New Parents Complain Amazon Baby-Registry Ads Are Deceptive - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-parents-complain-amazon-ads-are-deceptive-1543417201 <comment><USER2> That's pretty egregious. The fact that is says "0 of 1 purchased" implies that the person making the list asked for it which is a lie no matter how you spin it. Sounds like fraud to me.

<comment><USER3> I could spin it as well-intentioned. Regardless of whether the list-maker requested the item, you don't want to buy something that's already been purchased by someone else.

I'm not willing to give Amazon that benefit of the doubt, however.

<comment><USER4> Well intentioned would be to indicate that the product is not requested. _Maybe_ writing 0 of 0 could be acceptable. 0 of 1 is a lie.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It seems like Amazon may have violated California law, and under CACI 1903 the buyers of items on the baby-registry list could have standing to sue Amazon for negligent misrepresentation:

Fact: "the item was added to the list by the list's creator"

1\. Amazon represented to the buyer that the Fact was true.

2\. Amazon's representation was not true.

3\. Amazon had no reasonable grounds for believing the Fact was true.

4\. Amazon intended the Buyer to rely on this representation.

5\. The Buyer reasonably relied on this representation.

6\. The Buyer was harmed.

7\. The Buyer's reliance on Amazon's representation was a substantial factor in causing the harm.

The core of the issue to puzzle over: How was the buyer of the gift harmed?

[https://www.justia.com/trials- litigation/docs/caci/1900/1903...](https://www.justia.com/trials- litigation/docs/caci/1900/1903/)

<comment><USER6> _The core of the issue to puzzle over: How was the buyer of the gift harmed?_

One might be able to argue that the buyer was reputationally harmed by being tricked into buying a gift that was neither asked for nor wanted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Happened to us a few months ago. We got a pair of baby bath kits we didn't ask for. We looked afterward, and saw the ads mixed into our list with no way to remove them. Incredibly slimy practice.

<comment><USER8> Same with my wife and I. We have already been hemming and hawing with our parents about buying high quality products as a general rule – nothing against Fisher Price or Greco, but we have just decided on nicer things – and in this spirit have intentionally selected a diaper subscription service rather than buying certain other brands via Walmart/Target/Amazon/etc. (In fact, we originally rejected the idea of a baby shower or registry so that we could just buy everything ourselves).

Anyways, we were surprised to see packages of Huggies showing up on our doorstep. Not only did we never add Huggies to the registry, we never added _any_ diapers period. When we checked the registry again, we saw some Huggies ads spliced in discretely and almost imperceptibly. It speaks to our modern day lives that we simply said "wow, they put an ad in our registry... guess that's what Amazon does now" and just kicked off the return process. We've probably wound up with >$100 in Amazon credits based on returned Huggies at this point.

<comment><USER9> What diaper service did you end up choosing?

<comment><USER8> My wife chose to get monthly bundles from Honest (www.honest.com).

<comment><USER10> That's was initially my choice, but wife told me "a woman with STD will not be putting a diaper on my kid's ass". Then I looked up she was referring to Jessica Alba (the owner)

The net is full of terrible reviews but the whole company marketing scheme was based on pure fear mongering. They tried to argue that other diapers are dangerous for your baby. Then when that unsubstantiated fake news got popular, Honest deleted off the website related to it and redirected everyone to their home page. Slimy.

Great reading you can start here: [https://slate.com/human- interest/2013/06/honest-diapers-are-...](https://slate.com/human- interest/2013/06/honest-diapers-are-all-the-rage-these-days-but-are-they- really-any-better-than-huggies.html)

<comment><USER11> What exactly does STD status have to do with any of the rest of this?

<comment><USER10> Its a branding thing. Would you buy a childcare services from Jeffrey Epstein? Or give your investment money to Elizabeth Holmes?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I created DreamList [https://www.dreamlist.com](https://www.dreamlist.com) as a parent because I was appalled by the practices of baby registries and wish lists out there. Without naming competitors we saw:

\- A major retailer hid the actual wishlist behind an "idea list" page that visitors saw first when they clicked on someone's wishlist link. The "Idea list" was full of high margin items that had nothing to do with the wisher (sometimes even targeted to the wrong gender).

\- Multiple major registries indexed your name for SEO and thus a baby registry still showed as top result on google for female founders and executives who had babies in recent years.

\- Multiple wikipedia and gossip press links boosting SEO of several universal registries by showcasing the wedding or baby lists of famous people (the SEO boost was substantial too). Privacy was non-existent at that point.

\- Popular new baby or wedding specialized registries that are also retailers and would push gift cards for their own stores to registry guests where you'd often find 30%+ markup on common items. Etc...

So, as I was literally nursing a baby in one arm, I wrote code for DreamList with the other. It was architected to be actually private (no lists get SEO, unless users explicitly ask for it; no ads or promotional emails; etc.). It is not tied to a retailer, so you can add the lowest price items from anywhere (and link your other wish lists and registries). It lets you manage wish lists together with your spouse or team (we've served charity and disaster recovery teams in every disaster since Hurricane Harvey). More importantly, you can add large items and dreams you are saving towards such as a big trip to Disney, or 529 plans, so on special occasions family can contribute small amounts to help little ones get there sooner.

It starts with little architectural decisions, but every detail matters in a family product, as it sets a tone for interactions and thus relationships of millions of families that live apart geographically. We've reached a time when we have to take online privacy and quality in our own hands, for the sake of our kids.

<comment><USER13> Wow inspiring - How can HN help promote ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I run exactly 0 analytics and ads on Wishy.gift, nor do I plan to ever do so. Almost 300 users are using the service so far, and I have no idea who most of them are, where they come from, or how they found the service. There's a huge uptick in the number of registrations now before Christmas, but I'm really hoping that people might find it useful for birthdays, weddings and baby registries as well.

All feedback is very welcome :)

<comment><USER9> This sounded perfect until I went to your site and found the one and only way to sign in was via fb.

I mean, it's nice that -you're- not tracking me, but you're still requiring I invite fb to track what I'm doing.

So... for those of us for whom "I absolutely don't track you" actually matters, I don't know if this is usable.

<comment><USER15> Another consideration: it looks like those of us without fb accounts probably can't even look at lists or buy for friends / family. This is a bummer on a personal level, but also limits usefulness in cases where anyone who would see the list doesn't use fb or feel comfortable using it to log in.

To the developer: please consider adding email-based login, or maybe just unique links sent by email for viewers without fb.

<comment><USER14> Since yesterday, it's possible to view the items in someone's list without logging in. If you open your own wishlist in incognito mode you can see how this looks like :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Unless consumers/people get organized, and get laws passed (and enforced) to force companies to some minimal ethical standards, things will only get worse.

"Voting with your dollars" is just another way of saying to stay divided and alone, while companies unite and get ever more organized. How well has it worked so far?

<comment><USER17> Here is a good little video by an evolutionary biologist detailing your point [https://youtu.be/EsBvI9oSD1g](https://youtu.be/EsBvI9oSD1g)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Even after reading the article and specifically searching for the "sponsored" text, it took me minutes to find it in the screenshot. Extremely deceptive

<comment><USER19> I had the same experience. I was scanning the Amazon wish list page _knowing_ what I was looking for and finally found it with CTRL+F. This is unethical design. :\

<comment><USER20> "One weird trick... the FTC _hates_ it when companies do this"

r/unethical/illegal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've grown annoyed with Amazon's ad practices. I filter by for example price, and there is something like 4 ads per page, nearly identical to the properly search results. Makes scanning a page a much more cumbersome so that you don't click on the garbage products they advertise.

<comment><USER22> > Makes scanning a page a much more cumbersome so that you don't click on the > garbage products they advertise.

Which, I imagine, is the entire point. The ideal outcome, from Amazon's perspective, is that you can't simply scan a page and tune out the ads. As long as people are just "annoyed" and not "leaving the platform in droves," the ad creep will continue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I suggest using BabyList, which was launched by a friend on HN 7 years ago and is now one of the top baby retailers in the country.

[https://babylist.com](https://babylist.com)

<comment><USER24> Relevant HN link: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2175757](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2175757)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Amazon keeps making it harder and harder for me to justify having a prime account and buying things from them.

<comment><USER26> My wife and I are having the same discussion. We had a stretch where 8 of 10 orders were late, damaged, or clearly repackaged.

Buying from Amazon use to mean getting a legit product, quickly, and in new condition. Now it's a complete crap shoot what fake junk we're going to get.

<comment><USER27> Couldn't agree more. A decade ago, you'd always be 100% sure with Amazon. There was no need to be cautious. If the product was fake, broken, or you just didn't like it, Amazon would fix it. Support was both rarely needed and amazing. Their default answer before they were even sure what the issue was would be to overnight more things to you.

But these days, you've gotta keep your guard up at all times. Whoops, this isn't for sale from "Amazon," it's some rando on their marketplace. Hrm, do they have lots of reviews? Okay, let's check a few and see if they look real or fake. Is this the sort of product that might be faked or be a weird, cheap knockoff? Is this the right product page for this product or a weird clone of the real one? I can still get my business done with a minimum of being taken advantage of, but it's a lot harder to do now.

<comment><USER28> I bought a phone recently and specifically didn't go to Amazon for this reason. After searching for the kind of Samsung phone I wanted, I would find several slight variations, all with slightly different prices. It looked really sketchy to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I've gotten this from ads in their normal search. I've been conditioned for years to trust that the search returns what I expect. Now when I instinctually click the first link, I end up with the wrong brand. My fault for not paying attention, but me being more careful means they've lost my trust.

</comment><comment><USER30> [https://outline.com/8NvRtf](https://outline.com/8NvRtf)

</comment><comment><USER31> Just use Target.

Amazon is more expensive, abusive with this kind of behavior and it's core differentiator (speed) is irrelevant to a registry.

</comment><comment><USER32> I see this as a control group in the great Internet advertising experiment. It answers the question: "How often will someone click an ad, given that the advertised product is certain to be unwanted?" That is, how often will someone mistake an ad for a real result?

</comment><comment><USER33> These ads are probably not compliant with UK regulation, so if you see one in the UK please do contact ASA.

<comment><USER34> So the ASA can say, "we told them they'd been naughty, job done".

Aside: do people in the UK do "baby registries"? I've only ever seen it on USA media. Mind you we do seem to get USA culture eventually. My kid said he had "math" the other day ...

<comment><USER35> What do people there say instead of math? Mathematics?

<comment><USER36> Maths.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Is there no way out of the antiquated gift registry idea? Could we have baby showers and weddings in which everyone contributes cash (and absolutely no gifts) to offset the event costs? Any excess cash becomes a gift to the parents or couple.

Gifts served a purpose in the distant past because people needed "things" to start their life, but that's no longer the case. Most people have way too many things, and most of their expenses are operating costs anyway (like mortgage, rent, education, health care, and transportation).

<comment><USER38> Baby showers were extremely helpful to me because experiences friends and family with babies shared items I didn't even know about, but were useful.

Personally, I don't like to give cash because it's impersonal and doesn't allow me to express creativity of something relevant to my friendship or affection. I rarely get it perfect, but a gift let's me interact with the recipient to find out how they are doing, what they need, what I think will help best.

If I don't know someone well enough that I can't help with an item and would only send cash, I use that as a filter for whether to send a gift.

I also don't like receiving cash from friends, but appreciate gifts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> How is this not literally fraud?

</comment><comment><USER40> I thought "Customer Obsession" was their first core value?

<comment><USER41> The customer in this case being the company paying to have their ad shown.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Nothing deceptive about pushing your own brands over third parties then letting third parties buy back those sales with advertising then deceiving the users to click on those ads...

</comment><comment><USER43> Jesus our west coast techno saviors are turning on us.

</comment><comment><USER44> There are quotes from people interviewed who removed the sponsored ads from their own listings. Did no-one think Amazon's behaviour was so unacceptable that they abandoned it, and used a different service?

Or is Amazon such a monopoly that this wasn't even considered?

</comment><comment><USER45> "Customer-obsessed"

</comment><comment><USER46> I hope we see legal action over this. Incredibly deceptive.

</comment><comment><USER47> It's paywalled, and even Googling the link still gets me paywall version.

</comment><comment><USER48> Just return it

</comment><comment><USER49> Is there a non-paywalled version of this article somewhere?

<comment><USER50> I use the 'bypass paywalls' extension for Firefox. You can download from Github.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Pathetic</comment>


Semantic Web, Can it Happen? - <AUTHOR> http://www.victusspiritus.com/2009/07/30/semantic-web-can-it-happen/ <comment><USER2> I work for one of the leading semtech companies. It's all about data interoperability and it is inevitably coming. I am not convinced it will come as the result of a company advancing a standard like RDF, rather than as a grass root entity that grows up out of the many existing data formats. The bottom line is that data interoperability is good and it's really not that hard to accomplish. RDF puts forward a scheme to accomplish this with a distributed, directed graph structure that incorporates universally recognizable IDs. I cringe whenever I hear someone talk about how it makes the machine more intelligent or how easy it is to do XYZ using semtech... It's about making extremely precise descriptions of things and gives certain tools (RDF, OWL and inference engines) to make working on abstract models easier, but there is a hell of a lot of work involved in getting something really useful going. As an aside, bing used to be powerset, one of the leading linguistic semantics companies that I saw present in ISWC 07.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the education keefe. Maybe what I'm expecting isn't a fully directed graph but a set of automated tools that can help associate disparate data sets. Do you have any good suggested reading you could point me to on the semantic web?

<comment><USER2> The basic information is pretty well summarized here <http://www.rdfabout.com/> Automatically mapping disparate data sets is a pretty hard problem that does not tend to automate well. My current company produces tools for this and you can download a beta here <http://www.topquadrant.com/products/TB_Composer.html> The basic technique is to import your datasets (XML files or RDB or whatever) into RDF, then define a master data model in RDF and define a set of sparql construct rules (or SPIN rules, spin is one of TQ's proprietary languages) which says what I see data with structure X in data source A construct structure Y in data source A using the fields of X. The chief scientist at TQ has written a book on how to effectively do modeling with RDF : <http://workingontologist.org/> There are a number of other books and tools, you can checkout the semantic technologies conference for exhibitors for a full list.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks I'll check it out. I've been using a simple approach of allowing folks like Zemanta to extract meta tags from content (natural language text), weighting them by confidence levels or reuse and then finding similar combinations/weights. Link by content.

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure exactly what you mean, are you talking about entity extraction with confidence levels ala Calais? That used to be clearforest before Reuters bought them. I think entity extraction in general is so closely related to natural language quantification that it is one of those generally tough problems. In general, I feel work in this area suffers scalability issues and highly optimized point solutions will do better for a while yet. I guess we'll have to see how Bing ne Powerset does in mainstreaming this whole thing or if it'll be just a bunch of hype like twine.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, Calais & Zemanta have similar APIs. Input text and get back tags.

<comment><USER3> It's much more than tags - in-text exact entities, deep categorization, related news, etc :)

The exact disambiguation of mentioned concepts and entities is what is exciting and underused by web developers right now.

Andraz Tori, CTO at Zemanta

<comment><USER2> I think sense disambiguation is certainly one of the most interesting applications of semantic technologies. Here at TQ, the focus tends to be on the exploitation of referential semantics and structured data to establish master data models, merge data models and provide a platform for model driven application development and analytics. However, the focus here tends to be more towards corporate IT than mainstream web dev.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Controllers and Views in Go - <AUTHOR> http://calhoun.io/creating-controllers-views-in-go/

<comment><AUTHOR> Full disclosure - I wrote this while learning Go, so there is a reasonable chance it isn't perfect. I'm all ears for constructive criticism :D

<comment><USER2> Check out the MVC in [https://github.com/elcct/defaultproject](https://github.com/elcct/defaultproject)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh cool. I'll have to check this out. Thanks for the link :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Congrats on front page of Hacker News. I found this article easy to follow and generally well written. You'll probably want to fix the following typos when you have a chance do as not to detract from your message.

> The first thing we are going to look at is what we need form our base > controller

from

> This example is using httprouter, as this is my go to router in Go

go-to

> applicatoin

application

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I wrote this a bit hastily and didn't get to proofread it. I'll update it in the AM when back at my comp.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thanks, that's one of the most helpful post I have seen regarding Golang and web development. :)

</comment><comment><USER5> i know go has it's own advantages (speed etc) but whoever saying the language makes developers happy clearly came from c++/c and not from Ruby/Python. you can write it in much more friendly language in less lines of code.

<comment><AUTHOR> I coded in Rails for the last 3 years or so and jumped to Go for a new project since it seemed like a better fit.

From my perspective, some things are more verbose and others more annoying at first, but overall I have come to love it. I couldn't really pinpoint a specific reason why, but I simply enjoy it.

<comment><USER6> For me being able to compile to an executable with zero dependencies is a big win. And setting up the go dev environment is also trivial compared to my experience with rails.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Goofys – a faster s3fs written in Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kahing/goofys <comment><AUTHOR> I started learning Go a month ago and wrote goofys in it as an exercise. Looking for feedbacks from Go best practices as well as usefulness of reduced- POSIX filesystems.</comment>


Semantic Shape Editing - <AUTHOR> http://www.meyumer.com/semantic_editing.html

<comment><USER2> Reminds me of this scene from Star Trek [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0qGXPDJ19c&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0qGXPDJ19c&feature=youtu.be&t=19m57s) where the characters try to recreate their memories using the Holodeck. When I first saw it I thought that scene was ridiculously unrealistic -- but I suppose that's what I get for betting against technology.

</comment><comment><USER3> It seems like defining how the semantic sliders behave would be much more work than having an artist do the 3d modelling. And either way, you're going to need that 3d artist in the first place. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER4> I think so. You don't need a 3D artist -- models can also be created with a 3D scanner.

I also don't think (I haven't read the paper, yet!) you need to do anything to get the semantic sliders other than to label existing data. If you're going to design a single chair, it's probably more time efficient to have an artist make a 3D model to your specifications. On the other hand, if you're going to design something like a customized biomedical part with variations that depend upon the patient, then this could easily be a net win. Not to mention if you'd like to automate that design, you now have a much smaller dimensional parameter space to play with.

<comment><USER5> > You don't need a 3D artist -- models can also be created with a 3D scanner

As someone who creates 3D models from scanned objects... hah haha hahahahaa. <sob> It's _so freaking hard_. I wish it weren't so, but it's so frustrating, it is probably the aspect of my job that I enjoy the least. I use a Faro CMM arm with a laser line scanner and polyworks (IIRC that whole package costs about $90k), and you can get decent scans of certain objects without much effort, but it's really hard to get good definition in small details, and some surfaces (shiny ones, transparent ones, ones where light scatters slightly below the surface) and some details (holes, crevices, small protrusions) are really hard to capture. And even still, the resulting model has high complexity... If you want a smooth mesh without holes or other aberrations, that's another layer of work. And if you need to convert it to proper NURBS surfaces, that is yet another layer of work (and one that takes an entirely separate skill set).

I know these technologies are getting better all the time, but that one's still a really hard problem that's waiting for a better solution.

<comment><USER4> Oh I agree with you on all those points. That's one of the main thrusts of my work as well. It's hard, but doable, and if you've gone through the effort then you might as well leverage it with a technique such as this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This looks fantastic.

Before Google axed it, there was 'Google Sets', which expanded a few basis terms into a longer list of related phrases.

To be sure, this seems to be more powerful than that. The ability to eek out a 3D model by simply playing around with five or so intuitive parameters could be enough to get millions of people to use 3D modelling for many casual purposes in the first place (whereas traditional tools require orders of magnitude more deliberate thought, and therefore cannot be justified for non- critical drawings).

</comment><comment><USER7> I haven't read the paper, but from the video this kind of feels like blend shapes to me which are definitely not a new thing. Custom facial rigs often have blending between different expressions, controlled by 2d sliders. Another issue is probably the fact that the meshes need to be composed of the exact same amount of vertices to blend correctly, so no scanned 3d models. Would be cool if they blended on an underlying voxel representation though.

<comment><USER8> > Another issue is probably the fact that the meshes need to be composed of > the exact same amount of vertices to blend correctly

These examples don't require the same topology, in fact they seem to use really quite different ones.

This should allow them to take _new, unseen shapes_ and modify them in a similar way. I think that's what they're doing anyway but haven't read all the paper yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like this a lot! One big challenge in 3d today is making the jump from data to content: The jump we made for 2d in the late 80s when Photoshop changed the perception from pixels to images. But what is the equivalent to a histogram or a brightness/contrast filter in 3d?

</comment><comment><USER10> I was thinking about EXACTLY the same idea before I went to sleep last night!

<comment><USER11> This is not an idea, it's an implementation.</comment></comment>


The McGurk Effect (How Vision Affects Sound) - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypd5txtGdGw#t=0m39s

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll admit that I shamelessly stole this from Reddit. However, I thought it was really cool and thought people here would be interested in a 'optical illusion' that you can't understand.

I was also hoping to get a non joke answer to my serious question: Would people who speak different languages (with possibly different base sounds) not have this problem?

<comment><USER2> Do you know of any languages offhand that don't distinguish between voiced bilabial plosives and voiceless labiodental fricatives? I sure don't.</comment></comment>


I Hope This Bubble Kills The App - <AUTHOR> http://adamconrad.posterous.com/i-hope-this-bubble-kills-the-app <comment><AUTHOR> DISCLAIMER: for the record, this is a rant I wrote at 3 am so please don't take it too seriously. I'm mostly sharing it so you can have a good laugh, because apparently a few people thought it was funny and said I should share it.

<comment><USER2> Haha, I laughed so hard I pee'd a lil.

This is something that keeps me up at night. It gives me anxiety to think that more and more useless apps are not only being developed, but funded. What the fuck. The thing is, building something today that solves a problem, isn't going to make you a "rockstar" if it's not sexy and social :(

<comment><USER3> I'd rather be a rich nobody than a poor rockstar. If you keep solving real problems, I'm sure you'll be fine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ahem: [http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/...](http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/index.html) :)

Just sayin'. But, to your point, yes I would welcome a world where all the ultra low-fi junk would disappear and where there was less noise in the app marketplace... like 2003, except with today's consumer awareness.

But the exact opposite will happen. Right now, our peers are building tools to allow ever lower-fidelity apps to enter the marketplace, that is, enabling less and less qualified people to try their hand at building products.

I have yet to find the saving grace in this situation. I see two paths: 1) create tools to help people build crap apps, and make money while I can, 2) move up the value chain, and make money while I can.

<comment><USER5> Personally, I think democratizing technology is a really, really good thing. Sure, we have to suffer through things like Comic Sans abuse and crappy apps, but that is a minuscule price to pay for increasing the creative freedom of humanity.

That's fundamentally why we build new tools -- to increase the freedom of people to impact the world.

[Edit: Just read the article you linked. Losing 27 pounds by eating twinkies? Priceless. :) ]

<comment><USER6> App stores do not democratize technology. App stores limit access to technology to Officially Approved Developers who don't piss off the platform owner.

<comment><USER7> Democratizing technology isn't fundamentally about Freedom and Openness and Fairness.

It's about making technology useable by everyday people.

You can do that by making everyone an engineer, or by placing arbitrary limits that increase the likelihood of people using the thing, or any number of ways. Limiting access to technology can absolutely democratize it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Meh.

Apple first tried to push developers to the web. It was because of the hacking community that apps got popular and they opened up the iPhone OS (now iOS).

Mobile apps are great for small and quick functional tasks. It's not a great interface to do incredibly complicated actions unless they can be done at the press of a button, minimal typing or by a swipe.

I agree there's a lot of crud out there but I'd like to see where Adam Conrad has solved world hunger, ended climate change or stopped wars. He calls everyone else out. Where's his contribution to solving HUGE problems? :)

I think small apps by small teams have to start from somewhere. However, we probably don't need any more fart or lighter apps.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm 25...Einstein didn't publish his theory of relativity until he was 26. Give me a year...but seriously, I'm trying. I may not be mother Teresa, but I volunteer at shelters and I've donated a fair amount to the acs and relay for life. And I know my blood was uses to save someone's life. Baby steps. Change one life at a time. Rome wasn't built in a day, but I'm pretty sure ifart was (zing)

<comment><USER8> At 25 Zuckerberg was a billionaire. ;P

<comment><USER9> Not really, but ok.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Did the last bubble kill the website?

I mean, I remember when a website was something a company _had_ , not something a company _was_.

The trend toward per-project companies is, I think, fundamentally a good one. It means less job security, but more creative freedom, and probably more money going to the creators and less to managers.

<comment><USER10> The job security is an illusion anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is the exact problem companies wishing to develop useful programs face everyday. Now we have a consumer base that only buys because of hype/something going "viral". If you do create something beneficial one of the only ways to be noticed is to treat what you develop as one if those "candy" apps. The words software, and programs have disappeared.

It's still a bit of a gold rush, and investors mean well. However, there needs to be more innovative thinking on their end as well. We don't need a new photo sharing program, or ways to post a picture online. It's funny that this article uses weightless angle be because all of this technology has made us, well bigger. Technology is great, but it's time we get back to solving real problems.

BTW, I'm looking for an excellent programmer for a new project!

</comment><comment><USER12> " _...Ninja Warrior Agile ScrumMaster and Incompetent MBA Popped Collar..._ "

Epic.

<comment><USER13> Not really. Just stringing together buzzwords that irritate engineers. Variants of this kind of stuff have been around forever.

<comment><USER14> That's why it's epic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Without twinkie apps he wouldn't have a hipster 8-bit twitter profile pic:

<https://twitter.com/adam_conrad>

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh noes, fallibility in my logic! How could I have not checked myself before I wrecked myself! I should probably just close down my Posterous account right now and save face. Never again will I indulge in anything less than pure, unadulterated value. FFFUUUUU!

EDIT: I thought it was funny. I would totally call me out too haha. Ah man, totally ruins my cred, you know, cause I had some to begin with :-p

<comment><USER15> Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

Please come correct next time.

(I did appreciate "Incompetent MBA Popped Collar")

[edit] he really doesn't deserve negative karma for that, chill out people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So does that mean that people should stop working on the problem domain that is "social and sharing" ? I would say, not quite. But the "Me too" herd mentality is not helping, not just in terms of the amount of capital that is thrown at it, but talent that could have been better spent elsewhere now toils away in making another Groupon clone because he has tunnel vision.

We are working in the domain of contextual discovery and there are a number of juicy problems right there. Determining what is useful to you so that we can deliver that alone, based on where you are, why you are there and who you are with. Thats a meaty problem to solve. One of them, at least.

<comment><AUTHOR> I never said that. I said that there are real problems worth solving, and not all of them are in the social space. There is still plenty of value to be added to the social landscape, just don't forget the domains that aren't the bees knees at the moment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Great read, but I think that if the VCs can resist the temptation of investing too much too early there does exist a positive outcome.

We might just see feature development moving away from teams in big companies into smaller, independent teams. These will raise small amounts of money from angels and micro-VC's and get bought out en masse for mild sums by companies looking to add features and products.

</comment><comment><USER18> Incoherent drivel. I hope this bubble kills the content-free vanity blog post / spam.

Seriously, just don't write this crap. It's no good.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not only did you fail to read my disclaimer, but according to your profile you make iPhone games. I guess I cut to the core of you, Baxter.

<comment><USER19> This reply like the article had vaguely immature tone to it, but it was also the second time the author had me laughing today. I don't see it as any different than Lewis Black going off on politicians. As long as you're smart about it, and not just being crude for the sake of it, it works.

<comment><AUTHOR> Bingo. Cmon people just laugh and move on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Don't blame Apple for the app. Originally they wanted people to develop web apps and not software that runs on the phone. The people demanded it and they went with it.

</comment><comment><USER21> I agree with some of this article, even though it seems it's fairly tongue-in- cheek.

The problem isn't accessibility - the problem is (mindless) venture capital. There are people with money (and low wisdom / experience) who have learnt that you can invest in tech and make a huge return - in some cases, this has taken the focus away from creating sustainable and useful businesses.

Perhaps hackers are simply the cogs in the wheels of modern finance?

</comment><comment><USER22> The idea that small useful programs should die and not be sold is a sad idea IMO.

And app is not necessarily a business, but it isn't something that should die.

<comment><AUTHOR> Except you said "useful." I'm all for that. But you should keep building them. Just cause a company builds a useful application does not mean they should close up shop and start elsewhere with a new name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> My thoughts exactly. Doesn't anyone want to innovate, or "change the world" anymore?

If someone's going to go through all of the labor to make a copy of groupon or an iFart app or a twitter API mashup just for the cash, they should just write a Forex trading algorithm. They'll make more money that way, and their models will be infinitely more computationally unique than any consumer copycat.

<comment><USER24> _"If someone's going to go through all of the labor to make a copy of groupon or an iFart app or a twitter API mashup just for the cash, they should just write a Forex trading algorithm."_

You mean writing one that makes money? That's infinitely harder than the examples you provided.

Quite a lot of smart guys put nontrivial effort into that. You need to be as good as them, preferably even a little better. Good luck.

<comment><USER14> Smart guys don't trade Forex.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> but wait I thought apps were all the rage? :s [http://mashable.com/2011/03/23/mobile-by-the-numbers- infogrp...](http://mashable.com/2011/03/23/mobile-by-the-numbers-infogrpahic)

</comment><comment><USER26> Great read

</comment><comment><USER27> There is no stock market bubble.

 _News flash: coupons are still boring and I don't want to give out my email address to a service I don't even know I'll benefit from. So now we have an App Store that serves nothing but candy, and we all love candy don't we?_

The OP is not the intended audience for most/all of the apps he's talking about. I don't think he understands that.

There are apps and companies that seem to be absolutely superfluous -- how many Groupon clones do we need? (Do we even really need Groupon?)

But the market will decide that. Not us nerds.

<comment><USER14> _There is no stock market bubble._

nobody said there was a _stock market_ bubble. but I suggest you to check few graphs on Google/Yahoo Finance.

 _But the market will decide that. Not us nerds._

I hope _us nerds_ are a little bit more aware about stuff going on than _Mr. Market_.

<comment><USER27> _nobody said there was a stock market bubble_

That's what the word "bubble" refers to, though. If the OP didn't mean a stock market bubble, he should explain what he does mean. A "bubble" of investing? Why would it warrant the analogy of a bubble? What horrible things happen if and when VC investments don't pan out?

What people are trying to call a bubble is actually just an increase in investment by VCs, sometimes good investments, sometimes bad, and sometimes there are overvaluations.

But if you think we're in a bubble, you either don't remember the real bubble of 1999 or you misunderstood what the problem was.

 _I suggest you to check few graphs on Google/Yahoo Finance_

Considering the deep trough we just came out of, it makes sense that we see a stock market uptick. Moving up != inherently bad.

<comment><USER14> _That's what the word "bubble" refers to, though_

why? not at all. last spectacular bubble was in real estate - it was accompanied by stock market rise but not by any means stock market bubble.

<comment><USER28> Was the real estate itself part of the bubble? I thought there was lots of trading of mortgage-backed assets that went on the ridiculous assumption that house prices would continue to rise indefinitely, then when they stopped rising the derived (high-volume) trading was exposed as irresponsible. So the bubble would be in credit-default-swaps or whatever you call them, not in actual property.

Someone who knows what they're talking about explain please!

<comment><USER29> Yes, the bubble was in real estate. "People believe the value of X will rise indefinitely" is pretty much the definition of "there's a bubble in X". A lot of dumb things, not just selling exotic derivatives, were done based on the assumption that house prices could not fall. For example, people used crazy leverage to buy houses, figuring its value had to go up. Now they are underwater on their zero-down adjustable mortgages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Uh... speaking of being the next Mark Zuckerberg have you heard of Facemash? It's exactly the kind of crap the lean startup movement is trying to foster. That's exactly the idea, that any idiot can make a website, scrape some content and become a billionaire.

Yes, today Facebook has scaling issues but seriously any idiot with a book on PHP could make the original Facebook (the tech side, Facebook is all about execution and not tech).

Regarding companies being the app, have you heard of Microsoft, Oracle or SAP? Ok, granted Microsoft has two apps Windows AND Office, but why do you think Microsoft started branding everything Windows? All those companies are built off of a single 'app'.

Microsoft = DOS then Windows Oracle = Oracle DB SAP = SAP

One company who embodies the one app.</comment>


Why Is There No Uber for Prostitution? - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/modeledbehavior/2015/02/22/why-is-there-no-uber-for-prostitution/ <comment><USER2> Actually the solution to the problem of reviews raised is one that has already been semi-solved amongst sex-worker communities in the UK. Punternet(don't know if there are similar sites in other countries) allows customers of sex workers to review and there seem to be quite active communities around it. Before anyone's left wondering, I know about this because there is a project called 'The Invisible Men', that collates these reviews and presents them as an insight into the world of sex work. Both very interesting to check out. Obviously it's not marketed and packaged in the same way as Uber is, but it's probably the most effective one can create whilst sex work remains illegal.

</comment><comment><USER3> There is no Uber for prostitution, because app stores do not allow such apps. Wikisexguide ( [http://www.wikisexguide.com](http://www.wikisexguide.com) ) is an site online that finds escorts and street prostitutes from the city you type in to the search box, but currently they do not have mobile app. For a while there was similar an escorts app called Pepp r ( [https://peppr.it/](https://peppr.it/) ) but I do not think you can find it from app store anymore. Tinder ( [http://www.gotinder.com/](http://www.gotinder.com/) ) is an dating app which tries to block prostitutes using it, but example if you use this app in Bangkok, you will mostly find female and ladyboy prostitutes from this app. Also in NYC I have seen some escorts on Tinder.

</comment><comment> mycroft-holmes Because our government doesn't respect the sovereignty of individuals to sell services that involve their own body?

</comment><comment><USER4> > allowing technology that makes it safer and less intertwined with criminal > world seems would seem like a positive step forward.

No copy editing? At least proof-read the dang thing.

There's no reason to write an article like this if you're not willing to look at the reasons of _why_ prostitution is illegal since that underpins the entire thing. Instead it's just another libertarian rant about yet another regulated market that would totally be fine if the government would just get out of the way.

</comment><comment><USER5> Airbnb for prostitution exists: [http://www.airsnb.com/](http://www.airsnb.com/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Vooza tried this before they pivoted to local - see around 1:20:

[http://vooza.com/videos/radimparency/](http://vooza.com/videos/radimparency/)

</comment><comment><USER7> In addition to the legality issue, thanks to Tinder et al there is plenty of free exchange going on; lack of demand for paid sex is my guess.

<comment><USER8> You guess wrong - demand will always be high. For the most part, the people who can easily get hookups on Tinder are not the same people who would be paying for sex.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> A centralised service for a market still illegal in many (even some modern) countries isn't expected to be something sustainable.

What am I missing here?

</comment><comment><USER10> there is: [https://peppr.it/](https://peppr.it/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Forbes, asking the tough questions.</comment>


PlayStation Store to be back online May 24 - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/34739/Sony_Tells_Dev_Partners_PlayStation_Store_To_Return_May_24.php

<comment><USER2> Ah - so it'll be ready _after_ the rapture.</comment>


Where the Apple accounts that hackers are threatening to wipe came from - <AUTHOR> https://www.troyhunt.com/heres-where-the-apple-accounts-hackers-are-threatening-to-wipe-came-from/ <comment><USER2> Password reuse is still a huge problem. Even my friends who are somewhat savvy (not professionally in tech) don't know what a password manager is or use one.

<comment><USER3> The response I get from even savvy tech people is like I just told them they really should be flossing more.

<comment><USER4> It's like when a dentist tells you that it's ideal to brush three times a day after meals, plus once more in the evening.

<comment><USER5> Sure, but then an honest dentist told me that what's most important is flossing and brushing before bed.

So what's the analogous tl;dr for account management? Don't use passwords like "mysecretpassword", and don't reuse them?

<comment><USER6> Then we find out flossing isn't much benefit: [https://www.theguardian.com/us- news/2016/aug/02/dental-floss...](https://www.theguardian.com/us- news/2016/aug/02/dental-floss-proof-works-guidelines-dropped)

<comment><USER5> Well, when you're older, with iffy teeth, flossing removes trapped food that will cause inflammation and pain, the next day. That's personal experience.

<comment><USER7> Sadly I have to upvote this based on personal experience.

Was reading this thread right after the thread on John Goodenough. There are different things that happen as one gets older that one wishes didn't. Still, it beats the alternative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> According to the article, _Football95_ is the top password.

Anyone happen to know why the reference to 95? I can't quite remember anything particularly special about that year to make it a common password for people.

<comment><USER9> I thought the same thing. In fact, many of the top 10 passwords look odd to me: dthomas? disneyI (capital " _I_ ")? conrad76?

I have a hard time believing these are legitimately the most common passwords. Compare that to a list like this:

[http://www.iflscience.com/technology/the-most-commonly- hacke...](http://www.iflscience.com/technology/the-most-commonly-hacked- passwords-in-2016-were-painfully-obvious/).

<comment><USER10> From that link - can someone explain this one to me?

20\. 3rjs1la7qe

Seems like a word but not sure which language. Only interesting password in the list.

<comment><USER11> It's not a word, it's a keyboard walk. Fairly clever one too.

<comment><USER12> How is that a keyboard walk?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Great analysis Troy! It's good to see real data to back up the most likely (and least worrisome) scenario.

</comment><comment><USER14> The standard hacker stereotype is of kids in basements, which the author seems to propose here, but most hackers who commit crimes are in their 20s-30s. (I have no direct evidence of this except the majority of public arrest/sentencing of cyber criminals, and generally people in the blackhat and organized crime scenes are not teens) The bravado thing is less a factor of being young, and more that a ton of cyber criminals have comically inflated egos.

<comment><USER15> Most hackers would also recognize that demanding ransom from Apple in exchange for not wiping accounts isn't likely to be very effective and may have some negative consequences (e.g. being caught and getting beaten half to death by their victims). I have no trouble believing that the culprits here are likely to be pretty young.

<comment><USER16> The threat of wiping accounts was silly in the first place. The hackers have user passwords, not access to Apple infrastructure. So they log in as the users, delete files from iCloud... and Apple restores files from yesterday's backup. They could cause a lot of hassle for the users and Apple customer support, but not wipe accounts.

<comment><USER17> Or they issue a "lost device - remote wipe" via find my iphone / find my mac. No restoring from that for mat: [https://www.wired.com/2012/08/apple-amazon- mat-honan-hacking...](https://www.wired.com/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat-honan- hacking/)

It's a shame you can't have Find My Mac active without also allowing remote wipe. So I disabled Find My Mac for myself.

<comment><USER18> Did you just link to a 5 year old story?

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h Has the situation changed?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It took me some time to parse the title. Isn't the original - clickbaity - title better?

<comment><USER20> The only difference between the titles is "Here's", which doesn't make much difference to make it more parseable.

Took a while, but finally got it: "where the Apple accounts (hackers are threatening to wipe) came from"

Interestingly, now that I parsed it, I can't see why it took so long.

That said, "where the Apple accounts that hackers are threatening to wipe came from" would likely have been more obvious.

<comment><USER21> Yeah, it definitely needs the "that" added in, took me a couple of minutes to work out what the title meant

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> How come the twitter account of these assholes is still operational?

Twitter should not allow their platform to be used by self professed criminals.

<comment><USER23> Ask any cop how much easier his job is since YouTube came along.</comment></comment>


Music File Compressed 1,000 Times Smaller than MP3  - <AUTHOR> http://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=3136

<comment><USER2> _Two of Bocko's doctoral students, Xiaoxiao Dong and Mark Sterling, worked with Bocko to measure every aspect of a clarinet that affects its sound—from the backpressure in the mouthpiece for every different fingering, to the way sound radiates from the instrument. They then built a computer model of the clarinet, and the result is a virtual instrument built entirely from the real- world acoustical measurements._

It's really just MIDI with more variables.

<comment><USER3> Exactly. Don't look for this to reduce the size of your music collection until we can reverse-engineer physical models of entire bands and recording studios from the sounds they make.

<comment><USER4> Well, there was a submitted story some time ago that showed new technology that can recognize the individual notes of instruments (at some degree of accuracy) and they could then make adjustments... So, it doesn't sound completely impossible.

<comment><USER5> Still haven't seen that software in action. I'm more than a bit skeptical that it can do what it claims in the general case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is cool in it's own right but can they really call what they are doing "compression"? It seems more like synthesis to me.

<comment><USER7> Synthesis is basically just a form of lossy compression (or lossless, if the original was synthesized as well, with a lesser or equivalent amount of entropy.) For one practical example, think of fractal compression of images--a series of mathematical equations are synthesized that just happen to best approximate the original image.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Humans can manipulate their tongue, breath, and fingers only so fast, so in theory we shouldn't really have to measure the music many thousands of times a second like we do on a CD."

This seems widely flawed. Changes in play are limited by the dexterity of the player (and upper bounded by the dexterity of a body), but choices and timings aren't so mechanical.

The exact timing (feel, even) of, say, a swung eighth requires quite a lot of resolution before it's done right. I'd love to see them, even after they get tonguing "down", do a double blind study in Jazz.

<comment><USER9> I'm thinking, April Fools! (it's a 1 April release)

<comment><USER9> I stand corrected. They have now posted that it's _not_ an April Fool's joke.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The fact that mp3's are the default means that adoption of any new technology (no matter how good) will take longer than it should

</comment><comment><USER11> Wouldn't the computer have to solve the cocktail party problem and have models for each identified channel for this to work for normal music? And, whooptee doo, it'll still probably sound like shit underwater in a plastic bag.</comment>


UK e-mail law 'attack on rights' - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7819230.stm <comment><USER2> I'm sure the UK will be much safer after doing the traffic analysis on a billion emails for penis enlargers. Maybe they can use the get rich from home emails to fund the project. I am perfectly happy to help by forwarding the contents of my junk email folder.

</comment><comment><USER3> Either that or a big support for popularization of GPG and the like.

<comment><USER4> Read the article again. It says:

        The Home Office insists the data ... does
        not include e-mails' content ...

They are effectively only keeping the headers. It still lets them do traffic analysis, of course. Beside, nothing will provoke the general populace into using crypto, it will have to be forced on them.

<comment><USER5> Obtaining (let alone keeping) the headers is still unacceptable.</comment></comment></comment>


Why Topological Data Analysis Works - <AUTHOR> http://www.ayasdi.com/blog/bigdata/why-topological-data-analysis-works/ <comment><USER2> I'd love to see a success story of this type of analysis outside of their canned examples. I keep seeing them use the same datasets over and over again without any real benchmarks to state of the art. Its amazing how a data product is being sold without any empirical studies or benchmark datasets.

Ayasdi seems successful to me in that it has a lot of flash and their results make intuitive sense, but I don't understand how a practicing data scientist would use this.

<comment><USER3> I've seen it used "in the wild" in this publication: "Topographical transcriptome mapping of the mouse medial ganglionic eminence by spatially resolved RNA-seq" [http://genomebiology.com/2014/15/10/486/abstract](http://genomebiology.com/2014/15/10/486/abstract) (pdf: [http://linnarssonlab.org/pdf/Genome%20Biology%202014.pdf](http://linnarssonlab.org/pdf/Genome%20Biology%202014.pdf) ) to cluster gene expression samples from mouse brain.

I'm working on a project where I'm using similar methods, but not from Ayasdi, to study cyclic phenomena in high-dimensional data.

<comment><USER2> Ok, so here it's used to cluster. There are tons of benchmark clustering datasets. Never seen it used on any of those.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The key paragraph "The projection is visualized as ... pictured as below." is very ambiguous, and completely missing the explanation of how the data was split into red, blue, and indigo clusters.

</comment><comment><USER5> Isn't response surface methodology a form of topological data analysis? IIRC, it isn't used much since it has poor predictive power.

<comment><USER6> The key with Ayasdi's work is that they manage to layer the TDA with different ML filters, which does stunningly well for the datasets they like talking about.

I also second the notion to read papers from the Carlsson lab, particularly one of the more application-oriented papers such as this one: [http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/130207/srep01236/pdf/srep012...](http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/130207/srep01236/pdf/srep01236.pdf)</comment></comment>


How the Hashtag Became a Worldwide Phenomenon - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/samanthasharf/2013/11/07/the-secret-behind-twitters-ipo-how-the-hashtag-became-a-worldwide-phenomenon/

<comment><USER2> Hm. No mention of the obvious IRC connection.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's interesting that we live in an era where a microblogging website with no innate value can be worth more than the most popular professional social network with paying members.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/markrogowsky/2013/11/08/twitter-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/markrogowsky/2013/11/08/twitter- reminds-us-this-time-isnt-different-after-all/)</comment>


Ask HN: "Send people home at 5." Was this part of Re-Work to be taken literally? - <AUTHOR>

My last post (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1468545) was a lightning rod for valuable commentary and I learned a lot from this community. I, along with my business, have matured considerably since (and in some ways because of) that post. I'm hoping this post will spur an equal amount of interesting debate on this forum and hopefully less haters of the poster.
In my copy of the book (http://www.amazon.com/Rework-Jason-Fried/dp/0307463745/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1310709764&sr=8-1), the section in question is on p. 258. The section seems to be pretty serious about exclusively promoting an office environment that closes up shop at 5 PM. Given that my team's average arrival to the office ranges from 11 AM - 2 PM and average departure ranges from 6 PM - 2 AM, I'm put in a bind here. I'm trying to reconcile the advice I received from this forum in that post and the advice in this book.
In that post, the community overwhelmingly encouraged flexible (and self-selected) hours for developers if at all possible. It was possible and I made it happen. Everybody got along better respecting each other's own selected hours rather than being forced to conform to uniform working hours.
The book does point out some interesting side-effects of long hours such as "it lets you get away with lousy execution" and "you don't need more hours; you need better hours". I can say that both of these are valid statements given my (limited) experience. While I initially felt that self-selected hours were better across the board, I'm now starting to have second thoughts on the matter.
To me this begs the simple question, should this 1 page chapter be taken literally?
-Vignesh <comment><USER2> "Send people home at 5" is a metaphor for a humane workplace that values a balance between worklife and personal time - and importantly, requires people to take the time to achieve that balance. The degree to which it should be taken literally is the degree to which your office runs 9-5.

Based on the description of your workplace and if you want to follow the advice, it could be "Send people home after eight hours," because it looks like you have people regularly working 12 or more hours. Of course, that is easy to do in industries where the work is creative and the project is done when you run out of time.

Salaried compensation facilitates overwork because the feedback loop doesn't contain measurable consequences until staff get fed up and quit. But it doesn't have to be that way. If you want a feedback loop which forces management to take a real interest in long hours, put everyone, including the CEO on hourly compensation - I have a friend whose architecture firm did that years ago. They maintained very high retention through the construction boom when job hopping was common and salaries were rising because people appreciated the inherent fairness and management was able to add staff appropriately.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> If it's working for _you_ , with the people you actually have, why listen to some random business book?

Maybe if you're successful you can write your own business book, promoting what happened to work for you as business advice with "clarity, even genius":-)

You should come up with a catchy buzzword, say "time-distributed". "We're a time-distributed team, and that has lead directly to our success because ....".

On a more serious note, it's good to see you resolved your problems and are making progress.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hackers have two reasons for staying up late working, and both of them are because they couldn't get the work done during the day:

1) Distracting work environments. One person commented on your last post and advised you to read Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule, so I won't tell you to do that. But be aware of it. A door that closes, quiet neighbors, few meetings.

2) Guilt/determination. If a programmer for whatever reason is having trouble making progress during the day, but is dead set on shipping, they may stay up late to try and make it up. This is a good thing for you as a stakeholder, because it means they care. It's a bad thing because something is holding them back. Usually this thing holding them back is _some repeated obstacle that drains their willpower_. That can be a variety of things: bugs when you have bad debugging tools, figuring out how to do something without quick-feedback access to documentation/expertise, running tests when there's a twenty-second compile cycle that has to complete first, working hard to add a new feature and then losing it because your computer freezes and you don't have version control, etc. Note that 1)is actually a subset of this, as it's "getting your brain ready to code only to have it interrupted often," but since you can probably control 1) directly I gave it its own listing.

#2 can be hard to tackle. How are you supposed to find better debugging tools as a non-technical business guy? And how are you then supposed to go about telling your tech cofounder how to do his job? I don't know what the answer is. Likely it's that you should buzz off and go do customer validation or whatever. But maybe not.

In general, I agree with Rework on the early-to-work-early-off-work schedule, but the way to achieve it is to figure out the reasons the night owl thing happens and address them, rather than to try and force everyone in the 9-5 bucket. Shape the peg to the hole, THEN put it in.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think the point is that people should have sane office hours, that any software firm that default to overtime is up to no good. Also, I don't think having flexible hours is an issue according to 37signals as they have staff located in different countries.

Also, may I suggest that instead of focusing on top-down business principles you should be more product and customer centric and design your dev process around these aspects of your business? If your product or customers require x of you and your staff, then do x, otherwise don't. Deciding on office hours or how many office hours staff should work without a rationale risks creating bureaucracy and a sense of arbitrary decision making.

</comment><comment><USER6> First off, great work on making some progress.

However, just because you are 'the business guy' (to quote your previous post) doesn't mean you have to micromanage trivial details like hours of operation. Rather, I think that your role should be more big picture - figure out what customers want, how much they will pay, and how you will reach them.

Finally, this is not intended to be an insult, merely my own opinion. If I were your co-Founder, I would be looking to jump ship and do something else. In my experience, nothing kills morale faster than micromanagement. And nothing kills a startup faster than killing morale.

</comment><comment><USER7> _The book does point out some interesting side-effects of long hours such as "it lets you get away with lousy execution" and "you don't need more hours; you need better hours". I can say that both of these are valid statements given my (limited) experience. While I initially felt that self-selected hours were better across the board, I'm now starting to have second thoughts on the matter._

There are pros and cons to anything. Just make sure you have your eye on the prize and not on some proxy for it that you think is what is needed. In other words, if someone is putting in long hours to get the job done because they aren't staying adequately focused, work on the focus piece of it rather than on a specific time frame to work in. And don't forget that we are all human and no matter how much you do right, sometimes someone will be short of sleep, under the weather, distracted by a personal issue, etc. If it is short term, just be tolerant and supportive. If it is chronic, work with them to try to resolve things (or, if intractable over a long enough period of time, consider letting them go).

Different people work best in different conditions. Developers are often introverts and will tend to not be real happy campers when having to be surrounded by people and putting up with their chatter and general distraction. My ex and my youngest son are both seriously introverted and we homeschooled. I was the family extrovert. My computer area was in the middle of a high traffic zone where everyone could interpret me to talk to me. I handled it fine. The two extroverts had desks in secluded corners of the apartment where they could turn their back on the world and also shut the door. So if you can arrange the physical space the right way, that might resolve the need some people have for quiet and solitude in order to focus. And this is not just a personality thing. Some types of work need some certain environments to be done well. If you can't arrange the physical space to be adequately quiet when all hands are on deck, then letting the developer stay late is a timing option to address this issue.

In short, I think you need to do more analysis than what I see in your post. You need to know more clearly what the problem is and you need to think more broadly in terms of what your options are for addressing it. This isn't necessarily just a question of "flexible schedule or fixed schedule".

Best of luck.</comment>


An Idea for Good Procrastination - <AUTHOR>

I keep checking HN again and again throughout the day. And I don't get anything out of it. I would like to use my habit to do something useful.
I don't think this is the same as contributing to an open source project. I want to lower the barrier to entry and get over akrasia. The point is to use my distraction and habit of procrastination to do something fun and useful (even if it's for someone else).
So, do you have any small problems I can solve for you?
I am good at math and know Python, Ruby, Javascript, C, a bit of lisp and even VB (yes it's true).
Thanks. <comment><USER2> <http://savannah.gnu.org/people/?type_id=1>

<http://sourceforge.net/people/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks mahmud. I should probably look into one of these but I was hoping to work on small problems and for one person rather than a group.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> We are procrastinating too :-) I think it is an information adiction.</comment>


Snapchat reportedly hit 160M daily users and $400M revenue in 2016 - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/02/snap-ipo/ <comment><USER2> As someone who never really "got" Snapchat, I found this interesting:

>Snapchat has done an impressive job soaking up attention by covering three different use cases with a single app: private messaging, social media Stories broadcasting, and professional Discover content. These work together to give people something to do even if their friends don't post interesting stories, they're waiting for people to reply, or they don't resonate with the featured publishers.

<comment><USER3> Most people between the ages of 10-30 have been conditioned to pull out their phone during the slightest feeling of boredom, awkwardness, loneliness, or of course notification noise / buzz. It then becomes a question of which App gets opened first which usually is decided by the amount of 'reward' generated by the action.

I can only speak to my demo, but the order is usually:

Tier 1:

* Text messaging

* Snapchat

Tier 1.5:

* Tinder

* Mobile games (only applies to a subset of users 'gamers')

Tier 2:

* Facebook

* Instagram

Tier 3:

* Browser

* Mobile games (most people)

* Other

You'll notice personal communications falls above content sharing. Snapchat is a definitive type of personal communication and is pretty firmly planted (IMO).

<comment><USER4> If I pull out my phone I go right to HN, or the current book I'm reading. I'm definitely old now...

<comment><USER5> Same here. In a sense HN is a sort of restricted social network for me, or even a tribe if you wish.

Except we don't gather around the fire anymore, we gather around a website and exchange stories not of hunting animals, but hunting bugs.

<comment><USER6> I'm still fairly new to HN but I love the quality of posts and expertise in almost every technical thread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> 20% per year is not impressing to be honest. Don't get me wrong, I admire them as a company, but the grow rate is too slow, to compete with top social platforms.

<comment><USER8> Better a company that generates revenue than one that uses all it's money on growth and has billions $ negative. I hate this idea of a growth rate being "too slow", all it does is encourage monopolisation which is bad for people. Edit: spelling

<comment><USER9> I'd honestly be curious to why this comment is being downvoted so much, as I've often found myself agreeing with this refrain.

To pre-answer the common rebuttal I get, that VCs are taking moonshots at the chance of a VERY HIGH return; I'd ask why not look at VC investments in the sense of a more traditional portfolio, where you'd have your growth stocks, your value stocks, etc. If I could find a vehicle that reliably gave 20% YOY I'd throw fistfulls of money at it.

So can someone enlighten me as to why this isn't a viable way of looking at VC investment?

<comment><USER10> It's not a viable way to look at investing in ad companies. Advertising has historically been zero-sum (about 2% of the economy), and there's huge returns to scale (more data, bigger advertisers, etc). Unless your inventory is unique (which it isn't), you need reach (which is why TV is/was such a great platform). Look at Twitter, which is having a extremely difficult time w/ ads because of that lack of scale.

In ads, you want to be GOOG/FB, not TWTR.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> And their GCP contract is for $400M a year?

<comment><USER12> I came here wondering the exact same thing. Seems insane.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've been hearing they are losing a lot of users to Instagram, since the latter basically copied the best features of Snapchat. Anyone has any opinion on the topic?

<comment><USER14> IG is definitely ramping up features to compete. But I have a weird feeling that it's going to end up being a camel. Snapchat on the other hand, is being too selective with their advertising channels. They require ridiculously expensive contracts that reflect the way TV ads are sold. What really bothers me is that the stories are too short and I cant produce content and publish it there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Should I be experiencing FOMO over Snapchat? Is Snapchat one of those things you only get into if all of your friends are doing it? (like, say heroin for example)

<comment><USER16> I once read this article: [https://www.buzzfeed.com/benrosen/how-to-snapchat- like-the-t...](https://www.buzzfeed.com/benrosen/how-to-snapchat-like-the- teens)

which didn't make me feel that I was missing out on anything.

<comment><USER16> Or perhaps I should say I know I'm missing out on something but I'm glad I'm missing out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Heaviest app on my phone ever.

Yea I don't have the latest Nexus smartphone, but I am sure it's not coded as good as it could and should be.

<comment><USER6> Snapchat is terrible on Android. I'm surprised it got so popular (when FB had a real heavy Android app I feel like a lot of people were using the web interface instead).

<comment><USER17> Yeah, and honestly I can't understand the decision of opening the camera in transparency right on the first screen of the app, adding the camera opening time to the rest.

And that feature only looks kind of bragging to me: "hey, look at how cool we are", and I am sure some users will not even notice it.

Anyway, don't they test it and see how slow it ?

Or are they one of those company only interested in iOS and only developing for Android marginally?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Good for them

</comment><comment><USER19> Why should we trust these numbers?

<comment><USER20> Because they publicly filed for IPO today and released all these numbers.</comment></comment>


Matminer: Data Mining for Materials Science - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/hackingmaterials/matminer <comment><USER2> This is kind of cool, but probably the better link is [https://hackingmaterials.github.io/matminer/](https://hackingmaterials.github.io/matminer/) which actually talks a bit about what is and how to use it

<comment><USER3> Also it worth noting this research is done by Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, CA and point to other projects of this research group as well[1].

[1] [https://hackingmaterials.lbl.gov](https://hackingmaterials.lbl.gov)</comment></comment>


Yahoo Really Only Paid $262 Million For Tumblr - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2013/05/20/yahoo-really-only-paid-262-million-for-tumblr/

<comment><USER2> I object to the math here.

Just because many investors were not taking Yahoo's cash into account in valuing the company does NOT mean that they spent less than 1.1 billion for Tumblr.

The issue with spending 1.1 billion for Tumblr is that this is 108 other companies that they can't buy for 10 million each (assuming $20 million to assess the companies). Which is OK, I suppose, if Tumblr is worth it, but are they?

<comment><USER3> Yeah, exactly. Is this author drunk? Just because they found some cash somewhere else, doesn't mean they didn't spend it...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "The company is on track to make $100 million this year."

So they have a _goal_ of making $100 million. They make $13 million in the first 4-5 months. They are "on track."

Wait...

<comment><USER5> No, they made 13 million in their first quarter this year - the same as they did all of the last year.

It is not unreasonable to expect them to reach the 100 million goal. They are growing their income at a fast rate, so it is fair to say they are on track.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It was not like it got the 832 something million for free. This article just waste a couple minutes of my time.</comment>