USER2> What a surprise! I thouhgt it will be Android.</comment>


The Most Dangerous Person in Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> https://sneakerheadvc.com/the-most-dangerous-person-in-silicon-valley-8c6feb73a713#.7vizwdtzy <comment><USER2> I'm generally a fan of Phin Barnes, but two points here really bother me:

1\. This claim is a brash overgeneralization: "Unlike a junior person, they won't be open to feedback, guidance, or coaching required for improvement."

Devil's advocate — there are junior people who are comfortable where they're at and who don't seem interested in becoming senior. Not everyone becomes advanced and/or a manager... especially with the proliferation of dev bootcamps these days.

2\. Not all senior engineers are full of unqualified arrogance.

> There are lots of people with the title but not the skills. They are hard to > spot because they're definitely not junior but they're not really senior > either. They're mid-level engineers who have been convinced they're senior > by the ecosystem.

He should know better than anyone that we're hardly "convinced they're senior by the ecosystem". Startup title inflation is often there from day one, not added later on. Also, look at how rampant impostor syndrome is in this industry.

</comment><comment><USER3> author has chip on shoulder and no valid argument.</comment>


Forbidden Data: Wyoming just criminalized citizen science - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2015/05/wyoming_law_against_data_collection_protecting_ranchers_by_ignoring_the.html <comment><USER2> When this originally appeared, I looked into it, and found it to be nonsense.

WY did nothing of the sort. Google around, and you'll find this is a law increasing penalties for people _trespassing_ on private property to get to places to sample water, and this is because trespassers have been causing trouble for land owners in the region the legislators that introduced this bill represent.

The old penalties were not enough to deter people, so the penalties were increased. It's a reasonable reaction to increased trespassing.

It does nothing to stop people from getting samples and doing whatever science they want from places that do not involve trespassing.

Oh, and for the record, massive amounts of land in WY are public, which you can also Google. So there's still plenty of places to access probably every watershed to see what is going on.

The actual law [1]

[1] [http://legisweb.state.wy.us/2015/Enroll/SF0012.pdf](http://legisweb.state.wy.us/2015/Enroll/SF0012.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Ah, but detailed analysis like this conflicts with the need for catchy headlines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Quite a fluke for Wyoming. It's generally a very libertarian political climate... I guess that's what happens with climate changes. [pun intended :P]

</comment><comment><USER5> Good luck enforcing an unconstitutional law.

<comment><USER6> Unconstitutional laws are constitutional until you attempt to enforce them against someone with deep pockets (and for several years thereafter while the appellate courts do their thing).

<comment><USER7> They are not "constitutional"... they are just regular laws.

Also, I imagine the ACLU would love to help someone take this case all the way to the supreme court.</comment></comment></comment>


Banksy painting 'self-destructs' on podium in auction prank – Financial Times - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/1c748f2e-c8ea-11e8-ba8f-ee390057b8c9 <comment><USER2> [http://archive.is/E32rn](http://archive.is/E32rn)

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.vice.com/en_au/article/yw9xgy/a-banksy- painting-...](https://www.vice.com/en_au/article/yw9xgy/a-banksy-painting- self-destructed-after-being-auctioned-for-dollar11-million-vgtrn)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Banksy is my spirit animal.</comment>


Ask HN: 2FA hardware? - <AUTHOR> Right now I'm using Google Authenticator and I manage the services manually on my smartphone.
I use 2FA for my e-mail accounts, VPS, games and more. But it feels really silly to have it on my phone. Specially since I use 2FA for my phone e-mail account.
Is there any specialized hardware that I could use to replace this setup? Something that is compatible with any service and doesn't require a phone or a computer? Like a standalone solution. <comment><USER2> Everybody recommending Yubikey: because this [0], use that [1] instead. Amazon uses Gemalto [2] for AWS MFA, but I've had bad experience with it, and cannot recommend it.

[0]: [https://plus.google.com/+KonstantinRyabitsev/posts/4a7RNxtt7...](https://plus.google.com/+KonstantinRyabitsev/posts/4a7RNxtt7vy)

[1]: [https://www.nitrokey.com/](https://www.nitrokey.com/)

[2]: [http://www.gemalto.com/](http://www.gemalto.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> You could use any kind of hardware token like RSA, Fortinet or many other manufactors. The usually offer a software version four your desktop as well. But usually you'll hate this additional piece of crap in your pocket. The combination of something in your mind (password) and something in your hand (smartphone) is the optimal setup. If you have a password or fingerprint to unlock your phone and the token generator app for 2FA it should be enough security.

</comment><comment><USER4> I use the [https://www.yubico.com/products/yubikey-hardware/yubikey- neo...](https://www.yubico.com/products/yubikey-hardware/yubikey-neo/).

</comment><comment><USER5> One option might be something like a Pebble. I use mine for H/TOTP codes just fine => [https://github.com/JumpMaster/QuickAuth](https://github.com/JumpMaster/QuickAuth). It's always with you and works completely offline and outside of any service.

It still requires your phone to add seeds, but they are generated completely independently once seeded. Just an idea that doesn't require buying specializes single-task hardware.

</comment><comment><USER6> Google: Yubico ; the NFC-enabled version has a Google Authenticator-like app (Yubico Authenticator)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh I get it now, I misunderstood what Yubico could be used for. Thank you!

<comment><USER6> It can be used for a lot of things. GPG (even over NFC), U2F, 2FA,

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yeah, we use Yubico yubikey nanos at work for ssh 2fa as well as gmail 2fa. It's pretty nice.

<comment><AUTHOR> I always use huge passwords, do you think using an easier to remember ~10 digits password will be secure enough if I use 2FA?

Or there is another attack vector that I'm not aware of?

I imagine if somebody steal my password I would get notified (Gmail) and could easily switch to a new one, no damage done.

<comment><USER8> I think a good password manager + 2fa will be adequate. Make password manager long but memorable and then make passwords you generate crazy long, like 24 characters or more. That and 2fa all the things.

<comment><AUTHOR> But if you're using accounts in "public" (like in the office) computers, aren't you trading an unlikely bruteforce for a single point of failure: your password manager, who's also in the cloud? Unless you also use 2FA on the password manager and there's no way for a compromised OS to copy your entire (unlocked) password manager DB. Oh god, I went too far.

<comment><USER8> Most password managers encrypt your contents one-way, and don't offer a forgot-password feature. Not all are in the cloud (1Password, KeePass, etc), though they can be cloudified via sync (for instance, use Dropbox or iCloud) Some support the Yubikey for authentication.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> mike-cardwell I use my Pebble Time smart watch. I press one button on my watch and it instantly displays a list of 2FA codes for a bunch of sites.</comment>


Allison Stokke? - <AUTHOR> http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2009/05/allison-stokke.php

<comment><USER2> I feel bad for the girl.

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2007/05...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2007/05/28/AR2007052801370.html)

<comment><USER3> Have to love WP referring to Facebook as "a social networking site intended mainly for college students."

<comment><USER4> That's what it used to be. You needed an .edu email address to sign up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm going to add this article to my bookmarks on web site monitization. It appears that a good way to attract traffic is to pattern a site after a British tabloid. Prominently display a gorgeous girl (even with her clothes on!), along with whatever might be of interest to the real target audience. Grab those eyeballs.

<comment><AUTHOR> With over 500 articles, I've played around with format quite a bit. I enjoy doing creative and new things.

The problem is that the eyeballs you grab don't always monetize that much. You end up with this impedance mismatch. But maybe I'm wrong -- perhaps the PayPal link I added might actually work!

It's not just tabloid-related. It's much more along the lines of keyword density, which the article goes over. For instance, I wrote an article on Global Warming [http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2007/05/did_walt_disn...](http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2007/05/did_walt_disney.php) that had a picture of Walt Disney holding an early version of Micky Mouse. It was a lengthy article and I was trying to make a serious point.

If you google for pictures of Walt Disney, there's my blog up there at the top [http://images.google.com/images?q=Walt%20Disney&oe=utf-8...](http://images.google.com/images?q=Walt%20Disney&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en- US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi)

To this day I get 30-50 hits a day from people looking for pictures of Walt Disney. They read the article title (of course not the text!) and then make inane comments about global warming.

So the strategy might be good for bringing people to your site, but for what purpose?

I'm telling you, I should have gotten into porn.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm #14 for pictures of "Arnold". It's where most of my search traffic comes from despite having only one article and one picture of Arnold on one site. I wonder how I got so high for someone already famous?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> By the way, I'm really interested in the answer to the question presented in the article -- why am I getting so many hits from Yahoo for searches of Allison Stokke?

I thought about posting it as an "Ask HN" article, but I figured it was better in a longer format. Plus I get to experiment with seeing if future searchers are actaully willing to pay ten bucks for more pictures!

<comment><USER7> This is very interesting, so I'm not sure why it is dead... I had a similar experience with people going to my site from "girls gone wild" searches. When I searched Google Images for "Girls Gone Wild" a picture from my site came up in the top 10 results. It turns out it was just a picture from a party I had attended where one girl was straddling the other in some kind of horse play -- the photo name was girls_gone_wild.jpg.

<comment><USER8> Now it's _undead_ , apparently.

Zombie stories! Type as fast as you can!</comment></comment></comment>