Tell YC: Summer 08 decisions out - <AUTHOR> got a no :( <comment><USER2> Got invited for an interview! :)

This was actually my third time applying to YC. First time I applied (last summer) the application and idea were pretty crappy, so we never came close. We had a slightly better application during the winter round and almost got an interview.

I guess the third time was the charm. This is great news of course, but it only increases your chances - the real test will be at the interview.

<comment><USER3> Congrats Marty! Just curious - how do you know that you almost got an interview during the winter round?

<comment><USER2> Thanks everyone.

The second time around I thought we had a pretty good application and they emailed me back asking some extra questions, so unlike the first time around I was a bit surprised and pretty disappointed. I emailed them back and they told me we almost made it, but others were doing similar things and were further along. Turns out, what were trying to do was quite similar to Heroku, who had already been funded, but were still in private beta at that time.

I think what helped this time around is that we have (IMO) a decent and somewhat newish idea, combined with a working, if early, version of the app.

But we'll see what happens...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> When I was visiting Harvard one time before undergraduate college applications, my tour guide mentioned something that stuck with me -- that after a round of auditions for the highly selective a capella groups on campus, the students that were passed over for all the existing groups decided to band together and form a new group. And that that group ended up training more seriously and later that year came in first in some a capella competition.

There's a lot of potential value floating around HN.

Perhaps an informal BarCombinator of sorts could be formed?

(incidentally, we made it past this round, but...)

Whois Server Version 2.0

Domain names in the .com and .net domains can now be registered with many different competing registrars. Go to <http://www.internic.net> for detailed information.

No match for "BARCOMBINATOR.COM".

( Let the domain race begin? )

<comment><USER5> I've just created a LinkedIn group for Hacker News (unrelated to this thread, but reading it reminded me I was planning on creating it). I'll post the details here and in a new article when it's live. I've also added my LinkedIn profile to my HC profile.

<comment><USER6> There is already a group with 150 members here:

[http://www.linkedin.com/search?search=&sortCriteria=3...](http://www.linkedin.com/search?search=&sortCriteria=3&groupFilter=3426)

Does that link for people? I can't figure out a better way to link to it, it is called "Y Combinator News Group"

>The groups directory is not currently open. We are working on creating a searchable directory for all groups. If there are groups you wish to join, you may click on the group logo from the profile of a group member and request to join.

Looks like LinkedIn groups are mostly broken. So this is my profile, you can join the group if you click the group link in my profile. [http://www.linkedin.com/profile?viewProfile=&key=7886605...](http://www.linkedin.com/profile?viewProfile=&key=7886605&trk=tab_pro)

<comment><USER5> Hmm, yeah, this seems pretty b0rked. Ok, I'll see if I can dig something up a little more useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> no also.

'grats to those that got accepted.

Given I couldn't find a co-founder (and I'm aware my own programming experience is limited) I didn't really expect to win. Will apply stronger next time.

But I'm not giving up on my project. I may just take my time with it as opposed to investing all energy in it. I have so many things I want to do and learn.

This will allow the end product to be better than it would be if I hammered it sloppily into existance.

I might even come up with something better in the mean time.

</comment><comment><USER8> Congrats to everyone that got an interview! Get a prototype/demo working and be impressive. Y Combinator is life changing -- good luck. :)

For those not participating, you can still join a growing YC startup. Disqus is actively growing the team: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=158091>

</comment><comment><USER9> Some advice to people who got a no:

I've never applied at YC, but I've got a couple of failed startups under my belt. If you got a no, think about why, and consider it free advice from someone whose opinion you trust. If you disagree, then use it as fuel to work hard - as hard as you can; and show everyone else that when you were down on your luck you put your nose to the grindstone and made it happen anyways.

That being said, this isn't a win or lose sort of scenario; remember that it's a two way street. YC has certain types of companies or founders that they like to invest in; every investor does.

Take a few days for introspection, decide if _you_ believe in what you're doing. If you do, then keep on slogging.

If you got in, then congrats... Start working on taking notes, because I hear you get an amazing amount of information from being a part of YC... even the face-to-face interview portions.

<comment><USER10> > _If you got a no, think about why, and consider it free advice from someone > whose opinion you trust._

I honestly think they are just too pressed for time to do a thorough review. Applicants can check their web logs and see if YC even looked at their stuff. Submitting early is probably a major advantage if it means they (YC) actually have time to take a gander at what you did.

<comment><USER7> May I ask where the web logs I should look at are? (I see comments and submit logs)

I agree with you otherwise though. I think submitting the day before was... not a mistake... but I found YC a week before the deadline and spend the time working up an application and looking for a co-founder.

<comment><USER11> _May I ask where the web logs I should look at are?_

I think he's saying that you can check the logs of your own server.

<comment><USER7> ah... seems like yc had a note about checking something here for comments/questions. I thought he was referring to that.

<comment><USER10> If they have... had a question it would show up at the top of the page on this site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The classic, the best thing to read about rejection. It's by Teresa Nielsen Hayden, an editor at Tor (also a moderator at Boing Boing now). The context is science fiction publishing, but the feelings are all the same. And it's a good laugh. <http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/004641.html>

For instance, some of the "didn't peruse my website" stuff starts to sound familiar:

"But let's assume the author's right, and the reader didn't get all the way through the submitted material. Is that a fair evaluation? When we're publishing books that readers are going to glance at, briefly browse, then either buy or put back on the shelf, you bet it's a fair evaluation. Again, when you think about this with your reader-mind instead of your writer-mind, it all comes much clearer."

<comment><USER13> "SOME THOUGHTS ON WRITING" (Elizabeth Gilbert is the author of the #1 NYTimes Bestseller Memoir, Eat Pray Love) [<http://www.elizabethgilbert.com/writing.htm>]

"Your job is only to write your heart out, and let destiny take care of the rest."

"I have a friend who's an Italian filmmaker of great artistic sensibility. After years of struggling to get his films made, he sent an anguished letter to his hero, the brilliant (and perhaps half-insane) German filmmaker Werner Herzog. My friend complained about how difficult it is these days to be an independent filmmaker, how hard it is to find government arts grants, how the audiences have all been ruined by Hollywood and how the world has lost its taste…etc, etc. Herzog wrote back a personal letter to my friend that essentially ran along these lines: "Quit your complaining. It's not the world's fault that you wanted to be an artist. It's not the world's job to enjoy the films you make, and it's certainly not the world's obligation to pay for your dreams. Nobody wants to hear it. Steal a camera if you have to, but stop whining and get back to work." I repeat those words back to myself whenever I start to feel resentful, entitled, competitive or unappreciated with regard to my writing: "It's not the world's fault that you want to be an artist…now get back to work." Always, at the end of the day, the important thing is only and always that: Get back to work. This is a path for the courageous and the faithful. You must find another reason to work, other than the desire for success or recognition. It must come from another place."

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Yeah, unfortunately most of us here were turned down and most of those who got interviews will be turned down as well. That's just how the numbers are.

The more interesting question is how many of you expected to be turned down but applied anyway? I suspect a lot. It's funny that this round their application had a boolean question asking whether you were a single founder, non-technical group, full time jobs, etc. I even half joked to a friend that YC has an automated filter that queues up your rejection letter if the answer is "yes".

This time around I did not expect to get funded, as I don't have a co-founder yet. Funny thing is, this time I also believe in my idea much more strongly than both times I applied in the past (with co-founders) and got invited to an interview. I guess that's why I still went for it.

</comment><comment><USER15> Don't be discouraged. I'm 100% sure my idea is rock solid, I've executed successfully before AND I have a cofounder, but I was turned down. You don't have a good startup-tale without getting turned down a few times. I think of it like this:

me: Would you like to make some money with me YC?

YC: No thanks, we have plenty.

<comment><USER10> > _I'm 100% sure my idea is rock solid, I've executed successfully before AND > I have a cofounder, but I was turned down._

Send them a letter rejecting their rejection letter and show up anyhow. From gettingintogradschool.com:

        Thank for your letter of April 9. After careful consideration, I regret to
        inform you that I am unable to accept your refusal to offer me admission
        to our department.

        This year I have been particularly fortunate in receiving an unusually large
        number of rejection letters. With such a varied and promising field of
        candidates it is impossible for me to accept all refusals.

        Despite W.M.U.'s outstanding qualifications and previous experience in
        rejecting applicants, I find that your rejection does not meet my needs at
        this time. Therefore, I will join the ranks of graduate students in your
        department this September. I look forward to seeing you then.

        Sincerely,

<comment><USER16> Haha, brilliant! The problem is, you need at least one person (someone who has deciding power) to be impressed enough with your pure stubborn flippancy to let you in even after having been rejected.

<comment><USER10> If anyone actually went through with it I'd like their chances. If you have that kind of chutzpah why stop there? Hit up every other VC/Angel in the area and something will stick.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=68598>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=113610>

<comment><USER18> [http://theburningbiscuit.com/Pictures%20for%20site/Demotivat...](http://theburningbiscuit.com/Pictures%20for%20site/Demotivational%20Posters/persistence.jpg)

[http://theburningbiscuit.com/Pictures%20for%20site/Demotivat...](http://theburningbiscuit.com/Pictures%20for%20site/Demotivational%20Posters/stupidity.jpg)

[http://theburningbiscuit.com/Pictures%20for%20site/Demotivat...](http://theburningbiscuit.com/Pictures%20for%20site/Demotivational%20Posters/potential.jpg)

[http://theburningbiscuit.com/Pictures%20for%20site/Demotivat...](http://theburningbiscuit.com/Pictures%20for%20site/Demotivational%20Posters/losing.jpg)

[http://theburningbiscuit.com/Pictures%20for%20site/Demotivat...](http://theburningbiscuit.com/Pictures%20for%20site/Demotivational%20Posters/adversity.jpg)

<comment><USER7> although I think the pics are funny. I think they are also trolling. Modding you down.

<comment><USER18> Need not get petty. Share the laughs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> No for us too. But hey, to be honest I thought I'd be disappointed but I'm totally relieved because at least now we can plan our summer, and we'll be launching soon enough anyway!

We had a huge design meeting today going over how all our user/accounts management stuff should look, then we relaxed with some amazing Thai food, and we're totally pumped moving forward in any case.

I thought the letter they sent was really nice too. If we're not too far along by winter session, we'll certainly apply again :)

</comment><comment><USER20> Sorry to hear about the majority which all got a no. Keep your chins up and your hopes alive.

I would not worry about it. It might be time for a reality check though.

Step back and take a look at your idea. Does it have legs. Is it something that people want. Can you monetize it. Don't take your own opinion seriously, ask people if they would use it and see ads or pay for it. If you can't find anyone who would, come up with another idea.

Figure out what it would take to get to the next step. If the answer is a boatload of money or a team of people then it may be time to come up with another idea that has a lower bar to clear. If the answer is a couple of months of working nights for the founders go for it.

One more thing. I've been lurking here for awhile and I see the passion and desire to make things happen here all the time. It motivates me to work harder and make it happen for my project. I think this small community is a great virtual community. We can all use it to push each other to succeed. I know I am. I wonder how many YC rejects will succeed? I'm guessing a lot more than normal.

I couldn't apply with my reality. I'm too old. I need too much money. I can't move. etc...

But it does not matter. I will finish my project and I will release it and see if it has legs.

I can't wait to see more new products announced here by the YC rejects. I'll keep lurking...

</comment><comment><USER21> Do the decision letters for accepted groups ask them not to post that they were accepted? It seems like, after every funding cycle, no one admits they were accepted in these after-threads.

<comment><USER22> I'm not sure, but there's a few reasons not to post if you got accepted:

      1) just getting picked to go to the interview really only gives you like a 1 in 3 or so chance of getting in to YC.

      2) the news of getting accepted into YC is pretty
         noteworthy and shouldn't be squandered -
        it's useful for PR purposes when you launch your product.
        If you blow the news too early, you miss out on a
        potential PR-based influx of users from TechCrunch for
        example.

Congrats to those who were picked to go to the interview!

<comment><USER7> yeah and think of "I got interviewed".... back from the interview. "didn't get accepted..."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Just got the "rejection" letter, I'm a bit disappointed I couldn't get the team reviewing the proposals as passionate about the project as I am. I think being a solo founder hurt me, but I've been working on the project full-time for four months (over 12k lines of code). This won't slow me down. =)

What is your company going to make?

We make it easy to jot something down from any device and then share that note with your friends or colleagues to have a discussion.

We are building a web version and apps for Android, iPhone, and BlackBerry.

Sample use: You are at a restaurant and like a bottle of wine. You whip out your phone and snap a picture. Now that picture is part of your notes which you can access from anywhere. One more click and the note is shared on your Facebook News Feed so you can have a threaded discussion with your friends.

3banana: your notes are social <http://3banana.com>

<comment><USER7> I am working on building an online pencil and paper rpg play system. It would support a character database, dice rollers, major P&P systems, the usual forums, npc character search, all sort's of toy's for players/ST's,GM's,DM's, and a chat system. And eventually support for a subscription service for the books. Much like O'Reilly's Safari.

<comment><USER24> thats pretty cool. One project I'm working on is designing a much of tools for algorithmically determining when either a game design or a map for a game is "fair", for various notions of fair.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I also got a no.

It's actually what I was expecting my app is nearly done already www.embought.com and I'm a single founder.

Congrats to everyone that made it. Looking forward to reading the interview recap blogs.

<comment><USER3> Readmore I think your application is a good idea. Have you considered letting people choose their own charity instead of the preselected ones you have listed?

Or even better, people could choose their own cause (whether it's a charity, fundraising event, boyscouts, girlscouts etc etc) and could encourage friends, family and acquaintances to use the site to raise money for their cause.

<comment><USER25> Thanks!

I've thought along those same lines, and I'm hoping to make that an option in the future. Currently I'm not confident that I can track everything well enough to attribute purchases to an individual user. I didn't want to say a user could pick their own charity and then not actually be able to donate the money for them.

As I get traffic I'm hoping to find a way to pull that off.

<comment><USER3> Maybe you could set something similar to what ebates.com has done? Each user has an individual login and everytime they go to an affiliate site they are provided with a tracking ticket. It's a really cool system and I've made over a few hundred dollars with them related to business trips for my "real job". If your site ever starts marketing towards fundraising groups, a user could be asked to enter a simple identifier code to tell the system that all proceeds should be directed to XX cause OR the group could be provided their own sign up link which automatically associates the user with XX cause.

<comment><USER25> That sounds like a great system, thanks. I'll take a look at ebates.com and see what I can find.

<comment><USER3> Readmore, definitely send me an email if you incorporate any new elements: danhaubert [at.....] gmail (dot) com

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm planning on applying next summer when I'm done my CS degree and have a bit more experience under my belt, but I would love to know what are usually the reasons of rejections?

As for now I'm looking for a cofounder and a great idea, but I would love to improve on possible weaknesses I have that are import to the eyes of YC.

<comment><USER7> what's wrong with the idea you applied with?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> No for me too. I'm a little annoyed at myself for applying at the last minute. My plan was to solve some key technical issues before applying next cycle, but I changed my mind and applied without thinking it through. Maybe spending more time properly presentating my concept would have made all the difference... on the other hand maybe it wouldn't.

My idea is fairly wacky, and may need to be seen to be believed, so back to plan A: solving problems and building the alpha!

</comment><comment><USER28> I got a no as well and my feeling is that the entire process is pointless for an applicant without any feedback. I'm not bitter about being rejected, but going into this I expected at least some amount of commentary, and not 5 hits on my site and a form rejection letter. Maybe I should have tapered my expectations or the website should have been more clear about saying that if we don't pick you, you won't hear anything from us.

<comment><USER29> Trey, my friend -

Learn to love rejection, to thrive off of it. when people say no - or, even worse, give lukewarm support - they're saying they don't get it. Only one thing for you to do: prove it. Keep hearing no, keep moving on, keep building, keep getting stronger, keep doing what you do. Pain is good, pain makes you stronger. This - this industry/community/dream/passion/life - will never be easy. It's going to hurt and suck and make you want to quit (or die), so be ready to cry and bleed. Yeah, learn to take a punch - but that sure won't be enough. You need to learn to love it.

This isn't about them, the naysayers and the unbelievers. This is about you and your conviction to build something great and lasting. Every NO is more than a test; every NO is a challenge. So what are you going to do about it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> No as well, but frankly I expected it (as my idea really has very little programming in it). For a form letter, the email they sent was pretty well written. I feel more challenged after reading it, and fully plan on making some serious money and turning around and sending them an email of how successful I was, and what exactly they missed out on.

Cheers!

(and congrats to those who were accepted)

</comment><comment><USER30> I didnt apply this time around, but...

You have to realize that while Hacker News may be a community, Y Combinator is actually business. Businesses tend to strive to efficient processes.

Applying to Y Combinator is like applying to any other competition, so don't take the lack of direct feedback personally. If you got a rejection letter, it didn't state things like "You didn't pursue enough extracurricular activities, plus the grammar in your essay was horrible".

I think that what people that werent accepted should do is become a part of this community. Because while you may not get feedback from your application, we will give that feedback, we will give you that support when you are down, we will be the first users of your website, heck we may even be your first competitors.

So, dont drop your idea or stop coming here because you werent accepted or didnt get feedback. It's not personal. Really.

Good Luck!

</comment><comment><USER19> Forgot to add a big congratulations to those who got accepted for interviews! See you guys at the top! ;)

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm passion about our application and will continue to work on it. YC challenge helped us to make it faster, but we started to do it before we found out about YC (4 months ago). Continue to do what you do! Thanks to YC

</comment><comment><USER32> I was once again not accepted.

I really wasn't expecting to get in this time, but it really can be a big hit on the ego seeing all these people getting in and not being on the list. However, it shouldn't deter me - I will continue on fighting the good fight. Best of luck to the other applicants.

My idea is great, and I have just starting working on it. I will keep you guys updated, hopefully release before demo day, and with some luck nobody will notice I wasn't in this round.

</comment><comment><USER33> congratulations whether you got a no or a yes, you just made another step of a very long walk with many paths to choose from, before reaching where you dream.

</comment><comment><USER34> Got a no.

Hoping for some personalized feedback, some intel. When you are first starting out, generally that's the most important thing - since even if you get a "yes", what your going to get besides $5k+$5kN is lots of community and feedback. Cash can be burned through, especially that little. I mean, McAffee has a Stadium and computers still get viruses. But the truth, well, that's a bit more persistent.

</comment><comment><USER35> @raghus -- Make it happen anyway. Use the no for good.

<comment><USER36> For real. Although YC is certainly a great judge of talent and predictor of success, they aren't the be all and end all, and are forced to rely on a lot of proxies/indicators in making their decisions. Give it a go yourself!

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> @raghus - we just got a no as well.

Life deals out a lot of set-backs, but each one contains some very useful information (ideally examined in the rear-view mirror). Despite being rejected, I do think that the self-reflection involved in applying to ycomb was worth it.

Well, back to building stuff!

</comment><comment><USER38> We got a no as well. Probably could have spent more time editing/polishing our application but sometimes time gets away from you. Would have loved to get more feedback, though I am sure there were far too many applicants for that.

Good luck to all who are interviewing.

</comment><comment><USER39> Good enterprises is not to give up when you fall. Keep trying and I am sure you will succeed!

</comment><comment><USER40> I was rejected, but to be honest, I didn't expect too much. My project is in Panama and is in Spanish, so my chances were low to begin with. But I was happy just to get a chance to participate and a great forum to bounce ideas.

Good luck to all the projects!

</comment><comment><USER41> It would have been nice to get more feedback. It's pretty discouraging when they tell you that they invited more applicants for interviews than ever before, and you get a generic rejection email instead.

Congrats to those who made the cut though.

<comment><USER42> regarding feedback, consider how many applicants they get and how many people they have to go thru apps (Paul, Jessica, Trevor, I think). 10 minutes of thoughtful feedback times 1000 or so (I'm guessing) rejected folks.... 10,000 minutes of feedback. If you want feedback, crowdsource it and post it here. You'll get plenty.

<comment><USER41> I understand that, but I also don't think it would be too complicated for them to just jot their thoughts/comments down as they are going through the apps and have those included in your email, but it isn't a big deal. I'm just disappointed.

<comment><USER43> I think a good deal of the applications may have to be overlooked (filtered out by app questions) so there might not be any notes, other than something like "doesn't have a co-founder."

<comment><USER7> even that would be nice. although I think many of us are assuming that. But you know what they say about ass u me-ing things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Congratulations to everyone who made an interview and I wish you the best of luck.

I didn't get rejected because I didn't apply this round, but I will next round. Hopefully it will turn out well for me as well.

</comment><comment><USER45> No as well. I'm a single founder and my app's pretty much done already so it wasn't much of a surprise. Looking forward to hearing about some of the ideas they accepted.

</comment><comment><USER46> So, anyone got a yes?

</comment><comment><USER47> it's funny they miss spelled one of our founders email. The domain was la- fem.com instead they send it to la.anybots.com

I wonder why

<comment><USER10> Anybots is Trevor Blackwell's company.

Wild guess: the parsing barfed at the hyphen in firstname.lastname@example.com and sent it to name@la -- and the email system will fill in the local domain name if you don't use a FQDN. They sent it through anybots.com's mail system so it got filled in as la.anybots.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Hmm... haven't gotten my response yet

<comment><USER48> No for us as well... good luck to all who made it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> what was your idea?

<comment><USER15> Good question, but how about "is" instead of "was." The world always gives you a few thumps to the chest to make sure you really mean it before you succeed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I also got a no, but that's okay. I don't think the infrastructure is in place for mine yet, anyway.

Maybe in a little while! :D</comment>


Ask HN: LinkedIn alternatives for engineers - <AUTHOR> Are there any good LinkedIn alternatives? Any specifically targeted at engineers?
My major issues with LinkedIn are:
1. Data ownership and privacy (essentially selling data to paying customers)
2. Inability to easily export data
3. Spam from recruiters / people I don't know
4. Awful to use and ugly interface
5. Very bad developer relations and closed platform
6. Overall spammy and dishonest past
7. Out of control email spam (that continues after closing your account)
Does anyone else feel this way, or am I on my own here? <comment><USER2> To what end? The only audience - other than engineers - such a network would appeal to is recruiters looking for engineers, which at least in the long-term would cause pretty much the same problems you described. What's the purpose of engineers only networking among each other? Engineering is not a bubble that lives independently of other professions.

Another point is: Would you pay for such a service? The main reason why LinkedIn is as it is, is that nobody (well, nobody save for recruiters) wants to pay for their service. Hence, they had to find other avenues of monetization and started selling their users' profile data. XING - a European competitor - isn't entirely free but had a fairly successful premium offering right from the start. From what I'm seeing they don't have a prevalent spam problem, at least not to the extent LinkedIn has (LinkedIn spam probably isn't even seen as a problem by the company at all but rather encouraged, they just don't say so openly).

<comment><AUTHOR> It doesn't have to be for just engineers. It just seems like most competitors to large services like linkedin start by targeting a specific group. The purpose of engineers networking amongst each other would be for referrals, which are arguably more important than recruiters reaching out to random people.

I would consider paying for the service, but not much (and im not sure many other people would). You definitely have a good point here. I'm not sure how you could make money without having the recruiters as your customers, which would put you back in the same bad place as linkedin. Maybe something along the lines of tying it to the refarral bonuses people are getting?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> JSON Resume ([https://jsonresume.org/](https://jsonresume.org/)) is a project that attempts to create a JSON standard for resumes. You also get total data control and ownership.

As far as the shared network aspect, you'd probably have to build the glue between it and something like AngelList or Stack Overflow Careers.

</comment><comment><USER4> I agree with you on most of your points, but don't know an alternative. I actually accept all requests from recruiters and will hit them up if i ever need extra work, so the spam I get ends up paying off in the end. I've gotten a few gigs from recruiters on linkedin.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you not find that the recruiter noise gets in the way of keeping in touch with people you know though?

<comment><USER5> People actually use LinkedIn to keep in touch? I thought everyone used it as a static resume holder.

<comment><USER6> I do for some former coworkers. I don't use Facebook and have moved around a lot, so LinkedIn is actually an easy way to keep up with people I used to work with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd say that the most obvious answer is StackOverflow Career.</comment>


Why does software management have to be so painful? [Pic] - <AUTHOR> http://phoja.com/show/551/why-does-software-management-have-to-be-so-painful.html

<comment><USER2> Uh Oh. The dreaded [Pic] virus is spreading from the front page of reddit.

<comment><AUTHOR> A picture can say a thousand words! I wonder if your response would be the same if Phoja was a YC startup?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The whiteboard photo is scribbly, but doesn't suggest more complexity than most small projects. Actual software projects (I'm not talking about Flickr clone #60,255) are incredibly complicated.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't see what's so complicated about that whiteboard. Half the boxes are unnecessary to the point at hand, which is how perforce does bugzilla integration.

</comment><comment><USER5> It doesn't have to. But most software people tend to design solutions starting from "best practices" and address every imaginable problem ("what if X and Y happen while Z is going on?") so they often end up with complicated stuff. Whereas, if you start from scratch and focus on the most efficient way to address only the main problems, it can be brutally simple.

</comment><comment><USER6> This reminds me of a game with the Boston Celtics down by a point with 2 seconds left. K.C. Jones, the coach, drew up a play that looked something like this white board. Larry Bird erased the board with his hand and said, "Get me the ball." They got him the ball. He shot. They won.

Sometimes you just gotta code like Larry Bird.

<comment><USER7> __

    10 PRINT "LARRY RULES"
     20 GOTO 10

     RUN

Acquisition offers will be entertained: (288) 555-0153

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Phoja looks like a nifty startup. Any one got stats or info on them?

</comment><comment><USER9> You think _that's_ painful? Ha!</comment>


Ask HN: What does "the Cloud" mean to you? - <AUTHOR>

I keep running up against different definitions of "the Cloud" and was wondering if there is a right answer or at least a general consensus on what exactly the term means. When I say that our startup, IActionable, is in "the Cloud" I'm referring to our use of Windows Azure, MS's cloud, and the distributed nature of our service, meaning that we can elastically scale within the resources of MS's cloud and boast some level of stability like a large company while only having to pay for the resources we use. Apps running within Azure, Amazon's cloud, Force.com, Google's App Engine, or Rackspace's cloud are "in the cloud" according to this definition.
I've noticed, however, that many people say they are in "the Cloud" where they define the cloud as a server on the internet. Their thinking goes that since they store all the information remotely and there is nothing on the client's computer, their client-server architecture makes them "in the cloud". By this definition every server on the internet is a cloud, and every web app is in some cloud or another.
So is it one or the other? Is there some other definition that I'm missing out on? <comment><USER2> (Disclaimer: I work at Salesforce)

We at SFDC hear a lot about offers to businesses of "your own private cloud", which is essentially marketing jargon for something very un-cloud-like: running software locally, on your own servers, while you're completely responsible for the entire operation. It's a grossly disingenuous hijacking of the "cloud" terminology that I've found promotes confusion.

Most of the other responses here would match my own definition of the cloud: software, offered as a service, where all the underpinnings (data center management, software updates, redundancies, reliability) are abstracted away from you. The key is that you only need two things to access a cloud resource:

      A web browser, preferably != IE6
      An internet connection

When I explain the cloud to people who don't read HN, I usually make a comparison to Gmail and MS Office. You access Gmail through your web browser, and there's no local software to download. When Google releases a new feature or a bugfix or a security patch, there's no action required on your end. You're simply up to date the next time you connect.

Contrast that with MS Office, which comes on a CD/DVD, requires a local install process, and needs to be constantly patched for features and security. All of the work to maintain that software falls to you, the end user.

<comment><USER3> If you don't mind, I'm curious to find out why you view the private cloud as un-cloud-like. I don't think the cloud is defined by where the service is hosted or even how the service is paid for. To me, cloud computing is defined by 3 big ideas.

1\. Virtualization is key. I think the cloud is marked by a construction from dynamic pools of virtualized resources.

2\. Instead of focusing on individual physical components, the cloud focuses on pools of compute resources. This seems to have led to higher priority for service delivery.

3\. Finally, I think the cloud is defined by being convenient for the consumer instead of being convenient for the provider.

Within those constraints, I usually call a cloud private if it is under the control of an enterprise IT organization, in a way similar to older systems. I think of the cloud as public if the provider is mostly in control instead of the tenants.

With that definition of the private cloud in mind, the model offers a lot of advantages to larger IT departments. The private cloud allows IT teams to more quickly provision resources in support of business initiatives. It's also a better way to invest in IT infrastructure. The model is inherently scalable, which means that IT funds can be used to create value instead of keeping the lights on so to speak.

Obviously, private clouds aren't for every IT organization, but I think the private cloud has merit. As organizations globalize and just generally get big, economies of scale can be leveraged internally to increase the quality of IT projects and services.

<comment><USER4> I agree. A private cloud should also have a standard API, so that applications can be conveniently moved to a public cloud when it is secure and cost- effective to do so.

<comment><USER5> There; I disagree - if there were a standard API for clouds I might agree - otherwise, it makes sense for internal clouds to adopt the API most convenient for the end-users of that API. Sadly, that might mean something like SOAP, which would make me sad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The use of the term "the Cloud" is basically for anything that's not the traditional way of requesting and utilizing IT resources (aka rigid, pre- allocated, persistent and more than likely tied to physical systems). And that's probably why you're seeing so many different definitions.

What I think "cloud" should mean is the combining of individual resources (computing, storage, etc.) into a large virtual pool that can be accessed and allocated dynamically. This can be done within a corporation's own set of servers and devices (private cloud) or by tapping into someone else's collection of resources (public cloud providers like Amazon, Azure, etc.).

<comment><USER5> Completely agreed; which is why "private cloud" isn't as an insane a term as you might initially suspect (as I did when I first heard it).

If you have a global company, such as GE running it's own "private cloud" where CPU, Storage and platforms can be spun up by departments, users and others "on demand" and destroyed just as quickly, and it's distributed, fault- tolerant and modular in architecture - why should that not qualify as "cloud"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> To me, a cloud is a distributed system of computing resources where the resources can be dynamically allocated with an API. A hosted application should be able to increase or decrease the available processors, memory, and disk without human intervention. Human oversight should be implemented at points where it makes sense for business and security, rather than at points dictated by the limitations of technology. This means a cloud should do be able to do significant automated management of DNS, networking, and provisioning of fundamental operating system details.

The line between any classic distributed system or cluster and a 'cloud' is blurry, but generally speaking a cloud's API should be internet-compatible and capable of using commodity hardware to scale up with minimal (and preferably asynchronous) intervention from system administrators.

As for 'The Cloud' -- currently I don't think there is 'The Cloud' the way there is 'The World Wide Web', but it's theoretically possible. Right now 'The Cloud' generally means 'A Public Cloud', which is a publicly available distributed system like the one I described above. A Virtual Private Hosting service is not a cloud, because allocation of resources typically involves a sales contract of some sort. But the service itself it might theoretically run on a cloud, and you can build a cloud out of VPSs.

</comment><comment><USER7> If my mum starting using The Cloud in sentences she would mean "The Internet", she doesn't have the concept of a server, and doesn't really need to, she just knows it's "Out there somewhere".

I think it would be unlikely for one of my peers (mostly developers) to mention "The Cloud" unless they were trying to be intensionally buzzwordy for comedy effect. They would be more specific.

I/We would however say:

      a cloud to mean clusters machines (probably split into VPSs)
      xxxx's cloud to mean xxxx's server infrastructure/platform

I like The Cloud as a common term to mean "Stored/Processed out there in the internet somewhere", not as a well defined technical term.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it feels "buzzwordy" because too many people abuse it. It is a legitimate term but it is being stretched to the point where it is no longer useful. To me a cloud is a system where I can dynamically change my resource usage without having to really understand the underlying structure supporting it. I don't install an OS, I don't monitor specific servers for failure, I never upgrade anything; that level of minutiae is abstracted away.

<comment><USER8> This is a valid definition... but it's not most people's definition. For example, if you are running on ec2, well, you've still gotta install the OS (granted, there are tools that make it easier, but you still have to do it, and you still have to keep up with security patches, etc..) you've still gotta deal with failure, deal with upgrades, etc...

Granted, you could say that ec2 isn't cloud... you could say that ec2 is a VPS system with a decent and fast provisioning API. Your definition would say that hiroku and google app engine are 'cloud' - something few people would argue with... it's just that most people call ec2 'cloud' as well.

This, I think, is why most technical people find the term 'cloud' to be useless... there isn't a strong and generally accepted definition that isn't so nebulous as to be not very useful.

<comment><USER5> I don't think the need to consider maintenance and scalability removes something from the definition of "the cloud" - consider the fact that on modern VPSes and EC2 I can spin up new resources within a heartbeat - sure, I still have to think about stuff, but instance on for elastic resources is what I think caused the "cloud" term to come into being.

<comment><USER8> so your definition of the cloud differs from the definition ryanelkins gave. This is all well and good, both the "completely abstracts hardware and OS details" definition that Ryan gave and the "just allows you to really quickly provision new hardware" definition you gave are fine definitions, and both are useful services in many cases. but my point is that you get five nerds in a room and you are going to have at least three completely different definitions of "cloud"

<comment><USER5> You're right - and that worries me (personally, and professionally). I do think it's time the collective "we" start being a little bit more responsible with the term, so that others might.

Otherwise I'm worried we're going to see someone try to rebrand the internet as "the cloud" and then we're all doomed :)

<comment><USER8> I think "the cloud" has never had a solid, specific meaning, and it probably never will. I don't begrudge marketing and middle management their own set of jargon. Really, letting marketing and middle management have their own overly vague words can be good sometimes. If the boss asks you to put something "In the cloud" you have a lot of latitude to choose the solution that is most suitable for the situation.

Hell, maybe "cloud" will end up in the vague but useful category like "solution" I mean, sure, "solution" is even more broad than "cloud", but sometimes it seems more concise than "product or service" in a sentence, so it's still a word that I use sometimes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For me, it is the idea of outsourcing infrastructure and treating computers as a utility.

<comment><USER10> yes, agree. I think this is the talk from startup school where bezos used this metaphor : <http://wn.com/jeff_bezos_at_startup_school_08>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Computers I can't see and don't own. Suspiciously similar to a botnet.

Actually I'm less paranoid about it than that, but only slightly.

<comment><USER12> How does that make Amazon AWS (which most people would call "cloud infrastructure") any different from traditional shared hosting?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "The cloud means replacing your ops team with a clip-art picture of a cloud-- PROBLEM SOLVED." --Coda Hale

</comment><comment><USER14> IMO, cloud service is any service that a) scalable on demand, b)has ~100% uptime, c) require no maintenance from customer. It doesn't matter whether it is one server or 10000 servers - if it fits this model of consumption - it's cloud.

<comment><USER15> So cloud service is an outsourced mainframe? That's about the only thing that fits all 3.

<comment><USER14> Why not, say, youtube?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Whenever someone asks me what I think of cloud computing, I just reply with this video: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UYa6gQC14o>

</comment><comment><USER17> For me personally, I'd largely agree with your first definition - but I would expand it to services run on "private clouds" (ie, a corporate having a couple hundred virtual machines on a rack full of blades I would consider "cloud based").

However, if I look at our customers (techies and enthusiasts who build their own computers), they define a cloud based service as anything primarily online - IE, your second definition. I think this definition is gaining ground.

</comment><comment><USER18> I don't think of the cloud as just a server elsewhere on the internet, but more of a group of servers, like EC2, or Windows Azure, where the data is shared between them, and backed up in various places.

I have heard many people refer to the internet in general as 'the cloud', which I can understand, but I don't think of that as it's primary definition.

</comment><comment><USER19> Optimist: Decentralized infrastructure that powers 21st century commerce and acts as an infinite storage space for personal files.

Pessimist: Data Star (Earth's version of the Death Star) that will just become another way for more ads to find us where ever we go in space and in time...

</comment><comment><USER20> Most people couldn't put their finger on exactly what Cloud is, but they don't realize they fail because they don't understand the True Nature of Cloud.

A cloud is not Azure. It is not AWS. It is not Rackspace.

A cloud is not definable by what it is, but by what it is not.

Asking for a definition of a cloud, is like asking for the definitive IP Address of www.amazon.com.

A cloud is a hand-wavy indirection, and abstraction of a compute or storage infrastructure.

Each of the products you mentioned are not Cloud. They are manifestations of a cloud. But they are not the Cloud, as they are no longer abstract.

</comment><comment><USER21> A cloud is a visible mass of droplets of water or frozen crystals suspended in the atmosphere above the surface of the Earth or another planetary body. (c) wikipedia.

</comment><comment><USER22> To me it means not being in control of my own data.

</comment><comment><USER23> Outsourced data center on a pay-per-use basis.

</comment><comment><USER24> I think of it, at least this week, as:

      resilient Internet services with persistence

</comment><comment><USER25> To me, the cloud means trusting the base performance and uptime of my application to someone else.

</comment><comment><USER26> The (generally) light fluffy things in the air that produce rain.

</comment><comment><USER27> There are already 33 comments here, and not a lot of agreement. "The Cloud" just seems to me to be more marketing sucker-bait, basically (Web 2.0)2.0, I wonder what they are going to call ((Web 2.0)2.0)2.0?

<comment><USER5> I'm biased; but I suspect that much like "Web 2.0" there is some truth to the "marketing". Web 2.0 saw the rise of user generated content, richer/leaner and more interactive websites and applications.

I suspect the "cloud" trend will continue to allow us to abstract more of our computing resources, and make computing/application construction pieces more of a utility/commodity then they ever have been.

So despite it being used a bit too much in marketing - I think there's some fire behind all the smoke, and dismissing it simply because marketing people are blowing it around a lot runs the risk of ignoring a major technological shift.

<comment><USER27> There is always some truth in effective marketing; like all good lies, it uses truth in the service of falsehood.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> to me it means: computing power behind an api.

so my scripts can manage the data center (by growing/shrinking resource usage)

</comment><comment><USER29> Seriously, after all these years aren't we past this repetitive question?

</comment><comment><USER30> I think it came from one of those network diagrams where you have :

local server <> picture of a cloud <> remote user

I now have to deal with management types who have read too many magazines wanting their data stored "in the cloud".

The management of the company I share an office with is seriously thinking about moving all their email "into the cloud" because the person that was responsible for backup did it wrong and they lost some important emails. They now associate "in the cloud" with "reliable". They are paying for an expensive consultant to come in and tell them what to do.

</comment><comment><USER31> > many people say they are in "the Cloud" where they define the cloud as a > server on the internet.

To me, cloud would mean that the service has very good reliability, which your run of the mill "server on the internet" does not necessarily have.</comment>


Mathematical Treasure: Robert Fludd's History of the Macrocosm (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.maa.org/press/periodicals/convergence/mathematical-treasure-robert-fludd-s-history-of-the-macrocosm <comment><USER2> Fludd by himself had a large confrontation with Kepler, and by his anti- science position brought Kepler to state that he hates all Cabbalists.

[https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2011/12/27/kepler-contra- fludd-...](https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2011/12/27/kepler-contra-fludd- science-contra-woo/)</comment>


How Well Does Duolingo Work? - <AUTHOR> https://blog.duolingo.com/how-well-does-duolingo-work/ <comment><USER2> Interesting that they don't measure arguably the most important metric of language learning: speaking. I don't think Duolingo will ever be able to compete with in person classes when it comes to actually speaking the language</comment>


Mobile developers can already make more money on WP7 than Android - <AUTHOR> http://wmpoweruser.com/despite-the-size-of-the-market-developers-can-already-make-more-money-on-wp7-than-android/

<comment><USER2> It was the same way when the Android Market was released. Less apps means less noise that people have to sift through.

Definitely case in point though, you shouldn't ignore WP7 as a mobile developer just because of its small market-share. Taking advantage of it can be quite successful.</comment>


PostgreSQL on AWS - <AUTHOR> http://www.pgcon.org/2012/schedule/events/419.en.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Even without the video of the presentation, I found the slides conveyed a lot of wisdom about how to approach running databases on AWS.</comment>


US behavioural research studies skew positive - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/us-behavioural-research-studies-skew-positive-1.13599

<comment><USER2> As a culture we now assume that everyone is supposed to act as their own personal sales and marketing department. You aren't even a complete human being unless you do [1].

We also take it for granted that marketing involves a certain amount of exaggeration and deception, and that anyone taken it by dishonest marketing only has themselves to blame, as long as the dishonesty is kept within certain culturally accepted limits that keep getting stretched further and further [2]. Maybe some advertising can get away with honesty, but that's the exception, and it's arrogant to think you're exceptional [3].

In other words, lying about ourselves is now culturally expected.

Perhaps in the next generation, an unwillingness to aggressively sell yourself will be seen as just as sad and self-defeating as not completing high school. _How do these poor kids not see how dropping out of school affects their life? It 's so tragic,_ we think now. _Just sit in the classroom and do your work._ Perhaps in twenty years we'll be lamenting the stubborn inability of disadvantaged kids to exaggerate their achievements. _How can these poor kids just sit around doing their schoolwork and not sell themselves aggressively? It 's so tragic. Just smile manically and say you're an awesome, passionate rock star. Is that so fucking hard to understand? What are parents teaching these days? Shit, we should really be funding Head Start._

[1] [http://www.danpink.com/books/to-sell-is- human/](http://www.danpink.com/books/to-sell-is-human/)

[2] This link might not have much substance, but it's slick and vivid: [http://geekologie.com/2012/01/bogus-burgers-fast-food- false-...](http://geekologie.com/2012/01/bogus-burgers-fast-food-false- advertisin.php)

[3] Honesty in advertising is such an unthinkable idea that it has been relegated to the place our culture reserves for statements that are so false we cannot imagine anything falser, the bogus trend piece: [http://www.steamfeed.com/is-the-next-frontier-in- advertising...](http://www.steamfeed.com/is-the-next-frontier-in-advertising- becoming-honesty/)

<comment><USER3> Off topic, but talking about truth in advertising: on your second link, there's a link at the bottom talking about a mummy made from McDonald's burgers that will never deteriorate. I'm tired of seeing this incredibly misleading claim that _this_ is the reason the burgers are unhealthy.

Cooked and salted meat is, in essence, incredibly well preserved. This concept has been known since ancient times. Bacteria requires moisture to cause decomposition, and cooking/salting meat causes it to dry faster than it will rot. Once it's dried, it pretty much won't deteriorate any more. This is the concept behind pemmican and beef jerky.

The point is, there may be misleading advertisements, but this argument isn't any less disingenuous than the Big Mac that's too big to fit in a box.

<comment><USER2> First, criticizing a link on a link, really?

Second, I think you missed my point that a set of well-produced pictures of unknown provenance (really, could you figure out the source? I gave up after several clicks) is a more effective way of _selling_ my point than providing substantive information would be.

<comment><USER3> Oh no, I wasn't criticizing you or your link. I was just trying to add to the discussion that misleading advertisements are a problem, but there's plenty of misleading propaganda on the other side as well.

Nothing against your point at all. Sorry for the confusion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Professor Uri Simonsohn wasn't mentioned in this particular article, but he could have been. He has published several peer-reviewed papers on "p-hacking" and "researcher degrees of freedom" and other tricks that are used (and can be detected after the fact with careful statistical analysis of published papers) to inflate the significance of behavior research results. His faculty website

[http://opim.wharton.upenn.edu/~uws/](http://opim.wharton.upenn.edu/~uws/)

includes links to many of his papers. Not only are Simonsohn's papers a good lesson in how to use statistics to detect sloppy research practices, they are also often laugh-out-loud funny.

</comment><comment><USER5> We should be skeptical of this study, though. From my experience, behavioral researchers tend to exaggerate their findings.

<comment><USER6> Half expected to find Douglas Hofstadter credited on the paper abstract. A US Scientist publishing a paper making the claim that US scientists exaggerate their findings is on the same continuum as guards who always tell lies and gramophones that play records that destroy themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can confirm. Just like with many other types of research. It's part of our culture to exaggerate and be deceptive. It is how our politics, our government, our culture, our business, and how our economy as a whole function. Before I get a bunch of "everyone does it", the reality is that those who we should aspire to compare ourselves to are quite remarkably different regarding that characteristic. But go right ahead, compare America to all the dysfunctional, corrupt, fraying societies of the world. I choose to look up, rather than down.

Edit: I would like to point to the following story in the HN feed regarding Germany's election as a point of reference that things don't have to be the way that we think they are. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6283280](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6283280)

</comment><comment><USER8> It's interesting how the title of the article is an example of the phenomenon itself. Study finds US research is more likely to be wrong, and a US based journal reports this as "skew positive": they are just more optimistic, that's all.

<comment><USER9> I do think it's important to note that they're generally wrong in the same direction.. they tend to be overly positive, not overly negative (or an even mix of both). That particular skew is more likely to implicate the "publish or perish" incentive system as the culprit than the other two.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> My first thought on seeing the title was, "There must be a behavioral basis to this."

I'm interested in how much of this is ethics, a push to get more drastic results, or what is accepted by journals. The last case can be very true too - if there are too many journal submissions, it may be puffery on the referees instead of the publishers.

One way to test this is to see if there is a difference in the results from tenured versus untenured professors, or even in individuals post-tenure. If puffery shrinks post-tenure, then it really is the publish or perish mindset.

</comment><comment><USER11> In my experience as a european ex-PhD researcher, this is not only US and not only behavioural studies.

Authors are under pressure to publish as much as they can, and positive results are not only easier to publish on journals but also provide good deliverables for research grant review committees and help show that funding was well spent. Not to mention a good reference for the next research proposal, showing that money will be well invested.

</comment><comment><USER12> <tinfoilhat>

I've never believed otherwise. This is why when I'm debating an issue with someone and they throw up research papers and claim "See? science says so!", I don't really know what to say. I don't think issue is specific to behavior- related studies either. I highly suspect USA's science data when it's related to something that makes lots of money or promotes a certain predominant view point. _Not to say it doesn 't happen in other countries_, but we're talking about USA right now. Specifically things like:

\- Studies show corn syrup not harmful

\- Studies show cellphones don't cause cancer

\- Studies show 1 in 2 children need meds for ADD

These are not exact quotes, just giving a general idea. I suspect these things because if they turn out not to be true, millions of dollars to some big corp entity somewhere would be lost. Or maybe they need science-data to justify their funding. There's just too much money tied up in scientific results to trust they haven't been tampered with. What I like to see, is when many countries do studies and they all come up with similar results.

</tinfoilhat> EDIT: Yeah, I see this getting downvoted but I stand by what I said. Science is influenced by money a great deal these days; you should reserve a little bit of skepticism for scientific results that have close ties to supporting a belief required for bigcorp to keep making money.

<comment><USER13> You're getting downvoted because

\- You just made up article titles to prove your point.

\- You call out the USA for no particular reason, because your arguments apply equally to other countries.

\- You don't provide any alternative to "science", which according to you is inherently flawed, which makes pretty much any discussion with you pointless.

<comment><USER12> Okay, fair enough. let me clarify:

\- Those points I used are real arguments being made today. I don't have exact quotes/links, but they do exist. There are people who believe those 3 items are perfectly correct. I admit item#3 is a bit of an exaggeration, but there is an alleged issue of over-diagnosis of ADD. I'm not saying they're wrong, but just saying to keep in mind that there is a lot of money that would be lost if those 3 things were to be discovered false.

\- I called out the USA because this article is about the USA. Also I noted in _italics_ that I wasn't saying it was only USA.

\- Indeed, I don't have any alternative. Though I did mention I like the idea of multiple countries doing the study to see if everyone reaches the same conclusion. I'm just saying there is something to be said for a bit of skepticism. We know how long it took for science to decide tobacco was bad for you. It wasn't like they didn't know before, it just took a long time to push past the greed & corruption that kept the data hidden. Just saying to always keep a critical mind with these things. Afterall, this article here is calling out exactly what I'm claiming.

EDIT: And I see my original comment has been upvoted out of the graveyard during my commute to work, so I guess there are people who agree with what I'm trying to say.

<comment><USER14> I am skeptical, which is why I don't put much value in your comment. Want to convince me that corn oil is bad or that cell phones cause cancer?

Cite proper studies on these things, and don't cherry pick results you like, give me a fair sampling of all research. If the data supports your claim, I'll believe it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> US research findings are America Strong</comment>


Ask HN: Understanding Economics - <AUTHOR>

What are the books/knowledge should someone(like me) who has no idea about macro-ecomonics, read/gain to understand everything that is stated in the below url (http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/columns/dollars-taking-us-for-a-spin/article4953071.ece) <comment><USER2> I've found "Economics for dummies" (french edition) a good start. Then "Macroeconomics" from Olivier Blanchard (US edition) a great reference, but harder, something like 1st university years level.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nobody understands Economics, and if they claim otherwise, they are lying.

<comment><USER3> Having said that, this site is always good for a bit of a giggle: [http://www.zerohedge.com/](http://www.zerohedge.com/)</comment></comment>


Twitter's Stock Dips Below $20 to All-Time Low - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2016/01/twitters-stock-dips-below-20-to-all-time-low/ <comment><USER2> Wired consistently crashes Chrome on mobile. #fail

<comment><USER3> Maybe that's why it's called "Wired" \-- it doesn't work OTA?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do you do when you find out it's already been done? - <AUTHOR> So you've got an idea for a side project or something that you'd like to start. When you inevitable find out that it's already been done. Do you quit? Do you continue. How do you feel?<p>I usually feel discouraged. Should I? Should you stick with it, and try to put your mark on it. <comment><USER2> Just do it better.

Edit: actually, that's a little too glib. Let me say this instead "just do it different". And that's actually _not_ a glib answer, because I mean something very specific by that. In almost every market, there are always _multiple_ vectors along which you can differentiate your offering. To grossly over- simplify, you could optimize on "price", "quality", "customer intimacy", etc.

For example: if there's a company out there offering something like your thing, but offering it very cheap, then don't try to be the "low bid" vendor. Instead, become the "boutique" or "luxury" vendor that sells to customers who want white-glove service and are willing to pay for it. OR, do the opposite... if your erstwhile competitor has what appears to be very high prices, see if you can build your thing in such a way that you can sell it much more cheaply. Note that in either of these cases, your not _necessarily_ competing for the same set of customers! There may be some overlap, but there are always customer who want "the cheapest", or customers who want "the best", or customers who want the whole "white glove treatment" thing, etc.

Also, as an aside, be wary of trying to compete for "lowest price" as this can lead to a "race to the bottom" situation and make it very hard to maintain any kind of margin. If you want to lower prices, do it by finding a way to operate more efficiently, instead of just sacrificing margin, if at all possible.

There are a few variations on this theme, and you could argue there are a _lot_ of variations depending on how fine-grained you get in terms of how you segment those "vectors of differentiation". To learn more about this overall concept, I highly recommend reading _The Discipline of Market Leaders_ by by Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for this! I'll definitely take a look at the book you recommended. The product in question is B2C, and I'm thinking that perhaps it might be possible to offer as a B2B instead. I'm going to email a couple of businesses and see if I get any positive response.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think that depends why you didn't know about the existing solution when you started. Is it because the existing solution has a major flaw or gap (mediocre product, no awareness among its market/users, under or over capitalized, solves a related problem but not yours, etc.) or is it simply because you didn't know anything about the field?

If it's the former, the problem hasn't been solved. Keep going.

If it's the latter (and as a customer, you'd have used the existing solution if you'd known about it when you started), reconsider.

</comment><comment><USER4> If someone else is already successfully doing it, means there clearly is a need/market for what you plan on doing. Now talk to some of their customers and figure out how you can do it better!</comment>


Revenue at Craigslist Is Said to Top $100 Million - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/technology/internet/10craig.html

<comment><USER2> First off, the story of Craigslist is a great story and I hope it continues its successful path -- estimated $100m in revenue with 30 employees, woot!

On another note, wouldn't ebay have to report some sort of value for its 24% stake in Craigslist? Couldn't you determine the company's value from that, even though they are private?

</comment><comment><USER3> I never really knew how Craigslist made money. I guess I never saw those recruitment ads because I don't live in one of the cities given. Its an interesting freemium model.</comment>


Bill would allow Connecticut police to put weapons on drones - <AUTHOR> http://www.islandpacket.com/news/politics-government/national-politics/article141714294.html <comment><USER2> I remember when police departments said they wouldn't put weapons on their drones, when they were first trying to obtain them, to quell the outrage.

I guess that only lasted a few years. The problem is it's likely that these drones are going to end-up killing a lot of innocents, too, when they become "mainstream" in police departments, and when the police want to use them because they are "so cool" and it gives them more of that warrior cop feeling. That's only going to make the relationship between the public and the police much worse, and it won't be just black people angry at them.

<comment><AUTHOR> > _I remember when police departments said they wouldn 't put weapons on their > drones, when they were first trying to obtain them, to quell the outrage._

To be fair, these may be different police departments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Remember when that student was kicked out of CCSU simply for making a weaponized drone (which isn't illegal)?

[http://fox61.com/2016/03/07/teen-who-made-weaponized- drone-s...](http://fox61.com/2016/03/07/teen-who-made-weaponized-drone-sues- ccsu-over-expulsion/)

But it's ok for the state to do it?

<comment><USER4> In political science, we refer to this notion as a monopoly on the means of coercion. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence)</comment></comment>


Deploying TLS the hard way - <AUTHOR> https://timtaubert.de/blog/2014/10/deploying-tls-the-hard-way/

<comment><USER2> It's not necessary to generate DH parameters to enable ephemeral keys in Nginx. Nginx ships with a static, built-in set of DH parameters. You just need to make sure that the configured cipher suite includes ephemeral keying. And it'll normally be enabled by default as long as you don't specifically disable it.

(For ECDH you don't even have the option of generating new parameters as the curves are fixed by definition.)

Proof of automatic ephemeral keying:

1) ngx_ssl_dhparam in src/event/ngx_event_openssl.c calls SSL_CTX_set_tmp_dh with a statically constructed DH* object if the file parameter is empty.

2) ngx_http_ssl_merge_srv_conf in src/http/modules/ngx_http_ssl_module.c unconditionally calls ngx_ssl_dhparam.

That only establishes automatic ephemeral keying. To get Perect Forward Secrecy you must make sure that the SSL context regenerates the private key component of the DH parameters for each session. For that you must enable the OP_SINGLE_DH_USE OpenSSL option. That option is unconditionally enabled by ngx_ssl_create in src/event/ngx_event_openssl.c. (The equivalent for ECDH is OP_SINGLE_ECDH_USE, which is also set.)</comment>


The first wearable platform? track pants + shirt + sdk - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/gymi-smart-shirt

<comment><USER2> Releasing the SDK / hardware plans would be an interesting step: early adopters / DIYers can effectively alpha-test the hardware...</comment>


Foundations of probability theory - <AUTHOR> https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2015/09/29/275a-notes-0-foundations-of-probability-theory/ <comment><USER2> I don't know what mathematicians think of it, but I enjoyed "Probability Theory: The Logic of Science".

[https://www.google.com/#q=probability+the+logic+of+science](https://www.google.com/#q=probability+the+logic+of+science)

<comment><USER3> Its take on probability as a way of modelling our brain is refreshing, for instance, the beginning of chapter 1:

Suppose some dark night a policeman walks down a street, apparently deserted; but suddenly he hears a burglar alarm, looks across the street, and sees a jewelry store with a broken window. Then a gentleman wearing a mask comes crawling out through the broken window, carrying a bag which turns out to be full of expensive jewelry. The policeman doesn't hesitate at all in deciding that this gentleman is dishonest. But by what reasoning process does he arrive at this conclusion? Let us first take a leisurely look at the general nature of such problems.

A moment's thought makes it clear that our policeman's conclusion was not a logical deduction from the evidence; for there may have been a perfectly innocent explanation for everything. It might be, for example, that this gentleman was the owner of the jewelry store and he was coming home from a masquerade party, and didn't have the key with him. But just as he walked by his store a passing truck threw a stone through the window; and he was only protecting his own property. Now while the policeman's reasoning process was not logical deduction, we will grant that it had a certain degree of validity. The evidence did not make the gentleman's dishonesty certain, but it did make it extremely plausible. This is an example of a kind of reasoning in which we haveall become more or less proficient, necessarily, long before studying mathematical theories. We are hardly able to get through one waking hour without facing some situation (e.g. will it rain or won't it?) where we do not have enough information to permit deductive reasoning; but still we must decide immediately what to do.

<comment><USER4> Ah, but policeman's actual thought process might have actually been purely deductive or purely reflexive, it might only be that the probabilities justify a series of a discreet calculations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The fact that Shannon entropy is still relevant in numerous modern mathematics research is amazing.

Apart from minor typos that make him a "sloppy mathematician", he is a good educator based on my personal experience taking grad. courses from him. He's not the passionate high school STEM teacher type, but he offers great insights. I think which textbook he used is somewhat secondary. For courses he had taught before, he usually pick a standard text and teach based on the material he wrote in his blog post, including exercises.

</comment><comment><USER6> I have a question that might be related to the topic. I have found that often, when solving problems related to probability theory, it is more convenient to think in terms of combinations than to think in terms of probabilities (perhaps because I'm a programmer). Would it be possible to devise a programming language that allows me to program a filter that selects the desired outcomes out of the complete set of combinations, and to have the compiler automatically deduce a closed-form formula for the probability (without enumeration)? If this is not possible in general, what would the restrictions on this programming language be, to make it work in practice?

So for example, given the question what the probability is that, when throwing 4 coins, 2 of which will be heads; I could write a function that generates all possible outcomes "TTTT", "TTTH", etc. And I could write a filter function that returns true for "TTHH", "THTH", "THHT", etc.

<comment><USER7> This is possible, and in fact probably implemented in some probabilistic programming languages, but I think you are looking at the wrong direction.

The point is that even for fairly simple real use cases, the computation complexity is so huge, that all computers in the world couldn't compute it in your lifetime if you don't employ some approximation or optimization and stick to naive algorithms.

So, that is what the whole field of machine learning is about: finding some clever ways to deal with random variables in a computationally feasible way...

<comment><USER8> All those probabilistic programming languages will become exponentially faster once we have feasible quantum computers, since BPP \in BQP. We currently use a weaker inclusion, BPP \in PSPACE, as the core execution model.

<comment><USER9> Check your facts, because this is simply not true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looked at the text to be used, Durrett. There's more and with higher quality in any of M. Loeve, J. Neveu, K. Chung, and L. Breiman.

For what Tao wrote on his page about _determinism_ or whatever on that page -- just f'get about that.

And what he wrote, confusing a sample space and a probability space, just say that he had a bad day that day.

<comment><USER11> Out of curiosity, what's the background that lets you be so dismissive of a Fields Medal winner?

At this point I see a blog post written by a well respected mathematician whom I feel comfortable trusting and it's being brushed aside by I don't know who.

<comment><USER12> Well you can just read the reviews to see that the Durrett text isn't well regarded while others like Chung's are. And the criticism about a probability space not being a sample space is correct, but I think it's clear what Tao meant there, namely that the sample space would be a part of a probability space.

<comment><USER13> Thanks

The Amazon UK reviews of Chung's book lead me to _A Probability Path_ by Sidney Resnick which appears to be aimed at non-mathematicians. I have invested (speaking as a renegade physicist lacking a systematic exploration of measure theory).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: create a LIKE-ad network? (startup idea) - <AUTHOR>

I was reading an article a few days ago, which quantified how much money is worth for a business when some of their users use Facebook's Like button to share the business with their friends.
Suppose you're selling something (movie tickets/rentals, gadgets, etc...) and allow your customers to share/like on facebook what they purchased. Naturally, some of their friends will check it out and even make the same purchase (especially for certain type of products, like events, movies, etc... where it's important if some of your friends attend).
I'm wondering what you think about providing this as a service to everyone selling something out there?
I'm thinking something like an ad network which enable store owners to let their customers engage with their friends, which in turn drives more traffic/sales to the store owner. The store owner would pay a CPC or CPA fee.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Just a few questions about this: How would users like an advert? How would you aggregate the data and determine the amount of likes on an ad being more of a factor in bidding than price? (This would probably have to be used in an algorithm similar to Google's Quality Score). Also, considering that about 4% of Facebook users interact with ads, and less than that on other sites, how viable would this idea be?

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't actually think about it like this. People wouldn't like an advert, they would "like" something they just purchased or intend to purchase (like a phone or a movie ticket).

Once they do that, their friends will see it and could go to the same site to do the same action (i.e.: buy the ticket themselves).

I don't think store owners will need to bid on ads, because they are not competing with anyone, and looking at it this way, I guess it's different than what you would call an "ad network".</comment></comment>


Baidu's Online Maps Avoid Censors by Making China Look Like 'Sim City' - <AUTHOR> http://www.switched.com/2011/03/02/baidu-maps-look-like-sim-city-bypass-censors/ <comment><AUTHOR> A good example: <http://j.map.baidu.com/ib8C>

</comment><comment><USER2> I could go for a simpsons themed one.</comment>