When will rooftop solar be cheaper than the grid? - <AUTHOR> http://theconversation.com/when-will-rooftop-solar-be-cheaper-than-the-grid-heres-a-map-54789 <comment><USER2> Where I live, it's already gobs cheaper. I live in Shizuoka prefecture in Japan. We get about 2200 hours of sunshine a year at a latitude of about 35N. I pay the equivalent of about 35 cents per kWh for electricity from the local power station (hey, they turned off all the nuclear power stations and the only fuel we have is gas from Russia).

You can buy solar panels in _any_ electronics store. If you go to the mall, you will run into billboards and displays and salespeople wanting to sell you solar panels. Already, if I walk down the street at least 30% of the houses have solar panels. Lately virtually every single apartment building has put solar panels on the roof. All the farmers are putting up vast solar arrays because they can make more money doing that than growing food (which worries me quite a lot... food security is pretty important for a chain of islands off the coast of China).

I'm really curious to see how this affects pricing going forward.

<comment><USER3> Hawaii is another great example. $0.40-$0.50/kWh for their oil generated electricity. Solar comes in even cheaper than the article mentions. There have been so many solar installations in Hawaii that the power company has effectively put a moratorium on installations that don't include storage because they can't cover the swings in demand when a cloud rolls through town.

They expect things will get better once they install a connection between the islands to connect their grids, but for the moment, the power company can't handle the market penetration.

<comment><USER4> > the power company can't handle the market penetration.

When it comes to solar power, and anything else with externalities, it's always best to be clear whether "can't" means "has no economic incentive to do so" or not.

In this particular case I'd say we are below the optimum level of solar, and it's just poorly aligned incentives.

edit: just to re-iterate this in clearer language:

If they "can" do something if they spent $X million dollars, and $X million dollars is less than the total amount saved by the economy of Hawaii by doing so, then it's not a technical problem, it's an economic co-ordination problem.

If the utility is going to lose money from doing something, because they can't capture all the resulting profit (like lower pollution meaning healthier people) then their employees will say they "can't" do something, as no-one gets promoted for making children healther on the utility shareholders dime. Even though they could if someone gave them the money.

There's lots of BS surrounding solar, and a main thread of it is to pretend that it's going to blow up the electrical grid. The only thing it destroys is some current utility business models.

<comment><USER5> When clouds roll in, people are not OK with their TVs turning off. So you'd always need the traditional grid in place, even if it's for a few days a year.

In that case, the utilities would charge a standby fee for keeping their multi-billion dollar infrastructure in place (it's called a "demand charge" in the utility industry). Then, when you use the electrons during the cloudy period, you'd pay an astronomical "consumption charge", beyond $100/KWh because everyone in the city wants/needs those electrons. The utility share- holders would be fine.

But the people of Hawaii would have the cost of the solar installation PLUS the cost of the traditional grid. The calculation in the article misses this point and only shows the $/KWh consumption costs on the utility side.

So, yes, a huge amount of solar can figuratively blow up the electrical grid.

<comment><USER6> > When clouds roll in, people are not OK with their TVs turning off. So you'd > always need the traditional grid in place, even if it's for a few days a > year.

Sounds like a great argument for municipal generation and storage. If nothing else, it's both cheaper than "everyone on his own" _and_ could lesser the strain for long-distance infrastructure (which could still be nice for geographic smoothing).

> So, yes, a huge amount of solar can figuratively blow up the electrical > grid.

Demand-controlled EVs could take a lot of the load. In fact, it's probably one of the sanest applications of massive solar installations (beyond the potential of future power-to-gas tech).

<comment><USER7> There's a lot of ways to store energy if you're basically getting it for free, and these are generally more efficient at scale. It would be great if a utility could help buffer this for you.

<comment><USER6> Yes, that's another reason why a municipal grid would be useful: city-wide storage could work better than each house having a small battery (but the roofs are still useful for panels, of course). But it may not need to be a utility in the traditional sense (unless the US meaning of that word is different from what I understand it to be). Just some local company with a contract. Or a few of them.

<comment><USER7> Here the power company was split up into a generation unit and a distribution unit. What you're talking about is having a third type, a storage unit, to help manage demand.

If you can pull power off the grid very cheaply, even get paid to "dispose" of it, then later return it at a profit, you could arbitrage solar capacity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The article assumes net metering, which is a huge subsidy for solar. Peak solar generation causes low spot prices for power (see the California "duck curve"[1], and the negative prices that Germany has on sunny days[2]. In Texas wind can cause energy prices to go negative[3]).

The costs of storage must to be included for a fair comparison, so that power can either be saved and used by the household, or provided back to the grid. If provided back to the grid, the homeowner should get paid the spot price like every other generator, not full residential rates.

[1] [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-21/california...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-21/california- s-duck-curve-is-about-to-jolt-the-electricity-grid)

[2] [http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/details/beitrag/german- renew...](http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/details/beitrag/german-renewables- pushing-wholesale-electricity-further-into-negative-territory_100019141/)

[3] [http://cleantechnica.com/2015/10/01/texas-electricity- prices...](http://cleantechnica.com/2015/10/01/texas-electricity-prices-going- negative/)

<comment><USER9> This comes up in every discussion about solar power, but it seems unfair to me. Yes, solar is subsidized by a whole bunch of factors. But so is coal and oil, because the suppliers of those power sources don't have to pay the full cost of the damage their pollution causes.

A fair comparison should either include all subsidies, or none. Not just the subsidies we are used to.

<comment><USER10> The problem isn't the subsidies. The problem occurs when the proportion of solar users increases such that the utility's margins become low enough to threaten the minimum budget required to maintain the infrastructure.

If you want to subsidize solar users to bootstrap that market and as a general social good, that's fine. But you have to structure it such that the utility still recoups the cost of maintenance. If they're paying market instead of spot, the paid price is not taking into account the cost of transfer and storage to the utility.

<comment><USER11> When we get to that point the answer is to let the local government take over maintence, much like roads. Subsidize it with a tax.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I had a 6.7 kW solar system installed here in the Bay Area late last year, and you can beat the costs stated in this article by quite a lot if you shop around. The best bids I got were around $3.30/watt installed -- that's $2.31/watt with the 30% federal tax credit figured in.

For my particular location, assuming a 25 year system lifespan, I calculate LCOE of 5.6 cents/kWh. Way, way cheaper than PG&E. Even without the tax credit, it's still a significant savings at 8 cents/kWh LCOE.

Of course this math only makes sense if you're reasonably sure you're going to stay put for a significant portion of those 25 years.

<comment><USER13> Does this include storage?

<comment><USER12> No storage. This is a grid-tied system that exports power onto the grid during times when I am a net producer, for which I get credited at retail rates.

<comment><USER14> Retail rates? Are you sure? (PG&E?)

<comment><USER12> Yes, quite sure. However, the credits can only offset the "debits" from the times when you are a net importer from the grid (night, cloudy, etc). PG&E sends a once annual true-up statement where you pay for your excess annual kWh (assuming consumed kWh > produced kWh). If you are net exporter on an annual basis (produced kWh > consumed kWh) PG&E only pays wholesale rates for those at ~$0.04/kWh. They used to pay nothing if you were a residential net annual exporter, but after recent change in CA state law, they now have to actually cut you a check.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > Also, residential electric rates, on average about 12 cents per kilowatt- > hour in in the U.S., are much higher than wholesale electric rates – the > price utilities pay to power generators – which are usually less than 4 > cents per kilowatt-hour.

That 8 cent difference is mostly the cost of distribution and storage or variable supply. Distribution from the roof to the home would be inexpensive, but storage is not cheap. Asking utilities to accept solar energy input at this flat rate in exchange for the variable supply and grid backup may work for a small fraction of society, but it will hit a critical mass sooner or later and become infeasible.

</comment><comment><USER16> Has this been shared on HN yet? You put in your address and Google tells you how much you save by installing solar panels.

[https://www.google.com/get/sunroof#p=0](https://www.google.com/get/sunroof#p=0)

<comment><USER17> Cool site, thanks for sharing. I have never seen it.

According to that site a $20k install would pay itself off in 6 years. That is compelling.

<comment><USER18> I live in colorado and it says i would lose money by going solar. Interesting since at costco, etc the solar guys are pushing pretty hard. I've held off so far because I think there's still room for dramatic improvement in solar panel and battery technology in the next few years.

Also I seem to get a new roof every 5 or so years due to all the hailstorms we get around here. I suspect solar panels don't like big hailstones very much and I have no idea what would happen if both the roof and panels are damaged. I doubt a roofing company is well equipped to handle the panels.

<comment><USER19> That's actually pretty surprising to me, I have only visited Colorado a few times but I have always been very (pleasantly) surprised by the amount of sunshine.

A quick look on Wikipedia says Denver has sunshine 70% of the time totaling ~3,100 hours a year. I'm from MI where we see sun about once a week so I'm out of touch, but that seems like it should be more than enough to recoup costs.

Is the amount of sunshine in Denver significantly different from where you're at, or is there something else I'm missing?

<comment><USER18> might be current cost of energy is low here. and yes we get tons of sunshine, amazing amounts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> "Note that the total installed costs include the federal investment tax credit and any local rebates and tax incentives."

$3.50/W is WAY higher than I paid per watt last year after the federal tax rebate. I had 3.125kW installed on my roof for $2.16/W. Looking at the map, Denver gets grid parity between $2.00 and $2.50 and that has exactly been my experience with the panels.

</comment><comment><USER20> They conveniently omitted Hawaii from that map. Solar here is already cheaper than the grid, even after the very high installation costs and even if you go totally off-grid.

</comment><comment><USER21> If solar interests you, we're hiring senior software engineers at Wunder (TS '14).

Wunder was founded with one simple vision: to address the greatest crisis of our generation by accelerating the proliferation of solar energy. Members of our team have raised hundreds of millions of dollars in private equity, developed energy infrastructure solutions for the Department of Energy, and built digital products used and loved by millions of people. Now, we're saving the world.

Learn more at [https://www.wundercapital.com/hustle](https://www.wundercapital.com/hustle)

</comment><comment><USER22> If rooftop solar has a net positive efficiency, why aren't companies paying me to put solar panels on my roof?

<comment><USER23> It's easier and cheaper for a large company to just find a big plot of cheap land and put the stuff up there. Same basic reason that nobody's offering to pay you to grow vegetables in your yard, even though growing vegetables is a profitable activity in general.

<comment><USER24> One advantage of Solar on rooftop, is reduction of transmission and transmission losses, also local handling of the peak etc. Utilities love Distrusted solar in limited numbers. They do not love the idea of everyone getting on the bandwagon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Never IMO</comment>


Ask HN: How do you organize, maintain and collaborate on Jupyter notebooks? - <AUTHOR> We are starting to have large and important jupyter notebooks, that multiple people work on. The primary use cases we have are in-depth analytics and building machine learning models.
It typically works fine when you first create and build the notebook for the initial task. But as soon as we iterate on it with other team members and new features or questions to be answered, it leads to messy, non-DRY and hard to review code. In addition, there's always uncertainty as to whether changing a function breaks other parts of the notebook.
This paradigm feels a bit different from the traditional paradigm where we have different files, modules, and various kinds of tests for each of them.
How do you and your team maintain, organize and collaborate on notebooks effectively? <comment><USER2> > hard to review code

I built ReviewNB specifically for Jupyter notebook code reviews [1]

> various kinds of tests for each of them

Checkout treon, open source test framework for Jupyter Notebooks [2]

Some other tips,

\- Move code into Python modules whenever possible

\- Maintain dockerfile / requirements.txt so your notebooks are easily reproducible

\- Setup treon in a CI/CD pipeline

\- Setup internal Binder [3] for quickly launching notebooks on cloud machines

[1] [https://reviewnb.com](https://reviewnb.com)

[2] [https://github.com/reviewnb/treon](https://github.com/reviewnb/treon)

[3] [https://gke.mybinder.org/](https://gke.mybinder.org/)

</comment><comment><USER3> This might be of interest:

[https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/notebook- innovation-591e...](https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/notebook- innovation-591ee3221233)

</comment><comment><USER4> Just discovered: [https://colab.research.google.com/notebooks/basic_features_o...](https://colab.research.google.com/notebooks/basic_features_overview.ipynb)</comment>


How I could log in to Yahoo Mail with any password - <AUTHOR> http://nick.malcolm.net.nz/2013-05-20-yahoo-imap-vulnerability.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I was going to write this on my tumblr blog, but decided that might not be such a great idea in light of recent events ;)

<comment><USER2> This statement makes no sense. You're not going to use Tumblr because Yahoo! is rumoured to be buying the company? Nothing has even been officially announced.

<comment><AUTHOR> > You're not going to use Tumblr because Yahoo! is rumoured to be buying the > company?

Yes. At least not for a story which reflects badly on the potential acquirer. Makes sense to me.</comment></comment></comment>


Apple to Feature Yelp Check-Ins Within IPhone Maps App - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-25/apple-to-feature-yelp-check-ins-within-iphone-maps-app.html <comment><USER2> I didnt even know Yelp had check-ins? Is that at all popular?</comment>


The scariest chart in Mary Meeker's slide deck for newspapers - <AUTHOR> http://www.niemanlab.org/2014/05/the-scariest-chart-in-mary-meekers-slide-deck-for-newspapers-has-gotten-a-little-scarier/ <comment><USER2> If my behavior is anything typical, advertisers are going to be a world of hurt. When I read a newspaper, I tend to be open for advertising. I usually am looking for movie reviews, concert information and the like. Ads for concert series, festivals, ... are welcome in this environment. To me, these ads can often make me willing to deal with the advertiser.

However, when I am using a mobile I tend to be doing something with that mobile. Looking at mail, getting map information, watching a video or browsing my cycle of blogs and RSS feeds. While I am doing this I tend to find advertisements rather annoying. They suck down bandwidth I'm sometimes paying for. They get strangled when there's not enough bandwidth to go around. Contrary to print ads, these tend to make me unwilling to deal with the advertiser. Particularly if they're intrusive, animated or noisy.

As many others have said, if you show me pertinent(!) ads when I'm interested in ads I'm happy. If you ram stuff in my face, spend my time and money and keep me from doing what I want to do I'm unhappy. Here's a clue: unhappy people don't make good customers.

<comment><USER3> Also, if you're of a certain age you remember things like computer shopper magazine. Which, while it had articles, I don't think I ever found one. It was basically a one and half inch thick catalogue.

People paid money to buy a thick catalogue, to see what was shiny and new.

<comment> k-mcgrady What was it about ads in magazines that made us actually want to see them. I used to buy guitar magazines and even though I never bought any of it I liked seeing new gear that was coming out. Online I would never bother to check things like that and actually get annoyed by those ads on guitar websites.

<comment><USER4> I think it's just because of the pushy nature of so many ads on the web or mobile apps.

An example of it done well would probably be The Verge's mobile app for Android when their primary benefactor was Starbucks - when you'd launch it after a while, you'd get a quick ~2 second splash screen that showed the Starbucks logo while the news data was being loaded.

<comment> k-mcgrady True. I wonder how advertisers could get the kind of engagement online that they got in magazines where people would voluntarily read your entire ad, maybe spending as much as a few minutes on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Mobile ads suffer from 90%+ accidental, "fat finger" and "creative use of page loading effects" ad clicks (yes, the reported 40% or so numbers are wrong). The resulting conversion is terrible and both Apple and Google are knowingly keeping it that way because fixing the problem would mean greatly reduced clicks and ad revenue. Just try to promote a free mobile app download for a well-known website (no click-baity advertising at all, viewers know exactly what they'll get and have no reason to click on the ad unless they want to download) using Google's mobile app promotion ads, you'll get something like 1-3% actual conversion and many users telling you they hit the deceptively loading and positioned ads by accident, which shows clearly how big the problem is.

Sooner or later advertisers are going to realize how they're being hit by this problem and that advertising in print media or desktop browsers is still the better way to go. The mobile ad industry is in for a world of hurt ...

</comment><comment><USER6> My main problem with mobile ads is that they often completely break the user experience.

Why not make ads analogous to print: just (arguably) beautiful photography with some text on it and place them within the article where it makes sense. I never felt bugged while reading a multi page article in a magazine, when it says "continue on page 43" and got interrupted by a full page ad.

But no, mobile ads have to be huge in size, animated – or even better videos (because everybody has a unlimited data plans now, yeah), block scrolling and or slap you in the face after you already started reading.

Just nobody seems to care about quality of advertising on the web and mobile. A lot of big companies still focus on their traditional channels and pay a few bucks extra for the web/mobile part of the campaign. The Advertising Agency assigns the implementation task to the intern who knows a thing or two in jquery. And in the end the IT department of the newspapers just copy & pastes the code in without testing.*

A company would most likely never send a smelly alcoholic to sell their product on the streets. But they to that on the web.

*This paragraph may sound harsh, but this is how i often felt, when I was working for a big online newspaper responsible for custom campaign implementations and development.

<comment><USER7> That is why native ads are becoming popular in mobile. Think about Facebook ads in your news feed or Promoted Tweets. They don't break the experience.

This is early days yet but more and more app developers are catching on the trend. Tango and other text apps are other examples.

<comment><USER8> Ads in my Fb feed.on mobile very much do break the experience because it takes me a moment to work out where it came from. I have intelligent interesting friends and I take time to engage with the things they post. Finding out that something I took time on is a sponsored post is invariably a negative experience and I go out of my way to post childish rude comments on every one I receive in order to devalue it for the advertiser.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It isn't necessarily scary. The charts show "time spent" vs money spent. But what you really want to know is "money spent" vs "results taken". IE: Which channels drive revenue.

on the flip side, you can measure these things on web/mobile platforms, it gets much more difficult with print ads.

FWIW I'm more likely to respond to an ad I see on the Economist or Monocle than one I see on my mobile phone. At the moment just the fact that it's on my mobile phone tells me it has less value.

<comment><USER9> _Which channels drive revenue._

You don't even need to go that far: Which channels have useful audiences?

My guess is that the average Economist reader has far more disposable income than the average Candy Crush player.

<comment><USER10> Exactly the reason why professional golfers have very lucrative endorsement contracts, and why the tour has sponsors and advertisers ranging from luxury goods to enterprise software vendors.

(Phil Mickelson's endorsement income was reportedly $45MM in 2013, which is

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Since 1993, the only ad I've ever intentionally clicked on was for Belroy wallets. I still haven't bought one, though the idea is pretty cool.

I have accidentally clicked on many ads due to site that load the ads first and then put the content in the middle, so the page is continually shuffling around for the thirty seconds to a minute it takes to load on my "high speed" ADSL in Australia.

So take those click-through statistics with a grain of salt: how many of them are forced due to pages shuffling elements around?

</comment><comment><USER12> It's all about demographics.

I might advertise in magazine/newspaper X because I want to reach people who actually read magazine/newspaper X.

If you're reaching out to the high end / older demographic, that might just be the best form of ad spend.

Nowadays, advertising in Print is just another form of niche advertising. The ad spends don't justify it as a form of mass market advertising.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think the future of mobile advertising will be more like today's product placement and less like banner ads or interstitials. It's such a size- constrained platform that anything insufficiently subtle will give you haters rather than customers.

I created a public transit app which shows a route on screen. Is there a way for me to easily display a list of businesses or special offers within a km of the user's destination? If not, there should be.

Or with something like Instagram - okay, the user has taken a picture near a beach on a sunny day, why not ask them if they want an ice-cream?

</comment><comment><USER14> Lots of interesting stuff in the full deck.

On cybersecurity (18):

"Vulnerable Systems Placed on Internet Compromised in <15 Minutes"

Improvements in genome sequencing previously tracked with Moore's law, now jumping far ahead of it. (89)

142 and 143 provide some food for thought.

PDF of slides: [http://s3.amazonaws.com/kpcbweb/files/85/Internet_Trends_201...](http://s3.amazonaws.com/kpcbweb/files/85/Internet_Trends_2014_vFINAL_-_05_28_14-_PDF.pdf?1401286773)

</comment><comment><USER15> I like how she presents important info in easy to digest graphs. One thing that I find interesting and provocative is slide 11, where she lumps mobile devices (phones,tablets,mp3 devices,cameras,appliances) into a new category of "computing cycle." Characterized by increasing integration and consisting of much larger number of devices. Useful analysis to think about.

</comment><comment><USER16> Newspapers have significant and ever increasing mobile and online busines. They haven't been print only since last century.

The best news is decline of TV. I seriously hope it dies.

</comment><comment><USER17> Why is time spent so important? Results are what matter. And where is outdoor? A billboard has minutes of time spent.</comment>


The bias shield - <AUTHOR> http://lesswrong.com/lw/93x/the_bias_shield/

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think the math the author threw in added much, but the overall piece had an interesting premise.</comment>


Sir Tim Berners-Lee flags UN net conference concerns - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20594779 <comment><USER2> The problem I have with this situation is the basic premis that the ITU or any organization should have any say whatsoever over what is supposed to be an ad- hoc interconnection of independant networks. Anarchy was it's biggest virtue. The fact that these discussions are even happening reflects how centralized it has become, how easy to censor and disrupt it is, and how easy it is to seize in a coup, or simple UN slight-of-hand.

I feel like we have a learning disability or something, watching all this and I for one am glad I kept that 56Kbps modem so at least I can dial up my actual _peers_ when the robot apacalypse comes.

There's a difference between documenting the evolving anarchy (RFCs, W3C "standards") and what appears to be a deluge of closed-room policy and legislation.

<comment><USER3> Um, you do realise that the very reason you can dial up your peers pretty much anywhere in the world today is down to agreements made in the ITU?

<comment><USER4> Did the ITU have any involvement in constructing the Internet? No.

We can 'dial' (if you use Plan9 terminology) any address we wish? Yes.

What would their involvement bring other than a commercial model which does nothing for the consumers and businesses? No.

It's like the Mafia want their cut now because someone has started up a business on their turf.

<comment><USER5> > Did the ITU have any involvement in constructing the Internet? No.

The ITU had a lot of involvement in the CCITT modem standards. (CCITT morphed to be / is part of ITU.) V.21 through V.92 are all relevant for dial up modems.

<comment><USER4> None of which are relevant the the internet apart from providing some tunnels. The technical standards did not affect much in the osi stack bar the transport layer, which could be run quite happily over anything out there (Cambridge ring, avian carriers, cups and string, flashing lights).

<comment><USER5> > None of which are relevant the the internet

...but all of which are relevant to the comment you replied to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Somehow I find it fascinating how fast all those crazy world "World Government" conspiracy theories are getting more and more tangible.

The ITU case clearly demonstrates, that when we propose more negotiation and common solution finding of governments across the world, individual liberties are to many nations very low on the priority list.

<comment><USER4> _Always_ listen to the tinfoil hatted conspiracy theory spewing nutbags.

Why? Because there are more of them in politics and business than there are anywhere else working on the opposite agenda.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The ITU might have more geek cred if there were fewer politicians and diplomats and more technologists and engineers making the decisions. Do we really want people who regard the Internet as a "series of tubes" and/or a threat to their domestic power to be the ones in charge of it? Or are we content to let the people who _built_ the damned thing continue to run it too?

</comment><comment><USER8> To be fair, with all due respect, while I understand the concerns of Messrs. Berners-Lee and Cerf, I think they are also kind of missing the point. Unless newspapers are intentionally or not misleading us which is another possibility.

If you read what Russia is actually asking for, you will see that it has nothing to do with technologies and standardisation, everyone is pretty happy with that. No, what some governments start questioning is ICANN and especially IANA powers.

IANA is overseeing the whole IP allocations business and supervise root DNS management which give it a huge power over the network. However, while private, ICANN operates under a DOC contract and is headquartered in LA. I'm not overtly surprised it tickles some countries which are not too fond of the USA.

IHMO keeping ICANN but making it operate under a UN contract (maybe through ITU) would be a step in the right direction.

</comment><comment><USER9> The problem is that there are central points that any government can control because we communicate over wire and fiber-optics. By decentralizing the net and using mesh networking, we would regain and retain control. We need to develop the technology needed to have a world-wide mesh network.

<comment><USER10> Why even bother with mesh networking? We already have the technology needed to decentralize the Internet: amateur radio operators have been using digital modes for decades, over long and short distances, and packet switched amateur radio nets do exist. The problem is the ITU, which set up the regulatory structure that prevents amateur radio from ever being anything more than a hobby.

If we took some of the spectrum that was handed over to 4g cell providers and gave it to amateurs, and created a regulatory system that encouraged amateur stations to act as repeaters, routers, and gateways, we could have a decentralized wireless internet in short order. We should create a new class of amateur licensing, specifically for packet switched networks, that allows a station to repeat a commercial transmission (e.g. someone directing their web browser to Amazon or Google), allows the use of cryptography without requiring key disclosure, allows profanity, allows communication with unlicensed stations (e.g. someone's laptop), etc. There is no technical reason this cannot be done, and amateur radio operators are just as capable of setting up and maintaining a packet switched network as commercial services are (and perhaps even better; Comcast has pretty bad bufferbloat problems).

The ITU establishes standards and regulatory recommendations that are intended to protect the power of telecom monopolies. That is fundamentally incompatible with the Internet's design, which makes no distinction between nodes (compare to cell networks, cable TV networks, etc.) -- any connected node can be a service provider.</comment></comment>


scales: Greplin's new open source Python server metrics library - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Greplin/scales

<comment><USER2> We open sourced something similar called StatGrabber awhile back, including Perl and Python client libraries. We tend to avoid threads, and so it instead uses non blocking UDP (guaranteed delivery on localhost) to a collector daemon, which aggregates and then delivers the info to Ganglia for graphing. <https://spideroak.com/code> if anyone is curious.

The client modules simply emit non-blocking UDP packets and get on with their business, avoiding slowing down their response time. You can graph 4 types of stats: counters (ex: transactions) averages (ex: size of transactions), accumulators (ex: bandwidth used) and elapsed time (ex: time per transaction)

It's pretty nice to see Ganglia graphing system metrics along side of all the stats we have the backend emit. For example, one of the stats graphed are revenue events. There's clear relationship between network health issues and revenue.

<comment><USER3> We wrote something similar at Brightcove to collect system statistics and publish them graphite. It runs as an independent service and focuses on OS (not application) level metrics.

<https://github.com/BrightcoveOS/Diamond>

<comment><USER4> That looks really convenient and useful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Correct me if I'm mistaken, but it seems like this wouldn't really work with a web server that has several worker processes like uwsgi in preforking mode. Each worker process would be sandboxed to its own STATS object and attempting to serve the HTTP/Graphite server in its own background thread; all of which would be trying to access the same port.

<comment><USER4> Correct. This is intended more for daemons with one or two processes per server, or for handy debugging of a single instance on a development machine. In order to monitor something like preforking uwsgi, you would need a way to aggregate stats from all the processes, which this library doesn't do.

(You can change the port the HTTP server listens on, though. If you have ten workers, you can have them listen on ten different ports.)</comment></comment>


Increased mindfulness is associated with reduced levels of procrastination - <AUTHOR> https://solvingprocrastination.com/procrastination-study-mindfulness/ <comment><USER2> Let me read this article before I work on my work. I think procrastination has always been associated with anxiety and fatigue. Besides the normal state that many people need more sleep, there is the problem of intellectual fatigue, which I have always felt I suffered from. Programming requires bringing your focus to that small screen in front of you and shutting out the awareness of the world, at least for me. And that is tiring.</comment>


Donations vs. Deaths, Where Should Your Money Go? - <AUTHOR> http://www.visualmagnetic.com/portfolio/donations-vs-deaths-where-should-our-money-go/

<comment><USER2> It's a great list, that confirms my POV. I'm glad someone posted this.</comment>


Hong Kong protester shot as police disperse anti-China protests on national day - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/clashes-expected-in-hong-kong-as-protesters-try-to-spoil-chinas-70th-anniversary-celebrations/2019/09/30/a54fb004-e396-11e9-b0a6-3d03721b85ef_story.html <comment><USER2> Is this the first incident of direct escalation to live ammunition being fired?</comment>


Ask YC: Story for Forbes - What really happens when your startup fails? - <AUTHOR>

The last few inquiries I did on HN for Forbes stories had great results.  Would love to hear from you guys on this one...
I'm writing a story for Forbes about what really happens when your startup company fails.  I need to hear from entrepreneurs who have had failing startup companies with an honest explanation of how they were affected financially and emotionally.
The story looks to explore the difference between what potential entrepreneurs expect to go wrong and what really happens.  This isn't a postmortem on why your startup failed - it's a short summary of what was lost in the process and how you dealt with that loss.
Some basic questions -
- How did you expect the first few years of your startup company to go?
- What did you risk to launch your startup?
- What do you felt you lost when your startup company failed?
- How did you recoup from this loss?
- What advice would you give aspiring entrepreneurs launching their own startups?
Please respond to - wschroter <at yahoo
About the Author
Wil Schroter is a serial entrepreneur and startup columnist.  His columns appear in Forbes and are syndicated in newspapers nationally through American City Business Journals. <comment><USER2> Please post a link when this article is finished.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wil - Recovery from failure is the most important survival skill for an entrepreneur. I tried to summarize my own experience in the following. It is really tough but it must be done. Hope it helps.

<http://www.lovemytool.com/blog/2007/10/riding-a-bike.html>

</comment><comment><USER4> A few years ago I heard a great lecture on this topic given by John Nesheim. He was talking about how three times he's stood next to entrepreneurs while they were on the phone calling their parents to tell them that they'd just lost the family's retirement savings. He might have a couple of good stories if you were to contact him.

</comment><comment><USER5> In my case, this has just happened (about 8 months ago).

I'll add some bullet points: \- I'm still in good spirits and not destitute.

\- Out of the last 5 employees, the majority are still friends, including my partner in the venture. This seems to be rare to me, but perhaps not.

\- I am in a significant amount of personal debt. We did a few personal guaranteed items from the LLC, and now I'm stuck with paying them, including corporate credit card debt. The debt occurred when we were being a little irrational about survival in the last 6 months. It was easy to do because we were being led on a little by a big client. Overall, this debt is going to keep me poor for a while and limits my new startup options some (but not a lot).

\- The money invested by my family, friend, and contacts is now completely lost. Software startups really have very few assets worth a damn afterwards. I think most of them are OK with it, but they aren't happy with it, and likely wont loan/invest money again anytime soon. In other words, most of my potential startup cash pool has dried up for future startups.

\- I have an immense knowledge now of what it takes to make a business, a software project, a success, and some huge pitfalls that we hit that we can avoid next time. Hiring pitfalls are the most costly and damaging, especially when they are programmers. Good programmers, on the other hand, can basically save a company almost single handedly. We had one of each; unfortunately the good came too late.

\- Immediately after we closed, I was terribly unmotivated to do anything. Partly I think this comes with being burned out. I wouldn't call it depression, but it wasn't far from that. I drank too much, and really didnt do much except sometimes try to find a job and watch movies. Luckily I had some investments that I sold that could sort of pay for my worthlessness during this time.

\- Slowly I came out of that pseudo-depression, and I am now collecting my ideas, plans for a new startup. This time I'm taking things a little slower. I know I will hire employees a lot later, and look for investment a lot later. That means the business will take longer to get running and gain traction, and will be a side-project to my job for longer, but I don't have much choice monetarily. I think it will benefit me in the end.

\- I wouldn't trade my experience for debt reduction -- What I went through was kind of a form of an MBA crash course, and I think the experience will be highly valuable in the future.

Hope this helps.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is great - can you drop me an email at wschroter at yahoo so I can follow-up?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> When you're spending most of your waking hours on a startup, your personal identity gets completely intertwined with your company's identity. So I think the the most important part of recovery is to separate those things. The goal is to internalize the distinction between "My company failed" and "I am a failure."

Two things helped me reach this point after my first company fell apart. First, I taught myself how to program. (I wasn't a hacker at the time.) No new skill has made me feel more empowered. Second, I got a job with a big company, where I was surrounded by a lot of people who -- to be totally frank -- weren't as ambitious or capable as I was. That experience was also very empowering. I saw my strengths, whereas before I'd been dwelling on my weaknesses.

I only lasted about a month at the big company before I got my mojo back and thought, "screw this, time for another startup." =P

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've read a whole bunch of postmortems on TC and FoundRead that were great case studies on the biz side, but I wanted to get more info about how the entreps personally dealt with the companies. My experience is that failure is never nearly as bad as you would think, but I would imagine others have had very different experiences.

</comment><comment><USER7> I was involved in a very small startup. There were three of us, and we didn't release anything. What happened was that my cofounders decided that they would have rather had someone else on the team than me because I didn't code (at the time) and can be occasionally difficult to work with. Several months later both of them, after failing to find another third person for the venture, called it quits.

So the whole thing, which was based on my idea from the start, failed. This was in mid-January.

The way it happened, however, gave me a great deal of what I would call "negative inspiration." When I first got the news that I was off the team, I spent a weekend away to relax and collect my thoughts. When I got back, I went to the library and checked out books on programming, called and emailed several contacts who I had talked about working with before, and got to work. I learned PHP and started writing a Facebook app, talked with the CEO of a video game art outsourcing company about working on a spinoff project, and talked with some young founders I had met along the way about joining their teams.

It's a great way to harness energy (though I wouldn't recommend the way it happened to anyone): I ended up in a state of "Oh yeah? I can't program? We'll see about that!" and had a working prototype of a Facebook app coded from scratch within two weekends (no fancy frameworks, which I now know is a stupid idea but I wanted to do it more to learn the language). I worked my ass off on the other fronts for several weeks, spinning plates left and right, while taking extra work at my freelance/contract 'day job' running A/V at meetings in the corporate penthouse of a very large company.

There was a bit of panic because I had expected some compensation for my first startup which never arrived, so I had to borrow a bit of money - about a month of living expenses.

About a month later, I started at my current job, which I love. I've learned new skills on the job as well as sharpening old ones - as employee number 2 at a startup, I can pick up tasks that interest me. I'm now coding in Actionscript 3, RoR, and occasionally Java (with a few tiny bits of PHP and Javascript here and there).

So it all worked out in the end. Though I'm disappointed that my original idea and company didn't work out, I realize that it wouldn't have worked out between the other members of the team and me anyway, even if I knew how to code and wasn't occasionally a jerk about things. In that respect, I'm glad I was out when I was and not later, because I would have been wasting my time.

(edited for grammar. COMMAS!)

</comment><comment><USER2> I find the acceptance of failure quite interesting. I'm curious if people are more likely to abandon a venture because they want to handle failure properly and positively.

</comment><comment><USER8> I just wrote a blog post about my "failed startup"...

<http://airik.blogspot.com/2008/06/where-you-want-to-be.html>

It didn't work out from a business point of view, but it was probably the best experience of my entire life. And in that sense, I feel like I succeeded. Frankly, I'm quite proud of it.

</comment><comment><USER9> What news regarding the story?

Link?

</comment><comment><USER10> When all else fails you have to go look for a job.

I never really got emotional about failed startups. I just took the code and the experience and used it as much as possible when I went on to the next project.

This is one of the neat things about software development. When you are the coder you own the code regardless of any agreements that were signed. They can "sequester" the actual code on the hard drive. That's fine, but they can't sequester what's in your head.

If your startup is an internet business or a software product then the worst case scenario is that you will have a lot of code and a lot of knowledge for jump starting your next startup.

</comment><comment><USER11> Dude.... Wil Schroter... right now, when economy is down pretty much everywhere around the world, is it really a good time to write a story about why startups are failing? You should write about reasons why people should start their own companies not vice versa! Don't you get it man? What's the point of helping people to do worse? Screw your boss if he/she is behind it... start your own Forbes magazine!

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not about why startups are failing - it's about understanding exactly what happens to you personally when they do. When I talk to a lot of people about starting a company, they tend to be freaked out about "losing everything". I try to explain to them that it's rarely as bad as they think (the downside). Everyone I know that's "failed" has recovered in some way. But my data set is limited, so I'm reaching out to get other's viewpoints.

<comment><USER12> I lost $30,000 of my own money when my startup failed back in the day. It kind of sucked.

I could have used that money to get a master's degree, or put a down payment on a house.

I didn't have to live on the street and go to soup kitchens, but startup failure did set me back about 5 years economically. I had to work at jobs I did not particularly enjoy, and live in shitty shared roommate situations for longer than I would have liked in order to get out of debt.

If I had simply taken the job I was offered at Google way back when instead of trying to do my own startup, I'd be as rich as Marissa Meyer right now.

So yeah it isn't that bad and you do recover but it isn't the greatest experience.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you'd be willing to share more details, pls email me wschroter at yahoo</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Shocker: Google document proposes giving Motorola time-to-market advantage - <AUTHOR> http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/09/shocker-for-android-oems-google.html

<comment><USER2> While I suppose it's nice to see it codified in bullet points, this shouldn't actually be surprising.

The fact that Google develops Android in private and only pushes the changes to a public repo after it's finished is well-known. There are open-source purists (of which I am not) who shake their fists over this behavior, but it's been an observable trend since Android first launched.

And as a corollary to that, we've also known explicitly that each release of Android is given to one OEM first to launch a halo device, and then opened up to other OEM's only afterwards.

So...people predisposed to dislike Google's stance on Android are already well-acquainted with this information, and people predisposed to support Google's stance have already accepted this behavior.

<comment><USER3> This is a little different in that there was belief (I think Google even stated) that the halo device would be a competitive process. This document gives the appearance that now it will just be Motorola. No more HTC Nexus One or Samsung Nexus S.</comment></comment>


Julian Assange free to leave Sweden - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hKm0veWQ9IxEjmWJVYhyTToG-99Q

<comment><USER2> Sadly, his consideration for where to go is probably "where am I least likely to be shot?"</comment>


The Volvo 360c concept is an office-bed-living room mashup to disrupt travel - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/05/the-volvo-360c-concept-is-an-office-bed-living-room-mashup-to-disrupt-domestic-air-travel/ <comment><USER2> Somewhat ironic to observe that the pragmatic limit of Volvo's vanity-driven imagination is the next filthy public rest stop minimally provisioned to enable "private business"; _around 300 kilometers (186 miles)_ strikes me as objectively less concerned with the average commute distance of a _potentially lucrative_ target market than "synchronizing with nature".</comment>


How do you compute the midpoint of an interval? (2014) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/file/index/docid/576641/filename/computing-midpoint.pdf <comment><USER2> Summary: to compute (a + b) / 2 and get the best answer for arbitrary inputs, you want:

0 if a == –b

±realmax if a or b is ±∞

otherwise compute (a - a/2) + b/2 at higher precision, then round to the nearest float

<comment><USER3> _"±realmax if a or b is ±∞"_

That, IMO, is debatable. NaN is an option, too (as it is for the case a=+∞, b=-∞, so one can argue _"0 if a == –b"_ needs tuning, too)

Both choices break the property _m(I) ∈ I_ , but that may be fine, as NaN doesn't mean the midpoint isn't in the interval, but just that one cannot tell where in the interval it lies.

<comment><USER4> Is a == -b true when a and b are +inf and -inf? That's not what I would have expected.

<comment><USER2> You are asking if ∞ == ∞? Yes.

<comment><USER5> It's been years since I got my math degree, but IIRC this isn't true. At least, it's not true in enough framings that you can assert it this plainly. Infinity isn't just another number, and just because the symbols are identical in either side of the equals signs doesn't mean the entities described are.

<comment><USER2> We are talking about the floating point number format and the behavior of computer programming languages.

In "mathematics", the meaning of the symbol ∞ depends on what number system we are talking about. In some contexts ∞ is not a "number", but rather a shorthand for a statement about limits. In other contexts it is a number.

If you want to learn about the "affinely extended real numbers", which is what floating point numbers more or less approximate, you can read [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_real_number_line](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_real_number_line)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Similar things are relevant for calculations with integers (like array indexes), if you haven't yet, read this classic post about it: [https://ai.googleblog.com/2006/06/extra-extra-read-all- about...](https://ai.googleblog.com/2006/06/extra-extra-read-all-about-it- nearly.html?m=1) (reader mode makes it accessible on iPhones, why don't people test their layouts with common browsers?).

<comment><USER7>
      In C and C++ (where you don't have the >>> operator), you can do this:

        6:             mid = ((unsigned int)low + (unsigned int)high)) >> 1;

Since you're casting to unsigned int anyway, can't you just use / 2?

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I believe those compile to the same thing for unsigned ints. You can confirm using godbolt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This post is a great reminder of just how much we need to respect the people who write or have written system libraries. Even simple things can be so complicated when you have to factor for all eventualities. A rocket could blow up because the library function you wrote didn't account for floating point arithmetic correctly.

<comment><USER10> > _A rocket could blow up because the library function you wrote didn 't > account for floating point arithmetic correctly._

I would go so far as to say that using floating point in any software that might cause the rocket to blow up is probably Doing It Wrong (TM). That does not include the video encoder sending a livestream to the ground station, but it does include the µC that controls the engine turbopumps.

<comment><USER11> A microcontroller for a pump probably doesn't need floating point numbers, but flight control software uses it.

This went wrong before and an Ariane 5 was blown up (automatically as a safety measure), see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_(spacecraft)#Launch_fa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_\(spacecraft\)#Launch_failure) Strictly speaking the problem was converting floats to 16-bit integers which ended in an overflow... So avoiding floats doesn't even help as it won't protect you from overflows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Take an average in a range! Neat. Floating point uses exponential indexing and gets blurry. Taking a chunk of an exponential range and averaging that seems to solve the inaccuracy (!)</comment>


Elixir and the Internet of Things (2014) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-OCorBXX7M

<comment><USER2> Performance testing tool was written in Go, but then Go seems to have been ignored for writing the server. Any reason?

<comment><USER3> Doing distributed systems in Elixir/Erlang is dramatically easier/more logical than in Go.

Go is advertised as having "Concurrency" support, but that's nowhere near all that makes up OTP.

I think people don't seem to get this. Go is really not a good language for distributed systems programming. At least not yet when compared to Erlang / Elixir.

<comment><USER4> I'd like to see it translated to LFE - lisp flavored erlang to compare with Elixir. I started with Elixir, but I have since switched to LFE, since I prefer Lisp languages to Ruby/Python. I think LFE would be more powerful in the IOT application.

<comment><USER5> "Powerful" is a pretty vague term. Care to elaborate on why?

<comment><USER4> Sure, but your name presages what I might have to add. I like Elixir, and would prefer to write in it rather than Erlang just based on syntax, and Elixir is evolving. But the ability to change the constructs of the language are limited compared with a Lisp like LFE. I am a novice, so I defer to the man himself to elucidate - Robert Virding - [1]. Nowadays small chips and boards can do a lot more than their ancestors, but I think the ability to write new constructs in LFE will be more 'powerful' in developing small IOT devices.

[1] - [http://osdir.com/ml/lisp-flavoured- erlang/2015-01/msg00010.h...](http://osdir.com/ml/lisp-flavoured- erlang/2015-01/msg00010.html)

<comment><USER5> > _Sure, but your name presages what I might have to add._

My username has nothing to do with affinity for syntax. In fact, I would have started with Elixir a year earlier if in 2012 I hadn't dismissed the language for looking too much like Ruby. I ultimately embraced Elixir for its Erlang- like qualities, the parts I like from Clojure and excellent tooling.

> _But the ability to change the constructs of the language are limited > compared with a Lisp like LFE. I am a novice, so I defer to the man himself > to elucidate - Robert Virding_

Robert actually talked with José about that on Twitter recently[0] . This is above my head as well, but I think LFE's extensibility is something that gets stretched a bit too far whenever a comparison of Elixir and LFE comes up.

0 - [https://twitter.com/josevalim/status/601388406309036033](https://twitter.com/josevalim/status/601388406309036033)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting talk and on a related note, Strange Loop has become one of my favourite conferences for producing interesting talks these days. They always seem to get talks no a variety of technologies with a mix of real world applications.</comment>


In the Pancreas, Common Fungi May Drive Cancer - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/03/health/pancreatic-cancer-fungi.html <comment><USER6> Actual paper:

[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1608-2](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1608-2)

Looks pretty strong: getting rid of the fungi stopped tumor growth and repopulating it with that type of fungi (and not with other types) restarted it again (in mice). And they've even found a drug target!

Pancreatic cancer is not the most common but one of the most deadly (<10% survival) with very short times between diagnosis (it's mostly asymptomatic) and death.

<comment><USER7> > _Pancreatic cancer is not the most common but one of the most deadly ( <10% > survival) with very short times between diagnosis (it's mostly asymptomatic) > and death._

All but one of the people I've known in my life that died from cancer died of this form. It's like 7 people.

A useful treatment can't come soon enough.

<comment><USER8> A useful early warning bio-marker needs to come first.

<comment><USER9> or whenever it does, because once we have the bio-marker, we can then throw what would be the already-invented treatment at it ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What a feeling it must be for the researchers involved in this, if it turns into a method of improving pancreatic cancer survival. I am glad their are so many medical researchers driven in this way.

My mother passed away from pancreatic cancer last year; she had no symptoms until two months before she passed, when she got a diagnosis from a scan. There are a lot of trials ongoing looking at how the area around the pancreas impacts how well different therapies work in treating it.

This is really interesting as it suggests a new avenue to improve treatment, as well as a potential tool for easier diagnosis.

<comment><USER11> This reminds me a lot of the cancers attributed to HPV, a common virus. The researchers who discovered that link have likely saved millions of lives.

Almost every instance of cervical cancer is attributed to HPV. 70% of throat cancers, 90% of anal cancers, 60% of penile cancers, 75% vaginal, and 70% vulvar cancers. [1]

It always stunned me that one little virus that used to be seen just as an embarrassment was re-categorized as being a huge risk factor for deadly cancers.

If the person who identified a common bacteria being responsible for almost all ulcers got a Nobel price, the HPV <\--> cancer researchers should also have been considered, IMHO.

[1] [https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes- prevention/risk/i...](https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes- prevention/risk/infectious-agents/hpv-and-cancer)

<comment><USER12> "...person who identified a common bacteria..." (Barry Marshall)

Helicobacter pylori is also a suspect carcinogen, specifically in some stomach cancers. I am now wondering if it assists this evil fungus in any indirect way. Over half the world population carries h pylori, apparently mostly asymptomatically.

<comment><USER13> Is there a non invasive way of getting tested for it?

<comment><USER12> There's the poo test and a breath test.. beyond that I'm unsure. The breath test seems less available, maybe. Consider the following before alarming yourself though. H pylori, if asymptomatic, may be at a level of what some in the medical field deem best left alone. The goal in some treatments seems to beat it down rather than eradicate it. Rationale seems to weigh cost\benefit of slaughtering all the good stuff to get the bad when the bad might not do much beneath a threshold. I'm no authority. The subject, I do think is worth reading about and it doesn't appear there's a clearly advised plan for the infected asymptomatic majority.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm not surprised that fungi as a causative agent for cancers (and that by extension anti-fungals might be cancer protective).

It was once believed stomach ulcers were due to acid imbalance and we now know many types of stomach ulcers are due to infection and treatment with antibiotics is the proper course of treatment.

I think that more research in this line will be very productive. I believe that he balance/imbalance of the body's fauna will eventually be shown to be the root trigger of many other issues. Knowledge like this is invaluable because it can quickly turn major health concerns into preventable diseases.

It's not just about our genetics, it's about our interplay between our genetics and our environment.

<comment><USER15> > I'm not surprised that fungi as a causative agent for cancers

It bloody amazes me. What reason or prior experience do you have that makes it seem reasonable?

<comment><USER16> This may be a little harsh but I think you could rephrase OP's point as "The body seems really complicated so I'm not surprised that there are complex interactions going on".

<comment><USER15> I see what you're saying and it's a good point, but those complex interactions seem to throw up impossibly amazing stuff, for example the utterly mindblowing idea of mitochondria being captured organisms. To say "it's complex so surprises should be surprising" to me just doesn't make work. I still get staggered by this stuff. If I ever lose the ability to be mindblown, it'll be a sorry day.

Fungi in the pancreas isn't in the same league but it's still pretty good!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I have (idiopathic) Chronic Pancreatitis and I wonder if the same holds for me. I'm already on enzymes but not diabetic (yet, knock on wood). There is a link in the article pointing to Crohns so I have hope that there is some correlation. If anyone has any more info, I'd gladly hear you out as it could be life changing for me. For instance, if I'd want to try this myself, what could be a good off the counter medication (in EU)? And what would be a good interval of taking these? I notice that doctors are slow on the uptake with these kind of discoveries so I've become more prone to trying remedies (diet changes mostly) myself. (Note: I don't shun away from bad news, would like to hear that too)

<comment><USER18> I have a condition that can lead to pancreatitis, diabetes and usually involves digestive enzymes. I've successfully gotten off the digestive enzymes.

If you aren't already: I will suggest you keep a food and symptom journal, stay away from table salt (sea salt or kosher salt are both better) and figure out if you have trouble with specific oils. Symptoms can sometimes lag behind triggering events substantially. A journal can help you find patterns and make inferences.

I personally avoid peanut oil. It's very inflammatory and inflammation is has been linked to diabetes.

<comment><USER17> I've long put off having a food and symptom journal, because I'm pretty disorganized, but I will take your advice serious. Can I ask how you exactly correlate the symptoms with your food intake? From what I've read the digestive system takes max 48 hours from in to out.

<comment><USER18> I do a lot of reading. I discuss stuff a lot with my adult sons who still live with me. I look for patterns.

A lot of stuff happens about 48 hours after the triggering event. My son did some research and this seems to be a significant blood and lymph timing thing.

Other significant time frames seem to be one week, two weeks, one month and six weeks. These aren't peculiar to "things I ate." These are health events triggering physiological changes that don't show up until later.

It's harder to connect those longer time frames to the triggering event, but I am sometimes reasonably confident of the connection because of the specifics involved and I just read a lot and discuss this stuff a lot and write about it a lot. Patterns eventually become clear if you pay enough attention.

As your diet changes, your body changes and your needs change. It's a moving target.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Somewhat interesting that folksy/homeopathic "cancer cures" often suggest things like garlic, which is a fairly good antifungal.

<comment><USER20> Is there any downside to periodically taking strong antifungals? We don't have beneficial fungi do we? I have been considering a dose of ivermectin twice a year. Studies hav correlates it with a strong anti cancer effect.

<comment><USER21> Here is another point to consider: If you were growing say Shiitake mushrooms on a container, a "bad" or potential unknown fungus might move in first to it and out-compete with your crop and thereby ruin your attempt.

But if your Shiitake mushrooms took hold and established a strong and healthy foothold the other mushrooms/spores/fungi will not be able to "move" in on after the fact.

So if you took this to a human perhaps the "good" fungus needs to be healthy and well colonized to prevent other random things from trying to grow in areas they shouldn't be in.

<comment><USER22> But I don't want shiitake mushrooms in my pancreas!

<comment><USER23> Why not?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> First inside brain cells in areas affected with Alzheimer's disease ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10401344](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10401344)) and now this.

I'm increasingly thinking we have severely underestimated and misattributed the damage caused by covert fungal infections.

<comment><USER25> Shouldn't this be an easy hypothesis to test?

Or a cohort that has taken some sort of anti-fungal med and we could look at their outcomes?

<comment><USER24> I'm pretty sure 'easy' is not the word I'd choose to describe it.

To pick one common fungal infection among many: Let's have a look at fungal nails ([https://www.medicinenet.com/fungal_nails/article.htm](https://www.medicinenet.com/fungal_nails/article.htm)).

As they note, "Onychomycosis is a fungal infection usually caused by a special type of fungus known as a dermatophyte. Since most of these infections are relatively superficial, it would seem that topical treatments ought to work well. This is not the case because the nail unit is relatively impenetrable."

Where I live, typical treatments for an established fungal infection of this kind would apparently include medical nail varnish with Amorolfin (at least weekly) or Ciclopirox (daily), _for 6-12 months_ in cases with small, highly localized infection, or, for larger infections, oral Terbinafine (daily, for 3 months) or Itraconazole.

In my understanding (Life scientist here, but not really medical professional) Terbinafine is the nicer one of those last two as far as the patient's own body is concerned - a modern, effective, prescription-free antimycotic - <USER2> it still has a respectable list of side effects ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terbinafine#Side_effects](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terbinafine#Side_effects)).

This is not like procaryotes (Bacteria, Archaea, ...) where many aspects of their biology is almost alien compared to our own cells and possible to target with minimal host damage. Save for the fungal cell wall, and some exotic aspects to DNA reproduction and cell membrane biosynthesis, fungi are _much_ closer to animal, and the game with them tends to be "let's see if we can find something that hurts you (much) more than it hurts me".

If they are hiding inside human cells or tissues reaching them with antimycotics to a significant extent at all is tricky. Not sure about the pharmacological accessibility of the pancreas, to be honest, but many drugs don't even enter the brain without being specially designed for it, let alone get inside the nerve cells. And even if we can get in there treatments are fairly long, disagreeable and/or risky, and far from guaranteed to be successful.

Is the drug effective against the particular fungus? Does it remain effective under the course of microbial evolution? Is the body capable of eliminating the fungus entirely with aid from the drug? (Arguably maybe not, if the fungus is very good at hiding.)

So, I agree that looking at the existing outcomes after treatment with antimycotics could be a good first step, but as far as I can see, if you detect an effect you can be fairly sure there is one, but if you don't detect an effect that doesn't really tell us much because it could mean either there's no problem or, just as well, that the treatment has just been too ineffective in eliminating the deep covert infections for one reason or the other. And there's every reason to believe we may be in that latter scenario.

But, with Alzheimer's and pancreatic cancer on the list of allegations so far, is it _worth_ testing? On a society level, yes, unequivocally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This seems like an extremely promising development and the study looks to have done everything right regarding controls.

I'm hoping this isn't just another "works in mice!" story, but it doesn't seem like that is the case, as this is dealing with something very different (specific fungal infection) than most other studies.

</comment><comment><USER11> I have one of the variants of Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, a genetic condition that changes how collagen proteins are folded. The results of the condition vary wildly depending on how specifically the proteins fold, but in my case it's pretty minor. I'm "hyper flexible" and I'm more prone to fungal infections.

My skin is a buffet for fungal infections and I've been fighting a persistent Malassezia infection for years. It's caused me to have intense dandruff and lost a lot of my hair as the infection clogs my hair follicles.

The only thing that helped was taking oral anti-fungals, but once I stopped, the infection came back within a few weeks.

Reading that the specific fungus I'm fighting is also plausibly responsible for pancreatic cancer is a bit frightening.

I wonder if I can get routinely screened for pancreatic cancer without appearing like a crazy person to an uninformed doctor.

<comment><USER27> Pancreatic cancer is one of the worst to detect, often detected in the very last phase when nothing could be done; if I were you I would insist on regular checks given you likely suffer from seborrheic dermatitis given your symptoms.

From Internet: "(Eczematic) dermatitis can be one of the earliest indications of pancreatic cancer."

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Back when I was in college, someone gifted me Randy Pausch's "The Last Lecture". It was my first introduction to this terrible disease. Little did I know then, that a decade later, I would lose my beloved father in-law to the same disease.

When he was diagnosed, I digged into Randy's old blog, and realized how little things have changed since then. There is now a new cocktail of Chemotherapy drugs, but apart from that we have hardly progressed on this front. I don't think we could have really saved him even with an early diagnosis.

Surgery seems to be the only permanent, generic cure as far as most cancers are concerned. But with Pancreas, from what I read, even that gave a very grim future (as in Randy's case). If at all you survive the Whipples, you will be entirely on expensive enzyme supplements for the rest of your life AND carry a significant risk of metastasis.

<comment><USER29> It seems like the Chemotherapy / radiation is a lot more targeted and has less side effects. Furthermore, genetically targeted treatments and the early detection mechanisms of cancerous cells to avoid large scale re-growth seem to have improved markedly.

That said, detection in the case I'm thinking about was super early which always helps with outcomes.

<comment><USER30> not for pancreatic. only about 5% of cases have a genetic target, and there is no known test for early detection. you can look at a healthy pancreas and a few months later same person is stage iv.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Of interest to people who are willing to examine claims of treatment modalities outside of the mainstream medicine, without labeling them as quackery:

An Italian oncologist by name Tullio Simoncini believes that cancer is primarily caused by a fungus and he uses baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) as the primary treatment. He claims that he's been successfully treating patients for decades. I'm willing to give him the benefit of doubt, and I'd would welcome any information from someone who has investigated his treatment, or has direct experience either as a patient or personally know a patient.

His website: [http://www.simoncinicancertherapy.com/en/index.html](http://www.simoncinicancertherapy.com/en/index.html)

To the causal skeptic who will feel the urge to respond to my post : It's ok to be skeptical(Infact it's the wise thing to do, initially), but flippant skepticism is another matter altogether. Flippant skepticism a dead end, even if it's very gratifying. I'm also aware that there are unverified rumors that Simoncini's license was suspended. Personally to me, it does not matter if his license was indeed suspended.

</comment><comment><USER32> > "This is intriguing and exciting research," said Dr. Ami Bhatt, who studies > microbes at Stanford University. "But it's probably too soon to add broad > spectrum antifungals, many of which have lots of side effects, to cancer > treatment regimens, even in experimental settings."

I wonder if there are natural dietary changes you can make to help reduce the likelihood of these fungi.

</comment><comment><USER33> Could've saved Iain M Banks :(

<comment><USER34> Steve Jobs tried to cure his pancreatic cancer with diet for 6 months. This might have given him more direction.

Pancreatic cancer has taken quite a few famous people:

        Randy Pausch - Last Lecture
        Steve Jobs
        Patrick Swayze
        Sally Ride - <USER3>
        Piers Sellers - astronaut
        Hans Rosling
        Richard Hatch
        Bill Hicks - <USER4>
        Jef Raskin - Macintosh
        Iain M Banks - <USER5>

In the 12 years since Randy's Last Lecture, we've made little progress:

[https://www.cmu.edu/randyslecture/](https://www.cmu.edu/randyslecture/)

<comment><USER27> Steve Jobs had one of the mildest, non-aggressive forms of pancreatic cancer; had he taken chemo, he would be 99% here today. Instead he let it grow until there was no hope anymore. Fruitarian diet seems like the worst possible one for pancreas...

<comment><USER35> I guess that's the downside of a contrarian "Think different" mindset.

Sometimes if you "zig" while the whole world "zags", you build the biggest company in the world. And sometimes you die from very treatable cancer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Is it possible to avoid this fungus? What are the sources of this fungus?

<comment><USER37> fungi in general are pretty ubiquitous. Not sure about this particular one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> _PDA tumours in humans and mouse models of this cancer displayed an increase in fungi of about 3,000-fold compared to normal pancreatic tissue. The composition of the mycobiome of PDA tumours was distinct from that of the gut or normal pancreas on the basis of alpha- and beta-diversity indices. Specifically, the fungal community that infiltrated PDA tumours was markedly enriched for Malassezia spp. in both mice and humans._

</comment><comment><USER39> Are there any treatments to remove fungi ? I thought they were impossible to get rid off passed a certain threshold.

</comment><comment><USER27> Hm, given it's Malassezia, is there a connection to seborrheic dermatitis (the same underlying organism)? Is there a correlation between patients with pancreatic cancer and seborrheic dermatitis? I lost auntie a month ago due to pancreatic cancer, it took less than a year from diagnosis to death.

</comment><comment><USER40> I still put my money on K-Ras being much more important than any fungi.

</comment><comment><USER41> we've cured cancer in mice more times than people can count. It doesn't really represent forward progress in human cancer research.

<comment><USER42> We have made truly incredible process in cancer treatment. From 1990 to 2010 the number of cases breast cancer stayed about the same, but the number of deaths dropped by about 1/3\. [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221353831...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213538315000065)

It's hard to say what current rates are as treatment lasts so long. However, approximately 99% of people with localized breast cancer, which is ~62% of diagnoses, survive 5 years. 85% with regional cancer, spread to nearby lymph nodes or other tissue, survive 5 years. Even metastatic breast cancer has which is 6% of diagnoses has a 27% chance of surviving 5 years.

Now various other types have had more or less success, but amazing work has been done.

<comment><USER43> Your comment is almost completely orthogonal to dekhn's. The point is that, regardless of progress/stagnation in cancer research, success in mouse models is not a strong indicator of eventual success in humans.

<comment><USER42> Mouse models are almost the only indicator for future success. So while many fail, most progress comes through research just like this.

Just remember, successful means lower the rates of deaths they don't generally eliminate it. So, yay study 1357 got the survival rate from 5% to 10% that's real progress. (Reported as curing cancer). Study 2217 got the survival rate from 10% or 15% wow progress. (Reported as curing cancer). Study 3... I mean grated they did help some specific individual within that study so it's not meaningless, but come on.

<comment><USER43> > Mouse models are almost the only indicator for future success.

What do you mean by this? The vast, vast majority of things that work in mice do not work in humans. Even if effectiveness in mice is (approximately) _necessary_ for eventual effectiveness in humans (say, because of our research methods), this does not make it a good indicator. "Drug doesn't immediately melt your brain" is also a necessary property, but it doesn't do a good job of predicting effectiveness.

<comment><USER42> If you only look at everything that has already passed the test then sure the test does not seem important.

The set of all possible cancer treatments however are not just the set of treatments that pass animal models. Drugs etc need to go though several hoops before they are even tested in mice, and even more fail in mice. Everything that's made it to this stage is extremely promising relative to the baseline.

<comment><USER43> If the baseline is success probability 10^-8, raising it to 10^-5 is extremely promising at a relative level, but not at an absolute level.

<comment><USER42> That's fair though 10^-5 is wildly off base.

About 1/3 of drugs that show promise on mouse models are ever tested in humans. After that Oncology has a 8.3 percent success rate for 2015. So, when looking at 'cured cancer in mice' something like 2.5% is about the right ballpark, which I would consider promising as a general baseline.

For some comparisons the success rate in clinical trials averages around 14% though it ranges from around 33.4 percent in vaccines for infectious diseases to 3.4 depending on the type of treatment being tested. [https://www.centerwatch.com/cwweekly/2018/02/05/new-mit- stud...](https://www.centerwatch.com/cwweekly/2018/02/05/new-mit-study-puts- clinical-research-success-rate-14-percent/)

Baseline is harder to calculate, but 10^-8 is probably reasonable depending on what's considered.

<comment><USER43> > About 1/3 of drugs that show promise on mouse models are ever tested in > humans.

Do you have a citation? This seems totally off to me. In so far as the number refers to something real, I suspect "shows promise" must mean something much stricter than the threshold that this particular treatment has passed. That is, I would bet against a 2.5% chance that this particular study leads to an actual drug approved to treat pancreatic cancer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Does this imply anything regarding the consumption of yeast? Specifically nutritional yeast which many vegans tend to eat.

</comment><comment><USER45> In the coming decades, we'll find that many more diseases than previously thought are caused by yet-unknown pathogens.

<comment><USER46> There's good theoretical reason to think that. Evolution should eliminate diseases caused by self-defects, but arms races with pathogens can keep diseases around (either directly, caused by the pathogen, or indirectly, as a tradeoff due to things being selected for to resist the pathogens.)

<comment><USER47> If diseases caused by self defects arise mainly after reproducing (say in your 50s/60s/70s), would there be much evolutionary pressure to eliminate it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Archived: [https://outline.com/3zd62c](https://outline.com/3zd62c)

</comment><comment><USER48> > Researchers were surprised by the presence of fungi in the typical pancreas > and immense increase in their numbers in disease. "The pancreas was > considered a sterile organ until a couple years ago"

I'm surprised that after decades of treating pancreatic cancer, nobody noticed this earlier. You'd think they take biopsies and take a look at them.

</comment><comment><USER49> Is this why people are trying to cure their cancer with dog deworming products?

</comment><comment><USER50> It seems like every week research finds a new carcinogen or anti-carcinogen.

<comment><AUTHOR> It seems like every week that the mainstream press, in search of clickbait content and with no understanding of statistics, misstates the results of some study or another.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> It's either 'a Common Fungus' or 'Common Fungi'.

<comment><USER19> The NYT either had it right, or corrected it. The linked article says "common fungi" without the "a".</comment></comment>


Employee #1: Kickstarter – AMA and Interview - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ycombinator.com/employee-1-kickstarter/ <comment><USER2> Hi! This is Cassie. If you have questions/thoughts/recipes/doodles, I'm here to field all. (Pro-tip on the recipe front: peanut butter cookies are my #1, always seeking innovations.)

<comment><USER3> I guess i'll start. How did you end up getting hired by kickstarter?

<comment><USER2> Met one of the co-founders through a friend. We had a lot in common and, that first night we met, had a great conversation. A couple years later, he proposed to me the idea of working for a company he was trying to launch. (Aka: Kickstarter.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> >Things still felt very new then, like Christmas. The excitement and freshness was like that.

> I had hit a ceiling in terms of what I was learning and I got bored, to be > totally honest.

I wish more companies understood how common this is.

I also liked how you didn't investigate the idea of Kickstarter that much. I've heard other people say this too about good work they've done, that they fell into things. It makes me wonder if we're paying attention to the right signs before making decisions.

Which signs do you pay attention to now?

<comment><USER2> I've said this before and I will say it again. A long time ago, a friend gave me a piece of advice, re: making career choices: "Don't think about what you want to do, think about how you want to feel."

So much about making the "right choice" is about understanding and being responsive to your emotional intuition -- not a category of feeling that you often hear celebrated in (speaking frankly) bro-heavy tech spaces.

I still pay attention to how an opportunity makes me feel: excited? afraid? leery?

Then I work backwards to: Why? (Sometimes, being a little afraid can be a good sign, haha -- it means something will challenge you.)

And I pay close attention to the _people_ I would be working for: how do they communicate? who do they respect? how do they picture the future?

I also think about my own end goals. What am _I_ looking for? Do I just need a paycheck? (That happens sometimes.) Is there a specific skill I'm trying to master? Will a role be a stepping stone toward a bigger picture, long term goal?

It's a confluence of factors, and there's no science on how to balance them against each other. Again: that emotional intuition will guide you. (Keep it well honed.)

Oof, long answer. Does that help at all? Feel like I might have gone off deep into left field with this one. :)

<comment><USER5> A friend linked just this comment to me, and as somebody amidst an existential crisis, this is such a great answer.

That emotional intuition - have you noticed or observed any ways in yourself, or in others, to really keep this sharp?

<comment><USER2> Glad to hear it was helpful!

Yes, definitely. You have to carve out time for yourself, very deliberately, and be conscious about minimizing the amount of stimulation and distractions you are letting in. Spend time alone, go for long walks with your phone off, let your mind wander. Devote mental time to the things that scare you and trouble you -- really, really lean into them. (Another friend once said to me: "Embrace the struggle." Also a helpful mantra.) Therapy, if it's an option, can be great self maintenance. So is daily meditation, even if just for ten minutes. (It helps you get into the habit of unplugging.)

The work of focusing on your "feelings" is interesting because, often, it's actually the opposite of "focus." It's more like letting yourself drift freely and, in doing so, mapping your interior sea. :)

(Not to get tooooo hippy BS about it. Ha.)

<comment><USER5> You've characterized what the act of honing emotional intuition needs, then what one would actually look like: block distractions, go for a long walk, generally think about the things you're uncomfortable about but let your mind wander. I think the hard part is, how much time do you need to devote before you get something back out of it? Best policy is probably just "always do it."

And in the last line, you elicited a reaction from me to say "This isn't hippy bs" and buy in to what you've said. Thanks for the deceptively good answer :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Kickstarter was especially lucky to have you from the beginning. Because of the humble person you are you would never state this but I would attribute a decent amount of their success to your empathetic nature. Sustaining (note not growing) a community of creative makers is not about code and product, but of communication. Congrats on all your accomplishments and contributions. We need more people like you in tech!

<comment><USER2> Thank you so much! An exceedingly kind insight -- although, without any humility whatsoever, I have to insist that the success of Kickstarter was due to _many_ factors and the work of _many_ wonderful people (including the founders). :)

I enjoy the distinction you make between "sustaining" \-- I like to say "nurturing" \-- a community and growing one. It is important to think about that.

Thank you for reading!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is the book Cassie & Craig recommend in the interview: [https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-Forgetting-Name-Thing- Sees/dp/...](https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-Forgetting-Name-Thing- Sees/dp/0520256093) Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees: Expanded Edition

Do you know if there's a French version of this? For a gift. I couldn't find in my web search.

<comment><USER2> Not to my knowledge, but I wish. Sounds like a great gift.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What strategies did Kickstarter use to gather data on users (and on potential demographic segments) in the beginning when there was a limited R&D budget?

<comment><USER9> Hi there! I was Kickstarter employee #2 and my unofficial (which briefly became my official title) was "R&D", so I think it was just a matter of being in the right place at the right time and for me, realizing that the most effective way I could be valuable for our small team was to dig into the data and do the research to answer all the questions popping up day to day. Sometimes that was writing queries for our Year in Review posts, other times it was figuring out the best ways to mitigate payments risk.

At first we were just using Google Analytics and SQL. A couple years into it I deployed Mixpanel, and eventually we built our entire analytics infrastructure from scratch and used Looker to expose it to the rest of the company.

Here's the 30,000 foot view of how that worked:

[https://www.kickstarter.com/backing-and-hacking/this-is- the-...](https://www.kickstarter.com/backing-and-hacking/this-is-the-story-of- analytics-at-kickstarter)

I was at the company for over 6 years and by the time I left, my data team had people working on data science, machine learning, traditional BI, and of course infrastructure.

I wrote about that experience here:

[https://medium.com/@fredbenenson/on-to-the- next-2-271-days-3...](https://medium.com/@fredbenenson/on-to-the- next-2-271-days-309d6ba672d7#.r5yju1xmx)

Spoiler alert: I'm now at Y Combinator working on data science with their admissions team, so things have come pretty full circle :)

<comment><USER8> Thank you! This is very insightful. I'll definitely check out the articles you mentioned. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am particularly impressed with this interview. The level of self-awareness of cassie of her earlier self really helps the reader understand what it was like truly as a first employee of Kickstarter. I also really love how she managed explaining that although the founders are awesome, they were not perfect in a very balanced way. A lot of interviews I have read like this always tries to make the founders seem like people who have all the answers, but how she explains it, makes it feel like they were just any other company with a vision trying to figure shit out. Which is inspiring/encouraging.

Question: I get the feeling, Kickstarter feels like a different life for you now. Out of curiosity did your equity at Kickstarter completely vest before you left?

<comment><USER2> Thank you so much for the kind words! That's a very generous response and I appreciate you sharing.

Kickstarter does feel like a completely different life, but that's only because of how much I was able to grow while I was there. That's a good thing, I think!

My equity did not completely vest, no. Close, but no!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This interview was swell.

* Alright I'll add a question - what do you think was the spark whenever users fell in love with the product/community?

<comment><USER2> Thank you I think this comment is rad!

<comment><USER11> We're a crowdfunding/community/love thing too. We have a person who is you for our community team, and reading the interview was like reading that person's last 2 years. I sent it to our you.

<comment><USER2> That's wonderful. Thank you. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Where do you see the future of crowdfunding, especially as crowdfunding spreads to outside of the western world?

<comment><USER2> Honestly, I think less about the future of crowdfunding, and more about the future of companies like Kickstarter (in context of their recent choice to become a public benefit corporation and other community-and-civic-minded choices they've made as a business). Setting that precedent, holding themselves accountable to their community, and enabling other communities to follow in their footsteps is VERY important, I think. That's what I'm thinking about lately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Do you have any funny/remarkable stories of the things you guys had to do in the early days when you were still trying to get your first customers/users?

<comment><USER2> I always wish I had better stories for this, haha. Kickstarted picked up traction so surprisingly quickly, that we really just ended up being in the position of fielding all the incoming vs having to go out and convince folks. There was plenty of lovely zaniness in the early days -- many fond memories -- but I can't recall any stunts we pulled to try and attract new projects. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hi Cassie. How do you believe a Kickstarter campaign can be a precursor to an Equity Crowdfunding campaign on platforms like VENTURE.co?

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure if I believe it should be!

<comment><USER13> Why so?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Hi Cassie. Did you feel like you had extra leverage to negotiate equity as employee number one? If so, and if I may ask, did you?

<comment><USER2> Very good question. Speaking honestly, I had no awareness of that at the time I started. I was super young and very naive about the idea of equity -- I accepted what they offered me without reading the fine print or exploring the implications at all. I am fortunate that the founders of Kickstarter are incredible upstanding men and really looked out for me, but (for the record) I do not recommend this tactic for any other first hires. :) It is _incredibly_ important to do your research, dot your i's, cross your t's, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> How is your relationship with Charles Adler? It seems like you left kickstarter at similar times with similar motivations.

<comment><USER2> He's wonderful! He left awhile after me, and perhaps our motivations were similar, but we still talk occasionally and I think very highly of him. Genuinely great person.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Hey! :) What's the status on fondeadora?

<comment><USER2> Don't even know what that is!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Dancing on chairs is fun and all, but I'd love to see the video of this interview..

<comment><USER2> I'm afraid there isn't one!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Do the "Company culture" changes from seed stage to growing stages? If Yes, how?

<comment><USER2> Of course! Many things were much easier to manage in the early days, when there were just a few of us, and we functioned like a family: there was lots of time for conversations, Feelings, and talking things through. That naturally ebbs once a company begins to pick up steam. I will say, though, Kickstarter's core spirit was (and has been) remarkably consistent, and I think that's because of the consistency of vision from the top.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Do you suggest to enter in a startup at the beginning or in a later stage?

<comment><USER2> Totally depends on what type of person you are. Are you incredibly self- motivated and comfortable setting/pursuing your own goals? Do you have a wide skillset and/or if you don't know how to do something, are you willing and eager to figure it out? Then get in at the beginning, because that temperament will take you far. If you are more comfortable with structure, experienced management, and a clearly defined role -- enter at a later stage, when more administrative structure is likely to be in place. Just my two cents!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> When did you realize kickstarter was getting huge?

<comment><USER2> The moment I didn't have to explain what we did anymore -- to anybody. Which happened remarkably fast. People would say "What do you do?" and I would say "Kickstarter!" and I would see their eyes just light up. It was very cool and exciting.

<comment><USER3> How long did it take from you joining Kickstarter to you realizing that you guys had picked up this kind of traction?

<comment><USER2> It was relatively fast! I remember it being a matter of months -- six maybe?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google+ demo - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/intl/en_uk/+/demo/

<comment><USER2> Sparks looks cool. Sparks is the sort of thing where Google really have the experience, data, and competitive edge. Some of the other ideas seem pretty stupid, to be honest (sorry).

"Instant Upload" really depicts what I dislike most about Google's software at the moment. I already have two separate sync mechanisms on my phone from Google (contacts and apps), now they're making a third. Why can't they just make one simple sync thing?

It feels like they're just launching a smattering of separate vaguely "social" 20% projects at us, when really they should have taken the best bits and integrated them into existing applications. Huddle, for example - doesn't Google Talk already have this functionality?

Circles is where I think social is going to be heading, but being first doesn't mean being best. Facebook has been headed towards this sort of thing for a while now, and once they have this feature why would anyone use Google Circles?

</comment><comment><USER3> When I look at this demo, I just think about sporks.

Sporks are so cool! They are a spoon AND a fork! But they never replaced actual spoons and forks. Because while sporks are an improvement over the old design, they just weren't better enough for people to bother to switch.

People moved from myspace to facebook because myspace got too slow and spammy. Also facebook was "cool" because initially only kids in prestigious colleges could get an account.

Google+ needs either some killer feature that is so much better than facebook that it compels people to switch (if they have one they haven't shown it yet) or facebook needs to become unusable in the same way myspace became unusable.

<comment><USER4> I personally think the "circles" concept is going to be the killer feature, at least for me and my wife. Being able to easily post things that not everybody on your list will be able to see is something I wish Facebook had, especially for those of us unable to resist the guilt-pressure to accept family members into our friend list...

<comment><USER5> This is the thing Facebook got never right when they opened from college to everyone. It was obvious for so long and they never did anything about it, i mean the word "friend" alone is limiting the whole concept.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> G+ looks interesting but I expect Google Docs to support mindmaps soon based on the tour</comment>


Ask HN: What are some examples of great B2B landing pages? - <AUTHOR> I'm developing landing pages for our B2B and wondering what you think are great examples that convinced you to sign up or try a service? <comment><USER2> Check this out. A really good collection of landing pages:

[http://www.land-book.com](http://www.land-book.com)

<comment><USER3> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm biased on this one: [http://www.pointsource.com/sites/microsites/index.html#/insu...](http://www.pointsource.com/sites/microsites/index.html#/insurance)

... so it would also be interesting to have some feedback :-)</comment>