Launch HN: Necto (YC W18) – ISP Starter Kit - <AUTHOR> Hey, we're Ben and Adam, the founders of Necto (https://nectolab.io). We're enabling local entrepreneurs to start their own Internet Service Providers by providing network engineering, monitoring, and business support as a service. We've seen huge improvements in last mile distribution technology in the last few years (cost, reliability, thoroughput, ease of deployment), but it hasn't translated into an explosion of ISP operators. We want to change that by allowing non-network-engineers to deploy their own networks and compete with the incumbents. Necto handles the networking setup, deals with the backbone providers, helps with distribution planning, and provides ongoing monitoring and support. The operators pick the markets, set the prices, and provide a great overall experience to their customers.
We started our own ISP here in the underserved San Francisco markets of Bayview and Portola, with more neighborhoods to come. If you live in SF, we'd love to be your ISP (https://joinnecto.com). If you're interested in starting an ISP, we're looking for an initial batch of 5 operators. You can learn more about that here: https://nectolab.io .
Our product is a combination of a few important requirements for running an ISP effectively: a centralized Network Operations Center (NOC), a Operational Support System (OSS) to manage the subscribers and get visibility into issues, and an Operator's Handbook that covers the how-to's of running an ISP (both technically and our advice on the business side). Our NOC will handle things like BGP, routing, reachability, hardware issues, upstream connectivity, and distribution provisioning. The OSS supports managing subscribers, diagnosing common issues, and performing installations. Our handbook provides a list Standard Operating Procedures for day-to-day management of the ISP and, in combination with our community of ISP operators, strategies on how to effectively launch and grow an ISP.
We charge an initial setup fee and an ongoing percentage of revenue. The initial setup fee covers us designing your initial network, sourcing your backbone connection, and the cost of the core routing stack. The ongoing percentage of revenue aligns our incentives with our operators and covers monitoring, the NOC, and ongoing enhancements for the software and community. The exact numbers depend on the scale of the network the operators are building.
We're staunch supporters of Net Neutrality and increasing broadband penetration without sacrificing privacy. We don't sell personal information or throttle traffic (and our operators won't either). We believe that the future is in highly localized ISPs competing on service quality. We're excited to tackle this problem because we've had to deal with poor internet service before, and we now know that you can make a great business out of providing better quality access. Our backgrounds are in enterprise automation technology and the home services industry (air conditioning, plumbing, electric). We're happy to answer as many questions about any of this as we can! If you're at all considering starting an ISP in your neighborhood after reading this, let us know at nectolab.io and include your HN username!
Thanks, Ben & Adam <comment><USER2> Is what you're offering substantially substantive above [https://startyourownisp.com](https://startyourownisp.com)?

I won't mince words: you're asking customers to outsource the core pieces of their business (netops, backhaul, billing) that they should be competent in, which puts them in a precarious position if you exhaust your runway, decide to move on to another venture, or are acquired by a less-than-ideal org.

Full disclosure: Muncipal/coop broadband proponent.

<comment><AUTHOR> We definitely want to make sure that nobody's left high and dry in any set of circumstances. Obviously, we hope to happily partner with our operators indefinitely, but we wouldn't ask someone to commit their capital and ask their customers to depend on them without having these contingencies covered. Companies have started & run ISPs before Necto (of course), but there are significant cost and knowledge hurdles that keep a lot of operators out. I think of it like with Squarespace, where the knowledge of self-hosting a website may be outsourced, but the end result is broader access to the benefits of having an internet presence.

Also, big shout out to Graham (the author of startyourownisp.com). We met, and he's super knowledgeable. I encourage anyone interested to read his guide, it's very good. We don't see our offerings as directly competitive, and share a common goal of increasing connectivity.

<comment><USER2> Great to hear. A rising tide lifts all boats. Appreciate the reply.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Starting an ISP is relatively easy... get an uplink, some rack space somewhere, a router, hire a smart high school kid for tech support, and you are off to the races.

The really hard part is last-mile connectivity. You are either on someone elses lines (cable, DSL, etc), dealing with NIMBYs to bury your own lines, or working around line of site to do wireless. It isn't clear that you've solved this problem (or even from your website what you are using for last mile).

<comment><AUTHOR> It's largely an infrastructure business at the end of the day, and not without its challenges. The real problem is that there are people willing to take on these challenges, but they get stuck as early as the "get an uplink" part of that process.

Just digging into that piece, there are a lot of decisions. Burstable or dedicated? Why are they billing based on 95th percentile? How much bandwidth should I budget per subscriber? The typical uplink quote we've seen has 6 different tables with like 80 different prices on it. If you've bought it before, you know what the tradeoffs are. If you haven't, that's a steep hill to climb just for step 1 of the process.

We deploy fixed wireless here in SF, mainly 60GHz and 5.8GHz. They require line of sight, but something like Baicells could be a good fit for areas where that's more of an issue. It's not just the NIMBYs when you go to hang/bury your own lines, the incumbents will box you out on power poles and generally make things difficult for you.

<comment><USER3> Thats like saying you are helping people start a taxi business because they get confused when it comes to warranty options on buying their first car. If they don't have the fortitude to work out a transit contract, the ISP business might not be for them.

I think it would be better to frame your business as a franchise opportunity. At the end of the day it really sounds like your customers are a capital source.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think of it as a question of fortitude as much as opportunity cost. We're looking for operators that would be successful running other types of businesses instead. We want them to choose the ISP business over one that they might be more familiar with. No doubt they could come to understand a transit contract and all the other components, but it's frictions like those that reduce the number of people who decide being an ISP is the right business for them. If you can 1) find customers and 2) provide a great service experience, we want you selling internet! You can spend a lifetime getting good at those two things. We'd rather our operators do that, and we can handle the networking for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting project. With ARIN effectively out of IPv4 space, where do you get IPs from for a new ISP? Does it have to be transferred/purchased from an existing block? I am assuming you are setting up IPv6 as well for your customers, are you deploying some sort of CGNAT?

<comment><AUTHOR> We've been able to source enough IPv4s for our needs so far, but we don't expect that to last forever. ARIN is cutting off the allocations, but there are still a decent amount available for lease.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Net Neutrality has expired but remember it's on the senate floor this week to bring it back. If you are for net neutrality, contact your senator. (You can find their contact information in the upper left hand corner at [https://senate.gov](https://senate.gov) )

Despite that, I'm glad to see that you're doing this even if net neutrality does come back. I remember the days of Earthlink and Mindspring. Now the ISP companies have become "too big to fail" and I'd like to see alternatives.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you guys haven't, you should really look at [http://Sonar.Software](http://Sonar.Software)

That piece of software has been an amazing addition to our WISP here in Colorado. Simon and his team have made extreme strides in provisioning and IPAM management and continue to make bizops more and more turnkey.

The real magic though is the whole thing is VERY API focused. The entire platform can be automated and made more powerful with a little dev time.

We do a ton of 60Ghz (ignitenet), 24Ghz, 11Ghz and 5Ghz (ubnt & mimosa) links to cover about 200 Sq miles. We've been mostly following a modified webpass model with redundant PTP and multiple interlinking. A few PTMP hub/spoke exist too where needed (SFH).

We've been at this for a few years and have a dedicated lab and geo region that we test all kinds of new ideas and equipment both wireless and new fiber tech (10g GPON, bonded RF).

</comment><comment><USER7> I was under the impression (would be happy to be wrong) that the real problem was the last-mile of fiber, or DSL over copper and the dealing with the ILEC that involves. Basically the ILEC won't sell you DSL at a price that allows you to make any money. Am I correct about that?

<comment><AUTHOR> Getting good terms from an ILEC that you're directly competing with will be difficult. We advocate building your own last mile infrastructure where possible to get around that. Here in SF, we're using fixed wireless to do that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> How do you guys handle the physical side of network operations with your partners?

I live in a rural area in Idaho, and we've got a pretty great WISP here. But, I know that the owners and employees are close to retirement age, and I've often thought of approaching them to see if they have any plans to sell the business.

How do you handle physical, local network management with your partners? Things like installing hardware customer homes and businesses, managing outages at broadcast sites, and all the rest. Is that totally up to your local partners, or something you provide training/management for on any level?

<comment><AUTHOR> We monitor your infrastructure (out of band, where possible) and let you know when things go wrong and how to fix it. When the fixing requires physical intervention, we guide you through that. Similarly for installations, where we teach you how to do them and you (or your employees or contractors) perform the physical installation. We'll help you more generally with the business as well, and share advice on how to effectively run an ISP.

Let us know if you speak with them--we're interested in having an existing ISP in the batch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ben & Adam — Solid work. Maybe we can help expand the reach of the companies you partner with. We love helping small ISPs get their networks found by consumers looking for choice. Reach out to us at [https://broadbandnow.com](https://broadbandnow.com) and let's chat.

</comment><comment><USER10> In case you haven't found this lead yet, Microsoft has had a number of funding initiatives in the past looking to encourage startups to provide better connectivity to underserved markets. The first link google found on the initiative [0] is fairly old but I'm pretty sure this was/is a multi-year effort that is likely still active and if not probably still has significant advocates within the company that are worth finding if underserved markets are relevant to Necto.

Full disclosure: co-founder of a Seattle-based startup that was invited into the Microsoft Ventures Accelerator and found it an incredibly valuable experience

[0] [http://fortune.com/2015/11/16/microsoft-cheap- internet/](http://fortune.com/2015/11/16/microsoft-cheap-internet/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Very cool program, thanks! There are a few programs (both public and private) that will provide funding for starting ISPs. It really shows that access to capital isn't the main roadblock people face when starting ISPs. Or rather, that other groups are working to solve the capital access issue--we're working on solving the others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you're hacker looking to start your own micro-ISP using cool stuff, I think you should take a look at [https://altheamesh.com/](https://altheamesh.com/).

<comment><AUTHOR> I saw a demo of this in Oakland a few months ago. I thought it was super interesting, especially the way they're extending routing concepts. It feels like a very elegant technical solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Very cool, congrats guys. I am a Monkeybrains customer with a bunch of their equipment on my roof (I signed up for their enhanced "FTTH" campaign) and have wondered about replicating the service for myself and my neighbors if I were to move elsewhere.

Do you have an operating model for these small ISPs? Specifically I'm curious what the breakeven point is.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. How many neighbors are you thinking? It really depends on how many buildings they are in / how far apart they are, and what percentage use you as their provider. At smaller scales, it's much better to have an "in" with the building (HOA, owner, etc.) so you can market more effectively, outweighing the revenue risk of having a small number of customers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is interesting, I do have a few questions that I could not find in your FAQ:

\- how do you provision the last mile? Copper? Fiber? or Wireless?

\- Do you rely on the Local Exchanges? or is it on a case-by-case basis?

\- Is your typical ISP customer selling to business? Individuals? or is best- fit an apartment complex/business building?

Thank you.

<comment><AUTHOR> We use fixed wireless for our last mile (60GHz and 5.8GHz in SF). We haven't been reliant on Local Exchanges. We'd typically be selling to residential end users (single family homes and/or MDUs).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> From what I've read so far, this is fucking awesome. I have a couple questions about your "operators":

1\. Do you mean Comcast/ATT i.e. is this only a last-mile solution that must connect to some hub of theirs?

2\. "We don't sell personal information or throttle traffic (and our operators won't either)" \- how do you know this is true now, will be true in the future, and if your operators are comcast/AT&T why did they agree to this? (given that they are hell incarnate and would sell a baby to satan for profit ;) )

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Going through Comcast / AT&T isn't the only path to the internet, plenty of other companies sell the backhaul services that we need--Hurricane Electric, Zayo, Cogent, CenturyLink, etc..

Monitoring traffic and throttling it are both network-level interventions that we won't implement or support in a way that can be abused like that. We don't want to expose our operators to the liability of even collecting this type of info.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> What kind of residential density would you require? Is this only feasible for MDUs?

<comment><AUTHOR> It makes sense for a wide range of densities. Getting MDUs is really nice, because your marginal cost to serve another customer in the building is really low. Downside is that it may be more competitive. Rural areas present a different business model, where you may have to go long distances and charge enough to support the infrastructure that requires. Single family homes in suburban/urban densities are right in between.

Each of the cases can work, you just need to make sure you're running the right kind of ISP for the market.

<comment><USER15> What about backhaul? Is it wireless or is it designed as using a wireline fiber backbone to wireless clients?

What kind of bandwdith levels are you targetting with your product and hardware?

I think in the Bay Area you would want to be looking at near gigabit to be competitive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> How does your join necto privacy policy compare to local ISPs like Sonic? What about ISPs you help get started? Because your writeup about privacy is about net neutrality and throttling.

I see nothing about limiting data retention, not selling member data, or refusing to provide data voluntarily.

[https://www.sonic.com/privacy-policy](https://www.sonic.com/privacy-policy)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sonic has a fantastic privacy policy. For comparison, we follow all the same tenets and believe that both contractual and technical safeguards are the best way to ensure our operators do as well. We should definitely be more public about that to non-customers though--both so prospective customers know and to make sure there's public accountability behind it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> What's $25k get you? One tower / roof top location?

I'm real skeptical that this is profitable on the low end.

</comment><comment><USER18> Great! This has the potential to help a lot of Americans (and more people, even).

Quick question regarding your business model. Do you intend to charge forever, or is there any option for your customers to get out after the setup if they decide to grow their business with their own resources?

</comment><comment><USER19> Amazing idea! I'd love it if the site could give some sense of how profitable the business could be, and over what timescale. I don't need specific numbers, just the fundamental expectations for a model: How do I calculate ongoing costs? How many customers does it take to get to breakeven? What's the marginal profit for a customer after that point?

It would be great to see a blog post about how joinnecto.com got off the ground. "Be the savior the Internet needs and start your own ISP" is a good slogan, but "Start a great business and save the Internet in the process" seems even better.

</comment><comment><USER20> "the underserved San Francisco markets of Bayview and Portola"

Next time you fly over the midwest, look at density. If you can see your neighbor, you're probably not underserved.

<comment><USER21> I don't think he meant low density, he meant that even though there are a bunch of people the incumbent telcos don't actually offer service there. The Bay Area's internet is surprisingly fragmented. We couldn't get fixed broadband at the old office when I know for a fact we were less than 100ft from municipal 10 gig fiber.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's a bummer that this looks to be a turnkey kit that does exactly what I would imagine is the most fun part of building an ISP: network engineering, building routing hardware, etc...

I see that your own ISP relies on PPPoE... is that a decision you intend to rely on for the necto lab customers (other ISPs) or was that something you had to do specifically in your own case? Have you seen any downsides to that? I know as a consumer PPPoE is kind of a pain in the butt.

<comment><USER23> What don't you like about PPPoE ?

<comment><AUTHOR> When someone resets their router, it clears the auth details and their internet stops working. With DHCP, it'll "just work" when the device comes back up. You just need to be a bit smart about figuring out which device belongs to who. DHCP Option 82 is a tagging mechanism that allows you to do this without creating a hard dependency on the physical address of the customer's router.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> So how much money do you need upfront to start an ISP?

<comment><USER25> According to their on-boarding questionnaire $25,000USD

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm really interested to see what comes out of this.

It's interesting to see you list apartment complexes as one of the target markets - I've always wondered why more complexes don't just provide internet access as a perk instead of outsourcing to Time Warner, AT&T, etc.

</comment><comment><USER27> Just wanted to say congrats!

Is this still bay area only or are you ready to expand to other areas?

</comment><comment><USER28> 1) Roll out fiber to every house hold 2) Lease a few fibers to the nearest Internet exchange. 3) Negotiate as much peering as you can, and buy Internet transit 4) Profit 5) Work towards tier 1

</comment><comment><USER29> This is so dope - I would love to do this in east oakland

</comment><comment><USER30> Having run a very large enterprise channel in the past, I'm a big fan of powering new businesses this way. Good luck

</comment><comment><USER31> Is it $25k per site? Suppose I want to ISP several buildings. Should I budget $25k per building? How far apart can be?

<comment><USER32> An ISP would be a total network I think, so it doesn't matter how many buildings you connect to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> What about US markets outside the Bay Area?

</comment><comment><USER34> Can you guys bring it to Miami, I will be the first one signing up for personal internet and an ISP.

</comment><comment><USER35> I live in Bloomington, Illinois. So... I assume we'll be eligible in a month or two?

</comment><comment><USER36> This is a solution for optimizing existing small ISPs that are overwhelmed by growth, it is not a solution for starting an ISP.

If one cannot figure out how to solve all these problems himself or herself that ISP will go out of business in a matter of months.

</comment><comment><USER37> Is this wireless or FTTB? Can't really understand.

</comment><comment><USER38> Curious what your "routing stack" looks like.

</comment><comment><USER39> Do you cater to the UK market as well?

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately not in this batch--mainly because of travel and regulatory differences.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> we really need change in the isp business (yeah, captain obvious here)

</comment><comment><USER41> this is so awesome thank you hope it takes off in a big way

</comment><comment><USER42> [redacted]

<comment><USER43> They mention several times that they require you have $25k of capital to join the program. However, that probably only covers network deployment and other costs like marketing so I would expect the actual outlay to be quite a bit higher if you want to be successful.</comment></comment>


Voices of America - <AUTHOR> https://newrepublic.com/article/140976/voices-america-podcasts-stories-individual-obsession <comment><USER3> >Podcast listening carries with it a faint aura of cultural snobbery, a notion that to cue up an episode is to do something highbrow and personally enriching, whether it's a history lecture broadcast from a university, or an amateur talk show recorded in someone's garage. Both types of show are somewhat educational, in the sense that they expose listeners to unfamiliar subjects and subcultures.

This is only true if you ignore any podcast that doesn't fit in those two random buckets that the author made up. There are plenty of big sport podcasts that are taking the place of sports talk radio. There are also a huge number of successful comedy podcasts if you start scrolling down past the top 25 on iTunes.

If you are looking for great examples that fly in the face of that "aura of cultural snobbery", I can't recommend enough the podcast network of Maximum Fun [1]. It is a network created by the host of the NPR show Bullseye, Jesse Thorn. Most of the podcasts on the network are silly and stupid in the best possible ways. Even the shows that talk about serious issues don't take themselves overly serious.[2] The network is currently wrapping up their annual NPR style pledge drive and most shows are putting out their best episodes this week so it would be a great time to try some. My personal favorite is Jordan Jesse Go which is one of the oldest podcast around and is anything but snobby and highbrow. [3]

[1] - [http://maximumfun.org/](http://maximumfun.org/)

[2] - A great recent episode in which Jesse Thorn, the host of NPR's Bullseye interviews Guy Branum, the host of Max Fun's Pop Rocket about his new TV show, growing up different in a small town, and coming out in graduate school. -[http://maximumfun.org/pop-rocket/pop-rocket- episode-116-bonu...](http://maximumfun.org/pop-rocket/pop-rocket- episode-116-bonus-guy-branum-interview)

[3] - [http://www.maximumfun.org/shows/jordan-jesse- go](http://www.maximumfun.org/shows/jordan-jesse-go)

<comment><USER4> I really can't understand that first quote. Even if you believe you're doing something "highbrow and personally enriching", that doesn't make you a snob.

<comment><USER5> If you do something highbrow _because it 's highbrow_, that probably does in fact make you a snob. Whether that was intended by the original quote, I will leave others to decide.

<comment><USER6> I disagree. You might want to experience a change of pace. You might be interested in what "highbrow" is. You might like to challenge yourself.

To be a snob, I believe you'd have to look down on other people for their preferred content forms. E.g. "Oh, you're reading a website? I remember when I used to do that. Before I had discovered podcasts."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> tl/dr: Thanks to Serial, podcasting has acquired a snobby cultural cachet among the NPR set, but it has surprising origins 10 years earlier among nerds. Still, it can't entirely replace public broadcasting.

What a weird take on podcasting.

<comment><USER8> > _Still, it can 't entirely replace public broadcasting._

If you mean "public broadcasting" as what they _do_ , I'm with you 100%. Nothing about podcasting reduces the need for not-for-profit organizations like this.

If you mean the radio-based sound delivery system part, this must transition to the open web, and that means podcasting¹.

> _What a weird take on podcasting._

Amen!

¹At least for on-demand delivery. There's no live equivalent to the podcasting ecosystem right now.

<comment><USER7> "Public broadcasting" means a lot of different things. But one of the great values of radio-based sound delivery systems is that they are very local. And local radio cultivates niches that translate well into interesting podcasts.

For example, when studying languages, one of the great sources of listening material is podcasts produced by local radio stations. There isn't a lot of material in Cajun French (vs. Parisian French) available—except for Cajun French music and local news radio shows/podcasts in south Louisiana. There's an Ainu-learning podcast I subscribed to once that IIRC was produced by a Hokkaido radio station. The local base of the radio station has synergy with a non-local/Internet audience.

The major European non-English broadcasters tend to have streaming services rather than podcasts for some reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "We are living through a great flowering of the podcast industry, whose province of iTunes is something like a frontier boomtown right now, teeming with hastily erected new storefronts. The podcast form has been around since about 2004—it is kissing cousins with the iPod, in that way—but it was only in 2014 that the idea struck gold."

Uhhh... what?

[https://trends.google.co.uk/trends/explore?date=all&q=podcas...](https://trends.google.co.uk/trends/explore?date=all&q=podcast)

A re-flowering perhaps, looking at the trend's rise since 2014 - but certainly not as popular as it was around 2005-2006.

<comment><USER8> > _A re-flowering perhaps, looking at the trend 's rise since 2014 - <USER2> > certainly not as popular as it was around 2005-2006._

FWIW, that chart doesn't correlate with any measurements of podcasting popularity (e.g. downloads, research) that I'm aware of.

For example, Edison Research notes that general familiarity with the term "podcasting" has gone up 22% with Americans in the last two years. Saturday Night Live's satire of _Serial_ is an example of how podcasting has broken into mainstream awareness in a way that it definitely had not even three years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am glad that I found this article. When I search for podcasts, I predominantly see listings from America and Britain. Unfortunately, I could not relate to most of them as I grew up in and lived in India. There is cultural/historical tight coupling with west except some of the BBC ones.

In my opinion, the radio never took off in India. I see old Hollywood films and realise that in the pre-mobile internet era radio was a major way to be entertained and communicate while in the road. I can visualise family road trips (Playing empty roads .. west Virginia on FM) on a deserted free way. Same for a truck driver and amateurs having ham radio conversation.

On the contrary India Railways have been the primary inter city commute. People talk to each other instead, as there are always many people around (Its kind of true everywhere in India :)). However, with cheap mobile internet, this is changing. co-passengers may get busy on their own smartphone even in a 24 hours long journey. I think we directly jumped from Television to moile internet never bothered abour radio. There was a rise of world space radio in mid 2000s but turned out to be costly. With no restriction on pirated mp3s from the internet and burning them on CD/ putting them in USB sticks and now side-loading on smart phones, we never bothered about or dependent on music on radio. This is one of the reason services like Flipkart flyte who offered paid mp3 download never succeeded. While countries like Norway switching off FM some of the cities in India are just coming up with their first channels, that to full of commercial. Its too late for radio I think. With Google installing free WIFIs in all railway stations and Reliance Jio giving dirt cheap 4G internet on mobile (as a result all cell companies matching their offers) having internet enabled phones will be soon a hous hold thing even in a poorest hoise.

What we don't have is content. There are millions meaning less whatapp hoaxes being forwarded which most of the people see as interesting and true. Especially my father's generation refuse to disbelieve anything which is on the internet(Whatsapp/facebook). There is no sense of responsibility of the people who spread those messages.

There is no good Indian radio or podcast online now , at least what I think is good. I think we need a "Serial moment" .

<comment><USER8> > _There is no good Indian radio or podcast online now…_

"Good" is subjective of course, but here's a nice, categorized list of many of the best: [http://rockingentrepreneur.com/list-of-indian- podcasts/](http://rockingentrepreneur.com/list-of-indian-podcasts/)

If you search for "best indian podcasts" you'll get many other thoughtful lists of great Indian podcasts.

If you're personally interested in podcasting, this is a unique time in the history of the medium. You could take advantage of the potential opportunity by starting your own podcast, or by creating an Indian podcasting network that helps others create India-centric shows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > "The podcast form has been around since about 2004"

Downloadable audio shows predate the iPod and the term "podcasts". For example:

[https://web-beta.archive.org/web/19981212013454/dailydementi...](https://web- beta.archive.org/web/19981212013454/dailydementia.com)

High production values, interviewing guests, etc.

</comment><comment><USER12> Of all the articles I've read in my life ... that was one of them.

I don't even know where to start, though I'll try.

I access a lot of media, in different forms, much of if online: articles, books. And quite a bit of spoken or video content.

Most of what counts as "podcast" listening for me comes rather from YouTube, mostly as recorded lectures or interviews. The better material tends to run 10 - 60 minutes, though it can occasionally go over (most ideas, and speakers, as well as myself run out of steam after about an hour).

With few exceptions, I tend _not_ to follow any podcasts as such particularly religiously. There are a few exceptions. I raised a stink some months back when the CBC blocked my podcasting app (Podcast Republic) from accessing its content, on the exceedingly slim pretext that PR's occasional text banner ads constituted "commercial use" \-- and the stink was raised specifically because Paul Kennedy's _Ideas_ is a very nearly uniformly excellent program. Unusual, intelligent speakers, outside the Overton window, and generally not heard on other programs.

The other regular programme is WNYC's _On the Media_ , which is also excellent, and largely serves as the breech in the news dike I've erected -- a once-a-week dose of reality seems to be about right for my constitution, if perhaps not the US Constitution....

But ... other than those two (and they're excellent), I mostly prefer queuing up a set of related items, and working my way through them. Even with podcasts, what I'm often aiming for is to string up a set of programmes or episodes that I'm currently interested in listening to. My listening _doesn 't_ follow any particular schedule.

For YouTube or other downloadable content, the best solution is often to simply download the material (and usually simply the audio), and to queue it up on VLC.

(I've previously noted on HN that this is possible on Android if you install the Termux and Termux-API aps, the termux-api shell tools, python, and via pip, youtube-dl.)

The Android environment is still sufficiently fuxnored that for a long playlist -- say, the 48 episodes, 30 minutes each, of David Christian's Big History lectures -- your best bet is to download _everything_ first, then queue up the set. It _isn 't_ possible to do the Linux equivalent of constructing a playlist and running, say, mplayer over it:

        <playlist while read file; do mplayer "$file"; done

(Though it may be possible to construct a playlist file and run it.)

VLC _won 't_ directly stream YouTube or other online video content on Android. So no dice setting up a playlist along those lines.

What's proved most annoying is that the software I've experimented with to date _simply doesn 't retain or sustain specified lists_. Podcast Republic allows items to be added to various lists ... but they vanish within seconds (I've reported the bug). VLC allows queueing up of multiple items, but doesn't really seem to sustain _that_ list very well. And trying to find and utilise the playist files that do exist is ... awkward at best.

Beyond this, when playing content, the controls for managing playback ... don't exist.

Mplayer is awesome on Linux as there are keyboard mappings to skip backwards or forwards within a track, across tracks, speed up or slow down playback, or pause. When I'm following a lecture, all of those are employed.

VLC offers none of this.

Podcast Republic has a GUI control to skip forward and backwards (15s) within a track, which is quite useful. But there's no keyboard mapping.

Short of all of this: there's some truly amazing content out there. Tools for accessing and programming it from a user's PoV are sorely lacking.</comment>


The Two Faces of the Moon - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/the-two-faces-of-the-moon-398fbc85840d <comment><USER2> Would tidal locking really happen fast enough for that to be a plausible reason?

<comment><USER3> Maybe the cooling couldn't happen UNTIL the tidal locking...</comment></comment>


Swift for TensorFlow Design Overview - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/tensorflow/swift/blob/master/docs/DesignOverview.md <comment><USER2> Whoa...The Python interoperability is incredible.

You can use numpy from swift..As well as load pickle files !

[https://github.com/tensorflow/swift/blob/master/docs/DesignO...](https://github.com/tensorflow/swift/blob/master/docs/DesignOverview.md#python- interoperability)

</comment><comment><USER3> At first I was fairly disappointed that Swift was chosen over Julia, and I still wish there was strong Julia support because Julia is a great language, but I've slowly been changing my mind and think Swift could be a really good choice long term.

I also just really like Chris' work and trust him to make the right calls until proven otherwise.

<comment><USER4> I love julia, but it already has a TF library that does a lot of very nice things (like not having to specify a computational graph separately from the execution) and there are other really interesting machine learning libraries (like knet).

Swift is a good choice because there are some reasonably good mobile targets, which Julia does not have. If you're deploying a ML model, you should use swift. If you're developing one, you should use julia.

<comment><USER5> pretty much the entire deep learning community is still using python 2.7. I have moved onto python 3.6, but Julia is still an unsafe bet because it has an unreliable community behind it.

<comment><USER6> What does unreliable community even mean? As far as I know the Julia community is strong and healthy. Just check out their discourse site or slack overflow tag julia-lang.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As a longtime fan of C#, this article and use case just pushed me from "why would anyone think they needed to invent Swift" to "wow that's an extremely cool set of language design constraints!"

</comment><comment><USER8> > Automatic differentiation in Swift is a compiler IR transformation > implemented with static analysis.

Super cool to see this implemented at the language level like this.

</comment><comment><USER9> Given the fact that the vast majority of people is still on Windows, using Swift (with zero official support for Windows) will artificially limit the use of the project outside the circle of the original developers.

That being said, you can use Swift through WSL, but not directly on Windows.

<comment><USER10> > That being said, you can use Swift through WSL, but not directly on Windows.

I thought so too, but i've checked the instructions to build on windows, and now there's a way to build it natively using Visual Studio cl(or clang-cl).

Following the instructions here, it worked for me.

[https://github.com/apple/swift/blob/master/docs/WindowsBuild...](https://github.com/apple/swift/blob/master/docs/WindowsBuild.md)

<comment><USER11> For the record, "official" support is still not there because there's no CI environment for Windows (currently only macOS and a few versions of Ubuntu have CI). So changes aren't guaranteed to not break other platforms.

There's upstream (in-tree) support for Darwin, Linux, Windows, Cygwin, FreeBSD, Android, PS4, and Haiku. But most of those don't have CI support yet.

Same is true for architectures. There's support for ARM, i386, x86_64, PPC64 (BE + LE), and s390x.

IIRC there's been some talk about how to extend the CI infrastructure to support more executor environments, but so far I don't think it's been a high enough priority.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Does Swift have a large community beyond iOS apps? Last I used it was years ago, right after it was introduced by Apple. I'm curious if it has found growth in other areas.

<comment><USER13> Not really atm. There is a small community around server-side-swift which did some impressive work so far, most interesting project is IMO the Vapor Framework [1], but at least outside the Apple Dev community they didn't get much attention so far. For general system programming, which would be also possible with swift, Rust seems currently a lot more popular.

[1]: [https://vapor.codes](https://vapor.codes)

<comment><USER14> For people not familiar, Vapor is close to releasing version 3.0, using [https://github.com/apple/swift-nio](https://github.com/apple/swift-nio). I've heard rumors that the performance is really good, but I haven't ran anything personally.

<comment><USER15> Swift itself in _incredibly_ fast, at least in microbenchmarks. I last looked at the numbers a year or so ago, but IIRC it was about as fast as C, which is several (as in 5-6) orders of magnitude faster than, say, python.

In terms of "level of abstraction" vs "Speed", Swift is definitely at a Pareto-Optimum (if that's the term for "can't get better in one dimension without losing something in the other).

Microbenchmarks aren't the be-all yada yada yada... And it's somewhat ironic that the server framework is named Vapor. But for web apps that are computation-heavy, I think it would be a valuable option to have.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, here are some old Vapor benchmarks for curious people: [https://medium.com/@codevapor/server-side-swift-vs-the- other...](https://medium.com/@codevapor/server-side-swift-vs-the-other- guys-2-speed-ca65b2f79505)

I drop in on the Vapor Slack group occasionally. I heard someone mention that version 3.0 was passing Go in benchmarks. Apparently they had some performance regressions integrating nio (it was just released last month) - not sure what the status is now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Still a bit more verbose than Python. What would you gain by doing the same in Swift actually? If you have to type more code to do some experiments, and still have to import Python libraries for extra functions as they do in that example, what's the selling point? (beside it being cool)

<comment><USER11> Here's some context: [https://github.com/tensorflow/swift/blob/master/docs/WhySwif...](https://github.com/tensorflow/swift/blob/master/docs/WhySwiftForTensorFlow.md)

Some benefits vs Python are static types (catching more errors at compile-time vs hours into a training run), no GIL, don't have to drop to C++ for higher performance.

Some benefits vs some other (non-Python) languages are a shallow learning curve, small boilerplate, safety-by-default, and a growing community.

Obviously there are places where Python and others have advantages over Swift too, and several of those are called out in the paper.

<comment><USER4> Is it really likely that you'll catch a type exception hours into a training run? The way tf works it'll catch a _shape_ exception before you even start training.

<comment><USER17> I don't have experience of a type exception hours into run, but for me, deploying code to the test environment is long, so the edit-run cycle is very long. If the compiler can catch the errors _locally_ , then edit-(compile)-run is shortened.

<comment><USER18> This sort-of feedbacks on itself. I use estimators, so type errors occur far into a run, but not during training itself, and checkpoints mean very rapid recovery, so ...

I think I actually stopped caring so much because the recovery is so fast.

Big help for me was coding a little script that means I can just send a notification to my android from from cli and/or python, so I know when these things need attention.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Swift for Tensorflow or Tensorflow for Swift?

<comment><USER20> Yes, it's right up there with "Windows Subsystem for Linux".</comment></comment>


Interview with the creator of a automatic skin cancer detection app - <AUTHOR> http://www.centralskin.com/article/1178-exclusive-interview-with-thiago-pradi-creator-of-imelanoma-the-automatic-skin-cancer-detection-app/

<comment><AUTHOR> More info about the application: \- [http://www.thiagopradi.net/projects](http://www.thiagopradi.net/projects) \- [http://www.academia.edu/4490580/Software_for_Melanoma_Detect...](http://www.academia.edu/4490580/Software_for_Melanoma_Detection_for_iOS) (Paper in portuguese)</comment>


Your Most Valuable Asset Is Yourself - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/15/your-money/your-most-valuable-asset-is-yourself.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> How very American. With your 10 hour work days + 3 hours commute, you should totally take a side job. Why not work the 10 vacation days too?

</comment><comment><USER3> > find a side gig if you can make time

Nobody can make time. You can only spend time differently.

Time is your most valuable asset, because once you die you have none left. Make to most of the time you have, because once your time is spent, there's no way of getting it back.

You could be dead tomorrow, having more money in the bank won't make a difference then. Having spent time with you loved ones will make a difference to them, because they will have the memories.

<comment><USER4> I agree with your premise, but your last point doesn't make much sense. Your loved ones would also get the money. Maybe they value the money more than the memories they shared with you.

<comment><USER3> Yea, I thought of this too while I was writing it. It's a very personal matter probably, but I've often heard that people on their death beds are more concerned about not spending more time with loved ones than not earning enough money. So I chose to write it as is anyway.

<comment><USER5> I've always wondered how honest such statements are. Even if you'd actually enjoyed work much more than family time, wouldn't you tell your family what they'd want to hear under those circumstances?

<comment><USER6> Why not tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you God to your loved ones in your last moments with them? Don't they deserve that?!

<comment><USER7> _Don 't they deserve that_

Of course not, unless of course they happen to be assholes. Tell them what you think they need to hear to make a terrible situation as bearable as possible and try to help them have a loving memory of you. Confessing your 'sins' on your deathbed just to ease your conscience without any thoughts of the consequences is an extremely selfish and narcissistic act which does nothing to help your loved ones.

<comment><USER8> Nobody said that the whole truth consists of "sins". Might we guess that you feel guilty for something?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting idea, but underwhelming lessons: "invest in education and training, take side jobs, push back retirement".

I personally subscribe to the genetic optimization/hill-climbing strategy:

To make sure you don't get stuck in local optima, make sure you're time-to- time riskily choosing what may seem like short-term losses, and injecting a healthy degree of randomness/mutation in your process. Over time, your degree of risk and randomness should slowly decrease. Even so, you may find that a boost of randomness/mutation/risk may be necessary even during later stages of life.

</comment><comment><USER10> I have a better idea. Fuck "financial planning", fuck retirement, fuck all these people who think they know what's right for you and live your life NOW.

Be irresponsible. Be EXTREMELY irresponsible. Work less. Play more. Struggle less. Enjoy more. Save less. Live more. Comply less. Create more.

You don't "earn" your way to wealth and you don't "save" your way to wealth - the maths just don't work out! You can only ever play your way to wealth.

<comment><USER11> Can you explain how the "maths just don't work out"? I'm pretty sure saving IS the way to wealth for the overwhelming majority of people.

This honestly sounds like it's straight from one of the Facebook posts with clouds in the background.

<comment><USER12> Mid and lower class people won't get rich by saving their salaries.

In fact, it's not unusual that the entire earnings of a work-life of a mid- class worker do not add up to something that would make a person rich, even if 100% of it is saved.

The other side of the coin is that mid-class life is pretty good, most of the GP advice will lead to poverty much more often that it'll lead to wealth, and the one important piece that is "create more" comes by responsible working.

<comment><USER10> "Responsible working" is how you make other people rich.

Having fun and playing ("irresponsibly"), expressing your true essence, is the only way to create ANY lasting value.

It is also the only way to create any wealth. The OTHER (much more common) way that people get wealthy is by capitalizing on what others have created. Which is fine with me (I'm all for the wonders of capitalism), but I prefer creating my own wealth.

<comment><USER11> Most people get wealthy by working for other people. Depending on what you call wealthy. 1-2M in investment accounts and a paid off home is very affluent/wealthy to me.

Also, to say those people aren't creating wealth is very offensive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I liked the title (expecting advice to take care of your health), but was disappointed by the "you are your job and your net worth" mentality. By that measure, family, happiness, personal relationships are all distracting liabilities and should probably be avoided. Or perhaps maximizing one's wealth isn't a worthwhile goal after all and it's fine to reach a certain level of financial security - as a means, not an end?

</comment><comment><USER14> I think it's really gross to consider anyone an investment, a piece of 'human capital'. I read a book recently by Wendy Brown, _Undoing the Demos_. It's about how modern ideology tries to redefine human beings in this way: You are capital which appreciates in value and gives you return on investment. All other definitions of what a human being is ought to be subordinate to this definition: Human as political creature is less important than human as economic investment. Human as member of society is less important than human competing in the free market. I found Brown's observations disturbing yet plausible, but I never expected to see these pernicious ideas flagrantly advocated in a mainstream newspaper.

It feels like the void is trying to suck my soul out of my body when I try to think this way.

<comment><USER15> I wonder about the linguistic difference between the terms "human property" and "human capital". One is synonymous with "slave" and one is synonymous with "employee" and yet "property" and "capital" are virtually synonymous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > dcotors

> Tradtiional

Come on, NY Times, seriously? Is this the quality of journalism these days? At least run a spell check on the article before you hit publish.

<comment><USER17> Honest question, why does anyone care about spelling errors? They aren't even grammatical errors; we know what they intended.

I'd rather they make spelling errors than factual ones, and I'd rather we focus on teaching kids problem solving rather than memorizing sequences of letters.

<comment><USER18> Thanks to software, it is extremely easy to not have spelling error. So if they can't achieve this simple thing, how can I trust them to get the facts right which requires significantly more effort? For an author I don't know, a spelling error is a huge negative signal for me personally.

<comment><USER19> Agreed. Journalism is about words. That's it. Words are the sole instrument in print journalism (excluding photojournalism). If the words are wrong, then the instrument is out of tune. No matter how great the musician, if he can't keep his instrument maintained, then how are we to trust his abilities at music in general?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> TL;DR: to make this work - IMHO you must also be 'money oriented'.

I would like to say that this is not always true ('invest in yourself' and expand your bank account in such way).

Basically you must be 'money oriented'.

Looking into my university, there is a whole spectrum of people, who are all invested in them selves more than 99.9% people in my country. But there are professors who have some successful businesses, and also lecturers who are not 'money oriented' and just like academia, and there are some not so lucky people, who maybe had some bad twists in their life, suffered depression, etc., and just live a basic life.

It is probably to find something similar with people who are not so 'invested in themselves'. There some well established folks and not so well..

</comment><comment><USER21> tl;dr

Step 1: Get a piece of paper.

Step 2: Work your ass off.

Step 3: Never retire.

Pretty sure society has been drilling this into us since preschool, but thanks for the reminder.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm genuinely curious -- do many people with salaried jobs really have a "side hustle"? I'd feel a bit guilty working on a side project for money when I'm being paid as a fulltimer.

<comment><USER23> I wonder the same. I rarely side hustle for money doing tech stuff, mostly because I don't have enough mental energy left over after a full day of day- job work.

I suppose for side-hustles it may help doing something that's somewhat removed from your day job. Rental property comes to mind. It's fairly rote, it's social, you can put in as much/little elbow grease in it as you like (barring the rare emergency), but it does generate modest income, it's usually more than just a "hobby".

A friend, who doesn't work in finance, is really into the stock market, spends a lot of time on researching companies. That's a kind of side-hustle too I suppose.

<comment><USER24> Many people doing this are not doing it _after_ a full day of work, they are doing it _during_ their day job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Don't teach poor people how to outcompete other poor people. Instead, teach them how to cooperate.

<comment><USER7> That sounds like a terrible idea if you're rich person... ;)

<comment><USER15> >Now, what does all of this mean in this great period of history? It means that we've got to stay together. We've got to stay together and maintain unity. You know, whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in Egypt, he had a favorite, favorite formula for doing it. What was that? He kept the slaves fighting among themselves. But whenever the slaves get together, something happens in Pharaoh's court, and he cannot hold the slaves in slavery. When the slaves get together, that's the beginning of getting out of slavery. Now let us maintain unity.

-MLK, last speech the night before assasination

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> [http://radicalpersonalfinance.com/my-plan-for-how-i-would- be...](http://radicalpersonalfinance.com/my-plan-for-how-i-would-become-a- millionaire-with-a-minimum-wage-job-at-walmart-rpf0043/)

buried link in the story, seems more interesting than the story itself

</comment><comment><USER27> Why do comments here critisize this article as if it was life advice, when this is not life advice, but life advice purely from investment standpoint?

Is a concept of "advice purely from a certain standpoint" too complex for HN comments?

<comment><USER15> Life advice from an investment standpoint is life advice

<comment><USER28> Monetary investment is not equivalent to life investment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Thanks but that asset is pretty worthless here.

</comment><comment><USER30>
       s/Asset/Startup/</comment>


Yishan Wong comments on "What's the best long con you ever pulled?" - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the_best_long_con_you_ever_pulled/cszjqg2

<comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9871241](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9871241)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> For posterity:

\</comment><comment>--

> Here's one.

> In 2006, reddit was sold to Conde Nast. It was soon obvious to many that the > sale had been premature, the site was unmanaged and under-resourced under > the old-media giant who simply didn't understand it and could never realize > its full potential, so the founders and their allies in Y-Combinator (where > reddit had been born) hatched an audacious plan to re-extract reddit from > the clutches of the 100-year-old media conglomerate.

> Together with Sam Altman, they recruited a young up-and-coming technology > manager with social media credentials. Alexis, who was on the interview > panel for the new reddit CEO, would reject all other candidates except this > one. The manager was to insist as a condition of taking the job that Conde > Nast would have to give up significant ownership of the company, first to > employees by justifying the need for equity to be able to hire top talent, > bringing in Silicon Valley insiders to help run the company. After > continuing to grow the company, he would then further dilute Conde Nast's > ownership by raising money from a syndicate of Silicon Valley investors led > by Sam Altman, now the President of Y-Combinator itself, who in the process > would take a seat on the board.

> Once this was done, he and his team would manufacture a series of otherwise- > improbable leadership crises, forcing the new board to scramble to find a > new CEO, allowing Altman to use his position on the board to advocate for > the re-introduction of the old founders, installing them on the board and as > CEO, thus returning the company to their control and relegating Conde Nast > to a position as minority shareholder.

> JUST KIDDING. There's no way that could happen.

/u/yishan (Yishan Wong, former Reddit CEO)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the...](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the_best_long_con_you_ever_pulled/cszjqg2)

\</comment><comment>--

> We all had our roles to play.

/u/spez (Steve Huffman, new Reddit CEO)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the...](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the_best_long_con_you_ever_pulled/ct00fpb?context=1)

\</comment><comment>--

> Cool story bro.

> Except I could never have predicted the part where you resigned on the spot > :)

> Other than that, child's play for me.

> Thanks for the help. I mean, thanks for your service as CEO.

/u/samaltman (Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the...](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the_best_long_con_you_ever_pulled/cszwpgq?context=1)</comment>


Willy Wonka and the Medical Software Factory - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/20/business/epic-systems-campus-verona-wisconsin.html <comment><USER2> > Workers who fully commit to Epic — who survive the long hours and grisly > sights — are treated to a remarkable perk. After five years, they get a > sabbatical, including round-trip airfare for two to travel somewhere they've > never been for a month, plus a per diem for meals and lodging. (They get > another sabbatical after 10 years, 15, and so on.)

Obligatory snark: In Europe we call this paid vacation, and we get it every year.

But on a serious note, it's so funny how experiences temper expectations. Only in a place where most people's vacation time is used for familial obligations or not used at all, does a month of traveling sound like the ultimate luxury. And they're willing to slave away for _five years_ to get this?

When me and friends briefly served a stint as middle managers in corporate America, we had a vacation policy of "always yes". And people would still start their time off discussions by laying out arguments as to why they really needed time off. No, stop, you need zero arguments to get a yes from me as long as you have earned the time off according to company policy. It's my fucking job to make things work despite your absence, not yours.

<comment><USER3> The fact that it's a paid for trip is why it is worth mentioning, not necessarily the length. Five weeks of vacation, while not very common, is common enough that it's not really worth writing about otherwise. Edit: Agreed that 5 weeks of _contiguous_ vacation is rare

<comment><USER4> > Five weeks of vacation, while not very common, is common enough that it's > not really worth writing about otherwise.

Where do you work that you think this is common?

My wife and I are both in reasonably well compensated professional careers, and while we get to take more vacations than most americans, a solid 5 week block is basically impossible. And I don't think that's atypical: the Bureau of Labor Stats certainly doesn't support that idea ([https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2018/private-industry- workers-r...](https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2018/private-industry-workers- received-average-of-15-paid-vacation-days-after-5-years-of-service- in-2017.htm))

<comment><USER2> In Sweden, five weeks of paid vacation per year is the legal minimum, and you also have the right to take four weeks contiguous in the summer if you want. But you don't have the right to choose _when_ exactly if you exercise that right. Different industries do it differently, some shut down and kick everyone out in July, others try to get their employees to spread their vacation over summer so that there's at least someone in the office.

The difference in mentality and expectations is absolutely crazy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I interviewed at Epic Systems on-site and this article hits on basically everything I saw and felt. It's a very interesting, unique and weird place. But you also get a kind of weird vibe from it, it seems like a large facade.

A few things the article missed: The offices are shared by up to 3 people in offices designed to have 1 or 2. About half the company is akin to consultants where they fly out to a medical facility every Monday and fly back every Thursday. The vast majority of hires are new grads and turnover is very high. Oh and the article touched on this but the selling point for switching to Epic software is that Epic has nearly every person in the US's medical history in their databases (since their usage is so widespread) so if you sign up to use Epic you get the medical history with it.

If you ever interview there I recommend trying to schedule the flight in on a Thursday, your flight will have a transfer at MSP Airport and the next flight will be all Epic employees whom you can ask questions and they can answer honestly. Every employee I talked to on that flight said they planned on quitting soon and didn't like working there. This was several years ago.

<comment><USER6> > Epic has nearly every person in the US's medical history in their databases > (since their usage is so widespread) so if you sign up to use Epic you get > the medical history with it

Why is this legal?

<comment><USER7> While Epic produces the database/electronic health record system, the hospital or health system ultimately owns the data. AFAIK patient data don't sit on Epic's own servers outside of some research/pilot initiatives.

(Source: my personal experience working extensively with EHRs, including Epic products.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Epic is a steaming pile of shit. I hate the medical software industry so bad. I don't understand why the current EMRs are so bad. I'm in medical school now but I hope to make a better EMR some day.

I'm upvoting this in hopes that someone with more knowledge than me can explain why the EMRs are all terrible.

<comment><USER9> You might enjoy this video then: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xB_tSFJsjsw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xB_tSFJsjsw)

Now on to your question. A lot of the EHR systems have grown organically and in the end they are made by people with software experience but not per se medical experience.

Disclaimer first: I work on a competitor for Epic (Well, they only run in 3-4 hospitals in my country and we run in 30, so they're not really a threat). And I'm not saying we are doing it better than Epic, but these are a few of my thoughts (loosely collected).

1) Most of us don't have medical training. Our campus is shared by a university / hospital, so we do have access to a lot of doctors and when they work with us, their sides of the program tend to run quite well. But, not all doctors want to spend time on this (understandable) so one system might be well tailored for doctor A, but not to Doctor B.

2) The systems are _old_. They grow organically, but Epic is a few decades old and our system started in 1992, so it's by no means 'young' either. The Medical field evolves and so does the software field - we are playing catchup on both most of the time.

3) We can't afford downtime. We can't just decide "upgrade tonight and go offline for a bit". So we have to engineer around this. We release a new system of our software every week (one week testing by a dedicated team with medical knowledge, then production). But since we can't do a bulk update and force people to restart, we need to deal with different versions which impacts the code quality.

4) We run on multiple hospitals. Hospitals have their own way of working, but to tailor to each hospital directly becomes impossible at some point. In the end you get a system that doctor Y from hospital A really likes, but doctor B from hospital A doesn't. Here, sadly, money will factor in. If you want the software more tailored you will have to pay more. And this is not just to the doctors to decide.

5) These systems are _huge_. (SVN reports a linecount of just over 37 million at the moment). Because they do a lot, to give an idea: * Patient scheduling (find optimal time for a patient to get X therapies) * Decision support for doctors (suggested medication, ..) * AI System to monitor patients in the hospital * Scheduling for the devices (MRI, CT, ..) * Communication system between specialists (GDPR compliant nowadays, yay) * Import/Export to share with all other hospitals * Billing system * Social insurance integration * Government integration * Medication system * ER System * ....

This is a pretty loose collection of some things that come to mind. :)

<comment><USER10> > We can't just decide "upgrade tonight and go offline for a bit". So we have > to engineer around this... But since we can't do a bulk update and force > people to restart, we need to deal with different versions which impacts the > code quality.

This is pretty typical of almost any customer-facing software written these days. Every mobile app has this problem. Web apps have this problem to a lesser extent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For a take on Epic-the-software (as opposed to Epic-the-company), Atul Gawande had a great piece in the New Yorker recently: [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/12/why-doctors- ha...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/12/why-doctors-hate-their- computers)

It gets into some (though hardly all) of the issues of why EHR software is the way it is, and why (some) doctors hate it. (Among my friends who are doctors, some hate Epic, and some absolutely love it - depends on specialty, age, institution, how it's configured, etc.)

Among some interesting issues:

\- As others in this thread have noted, the buyer (administrator concerned with maximizing billing) is not the user. That's the easy one that's common to a lot of enterprises.

\- Epic makes it easier for medical directors to track population health and impose standard protocols of care. Individual practitioners don't always like that! I am not expert enough in those fields to say who's right, and I suspect there's not always an obviously correct answer.

\- A lot of doctors dislike the underlying mechanic - being forced to actually write down everything they're doing and why - on top of sub-par UIs. The goals of the system conflict with the goals of the practitioner.

\- Interoperability sucks, but it's true that standards aren't really there, and it's hard to get consensus... plus everything you put in prod needs to be back-compatible approximately forever. A lot of institutions got burned by maintaining internal software built over decades that you can't turn off because lives depend on it, and Epic/etc. are part of trying to avoid repeating that mistake.

There's more. I only have a toehold in that world now, but love to chat about it. Email in profile.

<comment><USER12> The interoperability standards are actually pretty much there, at least for the more common types of patient records. The situation has improved tremendously in just the past few years. Epic and their major competitors are doing a decent job of supporting the lastest HL7 CDA and FHIR standards, including specific implementation guides.

The bigger problem now is that many provider organizations haven't upgraded to current EHR release versions, or haven't opened up their systems to access by other providers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have to mention that having seen the software used that the UI is awful. Perhaps this is mandated by the hospital customers or made difficult by HIPAA.

However, when the database for patient records of two Epic systems in the center of silicon valley do not interoperate that is just embarrassing. When the designated procedure for a patient transfering to a hospital is, "print out the entire record, fax it to the hospital, hand re-enter all data, shred both copies of patient data" that is asking for horrible transcription errors and missing data. Sorry, no donut.

<comment><USER14> Is your experience with Epic from over a decade ago? Transferring patient data, especially between two Epic systems, is much easier than that. As far as the UI goes, over the last four years Epic has had a big push to hire experts and make processes to help develop and test good user experience, as well as trying to make it look better. But that takes time in a big, old, complicated system, and you still have hospitals who haven't upgraded from 3+ year old versions. The latest version already looks immensely better in lots of areas, but you also can only do so much to make an easy to use program that also gets dense medical data in front of the right pairs of eyes so that patients don't die.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> the problem with EMR is that it fosters copy-paste. you read the same misinformation over and over. If copy-paste is disabled, content will degenerate to fiction.

in our data driven medical system, human narrative has lost value, just as the physical examination is the equivalent of judging a book by its cover. Today we rely on invasive and computationally intensive tests to tell us what's going on. Ultimately i see AI as offering a 'tree of choices' at each step in the diagnostic and therapeutic decision tree where we doctors only need to click on the most right (least wrong?) choice as we pare the tree to the situation at hand.

Drug recommender systems are the crude first step i see being implemented. but these are choices made in isolation without integrating the numerous other data points available for a particular patient.

currently, the health care industry is the largest employer in many towns. the social disruption by further 'unemploying' these people will convert gainfully employed individuals into the depressed patients of the institutions they used to serve. so some wisdom is needed here to temper the zeal of our blind pursuit of the electronic medical record.

</comment><comment><USER16> When my mom was taken to the emergency room last year, it was common for the doctors to be followed by somebody who would enter things into the computer for them.

It seemed like a reasonable way to handle entering medical information without having to wait for it to be transcribed. It seems like doctors making rounds would not have that.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'll just leave this here to try to help explain the complexities on medical technology. These systems are all the complexity of medicine (and medicine is hard) with the difficulties of a large enterprise system.

[https://www.wired.com/2015/03/how-technology-led-a- hospital-...](https://www.wired.com/2015/03/how-technology-led-a-hospital-to- give-a-patient-38-times-his-dosage/)

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm a big fan of this line:

> Epic is constantly scanning the undergraduate ranks for new hires. Rather > than sticking to engineer incubator schools like M.I.T. or Stanford, it > scouts institutions like Carleton College in Minnesota and Clemson > University in South Carolina. Candidates take online tests to gauge their > problem-solving skills and, if they pass muster, are whisked to Madison for > an on-campus interview and tour of the area.

</comment><comment><USER19> The comments on the article are fascinating.</comment>