Is anybody using the Pyramid framework? - <AUTHOR>

Hello.  I have used django and wanted to take a look at the pylons framework to see how it differs.  But i see it seems to have reached its "end of life" and now the main focus of that project is something called Pyramid.  Which has been out for about 10 months now.
So im wondering if anybody has used it and what their experience has been with it.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Pyramid was BFG prior to being renamed and released as Pyramid. BFG was around for a year and a half or more and has considerable test coverage, is actively developed, actively maintained. There was a sprint held at PloneConf last week and a number of presentations which resulted in a large number of issues being dealt with.

If you're coming from Django, you might find Pyramid a little offputting at first. It is a non-opinionated framework which means they don't make too many decisions for you. Template language, form library, etc aren't decided for you. I find this to be a good thing, but, if you're looking to pull together a bunch of pieces to toss an app together, you might be a little disappointed.

Many of the developers hang out on irc.freenode and groups.google and are pretty responsive.

I use it all the time for many different apps. I find it to be pretty lightweight, does what I need it to do, doesn't get in my way and doesn't have too much cruft. Relatively easy to deploy - almost identical to Django.

I don't believe Graham Dumpleton has gotten NewRelic's monitoring agents working with Pyramid yet if that is a concern.</comment>


Why Bitcoin poses an interesting ethical conundrum for journalists - <AUTHOR> http://paidcontent.org/2013/03/22/why-bitcoin-poses-an-interesting-ethical-conundrum-for-journalists/ <comment><USER2> Bitcoin is a currency, not ownership of a company. Bitcoin are still so difficult to purchase that I doubt writing about them seriously raises the price. There have been bubbles in Bitcoin before, many are suggesting Spain/Cyprus are encouraging the current one.

Just as financial journalists do not have to disclose their personal wealth when writing about currency markets, tech journalists shouldn't have to disclose their bitcoin holdings when writing about Bitcoin.</comment>


Website of a NH Usability Association -- priceless - <AUTHOR> http://nhupa.org

<comment><USER2> It's down. Cached: <http://tinyurl.com/6k5aca>

One huge image map! Twitter feed hints that some people must have called them out: <http://twitter.com/NHUPA>

</comment><comment><USER3> Second iteration of a Web 0.1 site? <http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Web_0_0x2e_1.aspx>

</comment><comment><USER4> I hope it's a prototype that was released by mistake :)</comment>


Most Popular How-To Guides of 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://lifehacker.com/5964782/most-popular-how+to-guides-of-2012?popular=true

<comment><USER3> Is anybody still able to follow Lifehacker? Their feed seems to be updated hourly with every single irrelevant tech news of the moment.

I don't even know what "life hacker" means to them anymore...

<comment><USER4> Agreed. Lifehacker's usefulness has diminished significantly over the past couple years. Besides the articles, what made Lifehacker so great in the past was its community of smart people willing to share great tips. Many of these people have left, largely due to the horrible design changes pushed by Gawker.

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here. Agree completely.

The average article quality used to be great there, especially for niche apps/programs, the "hive five" feature, and detailed how-to guides. There's still some great content on there - like you can see in an aggregate article like this one.

However, the average article quality has declined significantly. Once Gina Trapiani left, I noticed a drop in quality. The awful, Gawker-pushed redesign hurt too, probably turning away some of the more valuable members who contributed great stuff in the comments like you noted. If lifehacker was an independent entity (or even an autonomous one like Reddit within Conde Nast) it could be fantastic. Not possible while Gawker is pushing it's media properties to a race to the bottom in search of traffic though. Gizmodo has gotten significantly worse too unfortunately.

<comment><USER5> Are there any sites that have risen to take its place? I think there's a lot of value in a site that does the sort of blogging Lifehacker does, but in a more concise and useful manner (like they used to).

<comment><USER4> I've seen some of the past top commenters on How-To Geek and Ars Technica forums. But there's nothing that really replicates the old Lifehacker. Reddit's LifeProTips might be good eventually, but there is a significant amount of noise since it isn't curated like a blog.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Didn't expect that "How to Crack a Wi-Fi Network's Password with Reaver" would be the top guide for lifehackers readers [http://lifehacker.com/5873407/how- to-crack-a-wi+fi-networks-...](http://lifehacker.com/5873407/how-to-crack-a- wi+fi-networks-wpa-password-with-reaver)

</comment><comment><USER7> I agree with other HN'ers that LifeHacker has lost a lot of it's appeal - <USER2> post waaay too much. I have found myself doing two things

1\. Only go to lifehacker once every few days and quickly browse to see if anything catches my eye.

2\. Rather than going to lifehacker.com (the new design is absolutely atrocious) I go to blog.lifehacker.com which presents the stories in a chronological order, which makes more sense to me.

With that said, this is (IMO) a completely useless collection of how-to guides.

Edit: Formatting

</comment><comment><USER8> I think the title of the link should be changed to: "Lifehacker's list of EVERY How-To Guild from 2012"

<comment><USER9> I came back to HN to post the exact same thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow, lifehacker's site is actually usable now without Javascript. Good job!

</comment><comment><USER11> TL;DR: Snake oil productivity tips and security/privacy hysteria get page views</comment>


Google Glass likely to be priced at US$299 - <AUTHOR> http://www.chinapost.com.tw/business/company-focus/2013/08/08/385842/Google-Glass.htm <comment><USER2> I'd pick up a pair at that price.</comment>


The real scars of Korean gaming - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-32996009

<comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9670093](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9670093)</comment>


As Staff Flees, TechCrunch's Traffic Plummets - <AUTHOR> http://paidcontent.org/article/419-as-staff-flees-techcrunch-traffic-plummets/ <comment><USER2> I've been pretty astounded by the lack of technical knowledge that TC's writers possess. The coverage now is mostly those meta, "Inside Baseball" kind of stories -- where they aren't talking about the technology, they're talking about the personalities, the stupid feuds, oh and all that insipid Valley navel-gazing...

<comment><USER3> TechCrunch was always shitty, people are just noticing now.

<comment><USER4> This comment could easily be mistaken for a comment made in 2008. I don't think that 'people are just noticing now' is accurate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not too surprised. These days it seems that TechCrunch is little more than a dumping ground for startup press releases, with a slight dose of embellishment around the edges.

Still, a new editor may changes things up a lot. At least _all_ of the old blood is gone now. They can try to make a fresh start.

<comment><USER6> Kinda what Engadget is for gadgets...

<comment><USER5> Pretty much. If I want to read gadget news I go to The Verge now. TechCrunch is lucky that no single large competitor is challenging it. Yet.

<comment><USER7> The Verge has great content, but damn, does their site design suck. It looks nice enough, but it hangs my browser even on top-of-the-line computers. I usually end up surfing the mobile site (mobile.theverge.com) even on my PCs.

<comment><USER5> Really? It works fine for me. That said, they could do with paginating their comments, or something- take this page for example:

[http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/28/2829143/apple- ipad-3-event...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/28/2829143/apple-ipad-3-event- march-7th-official)

full of comments (with images!) that slow down the page load.

<comment><USER8> It's bad on Opera and "OK" on Chrome (checked on Win7 / OSX), but it's definitely noticeable when you close The Verge and go to someone else's site.

 _edit_ : just checked your link. Urg, they really need to stop people being able to post images, my opinion of the quality of that site just dropped sharply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If I recall correctly, it was a post by Arrington that informed me about the existence of hacker news. Which for me personally directly resulted in a reduction of visits to Techcrunch, and a sharp increase in visits to HN.

Anyone else who remembers the post I'm talking about (couldn't find it) and who had a similar experience?

<comment><USER10> Possibly this one?

[http://techcrunch.com/2008/03/10/little-known-hacker-news- is...](http://techcrunch.com/2008/03/10/little-known-hacker-news-is-my-first- read-every-morning/)

<comment><USER9> Yes, that's the one! After reading that post I practically stopped visiting Techcrunch.

<comment><USER10> I'm curious: there has been a ton of linking from HN to Tech Crunch since then (less so recently, of course) - did you mean you gave up visiting Tech Crunch as a destination or hardly ever even followed links there?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Aaaand nothing of value was lost.

</comment><comment><USER12> The numbers are unconvincing. The argument is: Staff flees leading to plummeting traffic. What we essentially see is one data point (January year- over-year change). At a minimum, I'd like to see what it looks like for each month in the series to even out any anomalies.

It's hard for me to judge whether the quality of TechCrunch has indeed gone down, but to point to one month of data and say that traffic plummeted seems a bit of a stretch. I could just as easily point to February year-over-year and say, see, these staff defections haven't had an impact.

</comment><comment><USER13> Is PandoDaily the new TechCrunch? I ask because I think a lot of their former staff moved there.

<comment><USER2> As in, it's also garbage? Yes. Look at this shitshow. [http://pandodaily.com/2012/02/11/you-will-not-be-the-next- si...](http://pandodaily.com/2012/02/11/you-will-not-be-the-next-silicon- valley-please-stop-trying/)

<comment><USER14> > _"Yes, the idyllic town situated between Belfast and Dublin is looking to > capitalize on the latest trend: technology"_

A tech "writer" who thinks that "technology" is some new concept developed in Silicon Valley. Cute.

Thanks for reminding me why I haven't checked in on that site.

<comment><USER2> The writer is just 18 years old.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> do good things ever happen for consumers when AOL or Yahoo buys a startup?

</comment><comment><USER16> but HN statistics dont look promising either:

<http://siteanalytics.compete.com/news.ycombinator.com/>

<comment><USER17> Did you see how they collect their data? ("Representative consumers in the US")

<http://www.compete.com/us/about/our-data/>

Google shows the graph going up over time (and is international):

<http://trends.google.com/websites?q=news.ycombinator.com>

Alexa has a different shape (bump up in 1Q2011 and then slow decline):

<http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/ycombinator.com>

So three different companies all claiming to have good data with three completely different shapes for the traffic in 2011. It shows just how unreliable the data is. I remember the reddit folks saying just how bad the sites like the above were compared to the actual traffic they were getting (can't be bothered to find the link).

<comment><USER16> I didnt say anything about specific numbers; I just stated fact that the numbers are falling. I agree with you that each monitoring company comes up with totally different numbers. on the top of that, companies do revamp their websites - use more or less ajax, change approach to pinging back theirs servers for updated data, etc, and numbers can go sky-high or plummet and still it won't be a reliable read. but AFAIK this "problem" does not affect rather stable design of HN.

> Did you see how they collect their data? ("Representative consumers in the > US")

Again, if I dont look into numbers, but only simple chart, I read it that: representative consumers in US that use hackerNews website declined. thats it.

Now, someone else pointed: does it even matter? It depends who we ask.

<comment><USER17> > I just stated fact that the numbers are falling

Except Google says they are climbing and Alexa says they are about the same, and as Raldi pointed in his link for stats of Reddit (a somewhat similar site) the numbers these services report are essentially fiction.

> representative consumers in US that use hackerNews website declined

According to Quantcast they are climbing (almost 50% increase).

The only people who know the actual traffic figures are the admins. Why not ask them for the real numbers instead of considering one cherry picked report as a fact?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> AOL's share price has been flying high?!? Their stock price is down 25% since they purchased TechCrunch (no direct correlation implied); while the Dow and Nasdaq are hitting multi year highs. This is a company that has lost 80% of its value since the days when Google signed their big search deal with them putting a $10 billion value on the company - to say nothing of the long term disaster at AOL. And not to mention that they've gone from a cash generating machine just a few years ago, courtesy of the dying dial-up business, to currently bleeding to death.

I used to read TechCrunch daily while Arrington was at the helm. He kept it interesting, and they often had big scoops. I find that HackerNews has completely replaced my need to check in with TechCrunch to keep up on what's going on.

Ars Technica is one of the few other sources I keep up with regularly. TechCrunch just seems like a complete joke by comparison these days.

<comment><USER19> Not that Arrington itself did not have it's problems, though.

<comment><USER18> Absolutely, but you'll typically find huge eccentricities of character in someone capable of doing what Arrington did. I doubt you can separate his character from his results. He was like a pitbull latching on to the slightest hint of a scoop.

<comment><USER16> yes, but wasn't it the same attitude that actually got plenty of Angels to turn back on him? I cant recall certain articles but at some point VCs literally were avoiding him for unwilling to wait with breaking the news and spoiling a surprise that entire start-up worked for.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Migrate a large corporate system with strong relations to Firestore? - Tyler-Durden So i have been assigned with the task of migrating a large corporate system running in production to Firestore and cloud functions. At the moment the system is a JS framework with thousands and thousands of LOC, and the task of porting that to cloud function without having any data relations seems daunting to me to be honest. Not that it can't be done, but i feel many of the solutions to replace RDBMS seems so hardcoded and hacked to me at this point. Management have proposed it as a fresh start to rewrite the entire current system, after reading a bit about Firestore, and want to get offline data and get the strong authentication scheme from Firebase, but these features could fairly easily be implemented otherwise. So i am hoping someone here has had some experience with migrating large frameworks with strong data relations to Firestore/NoSQL frameworks, and replacing an entire serverside with just cloud functions? <comment><AUTHOR> I think your initial instincts that migrating the whole thing to a completely different paradigm for a couple features seems a bit off.

But, build a small prototype of part of it and see how far you get before it pushes back -- that's when you'll really know if it's possible and a good move.

<comment><AUTHOR> Also, I will add, re the relational aspect, I did the reverse one time. A company was having awful performance with a non-relational store in a very relational application -- ultimately migrating the backend to a sql database provided a bunch of benefits.</comment></comment>


Dear VCs: Kill the 'warm' introduction - mck- http://dearvcs.svbtle.com/dear-vcs-kill-the-warm-introduction <comment><USER2> Author has no concept of what it is like to take submissions to anything. As someone who is a member of an investment fund that gets way less attention than a top-tier VC, I'll tell you what it is like to have open submissions:

Almost everything that comes through that channel is complete garbage. It has negative utility to read through that stuff because it makes you tired enough that you might actually miss something good if you see it anyway, and it predisposes you toward negativity regarding submissions (which is psychologically unhealthy both for your quality of life and your relationships with potential investees.)

Our hit rate from open submissions was 0.25%, that is, it took 400 submissions to get one company in which we would invest. And that company is one that likely would have come to us through a more-closed submissions process.

One of the most valuable things you can have as a business owner (startup or no) is an understanding of context. Know what the situation is like for the people you are dealing with. Know why they do things the way they do. This author has not built that experience/skill. He is only seeing things from his viewpoint as someone who wants money. Guess what, this makes him isomorphic to every other random startup founder in which a VC is not going to invest.

Use common sense: VCs are financially motivated to find good companies to invest in! If they think something will give them an edge, they are going to try it. The fact that they don't take open submissions should tell you something about the dynamics of the system. You should listen and understand what that something is, because that understanding is valuable.

<comment><USER3> Great. Here is a hypothetical for you: we are a bootstrapped company with traction and earnings, but we're located in Armpit, KS and the only people we are networked with are our suppliers and our customers.

We want to raise from a well connected firm like yourselves to launch our next phase of growth. How, exactly, do we do that without already being part of your referral network?

In anticipation of your answer, "you'll find a way" is a pure blank-out. You've already closed your circuit. How do you expect the hypothetical "us" to break in?

<comment><USER4> Here's one possible way:

1\. Reach out to people who got funded by the VCs you want.

2\. Ask them for a 10 minute phone call or if you can invite them for coffee. Do this with enough people and some WILL take the time.

3\. Be awesome when talking to the founders (so they like you and believe you've got the stuff.

4\. Ask for an intro.

5\. Repeat 1 - 4 until you get an intro.

Details: [https://medium.com/@Steli/how-to-get-warm-introductions- to-v...](https://medium.com/@Steli/how-to-get-warm-introductions-to- vcs-a8fbe3affd01)

<comment><USER5> Just playing devil's advocate here. So you suggest people waste: \- a lot of their own time researching say 25 random other companies, reach out to their founders (who are in a completely different field of business etc) \- fly out to San Francisco from Armpit, KS. Waste 5 of those 25 founders time for coffee who actually agreed to meet with you even though you have nothing in common with them \- then tell them that you're also not interested in them really. All you want is a backhanded intro to their investors, which they hope they will give you

Only so that the investor will get 2-3 emails from founders who really know nothing about you other than what they found out in a 10 minute phone call or a rushed 30 min Starbucks on 2nd and Folsom.

Shouldn't an associate (who actually gets paid for this job) do this, rather than waste founders who are busy building their own companies?

Don't you think that system is broken?

<comment><USER4> "Just playing devil's advocate here." Not sure what you're getting out of that, but I'm happy to play along :-)

"you suggest people waste: - a lot of their own time" I wouldn't call it "wasting time" if it gets you the result you want.

"even though you have nothing in common with them" Being startup founders is already having a lot in common.

"All you want is a backhanded intro" I wouldn't do any of this in a backhanded way, founders will smell it. Be transparent and upfront.

"Only so that the investor will get 2-3 emails" The question was how to get warm introductions... these are warm introductions :)

"from founders who really know nothing about you other than what they found out in a 10 minute phone call" ... or from follow up interactions you've had with them after that initial 10 minute phone call...

"Don't you think that system is broken?" Nope :) I think it's an imperfect system - but then everything in the real world is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It bothers me when people try to tell businesses how to improve their operations, purely for personal benefit. The point of VC firms is not to fund your business, its for VCs to generate a return on investment. VCs surely know that by not reading all of the applications, they are missing potential winners. But they also know that getting strong introductions is a much much much more efficient way of finding potential winners.

It is not the system's job to work for you, it is your job to play within the system.

<comment><USER7> That's sort of the point, isn't it? VCs have generated horrible returns. Compare that to Y-Combinator which doesn't require a warm introduction.

<comment><USER8> Realistically are YCs annualized returns any better than a top-tier VCs?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> 1\. This isn't feasible. A partner at CRI once told me they get 5,000 deals a year. It's simply impossible to sift through even more than that.

2\. If you're spending your nights shipping code, then you can probably get users/customers. If you can get users/customers, getting warm intros is pretty easy. So much so, that VCs will come after you (see the WhatsApp/Sequoia story)

3\. I've struggled to get funding so I can empathize with the author (among his other various random rants) but this isn't the right way to react to it.

4\. VCs often say (at least in SV) their biggest mistakes are the "investments they didn't make". I know very few who said "shucks, wish I woulda have gotten a warm intro from them".

The reality is pretty simple - show growth and you'll get VC intros. If you spend your time complaining how the system is unfit for you, then building a venture-based tech company is probably not for you.

<comment><USER10> YC doesn't get more than 5,000 twice a year?

<comment><USER11> YC's cheque size is $20,000 at max. Most venture firms that have > $100M under management won't write less than $1M cheque. Why? Because that's how their business works. So for institutional investors, it's a huge risk to back someone random whom they don't know. That's why YC is successful.

Nowadays, VCs are rarely the first money in bank. So YC and other accelerators act as a screening step for most institutional investors. And VCs can be successful by writing larger cheques at a later stage. So win-win for VCs as well as accelerators.

<comment> mck- Just for the record, YC's check had increased to $120k since April

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Your story would become compelling if you share your raw revenue growth graph and tell us what market you are in. Without these, your complaints sound like hollow whining. I mean this in the most constructive way possible. You could even do this without losing your anonymity.

Lacking that information, we have no data to judge the reasonableness of your complaint. All we have is the perspective of two experts, who both said "Too early" (translation, "Zero interest. But do come back if your business does magically turn amazing").

</comment><comment><USER13> "It is practically impossible for a talented, but unknown founder to get a meeting with a top VC."

Let's break that into four buckets:

1\. practically impossible 2\. talented but unknown founder 3\. get a meeting 4\. top VC

Ok, so what's the problem? By definition, top vc's are going to be the most sought-after, and the ones who have the pick of the investment litter. So it's going to be hard. Real hard. It's going to be, you got it, _practically_ impossible -- but not _completely_ impossible.

If you're such a talented founder, then one of your talents is knowing how to figure out how to get through. If you don't have that talent then maybe you're not as talented as you think? You can sometimes make up for it through sheer persistence -- I don't mean by relentlessly calling the office of and sending Cuban cigars to Gordon Gekko. I mean subtle persistence. Find ways. That are clever. That show you're talented. Securing venture capital is a hack like any other. Make it a clever hack. In my experience a "warm intro" helps but is not necessary. Deep research helps more. Almost all of it is out there on Google.

But I also wonder, why do you need a "top VC" in the first place? There are bunch of smaller VCs who are superb. If your product/service is so great (read: traction, rave reviews), it will get on the radar of investors and media.

Earn your VC, and it won't be practically impossible.

</comment><comment><USER14> Build something interesting and they will come to you.

I get 10-15 pitches a day. Most are unworkable. I reply to about one a week.

<comment><USER15> Joshua, what is your take on strong (but not famous) teams in big markets with great looking version one but before meaningful traction? Under what circumstances do you take these meetings?

<comment><USER14> I might. Depends on the area etc.

Cold pitches almost never have working prototypes.

<comment><USER15> That's encouraging :-)

We are working on mobile education. I see you investing in Codecademy and AltSchool.

If education+mobile is in your interests, we can get an intro to you. We have ~15 mutual connections.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Man, you're selling an investment to a VC. If a stock broker cold calls you to offer you an awesome deal, you hang up. Venture capitalists are just like you in that sense; they have a practically infinite number of investment options and a limited amount of time. They owe you absolutely nothing.

</comment><comment><USER17> I think you give VCs too much credit for being good at being bad. In my experience it's more that many VCs are just mediocre at their job, much like any other field. I think the great ones don't really fall into some of these traps, but their associates and junior partners do.

As an example, I recently had a VC continuously email me for months which I ignored (mainly because I knew we weren't a fit and didn't want to waste either side's time), only to set up a meeting and have them blow me off. I found it pretty funny.

The reality is there are a lot of companies on the radar for these firms, and it's a lot of work to individually vet each one. They are only human, and I would just try not to take it personally and keep on kicking ass.

This is why it takes even great startups months to fundraise. All we hear about in the news are the rare super-hot startups which skew our perception of the fundraising game. The reality is fundraising sucks for most startups and you just described why (not that they can't improve though).

</comment><comment><USER18> It appears the author doesn't realize that VCs are normal businesses trying to turn a profit. If there was a profitable opportunity to find "99.99% of talented, unknown founders" by accepting cold emails, then some VCs would start doing it.

I would guess the reason they don't is because the authors assumption is wrong. If you're a talented, driven founder with a growing startup then it's not really that hard to get a meeting with a top tier VC.

The problem with accepting cold emails is the sheer volume. Unless there is a standard filtering process, partners will waste too much time with crappy startups.

A solution to this would be to create a standardized format (kind of like the YC application) which founders could submit to multiple VCs. Fortunately, AngelList is already busy solving this problem.

</comment><comment><USER19> If the author wants people to be impressed there needs to be something to be impressed about. Build an actual product with actual value and actual adoption by the market (even just a smallish test pool) and people will talk to you. If it's just an idea, well those are a dime a dozen.

VCs want to invest in real products. Does passing over a bazillion pitches about concepts mean they might pass up the next 'big one'? Sure, and the VCs know this. Their job is not to find the next big one as much as it is to make a solid positive return for investors and the best way to do that is focus primarily on real products showing something to be impressed with.

The effort wasted on writing this ranty post could have been put towards doing something to impress the VCs and have them calling you. Just saying.

</comment><comment><USER20> This feels like the definition of wishful thinking. If I, a nobody, tend to dismiss cold enquiries then why on earth would someone in high demand not?

</comment><comment><USER21> VCs are not like your local bank with all the time and willingness to hear all the potential business plans and pitches that can be thrown at them. Also their system isn't just spawned out of some kind of elitist mindset to keep you out of the in-crowd. Just keep working at it.

</comment><comment><USER22> In 1996 I worked at a small Internet Service Provider. We were known for being one of the cheapest (if not the cheapest) ISP's in New York City.

Back then if you wanted a machine on the network, you'd get a 10MB uplink to a T-3 (which was better speed than a lot of the other low-tiers). A port fee was $500 a month to be able to transfer 1 gig a month, up to $3000 to transfer 100 gigs a month. Then you'd have to lease a machine as well.

Nowadays, I can get a 125MB uplink on Linode, with 2000 gigs allowed a month - for $10 a month. No lease for a machine - the VPS comes with it for free - <AUTHOR> is much faster, has more storage, memory etc. than anything I could have gotten for a reasonable price back then.

It costs next to nothing to put a product out nowadays. Google Play and the App Store. 100 million people want to download your app from Google Play? No worries - it's hosted on their infrastructure.

Aside from that things like Github are around. There are open source libraries that do everything, and with foreign function interface you can use libraries from almost any language. A lot of your coding is done for you. A lot of what I do is hooking two libraries up together, put a UI on it, and then maybe a little bit of my own code. Voila, a product.

I have no idea why anyone who can code would feel dependent on investors.

Get in a hurry to where you, or you and your co-founder(s), are "ramen profitable", and then devote yourself 100% to building up revenue and getting product/market fit.

In high school, I used to have to sneak into the Columbia University engineering library to read the 1978 Bell System Technical Journal articles about how Unix worked. Now I can go down to my local bookstore and there is a shelf of books on it. I don't even have to leave my home, I can get the information on my PC. Not even that - all the information I want to know about Unix is on my phone at any time I want - which runs Unix.

It's like people are looking for someone to tell them "no". Every day that passes by, it gets easier and easier to build a product that hundreds of thousands of people want. You don't need a lot of capital, it's practically free. You just need to know a little programming and get to it. Of course, the more programming you learn, the easier it will be.

</comment><comment><USER23> _QQQ was featured on national TV. A junior partner at Firm #1, who happened to watch this feature, reached out to set up an 'introductory' meeting. Junior Partner #1 ended this introductory meeting by stating that QQQ was "interesting, but too early" for Firm #1. I was strongly encouraged to "keep Firm #1 in mind for (our) upcoming Series A."_

Having already been rejected by Firm #1 previously, perhaps you should have employed some strategy of your own at this point - display ambivalence about Junior Partner's overtures and make Firm #1 chase _you_ a bit instead of you chasing _them_. It's a truism of human psychology that people feel more intense desire for what they can't have. Another approach might have been to make it clear that QQQ was a time-limited opportunity and if Firm #1 was not inclined to invest, then the door would be closed to them, forever. Nothing personal or spiteful about it - just the filter that you use to put a cap on your time investment in any given lead.

As written, and notwithstanding some good points, this comes across as 'I have ____ and ____ desirable qualities, so why can't I find love?' And like love, if it's obviously the #1 thing on your mind then that means you must be coming up short. That's a problem because it's difficult for potential prospects to get a sense of who you really are behind the neediness. So if you want investment capital, talk about your organic growth strategy or your vision for employee-owned cooperative, like firms X and Y that found success that way. If the VC wants to talk money than you talk product, if the VC wants to talk growth you tell them you're very excited about the upside potential and then change the subject. Leave first. If you're at dinner (which you should be) let the other person order dessert, then get coffee and the check for yourself. Either pick up the tab or let the VC insist, but beat a path out of there.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm not a VC.

1\. Not all startups/business can be venture backed. Venture backed startups are expected to have 10x returns within 5-8 years of financing and swing for fences.

2\. If you kill warm introductions then how are they going to do screening? There is so much noise that it's humanely impossible for institutional investors find right kind of signal (i.e. venture backed businesses)

3\. Financing is hard in every situation. Be it mortgage for your house or financing your startup.

4\. If you build something successful and fits into the definition of venture backed business, they will come.

5\. Accelerators YC/Techstars/Angelpad successfully hacked this warm introductions problem by inviting everyone to apply. These accelerators will make warm introductions for you.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm a VC, although by no means a "Top VC". (Well, not yet!) I fully agree with the spirit of the post, which is that getting a warm intro shouldn't be _required_ to talk to a VC. What I will say is that most cold emails are not very good. When they are, many VCs, including myself, will reply and meet with the founder and treat it like any other startup pitch. Just last week, I talked with 3 founders who contacted me with an intro.

Requiring a warm-intro is simply an easy way to filter our a bunch of noise. FWIW, I would say that ~50% of warm-intro pitches that I see are good, and maybe ~5% of cold pitches are of a similar quality. About 1/3 of the pitches that I get come in cold.

<comment><USER25> Is there any automated process by which people can apply for your time? Are there tools that serve the VC space to make filtering easier and to broaden your net?

<comment><USER24> There's stuff like DataFox and Mattermark to help with filtering. Also, bigger firms often have associates who do a lot of filtering work.

There's no automated process to apply for my time. Emails work fine. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The author makes some really good points. It is incredibly hard to meet a well-connected VC if you, yourself are not well-connected. It's the classic double bind.

However, the article seemed to imply that somehow the "goal" was raising money from a VC, instead of making a great product. There were tons of companies started before the VC industry even existed. Businesses can and should be self-sustaining - creating profit that can fund operations. Just because most tech companies nowadays are money losing for years, doesn't mean this has to be the case. And if the company is profitable, it can exist without a warm introduction.

</comment><comment><USER27> The replies to the letter are silly. NOBODY has done a conclusive study showing that "warm" introductions result in a better deal success ratio. Ageism is the same thing. Until just 2 weeks ago, nobody had done a study to refute the rampant and overt ageism- of course, now we all know that companies founded by folks in their 40's and 50's have a substantially greater chance of succeeding. So not only is the ageism wrong, it is not remotely "best practices"\- something VC's owe their investors. Neither is the "warm" introduction.

</comment><comment><USER28> Regarding the lack of email contact info on VC sites, you can usually find ways around this. For example, the a16z contact page[0] has generic email addresses that probably just point to black holes. But a little bit of creative Googling will tell you that Marc Andreessen's email address is email@example.com. I couldn't find Ben Horowitz's or Chris Dixon's, but based on their Twitter handles, I would guess they're firstname.lastname@example.com and email@example.com, respectively.

0: [http://a16z.com/contact/](http://a16z.com/contact/)

</comment><comment><USER29> I wonder how many deals that are already series A size opportunities are out there which have so far avoided the typical tech startup route of picking up seed funding/ advisors which will avoid any introduction issue?

It certainly is possible, such as bootstrapping to early profitability or taking some money from those outside of regular crowds. The question would be I guess is this group big enough that it would make sense for VCs to put people on to sift through the volume of pitches to find those companies?

</comment><comment><USER30> It's pretty simple you need one of two things: Growth or Connections. I you don't want to play the connections game then metrics talk.

Both don't hurt.

As a note: this place (the valley) is small.. you run into people you know randomly and often. You're not going to run into these people or meet people who can help you or that you can help (it goes both ways pay it forward) if you're sitting in your home in Wisconsin or Florida or Oklahoma. Boots on the ground make it a reality.

</comment><comment><USER31> I think there is a pervasive culture that investment is a game that is almost completely separate from actually executing. Like the killer pitch deck wins the money. Or the best elevator pitch. Or most persistent founder.

There are a lot of stories that validate this, so I can see why. However, these kind of narratives are terribly distracting for a company. It's trite stuff, but stick to the fundamentals.

</comment><comment><USER32> From [https://twitter.com/sama/status/530880914708897793](https://twitter.com/sama/status/530880914708897793)

> _whenever i hear VCs say "we will only meet people with a referral" i think > "more opportunity for YC!"._

</comment><comment><USER33> VCs are your customer. You are trying to sell them your stock. Do retailers make their customers do all the work? Or do they serve up buying opportunities on a silver platter?

If you don't put effort into selling, don't act surprised when you don't sell.

</comment><comment><USER34> Ycombinator does a great job of abstracting investor emotional shtuff. At the same time, I think 'signals' are bad.

For example, just because a founder is non-technical and ivy league, is no reason to fund them or meet with them. Seen it happen too many times.

</comment><comment><USER35> Are you based in the US? Yes? Congratulations, you have access to a pool of investors practically unrivalled by any other country (or, at least, Australia). At least you have the opportunity to get warm introductions to them.

<comment><USER36> Is it harder in Australia?

<comment><USER35> Sorry for the late reply, but if you see this, yes. The VC/Angel culture just isn't here, and the money that is available is handled _very_ conservatively.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> While he's right, I imagine VCs get such an unbelievable volume of cold e-mail that sorting through it is really time consuming to the point of impossibility.

<comment><USER10> Because they use a generic email address.

Why not create a smart form, YC style, that take some time to fill and provide the most important data about a startup for them in an easy to read format?

A simple "submit your AngelList page" might go a long way.

<comment><USER38> Full Disclosure: I work for FundersClub

We had this problem for a long time. We had a generic cold inbound form and got such an abundance of email with no good way of filtering it that we just gave up on it. However we realized that with a bit of focus we could turn this into a good way to get some great deals we would have otherwise missed.

We now again have an founder application form ([https://fundersclub.com/founders/apply/](https://fundersclub.com/founders/apply/)). It asks some generic questions followed by more specific metrics based questions depending on what type of company you are (Consumer, B2B etc.). We can then filter based on these to surface what we believe to be good opportunities to the top. Would love any feedback on the metrics we ask for - we try to keep them as data focused as possible, as once you start asking more qualitative questions you go right back to being overwhelmed.

<comment><USER23> I'm just curious - why don't you delegate the cold pile to junior staff and make them do brief (39 min) writeups of incoming proposals? Film production firms (my field) are like VCs in that they receive many awful proposals and only a few of the good ones will actually work out, but they employ people to read incoming scripts and work up short summaries to indicate which ones might be worth their personal attention.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> The silicon valley culture where every VC demands an introduction sucks. I concur.

</comment><comment><USER40> My short response would be:

How to Jerk the Chain of a Seed/Early Stage Venture Partner.

Consider US _information technology_ (IT) venture capital (VC): It is easy to understand that the author of the original post (OP) is frustrated, etc., but my guess is that with reasonably high probability can get a response from a seed/early stage VC partner if (1) have a product/service developed, about ready to get users/customers and revenue, and that a VC partner can "play with" and (2) send the VC partner some e-mail with a short description of the project together with an easy way, say, just a URL, the VC partner can use to "play with" the product/service.

Then the VC partner may evaluate the potential of the project by pretending that they are a user/customer, that is, evaluate how well many users/customers will like the product/service. If the partner likes what they see, then more communications are reasonably likely.

For a little more, since most VC firms do publish their phone numbers on their Web sites, can call and, give name, say are an entrepreneur, and ask for "office of" a VC partner are interested in. Then may get a person, often a really sweet, young woman, and explain a little of the work and ask how can send e-mail. Often can send e-mail to the woman. Also, often, if call the VC firm after closing hours can leave a message on the phone of the VC partner.

Should, of course, check the interests of the VC partner to see if those interests do cover the project. And likely should pick a VC partner without very many current investments or board seats.

For a little more, once the results of a project have obtained some publicity and traction, VC partners may notice and call the entrepreneur.

The key in all this is just (1) above, that is, have the project that far along.

But, more generally, for such contacting a VC partner, my view is that an entrepreneur with a project about to get users/customers should try hard not to accept equity funding and, instead, just continue to own 100% of the business. I explained more in

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8640126](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8640126)

Whatever VCs are doing, tough to expect them to change if they are getting good returns on investment (RoI), but as in

[http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2013/02/venture-capital- returns.html...](http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2013/02/venture-capital- returns.html#disqus_thread)

actually on average VC RoI is poor.

My view is that US IT VC is missing out big time on much bigger RoI. The main reason is that VCs just will not fund the work before there is a product/service ready to "play with". Much of the reason here is that VCs can't/won't evaluate plans for such work, and likely the main reason here is that they do not believe that such evaluations could be at all accurate in predicting financial success.

So, essentially all the work in IT the VCs see is what could be done by 1-3 guys in a garage before equity funding, and this situation is for high RoI just devastating. Moreover, about all the VCs can do when evaluating such projects is to look just superficially, at only the cover and not really the book, and the superficial look hurts evaluation accuracy and, thus, average RoI.

Part of the extreme tragedy of this situation is that quite broadly in our applications of the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), we know quite well, thank you, how to plan projects, present the plans just on paper, and evaluate the projects, just from the paper, with high accuracy, much higher than that of IT VC. Or, we can do such evaluations for the largest engine, ship, or airplane ever built, the tallest building or dam ever built, the longest bridge, tunnel, canal, or pipeline ever built, etc. Heck, the ancient Egyptians planned the pyramids, and we don't see a lot of evidence of a lot of partially completed, failed pyramid projects.

Here's an outline of something IT VCs could do that huge evidence from history clearly shows would yield much higher Roi; the outline is in steps (a)-(d):

(a) Problem.

Pick a good problem, one where the first good or a much better solution will be a _must have_ , not just a _nice to have_ for many users/customers, so that in total, from number of users/customers and revenue per each, can build a business worth $1+ billion.

Here is an example of such a problem: Find a safe, effective, cheap one pill cure for any cancer.

For this _must have_ , there should be very little doubt; if there is much doubt, then pick another problem. In particular, we do not want to struggle over _product-market fit_.

(b) Solution.

For the needed solution, do some STEM research. We're talking real research here, of quality that would qualify as a Ph.D. dissertation in a good research university, a paper in a good journal, maybe a grant from NSF, DARPA, etc. Yes, there is training for such research, the Ph.D. degree. Right, mostly here we're talking a good research university STEM field Ph.D. prerequisite.

With the research, want to create some _proprietary intellectual property_ , _secret sauce_ , STEM technology difficult to duplicate or equal, that is the crucial, core of the solution and the business and, for competitors, a severe barrier to entry. Protect the work as a trade secret (with corresponding software securely locked up inside a server farm) or patents.

For this solution, there should be very little doubt that it is the first good or a much better solution to the problem. If can't find such a solution, then return to (a) and pick another problem.

It should be possible to give a quite accurate evaluation of the solution and, thus, the project from the research for the solution presented just on paper.

(c) Software.

Since we're considering IT, with Moore's law, etc., to provide the product/service to users/customers, write the software for servers and user devices. Given the solution, the software should be routine.

(d) Launch.

Now we are sure we have the first good or a much better solution for a problem where such a solution is a must have.

Get publicity, users/customers, revenue, earnings, and a company worth $1+ billion.

For (a)-(c) here, there are some great examples from medicine and US national security.

For the second, there was the SR-71: The problem was to do surveillance of the USSR. The intended solution was an airplane that could fly at 80,000+ feet, at 3.0+ Mach, for 2000+ miles without refueling. Kelly Johnson of the Lockheed Skunk Works showed up with an armload of papers showing the plan for the solution. The project was approved, and for years the SR-71s flew as designed.

Another example was Keyhole, basically a Hubble but before Hubble and aimed at the surface of the earth. Another example was GPS.

Technology? Nearly beyond belief. Value? World changing. Batting average? Very high, much higher than VC.

Gee, if the US DoD had wanted to sell the results of Hubble or GPS, wonder if they could have gotten any revenue? Are we talking _must have_ here? How 'bout that?

Of course, the work in (b) and (c) needs accurate evaluation, but the US is just awash in people that can do that in the best research universities, via editors of appropriate peer-reviewed journals, via problem sponsors in NSF and DARPA, etc.

After (a) and (b), it really is possible to know with quite high accuracy VC firms should look to fund projects just after success with these two steps.

That's how to do (a)-(c) of projects. To be sure the launch in (d) works, do the work as outlined in (a)-(c).</comment>


My cofounder is Canadian, how do I get him into the US? - <AUTHOR>

My cofounder is a Canadian citizen and he lacks US permanent residency. What's the easiest way to get him here? Can startups sponsor foreign nationals? <comment><USER2> If he's got a degree and a decent resume, look into TN-1 status as a "Computer Systems Analyst".

When doing this, however, you have to be very careful with the job description - the CBP manual specifically _excludes_ programmers from the CSA definition. CSAs can do some programming as a part of their job, but that cannot be their principal function. If your cofounder has an engineering degree (and is a EIT), they may be able to get a TN-1 under the much-broader classification of "engineer".

</comment><comment><USER3> Obviously you should talk to a lawyer; most immigration lawyers will give you a free hour of consultation to ask the general questions.

That said, there are any number of valid ways. If they're not taking a salary from the startup, for now they can enter on a basic business visa (B2 I believe) while they "explore opportunities", but they cannot make _any_ money from a US source. If they are making money, you may be able to get them a basic employment visa. You might also be able to set up a Canadian corporation and they can be a transfer from one entity to the other. If they have enough money they can get an investor visa (E2 I think, takes anywhere from $500k - $1M)... Like I said, there are a huge number of different options, only a lawyer can advise you on which one is best/easiest/most appropriate.</comment>


Saving Face(book): When do you hire a pro CEO? - <AUTHOR> http://foundread.com/2008/03/10/facebook/ <comment><USER2> Could a "pro" CEO have gotten Facebook to where it is now? Very unlikely. So what evidence do we have that this is the point (or that there is any point short of being GE) where an outside CEO would start to do better?

<comment><USER3> Who is a CEO anyway? I have talked to a few business guys and answers varied from "salesman in chief" to "just an administrator with connections". In that regard there is really nothing to hold on to if you are a product guy. The article implies that CEO is the "product guy" though. I wonder who is right.

<comment><USER2> A CEO is, in theory, what the name implies: chief executive. He makes the final decisions. If two subordinates disagree, he breaks ties.

That said, I don't think Eric Schmidt is actually Larry & Sergey's boss. They seem to work more as a triumvirate. But that is a fairly unusual arrangement. I believe it's a transitional phase between outside management coming in as CEO and coming in as COO, which I believe is going to be the most common plan in the future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> When you go public.</comment>


How do you feel about computers deciding who lives and dies? - <AUTHOR> Self driving cars already must decide between running you into whatever is in front of you, or hopping up on the sidewalk and running some people over, but saving you.
The phone record analysis of who called who's cell phone in Afghanistan could convince a computer to drop a bomb on you or your wedding party with the approval of a human.  I hear they don't know much more than what the cell phone was doing, and the ever watchful computer does most of the analysis on it's own.
It's a great thing smart men like Elon Musk have put their own money and time into things like the Future of Life Institute and OpenAI to increase the chances that machines have good morals and ethics and are hopefully less likely to see us as enemies.
There's the funny story of the paperclip maximizer.  A machine doesn't need to be evil, or dislike you at all, but still cause your extinction.  Imagine a poorly designed, but quite powerful machine, which is programmed to maximize the number of paperclips in the world.
It discovers that many atoms that could make good paperclips, are trapped in human bodies, and that the humans have to die in order to become what it thinks is the best thing in the world..paperclips. <comment><USER2> Except the paperclip maximizer case, all the others can be implemented by humans, without the help of a computer. How do you feel about human morons deciding who lives and dies?

<comment><AUTHOR> I feel that until computers write their own code, the ethics and programming skill of humans will live vicariously through the machine until a bug or edge case. Garbage in, garbage out. Hopefully what we put in is the highest and best ethics we can discern. The "trolley problem" is now real life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Focussing on self driving cars . . .

I expect these situations will be rare, self driving cars won't allow them selves to be in a position where there isn't a safe way out or way to stop. There will be edge cases of course. For those yes there will be some predetermination in the programming on whether the car crashes itself to avoid pedestrians. But even then every effort will be made to save as many lives as possible.

It it was me dying or 20 pedestrians or a bus full of kids I'd be glad it crashed me rather than taking them out.

One thought, will there be luxury brands that would take out the pedestrians protecting the driver at all costs, will programs take in to account the person in the car, doctor, celebrity, elected official will that be part of the equation?

But then there will be advances like this where car fatalities will be extremely rare. (hopefully)

Demolition Man | Secure Foam

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc1cX0abcJc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc1cX0abcJc)

</comment><comment><USER4> The problem is this: a human can make a mistake but a machine cannot. For example a human driver may need to choose between swerving left or swerving right and, in hindsight, _either_ choice could be defended because we know he had to make a split-second judgment, the outcome wasn't premeditated, etc.

With a self-driving car though, some programmer sitting in an office in the cold light of day had to make a conscious decision to kill the driver, or to kill the pedestrian. The outcome is programmed, and there are no mitigating factors like instinct or accident that can excuse it. This poses a very different moral problem for the creator of the self-driving car.

</comment><comment><USER5> Remember: Whatever a computer does a human can do too using paper and pen.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope. A human runs out of life long before he can find quite large prime numbers, or a good containment shape for a fusion plasma, or look at all the photos on flicker, etc. Heck my computer can even generate pure test tones. human != computer.

<comment><USER5> You are confusing two concepts which are completely different than each other - "What computation can be done" vs "How fast the computation can be done".</comment></comment></comment>


Seinfeld-sourced paper gets into legit science journal - <AUTHOR> http://kottke.org/17/04/seinfeld-sourced-paper-gets-into-legit-science-journal <comment><USER2> The title is misleading. The author of the paper/blog ([http://www.precisionscientificediting.com/-uromycitisis-.htm...](http://www.precisionscientificediting.com/-uromycitisis-.html)) knew that the "journal" was a bogus for profit "journal" that would publish anything and he was intentionally trying to troll them. There was nothing "legit" about it.</comment>


Ask HN: How to determine the failure of availability zone? - <AUTHOR> Been seeing a lot of instances of downtime or degraded service with cloud providers these days.
The AWS Well-Architected [1] suggests to spread the service over multiple AZ's to reduce downtime.
In case of AZ failure, is there any API to determine the status of AZ dynamically or do we rely on own health checks to determine corrective action? Is AWS Health API [2] any useful? Can it be made cloud-agnostic?
[1] https://aws.amazon.com/architecture/well-architected/ [2] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/health/latest/ug/health-api.html <comment><USER2> There are lots of reasons that _your_ instances in an AZ or cloud could all go down, other than the AZ's/cloud's operator self-reporting failure! For instance, what if someone wanted to do a rolling update starting in one AZ, and it starts to saturate a limited resource in that AZ halfway through, that doesn't affect the overall AZ but does affect your instances therein? Your internal health checks, rebalancing, and monitoring should be what you use to determine your health and trigger rebalancing.</comment>


The Helium Factor and Hard Drive Failure Rates - <AUTHOR> https://www.backblaze.com/blog/helium-filled-hard-drive-failure-rates/ <comment><USER2> You'd certainly expect the long-term failure for Helium filled to be lower. By displacing (moist) air, you've completely stopped any metal corrosion. Helium is also highly conductive to heat, so you will even out any hot spots.

Does anyone know to what sort of pressure helium the drives are filled?

<comment><USER3> Is the thermal conductivity of helium actually relevant to hard drives? Like what kind of hot spots and transfer rates are we talking about?

<comment><USER4> FWIW utility generators are cooled with hydrogen to reduce windage losses and promote cooling. Hydrogen is probably lower viscosity and higher thermal conductivity than helium. It's also very hard to contain due to the small molecular size and has the widest flammability range of any gas with which I'm familiar, making it an interesting gas to work with. ;)

<comment><USER5> The utility generators probably don't worry too much about leaks, since they can just refill with new, abundant hydrogen, too.

It would be amusing to have a hydrogen-cooled hard drive for which you'd have to regularly refill the water tank so that it could generate more hydrogen for itself. :)

<comment><USER6> Yeah, and it would have a little Bunsen burner to safely get rid of waste hydrogen!

<comment><USER4> Yes, it's the hydrogen that leaks out that's the problem. I was told that the way to find hydrogen leaks in plant piping was to walk the line holding a corn broom over the line. When it bursts into flame you found the leak. In an enclosed space it can form an explosive mix with air if it doesn't ignite before it accumulates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you model drive failure as a Poisson Process (each drive flips a coin each day with probability of failure x), then the measurements imply air and helium drives both have about x=2.8e-5. But drive failure rate may not be constant over time, especially if the failure is wear/aging related. The author should consider fitting the data to a [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weibull_distribution](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weibull_distribution) with k>1.

In particular, k=2 is a model where failure rate increases linearly over time. To estimate the instrinsic drive failure rate for this model, we must look at the raw failure times (not enough info in blog's totals table) and compute the root-mean-square of time between failures. Then divide this by the total number of drives. Do this for the two classes (air vs helium) and see which is better.

<comment><USER8> > If you model drive failure as a Poisson Process (each drive flips a coin > each day with probability of failure x)

IIRC the Poisson distribution applies when the rate is roughly constant per interval of time, which is not exactly the same as a probability of x per interval of time. (Failures are independent in the latter, not in the former).

<comment><USER7> Please see Poisson Process, which is different than Poisson distribution, [http://www.randomservices.org/random/poisson/index.html](http://www.randomservices.org/random/poisson/index.html) .. failures are indeed independent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Given the amount of engineering required for drives which are able to contain helium, one would expect that the required tolerances and materials would be much better. There may be reliability advantages for Helium, but I suspect greater care and QA during manufacturing will account for most of the improvement.

Also, it would be very bad PR for a new type of drive if they performed significantly worse.

</comment><comment><USER10> I might have expected the first-order effect to be that helium drives run cooler, and therefore last longer. Most failure mode rates have an eᵏᵀ term, doubling every 10-15 °C. But Google's large study didn't show much of that at reasonable temperatures (below 45 °C): [https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.c...](https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//archive/disk_failures.pdf)

<comment><USER11> I absolutely expect helium drives to run cooler simply because helium is a much better conductor of heat compared to air. As a result all heat generated in the drive cavity will be more effectively conducted to the containment vessel and leave the material inside consistently cooler.

<comment><USER12> That's a two way street though. If the ambient is higher it will carry the heat from the outside into places in the drive where it can do real damage.

<comment><USER11> For an excessively hot exterior sure, but I was thinking back to an experience at NetApp when thermal inside was the issue. When NetApp first started using SATA drives (rather than Fiber Channel) in their Nearstore appliance we discovered that the SATA drives were negatively effected by writing too much. Specifically, if write duty cycle was too high, the r/w head got too hot, and the heat caused it to change shape slightly and that shape change caused it to fly higher. Leading to something that was dubbed 'high fly writes' which splattered into adjacent tracks and could corrupt data. One fix was to keep track of the write duty cycle and to let the drive 'rest' for a bit to keep the overall duty cycle into something the drive could handle.

I don't think that sort of failure can happen on a helium drive.

<comment><USER12> You're right about that, in a drive filled with helium inside the drive the temperature gradients will be flatter.

Heat transfer in computing hardware is a super interesting subject.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Pretty interesting. I like how the author talks about how it may be too early to get useful data yet since their non-helium drives have been online for much longer.

It'd be interesting to look at the numbers again in two years and see if the guess is correct.

<comment><USER14> Yev from Backblaze here -> we're going to keep an eye on them and follow up on the stats so that we can eventually get there!

<comment><USER15> If the AFR numbers follow some bathtub-shaped curve, would it make sense to use that curve to "normalize" the failure rates according to drive days?

I always wonder if the rates we see for each drives are really comparable, since they all have different ages, and whether that's representative of the average lifetime AFR.

That might be an interesting column to add to the reports!

<comment><USER14> This might be interesting -> [https://hackernoon.com/applying-medical- statistics-to-the-ba...](https://hackernoon.com/applying-medical-statistics- to-the-backblaze-hard-drive-stats-36227cfd5372) it's more "time based" \- a medical statistical model applied to our drive stats!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> In the article it states that the helium can typically reduce drag by 20%. How much of an effect does that have on the cost of powering the drive? I assume it would at least be less than a 20% improvement overall.

<comment><USER14> Yev from Backblaze here -> You'd have to look at the entire cabinet to get a better sense of the power savings. Post author Andy explains a bit more here -> [http://disq.us/p/1s8psup](http://disq.us/p/1s8psup).

<comment><USER17> Maybe this is a stupid question, but why don't manufacturers evacuate the drives (i.e. create a vacuum) instead of filling them with Helium?

<comment><USER2> It's much easier physically to build something which can hold e.g. +0.1 atmosphere helium, than resist imploding against -1.0 atmosphere. Practically speaking, pumping down to vacuum is a slow process, whereas you can flush with an inert gas. Finally, hard-drive heads actually float on lamina of gas; this is one of the reasons that normal open-circuit hard drives have a maximum operating altitude.

<comment><USER18> Wait, if it's +0.1 atm helium (for example), what happens if it develops a slight leak, a leak from which helium molecules can escape but air molecules cannot? once the pressure reaches equilibrium, there would be no reason for additional helium to escape, and because air can't enter.... then what?

<comment><USER19> That isn't how it works though--look up partial pressures of gases. Helium will continue to escape until its partial pressure is at equilibrium with the external environment, i.e. near to zero, and the external gases will enter until they are at equilibrium with the internal environment. At that point the partial pressure of each gas will be equal on both sides.

<comment><USER20> What happens to these helium hard drives if you repeatedly cycle the pressure, like by taking the hard drive on an airplane?

<comment><USER19> Since the partial pressure of helium at ground level and flight level is essentially the same (≈0) there should be very little change, providing the seals are intact. Since they are very securely sealed to contain the helium, changes to the external pressure, unless extreme, should not have any significant effect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> have there been any drives designed with an array of fixed read / write heads i.e. one per track or a head that can access multiple tracks on a platter simultaniously?

<comment><USER22> There have been a few. Here's an older article [https://www.tomshardware.com/news/seagate-hdd- harddrive,8279...](https://www.tomshardware.com/news/seagate-hdd- harddrive,8279.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Just like in combustion engines, it seems like the best things are held to the last generations of hardware. I expect both to lose market share down to nil during the 2020s. BEVs replacing internal combustion engines and solid state storage replacing HDDs even in cost per storage unit.

<comment><USER24> "Perfection is attained on the point of collapse"

(I thought I had read that somewhere, but the closest I find now is C.N. Parkinson's formulation, which I did read years ago ...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> ever tried pulling a vacuum on a normal drive? does that work?

<comment><USER26> Air is required for the heads to function. While the disk's internal environment is separate from the outside air to keep it clean, air exchange is permitted between the outside and inside of the drive to allow the drive to adjust to changes in air pressure caused by thermal expansion. A special "breather" filter is installed to prevent foreign matter from contaminating the drive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Helium also has higher viscosity than air and because of that the flying head in the drive is more stable than in air.</comment>


Why Not to Join a Startup After Graduating - <AUTHOR> http://veyronb.wordpress.com/2011/06/06/5-reasons-not-to-join-a-startup-after-graduating/

<comment><USER2> One of the things people talking about reputation seem to miss is how easy it is to establish that base level of reputation. A couple of decent talks at local user groups will be enough in most tech areas that have job openings for employers and people with other opportunities to start querying you before they move onto more blanket searches.

On top of this I really dislike the argument that the skills are transferable from a big company to a small one easily. It seems like a much better argument for going towards something like a small-medium company. In the web space I'd suggest that the plethora of 10-40 person bespoke web dev shops that float around are a very good option for gaining broad skills and being less risky than startups.

People who are interested in startups should join something that looks pretty similar to a startup. People who are interested in making 10 million dollars should join a big company and live cheaply.

<comment><USER3> Good point on gaining reputation with the hacker group of the area by doing tech talks. However, I don't think that is the same thing as having a big name company experience on a resume. I imagine many HR people wouldn't likely know what a user group is, what a tech talk is supposed to demonstrate, or why they would find that valuable. On the other hand, if they see a brand they recognize and respect (Apple, Google, Cicso, MSFT, etc), they will more likely think higher of the candidate based on that alone.

Agree on the last point. One need not create a start up to experience working at one.

<comment><USER4> Well, if your reputation is good enough you tend to get job offers. In many cases this means it's just rubber-stamped paperwork for HR.

<comment><USER5> Your reputation is only as good as the people who know it. Most HR will not have heard of you (unless you are a high-profile leader in your field) and hence the desire for a rubber stamp from a brand company. It's the same reason many people desire Ivy League education, not for the learning, but the brand name that will make entry to most jobs a lot easier (as HR/Company assume certain level of quality/competency/work-ethic/etc has been met).

<comment><USER6> HR doesn't need to know you - they just need to be told "I want to hire this person" by somebody who do know you.

<comment><USER3> Which again, circles back to reputation building. Somebody, as you say, has to be impressed/like you enough to make the effort of pushing your information through the ranks to get hired. If you know the person from some other context, it's possible. If you're another resume from the stack, it's much more difficult to get that attention from anyone-HR, engineers, managers-in the company.

<comment><USER4> There's many ways of getting attention of people within a company than piling your resume on the stack;

\- talking at tech conferences / local user group (as the OP noted)

\- contributing to open source projects

\- keeping an interesting blog about a technical topic

and so on...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I disagree with most of this. I've been posting words to this effect a lot recently, but as a prospective employee, I think there's currently a false dichotomy between startup and big company.

There are plenty of companies in between "2 guys in a garage hacking" and "giant megacorp". Many of these - even late stage or well funded startups, although the word startup becomes blurry at this point - are big enough to satisfy all five of the author's reasons for joining a big company.

For example, consider a 4 or 5 person engineering team at a well funded startup, or a recently profitable/break-even late stage startup. You can probably specialize in something you're passionate about, have an impressive entry on your resume, make a competitive salary, make relationships, and learn from smart people. In fact, I would argue you'd probably do at least three of these things better at a small company than at a large company. If your ambition is to be a typical career person, then you'll have lots of advancement opportunities if you get in closer to the ground floor. If your ambition is to be an entrepreneur, then you can learn from your bosses, who have already succeeded at what you want to be doing.

As engineers, the market is in our favor at the moment. You don't necessarily need to forfeit equity or ground-floor opportunities for salary and stability.

<comment><AUTHOR> Now consider the other side of the equation.

Let's say you are a founder at a small startup. You are looking for the best talent. Rarely do you have thousands of people knocking at your door asking for a position. You have to go out and look for the best people. You will find yourself in one of three positions:

A) Not finding enough people -- then you have the ability to interview everyone, and any candidate may have a chance of getting in the door.

B) Finding too many people -- then you don't have the bandwidth to interview everyone, and you need some sort of heuristic to decide who to interview first. This is where pedigree comes in.

C) Outsourcing to a third party recruiting firm -- generally, even if you instruct them not to, they will send you candidates with strong pedigrees

<comment><USER7> There are ways of distinguishing yourself and building pedigree without spending the first years of your career at megacorp. Education, side projects, introductions, etc. If you can't create one of these distinguishing factors for yourself, you probably don't belong at a startup anyway.

In general, I think the issues of "Where should I work?" and "How do I get noticed/hired?" are very separate issues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Probably the biggest reason why you shouldn't work for a startup is that the word "passion" seems to be so carelessly thrown about.

<comment><USER9> I think a lot more people are passionate about having a job versus being passionate about the job itself.

The downside of jumping right into the startup game right from school is that your lack of experience in business, networking, fundraising, managing relationships and delivery is going to work against you right away unless your first startup job is with experienced entrepreneurs who will work to bring you up to speed in relation to technology (or biz dev if that's your (current) calling) and teach you everything they know about the business, not just the current business conventions that guide it. Being able to learn the business and identify opportunities is key; until you're able to do that you're just writing aimless code or making cold calls in the hopes of some modicum of success.

I'm not so sure that large companies can, or will provide the type of opportunities that a person who's interests lie in discovery will need in order to find balance in work and life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> 1\. Passion is the ultimate competitive advantage

The example given here is for someone who finds great value in a very specific subset of a field, but passion can be about a broader goal, such as building a company. Really this argument has to do with subjective values. So I do not see how this would make for a general argument for working at a large comapny.

2\. Leverage

It may be true that working at a large company provides as sense of credibility, but this does not address the startup world, which I find to be about the same. Working with a startup is not a lonely task, it involves much more and knowledge of the field, who the competitor are, knowing who else building a company. I'm given a sense of credibility simply because people recognize the startup I am a part of.

3\. More Money

Having bootstrapped a company before, I can't say that it is the ideal solution in all cases. Many factors come into play here. I find it very unlikely that a company that is in a highly regulated area or doing some kind of cancer research would be bootstrapped.

The title of this section addresses 'more money'. If you are looking to make the most money there is no faster way of that I know of than building your own company (I could be wrong here, feel free to point something out). It is risk vs. reward. A subject value again.

4\. Relationships

Being a natural introvert, it might be easier to develop relationships in a corporate setting. But, I still have people I know from various companies that I can call right up.

5\. If you want to start a company, a large company is the best place to learn

I would say the best place to learn is on the spot, but that doesn't mean you can't learn from other companies.

<comment><USER11> _If you are looking to make the most money there is no faster way of that I know of than building your own company (I could be wrong here, feel free to point something out). It is risk vs. reward. A subject value again._

Nah, if you are looking to maximise your chances of making enough money to retire by the time you're in your late 30s, join an investment bank, not a startup.

Do a startup if you can't imagine doing anything else with your time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Assuming that the long term goal is to start a company of your own at some point they are just means to an end.

If you work at a large company you need to work for a longer time to have enough cash, relevant knowledge of wide business area (not just something highly focused), and it is a safer choice.

However if you are one of those who like to see change, cannot stand lazy co workers, and are excited about immediate impact of your actions then startups are the place to be. It is riskier, more fun, you get _enormous_ experience in a wide domain which might not directly be related to your work. Whatever be the reason, please do not work in a startup because you think it will do well and you will be a millionaire because of it.

Also regarding: _If you are not a cofounder, you will be expected do a lot of different types of work, affording you little time to spend on the particular subfield of interest._ I for one know a lot of co-founders who work their asses off and party alongside their employees. This is in my opinion the best part about working for a startup that you will never find in a large organisation. There is no-one who is a "boss". You are a bunch of people who have a passion to make an impact and everyone is focused to make it happen.

<comment><AUTHOR> "If you work at a large company you need to work for a longer time to have enough cash" <\-- how long you need to work to have enough cash depends on two things:

A) your spending rate

B) your earning rate

And in general, your earning rate is faster at a company. Again, you have to compensate for selection bias here: not all startups are successful. Even if they are large enough to have employees.

Regarding your comments about little time, I think you are confusing "no free time" with "no free time at work to focus on something else". I'm definitely not arguing that people who work for startups dont have time for partying. Definitely not. All I am saying is that, because the nature and frequency of demands is different, you generally find yourself with more time to explore your own thing at a large firm. And yes, this is coming from a person in finance, so it must be true for other industries as well :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Call me romantic, but in this decision I would leave reputation, money, status etc. behind

To my mind what really matters is: do you love what you are doing. Ergo the goal is to figure out: What do I love?

How to do that? By doing internships and gain experience! I did 4 internships at companies from small to huuuge till my graduation. When you, like me, after many internships at companies of different sizes and sectors still have not found a job that you love - then you should think about working at a startup or even founding one.

Well, I don't want to generalize things too much, but when you are a creative mind and have ideas and want to make them real, then a huge company is the worst place to start. They lure with self-fulfilment, but more likely they suck out your potential. The questions you want to ask yourself in the morning should be like: Am I intrinsic motivated to get up now and give my best till midnight+ today?

Since I founded my startup it is the first time in my life that I have this feeling and I wake up in the morning and really can't wait to get to work and get work done.

Achieve that and your decision is made.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Since I founded my startup ..." <\-- the underlying comparison is between "working at a startup" (which is understood to be a non-founder status) and "working at a large firm".

As far as internships are concerned, internships at large companies are generally more flexible regarding roles. Some even involve rotations, where you get to see a little bit of everything.

<comment><USER13> You are right with that, and I do know what you mean. However my real point was that you can't really generalize things and make a checklist-based decision on those two, or in my case three (with founding) alternatives.

I personally think you should not make this decision on a too much numbers/status/fact basis, but on a very personal or you risk to regret it sooner or later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I worked for a (15 person) startup for a year and am now moving to a larger (70 person) company. I can say that working at a startup lets you try a lot of different things.

If you don't know what you want to specialize in a startup can be a great place. Over the last year I did everything from coding to usability testing to video editing.

At the startup, I worked with really talented engineers who cut their teeth at much larger companies (AOL, Microsoft, financial services firms). Now I've decided to specialize and am heading to a larger company to hone my craft.

</comment><comment><USER15> Lets not forget the gloomy market coupled with outrageous student loans

<comment><AUTHOR> The hurdle rate is still relatively low (US federal student loans can be extended up to 25 years), so you can afford to work at a startup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I disagree with point 5. A large company is a place to learn dysfunction and politics.

However, having an understanding of them is important so it's probably a good place to start. So perhaps I do agree with point 5 but in a different way.

<comment><USER17> It's good to have observed it in the wild, at some distance, but becoming part of such a tribe alters your perception of what is acceptable and qualifies as good enough. Like a reverse Heisenberg effect.

<comment><USER16> Fair point well described.</comment></comment></comment>


555 timer teardown: inside the world's most popular IC - <AUTHOR> http://www.righto.com/2016/02/555-timer-teardown-inside-worlds-most.html <comment><USER2> Probably a coincidence, but 0x555 == 0b010101010101. Just like the flip flop output signal.

<comment><USER3> Cool!

I was curious and looked this up on Wikipedia [0]:

> It has been hypothesized that the 555 got its name from the three 5 kΩ > resistors used within, but Hans Camenzind has stated that the number was > arbitrary. [1]

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/555_timer_IC#Design](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/555_timer_IC#Design) [1] [http://www.semiconductormuseum.com/Transistors/LectureHall/C...](http://www.semiconductormuseum.com/Transistors/LectureHall/Camenzind/Camenzind_Page2.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Maybe was the most popular chip for a while until the 90s, but these days they are not in very many things that sell in high quantities unless it is like a really cheap toy or something.. smartphones for example don't have 555 timers in them. Battery charger IC's probably are the biggest total seller.. but many companies sell similar types under different names, so not sure if you could call them all "one chip" like you can call the 555 timer and all of its clones..

<comment><USER5> The cheapest ones at Digikey are going for 10 cents (compared to 35 cents for the cheapest small microcontrollers [PSOC or a 10F200]).

So I guess they still have some use.

Probably sell mostly to hobbyists, universities and old designs though.

<comment><USER6> Hobbyists hardly use these things anymore, because they require all that external stuff -- resistors, capacitors -- before you get what you want out of them. They're not self-contained.

These days you can just program a PIC or something, drop it on your broadboard, and you get whatever signal you want out of them with software, without any components besides the chip itself, and maybe a quartz crystal if you want better accuracy (although I really wish they'd package a crystal inside the DIP as well to make it even more self-contained).

<comment><USER7> The DS3231 RTC clock chip indeed has an accurate crystal oscilator inside the package, so, yeah, put em in an AVR why not!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Chris Gammell (of Contextual Electronics) and Jeri Ellsworth (of Technical Illusions) held a really neat 555 timer contest a few years ago. You can see some of the results here:

[http://makezine.com/2011/04/21/555-contest-winners- announced...](http://makezine.com/2011/04/21/555-contest-winners-announced/)

[http://makezine.com/2012/08/22/555-timer-contest- highlights/](http://makezine.com/2012/08/22/555-timer-contest-highlights/)

</comment><comment><USER9> I started writing a sort of tutorial for the NE 555. Most documents give you just the formula to have the values (multiply the value by Ln2 and stuff), not _how_ we got there.

It's not finished yet, but here are the first few pages:

[http://j.mp/ne555calc](http://j.mp/ne555calc)

It will also deal with duty cycle and things like that.

Here's the French version (old lab report when I was in college):

[http://j.mp/ne555fr](http://j.mp/ne555fr)

<comment><USER10> This one of the reasons I hang on to old databooks and app note books. The National Semiconductor, Motorola and Signetics appnote collections in particular are very good for delving into the theory of how the devices work.

I may never _need_ them again for real work, but are they ever fun to read!

<comment><USER9> Right on! Well since you seem to like that, I've shared a link once here on HN but it went unnoticed. It's about Analog Design and it has a _ton_ of information. Don't get lost:

[http://www.wisewarthog.com/](http://www.wisewarthog.com/)

It give recommendations depending on what you want to do, discusses books and application notes, gives links to treasures, advice, pointers, and insights.

You might know the site; otherwise, I hope you'll enjoy it.

<comment><USER10> Thanks! Bookmarked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you want to play with a simulated 555 - and are willing run an old java applet - my favorite (educational) circuit simulator includes several 555 circuits (and an implementation of the 555's internals).

[http://www.falstad.com/circuit/e-555pulsemod.html](http://www.falstad.com/circuit/e-555pulsemod.html)

<comment><USER12> Paul Falstad's Java applets were my biggest regret about deciding to uninstall it.

<comment><USER13> Wow, I didn't know them before. Cool stuff!!

PS. I entered with my android mobile and to my surprise it works... Another thing I was not aware is that I have Java applets on by default...

<comment><USER14> Android doesn't support Java applets. The site uses JS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There was a project in Elektor a few years ago to program some cheap 8-bit microcontroller to emulate a 555. [https://www.elektormagazine.com/magazine/elektor-201511/2819...](https://www.elektormagazine.com/magazine/elektor-201511/28192)

They also did a kit to build your own 555 from discrete transistors. [https://www.elektor.com/the-three-fives-555-discrete- timer-k...](https://www.elektor.com/the-three-fives-555-discrete-timer-kit)

<comment><USER16> I have that kit! It was great fun to build it, make some simple circuits, and trace the voltages through the "chip". The kit is really nice quality and thoughtfully designed.

This kit is actually from Evil Mad Scientist [1], the same people who make the EggBot and other nifty stuff. Their own site has a lot more information about it, and they sell it cheaper than Elektor. [2] They also have a similar μA741 op-amp kit. [3]

Back in the '70s I used to make blue boxes [4] with a bunch of 555s in them. This was probably not the best way to design a DTMF box - I remember I had a heck of a time keeping the frequencies stable. Woz's blue boxes probably worked a lot better!

[1] [http://shop.evilmadscientist.com/](http://shop.evilmadscientist.com/)

[2] [http://shop.evilmadscientist.com/tinykitlist/652](http://shop.evilmadscientist.com/tinykitlist/652)

[3] [http://shop.evilmadscientist.com/tinykitlist/762](http://shop.evilmadscientist.com/tinykitlist/762)

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

<comment><USER15> Yep. Those links were nostalgia for me, 'cos I remember first using the 555 when I was a kid building projects from Elektor and ETI ...

<comment><USER17> The old elektor magazine was super good. Every issue had something on just about every level of competence in it. I learned so much from those. The most complex thing I built from them was the 2D graphics accelerator, hooked that up to the Beeb and wrote a fully functional vdu driver for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> HN readers: what products do you know of that used the 555 IC?

I'm working of a catalog of popular consumer electronic devices that used this chip. Anything you know of that used this chip would be helpful.

<comment><USER19> It's actually incredibly rare in consumer products. Especially since an 8-bit micro controller can cost much much less in bulk today.

Edit: and 8-bit micros come much cheaper than Digikey when you buy consumer product volumes directly.

<comment><USER18> Do you know what it is was used for in non-consumer products?

<comment><USER10> It's in a number of ancient DC time-delay relays.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've found this related IC to be useful in modern circuits: [http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/tlc551.pdf](http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/tlc551.pdf)

It's a low-power version of the 555. It runs down to 1.0V!

I've used it in inductor circuits to chop-boost small voltages.

</comment><comment><USER21> Link to the original chip designer's free book:

[http://www.designinganalogchips.com/](http://www.designinganalogchips.com/)

<comment><USER22> Thanks for this, I've got a few pages in and I really like his writing style.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I had no idea the 555 chip that we use today, is the same as it was in 1970. I would have (incorrectly) guessed that as time went on, that it would have undergone improvements/revisions as technology improved.

<comment><USER24> Well, there are lower power CMOS versions of the 555 available.

<comment><USER25> A 555 timer chip can deliver 200mA at the output, so it can drive small lamps and relays directly. The output load usually dwarfs the current used for timing. So, for most applications, a lower power version is pointless.

<comment><USER26> I doubt that most applications of the 555 are driving relays and lamps, it probably is mainly used to generate timing signals. But that's besides the point, the low power versions can function with low voltages, allowing to power the chip with a single 1.5V battery, which would be impossible with the standard version, so it's far from pointless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I just about died when I saw "banana for scale" on the photo near the bottom.

</comment><comment><USER28> I wonder if they make a giant expensive high voltage/amperage/speed EMP proof military space hardened version of the 555, for use in LED atomic bomb count- down clocks, etc.

Here's a cool DIY project: Make a drop-in replacement kit for the 555 integrated circuit with discrete transistors and resistors [1]

[1] [http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/hands-on/build-your- own-g...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/hands-on/build-your-own- giant-555-timer-chip)

</comment><comment><USER29> Who actually makes the 555 these days? Or is everything old stock?

<comment><USER30> digikey hardly sells everything, but they do sell various 555 chips from 12 manufacturers, at least per the parametric search.

Its fun to look at the weird options available. A UFBGA-8 package is available... weird, never used one of those before. TI sells chips that go up to 3 MHz. TI will also sell bare dies if you have a wire bonder. Supply currents are available down to 30 uA.

<comment><USER24> Buying bare dies would be really convenient for my die photos / analysis, but unfortunately with the Digikey minimum quantities, I'd need to buy 25 @ $4 each which isn't worthwhile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> this is a super cool write up of something plenty of us neglect. I wasn't expecting the excellent interactive explorer at the bottom! Click on the component diagram and see the component highlighted in the actual image!

</comment><comment><USER32> For those interested in understanding the general operation, this type of circuit is called a relaxation oscillator.

</comment><comment><USER33> feel so nostalgic reading this! I remember my first contact with the 555 was through the Chip-chap electronics kit when I was 10. good times making LED timers, metronome, etc.

</comment><comment><USER34> cool to see the mix of images, schematics, interactive graphics</comment>


This is what happens when kids try dial-up Internet for the first time - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2015/09/15/kids-try-dial-up-internet/?utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29&utm_cid=Mash-Prod-RSS-Feedburner-All-Partial&utm_medium=feed&utm_source=feedburner#NAnsu39TJaku <comment><AUTHOR> Oh... those horrible screeching sounds, for me is music to my ears so many memories!</comment>


Redis for a flat URL hierarchy - <AUTHOR> http://robots.thoughtbot.com/post/5773013507/redis-for-a-flat-url-hierarchy <comment><USER2> Why? As a user I love the context of a URL. As someone inspecting logs it gives me a quick hint.</comment>