YouTube Shoots Google in Foot, Publishers Suffer Collateral Damage  - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pagefair.com/2013/youtube-shoots-google-in-foot/?cmp=81 <comment><USER2> There's this great small village where everyone makes stuff and buys stuff from each other: good ecosystem, works well and popular stuff makes more money than less popular, as expected. Someone comes up with an idea to make money off the stuff by giving it away for free but putting some ads on it. People don't mind much: the stuff is free now and the people making popular stuff make good money from their share of the ads.

What happens next seems to be some kind of bizarre need to make _more_ money. This is the part I don't really understand. So the people giving away the free stuff with the ads put more ads, which starts to put the people off watching it for free. The people getting the free stuff start to try and find ways of getting the free stuff without the new annoying ads, which makes the people making the ads want to make more ads and make it criminal to block the ads. People stop making stuff because they aren't making as much money as in the hey-day of free-stuff-and-not-too-many-ads and people stop watching stuff and maybe go outside and watch the sunset (still free) or play card games and charades (not yet patented) or make their own stuff and put it on FaceGramSnap (which has ads but not yet so annoying). The people who put ads on the free stuff scratch their heads and wonder what went wrong.

<comment><USER3> > _The people who put ads on the free stuff scratch their heads and wonder > what went wrong._

greed

<comment><USER4> Agreed. Greed.

<comment><USER5> I work in a sort of purgatory of the broadcast/internet TV space, and with regards to ads, completely agree.

Broadcasters have gotten accustomed to very high rates for the ads shown on television. They're trying to get these rates on the web, but advertisers don't want to pay them (which is crazy, since you can directly measure response on the web; not as much with broadcast). So they show more ads. A lot more ads, to try to get to the same revenue level as broadcast television.

During the day, I sometimes feel like I'm watching two dinosaurs fight over a carcass as the meteorite comes screaming towards the ground.

<comment><USER6> Entitlement. You have to remember that old media is a monopoly biz. That explains alot about the culture. The people believe they are entitled to be at a certain level of power/money/presitge in society. Its not surprising they are masters of political interventions to support their positions. They don't do product as much as they do monopoly business model, legislated advantage(s) and regulatory capture. From that position, it's just extraction by contract terms.

<comment><USER2> >The people believe they are entitled to be at a certain level of power

That's a very good point to make: old school media (broadcast media/print) set the cultural standards for a society. That's changing: the Internet is allowing everyone to learn together what they think, or want to think. We know that anyone losing power will do anything to try and keep it, as they fall deeper into the well of redundancy. You just helped me realise that broadcast is going away, but we'll maintain our celebrity/expert hierarchies based on new media explorations (e.g. XKCD, notch, Colonel Hadfield)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ads are the least bad option. The Web functions best if content is available without paywalls. The Web is about friction-free use, you click a link, you are faced with walls. If we went to a micro-transaction based Web, where every link was behind a payment service, it would destroy crawlability, hamper sharing, and cast a chilling effect on people's behavior with respect to consuming content.

The people producing content do need to eat and datacenters cost money too. You can either turn the entire Web into a giant App Store Mall where you pay for everything on demand, or we can have a free, open web, where 'curl' works, but you have to suffer the annoyance of banner ads and profiling (which people can do anyway with paywalls anyway)

To me, it's a worthwhile tradeoff. I'd rather not see the Web behind a bazillion freemium pay-me links like we have on native.

The real debate should be over how to make ads less annoying, more relevant, more pleasant, and let those who don't want to make the tradeoff make a micro- payment instead to opt-out of ads.

If I could pay $50/year for an ad-free YouTube experience I probably would.

<comment><USER8> >If I could pay $50/year for an ad-free YouTube experience I probably would.

When you can install adblock and get the same experience for free I'm not sure that many people would think that way. And the problem is that for most of the people that I have installed adblock for don't understand the moral implications of using it. I've tried to teach them how to deactivate it for pages they like, but they just didn't care because they didn't see the problem with having it always on. Most of the regular people around me don't understand how webpages make their money. They may say advertising, but if you question them any further all I get is blank stares.

<comment><USER9> People pay for itunes when they can get music for free, people pay for netflix when they can torrent or stream for free. Some people are happy to pay for services they like. Some aren't. But I think that you can make a business out of those that can be happy to pay, if the product is right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Websites are expensive and other than charging users money, ads are an easy way to generate revenue. I like using free services and I'd like to support the owner. As such, I don't use AdBlock.

However, YouTube forced me to. Back when YouTube used a small ad in the top- right, it was fine. Banner overlays were a bit more annoying, but still tolerable. Pre-rolls? No way, they stop me from getting to the content I want.

I wish I could switch to Vimeo but there's not a lot of content there.

<comment><USER11> Aren't most pre-rolls 3 seconds before you can watch the video?

And it's funny to me to watch people smugly use AdBlock. All you folks who use it understand that Google could detect that you AdBlocked, and then refuse to show the video, right? I mean, you get that, right?

<comment><USER12> > Google could detect that you AdBlocked, and then refuse to show the video

Emphasis on "could". They don't. So what?

It's trivial to make anti-anti-adblock filters, so most sites don't even start that arms race.

<comment><USER11> Are you logged in to YouTube when you're blocking ads?

Google could announce, "Hey, everyone who has ad-blocked over the last year violated our Terms of Use, and so we're deleting their accounts."

Or they could just shut down YouTube, because it's impossible to earn revenue off of people who aren't even willing to watch an ad before they feel entitled to watch a video.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I didn't realize adblock would block pre-rolls. That damn web development company with the animated little guy and the tiles of site examples has really gotten annoying.

Installed adblock a few minutes ago.

Bliss.

<comment><USER14> YOU'VE BEEN CODING LIKE A BEAST AND NOW IT'S [skip]

It's weird that there's no mechanism for me to veto ads. I have no use for that service, which makes the ad even more annoying to me. A while ago Crucial RAM were showing a really irritating ad.

Normally I don't skip ads, but there have started being more ads that I hate and need to skip.

And it's weird to get a 4 minute pre-roll ad on a 9 minute youtube video.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Youtube wasn't the breaking point for me, twitch.tv was. Granted, the streamers themselves do have control over this, I found it utterly annoying to see the same 1 or 2 ads played over and over in my face. Once I had ABP installed, the whole internet suddenly became faster to load too. The only annoying thing is, some websites that have those annoying ads that scroll across the webpage will now result in a dead-iframe blocking its content. Fortunately, I know how to right click, inspect element, navigate to the iframe container, and delete it, which, takes about 5 seconds.

<comment><USER16> Not just faster, but more secure as well. I couldn't tell you how many malware outbreaks I see at work because of a rogue advertisement on a popular site. Adblock keeps these from getting the best of your users. We did a pilot group with some folks who commonly use their work computers without the benefit of our corporate proxy or firewall (these are the users most at risk of advertising-based malware) by having them install Adblock. The results were pretty drastic, even if it wasn't a statistically significant sample size.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I like how reddit discussion threads is now proof of how everyone feels.

<comment><USER18> Ha! Good catch. As a redditor, I sometimes fall into the same trap. Because, you know, who doesn't browse reddit? /s

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Let's also not forget youtube-dl: [http://rg3.github.io/youtube- dl/](http://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/)

<comment><USER20> And Youtube Viewer: [https://code.google.com/p/trizen/](https://code.google.com/p/trizen/)

<comment><USER21> You can play videos with youtube-dl:

        mplayer -really-quiet -cache 3000 $(youtube-dl -f 18 -g $(xclip -o))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Here's a related and interesting article [1] titled 'Unraveling Google's Product Strategy' from the author of a post that is linked to on the HN front page (Ode to Little Data)[2].

The author in this related article is really showing the total commitment to ads by google. I find it very unsettling.

[1][http://katsenblog.com/post/58721533658/unraveling-googles- pr...](http://katsenblog.com/post/58721533658/unraveling-googles-product- strategy) [2][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6782205](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6782205)

</comment><comment><USER23> A fair size chunk of the pre roll ads I see also don't show anything interesting in the first five seconds. They have some sort of banner and just as the five seconds are up the ad content actually starts.

</comment><comment><USER24> Reminds me of "Ask HN: What will happen when everybody uses an ad blocker?"[1]

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6382188](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6382188)

</comment><comment><USER25> This bit caught my eyes: "while paying AdBlock Plus to whitelist their other Adwords ads" So, adblock sells the ability to display ads to it's users? Isn't that just plain wrong?

</comment><comment><USER26> When will advertisers realize shorter and more direct ads work best on the web?

When Hulu was in beta they only had 5 second ads and I still remember some of them after all of these years simply because I had no reason to direct my attention away from them. Now when Im forced to watch a 30 second ad I just change the tab and check my email or whatever.

<comment><USER27> Also, repeating the same ad over and over is pretty annoying. If you binge watch a series on Hulu Plus, you'll get the same ad at least twice per episode, for every 24 min episode. I can recite some of them by heart, with the same intonation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Why are the screenshots in this article taken from klout.com instead of twitter or facebook or wherever they were actually posted?

<comment><USER29> It looks like he may just have my klout chrome or Firefox extension installed, which adds klout scores to twitter. He may also be using a 3rd party client with a klout integration.

<comment><AUTHOR> Correct, just the Klout chrome extension adding scores to Twitter =)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I don't know about y'all, but on Chrome right now, no ad-blocker works on Youtube anymore. The adblocking works on every other site, even other video sites. But Youtube pre-rolls continue to play no matter what extension or filters I use (and making sure that "acceptable ads" are off).

Anyone else experiencing this?

<comment><USER31> I'm using adblock plus with easylist and fanboys list, and "allow non- obtrusive advertising" off. Works for me

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> It's an evidence free nonsense article, but to answer that quoted tweet: YouTube for Schools doesn't contain ads [http://www.youtube.com/schools](http://www.youtube.com/schools)

<comment><USER33> What evidence are you expecting? It's an opinion piece that merely connects a few dots. Google paid adblock plus, that's a fact. Did you see the Reddit article? Half of the comments were citing YouTube as a major reason for installing adblock.</comment></comment>


How to Read Lisp Code - <AUTHOR> https://yoo2080.wordpress.com/2014/07/04/it-is-not-hard-to-read-lisp-code/ <comment><USER2> For me it was always confusing why Lisp uses this notation (+ 1 2) until I read this blog post, and now I get it. Lisp is functional, and it's using a functional notation for everything. "The sum of one and two" makes total sense now! Thanks.

<comment><USER3> This is not because Lisp is functional. Most dialects of Lisp are not functional languages. Many languages that are functional support 1 + 2 syntax for addition.

Lisp uses a nested list structure for representing code, which encodes into a parenthesized printed notation. We can think of (+ 1 2) as being an abstract syntax tree node with the operator + and two child nodes 1 and 2.

Because addition is a function (it operates on values and produces values), it is modeled as a function. The symbol + is simply the name of a library function and thus (+ 1 2) denotes a call to that function.

Not everything in the operator position is a function! Often, a symbol in the operator position is an operator.

The (symbol arg1 arg2 ...) notation isn't primarily functional; it is primarily denotational. It denotes a syntax in which the symbol is the main vocabulary item that gives it the meaning, and the arguments are modifiers.

It can represent ideas other than arithmetic. For instance, it could encode facts in a logical system:

      (married john amy) ;; declaration of fact: john and amy are married

Or syntax:

      (bit man dog) ;; verb subject object

In Lisp code there are lots of operators that are not functions.

      (let ((x 3) (y 4)) (+ x 3))

_let_ isn't a function; if it were then ((x 3) (y 4)) would have to be an argument expression that is evaluated, which is completely different from what it's actually expressing.

That's basically it; this nested list is a notation for encoding ideas: whatever ideas you want. In the notation, usually the first item is a symbol which holds an important vocabulary item that is the key to the meaning.

Forms can alter the vocabulary that is active in whatever they enclose, and so Lisp has to be read outside in.

In the above _let_ we know that because we are inside a _let_ , then (x 3) doesn't mean call the function _x_ with argument 3. _let_ has altered the vocabulary; it has its own rules and we must understand its interior according to those rules.

<comment><USER2> Thank you for the explanation, very interesting, and makes me want to dive more into lisp and see what's possible with this approach. Next thing you know, I am Clojure fanboy.

Can you help me understand, what is the purpose of (+ x 3) at the end of that let statement. Is that just the default return from the original function, using input given by the let function? Thanks!

<comment><USER3> Again, if we say "let function" that is not accurate. _let_ is an _operator_ that creates a new nesting of the lexical scope in which it binds some variables, and then evaluates forms in that environment.

 _let_ implements something similar to what is achieved with a combination of special syntax in some other languages.

        Lisp                                 C

        (let ((x 1)                          { int x = 1;
              (y 2)                            int y = 2;
          (foo x y))                           foo(x, y); }

Both of these mean "create fresh instances of variables x and y, which are scoped only to this construct, initializing them with 1 and 2, and then call _foo_ with x and y arguments."

<comment><USER2> Got it! Thanks.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mutant enzyme could vastly improve recycling of plastic bottles - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/huge-step-forward-mutant-enzyme-could-vastly-improve-recycling-plastic-bottles <comment><USER2> Mutant enzymes might make it into plasmids = wide spread, and existing plastics all over the world will start to erode. This is good, if they can manage to create something that erodes deep sea fishing gear which litters the bottoms of huge areas of the world and extracts a steady and horrible death on many hapless creatures. Might also work to erode these huge gyres of all kinds of plastic waste on various oceans. It may also erode things we relied on to endure natural forces -? This will take examination and with care in case we create a plague of enabled natural forces....</comment>


Most Americans say wealth hasn't improved during last three years - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-14/most-americans-say-wealth-hasn-t-improved-during-trump-years <comment><USER2> Monetary wealth sure but what about all the other markers of wealth? Wealth means more than money. Everyone walks with a supercomputer in their pocket and the world at their fingertips but they think they're not wealthy.</comment>


New York court dismisses Amazon's objections to paying state taxes - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/13/new-york-court-dismisses-amazons-objections-to-paying-state-taxes/

<comment><USER2> This is terrible news. If I was Amazon I'd eliminate all NY affiliates and tell them to contact their state. Lack of regulation and taxes is what makes the internet so awesome (and sometimes, awful).

<comment><USER3> That's what Overstock.com did.

<http://www.realtechnews.com/posts/6289>

 _To get around the "Amazon Tax," Overstock.com terminated its relationship with any New York affliates; it also filed suit against the state of New York (as did Amazon.com, separately). Meanwhile, Newegg.com simply stopped collecting it._

<comment><USER4> "Meanwhile, Newegg.com simply stopped collecting it."

That's not a bad idea, either- what's the State of New York going to do- as long as your company doesn't hold any assets in the State?</comment></comment></comment>


The Startup Story I Want To Hear - <AUTHOR> http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2013/05/the-startup-story-i-want-to-hear.php <comment><USER2> I had my idea in October 2004.

In 2006, I quit my job to work on it full-time.

In 2007, my co-founder and I finished the MVP. No one came.

In 2008, we got a big break and it was used by 4 million people.

By 2010, 10,000 companies and 6.5 million people were using it, but we still weren't profitable.

In 2012, we finally figured out a business model.

This past Thursday, 8.5 _years_ later, I got to show it to Barack Obama in front of the national press: [http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/05/10/recap- big-day-open...](http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/05/10/recap-big-day-open- data), and he mentioned it in a speech later that day: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2glCSMxXIF8#t=11m7s>

We're on the verge of several deals that could take us to profitability with a headcount of 6.

It's been an insanely difficult road. I think there are many reasons for that, but here's the chronicle:

[http://wensing.tumblr.com/post/1215873671/bootstrapping- stor...](http://wensing.tumblr.com/post/1215873671/bootstrapping-stormpulse)

[http://wensing.tumblr.com/post/26830276239/bootstrapping- sto...](http://wensing.tumblr.com/post/26830276239/bootstrapping-stormpulse- part-2)

Part 3 should be out soon. :)

<comment><USER3> Congratulations guys...both articles are inspiring - i just couldn't do anything but read every words in them I don't think I'd had the nerves to get through all that struggle

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > No business porn for me. I want struggle, not Disney.

+1. Even though @jstanley is correct about the latter quote, I do agree that most start-up stories are dominated by these fantastical circumstances and ridiculous buyouts. I think there are primarily two reasons for this:

1\. Retention (or lack thereof) in the start-up world

2\. The success bar

As far as (1) is concerned, I think why we don't hear about people that try, try, and try some more for many years is that once you reach a certain age or once you have kids, you can no longer afford to live on Ramen noodles and Ritz crackers. If you fail once, twice, or three times, it really is very very difficult to try again. Even tough you've (hopefully) gained some valuable lessons by failing, you've lost (a perhaps disproportionate amount of) resilience. Thus, you're much less likely to try again.

(2) is moreso culture-dominated than rooted in the real world. As far as I'm concerned, I'd consider myself "successful" if I launched a 1-person start-up and sold it for mid-to-high 5-figures. That's not even close to "Facebook successful" and maybe my success bar has been lowered since I've failed a bunch of times, but most of these books/interviews/talks are written/given by people that have had outstanding exits. No one wants to talk to the tiny 2-man studio that built a company and sold it for $300k (even though I would argue that's a successful exit).

</comment><comment><USER5> In the US, just pick a town, any town, tiny to huge, and walk down its Main Street. There you will see just what you are asking for except mostly the businesses are not in information technology, Web 2.0, mobile apps, etc. Instead the businesses are dentists, pizza shops, Chinese carryout, franchised fast food, auto repair, auto body repair, lawn services, plant nurseries, boutique retailing, kitchen and bath remodeling, roofing, driveway installation, other construction trades, CPAs, general practice lawyers, auto dealers, bakeries -- get the pattern?

Can look at an information technology startup essentially the same way. A great example is the Canadian matchmaking site Plenty of Fish -- long just one person, two old Dell servers, ads just from Google, and $10 million a year in revenue.

There are some advantages to an information technology startup: First, if connect a server to the Internet and keep it busy sending Web pages with ads, then at common ad rates will get the five figures a month in revenue. E.g., send two Web pages a second, send an average of four ads per page, get the charge per 1000 ads displayed (CPM) average of $2.125 in the KPCB Meeker report, and then get monthly revenue of

      2.125 * 4 * 2 * 3600 * 24 * 30 / 1000 = 44,064

dollars. So, the advantage? Sure: The server stands to be something can plug together in an afternoon from parts that cost less than $2000 in total. So, $2000 in capital equipment and $44 K a month in revenue. Darned near a license to print money and totally blows away everything else, legal or not, on Main Street.

If the usage keeps growing, fine: Get more servers. Else, the $44 K a month will do fine for providing for a family.

Moreover, most of the work is just learning the coding skills, e.g., in the Microsoft world, .NET, ASP.NET, ADO.NET, IIS, system management and administration. Then if the first Web 2.0 site flops, use the skills to bring up another one.

But, it might grow, especially if it was carefully planned to from the beginning to grow. So, then, let it grow.

Any questions?

<comment><USER2> Yes! I have one!

Where do you plan to get your 5 million PV's per month?

<comment><USER5> Well, apparently Plenty of Fish did it!

So, for a first answer to your question, have to 'plan', that is, think of a Web site that can attract that much traffic, at least from publicity, viral effects, other network effects, happy users, etc.

How to do that? Well one way is just to think of a 'business idea' (John Doerr said that business ideas are easy and plentiful; bad business ideas are; maybe good ones are more difficult and rare!), develop a prototype, use 'lean' methodology and/or the Steve Blank approach of continually 'iterating' with the customers and revising the prototype to achieve 'product/market fit', 'pivot' if this doesn't work well, and keep trying.

I have another approach in mind borrowed from project planning examples going back over 100 years. A joke version is, a good recipe for rabbit stew starts out, first catch a rabbit! More seriously think of what one venture partner calls a "big ass" problem. I would add detail: Want a problem that is 'big' in the sense that we are sure that the first good or a much better solution will be a very valuable 'must have' and not merely a 'nice to have'. To keep risk down, want no doubt about this. If there is any doubt, pick another problem. Another local, mobile, social, sharing app has too much doubt. Similarly for another 'social graph' recommendation site. From all I can see, mobile payments also have too much risk from regulations and need for 'critical mass'; if try this, then be ready to jump quickly on the first good acquisition offer.

The obvious example of such a "big ass" problem, although not from information technology, is a safe, effective, inexpensive, patentable one pill cure for any cancer. Then don't have to worry about 'product/market fit'. Instead, a sad reality and not at all a joke, have to hire security guards to keep desperate customers from breaking down the doors to the lab and trying to steal the pills. Why don't we have such a pill? No one knows how to make one. But the first person or group that figures out how to make one and patents it will have a low risk, first good or much better very valuable solution and a very successful business.

So, right, we are getting a hint: For the success we want, it might help to do some original research!

So, for step (1), think of a suitable "big ass" problem.

Step(2). For this "big ass" problem, want to find the first good or much better solution that will clearly be a very valuable 'must have'. For the very valuable part, in part want a barrier to entry. For a cancer pill, could use patents. For information technology might use Fred Wilson's "large network of engaged users" (but apparently now he is moving into mobile payments instead!), a network effect (everyone uses it because everyone else uses it, e.g., LinkedIn; nice to have; usually tough to get started), a brand name, etc. Or have a technological barrier to entry, that is, have a solution too difficult to duplicate or equal. The common claim that there is nothing new to permit such is just not true. Uh, the technology might be original and not on the shelves of the research libraries -- right, that's commonly called 'research' and venture capital won't fund it, evaluate it, review it, or even think about it and instead will throw it into the bit bucket because their backgrounds in bizdev, marketing, and selling made them afraid and jealous of it; also they want always to be "the smartest guys in the room" which raises a risk of the other guys not being smart enough to make money!

So, to get this solution, do something different for recent information technology entrepreneurship but nearly standard for much of engineering going back over 100 years:

For our step (2), faithfully convert the real problem into a mathematical problem, e.g., as in the applied mathematics in each of most of the fields of engineering.

E.g., notice that the wings don't fall off Boeing 747 airplanes. Why? A major part of the reason is the applied mathematics of mechanical engineering.

So, from our step (2), we now have a clearly stated mathematical problem.

Although we are in information technology, notice I didn't say we have a computer science problem. We're talking applied math, complete with theorems and proofs and possibly with some advanced pure math prerequisites, common in engineering going back over 100 years, e.g., to Maxwell's equations, but recently rare in information technology startups.

Step (3). Get a solid mathematical solution to the mathematical problem. Have two advantages here: (A) Generally it is relatively easy to check such math for math correctness. So, get lower project risk. (B) The math approach can yield solution techniques more powerful and too difficult to think of otherwise. So, get a better shot at the first good or much better valuable solution with a technological barrier to entry.

Step (4). Write software to do the data manipulations specified by the mathematical solution. There are two advantages here: (A) The math really should provide a precise, usually succinct, specification of what the software needs to do. E.g., we are not trying to write an 'artificial intelligence' application based on, say, 'rules' and Forgy's RETE algorithm where have to keep 'tweaking' the rules until they appear to work, i.e., keep throwing the software against the wall to see if it appears to stick. We don't have to keep trying maximum likelihood estimation of 'machine learning' to see if it appears to stick. Similarly for neural networks. Instead, if the software just does the data manipulations specified by the prior math, then likely the software is essentially correct, has done its job. So we lower project risk. And such software tends to be easier to write than the common, elaborate user interface software. (B) Such software is relatively easy to check for correctness because of the fundamental advantage that we have a precise, and usually succinct, specification of what the software is supposed to do (the lack of such a specification is the main problem in establishing software correctness).

Step (5). Deploy the solution. Get publicity. Likely have built into the problem specification that want a lot of virality.

The steps (2) through (4) typically are challenging and high risk. But there are two advantages: (A) Typically these steps can be done essentially just on paper, e.g., as an applied math Ph.D. dissertation or engineering project planning document. And, as for most applied math research, the work usually needs just one person. So, the cost, 'burn rate', is low. (B) The work, the applied math and software, are relatively easy to check for correctness thus lowering project risk.

If can't get through the fourth step, then return to step (1) and another problem.

Back to step (1), picking the big ass problem: Here definitely want no doubt. But 'social' is not well understood so that for highly 'social' applications we will usually have too much doubt.

More generally this 'way' of doing projects won't work for all projects and would not have worked for all successful projects in the past. Right. But the intention that, once step (4) had been completed successfully, the 'way' gives high financial return at low risk for an appropriate project and enough, broadly, to get the business progress we have in mind.

So, that's the plan to get the page views!

<comment><USER6> All I get from this is: 1) You can use buzzwords. 2) If I can cure cancer, I'll be rich.

Great insights there.

<comment><USER5> What "buzzwords"?

You need to read again. What's there is great stuff, far beyond what you described, that I largely borrowed from the past 100 years of engineering and technology history.

The bottom line points are: Getting through step (4) is comparatively cheap, when can do it. So, didn't spend much money. Then in step (5) get to deploy a solution that has high promise of big financial gains with low risk. That's not good news?

The 'secret' is that by the time get through step (4), really have something valuable. So, well before launch or traction, are quite confident will get major success. That's big, huge stuff.

There are many examples from the past 100 years. Now, note, that after step (1), steps (2)-(4) are just technical. So, we want to know if my claims for those steps are supported by history. Well, for an example, at one time the US wanted to do photo reconnaissance of the USSR. We tried the U-2, but it flew too low and too slow and got shot down. So, Kelly Johnson proposed an airplane that would fly at Mach 3+, at 80,000+ feet, for 2000+ miles without refueling, be relatively difficult to see on radar, and not get shot down. His design and proposal were essentially just on paper. The project was approved, and he delivered as promised. So, the lesson is, really can remove nearly all the technology risk just by work on paper.

Then with the 'big' problem as in my step (1) and solid technical work in my steps (2)-(4), enter step (5) in really good shape. This is good news. Sorry you don't see this.

If you want to insist, just insist, against all evidence keep just insisting that the usual wildly unpredictable, super high risk work of Silicon Valley venture funded information technology startups is just the best possible with all the risk necessary and impossible to remove, go ahead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Not buy a boat you can land a helicopter on. Not conquer the world with iPads. Just make a living."

Not to nitpick, but by looking at startup stories you're not likely to hear that. That sounds like more of a Small Business story to me.

<comment><USER8> Serious question: is there a community like HN that focuses more on small scale success a la patio11 and other Microconf types?

I love the tech I see on HN, but I don't relate at all to the obsession with acquisitions, venture capital, workaholism, and status seeking.

<comment><USER9> Maybe this?

<http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/?biz>

<comment><USER10> This is where I cut my teeth on the business of software, actually, but the forum is a bit less vibrant than it has been in previous years.

<comment><USER8> Do you have any ideas as to why or how to revitalize it? The topics are so much closer to my interests I'd love to see it get some life again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> You said you were at Microconf - Rob Walling's story sounds like that. Personally I get more out of Startups for the Rest of Us than Mixergy (both are in my regular rotation). Also did up all the podcasts patio11 has done - his story is fairly humble. Ditto for Brennan Dunn. Some of these guys are HN rock stars, but if you dig, you'll find some really good stories there.

</comment><comment><USER12> What about the entrepreneur that launches a startup that makes him/her a multi-millionare relatively quickly? No helicopters or yachts involved, just a enough success to live a comfortable middle class life for years to come. Im sure it isn't always Instagram or bust. At the same time though, is this not a Startup story? Why don't we hear these?

<comment><USER13> My question is why we focus so much on the personal income of founders. Someone getting rich is the _least_ important or interesting thing about a successful company. What matters is the impact on the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "That eventually combined the right idea with the right execution in the right market to make a living. Not buy a boat you can land a helicopter on. Not conquer the world with iPads. Just make a living."

I think I wouldn't call that a successful startup. When someone says "startup" to me that inherently means the seed of a large business. A software consulting business isn't a startup in my book. Even Bingo Card Creator, though it at least has the technological leverage, is in too small a space to really be a startup.

Selling out early or late doesn't change it, and if they transition from startup to small-medium sized business somewhere along the way, they could have been a startup that had a best case failure, but they would cease to be a start up. I'd worked at one of the latter. A good indicator is when you are given 65k stock options ... at a penny a share.

<comment><USER15> But But But.. If patio11 can corner just 1% of the market (Every teachers and Youth Worker in the world) then Bingo Card Creator will be huge.

I'm sure that's a valid pitch. (And I'm sure the BCC has made more profit that most companies who pitch something like that)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think this is more a product of selective reporting than it is lack of reporting. Angry birds was something like Rovio's 52nd game when they were on the verge of bankruptcy. If you've ever really read into most of these stories, there's almost no such thing as an overnight success. It is just reported as an overnight success because _most_ people don't want to hear about the 51 games Rovio made before Angry Birds. If you have time, I would encourage you to watch the talk AirBnB founder Brian Chesky gave at Startup School a couple year ago, and see how long it took them to do anything.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L03vBkOKTrc>

</comment><comment><USER17> It's going to be hard to find stories like that, because startups generally take investment to move and grow quickly ("Startup = Growth"). When you have a business that has taken outside investment, you don't have the luxury of taking your time for years to succeed. Anyone who's started along the path you want to hear about, as a "startup" defined as I mentioned above, probably failed. Certainly there's something to learn from those failures, but if you want to hear successes that took that path (investment for rapid growth, but ended up going slowly for many years), there are probably almost none.

</comment><comment><USER18> In August 2008, start working on my startup idea with my best friend who is also a co-worker at the day job. We work nights and weekends.

April 2009, I quit full time, start working 20 hours a week, and work on the startup 40-50 hours/week

2009-2011, continue working on startup full time, with occasional part-time contracting (less than 40 hrs/mo).

March 2011, my cofounder quits, I give up soon afterwards. We had zero revenue, zero traction, and no plan.

I screw around with a couple of ideas, and try to understand how we wasted the last 3 years.

I contract some more, realize I can't go back to big corporate life, and start another startup. This time I decide I'll do something "easy", with a clear path to revenue. We're going to charge people early. First line of code gets written in September 2011. We have beta users in December 2011. We turn on payments in April 2012. We sign up 14 paying customers in the first month.

We grow steadily, and raise $1.5M in December 2012. There are now weeks that where we add more customers than we did in the first few months. We'd be profitable if we stopped hiring.

It's been incredibly difficult, stressful and tiring. You need tenacity, but not too much, as my three-year wander in the desert showed. You need to not give up in your goal to be successful, but be able to give up on individual strategies.

You need people to support you, and you need to repay their support. My then girlfriend, now wife nearly left me several times because early on I didn't know how to handle the stress, and I didn't know how to unplug and have a nice night to repay her for putting up with my stress and inattention for the rest of the week. I don't think I could be successful without her.

My complete failure on the first startup was caused by not having a clear plan for how the startup was going to succeed. We should have done a better job identifying who the customer is, how we were going to charge them, and how we were going to reach them. Additionally, the first startup had large amounts of technical risk. (It was using some advanced machine learning, when neither of us started knowing machine learning).

I'd call myself a machine learning expert now, but that definitely wasn't the case when I started. There's a saying, "in machine learning, you learn, and the computer doesn't".

The other major failure was that we didn't evaluate our progress, in terms of business metrics. Each month the product got better, and we understood the algorithms more, but no progress was made on traction of any kind, or customer development. You should read Lean Startup before you write a single line of code in your startup. We should have given up after 3 months, or even a year of no progress. Instead we wasted 3.

Unless you're curing cancer, all startups have market risk. For first time entrepreneurs, I'd recommend against things that have both market risk and technical risk. And if you have technical risk, you'd better be an expert at it, before you start.

<comment><USER19> > And if you have technical risk, you'd better be an expert at it, before you > start.

I can't second this one enough. Our startup heavily involved video recording, which I thought was a solved problem. It turned out not to be at all.

I ended up learning a lot of really cool stuff about Flash's crazy edge case bugs (I should attach a microphone to a connection with a null hostname to get the activity levels? Sure. I should wait with attaching a camera until I've detected a greater than 0 activityLevel? Sure. I should sample connection speeds and run a regression analysis on that data to find the right bandwidth/quality settings? Cool, but seriously?) and the various flaws of the media servers out there (So I don't have access to the packet stream with Wowza, but in Red5 I need to rewrite the way audio and video packets are interleaved because when uploading high quality video on slow connections Flash delays video packets until the end of stream? No problem.)

In the end even though our startup wasn't about video but about interacting _using_ video, we spent 90% of our time on the video part. That's a lot of energy I wish I could've spent on building the business instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> If, as he says, he wants stories of people who "Just make a living," then Mixergy isn't the right site for him, and that's fine.

I got into entrepreneurship because I was scared of having a life where I just made a living. I feel like there's something great inside me. I haven't fully tapped it, but it's there and I want to learn how to express more of it.

I felt alone for most of my life because most people are like Daniel, they just want to make a living. I never felt like there was anything wrong with them. Hell, they're normal. I felt like there was something wrong with ME for wanting more. For feeling like I can do something extraordinary.

Doing Mixergy interviews reminds me that I'm not odd. Or at least that I'm not the only one who's odd. My interviewees and my audience are like me. We want something more. We're learning from each other about how to do it.

Most people reading this can't relate to that. It's fine. Striving to 'Just make a living' is incredibly honorable and I hope you find the site that tells those stories.

I hope there's one person out there who gets it. If you're reading this. I'll see you on Mixergy.

</comment><comment><USER21> You get the groups that get out of the gate and are just outright lucky. Then the second groups who figured it out. Then you have the third group that worked to get there.

Then you have the last group that tried everything and failed to know what that one thing is that could work.

You just have to wait.

I've been at this for twelve years, since I was in my teens. The struggle stories takes time to mature for that redemption.

</comment><comment><USER22> I think this story fits the bill... [http://wensing.tumblr.com/post/1215873671/bootstrapping- stor...](http://wensing.tumblr.com/post/1215873671/bootstrapping-stormpulse)

His story culminates in presenting to President Obama this past week @ the Capital Factory (Austin, TX). Great guy and a story that has definitely inspired me.

</comment><comment><USER23> Dude. You won't hear that story from VCs, they want a 100x exit, and a kid with his "brilliant" ideas is their best bet at catching media attention.

</comment><comment><USER24> I did the first interview on Mixergy with Andrew about a failed startup: <http://mixergy.com/etzel-notifo-interview/> \- I discuss my struggles and lessons learned, but it doesn't have a happy ending like you are looking for.

</comment><comment><USER25> A startup differs from a small business in that it is scalable. A restaurant or a CPA firm is not scalable since you can't grow faster than your headcount.

The author is asking for stories about the long slog of an eventual breakout success of a scalable startup.

</comment><comment><USER26> To be honest, most founders dream of big Mark Zuckerberg-like success (who wouldn't?). Reading stories about who just "make a living" isn't very promising or exciting, and I think hope is your strongest asset.

</comment><comment><USER27> That's pretty funny to me. (Sort of sitting here wondering how low you would want to go and what measure of "success" you would use to decide who to hear from.)

</comment><comment><USER28> If you want to hear that story (x4), attend our "founder stories" panel at the startup conference in two weeks (May 30, Redwood City). I believe it's at 9:30am.

</comment><comment><USER29> Here you are: <http://37signals.com/bootstrapped> Lots of such stories. Highly recommeneded.

</comment><comment><USER30> Thats my story. Email me. Ill tell you all about it.

</comment><comment><USER31> For anyone interested in such a story, I highly recommend Richard Branson's autobiography - "How I lost my virginity."

</comment><comment><USER32> Seven years of slog. A few disastrous false starts, four years living on a floor in a bundle of rags. A diet of rice and spaghetti, plain.

Always profitable, even through the doldrums. Decent (seven figure) pile of cash in the company account. Moderate pile of cash in mine.

Still have no idea what to do with it. It's a byproduct of creation.

I suppose this pointless little anecdote intends to shed light on the fact that we're not all in it for the money, and therefore not all stories are the same.

Some of us just need to struggle.

<comment><USER33> I would love to hear a more detailed writeup, or podcast, of the story of your business. I suspect many other HNers would too.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How did you bring your first big client in? - <AUTHOR>

I have a web application which is currently deployed at a client with 100 employees. I don't have payment yet and the web application stops working on the 1st of June (just to be sure i actually get payed).
In a month from now, on a partner meeting, the web application will be discussed and if all goes well, my expenses are payed and i will be able to resell the application (a document management application, flexible and very personal for any departement in the company). This isn't my first client, but it is my first big client and i'm wondering, how did you get your first big client, and how did it work out?
I actually had the luxury of knowing the "right-hand of the boss" (he's a friend), so i consider this an opportunity and a step forward. <comment><USER2> We got lucky. We knew someone, ex-employee of a big education organization and had left on very good terms. These people were pretty "old school" and relationships meant more than shiny products. We got our meeting showed them the product, they were not impressed which sort of perplexed me. We then sat down with them, spent hours building relationships with everyone and figuring out how to mold the product according to them(it was big enough organization to justify the change). Over time it paid off, they loved it.</comment>


Using Heroku's Expensive Query Dashboard to Speed Up Your App - <AUTHOR> https://blog.heroku.com/expensive-query-speed-up-app <comment><USER2> I thought the word "expensive" was referring to the price of using the dashboard. This title should have a hyphen in it: "Expensive-Query Dashboard".</comment>


How Facebook can take over the Internet (part 1) - <AUTHOR> http://omergertel.com/2010/03/07/facebook-is-going-to-be-the-next-big-thing-again/

<comment><USER2> The linked article (especially "the more I use any one service the more power it has over my digital life") provided me the motivation to crystallize some thoughts about Facebook Connect:

Premise 1: With Facebook Connect, a business--the primary interest of which is to keep making money--is in charge of your online identity.

Premise 2: In real life, you are (mostly[1]) in charge of what you look like, where you go, what information you reveal, etc.

Premise 3: Premise 2 is correct unless you're working for a business, in which you agree by contract to devote certain amounts of time to certain activities and agree to give up some privacy (e.g. email and phone use).

Claim: Facebook wants you to work for them. In fact, you are whenever you use their products and services. You are making them money in exchange for your time and effort. You also gain access to things that only Facebook provides.

I want an internet where each user controls all their appearance, connections, suggestions, etc... just like I do in the rest of life. OpenID seems to be a better solution, in my opinion, then letting Facebook be in charge. That said, I realize many online users nowadays don't even realize the value they willingly hand over to Facebook to manage, and many are happy to do so because it lets them be socially connected with minimal hassle. What we need is a revolt against FB connect and it's Google Buzz kin. A declaration of making a better internet, for the people, by the people, with personal identity controlled by each individual.

\--

[1]assuming you're not famous and the media is following you, or living in an oppressive country that monitors your every move.

</comment><comment><USER3> >You must have Javascript enabled to view this site.

My loss...

<comment><USER4> My fault. Fixed it.</comment></comment>


5 tips to get you through the design process - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@nirbenita/the-true-meaning-of-iteration-c7b1e964d21c

<comment><AUTHOR> We expect our own designs to be perfect from the start, only to give up when we find out that's not the case — and it's NEVER the case.</comment>


Halloween Costumes for Web Developers - <AUTHOR> http://www.stanleycolors.com/2013/10/halloween-costumes-programmers-people/

<comment><USER2> the original title, "Programmers", fit this much better. Regardless... good stuff!</comment>


Crush Point: When large crowds assemble, is there a way to keep safe? (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/02/07/crush-point <comment><USER2> It's a very long article, and the closest it comes to answering the question of "is there a way to keep safe" are these two sentences: "Keep your elbows akimbo, to protect your chest and give yourself enough breathing room. Don't fight against the flow of the crowd if you're trying to get out of it; rather, go with it, and during lulls try to work your way diagonally through the crowd to the perimeter. If you feel faint, grab on to someone, and, if you do fall, try to protect your head."

<comment><USER3> > Keep your elbows akimbo, to protect your chest and give yourself enough > breathing room.

I don't understand this part. Maybe I'm misunderstanding 'akimbo' but what I see in google image search doesn't seem useful to me: [https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=elbows+akimbo](https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=elbows+akimbo)

<comment><USER4> "When people die in huge crowd 'stampedes', it's rarely from being trampled, it's from being crushed and suffocated (while still standing) by densely packed bodies."

[https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/3oqcp4/til_t...](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/3oqcp4/til_that_when_people_die_in_huge_crowd_stampedes/)

<comment><USER5> It wouldn't take much to lose that stance and have your elbows pushed inwards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Alternatively, a Reddit post describing essentially the same thing, but in fewer words, that is a good read and has some good advice on avoiding/surviving these situations.

[https://np.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/3pcvfb/saudi_arab...](https://np.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/3pcvfb/saudi_arabia_hajj_disaster_death_toll_at_least/cw5vxtm?context=3)

</comment><comment><USER7> In case anyone else was like me in wondering what the outcome of the Walmart case was, it looks like they finally accepted the fine in 2014: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/19/walmart-black- frida...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/19/walmart-black-friday- death_n_6904604.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> Speaking of Music Festival crowds, having worked at Love Parade a few years back where there were fatalities due to lack of crowd controls and at Tomorrowland last year, I was really impressed with the Sendrato bracelet that Tomorrowland use ([http://sendrato.com/](http://sendrato.com/) ) which can be potentially used to determine densities of crowds in a particular area, and allow controls to be put in place before problems arise.

<comment><USER9> Here's a documentary/analysis on the circumstances that led to Germany's 2010 Love Parade disaster: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y73-7lFBNE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y73-7lFBNE)

Basically, exits were blocked off on both ends and the crowd was large enough that people trapped in the middle were crushed by enough force to led to suffocation. People attempting to move caused compression waves to ripple through the crowd which injured hundreds.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The article mentions the Jamaraat Bridge which just a few months ago had it's deadliest crush yet killing over 2,000 people. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Mina_stampede](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Mina_stampede)

</comment><comment><USER11> article is old and problem is older, research is there if you look hard enough, but until egress and crowd safety gets into building codes don't count on architects to implement the known solutions

[http://arxiv.org/pdf/0906.0224v1.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/0906.0224v1.pdf)

[http://www.pmcorp.com/Portals/5/_Downloads/Simulation%20of%2...](http://www.pmcorp.com/Portals/5/_Downloads/Simulation%20of%20Pedestrian%20Crowds%20in%20normal%20and%20evacuation.pdf)

<comment><USER12> Got a link to any cost-benefit calculations? Every new restriction made nationwide to the building code undoubtably costs society many millions or even billions of dollars. (Something like a trillion dollars of housing is built in the US each year.) I couldn't even find any news stories about people getting killed by being crushed by crowds in buildings in the US in the past couple years.

My suspicion is that building codes should be relaxed rather than tightened.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think that the necessary changes apply to very many facilities at all. Maybe a few thousand buildings countrywide need to worry about crowd crushes. These sorts of crushes happen in predictable circumstances involving hundreds of people; and there are not _that_ many concert amphitheaters. Or consider the Jamaraat Bridge - how many crushes is it, by itself, up to now?

<comment><USER12> Agree with the general line of reasoning, but I'd guess more people are crushed by small crowds in the US than large ones, exactly because the low- hanging large-crowd fruit has been picked. Would need to see some numbers. It's easy to imagine that changing a concert amphitheaters costs of order a million dollars, so you're already talking about order billions of dollars nationwide.

To be sure, less developed countries have all sorts of fixes that ought to be made.

<comment><AUTHOR> On the other hand, the value of a life is $10-20m these days and a crush or fire can kill hundreds at a stroke, even in a small venue like the infamous Station fire. So a single incident could easily go into the billions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> With a phobia of large groups of people, I cannot even fathom how people allow themselves to get into such situations.

That mecca thing recently blew my mind, they just all crushed themselves to death and kept going.

The mecca death toll is now near 1500 people I believe. 1500!

<comment><USER10> Imagine there's a place you want to get to along with a lot of other people.

It starts as a nice queue and is pretty orderly but then some people start pushing in and trying to jump ahead in the line. Other people see this and try the same thing. If there's no good exit or crowd control then the back of the crowd slowly pushes against the front until disaster occurs.

People in the back have no idea that there is nowhere to go but they've been standing for hours and want to keep moving forward.

<comment><USER13> Yeah except for me, the sheer existence of the crowd makes my brain go "avoid avoid avoid at all costs".

I even go shopping in the middle of the night or very early morning when stores first open. I don't mind a few people but a crowd will make me turn around immediately. It is some kind of primal fear to me that shouts danger.

Apparently a great many people don't seem to have that survival instinct.

<comment><USER14> It's not necessarily a survival instinct, crowds aren't inherently bad, and they rarely result in death or injury -- what if the crowd you're avoiding is the big line for fresh water after a disaster, waiting around until the crowd dissipates may mean that supplies run out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Employees asked the police for help. According to a court filing, the police responded that dealing with this crowd was 'not in their job description,' and they left."

Does anyone know if the officers initially on scene here ever faced disciplinary action?

<comment><USER16> I don't know details of this case, but in general the police don't have a duty to act in specific circumstances. They're more for our overall well being:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule- pol...](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-police-do- not-have-a-constitutional-duty-to-protect-someone.html)

At the risk of being "someone is wrong on the Internet"[1], I'd venture that the police did not face disciplinary action.

[1] [https://xkcd.com/386/](https://xkcd.com/386/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Having had some personal experience in hugely dense crowds (like the Edinburgh Hogmanay Street Party[1]) it does indeed feel exactly like being carried along in a shoulders-deep irresistible flow of people. There were actually perceptible currents & flows, areas of turbulence around obstacles, and many other things that suggest they behave something like a fluid.

Resistance is, as explained elsewhere, extremely challenging. The sheer force of a column of people and lack of any sort of feedback means it's quite dangerous and uncomfortable. A friend and I had to rescue several people who'd fallen and were struggling to get back up, or who were being forced into obstacles. The solution was to surround them and form a sort of rugby-huddle that left enough space in the middle for them to get back up or catch their breath.

They might have better crowd management measures these recent years, but I haven't been tempted to go back on new years.

[1] [http://www.edinburghfestivalcity.com/assets/000/000/264/Pack...](http://www.edinburghfestivalcity.com/assets/000/000/264/Packed_Street_Party_- _credit_Chris_Watt_gallery_detail.jpg?1411140230)

</comment><comment><USER18> Update on the OSHA vs Walmart appeal case: looks like Walmart finally gave up: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/19/walmart-black- frida...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/19/walmart-black-friday- death_n_6904604.html)

I guess even the largest retailer on earth can't fight The Man forever.

</comment><comment><USER19> Immediately this makes me think of nightclub fires. If you are willing to chance self-induced PTSD take a look at the uncensored videos from the Station nightclub fire. Crowded nightclubs are deathtraps.

<comment><USER20> Last time I was at a show it was particularly crowded (no seats) and I started thinking of that video as I stood there waiting for the band. I could see the 3 exits of the venue from where I was standing but I had this sinking feeling that if something happened there would be no way I'd get to any of them in time. I could feel a sense of claustrophobia rising and I had to actively put it out of my mind so I could just enjoy the show.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Related: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillsborough_disaster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillsborough_disaster)

</comment><comment><USER22> On Mythbusters, in their zombie myths episode, the elder duo put their crowd- crush volunteers in torso-length segments of large-diameter drainage tile, and had everyone hold their arms up above their heads while attempting to crowd- crush through a barn door.

It looked like the zombies had all gone broke in the 1920s and were wearing barrels for clothing.

But no one was apparently injured. So I guess shoppers and concertgoers could all wear crush-resistant chest armor?

</comment><comment><USER23> I wonder if tall people have a significant advantage here.</comment>


Gravitational waves reveal collision of heavy and light black holes - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/gravitational-waves-reveal-unprecedented-collision-heavy-and-light-black-holes <comment><USER2> Are they saying that the frequency produced is the _same_ as the note in the Elvis song or just that the ratio of the two notes in the song is the same as the ratio of the two frequencies detected?

I mean, I am not sure what the frequencies generated by orbiting black holes would be.. but ~260hz (middle C) sounds destructively fast to me so I'm guessing the latter. What is the orbital frequency likely to be here?

<comment><USER3> 260hz is not unreasonable, black hole mergers are unimaginably violent.

[https://youtu.be/9IdVyArDlZ4](https://youtu.be/9IdVyArDlZ4)

<comment><USER2> yes but I'm imagining that when the orbital frequency gets to that kind of level, the end would be extremely imminent?

(for the remote observer anyway haha)

<comment><USER4> Yes, but it's only when the black holes get extremely close that they produce gravitational waves powerful enough for us to detect.

You're correct that for many years (millenia?) the black holes have been orbiting each other much more slowly. We can't detect that though.

<comment><USER5> I wonder what the right time scale is here. My gut reaction is million of years?

<comment><USER6> I believe it depends on the specifics of the merger, but my understanding is the reason black holes that orbit each other merge at all is because they bleed energy to gravitational waves. While they are at a reasonable distance, that's a very small amount of energy. I think some of these systems would be stable for billions of years.

<comment><USER5> Billions seemed too long to me, at that point you're talking about tenths of the lifetime of the universe!

<comment><USER6> That's the timescale the solar system is stable on.

<comment><USER5> Aw, sorry. I think I mis-interpreted your comment. I was thinking more of how long the system has been falling apart for. It didn't make sense to me that that could have been for billions of years, since the movement involved would be so slow?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A link to the paper would be appreciated if anyone has it.

<comment><USER8> It was a paid livestream of the virtual conference. Free slides available below.

[http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/APR20/Session/C06.2](http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/APR20/Session/C06.2)</comment></comment>


Show HN: A social media with a mechanism enabling users to make money - <AUTHOR> https://ayocer.com/about <comment><AUTHOR> Ayocer is a social network with a mechanism enabling both enthusiast and regular social network users to make money from socializing. You can Blog, Chat, Get followed on Twitter, Share and Discover what matters to you; And most importantly, Make Money!</comment>


Against Service Layers in Django - <AUTHOR> https://www.b-list.org/weblog/2020/mar/16/no-service/ <comment><AUTHOR> I don't think the main use case for service layers is to be able to some day replace the ORM, but instead to have a place to put logic that should happen in your application despite a record is created or not.

For example, suppose you want to index in ElasticSearch a blog post on creation, but only if it's state is published and after doing this, then send an email to all your users, etc. Where would you put all of this logic? Models can get pretty big even if only they have to call other modules for performing these operations.

<comment><USER3> I'm currently working on a complex business-heavy application where we apply DDD and other "enterprise application patterns". Most of the negative aspects in the article I see proven during my daily work (like re-implementing parts of the ORM within a repository). Even then, as I understand this is the approach as its described in DDD books and "classics" like "Enterprise application architecture".

I have also worked with the opposite way as described in the article - <USER2> business logic and Django specific code and saw it becoming a hard-to maintain mess quickly, where it was hard to see the business logic between all the infrastructure code.

For me the hard thing about "Enterprise Python[Django]" is to find a way how we can apply these enterprisy architectures in a more Pythonic way. Hopefully there will be more books and articles about these topics now that Python gains more and more momentum and starts to become more respected to implement heavy business driven applications.</comment></comment>