A website that deletes itself once indexed by Google - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mroth/unindexed/blob/master/README.md <comment><USER2> I had a client once who had something similar, although unintentionally. She approached me because her website "kept getting hacked" and she didn't trust the original developers to solve the security problems... And rightly so!

There were two factors that, together, made this happen: first, the admin login form was implemented in JS, and if you went to log in with it with JS disabled, it wouldn't verify your credentials. And it submitted via a GET request. Second, once you were in the admin interface, you could delete content from the site by clicking on an X in the CMS. Which, as was the pattern, presented you with a JS alert() prompt before deleting the content... via a GET request.

Looking at the server logs around the time it got "hacked", you could see GoogleBot happily following all the delete links in the admin interface.

<comment><USER3> What's the idea solution for this? I would drop a cookie and use that to verify admin privileges on each page. Is that right?

<comment><USER4> Fundamentally, authentication when someone tries to delete a thing needs to happen in server-side logic, not on the client side. The rest is flavouring.

<comment><USER5> Authentication should happen server side, but authentication need not happen at the time of delete. When deleting, you should be authorizing and validating, which _can_ safely be done client side... but, if you are doing something server-side (e.g., a delete) you should also be doing it server side.

<comment><USER6> HTTP is stateless. You need to generate some kind of token that can be checked for each admin action a user takes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm surprised there are so many people on Hacker News asking "why?".

Hackers don't need a reason, other than it being clever, novel, fun, etc. But if you want a reason there are plenty:

* art: there are numerous interpretations of this

* fun: this is sort of the digital equivalent of a "useless box" [http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/ef0b/](http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/ef0b/)

* science: experiment to see how widespread a URL can be shared without Google becoming aware of it

* security: embed unique tokens in your content to detect if it has leaked to the public

<comment><USER8> I agree that there are lots of reasons that someone would make a site like this, but I think people are curious as to the maker's specific reason. From the github:

 _Why would you do such a thing? My full explanation was in the content of the site. (edit: ...which is now gone)_

I'm curious as to what the website said originally.

<comment><USER7> In that case, I'd guess "art".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's a digital embodiment of coolness; once the masses can find out about it, it isn't cool anymore and the coolness is gone. Literally.

<comment><USER10> I think Hipsterism is what you're actually referring to.

<comment><USER11> I was cool long before it was hip.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> An alternative would be to check for the browser _user agent_ and delete the website right at that point and return a 404 page to the Google crawler bot. Then Google won't have a static copy of the website.

<comment><USER13> Your approach is "a website that irrevocably deletes itself once indexed by Google".

What OP has done is "a website that irrevocably deletes itself once Google decided to publicly reveal the fact that it indexed said website".

OP's approach has no way of knowing _when_ the site was indexed. It's conceivable that Google indexed it on the very first day and decided not to share it publicly until 21 days later.

<comment><USER14> Technically, the former is when it is "crawled" and the latter is when it is "indexed".

In practice, since 2010 these two events have generally been separated by minutes.

<comment><USER15> If you really want to get "technical", then the first one is when the site is "crawled" and the latter is when it's "served". "Indexing" happens in-between the two.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What about the opposite? A website that created when it is indexed? Start with nothing and content is added each time the site is visited by Googlebot, or shared on Facebook, tweeted, posted on Reddit, etc. The website exists only so that it can be shared, and the act of sharing it defines what the website is.

<comment><USER17> This is an uber cool idea. Especially if, when this website is shared by someone, it would attempt to scan the sharer's public feed, last submissions, last comments, last tweets, etc. (depending on where it got shared), and generate additional content based on what it found.

Sounds like an awesome weekend project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Cool, but why? ( And shoulden't we invent digital Baroque art before inventing digital postmodernism?)

<comment><USER19> Both exist.

Postmodernism is a lot more relevant to the digital age than anything, imo. It emphasizes pointing out ways of thinking and doing, which I think is especially relevant when we are actually automating most of our ways of thinking and doing.

I know it gets a bad rap because of the ridiculous examples, but the real point of it engages the viewer into a serious kind of contemplation concerning the massive infrastructure that exists and how that shapes our culture, thoughts, understanding, action..

We have the expectation that the generations to come will accept this infrastructure and what it says about how the human mind functions. But much of it is founded on belief systems of how thought and action operate in the real world. Most of these systems are baseless, the idea of a base obfuscated only by the sheer complexity involved in understanding each layer.

<comment><USER20> Please don't tell me Geocities was our Renaissance.

<comment><USER19> I really look forward to when we, as academics, historically document and seriously examine the various phases of the internet, from a variety of alternative perspectives.

It's interesting while it's being built, but it's also interesting to look back and reflect on the bigger picture, outside of the buzzwords and technical terminology used to pull the creation through, and make it actualized.

I look forward when critics and theorists start thinking about the goal of the internet from a social perspective, a collective cultural subconscious directive. I look forward to all the kinds of art history theoretical methodology used to explain the significance of Picasso or Manet in their respective time periods, to use the same kinds of methodology to reason about the relation between the internet and everything that is not the internet.

It's interesting when some information gets washed away and other information is retained through time, and it isn't always the stuff that is indexed that is retained. The idea that art critics can even agree to call the same collection of works "cubism" or "impressionism" fascinates me, and I look forward to the same kinds of invented vocabularies being used to describe various processes, movements, and patterns throughout internet culture (way beyond studying memes and tropes - there are so many layers to the collective psyche of the internet, it is dumbfounding).

I don't know what geocities represents. I'd have to define it's 'kind' and compare and contrast it to other 'kinds' throughout time. I know this was meant to be a humorous comment, but I love to weave theories, and some of them even turn out to be descriptive of the nature of things.

<comment><USER21> And if you want to help out to archive the data that is needed for that kind of work, ArchiveTeam needs your help: [http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Main_Page](http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Main_Page) :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Thank you.

[http://i.imgur.com/cjDeLEb.png](http://i.imgur.com/cjDeLEb.png)

EDIT: What's with the downvote hate? Somebody actually posted a valid key...

<comment><USER23> As far as I can tell, you just posted part of a random screengrab from your web browser for no obvious reason. Striking's response suggests that this is actually a reference to a site which, per the OP, is gone forever, along with any chance of getting your joke. So...I'm not really sure what you were expecting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> >Why would you do such a thing? My full explanation was in the content of the site. (edit: ...which is now gone)

So anyone really understood why he did this?

<comment><USER17> My guess - because he could, and likely had some good laugh when discussing it with friends.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Anyone know the origin or have an archive?

<comment><USER26> The origin is this: [http://eep40h.herokuapp.com/](http://eep40h.herokuapp.com/)

<comment><USER25> [https://web.archive.org/web/20150213152238/http://eep40h.her...](https://web.archive.org/web/20150213152238/http://eep40h.herokuapp.com/)

Yay!

Edit: and now [https://archive.today/3QpC9](https://archive.today/3QpC9)

<comment><USER27> IF anything, that's a much deeper comment than the website itself. No matter how hard you try, it's impossible to really destroy something once it's been on the web. Resistance is futile.

<comment><USER28> That's not quite the point being made, since the site didn't even attempt to block indexing via robots.txt or a meta tag.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Not sure if I see this as "art" or something. I mean, _irrevocably deletes itself_ could be attached to a thousand arbitrary things.

\- deleted after 100 visitors

\- deleted if visited with IE 6.0 for the first time

\- deleted if referrer is Facebook

\- ...

<comment><USER30> Also, irrecovability seems a bit questionable (google cache, archive.org etc.)

<comment><USER31>
        <meta http-equiv="Cache-Control" content="no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate" />
        <meta http-equiv="Pragma" content="no-cache" />
        <meta http-equiv="Expires" content="0" />

+

        Cache-Control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate
        Pragma: no-cache
        Expires: 0

+

        User-agent: ia_archiver
        Disallow: /

Of course, this won't prevent crawlers which do not honor these headers/meta tags from caching your site, but if you're not in Google's index you're likely not getting traffic from said crawlers.

<comment><USER30> Good point. I wonder if meta tags were updated later or did archive.org ignore them - [https://web.archive.org/web/20150213152238/http://eep40h.her...](https://web.archive.org/web/20150213152238/http://eep40h.herokuapp.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Snapchat for websites...hmmmm perhaps.

</comment><comment><USER33> I see some potential use of this, for example as soon as Google crawlers reach the site I know that it is accessible from outside and I destroy the site.

<comment><USER34> What is the purpose of a website that is inaccessible "from outside"?

<comment><USER35> Maybe it's a resource that should only be used by people in a particular organization?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> "Death is reason for the beauty of butterfly"

<comment><USER37> Who said that? I could not agree less. Butterflies are beautiful for their color, not their death.

<comment><USER17> Whoever said that, probably meant selection pressure.

<comment><USER38> Potentially also that if every butterfly that ever existed were still alive, we wouldn't be very fond of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I have to say I'm not usually a fan of conceptual art, but kudos - the concept is great. Keep experimenting!

</comment><comment><USER40> I would be interested in similar experiments but with a couple of minor variations to see the effects of each:

1\. Sending the NOINDEX meta tag

2\. Combining meta tags

3\. Monitoring for a referrer URL that matches a Google search page to catch the 1st non-sneaky user coming from the index.

4\. Monitoring other search engines and their behaviors.

</comment><comment><USER41> grep Googlebot /var/www/log/* && rm -rf /var/www/site

</comment><comment><USER42> How about detecting GoogleBot traffic and deleting when it has crawled your website?

<comment><USER43> Then anyone would be able to trigger the autodestruct by spoofing their UA.

<comment><USER13> Googlebot's identity can the authenticated to prevent spoofing:

[https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/80553?hl=en](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/80553?hl=en)

<comment><USER43> I actually wasn't aware of that! Thanks for the link.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> [https://github.com/mroth/unindexed/blob/master/views/alive.e...](https://github.com/mroth/unindexed/blob/master/views/alive.ect)

</comment><comment><USER45> Like a snow angel? Art that auto destructs? Stay in the moment.

</comment><comment><USER46> What problem does it solve? EDIT: that was an honest question.

<comment><USER47> The problem of creating something interesting, a.k.a. creating art.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Guess I better clone the source before its deleted..

</comment><comment><USER49> Oh I was thinking something very similar few minutes ago and when I opened hacker news and saw this post I was amazed

</comment><comment><USER50> a) One can also use referer to check whether a visitor has come from Google to trigger the deletion (in addition to "seek itself in Google").

b) robots.txt shall get the same results, plus, no cached content at Google, unlike "deleting itself", which the cache content remains at Google.

</comment><comment><USER51> You mean a website which can't be used with Chrome or even with Android itself, on any browser.

</comment><comment><USER52> This makes me think about the immensely cool self destructing sunglasses in Mission Impossible

</comment><comment><USER53> I have a thought that I will forget immediately once somebody asks me what it is.

Now I am an artist, yay :-)

<comment> qu4z-2 What is it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> @Cjlm, what type of problem does it solve?

<comment><USER55> A Google worshiping sand mandala ( [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_mandala](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_mandala) ) ?</comment></comment>


CSS – Generator - <AUTHOR> CSS generator is a collection of tools. it can be used to get css codes snippets easily.
It can be used to get css codes snippets  easily & quikly including Shadows , Borders , Gradients tiles and Svgs Loaders collection!
All you need is just a click!
Simple,fast,innovative & attractive. <comment><USER2> Can somebody tell me where I should click?

<comment><AUTHOR> Here: [https://github.com/abhiprojectz/CSS- Generator](https://github.com/abhiprojectz/CSS-Generator)</comment></comment>


Dolphin – The Rise of HLE Audio - <AUTHOR> https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2014/11/12/the-rise-of-hle-audio/

<comment><USER2> I recently tried running Dolphin on my Macbook after a long hiatus, and was shocked to discover that my games were now running at a buttery 60fps. What's more, there are practically no glitches to be seen or heard anymore. When I last tried booting up my games about a year ago, all I could get was about 45fps at 1x resolution. Now I can have my Wii games with me wherever I go. It's stunning how quickly the Dolphin team is jumping over these technical hurdles. I find it almost impossible to visualize how a bunch of young, eager amateurs (at the time) took an insanely complicated black box and created an almost perfect software version of it!

<comment><USER3> If you follow the (extremely well written) monthly progress updates on the blog, Dolphin has been seeing speedups in the range of 100% per month in some of the past few months. Pretty incredible.

[https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/](https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/)

<comment><USER4> I guess they've hit stage three of make it work, make it correct, make it fast.

<comment><USER5> Well we were once at a point where we had fast+working, as we added correct we lost speed. Now some of the devs are just re-adding that speed and others are making it even more correct :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Amazing writeup as always. The quality of Dolphin's blog posts is really impressive. Now I want to go play some Wind Waker.

</comment><comment><USER7> Does Dolphin use JIT like PPSSPP? I have a crappy 2008 Macbook,and PSP games run incredibly well on it. I understand the Gamecube has more powerfull specs,but even on my PC Dolphin games were quite slow 2/3 years ago. I need to try running MSG 1 again to check the progress.

<comment><USER8> Dolphin indeed has a JIT ( [https://github.com/dolphin- emu/dolphin/tree/master/Source/Co...](https://github.com/dolphin- emu/dolphin/tree/master/Source/Core/Core/PowerPC/Jit64) ). Fiora has also done her magic in the past few months to make the JIT better and faster than ever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> All this is about fixing a bug in some emulator for an 2001-vintage video game console.

<comment><USER10> This is about the same thing that the Internet Archive is about: Preserving culture. That is also why the developers prefer accuracy over anything else.

At some point in the future the actual machines that run these games, along with the data stores for these games, will all be broken or otherwise incapable of functioning. However as long as there is machinery that can run these emulators, or emulate an OS that can run these, they will be preserved.

<comment><USER11> I'm a longtime emulator fanatic, but have seriously never considered this idea that emulation ensures future generations can experience a part of culture.

So insightful. Thanks for sharing.

<comment><USER12> I recommend you to read up on byuu's work. He's the author of bSNES, an accuracy-oriented emulator for the SNES.

This article is a bit old, but it's a good start: [http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/08/accuracy-takes- power-o...](http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/08/accuracy-takes-power-one- mans-3ghz-quest-to-build-a-perfect-snes-emulator/)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tumblr Is On Fire. Now Over 6 Million Users, 1.5 Billion Pageviews A Month - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/19/tumblr-stats/ <comment><USER2> These are awesome numbers. Posterous' dying platforms campaign looks ever more lame now.

<comment><USER3> I've switched from wordpress to posterous to tumblr. I like Tumblr's lack of branded drop down button that Posterous has even on self hosted, custom themes. Photographer Terry's Diary is a minimal Tumblr powered blog thats pretty interesting - <http://www.terrysdiary.com> (mildly NSFW)

<comment><USER4> Wait - I see two buttons on all Tumblr sites: one that says "+ Follow" and one that says "Join Tumblr". Is this something that I'm in a bucket test on or does it go away if you're logged or something?

<comment><USER5> The Tumblr blog owner can choose to show that or not

<comment><USER6> If you're a Tumblr user you'll see two buttons in the upper right-hand corner on every Tumblr blog - regardless of any change of settings.

This isn't meant for advertising though (these are existing users after all). Those two buttons allow you to:

      a) Follow that Tumblr (like RSS)
      b) Go to your Tumblr Dashboard

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> All these other blogging services sometimes forget the basics: People write because they want to be appreciated. Tumblr has very good 'appreciation' and 'feel good' triggers in there. So it grows.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm still trying to figure out this "quick blogging" phenomenon (and microblogging also), having no desire or apparently no inclination to do either of them.

I looked around the tumblr directory at some blogs and I didn't find anything that wasn't just glossy regurgitated content. Not one held my attention for even a second.

Anyway this article helped me out understanding tumblr (and how it contrasts with posterous)

[http://arstechnica.com/business/reviews/2010/02/tumblr-vs- po...](http://arstechnica.com/business/reviews/2010/02/tumblr-vs-posterous- quick-blogging-showdown.ars)

Someday soon I'll need to do a little blogging. Can anybody recommend something easy to use but not so gimmicky as tumblr or posterous? I'll probably want a nice way to format code, and probably a comment section. I'm a developer and not afraid to get my hands dirty but I'd rather have something self hosted because I'm not interested a potential cracking vulnerability I'd get hosting my own.

<comment><USER2> Wordpress can be as basic as you want (just text posts in reverse chronological order) and can be enhanced with plugins.

Host it yourself: wordpress.org. Have it hosted for you: wordpress.com.

For any hosted blog, I'd put it on a domain or subdomain you own so that if you do decide to move later, you control it 100%.

<comment><USER9> If you're going with self-hosted Wordpress, I'd also recommend putting it on a separate machine and ideally on a separate network from your other machines, so that they aren't compromised when your blog gets hacked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ive always wondered, how do they bring in revenue? Do they at all? I currently use at least 4 tumblr blogs and Im not paying them so where is the money going to be made up after they run out of funding?

<comment><USER11> From their Terms of Services:

Some of the Services require payment of fees. Subscriber shall pay all applicable fees, as described on the Site in connection with such Services selected by Subscriber. Tumblr reserves the right to change its pricing and to institute new charges at any time, upon ten (10) days prior notice to Subscriber, which will be posted on the Site and e-mailed to Subscriber along with a link to the modified fee schedule so that you can review it. Use of the Services by Subscriber following such notification constitutes Subscriber's acceptance of any new or increased charges.

\</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

Or, it could just be that they're making money by raising it from VCs.

<comment><USER6> Tumblr actually built out a feature set that was to be called "Tumblr Plus" ala Vimeo. This included group blogs and many other features that have since been released in the past year.

Ultimately, Tumblr's venture capitalists (including Fred Wilson) encouraged them to release those features as part of the free product and continue to focus on growth rather than monetization.

"Wilson added that 'some businesses should be allowed to scale and that takes capital — going for revenues and profits too early in some businesses is a mistake.'"

[http://gigaom.com/2010/04/20/tumblr-gets-more-money-now- it-j...](http://gigaom.com/2010/04/20/tumblr-gets-more-money-now-it-just-has- to-make-some/)

<comment><USER12> minor semantics, but I believe Karp decided it was best to focus on growth over revenue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> How much is porn? Not criticizing, just wondering...

</comment><comment><USER14> For what it's worth, I posted a little analysis of the platform about eight months ago that I think still holds pretty well today:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=961523>

</comment><comment><USER15> Compete comparison for Tumblr vs Posterous vs Wordpress

[http://siteanalytics.compete.com/tumblr.com+posterous.com+wo...](http://siteanalytics.compete.com/tumblr.com+posterous.com+wordpress.com/)

</comment><comment><USER16> 1.5b page views = ? revenue?

What is their revenue model?

<comment><USER17> Suing Posterous for calling them dead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I love Tumblr!

1) It's free.

2) I can edit the HTML.

3) It supports Disqus.

4) Default themes are awesome.

5) Custom domain support is free.

</comment><comment><USER19> but is becoming a new "home for trolls" if we're to believe gawker

[http://gawker.com/5589103/how-the-internet-beat-up- an-11+yea...](http://gawker.com/5589103/how-the-internet-beat-up- an-11+year+old-girl?skyline=true&s=i)

<comment><USER20> To some extent that validates a medium. If you don't have trolls you ought to be really worried.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Does anyone know what kind of architecture Tumblr uses to serve up that traffic?

<comment><USER22> Squid static page caching helps them a lot, I'm sure.

S3 for image serving.

Backend is written in PHP, IIRC.

<comment><USER23> IIRC? What's that?

<comment><USER24> if I recall correctly

<comment><USER25> If i rewind correctly

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> That's all fine, but when will the Dashboard get decent loading times? I know you're supposed to be a cool kid & email your blog entries, but I don't like what that does with line breaks.

<comment><USER27> I'd like to see a nicer way to read followed blogs. The Dashboard bundles everything together, and each site loses its design and identity (which a big part of what makes Tumblr great).

Maybe they'll do something like they've done with the Archive view (e.g., <http://staff.tumblr.com/archive>) or the Mega-Editor (e.g., <http://www.tumblr.com/mega-editor> if you have Tumblr log).

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've noticed a trend where some high traffic blogs have trouble keeping the lights on and are switching over to tumblr for their bandwidth capabilities and collaboration capabilities.

</comment><comment><USER29> It would be great to compare that number to the other big blogs: wordpress, blogger, sixapart, livejournal, posterous, etc.

</comment><comment><USER30> Maybe that has something to do with them finally adding oauth support

<http://staff.tumblr.com/post/806396160/oauth>

<comment><USER6> Yup, in the 6 days since the blog post you cite, they've grown by hundreds of millions of monthly page views...fueled entirely by their announced support of Oauth.

<comment><USER30> LOL, sorry I said that badly.

What I meant was the opposite - their massive growth encouraged them to finally add oauth support.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Would be nice to know Wordpress numbers too.</comment>


Ask HN: We launched 2wks ago and just hit $700 MRR. Should we chase funding? - <AUTHOR> I launched a SaaS business recently in the sales automation space, with a product that's better than anything else in the industry (especially at our price point). Without a ton of marketing, we've gotten to around $700 in MRR already with really high conversion rates (1-2% of our total visitors pay us).
We're not profitable yet, however the cash flow is modelled in a way that we'll be profitable after 250 users (we're at around 30 right now). In the long run I want to build this myself without venture capital, but right now a quick $100-$200k seed investment would immediately give us the influx we needed to become a sustainable business.
So, I need your suggestions: do we continue to just slowly grow ourselves, haemorrhaging 1-2k a month until profitability? Do I take time away from the business to focus on early-stage accelerators? Are we too early to look for investment? <comment><USER2> Congrats on getting traction.

I think you are too small to consider funding.

Even though you are downmarket I would look at raising your plans. Looks like your average is around $23. Even though you are downmarket of clearbit they should be higher.

You can grandfather in your existing customers. But I would rework your pricing so you start at $49 min and move up from there. Structure your plans where the more value your clients get their plans increase accordingly. So build in a way to upgrade them to higher plans as they use your app more.

$1-2k per month sounds like a lot to support 30 customers. Look at ways you can still provide a great app/support and lower your burn rate.

Don't look for funding, maintain control and keep adding signups. That $1-$2k is you investing in your business and then you can have 100% of the profit in the future. I think you can lower your burn rate though.

Good luck taking it to the next level.

If you haven't checked these out yet give them a listen:

DHH Startup School Talk [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CDXJ6bMkMY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CDXJ6bMkMY)

Listen to their archive, great tips and inspiration from what Rob has done over the years. [http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/archives](http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/archives)

Search for patio11 on here and check out his posts, podcast and book.

</comment><comment><USER3> I remember my first dollar in MRR so well. It's an incredible validation that you have something that can work. Going from $0.00 to $1.00 in revenue is difficult and impressive, so take a minute to appreciate that.

That said, as I'm sure you know, you're a long way off from a sustainable business.

To answer your question, it's not too early to look for investment, there are plenty of businesses that get funded without revenue, but it may really not be the right decision for you. Do you have a lot of competitors that are breathing down your neck or a large entrenched market that you need capital to get into? If so, then you may need the funding.

Sales automation is very competitive market, so in this space I would generally lean towards yes, you need it.

But on the other hand, it sounds like you're making some money without that. IMHO, with what little I know about your company, I would try to hustle your way to $7k/mo in the next 6-12 months. During that time, figure out what you and your partner/contractor/buddy are good and bad at and where the bottlenecks are (e.g, coding, marketing, sales, customer support, etc). Get a good idea of your growth through different marketing channels, your churn, and generally how much your customers like your product. While investment makes your feel good and can get you some press, it's a necessary evil, not necessarily something to be proud of.

Keep going on your own for a while.

</comment><comment><USER4> Sounds like you are off to an incredible start, so why not just run with it and see how far you go? Without VC pressure to get HUGE super quickly you could have a great business on your hands. So if you simply need funding for cash flow or to support yourselves, then try friends and family. You might be surprised how much people are ready to take a chance on your idea.

If you have some degree of product-market fit, then an accelerator likely won't be a great use of time.

</comment><comment><USER5> Set a goal of 100% growth per month, achieve it and you'll be profitable in about 3 months. My point is, maybe make a spreadsheet that has various growth rates and see how many months it takes at whatever growth percentage, and see if you can stand that.

I think taking $100/$200K from VC when you're making $700/month is going to cost you a TON of equity.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you launched just 2 weeks ago, then you still know absolutely nothing about your churn and I suspect that will be something you should be monitoring month over month to see if those initial customers stick around at month #2 or month #3.

</comment><comment><USER7> dont do it. that quick $100k means you will never be in full control

instead look for how you can cut/delay/share costs until profitability.

smugmug self funded, and just bought flickr

</comment><comment><USER8> What would the 100-200k let you do that you can't do now?

</comment><comment><USER9> Congrats on the initial traction.

I asked this in your Show HN thread, and I'll ask again: where did you get the list of emails belonging to "over 350 million professionals?" This is clearly your main value-add and the reason people are paying you money. But was the data legally sourced? This is the first question any competent VC will ask, and you better have a damn good answer to it, especially in today's political climate around personal data.

</comment><comment><USER10> you can

A) increase the price, without knowing your product, you have market fit, it could be because of the pricing, or it could be because of the product.

B) Offer 3mo/6mo/full year bundle w/ light discount, this way you can increase cash flow up front to use to get to your next growth target.

</comment><comment><USER11> It depends on a lot of things. Do you need the money? What will you do with it, and how the will the value of your share of the pie compare with/without investment.

</comment><comment><USER12> What's the product?

<comment><USER13> [https://www.uselio.com/](https://www.uselio.com/)

<comment><USER14> Very cool. As long as you are getting traction and burn is met, avoid raising. :)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there a reason I shouldn't open source payment related code? - <AUTHOR> So recently I created a rails site to take payments. I took significant steps towards moving all site secrets to environment variables using rbenv-vars, such that there are zero secrets stored in version control, and all references to those secrets are environment variables. I did that all with the idea that I could simply open source the site.
However, after looking around I can't seem to find many other people doing this at all. Is this because it's bad practice to open source any payment related code? Or because it would be easier for malicious people to potentially find loopholes? Or is this just something that companies are lazy about doing?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Two schools of thought, with the assumption that as you said no secrets, keys etc are in code.

Open sourcing it allows the people to provide you with feedback how to make it more secure or help find vulnerabilities so you can address them right away.

Not open sourcing it, prevents people from finding vulnerabilities which they could use to compromise your site, or other sites based on your code.

My own two cents, if you want to open source it, I'd do it and just value the feedback you will get and make things as tight as possible. A lot of times code doesn't get open sourced not because people are afraid of security but afraid of being judged by what they had to hack together to get 1.0 out, and then how long that code sometimes hangs around. Speaking from experience on this for sure.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, and that's the thing. If I do have bugs, I'd rather know about them and potentially let someone else learn from them, than simply solving security through it being closed source (the definition of "security through obscurity").

Thanks for the two cents!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What do you mean by "take payments"? You mean you collect CC/other info and send it to a merchant like Stripe? Or do you have a merchant account (as in an ISO account), and are actually communicating with a processor directly?

If it's the former and you store any customer information at all, I would caution against it, since it identifies your application as being something that people can attack and possibly get data from.

If it's the former and you don't store any information that can even remotely identify customers, it wouldn't really hurt. I don't think Stripe/Paypal/etc require that integration with their APIs be kept secret.

If it's the latter (merchant account) I would assume that you're required to maintain PCI compliance, in which case even if you remove all "secrets", it still may be unacceptable to open source that code.

Keep in mind, if you store data and transact with processors, any bug in your code opens both the processors and users up to fraud. Generally I don't consider that a good idea. Code audits are one thing (which can be done by hiring a firm to internally review your code), but giving it to everyone I think would be a bad idea.</comment>


WeWork, Bankers Have Discussed Laying Off One-Third of Workforce - <AUTHOR> https://www.theinformation.com/articles/wework-bankers-have-discussed-laying-off-one-third-of-workforce <comment><USER2> How have we gotten to the point where a company that is considering a $10-46B IPO is in a position where 1/3 of its staff is redundant and can be laid off, where investors can look at that company and think it's a good and growing investment to sustain their public pension or hedge fund returns, where bankers and consultants can come in and say yes deprive these 5000 people of their income and livelihoods because we need to give the founders and early investors an exit, where "tech" has come to be defined as a more flexible office space leasing model that scales quickly, where the brightest new students want to replicate another SV "tech" success by following the same playbook.

There is something extremely wrong with the rate of innovation, productivity growth, the division of labor and capital, and the distribution of profits between labor and capital in developed countries today, and it's unsustainable.

<comment><USER3> > where bankers and consultants can come in and say yes deprive these 5000 > people of their income and livelihoods because we need to give the founders > and early investors an exit

So if those 5000 people are doing work that is not valuable, we should keep paying them to do worthless work? There are a million worthwhile things we need people for, let's not pay them for busy work.

This is why we need a good social safety net... those people should be let go, and find new productive work... but as you pointed out, that will be extremely disruptive to their lives while they find new work. If we could support them with a safety during that time, to prevent this business decision from depriving them of their livelihood while they found a new place where their labor was productive, we could be both economically and morally efficient.

<comment><USER4> Who deems what is "productive"? I've seen plenty of apps that were really great get turned into shit because they were monetized or put under new leadership.

See Snapchat, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Reddit.

<comment><USER3> The market is pretty good at determining where resources should be allocated, as long as we mitigate the known shortcomings of a market economy - externalities, tragedy of the commons, etc.

I agree that I wish that not every app was designed to be VC style - grow to be huge, with large revenue and expenses. I do think there are plenty of examples of smaller, not VC growth type companies... they just, by definition, aren't as big and popular as the high growth, large audience, ones.

<comment><USER5> > as long as we mitigate the known shortcomings of a market economy - > externalities, tragedy of the commons, etc.

Pretty loaded caveat there. I can't think of a market economy that's actually existed where we've adequately internalized externalities and protected the commons.

<comment><USER3> Not going to argue, but what are you suggesting we do instead? I think we work on adding those safe guards as best we can, rather than throw out the entirety of a market economy.

<comment><USER5> A fair point, and I don't have a silver bullet. But wherever we talk about markets optimizing utility we need to acknowledge that to-date that's purely theoretical, and hand-waving away externalities and the commons has brought the entire planet to the brink of ecological collapse.

In some ways, the tyranny and 'sub-optimal' allocation of central planning seems preferable.

I'm more on the mandatory cooperative enterprise boat. But like I said, I don't have a good solution.

<comment><USER3> I think if you are going to point out that every market economy has failed to properly handle externalities, you also should acknowledge that every centrally planned forced cooperative has ended up run by abusive leaders who do not take care of their citizens.

All systems are going to have powerful people who work the system for their own gain... mitigating that is the primary problem of government design.

<comment><USER5> > you also should acknowledge that every centrally planned forced cooperative > has ended up run by abusive leaders who do not take care of their citizens.

I mean, that's my point. That abusive leaders who do not take care of their citizens in an economy centrally planned to not destroy the Earth is preferable to a "free" one that does.

It's a false dichotomy. The capitalist world has included horrible authoritarian governments that have perpetuated the same atrocities against humans as your "abusive leaders", just like these centrally planned economies haven't exactly been environmental stewards.

All else equal, I'm saying that I'd prefer a sub-optimal centrally planned economy that guaranteed strong environmental protections.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Had an interview with engineering at wework... the projects they pitch were things like creating a augmented reality system to visualize office build outs...

I picked up the vibe that none of their engineering endevors will drive any profits and basicly "sounds/look cool". I dont like being part of engineering teams that are cost centers and not value ads.

<comment><USER7> Every time WeWork recruiters email me, I wonder what they need this many software engineers for. At least Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, Pinterest, etc. have a lot of traffic from users. But WeWork?

<comment><USER8> I could see some pretty interesting systems for building management at scale being created, along with projects related to desks/chair/couch reliability, cleanability, etc. The internal dashboards for location health, product ordering, and scheduling are probably extensive too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I feel sorry that WeWork receives a lot of negativity for "not going to be profitable" and "not being a technology company". It might be true, but as a potential customer, I am extremely happy with their existence.

I live in Warsaw and 3 years ago there were not a single decent coworking place. Every option seemed depressing and overpriced for their offering. Then WeWork and their competitor Mindspace opened up. I chose the latter since it was closer to my home and I couldn't be happier. I assume WeWork would be the same. Brand new building, ergonomic desk, good looking interior, many meeting places, phone booths, free barista services, free delivery pickup service, 24h access, free bike rental, shower, community events, even massage and manicure is hosted few times per month. All this for $400.

The price feels as a bargain. Not sure if it's partly covered by VC money or is it due to competition by WeWork but as a customer I just want to thank them and hope it continues.

<comment><USER10> That's because it is a bargain funded by VC money.

<comment><USER11> It is a sustainable business to have "cool" coworking spaces for $400 per month (adjusted to COL). Just not a $50B business.

<comment><USER12> I don't think it is, though. WeWork's perks are a _massive_ overhead cost, on top of the huge upfront cost of building out a space that is trendy. I have yet to see any evidence that this model is actually sustainable, even at smaller scale. Co-working spaces that _are_ long-term sustainable tend to be some combination of more expensive, more boring, or less built-out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Heh, I got a recruiter from WeWork bothering me this morning about to see if I was interested in "confidentially exploring this opportunity". I was debating looking into it, but with all the crap coming out with WeWork, I think I'll pass.

<comment><USER14> at least they are offering the ability to confidentially explore the opportunity - just think if your friends found out!

<comment><USER13> I genuinely have no idea what she meant; if I didn't think it would be a waste of her time I would act like I'm interested to find out.

<comment><USER15> She's trying to tell you she won't tell your boss that you are interested in quitting your job, I think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I wonder if at the end of this year we'll look back at these last 10 years and wonder if we've really even made as much technological progress as it seems when funding, # of unicorns, and throwing "tech company" around for every venture-backed company has been our main proxy for "innovation."

</comment><comment><USER16> Ignore the elephant, ignore the elephant, ignore the elephant,HOLY CRAP there's an elephant in the room!!

<comment><USER17> "So _that 's_ where all this elephant crap came from."

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The couple WeWork offices I go to have pretty minimal staffing. 2 to 3 working the front door and on-site. 2 to 3 janitorial staffs; may be even part time. Unless they have lots of back office people, I don't see where they can cut personnel.

<comment><USER19> Meetup.com, flatiron, any of the other companies they own.

<comment><USER20> Ah I see, Flatiron School a quick google search cleared up. Not Flatiron health for anyone else confused.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Hypothetically, if I had a working solution for WeWork that would add value by really differentiating them from most other cowork spaces (because its technical complicated). How would I be able to sell it to them?

I would mainly be worried that they copy it after explaining and a few demos. In the end they can hire a lot of people very quickly whatever their value is.

</comment><comment><USER14> Sounds better than three thirds in bankruptcy, which is the alternative.

</comment><comment><USER22> What will happen to residents? Can we end up locked out of our offices?

<comment><USER23> Only if you bring an umbrella to work

<comment><USER24> WeWork branded padlock umbrellas — a path to profitability.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Why did this fall off the homepage so quickly?</comment>


Live SEO Course with Moz's Rand Fishkin - <AUTHOR> https://courses.platzi.com/courses/seo-training/ <comment><AUTHOR> I think Rand is pretty awesome and the Platzi people did a great job on our GitLab course, looking forward to this starting in 8 minutes.</comment>


The Last True Hermit - <AUTHOR> http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsmakers/201409/the-last-true-hermit

<comment><USER2> It's a good article. But it has been posted here several times recently: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8205993](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8205993).</comment>


Show HN : VerticalSet, next generation search platform/engine - <AUTHOR> http://www.verticalset.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> See blog post for more details

<http://blog.verticalset.com/launching-verticalset>

There are many innovations involved in this platform and would love to get feedback on what you think of it as a search engine and more importantly as a platform.

I intend to change from current closed nature of search engines to more open one where any developer can control what appears in search results.</comment>


GTmetrix: web-based pagespeed/yslow reports - <AUTHOR> http://gtmetrix.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> The biggest benefit I see to this tool is that it's usable by people who don't have (or want to use) Firefox, or who don't want to install Firebug, Pagespeed, and ySlow and do all the testing themselves.

Also, since having Firebug installed actually disables the Javascript JIT in pre-3.6 Firefox ([http://antennasoft.net/robcee/2009/12/15/firebug-and-the- jit...](http://antennasoft.net/robcee/2009/12/15/firebug-and-the-jit/)), it saves having to take that performance hit everywhere if you haven't upgraded for whatever reason.</comment>


Why does the tech world still embrace Peter Thiel? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/20/peter-thiel-donald-trump-donations-facebook-zuckerberg-support-diversity <comment><USER2> I remember as far back as 2012 seeing Gawker articles and truly feeling ashamed for humanity. You had these pompous writers completely mocking and attempting to knock down elon musk as some insane fool for his recent release of the hyperloop plans, etc.

So here's a guy actually moving our society forward in transportation and the environment, and these smug writers try to cast him as a clown.

Does anyone actually defend on substance any of the activities Gawker was engaging in? These people pushed wrong narratives and destroyed lives over reasons that were most often proven false and always self serving to the interests of gawker.

I think peter is a smart guy, but I really feel a sense of gratitude to him for ridding the world of that awful organization.

Everyone sensationalistically shouts he's an evil billionaire damaging free speech and journalism, but gawker was engaged in voyeurism and bullying. And a court of law agreed with it. We make exceptions to pure free speech all the time, such as not being allowed to shout fire in a movie theater, etc.

I don't care to comment about his support of trump, but I also find it curious most of his vocal critics are themselves journalists, and are in my opinion resentful of the fact he set a precedent that the power "journalists" have is also something that can be held accountable.

<comment><USER3> >"These people pushed wrong narratives and destroyed lives over reasons that were most often proven false and always self serving to the interests of ...."

Assuming our opinion is like above, but against Trump, do we have justification to attack Trump and Thiel based on their political opinion?

<comment><USER4> It can be your "political opinion" that the government should be small, taxes kept low, and regulation to a minimum.

When you start bragging about sexually assaulting women, advocating violence against your opponents, and feeding the flames of racial tension you've moved well beyond mere opinion.

It's bewildering that Thiel would support such a character now given how Thiel won't "suffer" from Trump not being in the White House.

It was under Bill Clinton that this entire tech party got started: The commercialization of the Internet. Laws favorable to the start-up investment scene. Freeing up investment banks to allocate capital more freely.

I just don't get Thiel's motivation here. You don't want a total lunatic in power, you want someone you can _talk_ to and persuade.

<comment><USER5> The only people who keep fuelling racial tensions are Democrats, notably Obama and Clinton, constantly telling black people they're oppressed and that the police is racist. Trump had to cancel a rally in Chicago after democrats started rioting, he's not the one instigating the violence, but whenever it breaks out, it's always described as a "fight breaking out", and never as democrats assaulting Trump supporters, which is what it is.

Trump doesn't bring race to anything. He's just called "racist" by people who don't understand the term "illegal alien", or that Islam is not a race.

Trump said these terrible things a decade ago. A decade ago Clinton and Obama were strongly, and publicly, against gay marriage. A decade ago Clinton praised sen. Robert Byrd as her "mentor", a former KKK member, and noted racist. Go back further, and you have tapes of her laughing at the victims of her husband and destroying their lives. The thing with Hillary though, is that you don't have to go that far with her, if you stop ignoring the fact she should be in jail right now, and not running for office.

<comment><USER4> I'm sorry, which candidate was endorsed by the KKK and other white power groups?

I have no idea where you get your news from but the wild assumptions you're making are absurd.

<comment><USER5> Who cares who endorses which candidate, that's out of their control. Hillary was endorsed by the Californian leader of the KKK, if you care, i don't. I'm not making any assumptions. Hillary's on tape calling Byrd her "friend and mentor" after his death.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryweuBVJMEA&ab_channel=U.S.D...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryweuBVJMEA&ab_channel=U.S.DepartmentofState)

<comment><USER4> It's hardly cut and dry: [http://www.snopes.com/clinton-byrd-photo- klan/](http://www.snopes.com/clinton-byrd-photo-klan/)

You really need to stop listening to people like Alex Jones.

<comment><USER5> My point is not that these things are or are not true, nor whether they matter or not. My point is that you're labelling Trump as the worst human being in history based on such minuscule things, but ignore everything remotely questionable about Hillary Clinton.

<comment><USER4> The point of an election is not to find the perfect human being, it's to pick between the lesser of two evils.

The dirt on Clinton is well known: Her hawkish attitude to war, her enthusiastic use of drones, her embrace of free-trade policies like TPP, and so on.

The dirt on Trump is way, way worse, and more keeps coming to light: What has he paid in taxes? What is he hiding? Why do his businesses keep failing in a spectacular way? Why is he constantly being sued by thousands of people? Why does he flip out at the slightest provocation?

Trump isn't the worst human being in history, but he's the worst major party candidate for president in the last hundred years.

If Thiel was supporting Romney, Cruz, hell, _any_ of the last round candidates in the last twenty years, nobody would be upset. Why he chose to get in bed with this particular turd, I don't know.

<comment><USER5> Most of the negative things you had to say about Trump are a part of being a high-profile entrepreneur. How does any of that come even remotely close to purging a private e-mail server you used for communicating top-secret documents while in office, or collapsing on a warm day is beyond me.

<comment><USER4> Maybe Trump is just like every other entrepreneur that has a trail of wreckage behind them, but when running for President there's different standards and the tradition has been, virtually without exception, that you release your taxes and a doctor's assessment of your health.

"Collapsing on a warm day" from pneumonia? Seriously? You've got some issues if you're busting on someone for making every effort to show up to an event relating to September 11th.

Speaking of purging email servers: [http://www.salon.com/2015/03/12/the_george_w_bush_email_scan...](http://www.salon.com/2015/03/12/the_george_w_bush_email_scandal_the_media_has_conveniently_forgotten_partner/)

Trump is a train-wreck _in progress_. If you're tied to that wagon you're in for some disappointment, win or lose.

<comment><USER5> We all know why he won't release his tax returns. He knows the system, he can fix it. Hillary can complain about that all she wants, but she didn't do anything about it while in office. That's been one of his main campaigning points since the beginning.

Why would you even talk about Trump's health records as a Clinton supporter. First it's not pneumonia, then it's pneumonia. She collapses from it, then hugs a child after it miraculously gets through the Secret Service, even though the disease can be contagious. Pneumonia can cause serious complications, Clinton doesn't tell you about it, and now you praise her for how strong she is? Why would you do that?

Who cares what Bush did. He's not running for president, why would that be even remotely relevant to the discussion.

The only bad thing you managed to say about Trump is that he's a wild card, while completely ignoring, or trying to awkwardly justify, that Clinton committed crimes, and showed utter incompetence while in office.

<comment><USER4> What Bush did, what Clinton did, what _countless others_ have done is delete email. You want to hold her to account, sure, but you better be prepared to accept that others have done the same thing. If that's a crime, there's a long list of criminals.

The FBI, however, has concluded that there was no crime. So hey, take it up with them.

If you think Trump's the candidate to vote for that says a lot about your judgement. Many people are voting for Hillary simply because there's no reasonable alternative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The entire Peter Thiel situation has taught me that the tech industry, like the mainstream media, is so corrupt, that they have no problem colluding against someone that disagrees with their political views.

Just remember: You might be the victim getting your livelihood taken away someday..all because of your differing political views.

<comment><USER3> Here is my counterargument.

It would be unethical to team publicly against average person, based on his opinions, but Thiel is not a average person.

Large amounts of money change the status of a person. Money and political power are largely interchangeable. Thiel is billionaire and his status and influence is closer to major politician, large company or small state than average joe.

Thiel has demonstrated that he is willing to use his money to attack against others he don't like, so I think he should be able to take some blowback. Hie livelihood is not in a stake.

<comment><USER6> This sort of mentality is sounding more and more like Germany in the 1930s.

You have money? You can be treated as less than a human.

<comment><USER3> >This sort of mentality is sounding more and more like Germany in the 1930s.

This is accepted principle in liberal democracies. Public Officials and figures get less protection than common man.

<comment><USER6> "Officials and figures get less protection than common man."

This is an accepted principle in evil authoritarian countries, not liberal democracies.

Everyone should have the same rights, regardless of wealth or status. This is just an excuse, so you can make yourself feel better at night for treating someone as less than human.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Supreme Court deals major blow to public sector unions - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/27/politics/supreme-court-union-fees-decision/index.html <comment><USER2> Silver lining: let's hope this will weaken the police union?

I'm actually not a big fan of public sector unions (I am of private sector unions) simply because a stronger union in the public sector means the taxpayers have to pay more and it's harder to fire employees that show poor performance at work.</comment>


Uber loses latest legal bid over driver rights - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/business-46617584 <comment><USER2> "Drivers... want to keep the freedom to choose if, when and where they drive." "If drivers were classified as workers they would inevitably lose some of the freedom and flexibility that comes with being their own boss."

Lol. These companies are still pushing this blatantly false propaganda that you can "make $25+ an hour" and that you're free to just pop in and out if the system whenever you want to achieve that. Here's the reality - you're only going to make that kind of money on a few select hours. Namely - late nights, early mornings, and weekends (again mostly nights). The reality is most hours of the week you may be looking at making <$15 an hour, and that's before you consider wear and tear, gas, extra insurance, tickets (given enough time you will get fined doing this kind of work one way or another), and all the other little costs that come up (bring tissues and water bottles and candy for your passengers!).

There's virtually no freedom in this unless you're literally just trying to make beer money for a night and work for 2-3 hours a week. If you depend on this for consistent work (read: not a career, but a full time fill in between jobs) - you're going to be raked over the coals. You don't get a choice in when or where you work. Hell you don't even really have the choice to decline rides unless you're willing to drive all the way to a person (up to 15 mins away), THEN the app tells you where you're headed, and at that point you probably have a person standing there looking at you. You can drive away and cancel, but these companies know that the empathetic nature of most people makes that extremely painful. Plus you've wasted your time and gas (unpaid) getting here, so you're paying for this "freedom". You can't set boundaries for where you work - you might end up hours from home and again, you now have to subsidize the cost of getting home again.

So basically every claim these companies make about the value they give to their workers is bullshit. You don't control "if" you drive, any more than you control "if" you eat. You don't control where you drive... pretty much at all. And you don't control "when" you drive unless you're willing to work below minimum wage. I would love if these assholes get buried and have to pay back all the drivers historically for the wages they deserve and give compensation for the psychological manipulation they've orchestrated. I can't believe that in 2018 we still permit these shenanigans that systemically restructure themselves to squeeze through clearly illegal employment methods that would be handled in any other industry.

</comment><comment><USER3> > "If drivers were classified as workers they would inevitably lose some of > the freedom and flexibility that comes with being their own boss."

Does the law actually mandate that employers offer less freedom and flexibility if someone is classified as a worker? Because from my vague familiarity with it, it does nothing of the sort, and this statement by Uber is misleading well beyond the point of lying. After all, isn't it precisely the lack of said "freedom and flexibility" that got their contractors classified as workers in the first place?

<comment><USER4> I'm many US states, loss of flexibility is the likely outcome. For example, in California you cannot pay someone for a shift lasting less than two hours. You can send them home if there's no work, but you still owe them at least two, if not four hours worth of pay. So if a driver wants to knock out a few trips while he/she has some time to kill, that would functionally be illegal due to the cost burden. Current employment law assumes scheduled shifts, so the "drive when you want" option would likely fall apart when Uber is given the legal right to dictate that X number of drivers will be working peak hours.</comment></comment>


Amazon's UK FBA operations will be split from the EU - <AUTHOR> https://tamebay.com/2020/07/amazon-fba-brexit-bombshell-efn-and-pan-european-fba-ends-for-uk.html <comment><USER2> I fail to see the "bombshell" here. This is what everyone expected when leaving the EU single market.

The only bombshell would be if the UK negotiators managed to prevent a hard Brexit. Given the current track record of their leading political party, this seems unlikely.

<comment><USER3> In context of Brexit, the inevitable consequences of the UK's actions is quite often a "bombshell" to the UK. The denial is strong.

<comment><USER4> This. You really have to be here to believe the extent to which the average Joe on the street believes they'll be able to have their cake and eat it after this is settled.

What's bizarre is that when challenged on how ridiculous that is, they'll immediately accept it as rational before saying "well we voted out anyway so it doesn't matter".

<comment><USER5> Is it the average Joe, or is it the 95th percentile idiot that happens to get attention?

<comment><USER6> Polling has repeatedly shown very widespread public confusion over what Brexit will actually do. Even many remain voters don't realise all the downsides.

<comment><USER5> > Polling has repeatedly shown very widespread public confusion over what > Brexit will actually do.

I can believe that.

> Even many remain voters don't realise all the downsides.

I can believe that, but what makes the confusion one-way? i.e. do leave voters realise all the upsides?

<comment><USER6> I mean, not being funny, but, what upsides?

The upsides of Brexit are generally, at best, very subjective and ephemeral ('sovereignty' in the sense of passport colour change) or outright imaginary (the EU is banning kettles and jam).

<comment><USER5> As a remain voter, I'm not best to advocate for the strengths of leave. As I'm sure you're aware, debate between remain and leave is difficult. Characterising sovereignty concerns as "passport colour change" won't start the conversation on the right path, however.

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29607906-why-vote- leave](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29607906-why-vote-leave) was a good book for understanding some benefits of Leave.

Please don't discredit the positions or the book solely from my my hazy memory of the book, but here goes:

* EU is a weakening trade bloc, so we're better off out of the customs union, and making trade deals that work for UK, rather than that work for the EU (example: cheaper tomatoes from Africa, that the EU will not make, since it'll make Spain/Italy worse off)

* UK's voting patterns within EU was anomolous: UK voted against policies far more than other countries anyway.

* UK public seems to have a max acceptable rate of immigration, and we may prefer more selective immigration policies (e.g. target the high skilled workers in India, China, Australia)

Those are meant to pique your interest in the book. I don't think starting a debate on HN will be productive, at least because I barely remember the book.

<comment><USER6> > Characterising sovereignty concerns as "passport colour change" won't start > the conversation on the right path, however.

By that I meant that the Brexiter conception of sovereignty is heavily based on surface symbolism; the archetypical Brexiter is fine with taking US rules on food safety, in which they have no voice in making, if it means they can change the colour of the passport (which, of course, they could do within the EU anyway, but never mind). That is, Brexit is not generally actually concerned with sovereignty in any real sense, and Brexit Britain will lose control, not gain it.

<comment><USER5> By responding solely to a minor part of my comment, and doubling down on your caricatures, I don't think you're willing to actually discuss this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is an example why exiting global cooperation such as the European Union is bad for the economy. Another side effect may be that For example the real estate market in London goes lower due to less foreign professionals competing for housing. Plus the price of vegetable at the supermarket will be higher due to more expensive imports from Holland the gardeners of Europe and Spanish fruits being more expensive. There is a benefit less carbon emissions from transport. Amazon selling less may be good for the local economy in that local producer can sell more local made products. Consumers will be hurt as they can buy less goods for the same amount of money.

As a European I hope UK will want to rejoin the EU. This will take time. I see price inflation in UK due to less foreign trade will lead to price increases. Inflation will make central banks raise interest rates which will make it more expensive with mortgages. I guess this was not the story UK brexit politicans sold to the UK people. And yes less income less income to UK national health service in form of taxes which was also not what was sold by politicians. Hope UK will rejoin EU soon. Frankly post Covid-19 the question is if UK can afford to exit EU.

<comment><USER8> _> As a European I hope UK will want to rejoin the EU._

As a European living in the UK, no mate, you really don't want these folks to rejoin. Their class system is pathological and their mass-media are fundamentally corrupt. I say this against my best interests, but England in particular should never be allowed back in. They made their bed and they should lie in it.

<comment><USER9> I hear Italy is an enlightened political paradise with ample job creation and flawless social structures. No wonder you are so enlightened to make these entirely rational remarks

Can you list what interaction you've had with the "class system" in the UK? Is the media in your home country any different? What about the media is "corrupt"?

<comment><USER8> I have kids and live in an area where the class divisions are pretty stark. Italy has many problems, but at least they don't enforce classism (and religious separation, which inevitably becomes ethnic division too) from primary-school age.

As for media, UK tabloids are beyond the pale. Nowhere on the continent I've ever seen a situation where most of the population is bombarded every day by outright racism and hate. The British upper classes make a joke of it (the "daily heil" etc), because they think it doesn't really affect them - which is only true until it isn't, and eventually you get a "brexit moment" when chickens come home to roost. In Italy, newspapers can be partisan or influenced by industrial interests like anywhere else, but tabloid-like hate- speech can only be found in a well-defined small minority of titles. You don't have a Murdoch-like figure - Berlusconi had his moment and was dealt with like any other political figure. The revolving door between journalism and politics is much worse in the UK, because most people employed in both fields come effectively from the same few classes. You have journalist wives writing excuses for their politician husbands, and nobody bats an eyelid. Somebody like Boris Johnson is free to write lies for decades until he gets where he wants to get.

UK tv is better, I'll give you that, and the BBC is excellent at being the last bastion of decency in a depressing landscape.

<comment><USER9> > I have kids and live in an area where the class divisions are pretty stark

How do you mean? I was asking for an illustration of the "class system" that you find oppressing to your person.

> most of the population is bombarded every day by outright racism and hate.

Well that's not true is it.

> The British upper classes make a joke of it

What might be considered Victorian upper class constitutes practically no one. If you don't like the media don't consume it.

Honestly I do not understand this unhealthy fixation on class that you have and frankly reject your assertions regarding it. At a guess you are using it as a simplification to understand a landscape you can't fully understand without it.

<comment><USER10> Class is still a big thing in the UK: [https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/mar/25/too-poor- to-p...](https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/mar/25/too-poor-to-play- children-in-social-housing-blocked-from-communal-playground)

<comment><USER9> I don't think you understand what class is. I'm familiar with the above story and it is beyond nonsense.

A communal facility maintained and paid for by some people doesn't necessarily have to be made available to anyone else.

If your back garden was in sight of someone living in social housing ought they be able to make use of your property?

<comment><USER11> Something like 60% of people going to Oxbridge went to private schools, despite 93% attending state schools, and this is after decades of campaigns, outreach, and adjusting entry criteria by school type. And this is new, the fraction from state schools used to be more like 10-20% if that in living memory.

That's just one example of class.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm in the UK. I can see this is going to mean a huge chunk of products disappearing from amazon here. A lot of stuff I order comes from Europe. So supply chain problems for months here we come!

Fun times ahead. And no I didn't vote for this shit show.

<comment><USER13> At least now you get to keep those 350 million GBP a week. /s

<comment><USER14> I really wish someone bothered to hold his feet to the fire on that one. He just got to chuckle and shrug it off, and the reaction from most seems to be "lol oh that's our Boris"

<comment><USER13> The way my British friends told me, nobody really took the brexit vote seriously and treated it like a Lord Buckethead, Boaty McBoat Face joke.

At least until the mic dropped and the consequences of their joke vote became clear.

<comment><USER15> They confirmed they wanted Brexit in the last elections. They had no excuses when Boris was elected. If that is what people want, that is what people deserve.

<comment><USER16> That's more a consequence of our terrible electoral system combined with the most incompetent / most poisonous opposition leader ever.

<comment><USER17> From the outside it looks as if Brexit is at most slightly unpopular, so it's not unimaginable to believe that in fluctuation we might occasionally find it to be the marginally popular position.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Exiting single market means no longer being in the single market. Who could have predicted that?

This whole thing is an embarrassing own goal

<comment><USER19> Dan Hannan and a bunch of the other dishonest brexiteers deliberately misled people into thinking they could be.

<comment><USER20> It is a politician's modus operandi/job to mislead in order to achieve political goals. It would have been the job of the press to point out the problems and the job of the public to form a qualified opinion.

Only the politicians did their jobs, unfortunately...

(And yes, I'm a cynic)

<comment><USER21> The press were largely campaigning for Brexit. Including one of the highest paid journalists in the entire campaign, Boris Johnson.

<comment><USER20> The press pushing an agenda for either side and not remaining an impartial observer is a huge part of the problem, not only with Brexit.

I'm not sure if in former times the press was just as opinionated and noone noticed. But now, people notice that the press isn't impartial and therefore just do not trust even the rare instances of impartial facts being presented.

<comment><USER21> British press has never really pretended to be impartial; the Daily Mail under Lord Rothermere ran pro-Hitler editorial until the war broke out.

(My point about Johnson was that he was genuinely paid more for a while as a Times "columnist" than as Prime Minister)

<comment><USER22> He was most recently a Telegraph columnist, he was sacked from the Times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> BFA (Fulfilment by Amazon) EFN (European Fulfilment Network)

<comment><USER24> FBA, not BFA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> So stupid! The UK voted to keep Europeans from coming over here and taking our jobs and seducing our women with their sophisticated accents. There was nothing about blocking European goods and European fulfilment centres. Boris Johnson even assured us that it was going to be easy to get a "great deal" on free trade. This is not the Brexit we voted for!!

<comment><USER26> > The UK voted to keep Europeans from coming over here and taking our jobs and > our women with their sophisticated accents.

This comment expresses an appalling amount of xenophobia and classism. This warped, cartoonish portrayal of "Brexit" voters on HN is not unexpected, but it is disappointing it seems to escape moderation.

<comment><USER27> Pretty sure OP is being sarcastic.

<comment><USER28> He knows it's sarcastic, he said it's a cartoonish portrayal of brexit voters

<comment><USER29> I'd have thought so, too... except that I regularly speak with Brexiters. Cognitive dissonance is very real.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is not going to be fun for Ireland. Ireland doesn't have its own regional Amazon, but the UK one would have great fast shipping. I wonder if shipping from Amazon DE or FR will be more popular in the future.

<comment><USER31> There are services that take delivery in newry (northern ireland) and deliver to dublin. Presumably, they'll still work. Shipping to ireland often costs more anyway, and not everything ships outside the UK.

<comment><USER32> I don't know how it would work, but the legal border of the EU customs union would be the NI/RoI border, but with some extra paperwork meaning, in practise, the border is the Irish Sea.

Maybe asking a friend in Belfast to forward a parcel to Dublin will continue without any checks, but a parcel forwarding service is unlikely to go unnoticed.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brexit_and_the_Irish_border#20...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brexit_and_the_Irish_border#2019_renegotiation:_New_Protocol)

<comment><USER31> I'll bet a fiver it will.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> > In reality you might find impacts of the Amazon FBA Brexit bombshell start > to impact you earlier. For instance, if you already have stock in Pan- > European FBA it is feasible that Amazon will repatriate your stock before > the end of the year and certainly are likely to stop sending your stock to > Europe at an earlier date.

I am very sceptical that they would do something like above, as there does not seem to be any reason to do so:

\- Amazon encourages you to have stock on both sides of the border to allow selling to continue as-is after the transition - repatriating stock automatically would run counter to that.

\- There is no legal reason to repatriate stock. The sellers that use Pan- European fulfillment already have to be VAT-registered in all countries that hold their stock, and those registrations will continue to be valid regardless of the EU membership of the seller's home country.

\- Amazon has not communicated that it is planning to do so (it has only said that it will stop transfers and fulfillment cross-border on 2021-01-01).

<comment><AUTHOR> There is no agreement between the negotiators as yet on the repatriation of "stranded" goods after 1 January; the default will depend on any tax agreements between each of the member-states and the UK, virtually all of which pre-date the Single Market Act, and many of which predate the Single European Act (which will cease to grant any rights or impose any obligations on the UK at the end of this year).

In general it is likely that moving goods of any sort -- including one's own personal property -- from a member-state to the UK will from 1 January incur formalities, with a risk of substantial financial liability to the UK's revenue & customs agency by the UK person importing the goods even if that person is conceptually "re-importing" property.

Amazon also will want relief from liability under the law of bailment in England & Wales, and other specific contractual and statutory liability to the UK persons using the systems discussed in the article. The most obvious way to do that is for Amazon ("the bailee") to return the goods to any vendor in England or Wales ("the bailor"). The most obvious time to do that is well before 1 January after which either Amazon is exposed direct liability for import formalities or indirect liability to the (England-and-Wales) bailor.

Another obvious approach is to convince the bailors to waive their rights, effectively writing off their interest in the goods that are in the EU in Amazon's control, possibly for some financial consideration. However, Amazon cannot be certain that it can sell on any such goods because there is as yet no agreement on e.g. Origin (and documentation via certificate of origin) requirements, nor on the continued validity of safety marks and other product labelling. Although it's unlikely that anyone seriously wants existing arrangements to suddenly halt at the end of this year, there remains a risk that a substantial number of UK-sourced goods in the EU prior to the end of December may simply become unsellable in the single market in January (I am less sure about goods (esp. "Mode 5") sourced in the non-EU SM member-states or states that are non-EU&non-SM members of the European Customs Union (EUCU), or the bilateral CU states, and unfortunately somewhat failed at avoiding the trap of calling it all "EU" in this comment, and the trap of thinking the legal positions are _probably_ homogeneous, i.e., there won't be operative side-deals between UK and Turkey before the end of December).

One very open set of questions involves "Mode 5" goods, wherein services are bundled with physical items. That includes warranties and guarantees for repairs, upgrade support including the upgrading of software that controls the physical items' operations, subscriptions bundled in with electronic book readers or the like, access to App Stores and similar. So far the UK government in particular has been focused on _goods_ , not on services, including "Mode 5" services.

Flipping things around, Single Market vendors with bailments in England (and Wales) may be unable to guarantee the continuation of "Mode 5" commitments on goods in E&W. In E&W the _retailer_ would be liable for making good on those commitments or on making the retail customer whole (e.g. by issuing a refund or replacement). FBA does not provide clear legal immunity from retail liability in E&W, and it is easy to imagine litigation brought by e.g. the Consumers Association and other bodies under the super-complaints procedure in the (UK) Enterprise Act 2002 if FBA goods purchased after 1 January cannot have software upgrades or lose access to SM-based customer support. (They are likely safe from liability for such goods if sold _before_ the end of this year.)

(The law is somewhat different, and in relevant ways, in Scotland and Northern Ireland, but going into that would take too many characters :-) )

ETA: the issue here is the law of frustration of contract -- the expiration of the transition period in the withdrawal agreement may create _frustrations_ notwithstanding careful drafting of contracts, and one possible result of a frustrated FBA contract is that the goods in question become _involuntary bailments_ with Amazon as the bailee. This is a concrete risk for goods managed under contract with entities outside the UK.

Single Market sellers with goods pre-positioned in the UK would by default have access to UK courts if needed to exercise (or clarify) their rights as involuntary bailors. Thus it is possibly in Amazon UK's interests to move SM- vendor goods from the UK to an Amazon EU facility in the Single Market or return it to the SM-based person who is the vendor, and to do so before the end of the year and with the consent of the SM vendors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Of all things implied by Brexit, making business harder for AMZN and their sellers might end up boosting UK retail. Or maybe not, as everyone has to do the customs themselves. To me, characterizing this as a "bombshell" sounds like satire, ie mocking a proverbial Brexiteer sitting at home all day and ordering things on Amazon. OTOH, it's not plausible that this undertone could've been missed by Brits of all people.

</comment><comment><USER35> Does anyone know what could be a specific reason leading to this change? I mean, deeper than "no single market", what would prevent Amazon from running the same operation, potentially with slightly higher fees to offset relevant transport/import taxes. They ran marketplaces at crazy prices before, like shipping to Australia before local distribution centres.

<comment><USER36> Doesn't Amazon not deliver to Switzerland or something? I think I heard that Swiss people for example can't order from Amazon.co.jp. Meanwhile I can order from Amazon.co.jp to Finland and Amazon (or DHL) handles everything from shipping to VAT and to customs declaration.

<comment><USER37> I could be off, but here's what I recall:

A couple years ago Switzerland changed the rules that companies shipping to Switzerland must collect and administer Swiss VAT and companies the size of Amazon said fuck it! and thus don't ship from the US any more. I suspect that the same goes for Amazon Japan.

<comment><USER38> Weird... in Romania, I can order from Amazon US with expedited shipping and they'll charge me for VAT and DHL will handle customs for me.

Or I can order with slow cheap shipping and stand in line and pay VAT myself at the post office.

Either way, they will (mostly) ship. What's different with Switzerland?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Near a UK fulfilment center ca. 2031: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJ2Sgd9sc0M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJ2Sgd9sc0M)

</comment><comment><USER40> ...brexiteers please remind me how this benefits the UK ?...

<comment><USER41> One immediate benefit. Not being on the hook for that shitshow:

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/18/eu-leaders- rec...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/18/eu-leaders-reconvene- after-stormy-talks-over-750bn-recovery-package)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> It'd be more noticeable if Chinese imports were curbed

</comment><comment><USER40> ..remind me how this is good for the UK?...

</comment><comment><USER43> That's all Brussel's fault! (/s, obviously, but many Brits really think this way).

</comment><comment><USER44> Another americentric post, seeing the upvotes it gets. This really isn't newsworthy.

Amazon in Europe is small, having <10% of the e-commerce marketshare (compared to >50% in the US). For example, in the Netherlands people are much more likely to shop at Bol, Coolblue or Wehkamp.

<comment><USER45> It's more about not being able to sell as easily as now, from the UK to the EU, which has a population of 443m.

It's yet another headwind for smaller UK companies, that will see their potential serviceable available market (SAM) get smaller, unless they spend extra. This will also significantly increase the time for the goods to arrive to EU destinations.

You calling this "americentric" is also weird. It's going to be the same situation for all other e-commerce sites, no?</comment></comment>