Women Aren't Always Sentenced by the Book. Maybe Men Shouldn't Be, Either - <AUTHOR> https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/women-arent-always-sentenced-by-the-book-maybe-men-shouldnt-be-either/ <comment><USER2> Eh, I say throw the book at all criminals regardless of gender. I'm a big proponent of putting females on the front lines of war too if the U.S. truly stands for equality. Having grown up as a ward of the court, I have seen judges sentence women to lighter sentences since they view these women as their daughters or mothers that made a one time mistake, in contrast to the men who judges deem useless and dangerous criminals to society and get the book thrown at them.

Just look at the epidemic of U.S. female teachers who sexually abuse their students and get slapped on the wrist compared to the harsher sentences of the men who do abuse their female students

Anyhow, I truly believe the industrial prison complex is too successful for the U.S. to change any aspect it. If anything, we will reignite the drug war and start using social media to lock up more men and the occasional woman. This feeds the narrative that our society does not care about men and that the government is always looking to take care of women at the expense of men and our taxes. As a young man it is hard to see it any other way and has radicalized me towards the manopshere, redpill and mgotw online communities and philosophy.

Then again, I wonder if this the outcome that social engineers are pushing our society towards to? I feel no desire to love, cherish or protect any women in my life after seeing how they can get away with things that I cannot as a man and how society caters to their every whim. / End rant.

<comment><USER3> There are absolutely crimes and criminals that should be punished more severely, but there's also a place for compassion in the justice system. Many men did make a one-time mistake (or sometimes not even that) and get harshly punished for it. At the same time, there are also men who get a slap on the wrist for crimes that are usually punished more severely. Usually men who are rich, white and/or well connected.

There's way to much bias based on irrelevant circumstances in the US justice system. Black men in particular need a bit more mercy, rich white people need more accountability, women need to be taken more seriously in both directions.

First an foremost, though, the US prison-industrial complex needs to end. Profiting from imprisonment creates perverse incentives. The goal of the prison system needs to be rehabilitation, not corporate profit at the expensive of the people.

<comment><USER4> White women, rich or not, tend to most often get a slap on the wrist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Instead of not sentencing people by the book, we need to make the book drastically less harsh for almost every crime. The US's number of people incarcerated is many times higher than comparably developed countries. Our sentencing guidelines are simply too high across the board.

<comment><USER6> And the entire approach is backwards and leads to recidivism, rather than rehabilitation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> In b4 "Men's Rights"...

One thesis you could take is that the US, with the largest incarcerated population in the history of the world _, could stand to be a little bit less harsh in their sentencing.

_[http://www.prisonstudies.org/highest-to-lowest/prison- popula...](http://www.prisonstudies.org/highest-to-lowest/prison-population- total?field_region_taxonomy_tid=All)

<comment><USER4> Men's rights are human rights. There's no reason that in areas where men fare worse we should not have its gendered nature pointed out.

<comment><USER7> Oh sure, but if we're going to get at the big problems in the US criminal justice system, I think there's dozens of broad, general problems (living conditions, privatization of a "public good" service, general focus on punishment vs behavioral reform, etc) that would do better at addressing the issues for the most people involved.

Also, as I was previously trying to state, I feel that we should address this issue by generally changing/lowering sentences. If we can be compassionate towards woman convicts, why not men?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Buried Lede: "But people of different races and genders still fare differently under the guidelines. Race looms large, according to a November 2017 report from the sentencing commission. It found that black men in federal court are sentenced to 19.1 percent more time, on average, than white men who, at least on paper, committed the same crimes and have similar criminal histories."

<comment><USER9> Compared to the statement "sentences for men are on average 63 percent longer than sentences for women", I think one number is a bit bigger than the other.

There seems to exist three major influences that "dictate" the outcome of a case. Gender and race of the accused, and the blood sugar level on the judge and jury. If you build a prediction model where only those variables are known then you would likely get quite scary accurate results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Accepting what the submission implies at face value[1]: Even if you lighten sentences on men, it doesn't change that courts favor women. When men are pitted against women in court, such as divorce proceedings, the root problem will remain.

[1]If you disagree with the notion that courts favor women, and you flag me instead of the article, you're doing it wrong. I'm pointing out flaws in submission's logic, not arguing whether or not it is correct.

<comment><USER7> Well short of gutting the entire "common law" system and switching an entire legal system over to codified law it seems difficult to address the root issue.

Also, this is specifically talking about sentencing which therefor relates to criminal law. You want to get into a myriad of issues relating to Civil law and it's flaws, that's a whole other can of worms.

<comment><USER11> The issue can be addressed in the law schools, where pretty radicalism and misandrist forms of feminism are respectable mainstream positions for many students and faculty to hold.

The nightmarish campus rape policies aren't created in a vacuum:

[https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/09/the- un...](https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/09/the- uncomfortable-truth-about-campus-rape-policy/538974/)

They're a result of a generation of activist law school graduates. Once you give an ideology carte blanche, people will abuse it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _I don 't know how to communicate this, or even if it is possible. But the question of justice has concerned me greatly of late.

And I say to any creature who may be listening, there can be no justice so long as laws are absolute. Even life itself is an exercise in exceptions._

Jean-Luc Picard

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't normally complain about submissions but I believe that this is inappropriate/off topic for HN

<comment><USER14> Please provide reasoning as to why if you are going to claim that this article is not appropriate for HN.

I did not see anything in it that would be a red flag.

<comment><USER13> It's pure politics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you actually read the article and the many citations, it's a strong data- based approach. If you only read the title or skim, or just react emotionally then it could hit you the wrong way. All of which is to say that this is an important issue, it's presented well and with sensitivity, and it's just the kind of thought-provoking article called for in the guidelines.

That it's already flagged off the front page is a credit to no one.

A selection of some of the embedded links from the piece:

[https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/amendment- proce...](https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/amendment- process/reader-friendly-amendments/20161219_rf_proposed.pdf)

[https://www.ussc.gov/research/research-reports/criminal- hist...](https://www.ussc.gov/research/research-reports/criminal-history-and- recidivism-federal-offenders)

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3793850/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3793850/)

[https://academic.oup.com/aler/article/17/1/127/212179](https://academic.oup.com/aler/article/17/1/127/212179)

[https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and- pu...](https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and- publications/research-publications/2017/20171114_Demographics.pdf)

<comment><USER16> _If you actually read the article and the many citations, it's a strong data- based approach._

As a review of the federal sentencing guidelines status quo, sure. As a source of proposed remedies, no.

I didn't go into the article looking for an argument that there were problems with that system and the application of it. I had prior knowledge there, and fleshing it out further wasn't my only reason to read this.

I went into the article looking for the proposed remedies (and a ounce of hope that they wouldn't be as hollow as the headline suggested). If they had limited the scope of the article to the problem they wish to describe, I'd agree with you. But the headline and the "lol, trump" paragraphs aim the article higher. Those aspects don't stick to the tough data-driven no-nonsense image fivethrityeight tries to convey.

Lies, damn lies and statistics.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Startup world -- is there any chance for us not based in SF? - <AUTHOR>

Do foreigners have a chance at getting funded if they're not based in the Silicon Valley ? <comment><USER2> Yes, there are other growing tech areas in the world including where I live and work: Charleston, SC which as been referred to as "Silicon Harbor".

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, we're based in Berlin and things here are not at all comparable to the US. We were thinking of moving to SF for fundraising and bizdev -- however the move overhead seems a bit too much.

Can you recommend incubators/accelerators based on Charleston ? a quick gsearch revealed a few, but can't seem to find successful startups graduating from them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Of course.

Silicon Prairie is booming right now. Kansas City, Nebraska, Iowa, etc all have people both investing in companies and starting companies.

Invest Nebraska, for example, will give you $50,000 if you provide 50% from other sources (So you'd need to find $25,000 on your own before they'll give their $50K to your company. )

</comment><comment><USER4> Your question has several aspects to it. Get funded where? in SV? or in the US generally?

Cambridge, MA is an option - there is a great ecosystem here. Although my understanding is that east coast investors are more "conservative" than west coast early-stage investors and VCs.

</comment><comment><USER5> The East Bay is very close. Anyone getting funded in Oakland/Emeryville?

My friends in Portland and New York seem to think things aren't quite as "crazy" out there.

</comment><comment><USER6> Colorado, and specifically Boulder is starting to build a pretty strong startup community...</comment>


Chrome and Safari extensions to view AMP versions on the desktop - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/edlea/DesktopAMP <comment><AUTHOR> The timing of Google's AMP project is especially interesting considering the recent attention ad blockers have received.

By limiting the functionality of pages, AMP makes them load faster, but also allows publishers to include ads. The ads however, can't run JavaScript (or Flash) and so should be a lot less obnoxious.

There's no reason to only use AMP on mobile though - AMP content renders equally well, and fast, on the desktop. These extensions for Safari and Chrome will redirect to AMP URLs for content that has them.

<comment><USER2> In practice it's after the content has loaded.. so you get the lack of advertising and junk but.. a decent increase in load speed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Using this means `ampproject.org` will be able to build a profile of your browsing history to any of the AMP partners' web sites.

I suppose referrer spoofing could help mitigate this, but then I suppose other browser fingerprinting techniques, if any, could counter this. Bottomline, having one server contribute resources to all the pages you visit is a significant threat to privacy.

Just using a competent blocker nowadays easily takes care of the page load speed issues -- which is the advertised benefit of AMP.

Addendum: basically, if you are already using an extension which purpose is to reduce privacy exposure, installing this extension (DesktopAMP) is self- defeating.

</comment><comment><USER4> So the AMP project just launched (with apparently unclear benefits and future outlook) and already BBC and BuzzFeed are publishing content using it.

Did Google specifically work with them on it? What are they getting from supporting it now? Are they just being paid?

<comment><USER5> At the risk of becoming somewhat conspiracy-theorist-like, a possible benefit might be this: (from the ampproject.org FAQ)

 _How will advertising work on Accelerated Mobile Pages? (...) As part of that, those involved with the project are also engaged in crafting Sustainable Ad Practices to insure that ads in AMP files are fast, safe, compelling and effective for users._

If Google should at one point choose to block all non-AMP-compliant ads in Chrome, it might be a good idea to get into the boat early when "AMP- compliant" is still in the process of being defined.

<comment><USER6> It's even better idea to boycott it. Embrace-extend-extinguish may work for a big player but it will harm everyone else. We've been there before.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> AMP idea sounds good but it does not convince me that it is mandatory to include amp.js via CDN. Why not via bower or other package manager? It it also clear that Google Will push it by giving higher search ranking to sites that implement AMP, and also has a partnership with Google. In fact I am working as a consultant for an italian newspaper and their competitor was contacted by Google to be an early adopter and partner.

Aside that it looks ok, and probably I will make my blog AMP compliant.

<comment><USER8> _AMP idea sounds good but it does not convince me that it is mandatory to include amp.js via CDN. Why not via bower or other package manager?_

I think the point is that amp.js will be preloaded anyway, so including it in your package manager means it is downloading content it already has.

<comment><USER7> I don't get your point, I'll try to explain better. I mean, instead of an amp.js link to a CDN, doing in my project

. bower install amp

and serving it statically from my server. Why not? Maybe cause Google want to create an audience of people using AMP on their devices.

<comment><USER8> _Why not?_

Because it's wasted bandwidth. AMP can easily intercept the CDNed version and serve a cached copy. If it's part of your bower build, it can't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The README is a bit confusing as to the purpose of the extension until you read the linked site explaining what AMP is: [https://www.ampproject.org/](https://www.ampproject.org/). This tech post also helps a bit: [https://www.ampproject.org/how-it- works/](https://www.ampproject.org/how-it-works/)

My first impression is that the whole thing is kind of a gross hack on top of HTML. I get that there's a lot of work you don't need to do when you do it this way, but this likely won't survive long.

We have a perfectly good container format called Atom that could have done the job here. Instead of hacking and slashing at HTML, why not define an AMP markup language and well-specify the transformation to HTML?

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't really get AMP. It proposes increasing page load speeds by limiting what content you can add - no JS, custom fonts, etc... is it really that surprising that a page with no JS will load quicker than one with? If I just strip out the JS from my page, why do I need AMP?

<comment><USER10> From my quick reading,. So that Google still gets paid in an Apple adblocked world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Yet another way to rub their native app in my face before I can even get to their web app.

</comment><comment><USER12> Chrome Web Store reports 0 users have donwloaded the app so far... what a hype.

<comment><USER13> Not too surprising given the permissions require complete access to everything. Not gonna trust a random extension not to steal all my logins.

<comment><USER14> While I totally understand your concern, it's not too hard to view the contents of a Chrome extension before installing: [https://gist.github.com/paulirish/78d6c1406c901be02c2d](https://gist.github.com/paulirish/78d6c1406c901be02c2d)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can we please stop pretending that this has anything to do with loading pages faster?

Stop breaking the web. It's stupid. You can try to just shove the ads down someone's throat but you're in for a surprise, again. Any attempt to force it will actually hurt the advertising. People don't hate ads. People hate obnoxious, obtrusive ads that bloat the page to the point of making it completely useless and the whole experience fruitless frustration.

Non-obtrusive ads work just fine. I know that for a fact, they pay my bills.</comment>


iPhone Disappointment Hammers Suppliers - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-25/iphone-disappointment-hammers-suppliers-fuels-taiwan-outflows <comment><USER2> What did the expect? Everybody is waiting for the X.</comment>


When Job Hopping Goes Wrong - <AUTHOR> http://jobtipsforgeeks.com/2016/01/06/when-job-hopping-goes-wrong/ <comment><USER2> You can also bet that the HR back channel will get used (off the record) as all the VP's talk to one another.</comment>


It's time to bring empathy out of the closet as a professional skill - <AUTHOR> http://jeffgiesea.com/time-to-bring-empathy-out-of-the-closet confronting and rethinking my biases against empathy as a professional skill. is this a gender thing, you think? <comment><AUTHOR> i wrote this after an experience that made me confront and rethink my bias against empathy as a professional skill. is this a gender thing, you think?</comment>


In a Lab Accident, Scientists Create the First-Ever Permanently Magnetic Liquid - <AUTHOR> https://www.livescience.com/66018-permanently-magnetic-liquids.html <comment><USER2> Dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20521875](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20521875)

</comment><comment><USER3> Super skeptical of this

<comment><USER4> Care to elaborate?

<comment><USER5> Magnets have the ability to pull things. This is energy being expended. But we know energy cannot be created, so it must be depleted after some time.

<comment><USER6> ALL permanence is relative, due to entropy, as you tried to say. We still use the word permanent as a useful term.

Permanent, in the headline, is certainly meaning something like a ferrite magnet or ceramic magnet. "Permanent" meaning it does not naturally lose it's coercivity in any perceptually measurable way. This is different than saying a substance can't have the coercivity reduced.

> > [https://www.physlink.com/education/askexperts/ae472.cfm](https://www.physlink.com/education/askexperts/ae472.cfm)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why to learn Flask over Django? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> What do you want to know that isn't available from many of existing sources, like [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=flask+django](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=flask+django) .

</comment><comment><USER3> IMO:

Django leads you to 'Hey, I wrote an app with a database' and then it gets in the way when you scale up.

Flask is definitely service-first.

If you wanted an ORM <-> DB in your service, you could go Flask+SQLAlchemy.</comment>


More Workers Start to Quit - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704113504575264432377146698.html

<comment><USER2> This is probably in part due to increased percentage of workers taking jobs they didn't want (but needed) durring the recession.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks more like musical chairs; the economy stopped and everyone grabbed a seat. Although, I switched jobs in November 2007, August 2008, and December 2009. It seems if you have a technical degree the job outlook hasn't really skipped a beat.

<comment><USER4> You switched jobs three times in three years? It sounds like you voluntarily changed jobs. Was that the case? If so, are you concerned about marking yourself as a job hopper?

<comment><USER3> No. Successful projects don't look bad. If anything I hope it helps me stay clear of companies that would assume otherwise and fail to contact my former bosses used as references. I stayed 4 years at the job before those 3. My current job I told them up front in the interview I planned to stay for 2-5 depending on the amount of growth. Honesty seems to go farther than loyalty IMO.

<comment><USER5> Let me preface by saying that I haven't been in a position to hire someone.

However, I think switching jobs a fair amount can even be a benefit. It depends on what your references say. If they really think highly of you, it's not only a good reference, but also says that you really impressed someone in a short amount of time. In other words, you learned what was needed and were productive very quickly.

Now, you can certainly argue, "why would I hire someone who will only be here a year and half?", but if that person is a great person, they're going to produce more than a lot of people would be in 2 or 3 years.

Maybe, I'm just biased and think that the best people like to change it up a lot to keep things interesting.

<comment><USER4> I'm replying to both parent and grandparent comment. I'm really trying to be helpful here and not rain on your parade.

Do you expect to find a job in the future by submitting your resume? If not, then you can happily ignore what I have to say.

I run part of a growing software operation. As part of my current role, I've looked through well over 500 resumes to fill a variety of positions over the past few months. This isn't my primary task. This is just one of my many responsibilities. As such I have to develop filters to assess a resume to see if we are going to phone screen or pass. If we don't have strong filtering, then we would wind up overloading our staff with phone screening. They won't have enough time to do their "real" work. So we need to err on the side of caution and accept false negatives and skip over some capable folks because they fail a filter. Is this fair? no. Is this a reality? Yes. There is only so much time in the day. I'm not going to overload my staff and I don't want to spend my own nights reading resumes and holding phone screens.

So although you are a unique and wonderful snowflake who may be on the far right of the performance bell curve, if you've hopped from job to job, I won't really know why by looking at your resume. I will just see a red flag that you might be a flake, you might get scared at commitment or have poor staying power when the going gets tough, or you might have trouble getting along with people. Your 2 page resume is probably not going to address those concerns. If your resume is much longer than 2 pages, I'm going to find an excuse to mark pass on it to for a variety of reasons (but that is another story).

I'll give your resume the 2-3 minutes attention I can and mark pass and go on to the next resume.

<comment><USER6> Your filter sucks. Not from a fairness point of view, but from a you're-not- doing-your-job-very-well point of view.

In my experience, length of stay doesn't correlate accurately with technical skill at all. It's often quite the opposite - 3-5 years of experience at BigCo. with lots of TLAs means that you couldn't find a better job elsewhere. Ditto if they've worked 12 months in a crappy PHP shop and couldn't hack it. If someone's worked 3 jobs in 3 years, with growing responsibility in each position, and a mix of technologies, that's generally a good sign.

I've also seen awesome programmers, with crappy resumes (ie. badly formatted, with all of the good stuff at the end). If you're filtering on anything other than "do they sound like a good/great programmer", then you're missing out on some good people. Try other mechanisms, like networking and code screening if your workload is too high.

<comment><USER7> "length of stay doesn't correlate accurately with technical skill at all"

They're not _looking_ for technical skill - at least, not as a primary factor. They're _looking_ for people who will stick around even when things get crappy, will put up with internal political maneuverings, people who will grit their teeth and deal with annoying coworkers and will tend to stay even when there's better short term offers.

For the company this is a win on a number of levels. Less cost of retraining new hires and the lost productivity that comes with new people entering a shop. Less need to get institutional knowledge out of people and in to documented systems. Freedom to experiment with new directions, because if things go south, they'll have a 'loyal' team who will stick around anyway.

These aren't necessarily good _or_ bad, just how it is.

So, keep that in mind. Companies often _are not_ looking for top-notch software skills, but a 'whole package', and they'll way often settle for 'good enough' on the whole package, even if it means average software skills.

<comment><USER6> Except that it's a false economy, and rarely works that way in practice.

Either you have decent technical talent, or the dead sea effect. If your workplace is mediocre, and you're good - you'll leave. The only people who "stick around when things get crappy" are the people who have to - either for life reasons or because they can't find a better job anywhere else.

Your company might win in the short term, but once you've gone too far down that path, you'll start losing and never recover.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Could also be that employees took advantage of the situation, laying off people and working the remaining ones harder, who couldn't just quit because their prospects elsewhere weren't much better.

</comment><comment><USER5> I definitely get the feeling the tech job market is transitioning. I should say that the market never really died, but there was a noticeable slowdown during the recession (you could find a job, but not necessarily the exact job you wanted at the salary you wanted).

Just in the past month without looking for a job, I've had about three sort of "prospects" get thrown at me. I decided to interview with one place and actually have an offer right now. On the other hand, I feel like their offer is pretty low and I'll probably decline so maybe some employers are still stuck with a mentality from 6-12 months ago (Admittedly, I have the luxury of already having a job that I can stick with).

<comment><USER9> Same here. Definite pickup in recruiter spam as well.

Hard decision coming re: lifestyle freedom vs tech challenge and career growth.

Hopefully, the more general job market will be picking up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Where I work this phenomenon has been spurred by the company using the recession as an excuse to cut benefits, low-ball employees on salary, and deny performance-based raises.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm an underpaid massive corporate's cog, dealing with stuff I have no interest in. That's why I'm gonna quit and start something on my own.

<comment><USER12> Congratulations - I did that two weeks ago and feel nothing but great for making the decision! If you're capable and have some bridge money, just make the jump and don't look back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I suppose this is good news.

<comment><USER14> ...for unhappy employees. It is very bad news for employers that are starting to reap what they sowed.

<comment><USER15> Much like the cratering in housing properties, I prefer to look on the positive side: if markets didn't occasionally send signals that bad ideas have negative consequences, we'd have no incentive to improve our (broken) systems.

If your company is built on your employees giving you salaryman-like loyalty and on you treating them like expendable interchangeable cogs, your company urgently needs market feedback.</comment></comment></comment>


PWAs: The State of Installability in 2020 - <AUTHOR> https://www.voorhoede.nl/en/blog/the-state-of-installability/ <comment><USER2> I guess my question is, why is Chrome the only platform seemingly which will let me install PWAs? I'm a Firefox user, I want to install PWAs, and _ideally_ , I'd like them to run using Firefox's engine instead of Chrome.</comment>


Choosing NoSQL For The Right Reason - <AUTHOR> http://blog.fatalmind.com/2011/05/13/choosing-nosql-for-the-right-reason/

<comment><USER2> There are two main reasons to choose NoSQL.

The first, aimed at every developer/application out there, is that some NoSQL solutions (document stores being the most obvious to me) have less friction with OO languages. In other words, they are simply more productive to work with. Embedded types, arrays as first class objects, and schemaless design all help you write simpler infrastructure code that takes less time to write, test and maintain.

The second reason is that some NoSQL solutions provide specialized features/capabilities. For example, what you can do with an [Ordered] Set in Redis simple isn't possible with relational databases of moderate (say 100K rows) size. You either have to lower your requirements (not real time), or increase your hardware. There are various examples...Solr does better indexing, Hadoop does better data processing....MongoDB does good logging and geospatial stuff.

The right way to look at it, imo, is to see RDBMS as specialized systems. Most people should almost always opt for a more productive general purpose solution upfront (say MongoDB), and then only turn on a specialized supplementary system (say Hadoop, or PostgreSQL) when they have those specialized needs.

Choose SQL for the right reasons.

<comment> St-Clock The first part of your post made sense until you said "The right way to look at it, imo, is to see RDBMS as specialized systems".

RDBMS have a lot more features and support many more usage scenarios out of the box than any NoSQL systems and SQL offers more features as a query language than any other NoSQL query languages.

Of course, NoSQL query languages are simpler than SQL by design because the programmer is expected to write a program or a script for complex queries instead of using the query language. But then, you have to write your own execution plan, and think about atomicity and consistency, etc.

NoSQL are clearly the specialized systems, not the general ones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Here's some NoSQL differences: <http://kkovacs.eu/cassandra-vs-mongodb-vs- couchdb-vs-redis>

It's outdated though (MongoDB stable is 1.8.1 already).

</comment><comment><USER4> One of the benefits of NoSQL is supposedly that you can change your schema on the dime and not suffer from it. I'm finding that you just have to plan for different things up front. For example, most NoSQL databases are awful at querying and to get things that are easy in SQL you have to plan ahead in NoSQL. To do a count in Redis, for example, you have to use INCR on a key to keep a count.

One gripe I have is that NoSQL is becoming the default by most PaaS providers. I have a Duostack account and they offer 3 database choices: Redis, Mongo, and MySQL. In their documentation they recommend using persistencejs which doesn't work with the new versions of node.

</comment><comment><USER5>
      Honestly, if I would have to develop a revision control
      system, I wouldn't take an SQL database as back-end.

But then, suddenly, Fossil, which seems to be doing pretty okay. (Admittedly, it does a lot more than manage blobs.) <http://fossil- scm.org/index.html/doc/trunk/www/index.wiki>

</comment><comment><USER6> I wish there was an SQL option to cause a fatal error if it needs to do a table scan. This would be very useful on test systems, at least.

NoSQL forces discipline which is a good thing, preventing "late" performance optimization when in production.

<comment><USER7> That would be nearly useless in my opinion.

If you have a table with four rows in it, would you like the database to give you errors when you do a full scan on it?

What you want is an option to throw errors when a query takes too long to execute and most products already have this in the form of a statement timeout parameter.

On a separate note, the balance between "late" optimization and "premature" optimization is thin indeed... These test systems need to run with the same data and on the same hardware as your main database to give meaningful results, so it's generally unavoidable to do some kind of performance tweaking on the already deployed code. And of course as the data distribution and its amount changes, you need to keep on optimizing...

<comment><USER8> The point is that when your table has 4 rows in it, it doesn't matter if you do a full table scan. Wait until you deploy your app and that table now has 4,000,000 rows in it.. then you have a problem.

In MongoDB (and maybe others too) there exists an option to fail when doing a table scan so that you know immediately while developing that there exists a potential for things to go awry at some later point. You can fix that now by either re-thinking your data structure, re-thinking your query, or adding appropriate indexes.

MySQL's slow query log is good for reactive development instead of proactive development.

I think its an indispensable feature.

<comment> St-Clock Errr... With a typical RDBMS, doing a full table scan depends on the current stats (e.g., number of rows, are the stats current, state of the index, possibility to use an index, presence of cached data, previous query performance etc.). It does not depend only on the query and the data structure, so it is near __impossible __at development time to be certain that a table scan will occur during production. In fact, a table scan might occur today and not tomorrow for the same query, but with different data.

Many developers have been burned by trying to optimize their queries and indexes too early. The query planner, although sometimes unpredictable, is generally better than developers at predicting the performance of a particular execution plan. Table scans are also preferable in certain situations.

Relying on the fact that RDBMS have sophisticated query planner (as opposed to MongoDB) is not a sign of "reactive development". It just means that you should test your queries (and your indexes) with close-to-production data, and, as the data grows and evolves, continue to test, because the best execution plan might change.

<comment><USER6> Slower query using indexes is better than randomly using table scans depending on statistics, ...

At least for interactive apps, NoSQL wins.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Will cashiers continue to exist? - <AUTHOR> http://andrewmcafee.org/2011/12/mcafee-retail-cashier-automation/

<comment><USER2> This is interesting because it is a great example of how technology is in the process of automating the world out of jobs. That is not a complaint mind you; it's simply an important indicator of the change taking place in the world at the moment. With every passing year, new, more advanced technologies become available and the ones from the year before get cheaper and with artificial intelligence and automation technology becoming more and more powerful and capable, I am 100% certain that most "dumb" jobs - the kind for which low wages are paid due to the lower skills required, are going to become obsolete and replaced by technology. This means we'll go through an ever-more-apparent period of politicians becrying the losses of jobs, the need to create new jobs and so forth and whatever they try, they will fail because jobs lost due to automation are going to dwarf those lost due to economic/recession-related reasons. Personally I think this will eventually bring about something of a new age where the masses (the 99%) end up forcing in a new paradigm surrounding how we live and work. I am not sure what that would look like, but it is certainly inevitable.

<comment><USER3> All automation is predicated on a machine being cheaper and more reliable than a human. As the cost of energy rises in coming decades, I'm expecting that we'll discover that some forms of automation only make sense in a world where conventional petroleum is dirt cheap.

Automatic checkout only takes electricity, so that'll probably be with us for quite a while. But manufacturing jobs will return to North America once it no longer makes sense to ship in consumer goods from east Asia. And I expect that as agriculture becomes more locally-oriented, there will be a lot of labour jobs associated with that—especially for tasks that might have been automated at the industrial scale, but are cheaper done by human hands at a farm 1/100th the size.

<comment><USER2> That's the wildcard though isn't it? Some, such as yourself, decry this form of futurism because it is predicated on the assumption that energy will become more expensive. I personally think it will become cheaper and personally am open to the possibility of breakthroughs making it negligibly cheap. See <http://www.bloomenergy.com/products/>, <http://ecat.com>. E-cat may or may not be real, but I do see interesting possibilities as a lot more time and research starts to be put into these sorts of technologies as conventional fuel becomes more expensive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Counterpoint: Automated checkouts suck balls.

A significant portion of the time I attempt to use one of these, the machine gets stuck in some kind of nonsense about putting merchandise in the bagging area, or explicitly asks me to see a clerk or something for assistance, or otherwise basically does not work. I only use these now if there is a big line at the humans. I'm sure this all sounds like I'm just an incompetent checkout user. FWIW, I worked for a summer as an actual human cashier at a grocery store. I think I did a reasonably competent job at it.

<comment><USER5> They really need to get the near field communications stuff in there - eventually you should be able just push your basket, yourself and your wallet/phone through a scanner and everything gets tallied and charged.

<comment><USER6> I would like to see how this scanner tells the difference between a plum and a nectarine. Or stack of DVDs ranging from $9.99 to $19.99. This seems incredibly complicated with the existing "throw all of your groceries in the cart" process. I think that it would much easier (and cheaper all around) to design a warehouse where you give a computer your list and robot goes to the back and to fulfill your order.

<comment><USER7> That would not work very well with fresh vegetables and fruits: what people like varies a great deal, as does the quality on the shelf.

Case in point: my wife adores green bananas: can't abide them after they begin ripen. How do you tell a robot picker 'only pick the florescent green ones, please'?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I love using self checkout. I can almost always checkout faster than I would if I went to a lane with an actual cashier. Most of the time it's an older person that tries to make painfully awkward conversation with me instead of just scanning my shit.

This works decently well in a college town where most people are younger and educated. When I visit my parents and do self checkout it's maddening. Everyone is constantly setting things down in the bagging area or taking stuff off early. Or the worst thing happens and they try to pay with a check. Another problem is when a purchase requires cashier interaction, like buying alcohol. If lots of people are doing it at once (college town) it can really slow things down.

Eventually this will totally take over, but it will be awhile before everyone accepts it.

It also kind of stinks

<comment><USER9> Hmmm... A lot of time I have really appreciated the human contact with a cashier. Even now, despite being practically physically wired to computers at all time, I still avoid the self-checkout where possible. (It might help that the local supermarket is staffed by hot Polish girls)

<comment><USER10> Maybe especially because you spend time in front of computers? I do like to avoid computers in my off work time, so prefer human cashiers (as well as film cameras not digital etc).

<comment><USER9> Maybe indeed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As much as I wish we had nice fast automated checkout technology right now, having a shop like this would drive me mad.

These things have become infamous here in the UK for "Unexpected Item in Bagging Area" and similar.

What would be really nice is RFID or similar instant scanning of everything in your basket (a local library has this for piles of books), but that may be a way off yet.

<comment><USER2> It's just a case of technological progress. I find these things (I live in the UK too) work for me 98% of the time and when they don't, you only need one store assistant amongst 8-10 self-service checkouts in a busy supermarket to assist customers when these issues crop up. Ultimately the technology will get good enough to alleviate this for the most part as well.

<comment><USER12> Not my experience (I shop in Sainsbury's mostly). I get the "unexpected item" problem almost every single time. Cashiers in my town are so used to it, they don't even look at the baskets anymore - I actually got confused and packed one item without scanning one day - approved with no questions asked (I scanned it later, got another weight error, approved again). Those are becoming as useful as SSL warnings or UAC - just click ok, because in 99% of cases, it's bogus. That's pretty much all they do - almost all the time they're near checkouts, they're busy accepting errors.

There are also products which do change weight. Electronic protection on clothes or wine bottles weight enough to confuse the scales sometimes. Condoms are packed in a plastic container which is taken off after purchase, but the weight is set for the condom pack only. I also get the error quite often because I'm thirsty/hungry and empty half of the bottle, or half a pack of brioches while shopping. (yes, that's my fault but I don't see any reasonable automated solution for it)

Then again, even with all those issues, I can still self checkout faster when doing small shopping alone (15+ items usually means some repacking so I think it's faster only when I'm there with my gf).

<comment><USER2> Maybe you need more practice ;)

Seriously though, every now and again I've noticed some supermarkets upgrading to newer machines and invariably the newer machines are much less prone to these sorts of issues. In one supermarket where I sometimes shop, I had experienced the difference before and after the upgrade and it was significant.

<comment><USER12> Ok, maybe that's the difference then. I don't think Bath's Sainsbury's got an upgrade of checkout machines since ~2005/6 (they look the same, there's just more of them now).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Counterpoint: Auto-cashiers have been in existence for a decade, and some chains have decided to replace at least some self-service stations with human clerks:

[http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/supermarket-self- checkouts-...](http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/supermarket-self-checkouts- being-replaced-with-people/)

</comment><comment><USER5> I would say cashiers will continue to exist for a long time but the number of cashier jobs will decrease dramatically especially as near field communication becomes cheaper and cheaper. The reason I say they will still exist in some form is that there are probably a small number of cashier scenarios that will be very difficult to automate in the near term.

I don't like to see anyone out of a job but I think eliminating these jobs may be a good thing for society in the long term. I'm not sure ultimately how satisfying repetitive, automate-able work actually is to anyone. I'd say the more we can push society into having to go into creative intellectual disciplines, the better off we'll be. I'm not arguing that that out of work cashier is going to start studying to be a scientist but maybe the next generation of would-be cashiers will realize they need to hit the books and become something that is more of a satisfying and engaging discipline.

<comment><USER14> There just aren't the 'creative intellectual' jobs, though. Universities can churn out scientists, journalists, artists, designers, programmers and so on. But if we're all creating, who is consuming?

We already have a surplus of people with creative industries degrees (especially media-related, TV, film and so on) who work in call centres, checkouts and other unrelated jobs because the demand isn't there for their skills. We don't need thousands of new radio producers every year, but we have them coming off the end of the university conveyor belt.

I don't know what the answer is, but I see a quite scary future if these jobs which have provided a low, but livable, income for millions are eliminated. We can't all be at the top of the tree.

<comment><USER5> Good points... I think its a social problem that we in the US have been failing at especially during the last few decades. Right now we have this dynamic in society where the all the spoils go to the 'winners' even though everyone is contributing in some form (usually by means of competition). This ends up encouraging somewhat of a macro-trend where everyone works very very hard to beat off others to get a piece of the pie but most inevitably end up failing to get wealthy and live 'luxuriously'. As a result of this feast or famine attitude, people end up getting over devoted to work and labor while ignoring many other very important aspects of life (in the sense of actually living)... culture, child-rearing, fun, relaxation, etc. (- note that these are the descriptors of 'luxury')

I think as a society we shouldn't be looking at automation as "Oh my god that machine is going to eat those people's jobs" - we should be looking at it as "Wow, we collectively don't have to do that crap anymore" Similarly to how somebody looks at a Roomba and says goodbye to pushing a vacuum around for an hour. But what fucks this all up - the distribution of money. Because the way distribution of money works in America, we look at it as those cashiers are now going to starve and die.

MBA thinking has morphed us into thinking life is about production and consumption (full stop). Its not (full stop). The majority of the population is relatively starved of the 'other things' in life and we should be reevaluating how automation can help us all focus on the things that make real life a better experience. Unfortunately were too busy all miserably hoarding money from each other like a bunch of dumb apes.

So back to your question about excess creative production - we shouldn't care about who consumes it in an idealistic scenario. If people genuinely enjoy the creative process, they should be doing it because they enjoy it and hopefully that can be more afforded by automation.

<comment><USER2> The flow of money is a very important point I think, and I think the global elite who are somewhat dependent on the existing world economic structure are going to ultimately see it forcibly evolved into something new over time. If nearly everything "dumb" can be automated in the future, there will simply not be the practical requirement for everyone to have a job and that leaves the existing structure as a relic of an obsolete past. Society will have to come up with new ways to think about the majority of its citizen's roles within itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> And then when there are no cashiers and customer service is at an time low someone will say hey let's put dedicated staff on the line! Customers will be happier and sales might go up!

Honestly we need to strike a balance.

<comment><USER8> I absolutely hate dealing with cashiers. I'll wait in a longer self checkout just to avoid them.

It seems like they always try to make small talk with me or they're just slow at their job. I just want to get in and out as fast as possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The only place I've seen this is Fresh and Easy stores, other stores have automated check out but still have the ones with cashiers too. I think it works great at Fresh and Easy, they have an attendant who goes around, as needed, to check Id's for alcohol purchases, etc. I've never had to wait in line at one of these stores, they aren't all that crowded but I still think it definitely makes things go faster.

</comment><comment><USER17> They built a new Walmart here about 7 yeas ago. Going with the current trend, it was about 60% self checkout. Same with the three local Albertsons supermarkets. All of them have now removed their self checkout stations, and replaced them with cashiers. I've heard it was due to rampant theft.

</comment><comment><USER15> For big business the feed back loop should not be just sales.

</comment><comment><USER18> I like self checkout. I would prefer a checker if they're competent (Costco) or interesting (crazy old Asian dude at the Rockridge Safeway in Oakland), but usually they're zoned out and slow, or make inane comments.

What amazes me about self checkout is how creatively awful the kiosks are. For example, receipts come out on the left, coin change comes out the middle, while cash change comes out from a black-on-black compartment hidden below the scanner.</comment>


Plotly for R - <AUTHOR> https://cpsievert.github.io/plotly_book/index.html <comment><USER2> Nice reference. Thanks for sharing.</comment>


Rails-like console for any Rack based ruby web app - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/sickill/racksh

<comment><USER2> Cool.</comment>


AV SQUID: Enjoy YouTube Simply Like Using iTunes - <AUTHOR> http://avsquid.com/

<comment><USER2> I don't really see how this is anything like using YouTube like iTunes. But before I even looked, I wondered, would I even want to use YouTube like I use iTunes?

what is the benefit of this as a user? I don't have that clear. Initially.

Your description doesn't "youtube the fun easy way..." and all the other text on your site doesn't tell me anything about it or why I would use it.

It took me a bit looking around (which most users won't give you) to figure out that you're using youtube as a music player. Oh!!! Why didn't you say so? Don't say "like using iTunes", tell me, "Use YouTube to find and play music!" (like itunes if you like), but you have to explain that to the user. Remember, iTunes isn't just music anymore, it's apps, movies, tv, etc.

Not meaning to be harsh, but your interface is horrible. Sure, I can play without typing, but it isn't just not nice. Go copy a design from somewhere else and use that. Copy iTunes if you like it (I think it's horrible), Zune is a much better UI, and most people won't recognize it because they don't use it, or do something like spotify.

At least you've launched something (which is better than many people), but you've just got started, still lots of work to do.

<comment><AUTHOR> The benefits are nothing to download, no searching, and less typing. I will be the first to admit the design really sucks. But the core functionality needs to be complete before we start decorating. The design and user interface are the next big challenges I'm about to focus on.

<comment><USER2> I still don't think you've nailed it. 'nothing to download'? I don't ever have to download to watch a video on youtube. Grooveshark let's me listen without downloading or signing up. No search is great if the user can find what they're looking for, but I don't feel like you've nailed that yet.

I'll have to disagree with you on design. Core functionality isn't functional if people don't use it. Design is not decoration. Think UX not UI. It is hugely important to the success of your start-up. I know. I created a site that people raved about the design and was growing nicely. I redesigned it to add some 'functionality' I thought people would appreciate, and people hated the new design and that growth came to a halt.

Good luck with the UX, my suggestion is still to stick to something people are familiar with, don't go re-inventing the wheel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is my start-up I've been working on for about a year and a half. Feel free to leave feedback/suggestions in the comments. Yes, after about a year and a half, it sure would be nice to get a friggin' angel round.</comment>


It's time to break up with VR - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnet.com/news/its-time-to-break-up-with-vr/ <comment><USER2> Even when untethered headsets come into play, and even when hardware performance gets better and smaller to allow that, I think VR headsets will always have the problem regarding locomotion as described in the article. At least in a consumer use case, eventually a wall, or a desk, or a door, or furniture will inevitably be bumped against. It may be made better in the future, but I'm not sure if said level of better will be enough to ever feel fully immersed.

Perhaps until a better VR comes in the future, it would be best if there were applications, games, or media that understands its current weaknesses and plays its current strengths. Game scenarios, for example, where players would normally be controlling a vehicle while seated is an immediate example I can think of that would work across--from cheaper Daydreams or Gear VRs to higher- end rigs. Social areas that utilized teleportation for moving, but allowed using the controller for arm movements to feel like you're 'interacting' with someone in a manner more personal than just hearing voice through a microphone or text on a screen. Things like that. That way the 'craze' may last longer until something better happens.

</comment><comment><USER3> It seems to me that the parallels between VR and 3D cinema are pretty striking. Both technologies that had an original heyday decades ago, but both ran out of steam. Then in the past decade or so they both got resurrected, largely on the promise that _if they worked well_ they'd be super cool, and lots of big companies really invested in them on that premise. But the sad truth is, they don't work all that well, and the actual experience of them is (almost) always a little disappointing. So eventually, even the huge hype generated by the big companies isn't enough to sustain them, and they sink back into obscurity... until the next time someone remembers the dream but forgets the reality.

<comment><AUTHOR> Couldn't agree more with the 3D parallel. It seemed this was the hot new piece of tech the last few years that we promised would be improved with future investment.

>You're still tethered to a computer or console via a big cable. A cable that you're definitely going to trip over, fight with or yank out of its ports on a regular basis

This is still one of the biggest flaws. If the VR experience is supposed to be submersive, it is almost impossible to forget you are connected to a computer when tethered to a massive physical "rope".</comment></comment>


Payroll on Auto Pilot, done in 0 seconds - <AUTHOR> https://zenpayroll.com/blog/payroll-on-auto-pilot/ <comment><USER2> I hope those image macros were intended to be cringe-inducing. Because they are.

<comment><USER3> Yes, and on top of that, you want a payroll service brand to speak to its professionalism and reliability. Not edgy "hipness" (especially if you are failing hard at that aspect).

<comment><USER4> I want to re-assure you that we take our responsibility very seriously. Payroll is a business critical task and we're committed to taking care of all payroll tax calculations, payments, compliance documents and filings for our customers. We have people on our team with 30+ years of experience in payroll compliance at ADP, Paychex and Intuit, and we've securely processed tens of millions of dollars in payroll. Our focus is on bringing the power of modern software to this industry and re-thinking the UX, workflows, automation, etc. while maintaining the security and stability you expect from a payroll product. If you have any questions or feedback, please feel free to send me a note at josh AT zenpayroll DOT com.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been eagerly waiting to use this, but apparently it only works with CA employees.. :(

<comment><USER6> My name is Nick and I work at ZenPayroll. Sorry for the delay - we'll be starting our multi-state rollout next month for a few states with many more to follow afterwards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love this - now I can just set it and forget it. We're customers of ZenPayroll and they've been top notch with everything they've rolled out.

</comment><comment><USER8> So, yeah, Zenpayroll is awesome but the rollout is taking forever.

Disclaimer: I'm in Illinois.

<comment><USER4> We really appreciate your interest! I'm the CEO of ZenPayroll and I want to re-assure you that adding additional States is a top priority for us. We'll be launching support for Texas and Florida next month, with several additional States added each month thereafter. -Josh P.S. Make sure you sign-up at www.zenpayroll.com and we'll notify you when we're available in your State.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Current response from link:

Bad Gateway

The proxy server received an invalid response from an upstream server. Apache Server at zenpayroll.com Port 443

</comment><comment><USER10> Somewhat unrelated rant:

I'm liking zenpayroll so far, but going to a payroll site (even the blog) and getting mixed https/http content raises flags for me.

If the blog doesn't need to be SSL, don't use SSL. If you want the blog to use SSL (it's redirecting), make sure all your external resources are too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for letting us know! fixed :)

<comment><USER10> I saw this a little late, but: Awesome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Zenpayroll is great. I just wish they didn't send me 6 or 7 emails within a 3 day period during the initial signup process reminding me to sign some documents (I hadn't spoken to my other founder to get his okay to use to use the site for our company yet).

</comment><comment><USER12> Any plans for other countries in the near future?

Disclaimer: I live in Australia and my Real Name is Zen

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Zen (love your name!), we're planning to start expanding internationally next year (after we're US-wide). Please sign up at: <https://zenpayroll.com/international>.

<comment><USER12> Will do, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Looking forward to more coverage as well. These guys have a better solution than anyone else out there.</comment>


Passion requires that something makes you angry - <AUTHOR> https://brookeallen.com/2015/01/27/passion-requires-that-you-hate-something/ <comment><AUTHOR> In February, 2014, I shut down a business I'd built and run for 18 years. I took my staff to a Startup Weekend to show them what entrepreneurship looks like, and I wrote about it in Quartz: [http://qz.com/173080/why-i-forced-my- staff-to-attend-startup...](http://qz.com/173080/why-i-forced-my-staff-to- attend-startup-weekend-instead-of-watching-the-super-bowl/)

Someone told me that he thought that only four of the people presenting showed any passion; I was one, and two of the others were employees of mine. (BTW, one of them - my youngest employee - won the weekend and has just recently graduated from Y-Combinator).

That got me thinking about what passion really is, and I've concluded that it isn't good enough merely to "like" something. There needs to be something about the status quo that you dislike so much that you're willing to work at addressing it, even when sometimes the work is so hard you hate every second.

Thoughts please..

<comment><USER2> It's just not true.

Lots of scientists are passionate about discovery. The lack of knowledge in a certain field doesn't always make them angry. It makes them curious. It makes them feel like they're living in the past.

Ego often makes people passionate. They have a drive to fill a void where self esteem should be. I've seen this many times in business. This doesn't always indicate anger -- it can be anxiety or insecurity instead.

I can probably come up with other examples, but you get my point.</comment></comment>


Thousands of refugee children sleeping rough in sub-zero Serbia - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/weather/2017/jan/24/thousands-refugee-children-sleep-rough-sub-zero-serbia-un <comment><USER2> They're neither children nor refugees. Please stop with fake news. We had enough problems in Europe last year because of this. Thanks.</comment>


Kozmo.com Returns Because One Dotcom Bust Wasn't Enough - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/business/2013/09/kozmo-returns/ I hope Joe's taking the reigns again! <comment><USER2> I've definately got some nostalgia for this.

When Kozmo premiered I was at my 2nd or 3rd startup job and I would order my snacks from there so I could keep on banging away at stuff. Spree, Newmans Own pretzels, a Sobe Energy beverage all for the same price as me walking down to the corner store, except without the 10 minutes of exercise. Sometimes I'd buy a DVD or something random. They'd deliver it by bike messenger so they really couldn't have been making money off my deliveries but I was a regular.

Now I tend to work out of home, which is on a Giant hill, pretty sure Kozmo won't deliver to me, or if they do all of the messengers will die of exhaustion.</comment>


Propose HN: HN Marketplace - <AUTHOR>

What up guys,
Why there isn't an "official" HN Marketplace?
Why dont we create a site where you can sell, buy or exchange domains, websites, scripts, services and more.
If someone is interested in building it as a weekend project, I'd love to help designing its UI.
Bonus: HNmarket.com is available.
If you are interested in having this but don't have time to help code it, maybe you can tell us what features you would like it to have.
(Contact information is in my profile) <comment><USER2> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2667815>

<http://hntrades.com/>

Interestingly it has been taken down by its developer Joshua Stein after he was banned from Hacker News - <https://jcs.org/projects/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Coincidentally, I've been working on this idea and I was going to show it today.

Show HN: HNBoard.com - Craigslist for Startup School / Hacker News

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4649863></comment>


How Does MoviePass Make Money? - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/moviepass-second-act/ <comment><USER2> > Helios and Matheson, an analytics company which has a majority stake in > MoviePass

This here is the juice: Big data. The more customers they have, the better - they have validated full names, birthdates, addresses and CC numbers (and most likely also ethnicity) linked with the data when they visited what movie and even if the customers repeatedly visited a movie.

MoviePass has, effectively, four distinct customers:

a) the moviegoers themselves, where MoviePass makes a profit on everyone watching less than 1 movie a month

b) the vast amount of adtech/big data/consumer analytics companies for which this data is a goldmine

c) the movie studios which can (as shown in the article) use MoviePass to promote movies

d) the cinemas which profit off the customers wanting to eat and drink

They have, of course, monetized a) and begun to discover how to monetize c) - it will be interesting if they find a way to monetize the data.

<comment><USER3> Is that data that valuable though? Its not that unique, off the top of my head there are several companies that have similar datasets, Every movie theatre chain, every online movie booking service, every movie review site

<comment><USER2> Yes, because:

\- the theatre chains only have mostly generic datasets (the audience for movie X is mostly young white males) while MoviePass can do far more detailed analysis (and, in theory, could pass detailed questionnaires after you watched a movie, thus gathering more personalized data)

\- online movie booking services (at least in my social bubble) are only used for movies where people think they don't have a chance to get a ticket without an early reservation

\- movie review sites only have tiny bits of data about the readers, and the reviewer dataset is skewed - it only provides data about the people caring enough to do a review.

<comment><USER4> I agree with this mostly. However, the data coming from MoviePass may be flawed. I'm much more likely to see a movie I would never normally pay to see with a MoviePass subscription.

<comment><USER2> > I'm much more likely to see a movie I would never normally pay to see with a > MoviePass subscription.

That is the exact thing that makes the data actually interesting: it removes the risk factor, aka "do I want to see a movie for $12/person and risk that it's trash?", from the viewer's decision process.

<comment><USER5> There's a lot more interesting data to mine there.

I'm a _lot_ more willing to walk out of a movie I didn't pay for. There's not really a way to capture this data right now, but the MoviePass system requires you to have an app on your phone, and check in shortly before the movie, at the theater.

If I was them I'd be looking at putting audio fingerprinting on the phone to determine whether people leave before the movie ends.

<comment><USER6> the app requires a surprising amount of permissions also

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I thought their business model was like a gym: hope that most people won't use it. (Source: I have MoviePass and I'm seeing less than 1 movie per month because I'm too busy :-D)

Instead, this article claims it's:

1\. Studio of movie $M pays MoviePass $X to market it to subscribers.

2\. Subscribers see a movie they otherwise wouldn't pay for. MoviePass eats this cost ($Y).

3\. Subscribers' word-of-mouth network effects bring in extra revenue $E that otherwise wouldn't have come in.

4\. MoviePass stays alive if $E > $X > $Y.

<comment><USER8> MoviePass can't use the gym model because most people actually like going to the movies, it's not aspirational. MoviePass also has much higher cost per visit, since they have to pay full price to AMC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Heads up from a former customer that just cancelled: I was a huge fan 3 months ago, but they've been dropping theaters left and right. Around mountain view, they have gone and dropped both theaters I watch movies in.

In my opinion, this will be a better program if there was a guarantee that theaters will stay for X months.

</comment><comment><USER10> I still remember when movie theaters provided a different experience - and I'm in my late 20's, so it was not that long ago.

Movie theaters became just another living room - people go there chat, comment and eat during the movie just like they were at home. It became such an obnoxious experience, where people are shoved into a room and door is closed.

This goes to say: movie theaters had a lot of distribution costs reduced over the years, and probably even the reform of projectors isn't such a big deal today due to digital distribution.

MoviePass is aiming to give them volume, at a reduced margin - that's how.

<comment><USER11> It depends on the theatre. I only go to a regular movie theatre when I'm back home seeing my parents. I enjoy the theatre experience where you get reclining seats and you get to reserve your seat beforehand. The next step is the dinner and movie experience where you get to both enjoy reserved seating and get food served while you're eating. Those theatres by necessity aren't as crowded and you have a much better experience. The ticket costs for the movie and dinner type places are usually cheaper since they can make it up on food.

We also still have a decent drive in in our area where the sound comes through your fm radio. You can see two new releases there for like $8 a person. You can bring your own food - usually we do take out.

Movie pass is a no go for popular movies for us because you can't use it to reserve movies in advance online.

<comment><USER12> > The ticket costs for the movie and dinner type places are usually cheaper > since they can make it up on food

For some of them, this may be true. However, one I visited in the Midwest put their 'eat & watch' section in an exclusive balcony above the standard seating area and was charging almost double per ticket (along with sub-Applebee's food at Chili's prices). They have apparently been in business for over five years doing this.

I enjoyed the experience, but I ultimately didn't feel it was worth the extra cost, and the sound of silverware on ceramic plates & bowls was a bit distracting. Handheld food and fancy paper/plastic plates and utensils would be how I'd run that operation.

<comment><USER11> I have seen both. I went to a theatre in Miami where you had to pay more for the eat and dine experience and just to be in the lobby.

Where we usually go - Studio Movie Grill - you can usually get a ticket for $5. The prices of the food and the quality is around AppleBeds like you said.

That's true about the silverware, it's never been distracting but another place we go - a small place with about a capacity of 70 that has live music uses paper plates and utensils.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> At least in my case, by continuing to charge me monthly even after I canceled the service. Their customer service is non-existent, so I had to file a dispute with my credit card company to make it stop.

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't quite follow the angle of promoting smaller studios' movies. If I am such a studio, and pay moviepass $100k to push a movie, and then that results in $1M tickets sold thru MoviePass, and I get $500k (or whatever), didn't MoviePass just lose $900k? MoviePass is both the marketing channel AND consumer. The studio has to make a profit and that has to come from somewhere - MoviePass' profit.

<comment><USER15> Ah, but it their customers watched other movies, they would have lost $1M, so it's better. If the intent is to get movie attendance data at any cost (as it seems), getting it at less cost is better.

<comment><USER14> True. How do you know they would've gone to see a movie though?

That's what seems weird about this whole gravy train - the various drivers of the business clash with each other. More movies per person, more data, but more margin loss. Fewer movies per person, more margin, less data. More studio deals, more revenue, less margin.

I think they're exploring various business models and finding where the sustainable value is. Will be interesting to see!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think most people are missing the point here. MoviePass has many ways to monetize from begin to end. It currently has more then 1.5 million subscribers & growing very fast (fastest subscription service growth ever, even faster then netflix). Most people miss the opportunities MoviePass has. It will control the demand & distribution of movies through its subscribers. Movie theater goers have been declining year over year and MoviePass will help reverse this.

It currently makes money by

a) subscriptions $9.95/month b) $2-3 rebate per ticket contracts with about 1000 theaters (5 new contracts a week are signed) c) 20-30% of concession revenue with about 1000 theaters (5 new contracts a week are signed) d) Bought "America Animal" movie rights for North American release at Sundance Festival

</comment><comment><USER17> They also now take cuts from ticket prices and upto a 20% cut from concessions.

More information here: [https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/26/moviepass-pulls-out- of-amc...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/26/moviepass-pulls-out-of-amcs-top- theaters-as-negotiations-fail/)

The article makes it sound like Moviepass now has more leverage than the theatres themselves, which is super interesting.

<comment><USER18> Based on another article I saw, this doesn't seem to be the case with AMC.[1]

Basically, all of MoviePass' subscribers is still a tiny portion of AMC's sales, so they're refusing to share any of their revenue with MoviePass.

[1] [https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/26/16936952/moviepass-amc- th...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/26/16936952/moviepass-amc-theatre-feud- movie-tickets-deceptive-earnings-statement)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> A: It almost certainly doesn't make money.

Since you have to buy the ticket at the theater, they are probably trying to sell analytics re: influencing selection. Good luck with that.

</comment><comment><USER20> [http://www.businessinsider.com/how-does-moviepass-make- money...](http://www.businessinsider.com/how-does-moviepass-make-money-2017-8)

> The same day it announced the $10-a-month plan, MoviePass raised cash by > selling a majority stake to the data firm Helios and Matheson Analytics > Inc.. With a new price-point designed to attract as many subscribers as > possible, MoviePass is hoping to attract a large enough user base so as to > be able to monetize it.

> "If you get a trailer right now for Spiderman on Facebook, Facebook can't > tell if you ever actually go to the movie. We can," he told Wired. "We can > tell if you look at 'Spider-Man' and look at 'Wonder Woman' and 'Mission: > Impossible,' we can tell you exactly what movie you went to out of all three > trailers."

> Farnsworth envisions movie studios using MoviePass' valuable data to do > targeted marketing for their films. Once MoviePass has millions of > subscribers, its ability fill seats can make the difference between a hit > movie or a flop, he explained. MoviePass plans to hold an IPO in March, he > noted.

<comment><USER21> > "If you get a trailer right now for Spiderman on Facebook, Facebook can't > tell if you ever actually go to the movie. We can," he told Wired. "We can > tell if you look at 'Spider-Man' and look at 'Wonder Woman' and 'Mission: > Impossible,' we can tell you exactly what movie you went to out of all three > trailers."

Oh bull. So many people tag themselves in Facebook posts when they go to the movies. Facebook absolutely has enough data to determine this.

<comment><USER22> Maybe for your friend group, but absolutely not mine (20-25). That market is huge for advertisers.

Thar said I can't imagine their losses ever being recouped in ads.

<comment><USER21> Maybe I am mistaken, but I find it hard to believe that if people in that demo are on Facebook enough to see movie trailers there that they wouldn't then post about the movie they just saw.

<comment><USER22> I have about 1000 Facebook friends, most within that age group. About 15 people still post there at all. I know more people using Facebook for college meme groups than for social interaction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> How do so many other companies like this make money? For example, HQ: the live trivia game show app that gives away a few thousand dollars multiple times per day. There's no ads, and no in app purchases. Besides burning through VC money like it's 1998, what's the business model?

<comment><USER24> No ads doesn't mean your data isn't being used for ads. It's likely being sold to orthogonal adtech businesses. i.e. the company collecting the data is rarely the one using it, it usually just sells it.

<comment><USER21> And how well does that work out? My experience with ad targeting is that it's mostly awful. Amazon can track every book I purchase through them, and the ads for books to buy on my Kindle are awful. Facebook has oodles of information about me, and if I turn off AdBlock for a moment there, the ads I see are... diabetes test strips (I do not have diabetes) and something involving Brook Shields that I bet is a total sham. The only online ads I see where data on me, and not just inventory, seems to play a major role is retargeting, where I look at something on Amazon and it's shown to me again in an ad in case I changed my mind about not buying it. The whole adtech industry is in awful shape, and the idea that MoviePass can be profitable by being such a periphery part of the adtech industry is laughable. People will just tell Facebook and Twitter what movies they've seen for free, there's no reason to subsidize movie tickets to get that data. This is a case of "let's spend VC money like water to get enough customers to get a huge valuation and then figure out a business model."

<comment><USER25> I'm curious, does Amazon continue to recommend items you either just bought or are similar to something you recently bought? I get this all the time and it is annoying. It seems like the recommended stuff is related to my searches and doesn't get changed by my purchases.

I think the whole online ad industry is broken. I don't know why people keep pouring money into it. Most people have learned to ignore ads, or they use an ad blocker. I don't care to see an ad for something I already bought.

I doubt a system like this would actually work, but I'd explicitly tell them what kind of products I'm looking for if they asked. This passive "we can get into their mind through searches" doesn't work very well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I wonder how much longer the theater experience will command such a high premium. Beyond a true IMAX experience, the theater doesn't seem to add much value for average movies.

One possible pivot for MoviePass would be to partner with Netflix, Amazon, HBO, or Hulu to run exclusive "members-only" premiers of their content in theaters. I could see some value in the community aspect of the theater for some of the more popular streaming shows.

<comment><USER27> For me, a movie theater is subpar to my apartment. I would much rather watch new releases on a streaming site than shlep to a theater, fight the desire to waste money on bad snacks, and sell my viewing history to god knows who.

<comment><USER28> I have a big screen 4k HDR TV, a 7.1 Dolby Atmos system, and very comfortable recliners.

But I would never consider a movie theater a subpar experience to my condo for any movie worth seeing on the big screen.

Maybe I'm just lucky that I live in Tinseltown and we know how to operate good theaters here, but every major-chain local theater has laser projectors, massive sound systems, and reserved reclining seats. The concession stands offer beer, wine, and cooked foods. Security regularly patrols the theaters during screenings to make sure that people aren't on their phones or talking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> jon-wood At least in the UK each of the big cinema chains runs there own equivalent to this, and they push their staff hard to sell passes because the actual seat costs them a negligible amount of money, and people who "aren't paying" for the seat are more likely to buy food and drink.

</comment><comment><USER29> Is what they are doing even legal? Co-opting movie goers into their debit cards and then using that power to extort the movie theaters for money?

Imagine how much money your bank could make if they started doing this...

<comment><USER29> /s

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Because the marginal cost for a theatre to show a movie is virtually zero.

<comment><USER31> The marginal cost to a theater, sure. But, as the 3rd paragraph points out, _MoviePass_ is paying those theaters full price for each ticket. They're losing money hand over fist.

They can't just solve this by squeezing theaters, either. They're already struggling, if not barely surviving. If MoviePass simply tries to strong-arm them into accepting less than full price, without offering some other source of revenue in return, that's a lose-lose strategy for them. If they fail, they lose their ability to supply customers in that market with the service that they signed up for. If they succeed, they risk bankrupting the people who _actually_ supply their customers in that market with the service that they signed up for, and so they still lose it.

<comment><USER32> If you believe what MoviePass is saying, they're not losing money hand over fist. They claim most people stop going to the movies after the first couple of months. If someone doesn't see 12 movies in a year, they aren't losing money. They say the average is closer to 4.

<comment><USER33> > They claim most people stop going to the movies after the first couple of > months.

Which of course hurts the ads/analytics side of their business. Not going to any movies means little or no data generation.

<comment><USER34> When the subscription price was higher, they have fewer members and the people that signed up went to a lot of movies and MoviePass was losing a lot of money. When the dropped the price, a _lot_ more people signed up and most of these were casual movie goers.

In every way they are better off with two million subscribers that go to 8 movies a year than a hundred and fifty thousand subscribers that go to 25 movies a year.

<comment><USER35> And this is exactly why they pulled out of the top AMC theaters. No surprise they're also the most expensive ones. The AMC at citywalk in LA is almost 20 a ticket for a basic 2d showing.

<comment><USER36> It's apparently not the ticket price that they care about. They removed support for the River East 21 in Chicago, which has 21 screens and shows a lot of foreign and limited releases. You could probably go there every couple of days and see a new movie you haven't seen before. Ticket prices there are actually cheaper than the 600 N. Michigan AMC which they still support. But that theater only has 9 screens and basically only shows blockbusters.

Likewise, the Webster Regal in Chicago is about $3 more per ticket than theater they dropped support for. But they don't carry all the limited/foreign releases that River East does.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


curl cheat.sh – answer to any question in any language on any programming lang - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/chubin/cheat.sh <comment><AUTHOR> Most important things:

        curl cht.sh/:help
        curl cht.sh/language/question for question about language
        ?Q to switch comments off
        ?T to switch syntax highlighting off
        append /1 for the next question

Special client:

        cht.sh

It supports tab completion, and so on.

You can find more examples on the project page:

[https://github.com/chubin/cheat.sh](https://github.com/chubin/cheat.sh)

Vim integration: [https://github.com/dbeniamine/cheat.sh- vim](https://github.com/dbeniamine/cheat.sh-vim) is very cool, you can make the queries (and access the results) directly from Vim.

Alternatives:

        howdoi (need to be installed to be used; uses google and stackoverflow)
        how2 (the same)

Cheat sheets tools:

        cheat (not cheat.sh; it is another project)
        tldr (need to be installed).

cheat.sh provides access both to the cheat sheets and to programming language answers.</comment>


Amazon's private label business: 94% market-share of all batteries sold online - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/16/amazons-private-label-business-is-booming-thanks-to-device-sales-expanded-fashion-lines/ <comment><USER2> The title doesn't match the article. 94% is an insane claim. Even 10% would be.</comment>


Lessons learned growing a team for my side project - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@yoojinlim/lessons-learned-growing-a-team-for-my-side-project-2b7cf34978b7#.mypshhp68 <comment><USER2> It's pretty amazing that you managed to convince so many developers to work on a project that is so already so saturated. Did you have any help?

<comment><USER3> Yes I had a lot of help from a mentor. That warrants an entirely new blog post which I will write later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a great post! Thanks for sharing your experience and good luck on your launch!

</comment><comment><USER5> Awesome post! This is also a good example of how important it is to get involved in an actual project instead of only watching tutorials to learn web development.</comment>