Ask HN: Is it time to give up, or is it time to push on? - <AUTHOR> Boring details: I started a company in July aimed at creating a new fantasy sports platform, focused on stat-heavy leagues, dynasty leagues, niche sports, eSports, and tabletop games.
Our CTO was hired away last month, our two other developers are learning Node and Angular, but not much progress has been made on the product. Lead developer doubts we'll get a product out before baseball season.
Haven't been able to find a replacement CTO/lead architect to help lead the development side.
Angels and VCs say we're too early, need usage stats to invest.
I'm not going to be able to make rent for January.
Stress is getting to me. I'm thinking I should just shut the whole thing down, but I've got that voice that says, "Giving up is way harder than trying".
Any advice would be appreciated. <comment><USER3> This isn't a hard question to answer. Your prospective investors really aren't going to invest without customer traction. You have no product, and you have just a month's living expenses left.

Even with a hail-mary play that gets you some a semblance of a working product _and some users_ in December, you still won't have a trendline to show investors.

If plodding forward doesn't really cost you anything, because you're basically insolvent anyways, sure, keep plodding forward.

Otherwise: draw up Plan B. Doing something else doesn't mean you can't return to your fantasy sports platform later on. It just means you need to figure out a way to start getting paid, and that needs to be a priority.

Due respect to the rest of the comments on this thread, but how much you believe in yourself really doesn't have much to do with your decision.

<comment><USER4> I had similar thoughts, my late fighter pilot friend used to say "Even the best pilots crash when they run out of gas."

<comment><USER5> I'm going to treasure that quote. Thanks for this one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is the hardest question to answer. My startup was once at a point when any sane person would have given up, and yet here we are - alive, growing, funded. Before that there was a phase when I was all in. I was living in my car in Silicon Valley because I couldn't afford rent, stressed out of my mind, had no product, and could tell that we were a long way yet from having product, traction, and being compelling to investors (or even an accelerator). And I had zero dollars in the bank (actually significantly fewer than zero dollars).

So how did we get from point A to point B? I got a job so that I could pay the bills and think straight. My co-founder and I parted ways, and I ended up finding another. We built out the product and got enough users for an accelerator to take a risk on us, then for investors to do the same. Now, a year later, I have the perfect team with enough money and the right product.

It sounds like, if you're honest with yourself, you're a long way away from being a palatable investment. My guess is that you're even farther than you think you are, because that's just the nature of the beast.

If I hadn't taken the time to postpone - not give up, but realize the circumstances we were in weren't conducive to building a company - I'm sure we would have failed. If you're not going to make it, accept that fact, and do what you have to do to get your ducks in a row.

Sometimes "Don't give up" looks a lot like giving up, and that's the hardest part. But if you really believe in what you're doing, you do what you have to do, no matter what that is.

Just my two cents.

</comment><comment><USER7> If your devs are learning Node & Angular on the job, it's time to find new devs. I've picked up far too many freelance projects where the devs just wanted to try a new framework, and Node/Angular are top of the list for "cool things to try".

If you're going to continue, find a dev with lots of experience in an old/stable platform (Rails, Django, etc) who can crank out version 0.1 in a month or two.

When you're this early, you don't have the resources to be educating your developers. They will bail before they're productive, and you're left footing the bill.

<comment><USER8> I think the problem is right here. Do they have a fundamental reason for using Node/Angular? It could probably be attributed to Survivor Bias by the non technical management. First question to ask is why are you using Node/Angular? If another technology stack can produce faster results, then..

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "our two other developers are learning Node and Angular, but not much progress has been made on the product."

Why are they learning this stuff now while you're under a deadline and have no product?

Do these guys have previous experience with other languages/frameworks/etc that would let them focus on building instead?

<comment><AUTHOR> It is a fair question. The former CTO set the stack and was helping those two along. They're Ruby converts.

After the CTO left, I asked if we should switch and they said switching to Ruby was more work than it was worth. The backend is pretty far along in Node right now. And we've got an Angular dashboard that we need to connect.

<comment><USER10> Another lesson that may apply: fad driven development isn't necessarily a good idea. Sometimes "old" (i.e. established, tested, widely used) technologies are better choices than whatever the latest fad offers.

<comment><USER11> I think you mean "easy to hire"-technology. One time it was Java, then it was PHP, now it's becoming node.js and angular. Maybe it's a bit soon, but it's far from insane to bet on these technologies nowadays.

<comment><USER10> Yes, that is one very big reason to go "oldschool:" there are more developers who have more experience. It is nuts to follow fad driven development on a tight budget and hard time deadlines without significant understanding of the technologies involved. I'd argue that it is nuts in general to go with fad driven development. Choosing a technology structure based on fads is a dumb idea. One should choose a structure that makes sense for the project and team.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Give up. Your current team is incompetent. They are padding their resume with node/angular experience at your expense. They should have a working demo after 2 months.

<comment><USER13> _> They should have a working demo after 2 months._

While I agree with your sentiment, this sentence sounds like an overgeneralization. I can't imagine it would be that easy to put together a working demo of a fantasy sport site in two months, even with the best talent.

<comment><USER14> What kills me is that this sort of mystery is not in any way necessary. The planning methods from, e.g., Extreme Programming, are 15 years old. So that nobody else has to suffer like this, here's my 30-second intro to a basic version:

Everybody sit down at a table with a large stack of index cards, all of one color that isn't white, and n+1 sharpies. Talk about the product. As you go, every time something buildable is mentioned, write it on an index card with a sharpie. 3-7 words is enough; the cards aren't documentation; they're just tokens representing conversations. Every card should create business value that is visible to all stakeholders. No "set up the IDE", no "learn node", just business value cards.

After 30-60 minutes, put the cards in strict linear order of business desire, ignoring technical dependencies. Now take a bunch of cards, write "RELEASE" on them, and insert them into the order every time something shippable is necessary, including investor demos, user tests, private betas, and the like.

Next, look at the top 10-20 cards. For each one, ask the developers if it will take a week or more. No wizardry needed, just gut-level estimates. If the answer is yes, tear up the card and replace it with cards that are all smaller than a week of effort. Congrats! Now you have a plan that is enough for developers to get started. Make a permanent home for the cards on a table or wall with three columns: backlog, working, done.

Each week on Monday morning, everybody should sit together, look at the backlog, and take an hour to discuss everything that will likely get worked on. During the week, when people start on a card, move it from "backlog" to "working". When everybody agrees that it is completely done and the business value is has been demonstrated, move it to "done". And the end of the week, sit down together again, review how it went, count the cards completed. Protip: keep the number of cards in "working" as small as possible.

After a few weeks, the business stakeholder can look at the number of cards completed each week, look at the backlog, and make reasonable guesses as to how long things will take. And after a few weeks seeing the team deliver business value each week, they'll have a good notion of how effective their team is.

There are nuances (about which I'm glad to answer questions), but that's enough to get going. I've built a number of products this way and helped others do the same. Please, founders: adopt some simple short-cycle iterative process. It's not hard, it doesn't take long, and it will save you immense trouble.

<comment><USER5> I know the basic principles of extreme programming. But I ignored it (like most hotheaded fresh young devs are wont to do) till I rediscovered it some time earlier this year. Do you have a go to book that discusses these practices? Already have a couple in my reference stack, just asking because you seem to have grasped the practice so well.

<comment><USER14> For programmers looking to learn about XP, the book that I most recommend is the _first_ edition of Extreme Programming Explained by Kent Beck, the white one. (The second edition, the green one, was rewritten for a broader audience; also interesting, but I don't think it speaks as well to programmers.)

But the book is ancient at this point, so I'd treat it more as a point of historical interest. We've learned a lot and our technology has changed greatly, so it's not something I'd recommend implementing as written.

Another easy place to start is here:

[http://www.extremeprogramming.org/introduction.html](http://www.extremeprogramming.org/introduction.html)

It's also out of date in some ways. For example, it talks about using a shared integration computer, but Git + AWS + Continuous Deployment have made that kinda ridiculous.

But what I think of it as the core of it is still quite solid. In particular, the notion of thinking of a project not as a waterfall but as a series of self-correcting feedback loops has been immensely helpful to me. What XP gets really right versus, say, Scrum, is focusing on the minute-to-minute developer experience as a driver of quality and economy. Test-driven development, pair programming, sustainable pace, collective code ownership: when pursued vigorously, these have made a huge difference for me both in terms of project outcome and personal experience.

My general tip for process change is for people to pick their biggest problem and then start solving it in a way that shortens feedback loops. So if somebody's getting lots of bugs in QA, then I'd encourage them to automate their tests so that developers get bug reports sooner. Or here, if the problem is long periods without knowing what's going on, it's breaking the work down into little chunks and delivering the next most valuable thing every few days. Humans are really good at optimizing short-feedback systems; we do a lot of it automatically.

Feel free to write me if you have particular questions; people were very generous in getting me started. I'm glad to pay it forward.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> 5 months should have been plenty to come up with something. It sounds like your initial goals were way too complicated. You need to aim small for a version 1 and then add features later. You have now learned one of the first lessons of software development.

</comment><comment><USER16> There's one awesome thing that is apparent here which is that you already know the answer to your question. Read your words: "boring details", "hired away", "not much progress", "developer doubts", "find a replacement", "too early", "need usage stats", "able to make rent", "stress is getting to me", "shut the whole thing down".

Your last comment is the most telling: "Giving up is way harder than trying."

When I say something is hard, what I mean is that it challenges and scares me. I live my life by one motto now: do the thing that scares you the most. It's worked so far for me - good things are happening already.

I think you should try doing what scares you the most. Is that keeping on keeping on, or quitting?

</comment><comment><USER17> But frankly: 3 devs * 5 months and you have nothing? This is a no go for every investor, i am sure.

<comment><AUTHOR> To be fair, the two current devs have been on board full time for just over a month and a half.

But, your point stands.

<comment><USER18> Most competent web devs can have something working relatively quickly -- even if it is an early prototype - like a week or two from a good developer. I would recommend hiring someone who already knows the stack you are using. Learning as you go, especially for the main devs, is highly problematic -- the chance they produce a pile of shit is very high.

Having a few junior devs around the experienced devs is okay, but only inexperienced devs (in the technology at hand) is a really bad situation.

<comment><USER19> > I would recommend hiring someone who already knows the stack you are using.

Or choose a stack the developers know.

<comment><USER20> Usually I would agree with this, but he states elsewhere a big part of the back end is already completed (Node) and they have a dashboard (Angular) that is (mostly?) complete and needs connected to the back end.

The two devs also come from Ruby and stated it'd be more work than it's worth to move to that stack.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Just remember this: You don't need to be the guy in charge to be successful.

It takes a long time to find a CTO; and if you can't make rent in January, you aren't going to look very appealing. Even if you find a CTO who's into fantasy sports; given your company's (cough) debt, a potential CTO might think it's easier to start over, without you, your code, and our developers.

If you like the startup scene, you can go work for an early stage startup. Chances are, there's a sports-themed startup that you'll be able to do very well in.

You can also keep networking until you find the right team of people to work with. Remember, you don't need to be the guy in charge to be successful.

</comment><comment><USER22> How far away is baseball season, 4 months? You can't have an MVP by then with several months already under belt? Is your Minimal Viable Product minimal enough?

If you plan to continue, you might need to look at chopping your launch features down a bit.

</comment><comment><USER23> 1\. Solve your financial problem first. Get a job to make rent, even if it's seasonal. Once you know you can eat and sleep somewhere, it will be easier to step back and be objective.

2\. Decide if the market is there "if everything was perfect". Nothing will be perfect, but if there is no market even in a perfect world, well, walk away. If you think there is a market even in an imperfect world that you want to go after, then that's your answer. But your second step is deciding whether to move forward on the project. If you aren't going to make the baseball season (which is likely), decide if it would be better to target the 2015 football season opener or the 2016 major league baseball opener.

3\. PM me anytime, I have a sports media company and I am very tech-savvy, I'm a longtime coder, I've worked for major corporations as an architect and manager, and I've worked with/advised multiple smaller 'grassroots' sports companies. I'm not offering to build your platform, but I am offering someone who you can at least bounce ideas off of that will know your market. And I'm not building a competing platform. I might not be able to solve your problems of today, but if you decide to move forward with it, I might be able to provide objective advice about your market and tech.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the offer.

HN doesn't really have a PM system, as far as I know. Feel free to shoot me an e-mail, firstname.lastname@example.com, and we can chat a bit more.

<comment><USER23> Sorry, I must Reddit too much. I'll shoot you an email.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Pivot Today: Keep your team together, assuming they're good guys. Find some contract development work to bring cash-in. Carve out time to work on your e-sports platform as a side project. Recommend reading Alan Weiss on acquiring clients> [http://www.amazon.com/How-Acquire-Clients-Techniques- Practit...](http://www.amazon.com/How-Acquire-Clients-Techniques- Practitioner/dp/0787955140)

</comment><comment><USER25> Reality check: Curll, if you can't fix your cash-flow problem in 30 days, then you already know the experiment requires a strategic pivot.

It doesn't help to question that.

It will have an emotional impact for you but fighting facts will not help you. Deep breath and change the perspective to see _how_ you need to pivot. Don't narrow possibilitites. On the contrary, expand them. You might feel blind or stuck for a little but do some Customer Development (essentially listening) to get inspired again.

You need the cash-flow problem fixed and is better if you can fix it by yourself delivering direct value (AKA, your paying clients).

Even if you have to do something else (diversification) and everybody tells you that you should focus, if it's not working then is _not_ working (AKA pivot needed).

Remember that you can always do the self-angel strategy (AKA bootstrap) and do that project as secondary thing instead of primary. Might not be so exciting but it will protect you (and reality around you is asking for it).

Do not surrender to peer pressure on cheap advice (perhaps including this one). Stay questioning and trust your subconscious intuition and discern.

What would you say to you if you were to advice your son on this?

Best!

</comment><comment><USER26> Been there, done that. Had to make the choice between paying Heroku or my landlord, I moved out and started couch surfing and crashing with my parents. Eventually that wears thin - actually immediately that wears thin.

You have a highly in-demand skill-set and I suggest you go use it and restore your finances and your sanity. The tech world isn't going anywhere.

Spend the next 3 years applying all the lessons you've learned which are no doubt numerous. How would you have done things differently to avoid your current predicament and lack of runway? You get another chance - and in the meantime you can take a load off mentally and financially.

Edit to add: By the way, you're successful for even attempting this. Don't hang your head in shame or beat yourself up for wanting to quit, or think that something magical will materialize if you just hold on. View it as a step to something greater and move on. You'll have great stories to tell the people who've been safely ashore the entire time.

</comment><comment><USER27> For me you are using the two frameworks harder to prototyping - this is more truth for node, in fact. (this is my opinion, take it on your own).

What I would do in your place is simplify your code. This is, change to ruby and do not use any front end framework (remove angular for now) and just stick with a simple bootstrap integration.

</comment><comment><USER28> In the spirit of "any advice" :)

How did you fund the initial 5 months?

The reason I ask is, if you don't have a ton of people to support at this point, you might want to move into "hibernation mode" and get a job to pay your bills while looking for folks you can count on to help you advance your vision and get to a point where you have traction, users, sales, etc, something that would be appealing to an investor.

If you already have taken money from an investor though, your options will be more limited.

Take a hard look at the market you are trying to penetrate and give yourself an honest assessment of what your chances of success are. Would you invest in yourself if you were angel or VC?

Think about how long you would have to spend on this idea to reach that goal and decide whether it is something you really love or not because 'success' can involve an arduous climb of 7 years or more.

</comment><comment><USER17> postpone.

get some money in the old way. if it is still in your head after 6-8months and dont let you sleep, you can still continue.

</comment><comment><USER29> If you live in the Bay Area, I would be happy to give you 30-45 minutes of my time and listen to your situation. Sometimes these things can be better clarified/understood in person.

I've been helped by HN members in many ways (mostly online though, and mostly indirectly), but in this case I feel compelled to "give back".

I have a few years of mentoring experience, and I can safely promise that with whatever suggestion I will come up with, I won't make your situation worse :)

[edit] just as a last thought, in case we won't meet - it seems that with such a short runaway, there's not much to do. The question you should ask yourself is rather this one: should I simply give up, or should I "regroup" and try again in a few months (e.g. with a short consulting gig in between, to get some cash flowing)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the offer. I'm in Boston, however.

Regroup seems to be the way to go; much appreciated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Sales fix everything.

Cash flow fixes everything.

If you can't generate cash then quit or pivot to something that does quickly.

Cash flow and traction leads to investors not the other way around.

Are you generating cash now? how much? what are you costs?

Focus on one thing and do it really well. I know you hear this all the time, but be the best SF Giants fantasy league.

<comment><USER25> Agree with all the first part but if he focused and didn't got useful results, continuing to be focused will only help him to do the wrong thing righter.

He's intuition is telling a lot, it's pretty clear that he needs some kind of pivot. And I would seriously consider diversifying to fix the cash-flow problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> > "learning..."

is a gigantic red flag. They should be learning the problem domain, not technologies with which to solve the problem. I'm with the folks saying they're wanking around on your dime and time to learn a thing they're interested in - which would be great, if you weren't about to starve.

I don't really have a lot of experience with which to base this, but...

I can't comment as to whether you should abandon your idea. I can comment that you should abandon your current plan for realizing it: That plan has become untenable.

Also, learn to code, at least enough to approximate competency. (Or use the wine trick: Ask for details, and look for coherence and passion - someone who knows wine can tell you /all about it/. You just need to know enough to judge coherence, not accuracy)

</comment><comment><USER32> Ping me – I _might_ be able to help: I run a (new but fast-growing) consulting co, work for equity, have fantasy sports on our project wish list (you have to have a unique take, though).

That said, I think the top advice here is good.

(My contact info is at the bottom of 10x.co.)

</comment><comment><USER33> Don't get bankrupt for this, its not worth it. Shut it down temporarily, try to make the MVP really minimal in your spare time.

The product you describe seems to have huge scope. Try to make it really focused, like an an NFL only fantasy league (the most popular sport).

You should really get developers that know already Angular and Node, those technologies are just not learnable overnight.

Other than that it seems like a nice stack, I personally would go for a backend based on socket.io and mongoose.

Any change of having people working remotelly to reduce office costs?

</comment><comment><USER34> If you want, contact me at firstname.lastname@example.com, and we can talk about how far along you are? If the platform is 50%+ finished, we may be able to take it on, knock it out, and consume a hefty % of equity.

I run sofetch.io, we build and design web and mobile apps.

</comment><comment><USER35> There's no glory in jeopardizing your wellbeing. And it's hard enough to make money in any market, especially one as competitive as fantasy sports, where all the big players have massive audiences already built-in.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sush, you. I ain't giving up that easily :)

Though, perhaps we should merge.

<comment><USER35> Always happy to talk and help if we can ... Ori at fleaflicker.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> All you need is to find the right find of partner? Get someone in as a partner and give him lots of stocks. Make sure he knows is his technology and makes a promise to deliver (put it in the contract).

</comment><comment><USER37> Can you get a part-time job to pay bills until you can sell the product?

</comment><comment><USER38> I don't think you've been at it long enough to quit. Here is an idea. Can you build something smaller that will generate revenue quickly instead of a much larger fantasy sports platform site? You obviously play fantasy sports so what if you wrote down all the things that drive you crazy about the big guys sites and apps and create a small solution for each problem on paper and then fix it with an app. Or look on a few app stores and find all the problems via viewing the low ratings on all the other apps out there. This is where the pain is and fantasy sports players will use whatever they find as a solution to their problems. What if you just build a small app that helped people get an advantage over other players that was easy to create, costs a couple bucks on an app store (or links to add rev. that can be dumped into an account that is linked to a top fantasy platform) and can be done before baseball season. You may have to do some Wizard of Oz stuff to start making money and get traction until you have some dough to hire a better team, etc. Here is an idea that may work: In my business, investments (actually building an SaaS product in FinTech) there are all these sites that for lack of better words are called "Guru" sites/apps. There are probably 5 sites and 5 - 10 apps out there. It sounds corny, but what people/companies have done (Using public filings) is find what the big guys (Hedge Funds/Institutions) are buying and then wrap a service around it. So if Warren Buffet buys MSFT they send out an email to all their subscribers telling them that Warren Buffet owns this now and they pile in. People will pay a lot of money for information. Some sites are slicker, where they have a good GUI with portfolio holdings of every single hedge fund, every single trade, weightings, etc., where you can slice and dice data a hundred different ways. Some have gotten as far as trading your accounts based on their (The Gurus) trades. So what if you built the simplist version of this where all the baddest ass fantasy players were tracked (Trades, allocations, etc.)and you sold a service where they get emailed when players are moved, allocations change, trades are made, etc., but the hook is you have to track the best, or maybe even professional athlete's picks (who knows more than a professional athlete about other athletes?) or maybe coaches, who knows. But keep it small, it has to create revenue immediately so you can pay rent and it has to be non-existing and something you could possibly sell to a big competitor (or put on their site to generate split ad revenue or something) because lets face it over time you could have a site with every widget, app, stat cruncher, etc. like a mall for fantasy players that need the best tools to kill it against all the guys in their office. Start thinking outside the box, but it has to be quickly built and must generate revenue quickly and then do what you want to do. Maybe follow an MVP regimen to get it going. Just some ideas, you could always build a quick picks aggregator that takes all the picking sites lists and makes a master list. Or generate a new way to rate players with a number (1,2,3,4) or alphabetic system (A,B,C,D), or turn players into stocks and make them into charts, quotes, graphs as a way or means to analyzing them better. Don't create a "market" for players though because it's been done and the Gov. doesn't like these sites/apps because they resemble gambling. good luck - <USER2>

<comment><USER39> You are speaking to someone who is going to run out of rent in two months. I see no suggestion you gave that has a reasonably-high-probability path to providing rent-quantity money in that timeframe. You have a few suggestions that involve money, but I'd estimate their most-likely return in one to one- and-a-half months to measure in the dozens of dollars.

This is not a great time to be overestimating the odds of making money.

<comment><USER38> I think getting a job at this point is obvious. I guess I should have said that in the beginning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Fail fast and often.</comment>


Major outage on travis-ci.com - <AUTHOR> https://www.traviscistatus.com/incidents/z2b3lz2kwcfp <comment><USER2> Some unhelpful speculation - given that they're restoring their production database from a snapshot (and judging from the 6-hour ETA, it's a full restore), someone's rm -rf'd the production server >_<</comment>


Procedural Dungeon Generation: A Drunkard's Walk in ClojureScript - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jrheard.com/procedural-dungeon-generation-drunkards-walk-in-clojurescript <comment><USER2> Even though the results are inconsistent if you can save a random seed for each you could store a list of the good ones.

<comment><USER3> That seems to be the secret of good proc-gen game design. Curate the good randomness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My ClojureScript-fu is not strong, could someone add a rule to prevent the script walk too close to already carved blocks? Edit: I mean, I've been trying add a rule so it checks the candidate blocks neighbours and couldn't. And I wanna see how it would work.

<comment><USER5> I don't know if this is what you want, but I made a version that prefers to carve out blocks with many full neighbours (and thus avoids already carved-out areas).

[https://gist.github.com/Haspaker/74f124859633edeb8d04465ce00...](https://gist.github.com/Haspaker/74f124859633edeb8d04465ce0053225)

<comment><USER4> Yeah that's more or less what I was trying to do, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love things like this, and I always appreciate the people who take the time to write them up and explain them.

It can take significantly more time to articulate how an algorithm works, break it down, and supply concise code for them than it takes to get them working in the first place. Reading code is great and all, but having someone take the time to walk you through it is fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's awesome to see the blogosphere's landscape finally changing from "Oh, look how awesome Clojure is" to "Here's the thing I build with Clojure(script), I think it's really cool". Language, tooling, community, market around Clojure have really matured and reached a tipping point. In just a few years from a toy thing it grew into a serious player. I am so glad I'm on this train, it's moving super-fast. You compare any JavaScript stack or set of libraries with what's possible in Clojurescript and it's hard not to conclude that the latter is always a few steps ahead.

</comment><comment><USER8> I like all of these gaming posts today!</comment>


Twitter allows access to rebuilt APIs - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/14/twitter-developer-labs/ <comment><USER2> But can I build my own client?</comment>


Pakistan's deadly robots in the sky - <AUTHOR> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/asia-pacific/pakistans-deadly-robots-in-the-sky/article1739172/

<comment><USER4> I'm based in Pakistan and all I have to say is that this is hurting America more than anything (these guys have no idea how much hatred this is causing among Pakistanis). I mean there is this American guy who's helping people teach their kids and this American guy is a hero (and he teaches in the same _dangerous_ zone). So I think if we need help we need it in education and etc.

I've been working with Americans for last 6 years and I've found them very honest, friendly, smart & hard-working. But when I look at American foreign policy towards the region I live in I find it most disturbing. Something is seriously wrong with the current drones-policy and American's(people in charge) have no idea how wrong it is ;( But our own leaders are probably responsible for it too. Stories of current government's corruption are very common now. I mean we have a 90+ member cabinet & most of them don't know an iota about running a country. I mean I can go on and on ;(

I'm currently pursuing graduate studies and most of people I meet everyday they want peace as much as you all want. We just don't know when will this terror end ;(

<comment><USER5> The American you are talking about is Greg Mortenson?

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I'm sorry but I was unable to recall his name ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Title should be: " _America's_ deadly robots in Pakistan's sky".

<comment><USER7> I don't know about upvotes, but with this title i guess that nearly 100% of HN will click...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The article does a good job of revealing the degree of superstition in that very poorly educated and isolated area. (I am referring, for example, to the claims that drones leave behind "poisonous dust," not a very likely payload at all.) If that superstition turns into hatred of America, that can't be good for United States foreign policy. Regions that are safe havens for the Taliban and Al-Qaeda include so many people who think so differently from people in the developed world that it may be very difficult to find a way to gain support for shutting down the terrorist networks. This is a bad situation all around.

<comment><USER9> This is the great issue that the US - over and over again - fails to grasp: You cannot use technology to bring a mind into agreement with your objectives.

The only way to win the hearts and minds of the people in that region is to meet them face to face where they live. Talk to them, argue with them, protect them and if required kill them. They need to see you as real, your objectives as firm statements - even if they disagree - and your resolve complete. They respect the strong and the committed, they deride the weak and conflicted.

This is a human war, and the only thing accomplished by flying drones around is a further separation from the people subject to their actions from the values of the people flying them.

All everyone ever really wants is to have a better life for themselves and their family. Maslow's hierarchy of needs suggests that if you can address or improve the base of the pyramid, you can restructure the entire pyramid. You can see easily how perverse religion warps the perception by manipulating these base needs; pretending that they aren't required, or even rejecting them outright as evil.

What we should be doing in Pakistan is essentially ignoring the fundamentalist nature of the region and showering them with things to address the bottom two levels of the pyramid. Yes this is a massive short term investment and yes this will cost lives.

Be sure though that it is the only way for the west to win this war over the long term. Every drone bringing faceless death from the sky only prolongs it.

<comment><USER10> This is a very popular opinion these days, but since when do we have to win the _hearts and minds_ to win the war?

What if the US just nukes every country with terrorists in it? There would hypothetically be no terrorists left, and everyone would work very hard not to be grouped in with those countires, otherwise they're going to get nuked too.

It sounds crazy (and I certainly don't condone that strategy), but realize that is one of the other options. For the vast majority of history winning wars didn't rely on winning the hearts and minds of _anyone_ , it relied on the complete destruction and subjugation of the other faction.

You could say "this war is different", but it really is not. It is different than the West on West wars of the last 3 centuries, but it is no different than a lot of guerilla wars in the past. The Native Americans tried really hard to stop Americans from expanding into their land - and the US won that guerilla war by just excersizing extreme cruelty.

Trying to win hearts and minds is a losing strategy against an opponent who doesn't care about that at all. The terrorists are not trying to win our hearts and minds, they are trying to kill as many Americans as possible. That makes their goals a lot easier to achieve.

Can we really invade every single country that holds some people that want us dead and "meet them face to face". Hell no, that would require conquering the whole world, which is impossible even for the US. The other option is making an example of a country and dissuading every other country from allowing terrorists to exist inside their borders, lest they end up like country X or Y that was conquered by the US.

Unfortunately by bungling in Iraq and forgetting about Afghanistan, the US ends up just looking weak. The reality is that the biggest obstacle to total victory is the lack of support for the level of violence required to win a war like this. The American people just won't stomach anywhere near the level of damage inflicted on the opponent in World War 1 or 2.

Thus with "total domination" off of the play book, we have "ignore borders and start dropping hellfire missiles on people no matter where they are" as a the current method for dealing with people. Overall, I'd consider it far more humanitarian than the other options.

<comment><USER9> _What if the US just nukes every country with terrorists in it?_

Well, you'll get the war you're looking for that's for sure. Unfortunately, you might actually be fighting a war that looks more like the downfall of the Roman empire than the liberation you seem to think you'll achieve. This isn't really a winnable strategy, even if you win the actual conflict.

 _For the vast majority of history winning wars didn't rely on winning the hearts and minds of anyone, it relied on the complete destruction and subjugation of the other faction._

History shows that wars without a clear decisive outcome tend to drag on for generations. "Most wars" did exactly that. The fact that WWII did have such an clear outcome does not make it the norm, even with the idea of "total domination".

Wars of ideas(opposed to those over resources and/or land) don't end until one of the ideas goes out of fashion. The cold war is a perfect example of this. That stalemate ended because the _communists_ didn't think their ideas would work. It had little to do with how many nukes the west could muster.

In the same light, radical Islam - I could argue Islam/religion itself - <USER2> only be "defeated" when the Islamics themselves decide that the particular path that they are on isn't worth the struggle. People turn to religion - <USER3> religion - when their needs are not being met. This is true even in the West - the Catholic church was the supreme authority during the dark ages, when Europe was suffering, and the Muslim world was enjoying a much less religious but more established existence a few miles away.

Fulfill the needs of the person to a basic level and religion offers nothing. You cannot win a war of ideas until you kill the idea, not the person.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> We're seeing the very beginning of what it means to be able to go to war for free (both in terms of cost in lives, and, in practical terms, in literal price), and there's no putting the genie back in the bottle.

<comment><USER12> >We're seeing the very beginning of what it means to be able to go to war for free (both in terms of cost in lives, and, in practical terms, in literal price), and there's no putting the genie back in the bottle.

you're right about very beginning. The "to go to war for free" is available and applicable to both sides, and thus, after a couple of iterations would lead to cost escalation. Remember the Stinger effect on the Soviet forces 20+ years ago in Afghanistan? The same way the next couple of steps are clearly visible: 1\. Pakistanis buy Stingers(or likes) 2\. USA start using stealth drones (google for SkunkWorks' one already being tested in Afghanistan) 3\. Pakistanis buy small [mull cart/pickup truck mountable] radar/missile automated system like Phalanx or Kashtan CIWS 4\. USA improve speed/stealth of the drones, increase the range and intelligence of Hellfire ...

As a result it is going to be more expensive and technologically intensive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's inhuman and unwise to target civilians when they are mere puppets of agents higher up in the hierarchy. It's simple, really: the US is killing Pakistanis, and when they find that their people are being _culled_ , the likes of Faisal Shahzad _will_ snap and go to any length to get back at the US.

IMO, what we really need is a MASSIVE propaganda effort to isolate Islamist ideologues within Pakistan. Not sure how this will happen, but the parallel I have in mind is the downfall of Nazism in Germany. If NATO along sympathetic states like India pool their resources together, I think it should be possible to buy out/instigate/support any number of revolutionaries within Pakistan who will effectively portray the Islamists as the cancer of not just Pakistan, but of mankind itself.

<comment><USER14> _but the parallel I have in mind is the downfall of Nazism in Germany._

That took the systematic leveling of a good chunk of Germany, just for starters. Perhaps not an optimal parallel.

<comment><USER15> But better than Imperial Japan.

<comment><USER14> If you go by death toll, it seems by most sources, Germany fared quite a bit worse.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_bombing_during_World_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_bombing_during_World_War_II)

<comment><USER15> My comment was regarding weapon systems deployed, as that was the subject of the article, not which pile of bodies was bigger.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


ItHot! A fast and free weather service - <AUTHOR> http://12345.ithot.xyz <comment><AUTHOR> Enter ZIPCODE.ithot.xyz to get the weather for your locale.

If accessed via CURL it will just return the temperature.

Feel free to submit feedback in the comments or b [at] debea d0t si

<comment><USER2> Where is the data coming from?

<comment><AUTHOR> weatherapi.com</comment></comment></comment>


TDP-43 bodies in ALS linked to ADAR2 and Calpain abnormal behavior - <AUTHOR> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29944911 <comment><AUTHOR> There are different kind of ALS diseases. ALS is not well defined, there are no quick tests or biomarkers. And once it is diagnosed (usually 2 years after the onset) the patient lives only two years (but that can vary much).

From a practical point of view there are roughly 50% of patients (pALS) that carry a mutation on SOD1 gene and most of the rest have TDP-43 bodies inclusions in their neuron's cytoplasm. Abnormal TDP-43 is also seen in other CNS diseases such as Alzheimer.

This article tells that abnormal TDP-43 stems from ADAR2 downregulation and Calpain abnormal activity.

ADAR protein is a RNA-binding protein, which functions in RNA-editing through post-transcriptional modification of mRNA transcripts by changing the nucleotide content of the RNA. So affected motor neurons bearing TDP-43 pathology invariably exhibit failure in RNA editing at the GluA2 glutamine/arginine (Q/R) site due to down-regulation of adenosine deaminase acting on RNA 2 (ADAR2).

The authors tell that exaggerated Ca2+ influx through the abnormal AMPA receptors overactivates calpain, a Ca2+-dependent protease, that cleaves TDP-43 into aggregation-prone fragments, which serve as seeds for TDP-43 pathology.

I believe this publication is novel and important in the ALS field, any comment?</comment>


Aerosol-Generating Procedures and Risk of Transmission of Infections - <AUTHOR> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK174442/ <comment><AUTHOR> CPAP machines are allowed to be operated on commerical airlines. They shouldn't be.</comment>


What's the best subscription model for an online game? - <AUTHOR> I'm a dev coming from an eCommerce SaaS background, where subscription pricing, either monthly or yearly, is the norm.  Recently I acquired an online multiplayer game, and since it's my first time in the gaming industry I'm wondering if the same ideas work here?
The game has a hybrid monetization model. There are in-game purchases, and also a subscription plan.  Sales are split about evenly between the two.
For the subscriptions, originally they offered 1 month, 3 month, 6 month, and Lifetime subscription plans.  When I came on board the first thing I did was eliminate the Lifetime subscription option (replacing  it with a 1 year plan).  I know from my SaaS background that lifetime plans are a killer.  (You collect money from the customer 1 time, but are obligated to provide support to them forever.  It's like a ponzi scheme where you rely on money from new customers to keep paying your support staff dealing with old customers.)
However I now have 2 problems:
1) Sales are down. At first I thought it was just a "rain shadow" from all those lifetime subscriptions that had already been sold.  (Also the old owner was doing a big sale on lifetime subscriptions before I started, and a ton of people bought it.)   But now it's 6 months later and sales are still down.
2) People are always asking me why there isn't a lifetime option. Now some of those people have been around the game for a long time so they would remember we had it before, but some people are new to the game and asking about it.  I see some other online games offer lifetime plans, so is that just a thing in the gaming business?
So my questions are... should I offer a lifetime subscription?  Should I get rid of subscriptions entirely and focus on in-game purchases?  Or something else?
Your thoughts are much appreciated! <comment><USER2> Hard to advise without knowing your product metrics. But on general online games are notorious for low retention. A lifetime plan might make sense, since the anticipated lifetime might be low and economics would add up.

Pull up the historical data if you can on how lifetime plan performed in your company when it was in place. If you know retention for the users, that purchased the plan and the acquisition cost, you can check, whether the lifetime plan makes sense.

</comment><comment><USER3> Increase the price of your lifetime subscription, and make other subscription more attractive. They will stop complaining and naturally switch to shorter one</comment>


Neiman Marcus Kitchen Computer (1969) - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchen_Computer <comment><USER2> "Reading or entering these recipes would have been nearly impossible for the average intended user, since the user interface required the user to complete a two-week course just to learn how to program the device, using only toggle- switch input and binary-light output. It had a built-in cutting board and had a few recipes built in."

Well at least I could use the cutting board...

Seriously though those hardware pictures make me nostalgic about physical switches.</comment>


HCL: a color model that actually matches our perceptions (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://vis4.net/blog/posts/avoid-equidistant-hsv-colors/ <comment><USER2> This is a fun topic. Here's a Lab and Lch colour picker I once made: [http://davidjohnstone.net/pages/lch-lab-colour-gradient- pick...](http://davidjohnstone.net/pages/lch-lab-colour-gradient-picker)

A keyword not mentioned in this article is "perceptual uniformity". It's the idea that the difference between two colours as measured by the Euclidean difference (of the L, a and b components) will be equal to the perceived difference between colours. That said, it turns out that this isn't quite as true as it was hoped for this colour space, and now there are much more complicated formula for this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_difference](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_difference)

<comment><USER3> Wow, the color difference stuff is fascinating. How on earth do they measure the space of perceptual difference?

<comment><USER4> Not sure, but maybe you could test by showing people two similar colors and asking them to decide if the are identical.

With enough samples (and enough individual participants) you establish how many "statistically-significant distinguishable differences" exist along a given path through the color-space.

Then combine those and get a sort of topographic grid...

<comment><USER3> Yeah, something like that was my best guess—either that or letting subjects adjust a second color until it matched the first. Turns out that's exactly what they did: "MacAdam set up an experiment in which a trained observer viewed two different colors, at a fixed luminance of about 48 cd/m2. One of the colors (the "test" color) was fixed, but the other was adjustable by the observer, and the observer was asked to adjust that color until it matched the test color." \- from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacAdam_ellipse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacAdam_ellipse)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wrote a viewer to better understand the HCL color space. By seeing it in 3D and then looking at different slices you can start to build an intuition about how the colors relate to each other and which colors are available at different parameters.

[http://briancort.com/hclviewer/](http://briancort.com/hclviewer/)

<comment><USER6> That's pretty neat. The 3d shape looks a little odd for some reason to be though. I think the perspective or projection isn't quite as I'd expect.

EDIT: Maybe if I could tilt the camera to look from above and below that would be better? Also it would be cool if it worked as a colour picker too. (Okay, that's enough feature requests for now...)

<comment><USER5> I'm happy to share the code, but realistically I'm unlikely to add features. There are already so many colour pickers that I didn't see the point in adding that functionality.

I created the tool while putting together a couple blog posts on how to use colours effectively in data visualizations. There are a number of links in those posts to other pickers out there: [https://briancort.com/?p=146](https://briancort.com/?p=146) [https://briancort.com/?p=174](https://briancort.com/?p=174)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think that Mike Bostock did a fantastic job with his cubehelix rainbow. It really does look visually less-jarring than HCL.

[https://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/310c99e53880faec2434](https://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/310c99e53880faec2434)

<comment><USER2> It depends what properties you want. That is a much nicer looking rainbow, but it drops the perceptual uniformity that often makes HCL useful.

<comment><USER8> This rainbow is interesting precisely because it shows that "perceptual uniformity" is not as useful as you might think. This is why people are still futzing with UX around volume controls and light dimmers. It's not just the math. Given "perception" there's no "uniformity" \-- by definition.

<comment><USER9> Huh? The pretty rainbow is a _perceptual mathematical model_. The reason is it looks nicer than the HCL rainbow is that, unlike a HC rainbow at constant L, it includes luminance in its model of perception

<comment><USER8> To clarify: commenter above states that the pretty rainbow "drops the perceptual uniformity that often makes HCL useful." My point is that you shouldn't claim one is more useful than the other without specifying the problem domain you're optimizing for. Also the language itself isn't helpful: "perception" is fuzzy by definition and we have two distinct positions on what "uniformity" means. You've now added the magic word "model" to the mix. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_models_are_wrong](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_models_are_wrong)

If any of this were obvious, Adobe wouldn't have stupid color pickers and I wouldn't have three wildly diverging ways for adjusting audio volume and light levels in my home.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There's also HUSL: [http://www.husl-colors.org/](http://www.husl-colors.org/)

<comment><USER11> Wow, for dark colors that one seems even more useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Well presented. Interestingly, I thought the RGB interpolation example at the end looked just as reasonable as the HCL interpolation. Though RGB was a little bland. But RGB should have been the 'dumbest' colorspace to interpolate in. Even trying random other colors the RGB always looked fine while the HCL, well, usually couldn't even come up with all the intermediate colors.

HCL actually seems to do very poorly interpolating towards black. Try #000000 and #AA0000. Apart from the missing color, the aparent hue changes significantly.

<comment><USER2> The missing colour in the #a00 to #000 interpolation is because HCL is trying to create a colour outside of sRGB (the green component is less than zero). As for the hue change, one difficulty of making a gradient to black in HCL is that black doesn't have a hue when specified as rgb(0, 0, 0), which seems to mess up some tools.

Edit: It's interesting to see how the different colour spaces react to the #000 being changed to #010000 or #000100 or #000001.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The first example comparing the differing fully saturated hues for the same value is what led me to creating my own color-picker. It takes in RGB hex and spits out the equivalent Munsell value and vice versa. I can edit in a human- understandable format and switch it back to standard Hex.

Let's take a dark purple, that's too light: 573F63 The tool converts it in place to 5P 3/4, then we just modify the value (second term) to 5P 1/4 and convert back to hex (#291333). All we have changed is the brightness, Hue and Chroma have stayed constant.

Hex values are horrible to work with, they contain no understandable info. 10Y 8/6 is going to be complementary to 10PB 8/6, without going outside equidistant chroma levels and having matching value.

Check out the demo in the readme.

Edit: [https://github.com/germ/munsellScript/](https://github.com/germ/munsellScript/)

</comment><comment><USER14> When I want to compare to solid like white/black background I just use Y. When I want to compare colors I have had decent enough results with this simple formula (conveniently in RGB for most programing tasks):

[http://www.compuphase.com/cmetric.htm](http://www.compuphase.com/cmetric.htm)

I think it's pretty telling that CIE and others have made a number of revisions to Lab color distance formulas over the years to the point of them having constants you tweak. There's no perfect out there yet, so I use a good enough that is simple to compute.

</comment><comment><USER15> The first example of how HSV's hues have different perceived brightness is an interesting topic.

Some researchers have been looking into better grayscale filters that could pick out colour distinctions better, too.

PDF, in case you're interested: [http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/~ago820/color2gray/color2gray...](http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/~ago820/color2gray/color2gray.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER16> I wonder why he didn't mention YUV.

</comment><comment><USER17> We do not all see color the same way in the first place! [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16647849](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16647849)

</comment><comment> mark-r The actual code used on the page needs better handling of out-of-gamut colors. When I plugged FF0000 into the first value for the gradient comparison, two of the samples turned pure black.

Other than that, it looks very promising.

</comment><comment><USER18> I can't figure out what this has to do with perception. In our retina, we have rods for brightness and cones as color sensors. So perception would be farther up, possibly in ganglion cells, thalamus, or visual cortex.

Side note: this is still an interesting topic though, and there is nothing wrong with exploring non-human modes of perception.

<comment><USER9> It's black-box modeling of perception by tweaking inputs (light) and measuring outputs (human statements of how intense/smooth/whatever it looks)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's quite a bit less practical than other color spaces, because it's far less reliable. For instance, try their gradient tool with #9C0A0A and #AA2AB5. Every other space produces good looking results, HCL fails completely.

</comment><comment><USER20> "HCL is a cylindrical transformation of CIE L _a_ b _"

What is CIE L_a _b_?

<comment><USER21> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lab_color_space](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lab_color_space)</comment></comment>


A New Accent Is Developing in Southwest Kansas - <AUTHOR> https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/new-accent-liberal-kansas <comment><USER2> Whoa, I never thought an article about Liberal would be on HN. I'm a Liberal, KS resident since about 2005, and now that I think about it...people here do have a kind of unique accent, but I don't know if it's really as striking as the article makes it out to be. I don't know, maybe I've just gotten used to it.

I was shocked when I opened the article and saw our welcome sign. Hahaha

<comment><USER3> fwiw, I grew up in Miami, and I 100% thought that me and my friends did not have an accent of any kind whatsoever ... because for whatever reason, there weren't really a lot of people born and raised in miami in popular media (at least that I was aware of, days before Pitbull, etc).

Well, I moved away to central florida (very different demographics) at 17 ... and it wasn't until a few years later when I went back to visit, that I realized just how distinct (to my ears at least) my friends sounded. Nowadays, I can hear someone start to speak, and within a few minutes of listening can tell that they were raised in Miami. It's a few subtle clues that thus far have almost always been right

<comment><USER4> > and I 100% thought that me and my friends did not have an accent of any kind > whatsoever

I suspect everyone thinks that. It's all those people from other parts of the world/country that have accents. :)

<comment><USER5> I'm 37 and I'm still perplexed that it rains some places in the summer.

<comment><USER6> Here I am from Michigan thinking "When else would it rain?!?!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ah, an article about my home state. It's worth pointing out how isolated this town is... Interstate doesn't even run through that part of the state, and the nearest 'big city' is hours away.

<comment><USER8> Isolation is probably an important factor for the development of an accent

<comment><USER9> I grew up in a small fishing village in the north of Scotland - an area notorious for its _very_ strong accents (to the point of some documentaries filmed locally having to be subtitled in English!).

However, people who lived on farms spoke with a noticeably different accent (at least to the ears of locals) - even though they might be physically on a kilometer or two from the nearest village.

NB This was in the 70s - I suspect none of these communities are quite as insular as they used to be.

<comment><USER10> The movie "Hot Fuzz" played up variations in regional accents in England. There's a scene (1) where the London cop (Simon Pegg) has to use two rural cops in order to interpret the dialect of an old farmer.

1\. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cun- LZvOTdw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cun-LZvOTdw)

<comment><USER11> That scene is only a slight exaggeration. Rural West Country accents can be almost totally unintelligible to users of standard English.

[https://youtu.be/WjTIFkWJctY?t=40s](https://youtu.be/WjTIFkWJctY?t=40s)

<comment><USER10> Wow. There's a linked video of farmers from Kerry, Ireland as well. I can't understand the first one, the second just barely.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsUvcjk8J5c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsUvcjk8J5c)

<comment><USER12> Haha, I ran into a couple of Irish lads in a club in the weekend.

I know it sounds like a stereotype, but with a few pints down them I swear I couldn't understand a thing they said when they were talking to each other. I had to check they weren't speaking Gaelic or something.

You definitely get used to accents quickly though. After a couple of weeks of hanging out with a bunch of Scottish people, I could understand Glasgow patter like it was normal English.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interesting. The "spanish influenced" accent described in the video sounds like standard English in southern california.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I get the feeling they make a big fuzz out of it. In the video she's mentioning the different ways an "a" is pronounced. If you look at England, every other towns has a different accent (that's what I've heard)

[https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/explore/what-is-the- differ...](https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/explore/what-is-the-difference- between-dialect-and-accent/)

<comment><USER14> I'd say the rate at which accents change here as you move is probably higher than the US due to the smaller size of the British Isles. You can see a few videos like this that demonstrate it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8mzWkuOxz8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8mzWkuOxz8)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As someone who grew up in Southern California and the "surfer" and "valley girl" cultures and dialects, I was hoping this article would provide some insight into the formation of such things. However, the biggest takeaway seemed to be the surprise that this was happening in the middle of Kansas. It was interesting that the Hispanic population quadrupled there recently, but no conclusions were drawn by the author.

</comment><comment><USER16> Strange-the pronunciation changes that she demonstrates with "hand" seem to be bringing the accent closer to RP English!

<comment><USER17> Yes, I noticed the sounds in hat and hand still weren't identical but perhaps she's exaggerating an 'RP-like' sound to emphasize the distinction with general nasalized American English.

<comment><USER18> It's not general. It's purely a midwestern phenomenon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Dialects are interesting. While it's still mutually intelligible, it's an accent. I wonder whether the Liberal accent will develop into a separate language like Louisiana Creole?

I made some graphs about the status of languages in Windows/macOS/Ubuntu/Google Translate/Facebook/Wikipedia/IB, and included a section about dialects of Chinese.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17344466](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17344466)

</comment><comment><USER20> The visual style of this map is overwhelming, but it's a great map of US dialects with links to native speakers: [http://aschmann.net/AmEng/](http://aschmann.net/AmEng/)

see also [https://www.daredictionary.com/](https://www.daredictionary.com/)

</comment><comment><USER21> Is there any audio of people speaking with the accent available somewhere?

<comment><USER22> Linked in the body of the article, it's a very subtle variation

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> > "But we would find them not only among the Latinx youth but also among many > of the white youth as well. It seems like these variants—because Liberal is > now a Latinx-majority community—are just becoming the way this community > sounds."

People actually use "Latinx"? Up until now I'd only seen that in discussions about it.

<comment><USER24> I was surprised to see that as well. I thought it was for particular group, not as a replacement for 'Latinos'.

Similar to people getting upset at using "guys" which the dictionary defines as referencing all genders, and only male when used as "guy". Latinos makes perfect common sense in the same way.

This seems like a bit of activism by the author rather than entirely necessary, especially considering it links to an article about "Gender Inclusivity" from within an article about Kansas accents... Unless I missed the notice that using "Latino-majority community" is no longer correct?

<comment><USER22> Is using "guys" not plainly kind of dumb though? Once someone pointed it out to me, I can't help but feel foolish using it to describe a group of women.

Conversely, if you call a group of men "ladies" you're being playfully derisive...

<comment><USER12> In romance languages (French, Spanish, Italian...) it's considered standard for a collective group of males and females to be referred to by the male pronoun. A group of exclusively females gets referred to with a female pronoun.

I guess the same applies to "guys".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is it an old wives' tale that east coast news stations send reporters with heavy accents to midwest stations to unlearn them?

</comment><comment><USER12> Does anyone else find the whole 'Latinx' thing nonsensical?

I understand the reasoning, it's about being gender neutral. But why don't they just knock the vowel off the end and just say 'Latin'?

<comment><USER26> I agree it is nonsensical, but I'd rather it stay as it used to be.

Through the usual meme grapevine I saw a tumblr post on reddit about this. Being gender neutral/genderless in this case is also actively ignoring Spanish linguistics (and arguably culture). Spanish is a gendered language like many others. It's not some patriarchal conspiracy to say Latino instead of Latina or vice versa, it's just how the language works. If I remember correctly as well, the gender neutral form would still be Latino.

Granted, they're being referred to through English here, which one could argue could benefit from just being 'Latin' (confusion between actual Latin aside). I'm of the opinion to keep loan words as close to the original as possible. Language changes over time but some words are still explicitly from elsewhere. So, keep it as Latino/Latina.

<comment><USER27> _> Being gender neutral/genderless in this case is also actively ignoring Spanish linguistics (and arguably culture)._

That argument that conflates the Spanish language and Latin American culture (which is not homogenous). Portuguese actually edges out Spanish in terms of European languages in South America, and there are hundreds of indigenous languages spoken there [1]. It's an appeal to the purity of a culture that is itself a product of colonialism.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_South_America](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_South_America)

<comment><USER28> > Portuguese actually edges out Spanish in terms of European languages in > South America

We're not in South America, though. In the context of this article, we're talking about a town in the USA with a large number of immigrants from Latin America as a whole, most of whom are Hispanic and comparatively few of whom are Brazilian.

<comment><USER27> This subthread is an aside on the term "Latinx" in general, outside the context of this article. I'm specifically responding to the meme described by the GP, which ostensibly was not created in response to this article but to address general usage of the term "Latinx".

<comment><USER28> > but to address general usage of the term "Latinx"

Which, again, in English, is usually used when discussing immigrants, most of whom are Hispanic.

<comment><USER27> It sometimes refers to people who happen to be immigrants, but it's not often used in the context of a discussion involving immigration. Broadly, it refers to people and culture originating in Latin America. Many people use it to self-identify.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> > Ironically, he adds, it's a bit of an exclusive phrase itself: "It's very > rarely that I find someone from outside of Liberal using TFTI."

What? A simple web search will show this is quite common.

<comment><USER30> I think he means used in spoken communications.

<comment><USER29> It's common in spoken communications among my friends here in California (both NorCal and SoCal), with the same meaning and connotation as cited in the article.

<comment><USER30> It seems to me that everything in the article probably is. I suspected the author of provinciality, but according to her bio, she is very well-traveled.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Everyone and their mother uses TFTI. This is satire right?

<comment><USER32> I've been on the internet for 6+ hours a day for the past 15 years and I have literally never seen it.

<comment><USER33> First I've heard of it too. The article says "thanks for the invite" but I googled it and the top Google result says "thanks for the info", so it doesn't seem like people agree on what it means.

Are we sure people in Liberal aren't saying it ironically? Most people who pronounce Internet slang acronyms IRL are doing it ironically and the fad wears off quickly.

<comment><USER2> I'm from Liberal. I've never heard a person here (or anywhere) use the pronunciation "tifty" in any context, but I imagine you're right -- I'm sure plenty use the phrase ironically.

I've seen the initialism TFTI used in earnest, but I would consider the usage that the article refers to as uncommon at best.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: GUID API - <AUTHOR> http://nextguid.appspot.com/16

<comment><AUTHOR> Version 4 UUIDs.

[ being those with bits 48-52 set to 0100 and bits 64-66 set to 10 ].

This uses python 2.7's os.urandom ( on GAE ).

Change /16 to /64 to get a padded base64 encoded GUID/UUID.

In the seemingly unlikely event that this exceeds its free quota, it will become a for-pay API.

<comment><USER2> Better if you add that information to the main page [http://nextguid.appspot.com/](http://nextguid.appspot.com/) (currently returns 404 error)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, it is done.</comment></comment></comment>


Functional Programming in OCaml - <AUTHOR> https://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs3110/2020sp/textbook/ <comment><USER2> ReasonML is Facebook's OCaml for JavaScript.

[https://reasonml.github.io/](https://reasonml.github.io/)

They have used it extensively:

[https://reasonml.github.io/blog/2017/09/08/messenger-50-reas...](https://reasonml.github.io/blog/2017/09/08/messenger-50-reason.html)

With impressive results:

" Messenger used to receive bugs reports on a daily basis; since the introduction of Reason, there have been a total of 10 bugs (that's during the whole year, not per week)! *"

<comment><USER3> If I get it right (from posts I've seen before and the docs on the project [1]) Reason is not really "OCaml for JavaScript" but just a parser for a more appealing, mostly compatible, syntax for the OCaml. So one should be able to compile to the same targets as with traditional OCaml.

Re: Mostly compatible: I remember there were certain things that were not easily expressible with Reason (but available in the OCaml syntax) a few years ago, not sure if it is still the case.

Subjective: OCaml syntax is definitely on the weird side, although I would not call it ugly. This coming from someone who enjoys writing clojure and xslt, go figure :-p.

1: [https://github.com/facebook/reason/blob/master/src/README.md...](https://github.com/facebook/reason/blob/master/src/README.md#repo- walkthrough)

<comment><USER4> Js_of_ocaml [1] is a good alternative to BuckleScript for standard OCaml (non- Reason).

For example, it works well with Core_kernel [2] and Async_kernel [3] to provide high-level functionality that is cross compatible between Unix applications and browser applications.

[1] [https://github.com/ocsigen/js_of_ocaml](https://github.com/ocsigen/js_of_ocaml)

[2] [https://github.com/janestreet/core_kernel](https://github.com/janestreet/core_kernel)

[3] [https://github.com/janestreet/async_kernel](https://github.com/janestreet/async_kernel)

<comment><USER5> To be clear, Bucklescript also works with standard OCaml (because Reason is just an alternative surface syntax).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> a-nikolaev Very nice practical and modern textbook for OCaml. I were using it last year to teach this subject at my school. Here are my additional notes and exercises, if you are interested: [https://a-nikolaev.github.io/fp/](https://a-nikolaev.github.io/fp/)

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't know why they felt they had to mess with OCaml's syntax - one of the nicest around AFAIC. With F#, even MS didn't feel like they had to add extra braces and other baggage and change keywords ("match" to "switch ()", etc.) to make C# programmers have an easier first ten minutes of transition time.

<comment><USER7> I think F# cleaned up a lot of OCaml's syntactic oddities nicely, though I could do without the off-side rule.

<comment><USER8> F# supports OCaml syntax as well, via a compiler pragma.

<comment><USER9> f# has diverged away from ocaml enough that the small fact that a tiny subset of it is compatible with ocaml is just a trivia fact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> An great course and a very good professor. I'm glad they've compiled the course into an ebook. It's the only way I can think of FP, so I'm glad I can know point people to the same source I learned it from.

It would be quite awesome if they made it fully interactive; in the vein of several other textbooks that have been shared on HN recently.

<comment><USER11> which textbooks are interactive like that?

<comment><USER12> Two that I know are SICP[0] and Eloquent Javascript[1]

[0] [https://sicp.comp.nus.edu.sg/](https://sicp.comp.nus.edu.sg/) [1] [https://eloquentjavascript.net/](https://eloquentjavascript.net/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> HN thread on 2019 edition: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19292067](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19292067)

</comment><comment><USER14> > Java didn't have generics until version 5 in 2004; the ML family had it in > 1990.

I thought Standard ML had it in the 70's (!)

<comment><USER15> Yes, 1975 IIRC. Standard ML was published in 1990, so that is probably the source of the confusion.

It's a bit sad that the foundations of modern programming languages were basically known by 1975 (either via Standard ML or Scheme) but the majority of languages in common use (mostly of a 1990s vintage) didn't learn those lessons. Thankfully that seems to be changing with more recent languages (Go being the exception).

<comment><USER8> And CLU.

Having researched a bit in the 60's and 70's systems programming languages, I would assert that the same issues with Go apply to C (language design vs existing competition), and they only got lucky because Bell Labs was forbidden to profit from UNIX.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If you want to access RESTful APIs via OCaml, you may consider using OpenAPI Generator to generate the OCaml client automatically instead of manually creating one. Here are 3 simple steps to do so:

1\. Download the OpenAPI Generator CLI Java JAR ([https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/org/openapitools/openapi- gene...](https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/org/openapitools/openapi-generator- cli/4.2.3/openapi-generator-cli-4.2.3.jar))

2\. Rename the JAR as "openapi-generator-cli.jar"

3\. Run the following command to generate an OCaml API client for the Petstore API ([https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OpenAPITools/openapi- gener...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OpenAPITools/openapi- generator/master/modules/openapi- generator/src/test/resources/2_0/petstore.yaml)):

Mac/Linux:

$ java -jar openapi-generator-cli.jar generate -g ocaml -i [https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OpenAPITools/openapi- gener...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OpenAPITools/openapi- generator/master/modules/openapi- generator/src/test/resources/2_0/petstore.yaml) -o /var/tmp/ocaml/

Windows:

$ java -jar openapi-generator-cli.jar generate -g ocaml -i [https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OpenAPITools/openapi- gener...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OpenAPITools/openapi- generator/master/modules/openapi- generator/src/test/resources/2_0/petstore.yaml) -o C:\tmp\ocaml

If you've any feedback or question, please let us know via [https://github.com/OpenAPITools/openapi- generator/issues/new](https://github.com/OpenAPITools/openapi- generator/issues/new)

</comment><comment><USER17> As I don't have a lot of time to investigate at this moment - is this intended to be a generally-standalone guide that one could use to learn OCaml? I'm guessing not, since it doesn't seem to dive in too deep into any subject, just giving a very broad overview.

<comment><USER18> If you want something more in-depth about OCaml itself, [http://dev.realworldocaml.org/](http://dev.realworldocaml.org/) is a good resource.

<comment><USER8> Any news on how the 2nd edition is going on?

<comment><USER19> It's totally usable and preferable in its beta format to the first edition. The first edition is pretty out of date with current practice.

<comment><USER8> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I haven't used OCaml in a couple of years. has the stdlib story been improved/standardized? is there still the whole async vs jwt problem or did jwt finally win out?

I think i remember that there wasn't a good web framework, and that the existing popular one had a memory leak.

I was learning from a book (Real World OCaml, i think) and it kept pushing jane street libs like Async and Core.

<comment><USER21> Do you mean LWT?

<comment><USER20> Ah. Yes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> How does OCaml compare with haskell?

<comment><USER23> Ocaml does not make any effort to control impure code or mutability. The type system is not as powerful, but the powerful module system takes up some of the slack. Lots of things that are really convenient in Haskell (like point-free function composition) work poorly or not at all in OCaml due to constraints imposed by the existence of impure mutable references. The OCaml runtime is pretty primitive compared to Haskell's, especially around stuff like concurrency. GHC has a world-class concurrency story and OCaml barely has support for multiple OS-level threads. OCaml uses tagged pointers for boxing, which means you have weird stuff like integers being 63 bits instead of 64. Haskell uses bitmasks on heap objects to avoid that.

Subjectively, I think OCaml is a huge improvement over, say, Java, but if you're deciding between learning one of OCaml or Haskell in 2020 I think Haskell is the better option for most people.

<comment><USER24> I don't consider OCaml and Haskell to be really comparable. I love statically typed FP and have professional experience with OCaml, Haskell, and Scala and Haskell is significantly different than the other two (also much different than F#). I've personally never found Haskell's encoding of mutability or impurity into the type system to be of any real benefit. Most of the time your impurity is coming from logging, networking, or interacting with files or a db; in which case, it's entirely obvious what's going on. Other times, you have a pure function that's implementation is unpure, which is also obvious on what's going on. In any case, if you're programming in good FP-style all Haskell is providing is a bunch of headaches around finding the write way to make all your type annotations match up: it's kind of a annoying experience when you're just trying to get something done.

I think Haskell's a good way to start learning functional programming because it really beats the habit of loops and mutability out of you _real_ fast by making the functional way easier. But if you're already an experienced FP programmer, less restrictive languages are better.

What makes Haskell interesting is all the crazy optimizations it can do since the compiler has so much information about the program. It would be really cool if other languages had a "pure" annotation or keyword that signified the function has a pure interface. This could dramatically improve the performance of a lot of Scala/F#/OCaml code.

<comment><USER23> I've put thousands of hours into both Haskell and Ocaml, so I feel like I have a pretty good understanding of how both affect my development process.

> I've personally never found Haskell's encoding of mutability or impurity > into the type system to be of any real benefit.

I find it completely indispensable for large codebases, especially codebases I didn't write.

> Most of the time your impurity is coming from logging, networking, or > interacting with files or a db; in which case, it's entirely obvious what's > going on.

Maybe you're a genius or something, but to me (and most people) it's not "entirely obvious what's going on" when large codebases use impure side- effectful semantics in a way that's not clear from the types.

> Other times, you have a pure function that's implementation is unpure, which > is also obvious on what's going on.

Once again, it is not at all obvious. And a very large fraction of the time, that "pure function with an impure implementation" isn't actually so pure after all, and either leaks mutable semantics or behaves badly (e.g. if used in a multithreaded way). Haskell actually does have a real solution for this in the form of the ST monad. You can write impure things and _prove_ (using the type system) that they have pure semantics. I'm not aware of any other language offering this.

> In any case, if you're programming in good FP-style all Haskell is providing > is a bunch of headaches around finding the write way to make all your type > annotations match up

Not only are type annotations optional (and usually trivial), but you can get the compiler to write them for you interactively e.g. with holes. In any case, this is never a problem in practice for "business logic" code. I've only really seen this come up e.g. when writing lenses by hand (i.e. rarely).

> it's kind of a annoying experience when you're just trying to get something > done.

The point where the cognitive overhead introduced by Haskell's type system is worth the payoff compared to, say, Python, is about 1-200 lines in my experience.

> But if you're already an experienced FP programmer, less restrictive > languages are better.

The only "improvement" that you've cited so far is that "less restrictive languages" let the programmer be architecturally lazy, which I don't think is really an improvement.

> It would be really cool if other languages had a "pure" annotation or > keyword that signified the function has a pure interface.

If this were preferable, then Haskell programmers could just write everything in IO and selectively factor things out into pure functions. The fact that no one does this is, I think, telling.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Pleasures of Eating (2009) - <AUTHOR> https://www.ecoliteracy.org/article/wendell-berry-pleasures-eating <comment><USER2> Title doesn't seem to match what I got from the article. It's more about eating local, less-processed foods, and ways you can learn more about what goes into your diet and how it's produced.

I like the premise, and I try to eat that way, but, like most things, life gets in the way. I'd love to be able to meet every engineer that designed my car, or read over every piece of code that I use, or follow how each piece of wood goes into my furniture, but it's just impractical. Yes, I think we as a society can easily make a better effort towards that goal, but sometimes all I have time for in a day is a quick burger, then back to work/hobby/etc.</comment>


NICTA micro-kernel trailblazers slurped by US defense giant - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/12/nicta_start_up_bought_by_uncle_sam/ <comment><USER2> Is this the L4 and the HURD project?

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe this is OK Lab's L4 "microvisor", which has Symbian, Linux, and Android guest operating systems.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK_Labs#Products></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Please provide feedback for my Demo video - <AUTHOR>

Please check the short video I made myself (http://www.jackpotbuddy.com) describing the service. Any feedback about the video, design, content, idea is highly appreciated. <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: <http://www.jackpotbuddy.com></comment>


Diaspora, the 'anti-Facebook', is doomed - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/social-media/7973490/Diaspora-the-anti-Facebook-is-doomed.html

<comment><USER2> Oh _come on_!

 _there is no space for another network between Facebook and LinkedIn_

15 years ago this guy'd have been saying

 _there is no space for another search engine between Yahoo! and AskJeeves_

Diaspora has the potential to be disruptive in a massive way, it can do to social networks what google did to search. Phrases like:

 _it's come too late in the evolution of social networking_

make me think the author really doesn't understand how quickly trends and allegiances change on the net. For instance, I spent a year on reddit, accumulated 1000 link karma and 8000 comment karma, and then discovered HN and my reddit usage has gone right down.

It's never too late for users to be attracted to shinier products.

<comment><USER3> You know, not everything is the next Google. Network effects and the size of the userbase are very important.

<comment><USER2> I'm not saying it's going to be the next google. I'm not even saying it'll be a success. But the arguments in the article simply don't support the conclusion.

The claims made in the article are:

1) Diaspora will fail because facebook's really big.

2) Diaspora will fail because Zuck's invested in it.

3) Diaspora will fail because there's a lot of competition.

4) Diaspora will fail because facebook's well funded.

5) Diaspora will fail because it hasn't launched yet.

6) Diaspora will fail because privacy doesn't matter to users.

Apart from the last one, I don't think any of those have any force at all. Lots of successful companies have launched against strong, well funded competitors in a crowded marketplace and been massively sucessful. And sure, lots have failed too. But the arguments are way too broad to have any meaning for the specific Diaspora/Facebook debate. You can apply them just as well to any startup you care to mention.

The only thing of any substance in the article is claim 6, the rest is too generic to matter.

What's even worse, is that a year down the line when Diaspora does fail, this hack'll say "Yeah I predicted that". No, you just pointed out some general reasons why startups have a tough time.

Diaspora will probably fail. But not for any of the reasons given in the article. Number 6 will possibly have an impact. The author only devotes 6 lines of text to that, the rest you could literally copy and paste for every startup and just change the names and numbers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I finally decided to check their website out and they don't have <http://www.diaspora.com/> !?

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://www.joindiaspora.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> People will always be willing to join new social networks in search of exclusivity. Facebook might always occupy the number one spot, but this is a large market.

Diaspora is appealing to me because it's appealing to many of my geeky friends.

<comment><USER6> Facebook rode the tide of popularity first among young people. This group is notoriously fickle and fad-driven. I visualize a school of fish or flock of birds suddenly all changing direction at once, for no apparent reason. It absolutely could fall out of favor at any time.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm not a big facebook fan. I joined but then deleted my account (or so I think!). So I quite like the idea of this, but I wonder if the distributed node based model will ultimately hinder this idea from getting real traction.</comment>


Networks diss iTunes rentals, embrace Netflix instant streaming - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2010/09/networks-diss-itunes-rentals-embrace-netflix-instant-streaming.ars <comment><USER2> The biggest issue I see in all honesty, is that as of now, itunes fails completely in terms of user experience when you try to find and buy anything.

itunes is rife with things that make it HARD to buy anything.

The user flow goes something like:

-Wait for itunes to load

-type in your password

-tell it you don't want to turn on feature x or y

-click itunes store

-type something in the search box

-wait while the store freezes for 5-10 seconds

-click on what you wanted

-click on the season you wanted

-find the episode, realize you don't want the HD version

-hunt for the small link to the SD version because itunes decieds for you that you must want to pay more and get the HD version

-re-find the SD version, click 'buy'

-re login in because for some reason it asks you twice

-click the 'yes I really want to buy this popup'

-get hit with a new terms of service that you must agree to

-realize that your download hasn't actually resumed now that you've agreed to the TOS

-re-find the episode and click buy once again

-re-click the 'yes I want to buy this' button

-hunt up the 'downloads' link on the left

-find the item that you want to watch, get hit with another popup talking about how downloaded items will show up here or there when they are done downloading.

-Double click the item you want to see

-hunt for the hidden-till-you-mouse-over-it button to expand the show to full screen

Don't get me wrong I love Apple, I sing praises for them all the time, but I know they can do _way_ better than this.

Compare this to the zune market on xbox:

-Load the market -search -click buy -click play

<comment><USER3> Don't forget the times when it just puts up some mysterious error that requires you to re-enter the store and try again.

The whole thing has become the poster child for feature-creep. Have you ever tried just browsing the App Store? It's nearly impossible to see anything other than the few condensed lists it gives you -- there's no true browsing that I've ever been able to find.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The interesting thing to me about this is that the media companies seem happier to take a flat fee than per-viewing fees for episodes, which seems counter to the general strategy of making people pay every time they watch something. I can think of for this are:

1\. Their models show that they get more money from the flat fees via Netflix than from per-rental fees. 2\. They prefer the steadier payments that flat-fee library access provides to more 3\. They think that $0.99 is a bad price from a customer psychology standpoint.

This is obviously not an exhaustive list, but I think (3) is an interesting point. If $.99 is now the de facto "cheap impulse buy" price point, is it possible that television execs don't want people thinking about TV that way? When watching a TV show can be compared with a fun little iPhone game or a single song, does it stop being a compelling purchase?

I think they'd rather that people feel they need a recurring subscription to television, or pay much more per episode to get a "permanent" archive of it. Both mechanisms encourage people to overindulge in and overvalue television, while individual payments for rented shows do not.

<comment><USER5> They may also have learned from the ever-ongoing micropayment failure. When prices start getting down to $.99, mental transaction costs start to matter more than the dollar costs.

I'm currently on the $8.99 plan for Netflix and probably wouldn't switch to the all-streaming plan even if they offered it. At my usage rate, .99/movie would be cheaper for me. But I would still rather hand over $8.99 a month and not _think_ about the dollar per streaming movie than to individually watch every dollar going out.

This is twice as true if that dollar is for some BS "limited time rental", now I'm watching every dollar go out _and_ I'm watching the clock. I am happy to pay a bit more to avoid this mental stress.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am curious about why Netflix has succeeded so well with regard to streaming movies and so much TV content. There are competitors, Hulu and YouTube, but Netflix seems to be winning. I think there are three possibilities:

(1) They got lucky. Netflix made the good deals early on. After a few of these, the deals simply snow ball.

(2) Netflix has a captive audience created through their DVD rental service. Netflix gives us DRM'ed content we can view online and we applaud it because we already love getting those red envelopes in our mailbox.

(3) Their distribution network is superior and is the best to deliver all this content.

To me (2) seems the most likely. Perhaps is a combination of all 3.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you hit it with #2.

Netflix created a huge following of normal, non-techie folks with their brilliant distribution 'hack' (aka using regular mail); when people started to see Netflix on their xboxes and ps3's, they understood what they were about already and it was easier for them to build up a following on the digital front.

Imagine if they'd tried to do that first - aka bypassing the whole mail/red envelop thing - people wouldn't have a clue what they were about or why it was awesome.

<comment><USER7> I always wondered why they were called 'Netflix' when you only got DVDs in the mail.

Actually no, I think it was fairly obvious they were intending to stream stuff online from the start and the mail thing was just the setup.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The success of the iTunes music store is huge impediment for Apple in video, tv, and books. Content owners look at the way Apple dominates the music retail business, and resolve to do anything rather than let another Apple service achieve near-monopoly status. The problem is that the results have been sucky and patchwork, with piracy the defacto winner.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think the part that Ars isn't mentioning is that Jeff "devalues our content" Zucker announced his departure today, so it's possible he may no longer represent his company's overall position on the topic. To me, the move seems to reflect a disrespect of Zucker's leadership as much as it does a diss on Apple.

Also, it's not like any of this hurts Apple anyway. They're a hardware business first and I have to imagine their margins won't be hurt by ceding a breakeven TV business to Netflix or Hulu.

Other factors at play: Netflix often sets up lump-sum deals with content owners instead of per-item deals. And those deals as a whole are way more attractive than $0.99 rentals for shows which may not even be as popular in the long-term:

[http://shortformblog.com/tech/netflix-slowly-but-surely- beco...](http://shortformblog.com/tech/netflix-slowly-but-surely-becoming-a- movie-studio-cash-cow/)

Fact of the matter is, Netflix writes big checks. Which might make them more attractive to old-school execs than Apple's model, which is a lot less like what they're used to than Netflix is.

</comment><comment><USER10> I always wonder were amazon video on demand is in these discussions. I find that service much more comfortable to use and you can redownload your videos or even watch them in the browser. I wonder why this is not getting more attention

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm curious as to why $.99 is 'devaluing' the rental. Renting a DVD is $5 (or $5-15 a month), and usually has 3-5 episodes on it. It's a little cheaper, but not by much at all..</comment>


5 Reasons You Must Learn C++ - code-dog http://nerds-central.blogspot.com/2012/01/5-reasons-what-language-should-i-learn.html

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a podcast

<comment><USER2> I'm sure it's very impressive.

<comment><AUTHOR> I mention that so people who dislike that sort of thing don't bother clicking the link</comment></comment></comment>