While Its Streaming Service Booms, Netflix Streamlines Old Business - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/27/business/while-its-streaming-service-booms-netflix-streamlines-old-business.html

<comment><USER2> My Netflix dvd queue is full of titles that are not available on streaming by anyone. I'm certainly not going to drop that service - I've seen a ton of movies via it that I've wanted to watch for decades but couldn't find.

Just because something is not a growing business does not mean it is not highly profitable and valuable.

But I am sad that Netflix's dvd selection has declined substantially. It's no longer "if it's on dvd, Netflix has it". If they continue shrinking the selection, I may wind up dropping it.

<comment><USER3> > I've seen a ton of movies via it that I've wanted to watch for decades but > couldn't find

It blows my mind how much stuff (old stuff! especially non-blockbusters) isn't available anywhere streaming. I can't imagine why you wouldn't release a lot of that stuff and make a bit of extra money on those old titles.

<comment><USER4> There's the obvious reason -- that digitization is expensive, relatively speaking -- but even more so, the rights to a lot of those older movies are not well defined. Many of those older movies are under contracts that have no provision for digitization, and in many cases the rightsholders who could grant a license are unknown. It's a mess.

<comment><USER5> > There's the obvious reason -- that digitization is expensive

Um, if it's on DVD it's already digitized.

<comment><USER4> It's unfortunately not that simple. Nobody uses DVD as a mezzanine format, partly because 4:2:0 MPEG-2 at DVD data rates is unsuitable for further manipulation, and partly because the DVD rights holders may not hold the rights to republish. It's a mess.

<comment><USER5> I just meant that in the process of producing a DVD, all the material would have to have been digitized. I'm sure for some releases the production companies have gone bankrupt and/or the files are lost -- but I'd think that once digitized the masters would be kept around?

<comment><USER4> You'd like to think so, but for the most part, the digitization and prep work is done by post houses or specialist digital distribution services, and the intermediates, which cost money to preserve, are almost always discarded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "'If you cut back on service, you are going to lose your subscriber base,' said Hank Breeggemann, general manager of Netflix's DVD division[...]"

I wonder what it cost them in subscribers when they ended Saturday deliveries a year. They arguably reduced the value of their disc subscriptions by 16-17% without altering the monthly fee.

It's not surprising it's still profitable, based on some back of the envelope math, they're number of subscribers is only 26% (20 million to 5.3 million) of their high but their employee headcount is 17% of its high (50 hubs x 100 employees vs. 33 hubs x 25 employees). Not accounted for is how many of those subscribers has, like me, opted for a cheaper plan (e.g. 2 at a time from 3 at a time). My hunch is the costs of adding discs (and replacing damaged ones) have gone down (fewer subscribers need fewer discs plus disc costs have remained steady or even gone down) while adding streaming titles has probably gone up as there are more competitors including ones who will pay for exclusives.

I hope it survives pretty much as-is, at least until the total streaming market can compete in terms of catalog size. 93,000 DVD titles is about an order of magnitude greater than any one streaming service's catalog and most of what's in one streaming catalog is available in another.

<comment><USER7> So of the 93000 say about 80K of them are not currently streamable. At reasonable compression for streaming those would take about 160TB to store. Are they just not ripping them because of legal issues? Does piracy just get to win every argument? Hell, Netflix could write a client and let people rip them and upload them back to Netflix for some kind of Netflix points.

<comment><USER8> Yes, legal issues. They (Netflix) do not have the rights to rip or stream these movies.

<comment><USER9> I like to hope that a couple of the massive companies that have run against these kinds of legal problems have gone ahead and secretly ripped everything anyways, and sent it off to a secret Foundation, to weather the onset of our new intellectual property dark ages...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10>
        "Never mistake a clear view for a short distance."
        Paul Saffo

        "We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run
        and underestimate the effect in the long run."
        Roy Amara

I looks like they have mastered funding the transition to the next generation --yet to be profitable according to the NYT article--by preserving the DVD business as a cash cow. See also

[http://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2011/10/11/learning-from- netfli...](http://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2011/10/11/learning-from-netflix/)

[http://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2011/10/14/learning-from- netfli...](http://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2011/10/14/learning-from-netflix- lenny-greenbergs-response/)

</comment><comment><USER2> "Only about 10 percent of the companies that appeared on the original Fortune 500 in 1955 remain on the list today."

The conventional wisdom is that companies in a free market grow until they dominate the planet. The reality is that larger companies tend to become dinosaurs, too big to adapt, and fade away.

<comment><USER11> That statistic is misleading. Much of that change is the result of mergers. Just take a look at the list from 1955: [http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500_arch...](http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500_archive/full/1955/) . Just looking through the top 25, the vast majority still exist in some form in the Fortune 500 today. Only a few have flat out gone out of business (e.g. Bethlehem Steel) or been booted from the Fortune 500 because the overall industry shrank (e.g. pretty much the rest of the steel companies).

Being in technology, which changes so rapidly, it's easy to think that "small companies overtaking big companies" is the norm, but if you look at more "static" industries, the leaders back in 1955 (e.g. Exxon Mobile, Kraft, Proctor and Gamble) are still the leaders today.

<comment><USER2> Few companies actually go bankrupt. They just fade away, and then the remains get bought (although such are technically called 'mergers'). I don't think that is the same as continuing and expanding dominance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The DVD business may stay around for a long time, if only because it's the only cost-effective way to rent a great deal of content. Movies that want $6-7 for rental on Amazon or iTunes can be had on DVD for a fraction of the $7.99/month subscription.

</comment><comment><USER13> As competition for streaming rights heats up it seems like a good way for Netflix to offer a large selection and differentiate itself in the market.

<comment><USER7> When I see people talk about competition for streaming rights all I can think of is a future of fragmented distributors that mimics the broken past. In that future piracy continues to be the sensible choice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I cancelled Netflix a while ago. When I go to netflix.com to browse the plans, there's almost no mention of DVD! It's streaming to either 1, 2, or 4 screens. The _Add DVD plan_ is found under Your Account, not on the front page.

The upcharge for Blu-Ray delivery is still there. I don't know who still watches DVDs, but I suspect it's the same people paying for AOL.

<comment><USER15> I watch DVDs. I don't pay for AOL.

<comment><USER16> You steal AOL service? Shame on you.</comment></comment></comment>


Draft Special Publication: 800-63B Digital Authentication Guideline - <AUTHOR> https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-3/sp800-63b.html <comment><USER2> This is great! I was actually looking recently to see if there was any definitive guide to best practices in single and multifactor authentication, and this is a pretty good description. Would be nice if there were a separate guide on actual implementation of such systems.

I really appreciate this section, as I have been frustrated in the past by stupid password complexity requirements that actually reduce the amount of available entropy for passwords: [https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-3/sp800-63b.html#appA](https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-3/sp800-63b.html#appA)

Note that this might have been a better link, giving an overview of the whole series and development process: [https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-3/](https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-3/)</comment>


Ask HN: Someone should make a Codecademy for graphic design - <AUTHOR> Like Codecademy's interactive code editor to teach programming, but for graphic design.
If you could build an interactive graphic design editor and use it to teach different modules. And you could pass modules by submitting pixel perfect designs.
Is anyone building this? This would be so so cool. <comment><USER2> > If you could build an interactive graphic design editor

but the same editor will not be used for real work, right?

you mastered the interactive editor, and then you need to use photoshop, illustrator, Maya at work ...</comment>


Markdown Tutorial - <AUTHOR> https://www.markdowntutorial.com/ <comment><USER3> I am not technical. I started using markdown to write my university papers, and it really helped with quickly formatting my text (as well as not worrying about Microsoft Word crashing). I really think more people should be aware of it as it would speed up so many workflows. Thanks for this tutorial!

</comment><comment><USER4> Perhaps one of the easiest ways to learn markdown in short time amongst loads of tutorials online.

<comment><USER5> When you search for 'markdown cheatsheet' on duck duck go, you get a cheat sheet at the top. Wouldn't that be enough?

[https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=markdown+cheatsheet&ia=answ...](https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=markdown+cheatsheet&ia=answer&iax=1)

<comment><USER4> I don't use duck duck go but this is awesome too!

<comment><USER5> I highly recommend it, I have been using it for years now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The only problem I have with markdown is that it's inherently based on those keyboard layouts with easy access to # and `.

In other news, website looks like crap on Firefox mobile.

<comment><USER7> I have almost entirely switched to using an editor which supports real-time preview for Markdown editing. There is a plugin for my editor (VSCode - <USER2> I'm sure that something similar exists for most other editors that support plugins) which has keyboard shortcuts for marking content as a given type (e.g. Alt+c will mark selected text as inline code). Perhaps this would address the problem you're talking about?

<comment><USER8> > Perhaps this would address the problem you're talking about?

He's talking about physical keyboard layout, nothing you suggested will help with that.

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

<comment><USER7> I understand that. If you don't have a # readily available, but your editor allows you mark a line as Heading 1 by pressing Ctrl+1, then it does in fact address their problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Markdown is fickle and at times unpredictable, and should not be the default formatting method for user input, imo.

<comment><USER10> Markdown is at a sweet spot that combines ease of read and write for technical and non-technical users. It's primarily made to be written and shared as-is.

<comment><USER11> Sweet spot as long as you don't want anything basic like using colors. In my experience Markdown has been about as much painful and frustrating than helpful.

<comment><USER12> Color isn't really that basic a thing - you need to take into account the medium that the color will be displayed in to do it correctly.

However, as Markdown is supposed to be nothing more than a superset of HTML, you can simply reach for CSS. It won't always render the best if you're moving from Markdown to physical medium, but that's largely dependent on the engine.

<comment><USER13> I very rarely, if ever, encounter markdown inputs where markdown is a superset of HTML. Almost always script tags and various other sorts of active content are stripped at the very least.

<comment><USER12> If certain tags are being stripped, then you're probably in a position where arbitrary input isn't desirable.

If this is an input to a website, for example, the webmaster really doesn't desire everyone to be able to reinvent the blink tag, or be able to express everything in rainbow fonts.

In which case Markdown shines, for it's ability to express simple markup, that can be safely expressed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I recommend reading the past HN post and thread "Don't write documentation in Markdown" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22675165](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22675165)

</comment><comment><USER15> which flavor of markdown is this ?

<comment><USER16> Just the original, Daring Fireball Markdown.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why the sudden popularity of markdown these days? I do not understand.

<comment><USER18> Markdown is 15 years old, and adoption has been relatively gradual. I believe you're experiencing the frequency illusion. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases#Frequ...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases#Frequency_illusion)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Markdown has no reasonable support for RTL.

<comment><USER20> How do you mean? Markdown is just a funny looking way to type things.</comment></comment>


Email: don't feel guilty being a jerk, embrace it. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.frontapp.com/email-dont-feel-guilty-being-a-jerk-embrace-it/

<comment><USER2> lol "Mathilde are you back from the pub"?</comment>


A founder's guide to making your first recruiting hire - <AUTHOR> http://blog.alinelerner.com/a-founders-guide-to-making-your-first-recruiting-hire/ <comment><USER2> The mention of hiring a recruiter from a brand name like Facebook or Google is a great point that I imagine may historically be overlooked by founders. For hiring engineers, the theory of "good enough for Google, good enough for me" may be applicable due to Google's vetting process.

Success in _recruiting_ for those companies might be much different, and perhaps the equivalent of being a salesperson (who actually has to sell) vs taking orders. The salesperson who has the commodity or the most recognizable product is simply taking orders, whereas having to sell a relative unknown is much more challenging.

The mention of writing skill was also not something many think about. Recruiters are using written communication as a first point of contact much more now than in say the late 90s (when finding an employee's phone extension was easier than their email address), and candidates are getting their first impression based on the personalization as well as the professionalism and writing quality. Poor grammar and spelling or even the wrong 'voice' can scare off candidates.</comment>


Ask HN:  User Verification Suggestions? - <AUTHOR>

1.  Amazon's "Realname" (verifying name on CC).
2.  Address Verification (sending code via postal mail, having them enter it online later).
3.  Email Verification (obvious).
4.  Asymetric, Public Key type system.
These are just a few examples I can think of.  Basically, I'm trying to compile a list of ways to verify the person on the end of the pipe are who they say they are. Any ordinary or out of the ordinary suggestions welcome! <comment><USER2> Mobile phone number verification, ie. prove that you're a human in countryX by entering your mobile phone nr. in the US and we send you an SMS code or something. Google does (did?) that if I remember correctly.

<comment><USER3> I work at Twilio and this is an extremely common use case for our service. We have two recent blog posts that show how to do both SMS and phone-based verification:

[http://blog.twilio.com/2010/05/sms-phone-verification- with-t...](http://blog.twilio.com/2010/05/sms-phone-verification-with-twilio- and-php.html)

[http://blog.twilio.com/2010/05/simple-phone-verification- wit...](http://blog.twilio.com/2010/05/simple-phone-verification-with-twilio- php-mysql-and-jquery.html)

<comment><USER4> Unfortunate that the service requires a US based billing address, is there any way to work around that?

<comment><USER5> You could use a service that works internationally like <http://tropo.com/>, <http://cloudvox.com>, or any voicexml hosting company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Are you looking to just compile a list of the ways that someone might do this, or are you looking for a good solution?

Basically, every method listed here uses something as a proxy for a signing authority. In the real world, we have Notaries. In the online world, we often try and use some other trusted third party as a proxy for a notary.

That's what the credit card schemes are. You're trusting that the credit card company has done their homework and verified the identity of the person they're issuing a card to. Sadly, this isn't the case; I know someone who once ordered a credit card for their dog.

As with any authentication system, the first question you have to ask yourself is how important is the system you're guarding? What is the aim of the authentication?

The lower the value of the system, the less you can put into it. To sign up for an email list, you can probably just ask for an email address and send a verification link. To handle a large financial transaction with an untrusted third party, you're going to want a whole lot stronger verification.

So it really comes down to whether your interest here is for a practical application, or if it's purely academic and you're just wanting to compile a list.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am trying to compile a list, and the stronger the verification process, the better. A Notary is a fantastic example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Phone verification, using twilio.You can at least verify that the user controls a mobile phone number.

My bank offers this as an option to send a verification code when I use a new computer or browser.

The drawback for you is that unlike my bank you are probably not verifying an existing account and are taking the phone number from the same person you're validating.

<comment><USER7> Another (possible --- depends on your usage scenarios) drawback is that cell phone text messages are not always "instantaneous". I've personally seen lags of up to 30 minutes between send and receipt, particular in fringe reception areas.

<comment><USER4> I see > 1 day lags occasionally (aus, vodafone).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am a user case that does not own a phone or has a credit record in the US. However the thing, if you are using payments that always works is PayPals user verification. Put a charge on a users card. Either add a code to the name of the merchant, or if unfeasible, charge 1.xy and ask the user for the xy.

</comment><comment><USER9> You could combine IP geolocation and caller ID phone verification. Geolocate the user's IP during the sign-up process and provide the user a code to activate their account through a 1-800. Compare their area code against the location they provided and see if they're close enough to trust.

<comment><USER5> Now that long distance service is essentially free for everyone and mobile phones (and VoIP) have nationwide networks, more people are choosing not to update their phone numbers when they move.

This means that there's a good chance my phone might have a Chicago area code but I live in LA now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Paypal and some payment gateways verify a user's bank account/routing number by making 2 small deposits (<$0.20) and asking the user to type in how much the deposits were.

</comment><comment><USER11> it sounds like you're talking about authentication? imho nailing down <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAA_protocol> can be fairly tricky

<comment><AUTHOR> I wasn't aware of the AAA protocol. Thank you for the reference!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Canadapost.ca does a credit check when you signup for a change of address and asks the user to verify two items on their credit report. Ouch.

<comment><USER13> The US postal service's mechanism for doing this is slightly less invasive; they charge a $1 fee to your credit card card so they can confirm that the card's billing address is one of either the "old" or "new" addresses.

<comment><USER14> That might work, but hardly all people have a credit card.

And the post office certainly has no need to know it.</comment></comment></comment>


The Loose Reins on U.S. Teenagers Can Produce Trouble or Entrepreneurs  - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/14/business/14scene.html?ex=1339473600&en=c774cdab55316f7b&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss <comment><AUTHOR> Interesting article about how the lack of structure in the US (often cited as a problem in education) may actually be a boon to teens who are more interested in finding their own path.

One line surprised me a bit, though: "Ben also cited outsourcing, in this case the ability to buy cheap programming from abroad, as helping business start- ups."

Cheap server space and productive programming languages help a lot, of course... but how many people here involved in start-ups would say that offshored application development has been an important factor in starting business?</comment>


MIT researchers uses carbon nanotubes to store solar energy - <AUTHOR> http://bostinnovation.com/2011/07/14/mit-researchers-uses-carbon-nanotubes-to-store-solar-energy/

<comment><USER2> Solar energy changes the shape of the nano structure. Shape is retained. A catalyst (heat, or flash of light) can cause the shape to revert and release stored heat energy.

"The only problem with this method is that it can only be used for heating an area. Attaining electricity from this method would require another step. "

<comment><USER3> Isn't one of the big problems with solar collection towers, heating the fluid at night? They've been researching different types of salts and fluids that stay hot longer, so they can essentially run 24/7. With this, couldn't they store the heat and use that to heat up the fluid at night?

Or am I just way off here?

<comment><USER4> That's exactly right. The interesting questions are what temperatures are needed to activate this, and what temperatures can be recovered?

<http://www.photofileit.com/doe-storage-projects.htm></comment></comment></comment>


Fulfillment by ShipHero - <AUTHOR> https://fulfillment.shiphero.com/ <comment><USER2> BFCM is gonna be cray on this year. On brand for 2020.</comment>


"I'm not smart enough." - <AUTHOR> https://yourfirst.io/im-smart-enough/ <comment><USER2> Many people are genuinely not "smart" enough. Saying they are, is likely to cause suffering and waste resources, on both personal and societal levels. It's also insulting towards the intellectually disabled.

"I'm not smart enough" is not always a cop-out, or "a (lame) excuse". It can be a sign of maturity, and a cause of significant respite. Knowing your limits allows those who are intellectually limited to pursue tasks suitable to them, and still be satisfied with life (even though they haven't created Facebook or Pinterest).

Even for the more gifted of us, knowing your limits might lead to a happier life..

<comment><USER3> Exactly people are different, some are smarter than others. Otherwise everybody would be an engineer or medical doctor or some other high status high paying job.

This whole mentality that everybody are born equal in mental capacity is a likely cause of stress and depression among many people today.

People are born tall, small, fat, skinny, smart, supid. Just find your level and optimize your own happiness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The thing is, there are definitely different levels of persistence required and that's obvious to most people who struggle. When I was school, I almost never studied, and even skipped class with some regularity. Still got good grades. It just wasn't hard. It didn't take persistence.

Fast forward. Now my wife is in school and she studies like crazy hours every day and still doesn't absorb the material well. It takes her tremendous persistence and she is frustrated by people in her class who, like me, could just roll in having glanced over the material and do well.

That said, I agree with the meat of the article. I used to say "I'm not smart enough" to do things like work at "Big Software Corp" or invent novel algorithms, etc. Now I'm more honest and I'll admit "I'm too lazy" to do those things.

<comment><USER5> > Now I'm more honest and I'll admit "I'm too lazy" to do those things.

I used to think that too. "I'm just too lazy". But in comparison to what? The protestant work ethic? Are you really "too lazy" or is it just that you're happy with who you are but like everyone else are still bullied by societal pressure into feeling guilty for not wanting "more" or having more ambitions?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> When I go to places, I just tell people I'm a garbage man or "waste disposal engineer." That's usually a super quick conversation.

But to your point, engineering is just persistent and consistent effort. Most people don't want to put the time and effort to really learn the science.

</comment><comment><USER7> It is a copout. But, the next step is realizing that this is one way people prevent change from occurring, change is uncomfortable and scary. I don't think it's particularly empathetic to get upset at people's common thought processes, even when they are bad. Try to remember we're all humans and life is hard and everyone is already trying.

Also keep in mind that the person saying it may mean it more as flattery - i.e., it may be a polite lie and they don't really think that. And of course, "I'm not smart enough to do that" is more polite to say than "that sounds boring and I'm super not interested".

</comment><comment><USER8> When I tell people of my background in mathematics, the second most common reaction is along the lines of "I'm not smart enough" (the most common is the old canard of "I hate math! My old math teacher, Mr. So-and-so, dropped my older sister into a wood-chipper! Feet first!" etc, etc, etc). In a lot of these cases, "I'm not smart enough to do math" was really just a proxy for "I hate math and am uncomfortable talking about it".

It wouldn't surprise me if that was the case for at least some of the people described by the author.

</comment><comment><USER9> "I'm not smart enough" is, I think, 50% "I'm too intimidated by what I don't know" and 50% "I don't care enough to overcome the initial learning curve."

<comment><USER10> Jeez, maybe they're just not smart enough as they say. Why complicate matters by denying what is actually a sound conclusion?

Or are we so politically correct now we can't acknowledge variation in mental capacity - particularly working with numbers and logic.

I think it's maybe 10% intimidated, 10% lack of motivation, 80% not smart enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Precisely. Programming relies heavily on using others' talents and code and abilities.

For example, I wouldn't know how to do face recognition quickly. But thanks to OpenCV and QT, I was able to make [https://github.com/jwcrawley/uWho](https://github.com/jwcrawley/uWho)

I leveraged the code that was written to allow me to go a tiny bit further.

</comment><comment><USER12> Thomas Edison was not in a position to judge geniuses, but yes, Tesla did work hard.

</comment><comment><USER13> I get this all the time. People ask me what I am doing in school and I tell them I am majoring in Business Management with a Computer Science minor.

All people hear is the Computer Science part and every conversation people say, "Oh you must be smart," or "I could never do that."

My response is always, "Nope I am not crazy smart. I just really love computers and I keep at it." People always associate CS with being a genius, I am no genius. I am just a hard headed guy who loves computers, and will always keep trying to get better at whatever I am doing no matter how many times I fail.

</comment><comment><USER14> Conversely to the article, I am _certainly_ not smart enough to tell someone how to build their own Facebook or Pinterest. That requires more than programming skill; a combination of marketing, business sense, and user experience.

I'm a backend/appsec guy. No way in hell would I do that. It would be arrogant and end in disaster.

That's what teams are for.

</comment><comment><USER15> The Venn diagram in this article really bothers me. Venn diagrams aren't meant to show the makeup of a whole. This should be a pie chart. The diagrams implies that there are more persistent people than inspired people, not that you need more persistence than inspiration.

</comment><comment><USER16> Some are persistent at programming, not looking for programming jobs or kissing up to bad people.

</comment><comment><USER17> I say, If you really want it, you go and you get it, period

</comment><comment><USER18> If they don't feel smart enough, that is just going to be compounded by joining a programming community. _Smartness_ is the status symbol to these (us?) people, so get ready for a lot of subtle and not-so-subtle comparisons of people's academic record, what tier of university they went to, what inherent _hardness_ of problem's they have worked on, whether or not they started programming before they could talk, who is working with a language/ecosystem that are seen as intellectually inferior/lazy, whether they are part of the mythical "10X" ũbermensch[1] develeopr, whether or not school- work came _effortlessly_ to them, and so on. No, of course the tone is not as obvious as "I'm smarter than you, or I'm less smart because X, Y, Z". But the underlying tone is clear enough. The best way in these communities is to compliment their smarts, or imply that they are smarter than you. The perfect way to insult them is to insult their intelligence. The common currency is _brains_.

If they don't feel _smart enough_ , maybe what they mean is that they expect to end up on the bottom of the status hierarchy. And that might be a bit too rough to want to go through with. Especially if you have other interests, aptitude or talents.

[1] Yeah, umlaut-fail.</comment>


K Lambda and the Development of Qi - <AUTHOR> http://www.lambdassociates.org/blog/klambda.htm <comment><USER2> Short background gleaned from Google Group:

Mark Tarver is back from India and Qi lives ^_^!

(I'd stopped paying attention when he announced he was leaving.)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for this - The last I had heard about Qi was its demise, so I was confused to see the dates in this posting.</comment></comment>


Show HN: A miniature Linux distro for non-rooted Android devices - <AUTHOR> http://kevinboone.net/kbox.html

<comment><USER2> I hate to sound like a grumpy neckbeard but what's the world coming to when a clearly pretty clueful guy dismisses android as lot linux without a footnote but then goes on to call busybox and a handful of classic userspace command line tools a linux distribution?

Doesn't make it any less useful, but what's next - calling wine a windows distro?

<comment><USER3> Agreed, this is no more a "Linux distro" than Cygwin is, but it does sound useful (much like Cygwin's bash shell).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The author states that there is no X server for Android. That is false, and not even hard to verify:

      App name:    X Server
      Website:     http://my20percent.wordpress.com/2012/02/27/android-x-server/
      Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=au.com.darkside.XServer
      F-Droid:     https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=au.com.darkside.XServer

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm using this right now on my phone as a mini-monitor tailing a tomcat log on a server I'm ssh'd into. I don't use my phone most of the day anyway, now I can have it do something useful for me.

</comment><comment><USER6> Another project in the same vein: <http://dan.drown.org/android/>

<comment><USER7> As someone who has opkg on his router and NAS... This looks very tempting. Especially on the Android tablet.

Edit: Android says source for this is available on demand. I've asked him to post it on github :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This looks really, really cool, especially the vim support. What would be really awesome would be a native port of gcc and other supporting tools to create packages on the platform. That would enable public repositories where people can easily post builds of other apps of note.

</comment><comment><USER9> This got my hopes up, but I don't see what it does that Terminal IDE doesn't already. I was hoping it would include gcc and the ability to compile things, so that it could be the starting point for a more complete development environment, but no such luck.

<comment><USER10> with a trivial script to setup bindmounts and such, you can easily run a full linux distro on android's kernel, concurrent with the main Android OS. Debian Kit for Android is just one example. gcc, emacs, ghc, whatever you need is an apt-get install away, w/ the Hacker's Keyboard and JackPal's term emulator, you are in as good or better shape than you would be on Maemo or Meego or Tizen..

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> >Because an unpriveleged user has very limited access to the filesystem, the entire root filesystem is located somewhere under the Android app's preferences directory. From a Linux perspective this makes no sense, but is necessary. Most Linux utilities — even simple ones — expect a conventional file layout, with directories '/etc', '/usr', etc. This is impossible in this application, and most of the Linux utilities that have been ported to KBOX have required some reworking to account for the unconventional file layout. For the most part, however, the file layout is not particularly visible to the user.

Wouldn't it be possible to use the preloader to fake the root directory. I know that calling chroot itself requires root level permision, but fakechroot [1] uses the preloader to allow non root to use chroot.

[1] <https://github.com/fakechroot/fakechroot/wiki>

</comment><comment><USER12> Cool. How does this differ from Terminal IDE?

<comment><USER13> I had thought along these lines too. AFAICT, Terminal IDE is geared toward more of a developer toolset. Thats not to say you couldn't use this as a dev platform though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Here <https://sites.google.com/site/taldewandroid/> is an overview on how to install OpenWrt on Android without root. This includes a package system too, with dependency management and binary repositories.

</comment><comment><USER15> No C compiler?

It's not really a Linux distro without a C compiler.</comment>


Sourcegraph: Search code, jump around source, see real usage examples - <AUTHOR> https://sourcegraph.com <comment><USER2> Hope you have Haskell soon, I've wanted to do some analysis of occurrence of certain patterns.

<comment><USER3> None of us at Sourcegraph write Haskell, but if you know of anybody who would be interested in helping us add it (on a contract basis), please let me know! sqs at sourcegraph.com

<comment><USER4> Any plans on Clojure support?

<comment><USER3> Same deal...we would _love_ to add it but none of us use Clojure. Anyone who's interested in helping us add it (on a contract basis) should email me at sqs at sourcegraph.com. Or follow the issue at [https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph.com/issues/154](https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph.com/issues/154).

<comment><USER5> I'd love to see C# support. I suspect you could achieve this via Rosyln [0], but I don't think I'd be able to accomplish this myself. I'd be happy to chat about it, though.

[0]: [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/vstudio/roslyn.aspx](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/roslyn.aspx)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Love the idea! I tried it by searching for Node's require. It did point me to the right source [1], but the usage examples are all minified and unreadable. Might want to check for a maximum size on the usage examples that are presented.

[1] [https://sourcegraph.com/github.com/joyent/node/.CommonJSPack...](https://sourcegraph.com/github.com/joyent/node/.CommonJSPackage/node/.def/commonjs/lib/module.js/-/prototype/require)

<comment><USER3> Ahh, thanks for pointing that out. I just filed that at [https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph.com/issues/151](https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph.com/issues/151) and we will fix it soon.

<comment><USER3> I fixed this issue, but it'll take a while to propagate as Sourcegraph rebuilds all libraries that contain minified JS files. Thanks for reporting it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One of the co-founders of Sourcegraph came to UC Berkeley and spoke at entrepreneurship event. He was very engaged and gave lots of real practical advice.

I've tried Sourcegraph and think it solves a real pain point but I have had problems integrating it into my workflow. I'm not sure when I should be using it. I've been meaning to use it to read more open source code code but it seems like they recently disabled support for Ruby.

<comment><USER8> We've got all of the documentation (and source code) for all versions of Ruby, and all versions of all Ruby gems over at Omniref: [http://www.omniref.com](http://www.omniref.com)

Some examples:

[https://www.omniref.com/ruby/2.1.2/symbols/Enumerable/sort_b...](https://www.omniref.com/ruby/2.1.2/symbols/Enumerable/sort_by)

[https://www.omniref.com/ruby/gems/sass/3.3.8](https://www.omniref.com/ruby/gems/sass/3.3.8)

[https://www.omniref.com/ruby/2.1.2/symbols/MiniTest](https://www.omniref.com/ruby/2.1.2/symbols/MiniTest)

[https://www.omniref.com/ruby/gems/activerecord/4.1.1/symbols...](https://www.omniref.com/ruby/gems/activerecord/4.1.1/symbols/ActiveRecord::Base)

You can even build custom search engines for your project by uploading your project's Gemfile.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, Omniref is really cool. We're going to release our Ruby analyzer soon as a standalone open-source tool. If you are interested in using it to get semantically annotated code on Omniref, let me know (we'd prioritize Ruby over some of the other language analyzers we are also going to release).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've just been able to add my repository but there's nothing happening even though it says it's indexed the code completely. No annotation happening anywhere. Does it support angular.js's development style?

[https://sourcegraph.com/github.com/SchizoDuckie/DuckieTV](https://sourcegraph.com/github.com/SchizoDuckie/DuckieTV)

<comment><USER3> No, we don't support AngularJS yet. Sourcegraph really only supports node.js (anything with package.json). It's on our todo list, though!

<comment><USER9> Then you should really update the frontpage to say 'node.js' instead of 'javascript' imo, it would have saved me the time of importing my repostitory.

Other than that: cool tool! :-)

<comment><USER3> Good call. I just pushed that change. It should be up in a few minutes. I hope you find Sourcegraph useful once we support AngularJS! :)

<comment><USER9> As a matter of fact, I hope you get bought by github because this would be the most brilliant addition to it since the invention of github itself. Turning it into a code intelligence tool makes it 100^99 times more powerful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is very cool, it is very close to a product I would spend money for. The product I would spend money for is an e-reader for code. I would copy a 'blob' to my tablet (ipad preferred by Android is ok too) which has all of the code in my example (could be small like an application, could be large like the entire 3.13 kernel source) There would be an ever present search bar or hot- gesture that would let me search for function, definition, callers, or callees. Think cscope on steroids for the language of my choice. Browsing around the source code would bring up source in syntax colored glory (either dark motif or light). It would use high resolution fonts on my retina display for crisp clear text. The typography would be optimized for reading code. It would remember my walks through the code, it would be able to recreate them on request, it would have a swipe-able interface to get to a notes pad "behind" the code where I could at notes about what does what. I would have the ability to fold entire functions, clauses, or loops, and unfold them as needed. It could bring up doxygen comments, when I gave a long press on a function name, it could jump between call graph and code mode. In short I could read code of arbitrary complexity while I rode the train home from work, or sat on the tarmac at JFK. I would pay $100 for an App that could do that for me.

<comment><USER10> As I write this the parent comment is sitting at 0 points (downvoted by 1). Given that everyone here is looking for the "next big thing" and given that I expressed a potential market for a product which doesn't exist, I would think people might say "impractical" or "too limited a market" But I don't get the person with enough karma to down vote, doing so without a comment. I would love to know what they were thinking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is cool, but I'm not sure what's going on here. Is this full static (i.e. AST) analysis of these languages or simple full-text search, or some middle- ground constraint on full-text search driven by common usage patterns?

For example, "d3.timer" doesn't show meaningful results?

<comment><USER3> This is full static analysis, with AST and type inference.

However, type inference on JavaScript is quite hard, and as you've seen, our analyzer fails on many complex libraries like d3. We have an open issue about fixing d3 support at [https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph.com/issues/13](https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph.com/issues/13), which you can +1 if you want to stay updated on. And we're releasing the analysis toolkit we use as open source soon so it's not bottlenecked on us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What I love about sourcegraph is that between it and github search/searchcode you can find pretty much every bit of code you need without resorting to Google. Big improvement to my workflow personally as I always have preferred to find an example first and the documentation second.

<comment><USER13> Searchcode is awesome and super snappy. It's great to see more tools being created to make open source code more accessible and useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I must be stupid, but can someone please tell me how I navigate to the list of examples? When I click on search result, I get to the relevant source code. I just can't seem to find a way to get to the examples.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm 2 weeks into building the thing I just watched you demo. Cue sinking feeling.

It looks awesome. Bravo.

<comment><USER3> Sorry! I would love to get in touch with you but I don't see your email in your profile. Can you send me an email at sqs at sourcegraph.com?

(I'm the co-creator of Sourcegraph.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've been using it to study good open source code.

</comment><comment><USER17> Is it possible to filter search results by language?

</comment><comment><USER18> Sourcegraph looks beautiful. Good job guys!

</comment><comment><USER19> Congratulation Beyang and Quinn. Looks really slick!</comment>


Generalists vs. specialists – which one should you strive for as a developer? - <AUTHOR> https://youtu.be/LlFZ2tt-sTY <comment><USER2> Most likely a single specialization won't span your whole career, so have a solid general base and then delve deeper into something you enjoy.

A broad base will allow you to re-train much easier, plus draw parallelisms from your areas of expertise into new areas.

<comment><USER3> Conversely, being good at a single thing will give you the necessary mental tools to get good at other things too. One of the biggest hurdles beginners face is not knowing how to push through "the gap" and reach a level of competence where they can actually produce work that aligns with their vision. Being able to draw on the memory of already having done that in the past can be very powerful, and can help you acquire new skills more quickly and with more tenacity than others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If the answer isn't "whichever you enjoy", it's probably wrong. There's demand for both.

<comment><USER5> In my opinion you can't be a successful specialist without first being a decent generalist in at least the fields adjacent to yours.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess it also depends on the profession/field.

When you're a doctor, it's vital to learn the fundamentals of different areas of medicine.

Whereas as a developer, you can also just focus on one thing(let's say frontend development) and pick up other areas (backend, databases) on the go, based on your needs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's a bit cliched, but I agree with a T shaped approach. One of my mentors told me that I was wearing too many hats, and I should focus on a single topic and develop deep expertise to advance my career. On the other hand, in a world where technologies get obsolete faster than you can master them, I wouldn't feel safe without a broad base of knowledge.

<comment><AUTHOR> To be honest, this is exactly what my manager told me. It's also when I was introduced to the T-shaped approach. As a dev, I want to learn multiple subjects, but I've found that mainly focusing on one thing while also educating myself in others is a good approach.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I feel that having a specialism is more a more marketable headline early on in your career (e.g. I am a React Developer). As you become more senior the expectation is for you to take on additional roles such as hiring, coaching and mentoring. This is very hard if you have focused to much on one area and not taken a more general view.

But this is all about what you want from your career. Some people strive for leadership roles (CTO/Tech Lead) and some people prefer to write code (Senior Developer). Both careers are valid options.

</comment><comment><USER8> For new grads you are probably best off being a generalist in some broad area you're most interested in (web, data, mobile, low-latency/systems, games) as 1) most places you'll interview will just ask you the standard DS/algo questions, and 2) you don't know exactly what you want to do yet. Don't fret about the litany of skills in job listings, as they are usually overly specific.

With some experience, you may choose to specialize but if you want to go the management route, you'll have a very interdisciplinary and generalist job.

Source: FAANG engineer from Tier 1 school</comment>


Ask HN: As a Web Dev working only 60%, how would you use the 40% free time? - <AUTHOR> How would you fill the 40% in a meaningful and profitable way? <comment><USER2> Health, to a large extent. Everything is more fun and less stressful (to the mind and body) if you are somewhat fit. It feels good to feel your body work when you do something heavy. This also include things like hiking in a forest (or whatnot), trying out things like making a fire out in the woods. Try it, if you haven't already.

edit to add, it is by extension profitable to focus on your health, but in less obvious ways.

</comment><comment><USER3> As a software engineer working 60% as well, I'm currently using my 40% for studying towards a degree in a non-tech field (social sciences). I'm glad that my country (Switzerland) has such low tuition fees which makes that kind of continuing education possible.</comment>


Ask HN: What, if anything, does Mavericks take away? - <AUTHOR>

Has anyone run across any features that OS X Mavericks removes or disables? <comment><USER2> I've noticed that the scrolling behavior on Mavericks is eeeever so slightly different. When I'm reading on a laptop, I like to scroll the text so that the line of text above the current line disappears by one pixel. This requires a very fine level of control.

I find that the new scrolling behavior is too sensitive, and there doesn't seem to be a way to go back to the original.</comment>


Ask HN: LinkedIn got my Google Contacts – how do they do that? - <AUTHOR> Today, LinkedIn listed a large number people from my Google Contacts and asked me whether I wanted to connect to them. I double checked and I never had LinkedIn authorized to access my Google Contacts.  And my Gmail password is different from LinkedIn password.
It is interesting that list is not the exact copy of Google Contacts but it is quite similar.
This post is not to complain but to understand what kind of voodoo LinkedIn is using to get users Google Contacts. <comment><USER2> It's not required for you to give LinkedIn access to your contacts for them to know you're connected with someone else.

* Your friend may have given LinkedIn access to _their_ contacts and now LinkedIn will start spamming you to connect with them.

* You have a friend-a and friend-b who both gave LinkedIn access to their contacts. You're in friend-a's contacts but not in friend-b's. LinkedIn can assume there's higher than random chance that you know friend-b. LinkedIn will probably try to spam both of you to connect with one another. Why not, right?

* You have a friend-a and friend-b and friend-c who all gave LinkedIn access to their contacts and you're on all 3 but none of them are in each others. LinkedIn will probably try and spam all 4 of you to add each other.

There's prolly plenty more and a team at LinkedIn focusing on just this. Anyone else care to add clever ways to infer connections?

<comment><USER3> I was the PM for this at Twitter. You pretty much nailed it. The straight Address Book algorithms are Reverse Address Book (your #1) and Strong-ties prediction (your #2 and #3).

LinkedIn for sure also uses common groups (schools, workplaces, interests, etc), and geolocation in their recos. There's also sneakier signals like app graph and browsing history, though in my experience those were more useful for content recos than people recos.

<comment><USER4> Do big companies buy 3rd party databases that they can cross link data or is it easier to build your own with linkedin patterns?

<comment><USER3> They would if they could and it was clean/legal. But there are very few purchasable databases that make a dent at Twitter or LinkedIn scale.

This line of thinking was behind the original motivation for Digits (part of the Fabric SDK). Get developers to collect Address Books for us, in return they get a free SMS-based verification service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Some of these people may have allowed LinkedIn to scan _their_ contacts and you were one of them.

</comment><comment><USER6> Other commenters mentioned it could have been constructed in the reverse direction.

But, they did have some dark patterns you might have missed: [https://medium.com/@danrschlosser/linkedin-dark- patterns-3ae...](https://medium.com/@danrschlosser/linkedin-dark- patterns-3ae726fe1462)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think I figured out this. I'm occasionally using outlook on my iPhone to access my Gmail. And Microsoft owns LinkedIn so this makes complete sense ...

</comment><comment><USER7> You must have unwittingly opted in at some point. Linkedin is really scammy when it comes to harvesting people's contacts and sending nonstop notifications. They prompt you to add all your device and email contacts at every chance they get.

</comment><comment><USER8> They can use other people's contact lists (users on LinkedIn who shared their contacts) and you surely will be on some of them.

</comment><comment><USER9> Also their definition of "google contacts" is extremely broad. During the time I allowed LinkedIn access to gmail contacts, I suddenly noticed a ton of my neighbors in my building being suggested to connect to. People I never had any direct mail conversations with. Turns out our tenant mailing list was sent out once by accident as CC vs BCC, so it seems even the CC field contents count as "contacts".

</comment><comment><USER10> I gave LinkedIn access to my contacts. What they also did was to send an email referencing every sender email I use (and I use several dozen all from our corporate domain), effectively spaming new and existing contacts with the same request. They also seem to have sent emails to any email that's ever been on a thread... won't be doing that again...

</comment><comment><USER11> CyanogenMod/Lineage Android roms have a nice feature called privacy guard. I always use it on all social media apps because I know they pull my contacts and upload them.

The feature basically just gives back empty results when the app tries to access, I wish it just fed it back garbage made up accounts.

</comment><comment><USER12> Outlook has a connector to LinkedIn that can get mysteriously enabled.

</comment><comment><USER13> They got my contacts because several years ago my Android phone upgraded to a new version that had removed the privacy guard feature. OTA, never again.

</comment><comment><USER14> Also, considering that bit about unroll.me that came out recently, are there _any_ (non-linked-in) apps that you've authorized to see your contacts? Those services may have sold your address book to LinkedIn.

</comment><comment><USER15> Don't use what you don't trust

<comment><USER16> well, you're right.

i guess i should start on that m32u4 assembly emacs clone</comment></comment>


Startups.co to Acquire Zirtual, Service to Resume - <AUTHOR> https://www.startups.co/articles/acquire-zirtual-service-to-resume <comment><USER2> This is an ideal outcome for a situation where the failure of one person to do their job resulted in 400 employees losing theirs.

As CEO, it's your responsibility to understand your runway and know whether your business can afford to be operating in a month or two. If it can't, you need to reduce your burn. Depending on a last minute cash infusion to avoid telling your employees things are looking rough means you failed to do your job and run a sustainable company.

<comment><USER3> Thank you for writing this. As a startup CEO with 12 employees, I have a daily reminder of how much cash is in the bank. It is absolutely unacceptable and ridiculous for a CEO to mismanage a company and then write a blog post saying "Oops, burn!"

<comment><USER4> Also considering that "burn" is one of the very few things that is wholly within your control.

<comment><USER5> At first I thought "this statement is madness!"

Then I thought about our burn, what the spreadsheets look like, how we estimate runway, and so on, and I realize this is uninformed madness.

If you believe this, then you understand that 400 people losing their jobs is the definition of the wholly controllable burn.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure I follow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is Wil Schroter @ Startups.co. I was a customer like many who got the same email and was disappointed. This is a great company that made some bad moves. I'm not defending that. But I will tell you - it is still a great business, although obviously with some serious challenges. Will this be an incredible uphill battle? Of course. But I believe in the company and I think it's worth it.

<comment><USER7> Will Maren Kate remain in her role as CEO?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Whoa; I literally JUST finished listening to her interview on TWiST, which aired on Friday. It sounded like a growing business even to the point that Jason claimed it could be another "unicorn". Then for it to simply implode on Monday?

Absolutely amazing in the worst way, especially with the CEO constantly talking about the need for being transparent; this obviously wasn't something that snuck up on them.

Edit: The CEO gives more information here: [https://medium.com/@marenkate/zirtual-what-happened-and- what...](https://medium.com/@marenkate/zirtual-what-happened-and-what-s- next-f9bd493ecc49)

Waiting until the 11th hour to let people know you're out of runway? Absolutely terrible, in my opinion. Personally I think you need to give people notice 6 months out. Then constant updates thereafter with what you're doing, the risks, etc. Springing this on them like this is just incompetence.

<comment><USER9> 6 months' notice would be absurd, and enforcing that (either legally or as an industry norm) would mean a lot of otherwise promising businesses would have to die prematurely "out of an abundance of caution".

It's a speculative startup in a new category. Most of them fail. You won't get 6 months' notice when they do.

<comment><USER8> > 6 months' notice would be absurd

Why? What's wrong with "here are our numbers; as you can see we're at about 6 months left of runway but we have X, Y and Z that we believe should take care of it without issue"?

Seems like being transparent in the finances would be a good thing. To me at least; I know as an employee I feel much more comfortable when I know how the company is doing. It at least let's me know I have some solid time left should the worst happen.

<comment><USER9> Management must of course be honest. And, especially at inflection points like initial hire, new financings, or major changes in burn/strategy/etc, it should share with employees an optimistic-yet-plausible projection of the business prospects. (Attentive employees should ask; management should answer.)

But once that's done – and perhaps in somewhat coarse, conditional, speculative terms – a running detailed 'soap opera' of the sustaining-funding- hunt can be destructive. Many employees would honestly _not_ want to be distracted by a play-by-play: "that prospect fell through but we've got more meetings next week! drop dead date is still 152 days away! next update tomorrow morning!" Employees also don't want their most-jittery (but possibly still key-role) coworkers to depart early: making the worst-case scenario incrementally more likely.

The balancing will always be tough: is a believed 80%-chance of uninterrupted operation enough to keep sending a cheery, full-speed-ahead message? Or must you alert, "20% chance of failure!", to everyone? (Which, of course, causes some to assume the risk is even worse, and might derail the 80% chance of success.)

It's the idea of a firm, quite-long threshold – and in a startup domain that's inherently uncertain – that I find absurd. ("6 months" is three times larger than the 60-day federal law for notice of mass plant layoffs, by giant well- capitalized corporations.)

<comment><USER8> Hmm, I feel like you took my thought to the most extreme view possible.

I was thinking more along the lines of: notification at 6 month mark, list of things we're doing to ensure smooth operation. I wouldn't expect issues at that point especially since everyone joined a start-up, they know it's not going to have money for years of operation. Then update people when you check off the items on the list that you said you were working on, good or bad. Not any more frequent than that. Depending on the amount of money it may be a good time to start about some minor culling if possible.

At month 3 you probably want to start culling employees so you can stay afloat longer should things not pan out. This way you can stretch out your life for far longer than waiting to cull at 2 or 1 month.

At least those are my thoughts. Nothing like "guys we failed, new update tomorrow morning!". Then again I haven't run a start-up; only have been part of a few. That just makes sense to me I don't know what works best in practice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I did a double take at this headline because I just listened to the This Week In Startups episode [1] about this company yesterday. You wouldn't have gotten the impression the company could have gone out of business in a week after listening to that.

1: [http://thisweekinstartups.com/maren-kate-donovan- zirtual/](http://thisweekinstartups.com/maren-kate-donovan-zirtual/)

</comment><comment><USER11> I have said it before and I will say it again.

I really feel for the 400 employees who lost their job, but I am happy to see a sense of reality being forced into some of these companies. Building a business on people rather than tech is a much much tougher thing to do both execution wise and financially. And so the real innovation if someone wants to "change the world" without trying to cheat the system is to find a way to make a profitable business with a huge part of the business being used to pay salaries. This as we can see is a very hard thing to do. And so I applaud them for trying.

For many entrepreneurs who are used to thinking about business as something which is based on software, servers and an internet connection, this is completely uncharted territory. You don't reap the benefits of scaling your business as if it's just a matter of adding more servers. The primary challenges with these kind of business if they are to be built on a solid foundation is.

1) Patience – It takes a long time to scale an employee based business up to anything worthwhile and sustainable

2) Selective – You have to be smart about which sectors actually have enough money and need for your service to make a proper ROI

3) Employee satisfaction. You can't just treat your people as if they are freelancers without giving them freelance opportunities. Instead you have to really care about your people and make them want to work for your company and do a great job.

</comment><comment><USER12> [http://www.businessinsider.com.au/zirtual-suddenly-laid- off-...](http://www.businessinsider.com.au/zirtual-suddenly-laid- off-400-employees-via-email-2015-8)

This is weird as hell.

<comment><USER13> > all of its rounds after seed funding were debt rounds, including one at the > end of July

This surprised me. They burned through a round in just a few weeks? And looking at their funding history[1], they closed $2.6M back in June. So that's $3.25M in less than 60 days.

It looks like the July round was targeting $3M and they only got $650k[2]. Maybe an expected deal didn't go through and it was just as much a shock to the management as the employees. This could just be a case of unrealistically high fundraising expectations, with unfortunate consequences for everyone. OTOH, assuming they hit the end of their runway, they had a burn rate of at least $1.6M/month, so I don't know how that last round was supposed to help for long.

Anyway, this is all armchair speculation. I hope their CEO can take some time and then share her experiences. It would probably serve as a good lesson for others.

[1]: [https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/zirtual/funding- roun...](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/zirtual/funding-rounds) [2]: [http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1566557/0000897069150...](http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1566557/000089706915000411/xslFormDX01/primary_doc.xml)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Here is Zirtual's founder Maren Kate post on the situation [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10045423](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10045423)

</comment><comment><USER15> It's important that one of the key lessons here is that the CEO of Zirtual, AND their investors, failed in their responsibilities during this whole fiasco.

The CEO:

Jack Dorsey has a fairly good description of what the CEO's role is - that of an editor ([http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-role-of-a- CEO](http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-role-of-a-CEO)). The CEO should do 3 things:

\- Build and nurture the team

\- Communicate internally and externally

\- Make sure there's money in the bank

It looks like Zirtual's CEO screwed up all three of these - it's inexcusable and ludicrous to think she didn't know how much money was in the bank, and the burn rate. She probably knew exactly what was going to happen, she saw the writing on the wall, and tried her best to figure out an outcome for the company and team.

It could be that the Startups.co acquisition was the perfect thing to do, but to do it after missing payroll, breaking user and employee trust, and in such a ham-handed way is ridiculous. She played chicken with cash flow, and she lost. 400 employees who thought they had a job had to suddenly go through a stressful shake up, and start worrying about bills, insurance, and their livelihood, right before school season starts.

The Investors:

According to Crunchbase, this company raised $5.5M from VCs like Mayfield.

Don't these investors have an obligation/responsibility to their Limited Partners to invest their money wisely? Don't these investors ask the CEO for monthly or quarterly financial statements (or something simpler like - "How much money in the bank? What's your Accounts Receivable? What's your monthly burn rate?").

Why didn't someone say something 6 months ago? Why didn't someone say something 1 month ago, so that there could have been a more orderly pause in the business while trying to sell it?

What's the point in simply investing in deals and not spending any time to advise/help start-ups? The CEO of Zirtual could be super talented, but she's not run a start-up before. Shouldn't investors spend some time with her making sure things don't go off the rails?

It's events like this which erode trust in start-ups, investors and founders.

</comment><comment><USER16> Honestly I would refrain from blaming her. There are just too many variables, many of which we can't talk about, to judge someone.

Perhaps offering support, direction, and a way to rectify what is "seemingly" a mistake is more helpful.

<comment><USER17> She was the CEO and particularly deserves credit for the abrupt nature of the shut-down and having not given employees warning. It was an extraordinary mistake, one that any CEO should get lambasted for.

There are not too many variables when it comes to her responsibilities on that matter. It's crystal clear that she made the wrong choice in how to deal with the situation.

<comment><USER16> How is this different from say Microsoft or Yahoo giving a pink slip to 1,000 employees on a friday afternoon?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Acquired all the assets?!? This seems really off, who is left holding the bag here?

<comment><USER19> Creditors of the failed company, as is traditionally the case when liquidation occurs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Based on what I've read, clients were charged up until the last minute. I wonder how this affects them? Will Startups.co help to reimburse them in order to earn those customers back?

</comment><comment><USER16> Consider: how many businesses would be in business tomorrow if they announced today to all their users and customers how much cash they had left on hand. How about the ones that are operating in the red, should they all tell everyone?

In the end I respect that they stop it at the very moment they could no longer pay instead of owing everyone one hour of work.

Without more information, I would say they handled it okay.

<comment><USER21> Maybe you wouldn't, but this is why financial reporting is important and often a requirement. These people bet on someone else's gambit and lost, but according to all the signs they could see, things were sparkling.

<comment><USER16> I am not saying I would not. I would have probably acted 180 degrees differently, but that does not mean she did not make the best decision for everyone involved.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> They should change their name :/

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> > According to Schroter, "We were happy to step up to keep Zirtual in > operation. So many companies depend on their services to keep their > businesses running smoothly, _and with over $11 million in earnings in the > last year alone_ , the acquisition made sense...

"Earnings" is a measure of profit. Zirtual claims it had an $11 million annual revenue run rate but, as we now know, was not at all profitable.

It's amazing that in startupland folks still can't seem to use basic accounting terms properly, especially in situations particularly sensitive to their misuse.

</comment><comment><USER23> "Zirtual"? Really scraping the bottom of the barrel for names these days.

Edit: Really, guys? It's a _terrible_ name.

</comment><comment><USER14> How is this different than Tesla? [http://blog.sfgate.com/energy/2014/02/28/tesla-from-the- brin...](http://blog.sfgate.com/energy/2014/02/28/tesla-from-the-brin..).

It was near death yet Musk is now a SV hero?

<comment><USER17> Tesla didn't fire its workers, and had a plan to keep the business operating by selling to Google for billions of dollars (which apparently Google was on board for). When selling proved unnecessary, Musk stopped discussions with Google. It was a very different situation: Musk didn't cause the business to shut down, and had a plan for dealing with their runway running out.</comment></comment>


Re-litigating the Simon/Ehrlich Bet - <AUTHOR> http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2010/02/re-litigating_t.html

<comment><USER2> _If raging population and economic growth don't cause important resources to be depleted, what will?_

He doesn't get it. The point isn't that something magical happens to repeal scarcity, to give us all the [pick your commodity] that you'd like. Instead, the scarcity drives up prices (yes, prices do rise in the short run) which leads those who would have liked to buy the commodity to instead learn to use a substitute instead.

The reason we're concerned about gasoline now is because we found a better way to do things than the wood, or whale blubber, that we'd been using previously. At some point in the future, our descendants will think of fossil fuels as we think of blubber.

Now, talking outside of my specific knowledge, but just building from what I understand... I bet that if you went and looked at the price of whale blubber today, you'd find it significantly higher than back when it was used in lamps. That would be because nobody is much interested in it anymore, so any economies of scale in its production have been lost.

<comment><USER3> Is there an end to the process? Is there some "omega resource" for which cheaper substitutes can never be found?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > If raging population and economic growth don't cause important resources to > be depleted

Someone else talked about substitutes so I'll point out that "raging population and economic growth" doesn't imply that you're anywhere near depletion. It merely says that you're headed that way.

Consider atmospheric O2. We've got billions more people today than we had 200 years ago, but we're still not anywhere near depletion.

All the numbers and units matter, not just derivatives, and especially not derivatives without units.</comment>


Interview With Sam Altman [video] - <AUTHOR> http://recode.net/2015/07/23/watch-kara-swishers-interview-with-y-combinator-president-sam-altman-video/

<comment><AUTHOR> In reference to the YC Fellowship, Altman said, "If this works, I 'd like to scale it quickly to a thousand a year." (8:33)</comment>


2 Taxi Medallions Sell for $1 Million Each - <AUTHOR> http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/20/2-taxi-medallions-sell-for-1-million-each/ <comment><USER2> It's incredible to see cities that still do this. It means the investment goes into the medallion, the cabs can be crappy and the drivers don't get a fair return (the medallion owner does).

There are plenty of examples of cities that have abandoned the monopoly approach to supply and price of taxis. One example is every city and town across New Zealand.

Here's what it looks like: The entry price for a new cab is low - a decent car that passes muster with regular inspections, a clean sheet for the driver and so on. There are no huge fees.

There are a lot more cabs than before deregulation (2 to 3 times). The difference is that even after a major event you can still catch a cab. That in turn means you are less likely to drive, as you know you can get a cab safely, and so those extra cabs get used.

There are a large range of cab companies - from unmarked 'limos' to branded Corporate Cabs, large regional players and then a host of cheap and cheerful players. My favorite right now is Green Cabs, which has a 100% hybrid fleet and charges less - as they save 30-70% on gasoline versus the v6 powered monster cars the traditional cab companies have.

You can pick the car you want when exiting an airport, and there are no monopoly suppliers at airports, though some pay to have better positions. There is no mandate to take the one in front, and people don't.

Prices are set by each company and registered with the government. They cannot change them each day, and they have to apply to all cars. It does mean that some firms are more expensive (nicer cars, better service) and some are cheaper. There are also some that are better for short trips (low flag fall, hugh cost per Km/Mile) and others for longer trips.

We have a market based economy for cabbies, and we as consumers and the cabbies (by the numbers) are much better off. How can anyone, especially Wall St, credibly argue for free markets when there are mandated monopolies under their noses? [edited to remove arbitrary attack on right wing]

<comment><USER3> How can the right wing argue for free markets when there are mandated monopolies right under their noses? Uhh... The right wing is _NOT_ who's in charge of New York City. NYC as a whole is firmly in the camp of the left wing, democrats, Hilary Clinton and friends. It's not even close.

<comment><USER4> The mayor of New York City was a republican when first elected and is now an independent. He is a billionaire who has always touted his business expertise as his biggest advantage. So I think the original poster's claim kind of stands if he just replaces "right wing" with Bloomberg.

Hillary Clinton used to be a senator for the state of New York and now is the Secretary of State of the US. Neither of these roles have much to do with New York City government.

<comment><USER5> Bloomberg is attempting to clip the wings of the taxi industry, but he's having a hard time of it.

I'm not sure of the details and precisely why the taxi industry has so much power. (Maybe they have carefully compiled dossiers on the late-night trips of every politician in the city...)

<comment><USER6> It's nothing to do with left vs. right. It's people with vested interests. For most people, getting a taxi is a minor annoyance. They don't know what any candidates' standing on the issue is, and don't even know how the issue effects them. Why would they consider it when they go to the polls?

But medallion owners care. If someone says they will end the program, they will vote like crazy against it. They will also tell the drivers (who might actually stand to gain if they could get their own medallions at a lower cost) that margins will drop, cheap competitors will move in, safety standards will drop, and so on.

The same is true of sugar imports, patent laws, retrospective copyright extensions, and other issues which have a few people who care about it, and a lot who don't even understand it.

OK, you could say that deregulation is what the right (or libertarians) stands for. But sometimes it works the other way - regulations and subsidies can arguably help the broader community while hurting a few special interest groups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicabs_of_New_York_City#1930s...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicabs_of_New_York_City#1930s_- _Medallion_System_Introduced)

>> Only "medallion taxicabs," those painted in distinctive yellow and regulated by the TLC, are permitted to pick up passengers in response to a street hail. The TLC also regulates and licenses for-hire vehicles, known as "car services" or "livery cabs," which are prohibited from picking up street hails (although this rule is less often enforced in the boroughs outside Manhattan)[44] and are supposed to pick up only those customers who have called the car service's dispatcher and requested a car.

Those $1m medallions are just an iPhone (or mobile web) app away from a crash. In fact, I think there's already some company that does this.

<comment><USER7> Why do I need an app for this? I swear some of these apps are solving problems that simply don't exist.

I speed dial Eastland Car Service in Brooklyn and call it a night (excuse the pun.)

      *Ring*
      "Eastland."
      "Can I have a car to the Moon please?"
      "5 minutes."
      Click.

3 minutes later it's waiting for you.

Edit: Funny story, once I was picked up by a brand new Porsche Cayenne. Pretty good for an $8 cab.

<comment><USER8> >Why do I need an app for this?

You don't, but it makes the entire stack easier for everybody involved.

I don't live in a NYC, I live in Phoenix, but we have our own problems that necessitate taxicabs (urban sprawl, meaning if I going to beers-with-friends, I'm paying for a cab).

Sitting in the bar and pressing a button on my phone to hail a cab would be _awesome_.

The management software on the backend finds the closest 5 available drivers, lets them bid on me, and whichever one bids the lowest takes me home.

Honestly, you could take it a step further and do AirBNB for car services. Give me the ability to rate drivers and their cars, and then let drivers bid on me where _I_ get to choose which one takes me home.

<comment><USER7> I've spoken to Eastland drivers -- I've been riding with them for years -- and thats exactly what they do, minus the complexity. They announce an address over radio and the closest driver takes it. I don't remember how they enforce this policy in the company (sorry), but they do and it works.

As a customer, I don't have to muck about in some app, especially while buzzed, to get a car. I call and get a real person and am done in 5 seconds. No app can do that.

Admittedly, it works because they have a lot of drivers. I can see how this becomes a problem when you have many smaller companies and you need to hail the closest. Thanks for the perspective.

<comment><USER9> Speak for yourself; I find it far faster and easier to open an app and press a button than call a phone number and try to verbally explain my location to some guy with a thick accent. When you add in the fact that Uber also takes care of payment and tip, which is another hassle at the end of the trip, it's a far better experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It would be interesting to see a breakdown of where the money goes when I take a cab ride. What % goes the the actual guy doing the driving? What % to pay for the vehicle? What % goes to the amortized cost of the medallion?

</comment><comment><USER11> You too can own a piece of the taxi medallions in New York (or use them as collateral for loans, at least). Medallion Financial Corp is publicly traded (Nasdaq: TAXI).

Company: <http://www.medallionfinancial.com/index.html>

Quote: <http://www.google.com/finance?q=taxi>

<comment><USER12> Wow they actually pay pretty good dividend.

<comment><USER13> For now. Uber won't break their business model alone. They will probably maintain a premium for quality. But with the precedent set, other 'brands' will eventually jump in and attempt to duplicate the technology and offer taxi-like service for similar cost, without the medallions.

<comment><USER14> By most accounts, Uber has built a great customer experience. However their technology is not really an exclusive secret sauce. The key in disrupting taxis will likely be scaling a private operation like Uber to where it costs as much or less than taxis currently do, at least on average (hard to do), or to co-opt the current taxi/limo infrastructure to improve the customer's experience and automate things (also not easy). The technology is not a piece of cake, but not rocket science either, and is certainly not the key to the kingdom.

Disclaimer: My startup (RideCell) builds automatic request/dispatch/tracking technology for fleets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Random notes.

The word "medallion" carries an emotional charge (it's archaic), but taxi medallions aren't all that different from commercial zoning restrictions.

Regardless of why they were introduced, medallions do more than restrict competition; they also give medallionholders something to lose if they abuse their license. Were barriers to entry eliminated, unscrupulous companies could put unsafe cabs on the road and simply fold up shop and reincorporate when anything bad happened.

Ironically, the sky-high price of NYC medallions is a result of a free-market spin on taxi licenses: taxi permits in NYC can be freely bought and sold (like seats on a stock exchange).

Cities have experimented with taxi deregulation and the results have been mixed; in particular, taxi deregulation has been reported not to improve driver salaries.

It's also important to remember that street taxi service is not a particularly efficient market system. In the norms of the taxi market, you cannot in fact be choosy about what cab picks you up (even if you could, there's virtually no information available to you when a cab pulls up). It's thus hard to argue that street taxi competition would be that beneficial to consumers.

On the other hand, because the street taxi market is also characterized by lots of externalized costs (pollution, traffic, hit-and-run accidents, etc), one way consumers could conceivably benefit from "competition" among cab drivers would be to auction permits off, and _increase_ the cost of entry to the taxi market.

<comment><USER16> The benefit for consumers is that there are enough taxis to go around. If I need to get somewhere in SF I have these choices:

\- Call in a taxi (long wait time, high chance of a no-show)

\- Hail a taxi (sometimes impossible, wait times can be close to 20 minutes in some parts of town)

\- Use homobiles (might get picked up by a smoker's car or someone carrying a dog, wait times can exceed 45 minutes)

\- Use Uber (more expensive, but very low wait time)

Uber is the clear choice almost every time now, but if there were enough taxis there would be a reason for them to show up when you called, and a reason for the cab companies to invest in an app as good as Uber's.

<comment><USER17> Go to a hotel. It's the only reliable way to catch a cab in SF. Choose nicer hotels and if the pickings are still slim, $5 to the doorman will resolve the problem pretty quickly.

Even less-nice hotels are good for cabs if they have a notable bar. E.g., the W usually has very quick service, but it's a hike from anywhere good.

After your first few months in SF, you develop a skill for sniffing out cabs. Good luck outside FiDi, Union Square, Market Street, Fisherman's Wharf and the feeder streets through North Beach, and the top of Nob Hill. There are a lot of cabs in the Castro, the Mission, and Cow Hollow, but you need to be ruthless in leapfrogging other parties.

That said, just use Uber. Don't bother with Cabulous and the like, because the inbound driver will flake if he's hailed and can drop the meter sooner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The price appreciation is artificial. It's disconnected from economic reality. All it takes for the new Mayor of NYC to decide to issue thousands of new medallions and the price will fall.

This is what happend in Israel, when government issued many new taxi licenses and price fell from ~ $75K to ~ $25K.

<comment><USER5> It's hard to say that's "all it takes" when the actual Mayor of New York City had a huge fight on his hands just to wrench a tiny amount of power away from the medallion owners: [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/25/nyregion/bloomberg- plan-to...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/25/nyregion/bloomberg-plan-to- expand-reach-of-livery-cabs-passes-in-albany.html)

I don't understand it. The taxi industry is a huge and powerful lobby which manages to twist the law in its favour in just about every first-world city on Earth. I don't know how they do it, but they do.

<comment><USER19> Melbourne Airport is on the outer fringe of the city and there's always a push to get public transport to the airport, in the form of light rail - a taxi to the CBD is north of $30, from memory. The land is there, the public support is there, but the taxi lobby keeps killing it every time. I've never understood where they get their power from.

<comment><USER13> Now you know. From Medallion holders.

<comment><USER19> They use custom license plates instead of medallions, but the effect is the same. I think a set of Melbourne taxi plates goes for around $500k these days - a quick search just found "a bargain - 485k!".

I really don't see where _that much_ value is, beyond blocking potential competitors from the market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> With the super high cost of these Medallions, it seems like services like Uber should be able to compete on price, yet some how they're always more expensive than cabs.

Does anyone know why that's the case? Do Uber drivers consistently make more than cab drivers? Where does the money go?

</comment><comment><USER13> The internet is great at killing business models where middlemen make the lion share of profit. Like Taxi medallion holders. Über and services like it will destroy their margins eventually, and thus push down the price of medallions.</comment>