MakerBot lays off 20% of its staff for the second time this year - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/8/9477999/makerbot-layoffs-employees-lawsuit <comment><USER2> I have to be honest, I do feel for anybody losing their job, but it makes me happy to see makerbot doing poorly.

These guys really did a mean thing to the maker community. Not only did they betray the trust of everybody that helped on that project, but it seemed like they wanted to take credit for 3D printing, as if capital M makerbot was THE THING that had suddenly made 3D printing explode.

No. It was the efforts of thousands of hackers all over the world collaborating that made 3D printing explode, and it wasn't fair to those people to see Bre's face all over the news, as if he had personally designed and built all of this stuff.

Time heals all wounds, obviously, and I hope there are good things for everybody involved with (or previously involved with) makerbot. But I hope that this is a lesson: being mean to people isn't cool, and they will turn on you and market against you when you do.

<comment><USER3> Agree, however Pettis probably does not care too much anymore after the sale to Stratasys some time ago. For the long term employees, i feel bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is sad on many levels, but for me it is most sad that Makerbot got caught up in the whole "if we own the IP we'll be the biggest fish in the pond" mentality. They fundamentally did not understand that as big as the 3D printer market was when they switched over from open source to closed source, it was _not_ self sustaining, and it still isn't self sustaining. People like Printrbot came in with better solutions, people like Lulzbot out makered Makerbot, and in general the community revolted at them trying to be the only game in town after all the contributions from everyone in the community. Totally not the way to start a revolution but a good way to put the brakes on one.

<comment><USER2> Why is that sad?

What makerbot, and Bre Pettis, did was truly awful. That was an absolute betrayal of trust to everybody who had been working on that project.

Good that makerbot is doing poorly.

<comment><USER5> It's sad because human beings are losing their jobs, which always sucks. It also sucks because this is a big market player, and them going under may hamper investor confidence in future 3D-printing ventures or give consumers the impression that consumer 3D printing is dead. Additionally, if they go under it would mean that there are suddenly lots of schools and libraries equipped with makerbot machines who are no longer capable of getting support or replacement parts, which would also serve to dampen public adoption. Finally, it's sad because makerbot had so much potential, and although it's been a long time coming and they completely brought it upon themselves it still sucks to watch it end up like this.

<comment><USER6> >and them going under may hamper investor confidence in future 3D-printing ventures

Could this be a blessing in disguise?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> MakerBot appears to have gotten themselves trapped between Printrbot (proprietary, entry level) and Lulzbot (open source, more expensive). Well, and about 40 other competitors.

I own a Printrbot Simple Metal, which is a nice machine. But the simple reality is that this is _not_ a consumer machine:

\- Given a choice between driving to town to buy a part, and firing up the printer, I'll drive.

\- Given a choice between buying on Amazon, and firing up the printer, I'll buy on Amazon.

Where 3D printers are awesome is when I'm in "tinkering" mode—when I've taken out my toolbox and my calipers and my Arduino and I want to make something that doesn't exist yet. I can design a part using OpenSCAD, mess with the tolerances a bit, and run off two or three generations of prototypes in an afternoon. When I'm done, I can upload the schematic and some images, and other people can download it. It makes hardware almost as much fun as software.

But the reality—at least for machines using hot plastic—is that you need to learn about how plastic heats and cools, about what kinds of shapes are easy to print, and about how to model things using CAD software.

Until the open source laser sintering printers come down in price, the only "mass market" for 3D printing will be the kinds of people who have always hung out around RadioShack and Home Depot, or who browse SparkFun and Octopart regularly. 3D printers are awesome because they encourage hacking and entrepreneurialism, not because they give you a push-button desktop fab.

</comment><comment><USER8> When they opened a brick and morter store in Boston, I remember walking in with a real sense of excitement but walking out without any interest in becoming more involved in the 3D printing scene.

If anything, seeing the printers in action made me realize just how inessential their product seemed from a layperson's point of view.

For all of the potential 3D printing has, at the moment it is a solution looking for a consumer problem, and most consumers aren't looking to make custom figurines or embossed text.

A few months ago, I walked by the storefront and it was totally empty. Apparently I wasn't the only one disillusioned by seeing their product up close.

<comment><USER9> 3d printing got oversold. "Print replacement parts for your washing machine" was total bullshit. 3D printer CEOs wanted to be like Steve Jobs and sell millions of devices to consumers. They could have earned a respected spot in the toolboxes of engineers, artists, scientists, even manufacturers. Instead they pushed trinket machines that didn't even work as designed. They could have been like Tektronix or Mori Seiki but they got greedy.

<comment><USER10> I read them as, enthusiastic promoters on the bleeding edge. They jumped into 3D printing despite the risks. Harsh to call that 'greedy'.

That said, 3D printing is still pretty lame. Cheap plastic parts are rarely the critical element in a device. And even knobs etc often have retaining clips or friction-fit holes with sub-millimeter tolerances, that 3D printers cannot achieve.

<comment><USER9> I speak from personal experience. It was all greed with certain major players.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Print The Legend was a pretty interesting documentary that showed the development of Makerbot and form labs - but it made Makerbot look like a complete disaster and the original CEO seem terrible (along with what I think was Amazons invester arm)

Not surprised things aren't going well. Seems like the vision died long before the sale.

</comment><comment><USER12> MakerBot's problem is that their hardware technology is obsolete. They made a mediocre extruder-type printer years ago, and they still make a mediocre extruder-type printer. Meanwhile, the other players are going to better technologies.

</comment><comment><USER13> So many people talking about how 3d printers is something impractical for everybody.

The other day I attended a talk about the history of personal computers, and certainly it rhymes.

At the time everybody was saying, a personal computer? who wants this? People do not need a database for cooking, or a spreadsheet, it is a very expensive typing machine and it is very hard to use(command line). It was true.

What happened is that personal (and then mobile) computers evolved from a entrepise-centric to user-centric to grandma-could-use-facebook centric computers.

Most people in the old days could not imagine what the future would look like, because computer did exist, but their applications were different to what they predicted.

In the same way I believe 3d printing is amazing, not for what it is now, but what it will became.

I volunteered giving 3d classes for children and it is incredible what they could do after you teach them the basic concepts.

What is shocking for me is that it is "normal" for those 10 years old to design things that I could only do after studying engineering and gaining experience. Some of them absorb knowledge like an sponge.

I see in them the next Linux Towards, but instead of OSes, it becomes possible to design a car, or a plane over the Internet.Before 3d printers it is so hard that is practically impossible for normal people to do it.

</comment><comment><USER14> Sorry to hear about the problems at makerbot ... This company really got out in front of 3D printing and made people excited about it. That being said, maybe the growth was a little to aggressive. I remember seeing a makerbot store here in Boston in the last few years-- a lot of people watching the machines in awe, but no one was actually making any purchases (as in the printed items they were trying to sell). It just seemed more like an expensive showroom rather than a store. So cool, though!

I'm still bullish on the maker space. I saw a functioning prototype of this 3in1 machine in Pittsburgh last year.

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/boxzy/boxzy-rapid- chang...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/boxzy/boxzy-rapid-change- fablab-mill-laser-engraver-3d-p)

CNC routing and laser cutting/etching included and priced much better. The maker machines will just get better and less expensive and I can't wait.

</comment><comment><USER15> How big is their actual market. In Print The Legend they realize a major sector is the small engineering/tech shops that can't afford/don't need an industrial prototyper but could use a $3000 one. After that they have the "Hobbyist". These sectors seem small and possibly shrinking.

<comment><USER16> An anecdote: I know someone who works for a small engineering company. They bought a ~$3000 one and used it perhaps a couple of times. 3d printing is still at the "early inkjet" phase of hassle. It's sometimes easier for a guy with a lathe and a mill to knock something up by hand from a pencil drawing for a one off if he's got 20 years of experience than have to knock the thing up in some CAD software and frig around with a 3d printer for an hour then wait for it to print and then have to clean it up.

I suspect the market is saturated with such purchases.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, 3d printing is still a solution in search of a mass market problem. Quality isn't good enough to make "consumer" parts yet and still too fiddly, and not 10% of the country needs to prototype, much less the _whole_ country.

Eventually someone's going to figure out exactly what they're perfect for and things will really go bananas. Until then they're fun but only useful to a pretty limited set of people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm looking forward to the day when the norm becomes "things have slowed down so we're all taking a temporary 20% pay cut".

If you're hiring full-time employees for short-term goals you're part of the problem, not part of the solution.

<comment><USER19> You mean a 20% paycut and double the equity, right?

If it's just the 20% paycut, all your best talent is going to jump ship and you end up losing people anyway.

<comment><USER18> 20% was just an arbitrary example. The underlying point I think is the first focus should be on trying to retain all full-time employees. And I probably should've mentioned that the likely outcome would be that the higher ranks would make the sacrifice, not the lower levels (unless absolutely necessary), since they probably depend more on their salaries for the basics.

Those who are not willing to make the sacrifice probably don't really believe in the vision and thus probably aren't the right people to help you get out of the rut.

And one other caveat would be transparency. That way a company can't just arbitrarily request that their employees make sacrifices when it's not demonstrably essential.

<comment><USER20> >Those who are not willing to make the sacrifice probably don't really believe in the vision and thus probably aren't the right people to help you get out of the rut.

Sorry, but this is a bit ridiculous. You could make the same counter-argument from the employees perspective as well.

"If my company isn't willing to sacrifice to pay my current market worth, then they don't really believe in me as an employee"

Is this company going to pay an extra 20% when things start going well again to make up the difference lost?

When you sign on for a job/salary you shouldn't feel bad for leaving if the company can't hold up their end of the bargain. If you only worked at 75% of the capacity they thought you were going to, you'll most likely be fired.

<comment><USER18> That's not the point really. The criteria are: If a company is demonstrably (ie. open financial books) having financial difficulties, then I think the default reaction should be "what can we do to get ourselves through this without layoffs". The current environment seems to condone a "fire as first reaction to save the company" behavior. I would argue the default reaction should be "fire as last ditch effort to save the company". Before firing anyone the first reaction should be to find a compromise everyone is comfortable with so that everyone can find a way to help the cause.

Also I think there is merit to the point that if someone is not willing to sacrifice in times of scarcity, they are only thinking about themselves and thus are not mentally in a state conducive to helping the company to get out of its financial difficulties.

I've lived this situation. At one point in my career I had people on my team who I thought were truly brilliant, and I vouched to ensure their happiness and comfort in spite of difficult times. They simply took that gesture of goodwill as a sign of weakness and feasted like vultures without any real uptick in output in return.

In the end the lesson is that no matter how brilliant or gifted you are, a true sign of loyalty or dedication to a company's cause in the form of sacrifice is far more valuable than a self-absorbed employee who can churn out good code, but only as long as everything is going in their favor.

EDIT: And that's not to say a company shouldn't find ways to sacrifice as well. For example additional equity should certainly be on the table as an option. You can't expect people to give without expecting anything in return should things turn around and the company should eventually get back on its feet financially.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's worrisome to me that I'm now getting in my emails offers for extreme discounts on their printers as part of customer loyalty (I've bought PLA filament from them, but not a printer). I mean, that's not generally unexpected, but 40% discounts? That does not instill confidence as a buyer, unless they're now going for the "always on sale" model.

</comment><comment><USER22> It seems weird that they'd put their software engineers and even _customer support_ all the way down in Industry City. Unless you live off the D/N/R in Brooklyn already, or maybe in lower Manhattan, that's a horrid commute. Unless you actually need the industrial space for your job... why?

<comment><USER23> Space in Industry City is _cheap_

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Read an article a while ago where they did an analysis of the amount of printers a company needed to sell to break even (based on the parts cost). The conclusion was that there were just too many players in the field to ever make money (given the limited market atm).

</comment><comment><USER25> You know we're in a bad situation when machines are firing humans.

</comment><comment><USER26> I quite like thingiverse.

</comment><comment><USER27> Niche market is niche?</comment>


Machinima.com Raises $35M in Funding, Led by Google Inc - <AUTHOR> http://www.tubefilter.com/2012/05/21/machinima-raises-35-million-funding-google/

<comment><USER2> Hopefully Freeman's Mind will have more frequent releases.</comment>


Ask YN: Review my new side project, Netbook Tracker - <AUTHOR>

Netbooks are my new favorite gadget. I bought one a few months back, but it was a pain to compare all the models and decide (I ended up with the Acer Aspire One A110 and highly recommend it). So to make it easier I created a database that makes it a whole lot easier.
http://www.netbooktracker.com
Basically a niche buyers guide. The code's abstracted, so it can easily be used to power different verticals. People seem to be enjoying it so far, the average visitor goes through 7 pages in a visit. It's still a bit confusing to use at the moment, so I'm hoping for some good advice here.
Browse through the site and when you see a model you're interested in, hit compare. It creates what amounts to a shopping cart of models you're interested in. When you have more than two selected, the comparison page does its magic. This is still a bit confusion, so if anyone has ideas I'm all ears. <comment><USER2> I don't understand the compare button. Can't comparison be a little easier for the end user? The fact that nothing happens on this first click is already considered a UI flaw. Why not make it easier to add products to compare when you're on the compare screen? It seems like a context loss when you have to leave the compare screen to select another product to compare against. It only makes it worse when you don't know what brand to select and compare against. I do like how Newegg implements their product filtering, maybe you need something like that here.

When you're comparing 2 items, maybe there should be a modifier on each stat where the modifier allows you to find another netbook that has "more" or "less" of that stat. ie, pressing the up arrow on price would find you the netbook just slightly more expensive, and pressing the down arrow on screen resolution would find you the laptop with slightly less screen resolution etc. I do love how the netbook comparison works on obsessable though. (see other commenter)

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, your site doesn't answer the netbook question I want to know. Why would anyone get an Aspire One A110L over an EEE 901? To me it looks like equivalent models are about the same price, except the 901 has twice the battery.

<comment><USER4> For me the keyboard was a deciding factor.

I went with the MSI Wind, for what it's worth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This site is awesome. I (well, a virtual assistant =P) went through the same pain collecting all the data.

Instead of "cells" can you put also expected battery life? I would also be interested in weight and size

I also own an Aspire One - 6 cell variety, shiny blue outside. It's awesome. Light, battery lasts on the full plane flight from Hawaii to/from West coast (tested to/from Los Angeles and Seattle ;) ) with movies running.

My only complaint is the Wifi is a bit weak

Perhaps show inline Amazon reviews? Not sure why so many come up as question marks. Perhaps add a minimum amazon review to the search as well?

<comment><AUTHOR> The data depends on the model, some don't have battery life estimates (that I've found at least). Not that estimates are reality, but it's still nice to have it all. Everything that's in the database is shown. Also, Amazon doesn't sell all models so the reviews don't always get tied in. I'm looking to expand out to reviews on Shopping.com as well since they cover more models. If you're comparing a model that does have Amazon reviews and one that doesn't, the one that doesn't will show up as a ?. The AWS interface can be a bit different for items that are sold through a third-party, so that might be affecting some models as well, I'll have to check on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> In the Browse section instead of listing the manufacturer logo's start listing the netbooks (with pictures). Then have a way to filter out by manufacturer, price range, etc... Kinda like how NewEgg handles it (eg: [http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE...](http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&SubCategory=562&N=2153340562&SpeTabStoreType=15))

Have a little checkbox in the browse section next to each picture to select netbooks, and then use it for comparison.

<comment><USER7> I agree with the New Egg suggestion. I would combine Search and Browse into the same function, call it Search Netbooks, and ditch the Compare menu item from the top nav as it's confusing.

Your new Search Netbooks page would then have the faceted search in the left hand column like New Egg does and allow you to drill down into manufacturer, price, etc. Each result line item in the right hand column would have a compare checkbox that you could use to set up comparisons.

I'm also assuming you're targeting peeps who've already decided they want to get a netbook and it's just a matter of which one, so take this with a grain of salt: I'm one of those guys who doesn't quite get the netbook thing or understand why I'd want one, so perhaps some content related to what they are and why I'd want one would be cool.

I'd also consider trying to aggregate some of the review data for each model like Consumer Search does for TVs (<http://www.consumersearch.com/hdtv>). It's one thing to see the specs, but once I've narrowed that down it would be nice to see some review data too.

Overall a good start, I think. Good luck!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Good idea, clean execution, _BUT_ are you really prepared for the effort that is required to stick to the "unbiased comparison" motto ?

You _will_ start acquiring affiliations if your site rises above the noise level and this will test the hell out of your integrity. Say Acer sends you nice top-of-the-line yet-to-be-released netbook, which is also complimentary. Even if you write a bad review. They will even send you the next model too. And they will keep sending and sending them showing you a considerable amount of goodwill. Will you be able to ignore it ? Alternatively, are you prepared to fight defamation lawsuits and bogus DMCA notices ?

Point being is that virtually all review sites are started with an intention of being unbiased. You appear to think that there are no such sites in your niche, but surely there were some in the past ... ever wondered what happened to them ? :)

</comment><comment><USER9> "Ask YN"

Something is so wrong here, but I just can't spot it ;)

</comment><comment><USER10> Great idea- this is an excellent niche that will probably do quite well for you.

A few things:

1) It would be great if I could choose multiple models to compare right out of the gate versus having to navigate to each page. This may already be possible and I just missed it.

2) More review content would be helpful. Users really react well to reviews from both experts and other consumers. The links to the Amazon ratings are great, but it would be nice to have easy access to more. Also, seems like a great opportunity for you to layer over some proprietary content. This can be your own editorial content or the ability for users to post their own reviews or both. It will make the site seem more authoritative.

Good stuff!

</comment><comment><USER11> My two cents...

1\. After clicking the "compare" button, say something like "Choose another netbook to compare <your selection to>?" And don't make me click "browse", show the models immediately (preferably the models, not brands).

2\. Include the "compare" buttons beside each netbook on the page that lists all the models (less clicks for those who know the models they want to compare already... alternately you could use checkboxes).

3\. Show a mouse-over popup that lists the main specs of each netbook (CPU, memory, etc.)

4\. Change "Stop Comparing" to something like "Remove"... during browsing, think of how to show a little shopping-cart-like list of the models you've already chosen.

</comment><comment><USER12> Nice site. I'd prefer the results in a grid format so I could quickly compare the results (specs/price) of many netbooks on a single page.

I had an Acer Aspire One for two months, the 6 cell 160GB HD version. It was just a little too cramped for me and I replaced it with a HP 1035NR. It is not much bigger, but the keyboard and screen are now just big enough that they are more usable.

[http://www.amazon.com/1035NR-10-2-Inch-Netbook-Intel- Process...](http://www.amazon.com/1035NR-10-2-Inch-Netbook-Intel- Processor/dp/B001J6N9J8)

</comment><comment><USER13> How about adding a feature where you display the most often compared items in the past month/week/day. To sort of give a pulse on what's hot at this point in time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very good idea. Don't have too much data to work with at the moment, but I'll make sure it's being tracked so that it can be exposed later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Also, maybe you shouldn't use MSRP for pricing, it can skew the data since some of the older netbooks are actually significantly cheaper than recent models and it's really hard to gauge what is better for the price. Why not scrape data from sites like Amazon/Newegg for data on real prices? Price is a big comparison factor when you consider that only a few hundred more will get you a full blown laptop with all the bells & whistles.

<comment><AUTHOR> I just added pricing info from Shopping.com, that should probably be used in place of MSRP for comparison sake. Some are really discounted, others (Dell/Lenovo especially) sell for MSRP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Nice concept. Giving people easy to understand ways of navigating complex electronics is smart.

We have actually made our own review of the Acer Aspire One here. We target people who care about what technology can do for them not the other way round.

<http://www.kallow.com/computing/mini-laptop>

</comment><comment><USER15> Wonderful. Ever consider generalizing it? You'll probably need a different domain, but...

netbook.tracker.com laptop.tracker.com etc

The small, simple sites are what I love. Get to the point, leave me alone :-)

</comment><comment><USER16> Cool. Maybe it's just my flu-addled brain, but it would be handy to have a way to search that's a bit more point-and-click.

Where'd you get the data?

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you mean by point and click? There's a free text search (top right) and then an advanced search form (linked in the menu bar). I need to add some more metrics to the advanced search, but it's point and click if I understand what you mean.

As for the data, good ol' manual spec hunting. Hunting down manufacturer spec sheets was a lot of it. Not too bad once you get the hang of it.

<comment><USER16> I mean just sort of clicking around to find some categories, like the 'browse' tab gives you, but not just manufacturers, but also price points, maybe a few other things to select on. You can get all that in the search form, but you have to sit there and fill it out.

<comment><USER13> I think it is a bit cumbersome to compare the items. Right now, it's browse -> manufacturer -> netbook -> click compare, and then you cycle that for each netbook.

A filter on the browse page to browse by predefined categories, such as screen size/price point would help as well as being able to select an item to compare from the list view, without clicking through to the details view.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Awesome site - just one thing to add. It will be good to be able to export the comparison table to a spreadsheet. A simple CSV will do as well.

</comment><comment><USER18> <http://www.obsessable.com/comparator/netbooks-compared/>

<comment><USER5> Oh man! That interface is only something geeks would enjoy.

Well played Paul. They know their audience well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> In addition to number of battery cells and expected life, perhaps you could list mHh, too. Some cells are more equal than others.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good call. I'll add mAh to the list. I'm also planning some help pop-ups so less experienced users can get clued in on what battery cells and what not actually mean.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> it would be nice if I didn't pick anything yet when I reach the comparison page, that you'll allow me to pick a netbook from the comparison page itself

</comment><comment><USER21> the homepage lacks punch, but I really like the clean design when browsing and comparing

</comment><comment><USER22> I like your idea. Netbooks are one of my fascinations too - I've been happy to see the market grow so much recently.

The first thing that strikes me, though, is the weakness of the design. The homepage really needs some work - it lacks "pull". I'd like to be more specific but it's a difficult issue to describe concisely. I would recommend consulting a designer or doing some design research on similar sites in the same niche because with a better design I think the site could have a lot of appeal.

</comment><comment><USER23> Very nice site. I agree with others that the compare feature needs to be improved.

Also allow me to chose kg vs lb and cm vs inches, most of the world is metric.</comment>


How Google Maps calculates the shortest distance - <AUTHOR> https://mathsection.com/how-google-maps-calculates-the-shortest-route/?cookie-state-change=1546194774335 <comment><USER2> The article appears to be a gross oversimplification. As is stands, it's a lot of words to convey the fact that "Google uses Dijkstra's algorithm to calculate the shortest distance"

<comment><USER3> Google Maps most probably does not even use Dijkstra. According to my Algorithmics lecture notes, Dijkstra has O(|V|^2) which is too slow for large street networks.

<comment><USER2> Yeah that wouldn't surprise me. I can imagine they've got some smart heuristics built in too to come up with suboptimal routes that are good enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> or as i like to call it, how Google Maps finds the most obscure/sceneic route with most turns and narrow streets to save 0.5 miles when a more obvious 2-turn route can be had for the extra 0.5mi.

not having a "prefer simple routes" option is often very aggravating

</comment><comment><USER5> "How some random dude supposes Google calculates the shortest distance"

</comment><comment><USER6> I wish Google had more levers and knobs. For me it would be:

No unprotected left turns into major streets.

I value simplicity over expediency

<comment><USER7> Often, the simpler route actually _is_ faster because Google fails to compute a realistic time penalty for all of its additional turns, or account for the fact that you can't blast down a residential street at 60kph even if that's the legal limit there.

Over-optimization of routes on Google Maps is borderline comical some times, when Google wants you to make 2 extra turns to get somewhere _on the same street that you 're already on_ because the parallel road on the next block has a speed limit that's 5% higher so it thinks it's faster.

Bad routes from Google (or Uber's built-in navigation) are a big part of why Uber/Lyft use has become so frustrating for me, especially when Google gives illegal or dangerous directions (make a U-turn right now even though there's a median in the way!).

<comment><USER8> _> you can't blast down a residential street at 60kph even if that's the legal limit_

Google knows how fast cars actually drive on that residential street, on different days of the week, at different times of day, and considering realtime traffic.

They're not just using the maximum legal speed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wish navigation would take weather and road conditions into account. The last thing I want is taking a bunch of back roads at 3am in the middle of the winter just because it's 'shorter'.

<comment><USER10> Well, that is an interesting thought given both the data are locally available. Isn't road conditions already available like the given road is blocked because of work in progress.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Déjà vu? I spent a good 30 minutes yesterday on blogposts about how google/uber calculates the shortest distance and found conflicting answers oscillating between Dijkstra's algorithm and [0]Contraction hierarchies(which I didn't understand much).

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contraction_hierarchies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contraction_hierarchies)

</comment><comment><USER12> I would have imagined it went something like how a person reads a map: first look at the straight line between starting point and destination, then look for arterial roads closest to that.

<comment><USER13> What you describe (and what Google does of course) is closer to the A* algorithm.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Minimal game with procedural graphics in JavaScript/GLSL - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/westoncb/under-game <comment><USER2> I'm on mobile right now and couldn't play it, but looks good. Nice work!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

I set it up to just show a video on mobile since it wasn't performing well on my phone. It may actually work alright on newer phones, though... —not sure.

<comment><USER3> Can you add a link for those of us who want to try to play on mobipe anyways?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Doesn't work for me. The play page just shows a "0" and no graphics: [http://symbolflux.com/under/](http://symbolflux.com/under/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Mind if I ask which browser you're using? Or to copy/paste any console errors? Could be that I'm using something in webgl not supported by your graphics card/driver...

<comment><USER4> That does appear to be the issue. Latest version of Chrome on Mac OS 10.14.1. "THREE.WebGLRenderer: Error creating WebGL context."

I enabled hardware acceleration in Chrome and it is working fine now. Thanks and good work on this!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Played on desktop. Love the look and feel! Scored 348.

</comment><comment><USER6> Quite addictive. :)

</comment><comment><USER7> 840

</comment><comment><USER8> Cool!</comment>


LinkedIn app asks for permission to impersonate you? - <AUTHOR>

LinkedIn lets apps request to "Send messages and invitations to connect as you." FounderDating is one app that requests such permissions. Does this seem a reasonable risk? (Seems sketchy to me.) <comment><USER2> I wouldn't let anyone impresonate me, I barely trust myself with my own image!</comment>


Sketchbooks aren't about being a good artist, they're about being a good thinker - <AUTHOR> http://jasonsantamaria.com/articles/pretty-sketchy/

<comment><USER2> I have a few friends who are mechanical and electrical engineers and they always use a notebook.

Apparently its so that they can document their work and thought process continuously, just incase they ever need to justify why they did something.

I've started to do it myself because it seemed like a good idea. It definitely beats having random pieces of copier paper that are piled up in a mess all over my desk.

<comment><USER3> Indeed. If you ever need to provide evidence for a patent, this is the way to do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I always keep paper around me to jot down ideas, sketches of interfaces, uml, whatever. The problem for me is retaining the content of the paper for later use, and being able to find it.

I tried a OneNote on a tablet PC for a while but having to wake/boot a sketchpad before capturing your thought just doesn't flow. I also tried OneNote (great program) on my main machine but the mouse and keyboard just isn't conducive to sketching.

What do you guys do?

<comment><USER5> Get a spiral bound (so it opens 359 degrees) 8.5 x 11 sketchpad with detachable pages for about 4 bucks at CVS or Walgreens. When it fills up, file it away. Remove any pages that apply to a certain project and put them in that file. I attach 4 different color markers to mine and carry it everywhere.

<comment><USER6> Lefties like me can't use spiral notebooks as they hurt the wrist.

<comment><USER7> What about one with the binding up top?

<comment><USER8> Yeah, being a leftie as well, spiral notebooks are incredibly uncomfortable, unless the spiral is on the top. Even reversing them can feel awkward.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The best tip I can give non-designers or non-artists is to read Dan Roam's Back Of The Napkin. It's about how to use basic sketching skills to both capture and express your ideas.

We're holding a discussion on it on Sept 10th at our next UX Book Club, for those in the bay area:

[http://groups.google.com/group/ux-book-club-san- francisco/br...](http://groups.google.com/group/ux-book-club-san- francisco/browse_thread/thread/90c7f93b24ac91f9)

</comment><comment><USER10> They are also better than using a computer for exploring ideas, because paper is more flexible.

[http://drezner.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2006/05/26/pen_and_pa...](http://drezner.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2006/05/26/pen_and_paper_rule)

The comments including many by engineers, and a couple of musicians, are especially interesting.

</comment><comment><USER11> Is it white on pale yellow and unreadable for anyone else?

</comment><comment><USER12> If you are intending to keep them for some time, look for pH neutral/buffered paper, and a permanent (and non-toxic) marking device.</comment>


New tool: See into a PPC campaign -- typically a blackbox - <AUTHOR> http://ppcassurance.enquisite.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Saw this today with a clearer description on mefi: <http://projects.metafilter.com/1314/Get-your-money-back></comment>


Why Entrepreneurs Are Bad At Finding Their Competition - <AUTHOR> http://www.berserkia.com/blog/doing-a-competitive-analysis <comment><USER2> Because sometimes investors run the following algorithm:

Q) Do you have many successful competitors?

A1) No -- then why isn't anyone succeeding in this space? Maybe it is too ahead of its time but most likely there's a reason no one can make it work. In any case, I'm out.

A2) Yes -- in this case look at how much competition you have, it's too hard to break in now. It's a very crowded space and you won't be able to differentiate yourself. I'm out!

Proceeds to invest a couple months later based on liking the team and seeing who else is investing...

<comment><USER3> You answered your own concern here.

>> based on liking the team

We all know that the idea without an execution is not worth much. It's easier to halt everything by saying the idea sucks rather than saying that he doesn't believe in the founder.

>>seeing who else is investing

Social proof is a huge factor and touches many aspects of every day life. And at the end of the day, investors are humans.

<comment><USER4> It's wiser to adopt the view that it's not really about "entrepreneurs", "business models", and "venture capitalists". If it ever were that, it sure ain't anymore.

Instead the dynamic is closer to student-apprentice applicants and admission committees.[1]

[1]: "Entrepreneurs Are The New Labor" by Venkatesh Rao: [http://www.forbes.com/sites/venkateshrao/2012/09/03/entrepre...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/venkateshrao/2012/09/03/entrepreneurs- are-the-new-labor-part-i/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I agree in general (so many people, myself included, avoid finding competitors because it's like asking for bad news.)

That being said, it shouldn't take 20-30 hours. If you're _looking_ for it but can't find it, there's something missing with the existing companies (execution, marketing, etc).

But make sure you know everything. Literally nothing kills a pitch or talk quite like not being able to answer the question "So it's like ____?", even if the mentioned startup turns out to be only tangentially related.

<comment><USER6> One of the points raised in the article is to understand _why_ you can't immediately find a good competitor. 20-30 hours of search helps you cover your bases by finding the languishing or dead competitors; IMO learning what they have done to die out helps you avoid those pitfalls in the future. This could be part of your point about "knowing everything". Being prepared is paramount.

<comment><USER7> I think that sometimes you have to find out what are specific terms used in that field, it might not be initially obvious for a new comer in a field.

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely, it's not always easy knowing what to search for and it can take awhile to narrow that down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > "All ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a > million outside sources, and daily used by the garnerer with a pride and > satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them." -Mark Twain

Of course someone already built your idea. You'll find 30 versions of it just be searching for suitable domain names. Take advantage of that. Your first 30 iterations and pivots are done before you even started!

If you go beyond the Yes/No of instantdomainsearch.com and actually look at what's hosted on the unavailable domain names. Click around the website. Become a customer. This is more useful "market research" than blasting out hundreds of SurveyMonkey surveys or asking people if they'd use your product!

</comment><comment><USER9> > One of the most exciting times of being an entrepreneur is the very early > days after having the idea. You discovered a pain point, created an awesome > solution, and now you have a whole world of potential ahead of you.

Having an idea and building a solution is innovation, not entrepreneurship. "Entrepreneurs" are business people who take what someone else built and compete with other business people to sell it to the greatest market at the highest margins, then flog the business itself to some sucker just before it tanks. Someone who imagines and builds needs to be quite profound, whereas someone who takes and sells needs to be quite petty, so rarely do you find innovation and "entrepreneurship" in the same individual.

So I would say _innovators_ are bad at finding their competition, which is the "entrepreneurs". Innovators often get a shock at how vicious "entrepreneurs" turn out to be when the product's almost ready. Even before there's a solution built, many "entrepreneurs" roam around looking for innovator victims who happily advertise what they're doing or even posting their software samples online. "Business is war" to the entrepreneur. Anyone in business who's building and trusting instead of stealing and fighting won't last long.

<comment><USER10> Hm, disagree. Innovation is an essential element of entrepreneurship, just as persistence, boldness, business-acumen, if not the most essential one.

If you're not an innovator you also can't really be an "entrepreneur" since you won't be able to build new features for your product, nor scale your company.

What you're describing is more of an executive/corporate CEO that was hired into the company after a few years down the track I would say.

An example that comes to mind is Eric Schmidt. He's not an entrepreneur at all, he never invented something or created something new. However, he is a full-on CEO. He probably can scale up your company from $10,000 rev to $100M rev like no one else.

Imho entrepreneurs normally aren't good CEOs. They like to create new things, work on the product and usually don't want to bother talking with investors, hiring people or talking to the media.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > I would google "Rideshare OR Carpool + Service OR Startup OR App"

How many of those search modifiers still work with Google, and does it give the parsing he expects? I haven't seen anyone do a search like that in a decade. I notice that removing the plus gives the exact same SERPs for example.

<comment><AUTHOR> I still do it, though you might be right that it's deprecated and just doing "rideshare carpool service startup app" would be the exact same.

EDIT: Just tried it, and it does return different results. The search modifier OR seems to work, but the + might not be doing much. I definitely find the search with the modifiers to return more relevant results.

<comment><USER12> Putting a single word in quotes is the same as using a plus used to be.

+searchterm has been replaced by "searchterm"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> In general, you should do a competitive analysis before even thinking about problems or solutions. If you want to be an entrepreneur, pick an area that interests you and dig very deep in all the players and what they provide. Then learn about the problems (usually by using their solutions) and look for pain points that are missed and that you are well suited to solve.

At that point your brain will veer away from solutions that are already well covered and will naturally focus on the fuzzy areas that are being missed. But you know at least that you are dealing in an area that a) you enjoy (this is the most important) and b) your market is validated.

The key point you have to look out for at this phase, is your solution just a feature of some bigger product? In which case, you'll want channel partners / look for acquisition exits. Which, TBH, nowadays is often the easiest and fastest way to exit.

</comment><comment><USER14> Depending on the market, 20-30 hours seems really low for thorough market research. Often times, when a market is super crowded, that means that there is a great opportunity because there really isn't a winner. Doing thorough research on tens or hundreds of companies, especially in opaque markets can be a big waste of time compared to focusing on what you are doing that is working.

Referencing AngelList and CrunchBase leads me to believe that this article is applying only to startups that compete with other startups but it is ignoring the bigger opportunity of changing existing markets.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, the amount of time you spend can really vary. If you're going after a space with major incumbents, it should be much longer, because you really need to drill into the strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities of your competitors.

I reference CrunchBase and AngelList not because it's only startup-startup competition, but it's a great place to look for new entrants that you often won't find through Google alone. If there are major incumbents in your space, you should find them with that initial google search.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I found this particularly insightful: "Startups are all about learning and iterating and failing fast, so competitors are a bunch of experiments that have already been done."

I'm trying hard to learn to getting to know the competition and appreciate it but it can be very discouraging to find out that your killer app is just another player in a saturated market. Nevertheless, I feel that I'm more honest with myself if I do a competitive analysis very early on; even one that takes a few minutes is incredibly useful.

<comment><AUTHOR> I definitely know what you mean, it can be incredibly discouraging. But, hopefully you can copy what they have done well and improve what they haven't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Just because a competitor does a certain feature or something a certain way doesn't mean they iterated quickly, perfected it and you should copy. It could also be that they simply have enough customers they are scared to change anything for even the better and are stuck. At my last company we got to a point where the executives were happy making zero product changes to make life easier on our support team and not make customers mad due to re-training and causing new bugs.

Some others may be nimble enough to add whatever your killer feature is. But their management team or investors may want to keep with what works and not vary from that path.

Point is some companies are in different points of their life cycle. I think it is good to know who the players are but to use your own product vision to guide you. If you have no product vision and your goal is to just copy, well good luck with that. Why a product is built a certain way isn't something you can always figure out.

</comment><comment><USER17> I agree on 20-30 hours estimate but in general, you just cannot sit down in a few days straight and find out all competitors. The reason is very simple: most of the time, you don't know the right keyword to search. This happened to me. I spent days searching for competitors. Then I thought I had a pretty good idea and started on coding. During that time, my head started to pop out with "alternative" keywords, not necessarily direct competitor keywords. Those are dangerous because again, most of the time, people already have a way to do certain things (i.e. alternative solution). So that 20-30 hours is just the tip of the iceberg. After you start reading blogs and talking to people, what you ended up having is a way better list of keywords to search for. By the way, don't forget to get ideas from Google Keyword Tool itself.

</comment><comment><USER18> Every time someone approaches me about starting a company with a "brilliant" idea, I run a quick Google search and ask them, well have you heard of ___ or ___? 99 percent of the time they give up after that.

</comment><comment><USER19> >An investor or friend shouldn't be the first one to tell an entrepreneur about someone new in their space.

This line resonated with me. I know the stomach-dropping feeling of someone mentioning a potential competitor that I've never heard of. I usually play it off and say, "Thanks, I'll definitely check it out" and then immediately Google it on my iPhone as soon as possible. Luckily, in my research I haven't found anything all that similar to what I'm working on.

This brings up a corollary question: Assuming I have a pretty well-informed view of the competitive landscape and I can't seem to find anything that solves the problem in a similar fashion, how do I sufficiently answer the inevitable question from investors about my competition? I've often heard people write and say that business ideas ALWAYS have competition, the tricky thing is that the competition isn't always immediately obvious. Answering that a startup doesn't have direct competition leads to skepticism, therefore creating distrust right off the bat when it may not be warranted.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a great question. I think the only thing you can do is address who your competition is, even if they're only tangentially related. I usually follow a pattern of "X competitor is doing Y, which helps our target customer solve A and B need but not C and D".

I think it's worth finding the closest competitor no matter how far away they are, even just to signal that you've done the research.

<comment><USER19> I think it's better to mention the tangential ones than to omit them because it shows that you've really thought through the competitive landscape.

Competition is also not a bad thing. If there are a few startups vying for attention in a certain space, it means there's obviously value there. You have to prove to investors and customers that you're going to do it better and ultimately win the lion share of the space.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> As a quick tip for new entrepreneurs is simply to hire someone to do it on elance. For as low as 150-500$ you can get a very good summary of the market, the competitors, the market-size. You can ask to have it in a excel spreadsheet sorted by features, money raised, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely a good idea. I'm thinking about writing a post at some point about how valuable outsourcing certain facets of the process can be, provided you have some cash.

<comment><USER20> You should! I've learned to use elance (and when _not_ to use it too!), very very useful. Especially when starting out without employees. You can't do everything yourself, and it's stupid to try to do it.. but that's exactly what most people do when they start (and what I did). Market research is a very good example of a boring task that's very hard to do for entrepreneurs because it can totally destroy their problem/idea..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> You should know who your competitors are, but focusing on them is a waste of time.

"The last thing you want is to find out that hundreds of other people have already thought of it and Andreesen just backed three of them."

This is a pretty naive point of view. Who cares if they are all startups.

Spend the time and energy this post recommends spending on your competitors and direct it towards your own customers instead.

Also see #4 here: [http://paulgraham.com/startuplessons.html](http://paulgraham.com/startuplessons.html)

<comment><USER15> This is an interesting POV. There's this school of thought in business/marketing that continuous positioning is absolutely crucial for the success of any business because it allows you to offer better value to your customers. Not sure if I completely agree but most companies have to react when the competition changes a major part of their business model or does minor biz dev like dumping their prices.

<comment><USER21> Possibly for startups that are past product/market fit (not many seed stage investments). Pre-product/market fit focusing on competition is a waste of time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I don't think "entrepreneurs are bad at finding their competition" as the OP suggests.

In my experience, "We don't have any competition" usually translates to "We are so differentiated from the competition that it effectively isn't competition." That's more often than not an unrealistic conclusion, but the reasons an entrepreneur might favor such a conclusion are fairly obvious.

</comment><comment><USER23> Isn't this a just-so story? I don't see any reason to believe that more good companies do things this way than don't.</comment>


Show HN: Find the perfect surf vacation for you. (Built in 7 Days, Zero Code) - <AUTHOR> Hi HN! I made this.
It's a web app called, Surf Trip List, that helps you find the perfect surf trip for you, book flights and book accommodations all in one place.
I built it in 7 days using only Squarespace, Typeform and Right Message.
(link below)
If this became a business I imagine it'd be from partnerships with local Airbnb hosts, hotels, etc. But first I need to make the site valuable enough for a large audience to use and return to.
What do you think? Would love any honest feedback!
Thanks! <comment><USER2> It would be awesome to factor in being able to watch a rocket launch while visiting the area, including finding the date based on scheduled launches, just as a cherry on the cake. This narrows locations down to places like Ventura CA, Pismo Beach CA, Orlando FL area, French Guiana, and where else?

<comment><AUTHOR> That'd be pretty cool, not sure how many people might want that too, but an interesting thought!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> [https://surftriplist.com/](https://surftriplist.com/)

Or see how it works here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ttj1wZeON0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ttj1wZeON0)</comment>


Liberapay – A recurrent donations platform - <AUTHOR> https://liberapay.com/ <comment><USER2> This is interesting. The non-profit is a French association under the so called 1901 law[0]. In Germany it would the equivalent of an Eingetragener Verein[1]. This structure is flexible, well defined and relatively safe, that is, they are not going to run away with the money as you have quite some reporting work to do and the reporting must be available to everybody. So, from a legal structure point of view, this is really a nice thing. Now, they need to find their users.

[0]: [https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_loi_de_1901](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_loi_de_1901)

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registered_association_(German...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registered_association_\(Germany\))

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for looking it up! It validates the opinion I had when I checked them out

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Since Facebook fan subscriptions recently released. Another multinational corporation tries to claim 30% on the shoulders of developers/content creators/...

I would rather see a "true" non-profit appear and claim this space. I also trust European non-profits more than American ones.

The platform (Liberapay) lives on donations, supports different currencies, multiple languages, has multiple integrations ( Github, Gitlab, Youtube, ..) and doesn't take a commission.

Which is the first time i see something like this.

Note:

No affliation with Liberapay, it was mentioned in another topic and i found it newsworthy ( Facebook fan subscriptions on the frontpage ... )

<comment><USER3> The question is not the money, the question is freedom of speech. A platform taking a commission is no big deal compared to the fact that it is allowed to determine what opinions are allowed and what aren't.

<comment><USER4> The platform _has_ to determine what it's funding, because it's dependent on (a) local law (b) payment processors (c) the goodwill of the rest of its customers.

Nobody's going to help someone fund their child-porn-to-Iran scheme, and nor should they.

<comment><USER5> Unless you call it something cool, like "Tor".

<comment><USER6> Tor is a security tool that might be used for evil purposes.

It's not a gun, Tor is not developed so that pedophiles can share child porn.

<comment><USER5> And guns aren't developed for murders. But that isn't the point I was trying to glibly make.

People contribute to lots of well-intentioned took that contribute some kind of indirectly to evil things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Note that Liberapay had to change payment processors, and in the process they changed how the payments work ([https://medium.com/liberapay-blog/liberapay- status-update-a7...](https://medium.com/liberapay-blog/liberapay-status- update-a76403f4e0)).

I get the impression that they're getting into a state now where there's probably an "expectations mismatch" between what people expect to be doing when they set up a recurring donation compared to how Liberapay actually works.

As the blog post mentions, now you can say "I want to donate $5/month" and you put in $60 to cover a year, but you have to pay that full $60 immediately, _and_ the recipient also receives the whole $60 (minus fees) right away as well. After that point, there's not really any way for the donator to change their mind and stop donating after a few months, so it's more like a one-time donation with a reminder but still being presented as a smaller recurring one.

I think the problem is that overall it will end up encouraging people to make smaller donations for shorter time periods because they won't necessarily want to commit for many months or years' worth up-front. Then that means that they have to be sent reminders to re-donate more often, which feels more annoying and will probably result in people just letting their donations lapse more often than repeatedly renewing them.

<comment><USER8> You diplomatically state this, but they fail to deliver on the most important thing of their service, surely there is a plan to fix this?

<comment><USER9> It used to work this way, and the way it was done is that you would pre-load your account with money and then they would transfer it (transaction fees made withdrawals each month prohibitively expensive).

Unfortunately they were forced to change payment processors (MangoPay kicked them off their platform without an explanation) and they weren't able to find a new payment processor that gave them the same feature (having a staging bank account).

The blog post that GP linked explains things in far more detail.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love liberapay but everytime I go there I see that developing floss is not a viable career path even for the best of the best. Weekly income is no more than 100€, that's what like an hourly rate of top end freelance developer (which really a lot of these guys are).

Projects like this are a very bittersweet victory for floss comunity. One step at a time I guess.

<comment><USER11> Liberapay is not the only platform that allows for free software to be funded. Here are two projects that are very well funded on Patreon. The platform itself is obviously not open source, but the projects themselves are:

[https://www.patreon.com/godotengine](https://www.patreon.com/godotengine)

[https://www.patreon.com/mastodon](https://www.patreon.com/mastodon)

<comment><USER12> There are so many good projects on Liberapay:

[https://liberapay.com/Mastodon/](https://liberapay.com/Mastodon/)

[https://liberapay.com/archiveis/](https://liberapay.com/archiveis/)

[https://liberapay.com/davidrevoy/](https://liberapay.com/davidrevoy/)

[https://liberapay.com/GIMP/](https://liberapay.com/GIMP/)

[https://liberapay.com/UBports/](https://liberapay.com/UBports/)

[https://liberapay.com/F-Droid-Data/](https://liberapay.com/F-Droid-Data/)

[https://liberapay.com/pixelfed/](https://liberapay.com/pixelfed/) (open source federated Instagram)

[https://liberapay.com/SFTtech/](https://liberapay.com/SFTtech/) (open source Age of Empires II)

[https://liberapay.com/Telegram-FOSS/](https://liberapay.com/Telegram-FOSS/)

[https://liberapay.com/phpMyAdmin/](https://liberapay.com/phpMyAdmin/)

[https://liberapay.com/Framasoft/](https://liberapay.com/Framasoft/)

[https://liberapay.com/matrixdotorg/](https://liberapay.com/matrixdotorg/)

[https://liberapay.com/Krita/](https://liberapay.com/Krita/)

[https://liberapay.com/Nextcloud/](https://liberapay.com/Nextcloud/)

[https://liberapay.com/ReactOS/](https://liberapay.com/ReactOS/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've found interesting that it's a fork for [https://gratipay.com/](https://gratipay.com/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Recurring payment, so many platforms now...

[https://maecen.com/](https://maecen.com/) [https://www.tipeee.com/](https://www.tipeee.com/) [https://patreon.com/](https://patreon.com/) [https://www.buymeacoffee.com/](https://www.buymeacoffee.com/) [https://flattr.com/](https://flattr.com/) [https://d.rip/](https://d.rip/)

What other platform to host a profile and raise money monthly do you know ?

<comment><USER15> As a content creator, what I need is the ability to create multiple projects under one account. I want people to donate to separately to each individual piece of content I create.

Ideally, a payment platform should offer an API for creating projects programmatically and retrieving information on the funding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've used Liberapay to donate to the Matrix.org project[1] for the past few years. It's a bit of a shame that the new Stripe integration is actually a direct bank transfer of your entire donation amount (in other words, recurring donations are actually lump sum donations).

This doesn't make a difference for most projects, but it is something to consider -- though Liberapay has always required a lump sum deposit into _their_ accounts for recurring payments so I guess this is a safer setup.

[1]: [https://en.liberapay.com/matrixdotorg/](https://en.liberapay.com/matrixdotorg/)

</comment><comment><USER16> I love this but the main page should clearly state the thing that makes everyone here so interested:

> Liberapay takes 0%.

> We are a European non-profit and open source.

> We are funded by donations.

Now it's "just a recurrent donations platform".

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm surprised no one has mentioned Open Collective yet:

[https://opencollective.com/](https://opencollective.com/)

They have an expense claim transparency system for each collective and a cool gifting system for larger organisations to allow their staff to donate to different collectives from the company pool.

</comment><comment><USER18> This seems really great, I was thinking of doing something like this recently as well, although I was thinking more along lines of:

\- I have a set amount of money I wish to give each month (say £200)

\- Given I have setup x amount of people I wish to donate to, the system will automatically spread my money evenly amongst the creators, or using a given weighting provided

\- I'll be able to add any new creators to this list and not have to recalculate the amount given to each one, given I'm still putting the same amount of money into my "donation pot"

Looking at their current system it seems to still follow the old paradigm of "set up a creator and set the amount for each of them individually", I hope that they could support something more like the above some day. Personally, the mental burden of having to continually reevaluate my monthly spend is probably the biggest burden when considering donating to someone new, which only gets larger as your donation list gets larger, so having the a system offload this I think would be a great way to encourage more donating.

<comment><USER19> Then you should take a look at Flattr <[https://flattr.com/>](https://flattr.com/>). They are older than Patreon (although they never got the same level of widespread use as Patreon) and they operate in exactly the manner you describe.

<comment><USER18> Huh, can't believe I hadn't seen this before. I suppose the main problem with all of these systems is that the creator ultimately has to sign up to them in first place, and unfortunately all these smaller sites just don't have the people I want to donate to on them. There's no quick and easy answer to that unfortunately, outside of trying to federate some kind of standard for all donations that clients could plug into, and we all know how that goes[0]

[0][http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/standards.png](http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/standards.png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Ha, so Facebook by claiming 30% of the profits basically advertised Patreon and Liberapay by not emphasizing the benefits. Instead of promoting 'ready-to- use' audience they've been caught in the middle between high percentage and fuzzy copyright rules. Good job

<comment><USER21> This is what greed gets you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Do I correctly understand that Liberapay currently receives 20.50 EUR per week from 64 patrons? [https://liberapay.com/LiberapayOrg/](https://liberapay.com/LiberapayOrg/)

<comment><USER23> The organization behind the website does. The website development team is at [https://liberapay.com/Liberapay/](https://liberapay.com/Liberapay/).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting, although really lightly used; if I'm reading this correctly the top payee only has 280ish subscriptions? [https://liberapay.com/explore/individuals](https://liberapay.com/explore/individuals)

</comment><comment><USER24> Are donations made with Liberapay tax deductible for companies or individuals (at least in the EU?)

<comment><USER25> Probably only in France

<comment><USER26> Not even. Only "charity" are tax deductible in France and not every Loi 1901 association are considered to be "charity". The state control the status that allow to be tax deductible and they strict rule about what your association need to be about to apply for it but also how it is organized.

Now, if you use Librapay to give to an association or an NGO that has the status, nothing prevent them from giving you the tax deduction proof that you are going to need to show the tax office.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Their legal page seems to implies that they comply with European money transmission laws. How about the US?

Recall: [https://gratipay.news/gratipocalypse-42fd0ec0d9e8](https://gratipay.news/gratipocalypse-42fd0ec0d9e8)

<comment><USER23> May not directly answer your question, but Gratipay held funds in escrow and Liberapay does not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Suppose Terry Davis had had a liberapay account, and a developer had read an article about him being in a bad way at some point in the past.

Suppose that developer then decided to donate some funds to Terry using liberapay.

Would such a donation have complied with French hate speech laws?

</comment><comment><USER28> More important than the 0% commission is how open this platform will actually be, or will it also engage in politics and police certain speech as they see fit?

<comment><USER29> Hopefully they will police hate speech and other forms of speech which are rightly illegal due to their inherent intention to infringe on other people's rights, yes.

You can use a hateful platform like Hatreon if you wish to spread those views. Because your freedom of speech isn't being trampled on, it's just that civilized people don't want you junking up their property.

<comment><USER30> Companies need to leave the policing to the police. Also, hate speech is not illegal in USA, nor should it be. It is a complicated issue - everything that is wrong should not be illegal or banned.

<comment><USER31> It is, thankfully, illegal in France, and as such Liberapay does have to police it. Again, if you want to spread hate speech, you'll have to use another platform.

<comment><USER32> Given that Jean-Marie Le Pen was able to campaign for years, I find it hard to believe it is illegal.

<comment><USER33> In practice, actual hate speech (the respective local legal norm, not the battle cry) doesn't govern what you can say but how you can say it.

Jean-Marie Le Pen managed to formulate many of his statements in compliance with local hate speech regulations. Far from all of them, though. See:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean- Marie_Le_Pen#Issues_and_p...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean- Marie_Le_Pen#Issues_and_policy_positions)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Alfred Hitchcock: 'A superb fantasist of fear' - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/alfred-hitchcock-a-superb-fantasist-of-fear/2016/10/19/e3f561fe-9601-11e6-bb29-bf2701dbe0a3_story.html <comment><USER2> Speaking of Hitchcock and fear, I recently learned about the documentary "Night Will Fall" \- which is about the British government documentary "German Concentration Camps Factual Survey".

Even the trailer for "Night Will Fall" is shocking - particularly the line, which gives the film its title:

 _"Unless the world learns the lesson these pictures teach, night will fall."_

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


Boring but possibly interesting audio for going to sleep - <AUTHOR> https://trackchanges.postlight.com/the-worlds-best-sleepy-time-media-abf2ec2c667c#.99hfyjsva <comment><USER2> The article somewhat misses the point about the Sleep with Me podcast: it's not boring content; it is boring by design.

Drew Ackerman has a keen understanding of cadence, stream of consciousness, and knowing his audience that allows him to craft an efficient insomnia assassin. You want to follow him down the rabbit hole and see where he goes with it, and by the time your brain realizes it hasn't been thinking about that big presentation you have tomorrow, you're already asleep. If you happen to jolt awake, you struggle to figure out how long it has been...and you are out like a light again.

Boring content simply gets tuned out quickly, and you are back to your racing thoughts. Boring content doesn't entice you to try and stay with it, and that is why this hasn't worked before.

Sleep with Me is an absolute gem and I feel like it's just beginning to scratch the surface of how technology can help us rest instead of distracting us from sleep like it has done so much up to this point.

<comment><USER3> "The article somewhat misses the point about the Sleep with Me podcast: it's not boring content; it is boring by design." I have not yet tried the Sleep with Me podcast, but based on what I've read, it is its "by design" part that got me more interested in trying the author's methods.

I could instantly relate when I read that "I need to convince myself that I'm doing something meaningful in order to finally disengage". Many people go to bed with a feeling of not deserving their rest, of having a debt to themselves because they missed opportunities or procrastinated heavily during the day, a debt that can be repaid by using their last minutes of the day to do something meaningful to compensate for the wasted time. Presidential speeches, old radio shows, financial crisis analysis, all these create the illusion that you take full advantage of your time, keeping your brain active and broadening your knowledge. Them being boring is an added bonus.

On the other hand, actively trying to get myself bored would most probably get me anxious, wondering exactly how wisely I am spending my time, which is not really what you want when trying to fall asleep.

<comment><USER4> I think the point is it has to be interesting enough to keep you preoccupied, but not interesting enough to keep you awake.

I sleep to old Simpsons episodes. I know them inside out, and at least the older ones have a fairly calm rhythm. I don't need to pay attention because I know what is happening but it still distracts me from all the kinds of thoughts you mention. I love the episodes, so I don't feel like I'm wasting my time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I discovered a few years back that chess instructional videos knock me out immediately. I used to play competitively and am genuinely interested, but have never, not even once, survived an entire 20-30min video--usually Alex Yermolinsky and his fantastic accent in the "Every Russian Schoolboy Knows" series on the internet chess club.

<comment><USER6> The "chessnetwork" channel on YouTube is absolutely great. Interesting narrative and soothing voice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Only saw one other mention of this, but ASMR[0] videos are often helpful to promote sleepiness, in addition to the pleasurable feeling they give some people.

Here's a good example of one I've found that has helped me to fall asleep [1].

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_sensory_meridian_re...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_sensory_meridian_response)

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRcdrgPA5wI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRcdrgPA5wI)

<comment><USER8> I'd also like to mention ASMR.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/asmr/comments/26mqkp/meta_the_100_m...](https://www.reddit.com/r/asmr/comments/26mqkp/meta_the_100_most_popular_asmr_channels_by_paul/)

There is a newer version of this list, but I can't find it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > In 2016 it is a normal thing to go to bed with earphones in your ears

Huh? Does anyone else find doing so completely impossible?

I start to feel kinda claustrophobic when i'm in headphones - not being able to hear the world around me leads to the "fire, burglars, plane crash, doomsday" kind of anxiety.

<comment><USER10> I'm much more terrified of rolling around during my sleep, wrapping the headphones around my neck, and suffocating myself.

I move around a lot during my sleep, mostly to roll to one side or the other and get comfortable again. I don't trust a dangling wire. I could probably do wireless earbuds, but I'm not made of money; a simple speaker would work fine.

Then again, I don't find audio to be a big issue for me, but rather light. I installed blackout curtains in my room, and immediately found that I could more consistently stay asleep for 7.5 hours without any trouble. Distracting audio is a problem, but the low drone from my air conditioner is usually more than enough to help me zone out for the day.

<comment><USER11> It was less suffocation, and more pulling off the phone along with everything else in its path on the nightstand for me. :) I also found it uncomfortable how the pillow pushes on the earbuds at times.

I usually put the phone to a very low volume instead, and place it either face down or propped up against something, to get more direct sound from the speaker at the bottom.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Lately, I've been listening to a lot of audiobooks, mainly at bedtime. I've found that using a 30 minute sleep timer is ideal to fall asleep. It doesn't require that the audiobook be boring. The advantage of this is that I'm not wasting the time listening to waves, white noise, a droning voice or whatever. I'm catching up on works of fiction that I don't have time to read otherwise, but wish I did.

The only downside is that out of those 30 minutes, I might remember 30, 10, or nothing. It all depends. So I spend a lot of time seeking backwards trying to figure out if I remember hearing that bit, made more difficult by trying to avoid accidental spoilers.

<comment><USER13> >The advantage of this is that I'm not wasting the time listening to waves

Maybe that's why people are having a hard time going to sleep in the first place. Do you have to be productive even while falling asleep?

Also, do you have dreams from the audiobook story? I was doing this for a while but had to stop due to nightmares.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> My favorite YouTube channel for getting to sleep lately is "Mr. Carlson's Lab". Soothing voice, no music and long-winded explanations on electronics repair seems to work pretty well.

</comment><comment><USER15> "In Our Time" podcast. Works every time.

<comment><USER16> This. It's actually quite frustrating!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Brilliant idea for a post :-)

I've listened to spoken word stuff (podcasts, audiobooks) for a few years now and found it cured my insomnia 100%. I realized I'm a verbal thinker who struggles to think properly when other people are speaking and listening to speech sends me to sleep fast. I don't even need boring stuff though, I work my way through audiobooks about 5-10 minutes a night :-)

<comment><USER18> Yeah, I would definitely recommend people to try more interesting or even active stuff first. My most effective sleeping aid is a Spanish language learning audio course that's just a little below my level. I get 15 minutes of solid learning/review out of it, and then doze off.

Teaching Company audio courses are great too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> There's the Shipping Forecast [1], broadcast on BBC Radio 4. That was always a sign that it was way past my bedtime when I was a child.

I think it usually follows "Book at Bedtime" [2], but that's less soporific.

[1] Example: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07gct6w](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07gct6w) (works for me outside the UK). As an additional treat, if you listen to the end and through the national anthem, you'll hear the "time pips" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwich_Time_Signal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwich_Time_Signal)

[2] [http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qtlx](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qtlx)

</comment><comment><USER20> Has anyone listened (well, ideally only briefly) to Max Richter's eight hour Sleep composition?

[http://www.deutschegrammophon.com/en/cat/4795267](http://www.deutschegrammophon.com/en/cat/4795267)

</comment><comment><USER21> Bob Ross's "Happy little clouds" instructional painting is like a 10mg Xanax.

</comment><comment><USER22> There are some brilliant ideas here (many made me smile), and I don't struggle with insomnia per se. But I have found meditation before sleep really gives a lot back in quality of sleep, and quality of life. I'm a complete novice at meditation, so I simply follow along with instructions specific for sleeping from apps like Buddhify.

Of course this is nothing revolutionary, but I highly recommend trying it for anyone going to sleep with a lump of stress in their chest or stomach at night. :)

</comment><comment><USER23> I struggle with going to sleep and have tried myriad methods of falling asleep. One of the best ways was to plug in my iPhone headphones and listen to a documentary on Iplayer or TED.

However several months later a huge problem occurred. Both my ears were infected, left moreso than the right, that caused me a great deal of irritation and pain. Many months of visiting doctors, hospitals and medicine did this horrible problem get better.

Bear this in mind even though I was using dettol wipes to disinfect my headphones daily!

<comment><USER24> Have you tried bone conducting headphones?

<comment><USER23> First time I'm seeing this! You believe this will help?

<comment><USER25> I just got the Trekz Titanium, put them on my head backwards for the first time last night. Works great. Nothing in the ear – wireless so no cords to get tangled up in. Super flexible so I'm not afraid of breaking them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> There's plenty of great music that can be used for this purpose as well. Put on The Pearl by Harold Budd and Brian Eno. You can thank me when you wake up.

<comment><USER27> I'm a big fan of Aphex Twin, but I've never been able to listen his Selected Ambient Works II without falling to sleep. It's amazingly beautiful music, but I always just fall asleep and don't remember what kind of music the album has after the fourth track. Maybe this was Richard's original idea...

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> YouTube ASMR videos do the trick for me.

</comment><comment><USER29> I cannot sleep without audiobooks any more. This has been a fact of life for me for 22 years.

My technique is simple. I listen only to things I have already listened to in a fully waking context. No surprises, no excitement.

Spoken word only. Nothing with music or sound effects.

I hope to take a year off sometime and kick this habit.

<comment><USER4> How would you go about kicking this habit?

<comment><USER29> Same way I kicked smoking. Extreme levels of contentedness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I recently discovered that I can easily fall asleep to two types of Youtube videos: a) videos about the lore of Warhammer 40K and b) a random episode of Jay Leno's Garage. Both will put me to sleep in 10-15 minutes even if I am extremely stressed.

</comment><comment><USER31> Drone Zone by Somafm is a great radio station for this. Good to save some for offline listening though so you're not sucking their bandwidth unnecessarily

</comment><comment><USER32> The best way to beat insomnia is to wake up at the same time every day. Lowering the volatility in your sleep times will lead to better rest.

</comment><comment><USER33> i like these: [http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2014/07/29/the-ambient- sou...](http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2014/07/29/the-ambient-sounds-of- science-fiction-spaceships-playlist/)

</comment><comment><USER34> Wow I thought I was the only one who does this. I find Alan Watts lectures to be a pretty good fit.

</comment><comment><USER35> bookmark

<comment><USER36> In your profile page there's a link labeled 'upvoted stories'</comment></comment>


How India tried to ban porn and failed - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/08/economist-explains-2#2iRaeWBRWgIcOzpV.99

<comment><USER3> "ban porn" sounds like banning wind or sun. 35 years ago in USSR - <USER2> environment where banning things was a normal practice and frequently worked, and porn was a banned thing - in elementary school we had porn - it were texts copied on type writer :)

<comment><USER4> Oh, pornography is still banned in some countries that used to be in the soviet bloc. In Bulgaria for instance, even though the country is part of the EU now, porn is still absolutely banned. Possession of porn, selling of porn, disseminating porn - all illegal with jail time. The only thing you can buy is erotica, like Playboy and others like it featuring naked women, sometimes with naked men, doing naked things. Whether a work is classified porn or erotica is decided on a bribe by bribe, I mean case by case basis. The law is practically not enforced, you are absolutely free to browse the entire internet and can purchase por.. I mean erotica magazines freely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why would _they_ want to ban it? If anything it would result in an increase to population.

<comment><USER6> Maybe the regular rapes have been partly attributed to access to pornography ?

<comment><USER7> It was not long time ago that Sweden attributed violence in society to TV and movies, and it's only in current enlighten days that the old censorship is now finally removed. A person doesn't go and murder, rape or steal just because they happened to see a movie that displays actors doing those things.

<comment><USER6> I'm not saying there's an actual logical relationship nor that I believe porn causes violence but governments might end up believing so. I strongly think porn, even inevitable, especially in teens, is amazingly detrimental. It might not be a reason for someone to force someone else (I never thought of shooting someone after playing Doom), but it will twist the notion of intimate relationships.

<comment><USER7> During the 90s, people argued that teens watching movies like _The Texas Chain Saw Massacre_ would get a twisted notion of what normal was. The detrimental effect on teens was seen as such large that they banned the cartoon darkwin duck for TV, and blamed TV violence for the increase in violent crime amongst youths.

Those claims has since proven at best to be speculative, at worse outright media fabrication. Studies have shown that even very young kids can distinguish that what happens on a movie is not real, and that the social rules that gets shown on a movie does not exist in real life. Teens and adults has a more mature brain and longer life experience that if there was an effect, movies would have destroyed them long before.

<comment><USER6> I agree but I didn't indulged the 'ban' logic. I'm just saying it might be one of the reason invoked for the Indian government decision.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> all the bans that are implemented for only political reasons rather than socio ones have the fortune to fail because they are not aligned with our practical lives. And like any other none practical rule, this one will not only survive but also result in a higher negative(for the gov't)numbers. Just like we saw during the Prohibition period, this will also make people to see the law as whimsical and unimportant, instead of something good and protecting. It did nothing to encourage the respect and obedience the law deserves. I agree there is a lot of harm that's caused by porn, both personally and sociologically. Personal one is our own free will, governments cannot ban everything that is harmful to us but in this case I can understand and support governments who will fight against sociologically disruptive porns with the content of rape, beastiality, extreme fetishism and definitely child porn.

</comment><comment><USER9>
      They didn't fail ISP's are now responsible for the content so Isp's will play safe and not unban the porn sites.
     So the government will be able to get the ban without calling it a ban.

</comment><comment><USER10> Unprotected sex is opium for the poor in India leading to pregnancy/population growth;</comment>


Show HN: I built an app that helps amplify the voice of the customer - <AUTHOR> https://www.shieldvoc.com/ <comment><USER2> Rating and social media systems give the strongest voice to your worst customers.

I run a few SaaS apps and by far the majority of my time spent in support is dealing with unreasonable customers. In the past, SaaS apps used to be able to ignore them but now they hold your company hostage with threat of bad reviews.

It's true that these systems could be used for good - letting other users know about issues with a product. In my experience, it's not how they're being used in practice. These people want special treatment and they get it - from me, and from everyone else.

It's really not fair to my other customers. I'd love to refund these unreasonable people entirely and send them on their way. I don't want their business. But the damage is just too great for refusal of service. One 1-star review is as powerful as ten 5-star reviews.

I'd like to see a rating and social media system that tracks the average rating of these customers across platforms. I'm sure it's overall negative for those on the attack.

These often verbally abusive, entitled customers are a real problem. They increase the cost for those not willing to be as pushy/loud/abusive. Giving them an even stronger voice is not a step forward.

<comment><USER3> did you consider using a public support forum to promote transparency? your helping customers would be visible, and unreasonable asks would be there too, for everyone to see if you did your best

<comment><USER4> I wish Amazon had forums instead of their awful review system. They'd have a Facebook level moderation problem but customers would be served better. Good companies with good products would also benefit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love the idea! (Admittedly without knowing the details of how it works, or the complications that may arise) It feels like in many cases, you're reliant on the company having a good channel for addressing concerns (Some do, some don't). Reviews aren't necessarily a good fit, yet customers may go straight there, for want of something better.

Do you think the chance of abuse is high? (Eg a competitor posing as an unsatisfied customer, or a customer abusing it trying to get free things) What mitigation plans do you have for this, if you think it could come up?

<comment><AUTHOR> Those are really good points.

> It feels like in many cases, you're reliant on the company having a good > channel for addressing concerns (Some do, some don't). Reviews aren't > necessarily a good fit, yet customers may go straight there, for want of > something better.

That is true and even more so having a social media presence in our case. Our approach is to focus on companies that already have a social media presence and propose an alternative way to track customer satisfaction and reduce the subjectivity baked into that metric by relying on the facts and measuring customer service quality instead. We still provide users with a space to express their feelings as they would on review sites and receive support from other users in similar situations, while we work with companies to get better at serving their customers.

> Do you think the chance of abuse is high? (Eg a competitor posing as an > unsatisfied customer, or a customer abusing it trying to get free things) > What mitigation plans do you have for this, if you think it could come up?

Moderation is key for any platform like ours, because our user community is placing an enormous amount of trust in us to ensure that we're helping genuine users like themselves, which means letting through genuine complaints on our platform and bringing down abusive complaints where we have compelling evidence. We have processes in place for complaint moderation today, and as we scale, we will automate more of these processes where needed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "And immediately my issue was eventually resolved." \- from their testimonial.

<comment><USER7> " _eventually_ my issue was _immediately_ resolved"

/nitpick

<comment><USER3> even that way, the sentence doesn't make any sense, it's either eventually or immediately /nitnit

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Twitter mob as a service?

<comment><USER9> It might create so much more noise that people would find Twitter even more annoying and less useful, and thus help its demise. That'd be a positive result.

<comment><USER10> You underestimate how much annoyingness and uselessness people will tolerate, for the goal of being distracted. It is arguably a feature!

(Tongue in cheek!)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This type of brigading is pretty clearly against twitters terms.

</comment><comment><USER12> The obvious way I can see this making money is allowing companies to come in and pay for problematic reports to go away–is this how this will be funded?

<comment><USER13> Or the exact reverse. Customer pays a small-dollar figure to ensure they get a more meaningful support response. Either way an idea I'm not a huge fan of.

<comment><USER14> That was what came to mind as well. We have a landscape where customers with the largest social media following/ore persistence are more likely to reach customer support - a system that -should- be serving everyone equally well. Rather than trying to improve customer support, this product strikes me as allowing users to buy influence and get a response - at the expense of customers who aren't willing or able to pay.</comment></comment></comment>


Mobycast Microservices Miniseries - <AUTHOR> https://mobycast.fm/episode/microservices-boot-camp-part-1/ <comment><AUTHOR> Mobycast recently did a breakdown of sizing and organizing microservies, dismantling monoliths, and micro front-ends. The microservices stuff I was mostly familiar with, but the micro front-ends episode was pretty new and interesting.</comment>