How becoming a pilot made me a better programmer - <AUTHOR> http://nathanmarz.com/blog/how-becoming-a-pilot-made-me-a-better-programmer.html <comment><USER2> Personal opinion: If you have the tendency to involuntarily hyperfocus on things, re-consider your interest in flying.

I had that happen to me once while landing in high wind, and it's only thanks to my instructor that I'm still with us today. Another time I was so focused on my landing pattern that I blanked out the tower instructions and pulled in front of a landing passenger plane (at MSP). And those are only the dangerous incidents, not the dozens of other minor incidents.

For me, the traits which make me an exceptional developer made me a terrible pilot. I can't regret choosing development of flying, just the money I lost realizing that I was not a good fit.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for this. I've always been interested in flying and have only taken one lesson. However, I also have tendency towards hyperfocus and this comment has sufficiently frightened me.

<comment><USER4> Don't let it discourage you. If it didn't work for him doesn't mean is not going to work for you.

<comment><USER2> I'll agree with this, but definitely recommend working with a good CFI, not just a prior student building up hours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Flew for the military for a decade. Disagree with the black box take away. Feel that is beginning vs expert. In the beginning you learn the systems as a sort of firehouse training. But later, so much is black boxes. Certainly you want to try to understand inside the box, but the important part is to know the interface. The talk about intuition in a spin gets you killed. The spin recovery for his plane may not be the right recovery for other planes. Understanding the fuel system rather than memorizing emergency procedures is bad. It helps to know both, but intuition when in flight quickly falls apart and memorizing procedures until they become second nature is important. Loss of power off a carrier cat shot, engine failure, fires, out of control flight, and so much more, you better know your procedures for your aircraft. Understanding details is good, but knowing the procedures cold and not just relying on intuition is so important when flying. Seems similar to programming, at a small scale you can afford to know all the details, but working in a large company you would never be able to. The interfaces are critical.

<comment><USER6> Programmers should be able to trust procedures (interfaces) to do what they want them to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've done the opposite of the author. I was a professional pilot and flight instructor, now I'm a software engineer.

As always with these "techie turned pilot" articles, I disagree with the author's conclusions. It sounds nice. Don't let the airplane be a black box, don't let the computer be a black box. Makes sense. But the prescription is wrong.

As an operator of a system (let's say a pilot of an airplane) all you need is a basic understanding of how it works. Past that, you create mental models from experience and instruction. If I do A, B happens. If I need more X, do Y.

There also has to be a willingness to deal with change. Pushing the throttle decreases power? Cool. Today is backwards throttle day. Let's get back to the airport and figure out why.

Being overly obsessed with the "why" can get you in trouble. Small airplanes crash all the time while people are trying to figure out what is wrong, when they should have just gone back and landed. Or, things don't work the way they expect them to and they just can't accept that. They crash into the ground being perfectly right.

The author's own example of spin training disproves his point. I've taken about a dozen people through spin training. I can tell you that no amount of understanding an airplane will prepare you for recovering from a spin. Rote memorization (and practice) is exactly what you need. The fact that this memorized procedure is different that the standard procedure doesn't make it not count.

Take two pilots, one that spent 10 minutes dry drilling the recovery procedures in a parked airplane and one that has written a paper on spin aerodynamics and watch who does a better recovery. I can tell you which airplane I'd rather be in.

There's another problem with being overly reliant on the "white box" approach. It's really easy for your mental model to be wrong. All the time I'd have some know-it-all pilot tell me why such-and-such is true. He'd have all this lovely reasoning. I'd listen to it all and then say "Cool. But that's not what really happens. Want to fly and see?" It's really easy for some mental model of a system to be missing one little thing that totally flips it around. The airplane never lies.

Now, I deal with the same thing in software. Someone treats the real world operation of software engineering with the academic touch of computer science, and things get all jacked up.

I am NOT against understanding the machine, wether it's a computer or an airplane. My point is keep your eyes open. Your understanding should serve your operation. Don't let your own knowledge get in the way of doing what works.

<comment><USER8> You seem to be implying that I'm saying understanding how the plane works is more important than practice and memorization of procedures. I don't say that anywhere. What I do say is "You use your tools much more effectively and safely when you understand their implementation." I would not say that someone who blindly operates the airplane based on theory is someone who really understands implementation.

Understanding how the plane works goes a long way towards developing the right instincts. For example, understanding the aerodynamics of stalls helped me greatly in developing an instinct for keeping the ailerons neutral and being active on the rudder during recovery. Likewise, understanding the mechanics of carb icing helped me internalize that I should not be surprised if the engine runs even rougher immediately after applying carb heat. Finally, I got skilled at crosswind landings through an iterative process of thinking about the aerodynamics and then adjusting my technique through repeated practice.

I address the topic of "theory vs practice" directly when I said in the post "My answer is I advocate for a computer science education for programmers to the same extent I advocate for an aeronautical engineering degree for pilots. The degrees are relevant, useful, and helpful, but on their own do little to make you a good programmer or a good pilot." My previous post about computer science educations addresses this topic as well. [1]

[1] [http://nathanmarz.com/blog/the-limited-value-of-a- computer-s...](http://nathanmarz.com/blog/the-limited-value-of-a-computer- science-education.html)

<comment><USER7> > Understanding how the plane works goes a long way towards developing the > right instincts.

Well, I won't imply anything and I'll disagree with this directly. Understanding does not go a long way towards developing the right instincts. There is only one thing that develops instincts and that's repeated practice. Understanding doesn't even come close.

At best, understanding alleviates a mental block that some people have where they can't do something (in extreme cases literally physically can't do it at all) if they don't understand how it works. Not everyone has this.

In my experience as an instructor, this is more common among those who are from an engineering type background. I also find it to be strongly correlated with age. Younger people are more accepting of instruction (and tend to learn much faster).

I could write the same article about flying or programming: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Black Box.

<comment><USER9> > I could write the same article about flying or programming: How I Learned to > Stop Worrying and Love the Black Box.

Coincidentally enough, such an article already exists:

[http://www.thecaucus.net/#/content/caucus/tech_blog/373](http://www.thecaucus.net/#/content/caucus/tech_blog/373)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love the "understand how it works before you use it" angle; this is how I was taught in school and it's how I practice. I had to build (simulated) CPUs and RAM out of transistors, an assembler and eventually compiler to run programs on my simulated computer. I have great respect for the machine (and also a deep hatred) but mentioning Von Neumann to a junior engineer these days will get you written up by HR (hostile work environment).

Unfortunately, today's new developers are die-hard black boxers. They were taught that software is built by integrating Twilio with Mailchimp and deploying to Heroku. Furthermore today's new managers are black boxers as well; both towards the software their teams produce as well as the teams themselves.

<comment><USER11> > today's new developers are die-hard black boxers

How is anything else even possible? I spent eight years doing CPU development and even at the time I wouldn't say that I understood how CPUs worked. No one understands how an entire desktop or server CPU works today. They're too complicated. Back in grad school, I had a fairly good solid state & device physics background, stronger than most EEs. Ten years later, if I now want to understand how a modern transistor works, I expect it would take me 1-2 months to get a good high-level picture. And that's just the digital stuff -- I never had a good picture of how analog circuits work, and understanding that would take years.

In terms of complexity, the CPU is much less complex than the compiler or OS I use. For that matter, it's less complex than the browser I'm using to type this comment. If you don't believe that, look at the number of person years that goes into developing a CPU vs. the amount that's gone into any of those pieces of software. Relatively speaking, CPUs are simple. And they're still so complex that no human can understand them.

There's no way to understand the entire stack below you unless, maybe, you're doing materials science work and don't have anything else below you in the stack. And even then, "understand" is sort of an iffy term to use. When I was up to date in the area, there were a lot of open questions on phenomenon that worked but had no proven "why". While I haven't looked into it, it's a pretty safe bet that the total number of such mysteries has increased.

This isn't to say that people shouldn't develop some understanding of the building blocks they're using. Rather, understanding is a difference in degree, not a difference in kind. There's no such thing as understanding everything you use. There's just, at the margin, spending a bit more time on understanding components vs. spending a bit more time understanding how to use components.

<comment><USER12> Well it's really a balance. Looking at the CPU, these days the x86 instruction set is a total illusion--the CPU decodes those instructions so a totally different underlying architecture can take action on them. The block diagram for a modern processor is astounding.

Back when I was working on Motorola 68K processors and creating hardware drivers, learning to work with assembly helped me tremendously with basic principles like pointers/registers, stack/heap, memory-mapped IO, and so- forth. How the processor worked inside wasn't really the point; working with assembly made me a better C programmer.

The point isn't so much that you have to keep peeling back the layers of the onion so far that you can understand how the silicon is laid out, you just need to peel back a couple more layers than you're used to. If you're a Ruby programmer, for example, write a C extension. It'll be enlightening.

<comment><USER10> > The point isn't so much that you have to keep peeling back the layers of the > onion so far that you can understand how the silicon is laid out, you just > need to peel back a couple more layers than you're used to. If you're a Ruby > programmer, for example, write a C extension. It'll be enlightening.

Thanks, this is just right. You don't have to meet the turtle on the bottom, but you should be acquainted with a few turtles down.

<comment><USER13> I'm not sure running on AWS instead of on your own server is actually going down a turtle. I run pretty much everything myself, but that is mostly dealing with complexity which isn't very enlightening. Might very well be that someone who uses a provider gets a better understanding of infrastructure design.

<comment><USER14> Running on AWS is going _up_ at least one turtle, possibly several if you're throwing configuration management and deployment tools into the mix.

AWS abstracts out bare-metal through Xen, deployment images, the AWS control panel, its monitoring, and the fact that you can't physically grab and yank the server should you want to.

On bare metal, you've _removed_ most of those layers, though you have the option of putting most of them back in. I find the head for AWS vs. bare-metal admin to be quite different. Being old school, I prefer metal.

<comment><USER13> I'm just not sure that those layers are actually functional. I see little reason why things couldn't be more like AWS if there were standardized ways to e.g. configure things. A lot that one deals with is glue between the turtles and not necessarily the other turtle.

<comment><USER14> _Everything_ is glue between turtles.

It's glue between turtles all the way down.

(A problem now is that the glue is nonstandardised, and you've got vendor- specific glue, much of it with craptacular Web interfaces, at various levels. We used to have this in other parts of the stack, but they eventually got commoditised, and _those_ particular layers went away. If you haven't done it before, crack open a Sendmail.cf file. If you have done it before, I'm truly sorry for the flashbacks.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Experiencing new things is the best way to get new ideas. I've heard it described as the "hunch" theory of creativity: experiences give you "hunches" and they form ideas when they meet with new hunches.

On the subject of instrumenting your system and preventing bugs one thing that I've been investigating has been high-level specifications. Using temporal logic one can design systems with varying degrees of constraints, invariants, and properties and test those designs before building the implementation. It then follows that if your instrumentation is reporting errors you'll know that your implementation is not following the spec closely enough and using refinement calculus you might actually be able to discover how and eliminate the case from the specification.

Where this becomes useful is for really large applications at huge volumes (think AWS big). There might be an execution path in your algorithm that is 53 steps deep before it encounters an error. You might think such a bug only has a 1 in 500000 chance of being triggered for any given request. Well obscurity doesn't work in the land of large numbers where you're servicing many millions of requests per minute.

For large, complicated systems being as specific as a formal specification pays off... along with good instrumentation!

Great article.

</comment><comment><USER16> When I was a teenager in the early 80s I both learned to fly (eventually becoming a flight instructor and charter pilot) and learned to program. There was definitely a synergy between the two. My systems perspective was formed in an environment where decisions managing relatively complex interactions with the physical world have serious consequences in a matter of a few minutes or sooner.

Emotionally IT/programming haven't been nearly as satisfying as successfully managing a flight in adverse or challenging circumstances. Bush runways, unexpected weather changes, etc....

</comment><comment><USER17> From 2014 to current I too have been learning to fly (PPL and most recently night rating, single engine IFR is about to start next. If you're ever at CNC3 hit me up!). Being a part time student means you're "one of those guys" that everyone knows at the flying club/school. You're clearly learning just for personal enjoyment and betterment (because those who are not are trying to do it as quickly as possible, you just cant pull that off while working) and you stand out because you're not 18 years old like everyone else (i'm only 29, but still you're one of the old guys if you're anything above 25)

For me, learning to fly made me a smarter person in general, becoming a better programmer has been a benefit for sure, but I don't think that's where it ends.

I find that now I understand and estimate risk way better, know how to build processes and follow instruction better than ever before, and most importantly I have managed to step up my expectations of myself and those around me through the experience being involved in something that can be very dangerous, but doesn't need to be if you handle yourself appropriately, understand the systems around you and operate within logical/known limits...and then there is the added benefit of being able to fly.

It's not cheap, but if you have $20-25k available (and around 5-6 hours / week that you can sustain over a 6-12 month period; flying + study time), this might be a good thing for you to give a shot. Given the choice between doing my MBA and this, it's not only cheaper and was way more enjoyable, but the short term impact of doing this study and practical work has really helped me tackle a lot of issues I feel that I would have previously struggled with.

</comment><comment><USER18> As the (programmer) spouse of a commercial-rated pilot I can endorse this premise. I've learned a lot about focus, analysis, and how parts AND process work together from my flights with her. The stakes are high, and that's why process is (should be) always followed. Cause, effect, and clarity are key.

<comment><USER19> I also think there's a lot to be learned from the no-blame process involved with accidents.

I've always been amazed at how honest and self-reporting the industry seems to be. It seems there's a real interest in improving root causes and processes that somehow doesn't involve people's egos.

<comment><USER20> Yes! Cockpit/Crew Resource Management (CRM), too. As a developer who manages other developers, I'm completely fascinated with CRM; I found a whole lot of the material and concepts useful at work despite being nowhere near a airplane.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Sort of related video from PyCon2015 about what programmers can take away from the habits and behaviors of licensed pilots.[0]

[0]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we4G_X91e5w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we4G_X91e5w)

</comment><comment><USER22> Being a Sous Chef for a number of years taught me a lot about resource contention in real time systems, far more than I ever learned in the classroom although having the knowledge base definitely helps.

When you've allocating shared resources in a limited space frantically working with multiple other people during the rush, you really can see the algorithms at work and can learn to optimize and even come up with alternate algorithms solving these types of problems.

</comment><comment><USER23> Working at Boeing on designing flight critical systems on airliners has had a lot of positive influence over my work in programming.

</comment><comment><USER24> Doing anything in life makes you a better programmer.

</comment><comment><USER25> I obtained my private pilots license in February this year and while I'm not a commercial programmer (anymore) I apply many of the wider lessons I was taught as part of my PPL to the running of my businesses.

Flying is said to be incredibly safe, and indeed it is. However it's equally unforgiving and mistakes are usually punished by a gruesome death - so they're to be avoided.

One key element of flying is checklists. Before you get in the plane, you use a checklist to verify that everything on the plane is as you want it to be for a safe and uneventful flight.

Suffer an engine failure? There's a checklist for that.

About to perform a manoeuvre that isn't simple straight and level flying? There's a checklist for that too.

If you thought there was lots of acronyms in IT, flying is equally as acronym heavy. There are catchy (and less catchy) acronyms for everything. For example, when you're thinking about coming in to land you perform a CBUMFICH. I know, doesn't sound catchy but it'll stick and before you know it you've memorised all the important things you need to do ahead of attempting to land a plane:

Carb heat hot

Test the brakes

Undercarriage down

Mixture - is it as you want it

Fuel - got enough for a go around?

Instruments - as you want them?

Carb heat cold again

Hatches and harnesses - is everybody strapped in?

That's just one of the many acronyms, or shortcuts, that are ingrained in to you to remember shit when you're already under a heavy mental load.

Then there's other things like gross error checking. Mental tools you're equipped with that allow you to take note of a scenario and make sure you're flying on the heading, speed, height and so on that you should be on without doing the intricate maths that gives you a 100% accurate answer. Contrary to the checklist sometimes when you're already under a mental load in the cockpit you need to use gross error checking to get yourself 99% confident that you're flying how and where you want to fly.

Then there's the communication element. So many smart mechanisms built in to how you communicate with other pilots and air traffic control to reduce the risk of error (mishearing vital information can be fatal). Also, the way that elements of flight evolve after accidents. For example...

[http://www.echo- news.co.uk/news/842963.pilot_16_killed_in_pl...](http://www.echo- news.co.uk/news/842963.pilot_16_killed_in_plane_crash/)

This poor kid was a member of my club well before I started to learn to fly. He was overwhelmed by an instruction given to him by air traffic, lost situational awareness and stalled - re: my previous point about mistakes being unforgiving - he died. NTSB investigated and rather than try to apportion blame, they worked to ensure that this problem never occurred again. Their solution? When you're a student you always address yourself to air traffic control as STUDENT <CALL SIGN> <COMMUNICATION>. Simultaneously air traffic control were instructed to give students priority over all other air traffic. Such a beautifully simple solution and hopefully one that has prevented similar incidents occurring.

In summary - earning a PPL teaches a wide range of lessons, approaches, mental thought patterns, sensible communication strategies that can be applied to business and perhaps all areas of life.

<comment><USER26> Oh, I love them: atomatoflames, FMS Race, and Imsafe. Or the whole how to remember the 7500, 7600, 7700 emergency order: "Hi Jack, can't talk now, got an emergency."

<comment><USER27> I remember the emergency squawk codes as a rhyme: 75, Taken alive (7500 for a Hijack) 76, Radio nix (7600 for Lost comm/radio failure) 77, Going to heaven (7700 for Emergency)

<comment><USER25> I was taught largely the same but 76 was "in a fix".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> In my experience, the programmers I've worked with that are also pilots have been just too meticulous for the work, there's too much attention to detail and focus that doesn't let them work on teams. And, sadly those traits are pretty bad to get stuff done.

Again, my experience. They had to let them go, although they are very bright and likely I'd hire a pilot again.

<comment><USER29> It sounds like they were a bad fit for the job, but that's not true for all programming jobs.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: I cannot afford to scale… - <AUTHOR> … but I cannot afford not to.
Almost a year ago I decided to quit my job and start 2011 doing something I've always wanted to do: start my own company. I started with two primary aims: 1) to provide the best, most accessible app translation service and 2) learn as much as I can about running a business as possible. I decided from the very start it was ok if there were a few mistakes along the way, just learn from them for the future.
Now I'm at a point where my knowledge escapes me and I'm looking for some advice as I'm beginning to turn away customers.
My revenue is client based. A small iOS or Mac OS app can take me around 4-5 hours of my time in a week. A medium sized app 8-10 hours. A big app or a technical app takes me much much longer. And that's only if things go well. You all know client work involves last minute changes and lengthy email discussions.
As you can see with those times, there's only so much I can do.
I don't charge enough. Revenue minus costs is healthy, until you factor in my own time. When we're talking pennies per word ($0.14 USD per word) you can see how a small project (250 words) costs me money and a big project (4000 words) costs me a lot of time (which means I have to refuse other projects). I can't increase costs because of competition, even though I am sure my service provides a much higher quality translation.
I can't afford to take a second person on. We will be able to take on more work, sure, but I can't guarantee someone a full-time position. Maybe I could use a vWorker, but I want a relationship with my colleagues. I need to know we're on the same page.
So as you can see, I need a bit of advice. I love my clients and the rapport I have with them. But I need to expand and move this away from a life-style business into something a bit more automated (while maintaining quality). <comment><USER2> Hi! This is the Market Economics Fairy! I help supply and demand equilibrate everywhere! If you're turning away customers it means you've set your prices too low! Raise your prices until you have exactly as many customers as you can handle!

Sincerely, the Market Economics Fairy!

<comment><USER3> I also recommend playing a game like lemonade tycoon, it pretty much explains stuff like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think you have an 'easy' choice here.

1\. Like other people have said, increase your price and fewer people remain. It is polite self selection

2\. Outsource the actual job. make your job relating with the customer and pay people to do the translation (per job). your work will be to review what they have done and interact with the customer.

3\. Focus on the one that had higher money/time ratio. So if it is the highly technical jobs or the phone apps, you chose.

Congratulations, you have a good problem :).

PS: NEVER reduce your quality.

<comment><USER5> There's always the possibility you increase your price and no one leaves. Companies do this all the time.

<comment><USER6> Again, a great problem to have. More cost effective to hire help if you want to expand. Or repeat increases to diminish demand. Profit!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi Guys,

Thanks for all the answers so far - much much appreciated. A few points I should clear up.

1) I do outsource translation. I work closely with a group of freelance translators who I interviewed back in January when I started up. I wish I could speak 20 languages, but I don't ;-)

2) Running a business unfortunately isn't just Project Management and Project QA. There's also finances, marketing, the website to maintain. Certain things can be outsourced, and I have for the smaller jobs.

3) I am happy to make some investments to improve long term returns. Indeed, I didn't pay myself last month to pay for a few improvements. Not ideal when you have rent, but sometimes sacrifices have to be made and I'm ok with that.

4) After reading your comments I'm a little less nervous about increasing prices. I worry, of course I do, that'll I'll be too expensive. Pricing is definitely something I am learning, it isn't easy.

What do you guys think about partnering with someone? Perhaps taking on a junior partner so we can work together towards common aim of Applingua… Is this ever a good idea?

<comment><USER7> If you are really concerned about raising prices (I wouldn't be; I think you should raise them across the board), you could try just charging new clients/users the higher rate. Adds complexity to your system, however.

Edit - just saw the question. The problem right now is not that you don't have a partner; it's that you don't charge enough for the work you're doing. Adding a partner is going to create another set of distractions and issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Charge more. You seem to be stuck with the idea that if you charge more you will lose clients. Do you have any evidence that this is true? Have you talked to existing clients and said "I'm pretty busy, but if you pay X I can fit you in this week?" What did they say to that? Did you try putting out a new ad with higher rates? Do you get lower feedback? Or the same feedback.

<comment><USER8> You sound like your working in the apple software space. This is good for you, since mac app developers are more likely to be small, indie and not bigco enterprise shops. They are more likely to want to "be cool" and not want to be greedy uncle scrooge.

So that's the story you tell them when you want to raise your prices.

Tell them that you're a small indie shop, that you love working for other small indie developers working with teams that "get it" and love to produce beautiful apps. Tell them you're glad you're not working for soulless megacorporations who want to turn software into Walmart. Then tell them that you'd love to keep working with cool people like them, but you're running out of money, and would they mind paying more. Hopefully they will want to not be seen as heartless corporations like Microsoft that peddle cheap junk, and will agree to a rise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > I can't increase costs because of competition, even though I am sure my > service provides a much higher quality translation.

Self-limiting belief. Self-fulfilling prophecy. Whatever you want to call it, this one single sentence will kill your business.

If you are providing a higher quality service than the competition, then guess what? You should be charging more.

If you're not getting the clients you need when charging more ... well, your marketing sucks. Position yourself as a premium service. Provide a better experience and charge for it. Get customers by encouraging referrals, etc, etc.

Look at Apple. They charge twice as much as their competitors for the same hardware. Why? They provide a premium experience and they charge extra for it.

Why are you competing on cost?

</comment><comment><USER10> You say you cannot increase costs because of competition? Are you sure about this? I understand its scary to price yourself above competitors, but that doesn't mean you can't do it.

For example, the software I sell is more expensive than all of the competing products. However, I know that as we have similar fixed costs, I only need to sell around 1/3 the volume that they do in order to make a similar profit. People don't always go for the cheapest option- indeed most people avoid it.

Until you've tried raising your price you really don't know what you can get away with (and I think you may be surprised, especially if you're getting people coming to you via personal recommmendations). Companies like Apple have made enormous amounts of money selling products which are more expensive than the competition.

This doesn't address your scaling concern though. Are there parts of the process that are automatable? For example- could clients preprepare their app in a certain way that makes it easy to extract and translate all the data.

</comment><comment><USER11> A good strategy for pricing in this situation is with an "express service." This allows you to keep your existing "list price" but of course the delivery time for that will go up by days/weeks/etc. Your express service has a guaranteed quick delivery at a much higher price. You now have a way to capture a premium for customers that are in a rush. It's a win-win with no risk of downside due to a complete price change.

</comment><comment><USER12> The big issue is not that you cannot afford to scale.

It is that your business model cannot scale - effectively, you are hand crafting widgets, not leveraging technology to increase productivity.

Adding another translator, adds approximately one unit of capacity. Another document, well, that adds approximately one unit of work. Sure, growth can occur arithmetically, but there is no possibility of exponential or even geometric growth.

To make the issue more intractable, the iOS ecosystem provides less opportunity to acquire and apply more efficient tools - there is a significant degree of rigidity in the technology stack (i.e. you can't employ a tool written in LISP easily in order to improve throughput).

What you have is ownership of a small business - which is entirely consistent with your initial goal of owning a company. And you are facing the same issues all small businesses face - the problem of hiring people who might not do things exactly the same way you would.

Good luck.

<comment><USER13>
      Sure, growth can occur arithmetically, but there is no possibility of exponential or even geometric growth.

nitpick: "exponential" and "geometric" refer to the same quality (there are minor mathematical differences, irrelevant in this context).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Speaking as someone going through the process of commoditising at a fixed price what is traditionally a very variable price service business, my biggest piece of advice is figure out how to be profitable at _one_ type of job in this space, systemise and do only that, and say not to everything else.

Once you're profitable at that one type of job ("type" here could be size of app, type of client, whatever) you can repeat the process. Rome wasn't built in a day and you don't have to cater to everyone immediately.

Work out how you can automate each step, but most importantly the qualification step that will tell you if the client is a profitable one for your process or not.

Once you've done this, you'll find it easier to outsource each part of the process.

</comment><comment><USER15> Don't assume that you cannot charge more than the competition. If your service is better / faster / higher quality / more personal and so on, customers will be willing to pay a premium. Perhaps not all of them, but some.

You can always quote a higher initial price, and if the potential customer makes it clear that it is more than he's willing to pay, you give him a "new customer discount". Then, once he knows how great your service is, he might become a return customer and then pay the full price.

</comment><comment><USER16> Two things I would recommend:

1) Charge more. Lots of other people have said that too. If you have to turn away customers, then you know you can raise your rates. You need to do a/b testing on this (i.e. high-low) until you find the proper rate at which the number of customers is balanced by the price you charge.

2) You need to automate some stuff. If I were you, I would invest a little time into writing a simple tool where you can enter the corpus of text and translate it via Google Translate. If you set up your tool to allow multiple inputs, you can easily start a project by filling in all the text to be translated and hit "Go". Afterwords, you just go through each translated entry and correct things. This should be significantly easier than doing every single thing by hand, over and over.

</comment><comment><USER17> Also consider "small scale automation". Maybe you can't automate a process or even part of a process and maintain the level of quality you're looking for, but take a look at the individual tools you're using and whether or not you're using them efficiently when performing specific steps. Is switching back and forth between apps too slow? Are there keyboard shortcuts you should become familiar with? Are there plug-ins/extensions that can automate something simple (in the .Net space, something that might help an app translation process is a refactoring macro that will "extract selected string to resource file".

And as others have said... if you're product is better, raise your price. Just be ready to explain WHY you're better to your customers. :)

</comment><comment><USER18> Firstly, set a minimum per project. There is a overhead to every project and that needs to be accounted for. Each project needs to make enough profit to buy you lunch.

Secondly, look at any non-key functions that you are performing and see if a Virtual Assistant can help you with.

Thirdly, you have to believe this: people are not that price sensitive. You might be $50 more expensive than other people, but most don't care about that $50, especially if it is paid for by the company, and there are other factors - deadlines, professionalism, etc.

Fourthly, try hard to increase your quotes until 20% of people reject you for being too expensive. If you are in a price competition, you will _always_ _invariaribly_ feel stuck in the future just like you are now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately the vast majority of iOS/Mac OS developers are individuals/small teams. Prices do matter to them, especially if they are taking a chance with localization.

The 20% rule is interesting. And I'll definitely consider this. Thanks.

<comment><USER18> Also provide the developers with a stats plugin that can collect usages based on languages. Tell them it will help you and them figure out which languages are worthwhile targetting and which aren't.

Later, use this data as a differentiator since you have a lot of aggregate behavior.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This post piqued my interest because I've been working for one of the bigger players in the translation industry, and I have a lot of thoughts about your predicament.

You are a commodity. That's the reason why it's difficult to raise your prices. App developers could easily find alternatives to your service quite easily... they can go to myGengo or tens of other services (including the company I work for), and they could probably get it at a cheaper price. When you have a situation like that, then you have no leverage.

You need to find your differentiation. For example, a good niche some translation companies we work with specialize in medical translation. You can't easily substitute translators with medical expertise... They have more price leverage than your regular run-of-the-mill translator. I'm not sure what specialties you have in your skillset, but you need to find a niche that you can serve.

Another differentiator is speed. The translation industry is changing rapidly. In the past, most translation jobs were completed in the order of months (think documentation for Microsoft). Nowadays, most jobs require translations to be done in less than a few days (think blog posts). Running an efficient and scalable operation is quite difficult.

I have much more to say, but I'm at work, so I'll reply later.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Peter, great comment. Thanks. I'd love to hear more from you and you can add me to Skype on "robertlobue" or "applingua" if you want. Or rlobue at gmail . com

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Raise your rates. It is simple. If you provide a higher quality service then you will continue to do well. As you said you are turning away potential clients at this point. That means you have very little to lose by raising your rates a bit. You are already losing business, might as well turn a better profit while you do it.

</comment><comment><USER21> 1\. Raise your prices 2\. Find someone locally to help part time with translation. In this economy, there have gotta be some good bi-lingual people who need some extra cash irregularly to do translation. 3\. Create a system to make the process more scalable, so that the person doing the translation doesn't need to know anything about programming. 4\. Find more hours in the day and push yourself until you do have enough fulltime work for a second person. 5\. Setup good relations with app developers that you've already worked with. They are going to keep creating apps, and their new apps, updates, etc... will all need translation. This can help make work more steady.

</comment><comment><USER22> Just thought I'd point out that you're running a service business not a product business, there is plenty written on this topic, there's nothing inherently wrong with running a service business but they are known to be harder to scale, for example VC's also tend to shy away from investing in service businesses. I'd recommend reading up on other service business and how they have dealt with the challenges you're facing as the challenges are bound to be different from a product business (which is what most web startups are aiming to be)

</comment><comment><USER23> You answered your own question.

"I don't charge enough."

Tada. Fix that.

</comment><comment><USER24> Don't be afraid of charging for something the brings value to the table. I see a little bit of both, crappy apps charging huge amounts of $ and awesome apps almost for free. It amazes me how can companies or developers put so lower prices and something that probably took them a lot of time to create. So, if your app is awesome, users recommend it, charge it for the right price. You might loose cheap clients, but you highlight yourself from the competition.

</comment><comment><USER25> You could follow the advice of many commenters here and increase prices. I recommend you increase prices on new customers, but maintain similar prices for current customers, since they've been early adopters of your service. The danger of suddenly raising prices on existing customers (or radically changing the service) is that you might lose them (see Netflix).

</comment><comment><USER26> If your level of service is better than your competition, you should charge more. Price is of course a parameter to compete on, but it is not the most important one.

The cheaper competition no doubt have much more work, and many more customers. Even so, they will be much less profitable.

</comment><comment><USER22> oh yeah, and find some real companies as clients, by this I mean companies that have like 50+ employees, that have budgets and established products etc. I work for a company with 100, or so, employees that has an established web app product and I have heard our CTO talk on more than one occassion about the difficulty in finding a good English to Japanese translator for the web app.. If you find the right clients (and a lot of web app companies nowadays are "going global") then charging more shouldn't be an issue as, with bigger companies, cost isn't usually the main issue so much as quality of work. Limiting yourself to just doing Apple phone apps is going to put a major constraint on your growth.

</comment><comment><USER27> outsource it.

<http://mygengo.com> should sort you out.

you still take on clients, you just won't be the one doing all the translation yourself. your role will be more of a project manager / QA role. should be easier to scale.

<comment><USER28> MyGengo doesn't scale very well when you have large catalogs of strings. Their frontend interface is nice but is missing a useful search and it has lots of little bugs.

If anyone has an alternative for a translations editor that works well with PO files, let me know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Outsource the writing, then spend time doing the quality checking rather than the hard yards. That should allow you to scale 2-3x faster & take on more work.

The downside is trying to find good contractors who can translate to a standard that you set.

Good luck!

<comment><USER30> You could try outsourcing to Language Students at a local University. They are probably cheaper than other local translators (don't take the piss) and could become employees as you scale.

<comment><USER31> We did exactly this last time we needed translation work to be done.

Put up flyers in the local universities offering part time work to students with good english and fluent in one of various other languages.

We had litterly HUNDREDS of applicants even though the pay was only marginally above minimum wage and some very good candidates to choose from. Of course there is a big imbalance for different languages depending on the ethnic makeup of your local universities.

Many of the foreign students are quite well off financially anyway and don't care about the money, they just want the opportunity to improve their english and add to their resume, of course you have to be wary of visa issues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Look for free ways to scale before you pay for them.

Aim to get to the point where it takes you the same amount of time to deal with 1 customer or 100. What would that process look like?

Maybe something like...The client hires you, you assess the requirements, send details to the translator and then all future project messages go straight to the translator (or a virtual assistant), you fix unusual/unique issues and issue the invoice. Rinse & repeat.

If you're entering into lengthy e-mail discussions try to find recurring topics/issues across all of your clients. Can you refine the requirements gathering process at the beginning of a project to save you time at the end?

Anticipate the standard number of hours needed for support and add a percentage onto your prices for "support issues". You can happily say this price also includes x amount of after-care.

If your client chooses not to have this added on up front you can say that unplanned support hours cost $xx. Knowing that your time is a premium ensures they are clear and concise with you from the start. Fixed price jobs are prone to requirements creep.

You're paying in so much time by reading long client e-mails, replying to them and then forwarding important info onto your translators. Maybe by discussing with a client on a recorded Skype call instead of e-mail you cut time needed down to 1/3.

Analyse your working day. Any repetitive task can be automated/outsourced made quicker or eliminated completely.

What types of task take up your day?

How long does it take to get your computer ready in the morning? Add programs to start-up, get frequently used websites saved to permanent tabs. Is filing paperwork/accounts simple? Any task over 10mins needs to be considered.

I know it sounds wrong but you've got to work yourself out of the business as a critical cog. You (i.e your time) are the bottleneck stopping you making more money.

Maybe having a virtual assistant for a few hours per day would be a low cost way of helping with communication back log. They could take info out of mails and forward to the translator working on it in a template. Or they could read mails and highlight the critical info for you consider.

It sounds as though your business is at a turning point where your job role needs to change to progress, move away from day to day work and more towards finding new clients and streamlining.

Your overall job is to remove obstacles for yourself and those that you employ.

Best of luck!!

</comment><comment><USER33> Do you get much repeat business? Can you speak to old/previous clients and find out what they would be willing to pay?

Can you improve your own productivity, what takes up most of your time when managing the translation?

</comment><comment><USER34> Many services are very hard to pin a price on.

Raise yours. Find new people willing to pay the increased rates.

Oddly enough, I've found raising prices to make people MORE DETERMINED to get you sometimes.

</comment><comment><USER35> If you can't charge more then you need to spend less time doing the work. Is there a way you can automate your process more?

<comment><USER36> Thats what I was thinking... rather than translating from scratch perhaps put it out to Mechanical Turk or another automated translator, than refine manually using your expertise?

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> > You all know client work involves last minute changes and lengthy email > discussions.

For which they should be billed. By the hour.

If they want a fixed price contract, they can go elsewhere and find a job shop that will never go the extra mile when the time runs out. Emphasize the value proposition you bring by providing in-depth professional services. Emphasize the fact that your extra billable hours are pay-as-you-go: every time something gets worked out, they are getting proof of just how much you are worth.

</comment><comment><USER38> The problem isn't that you can't scale, the issue is that you can't scale with the current business model.

Looking at your website (Applingua), I have noticed a few things which can be done to solve this.

First of all, your pricing strategy is wrong and part of the reason is what, you yourself admit that you _don't charge enough_ as a small project is costing you money and a large project costs you time.

To fix your pricing strategy, I would implement the following changes:

First of all, I would implement a set fee for a certain amount of words and then $0.xx per word afterwards. This would instantly prevent "small projects" costing you money as for example you can decide upto 500 words = $xx then $0.xx per word after so words under this amount would be "profitable" for you so to speak since you're getting paid for more words than you are actually translating.

Additionally, I would also offer an "express" service like PSD to HTML services offer with premiums being charged on delivery times. Many small teams/single devs use these and pay for the "premium" feature of express service - you definitely should implement this into your service.

For example, turnaround time would be offered to all customers for instance at 5 working days, and then they can pay an additional fee for the express service i.e. $10+ for 3 days, $20+ for 48 hours , $35+ for 24 hours and even $50+ for the same day (providing it is before a certain time) - Obviously, these are example express pricing fees and turnaround times so you can edit these to suit your needs.

Upon, doing all of this I would also slightly increase your prices slightly by a couple of pennies on each of your offerings.

This would mean that you would have a new pricing structure, that would give you an inital set fee for your work and even more money for certain jobs than you would initally receive as well as, additional revenue from your express service. Likewise, the slight increase will also help your profitability and help solve the fact that you don't charge enough.

With regards to being able to take on more work via employing someone then, there are a few methods and options available to you for this.

First of all, you could employ a student on a part-time basis (since you can't guarantee a full time position) meaning you could take in more work as well as, provide them with relevant work experience especially if they are a language student.

Secondly, you should focus on automating as much of your service as you can - even more than you are already doing. This may mean having to refer to vWorker or Automated tools etc for various aspects and using your language/freelancers language skills to "tidy" up the work so to speak whilst, maintaining the quality.

Moreover, you could also employ a Virtual Assistant as well to automate/scale- up some of aspects of your work. You can hire some VA's for $250/month and they'll work pretty much full-time for you - and you can "train" them to do various tasks for you - whether thats focusing on the marketing etc to take some burden off your shoulders and automate/scale up other aspects of your business.</comment>


Where's the best place to find freelancers? - <AUTHOR>

Where's the best place to find freelancers for coding projects?  I know they all have their pros and cons, and how you use the services determines your success.  But, what are the top 3? <comment><USER2> I'm a designer and the only way I've been able to find great freelance coders is through friends. Sorry that doesn't help but maybe going to some programmer meetups would work effectively.

I just say this because for designers, the best way to actually find top-tier talent is through friend of a friend. Most aren't looking (and thus, aren't on the usual suspect websites like elance/guru) but wouldn't reject a project if they actually met the person or if it was through a friend.

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://freelanceswitch.com/> is a fairly decent board where you can find some decent people. as well a lot of us here that freelance are listed on <http://www.hnhackers.com/> .</comment>


Google to offer upto 100GB storage. Tuesday launch possible. - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/google-launch-online-storage-consumers-source-025833586--sector.html

<comment><USER2> So ironic to see news about Google market expansion on yahoo....</comment>


The China Syndrome: Why Baidu is Not more evil than Google - <AUTHOR> http://zenroll.com/2011/03/04/the-china-syndrome-why-baidu-is-not-more-evil-than-google/

<comment><USER2> At least to me, it seems that a US agency putting Baidu but not Google on the list for linking to sites with pirated material smacks of protectionism -- or good lobbying by Google.</comment>


Ask HN: Would you fund Open Source projects? - <AUTHOR>

We have platforms to fund charity, creative projects, almost anything, but in most of these platforms, Open Source projects are not very welcomed, and in some others they will not gain the right momentum. So I started to think that maybe, a platform to support ONLY Open Source could be very useful. The platform's goal is to fund long development cycles, it's not meant to compete against bug-bounty programs, but to support design and implementation of long production cycles like from alpha to stable, new major version, big technology update or similar.<p>So the question is, would you or your company support Open Source projects that you use via a dedicated crowdfunding platform? <comment><USER2> I speak for myself. I find a bit against the Open Source culture.

Normally the Open Source projects start from a personal itch, meaning that nobody sits down and think I'll do this cool Open Source program that people will use. On my eyes, it starts the other way around, someone developed something that s/he needed on that moment, it gives him/her results and then decide to share it. If this project is really needed on large scale it will take off. (the Apache foundation got it right with the incubators).

In my case I will fund Open Source projects that gives me some benefit, so if I use any of them and I manage to get some income thanks to it, I'll like to give back some part of my benefit. But blindly fund an Open Source project if I don't see any usefulness it will be hard, but I wouldn't mind to join an organization that ask a fee and redistribute on Open Source projects.

<comment><AUTHOR> I truly liked your point. Just one tiny detail: you don't really look to be against OS per se, but against the current movement that is basically pushing to open everything and do stuff that nobody really need.

I was thinking about funding projects (f.e.) like Grails, recently left alone by Pivotal and rescued by Apache. I am against funding blindly too, but my point is to fund projects that already have defined a list of features, milestones and delivery time.

<comment><USER2> Exactly, I'm in favor of open source, but I'm against of open sourcing something useless and drain funds that might be useful in somewhere else. The example I get in mind is the gnupg project, that guy almost got broke for such an important tool.

Your idea is nice, and I won't discourage to pursue, those projects might need some kind of air to survive until something/someone finds it back, and get them back to the spotlight.

An Open Source project can be a bold idea, or it can be an advance scam system, for the first possibility I'm not against as some good projects might come from a bold idea, who am I to close that, but the second one, the community has to protect itself.

Something I dislike from the current situation of the linux userland status is the amount of programs or libraries that you might need and for the next version, some parts of your code are incompatible, and no way to ask any fix as it is open source you can get the sources to fix it, but not the time to do it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Company wouldn't: funding Open Source unlike charities doesn't buy you a good generic PR.

I wouldn't: hate registering in 1000 places, Kickstarter is good enough.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes, I'd even do so via an existing platform, like Patreon.</comment>


On Steve Jobs's passing - <AUTHOR> http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=3790#more-3790

<comment><USER2> It's a pity that the following paragraph was included:

      The velvet glove over Jobs's iron fist was thinner that
      second time around; like most people who attract a cult
      following, he became increasingly convinced of his own
      infallibility. It was an error that eventually killed him;
      the kind of pancreatic cancer he had was essentially
      curable with early surgical intervention, but Jobs
      insisted on treating it with "alternative medicine" that
      didn't work.

No need to bring up the manner of Jobs' death, or speculate on what he did and did not do and its influence on the outcome. Better to stick to the core argument about the closed Apple world and the open source alternative.

A man died, but the core Apple idea (of a closely tied and controlled software/hardware combination) did not. Focus on that.

<comment><USER3> From his own declarations, he did have surgical intervention.

He probably chose alternative medicine over chemotherapy, a procedure which is known to have awful side-effects. It's also a dangerous procedure that can cause problems to other parts of your body. It is also less effective for pancreatic cancer - and the pancreas is a highly sensitive organ anyway, as in, with too much chemotherapy you'll probably die faster of pancreatitis caused by chemo, rather than cancer.

That's why I don't like ad-hominems (even though I'm also guilty of it from time to time); it's much better to attack ideas and their implementations, rather than the person.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article isn't very insightful it's just rehashing the old tale that often the first group to invent something isn't always the first group to refine it in a way that makes it ultimately successful on a wide scale.

The author's argument is that the tendency to assign historical credit for the invention to whom ever made the invention a success is some how an injustice. The magic of Apple has never been their claims of pure invention but the ability to take very raw technology and make it into something that people actually want to use and can afford.

<comment><USER5> He is not arguing against it. He is arguing that Steve has caused harm to the computing culture by creating a walled garden. Eric is arguing against Steve's doublespeak which was evident from the start of his carrier. On one hand he was projecting himself as a liberator. On the other hand he was fighting nails and teeth against putting extra ports in the original Apple created by Woz. Eventually he succeeded during his second stint.

He was a wonderful designer and marketer but portraying him as if he was Christ is not right too. Eric is not denying his marketing skill or design sense. He is trying to break the aura of cult created around Apple so that future of computing can be opened a little bit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't know why people keep bringing up this "alternative medicine" thing, claiming he could just have had surgery and been cured.

The details of his illness and his treatment were, quite rightly, private.

Unless somebody links to a video of the man himself stating that he deliberately chose to not have surgery and partake in alternative medicine instead, then anyone claiming so has no credibility.</comment>


BunsenLabs: lean and mean distro, continuation of CrunchBang - <AUTHOR> https://www.bunsenlabs.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> It actually quite impressive little distro if you love Debian and want to use it on the older machine, because it is Debian and Openbox. They have a cool terminal based welcome script that lets you configure many things.</comment>


Ask HN: Will you pay $49 per month for food startup? - <AUTHOR> Hello,
We will be delivering delicious food tifin for lunch at your office address.
Will you pay $49 per month for the service? <comment> ng-user There's _a lot_ of details left out, was that intentional?

What types of food? Is it the same thing everyday? Do you have vegetarian options? How many meals do I get for this price? What if I'm away on holidays for a week, do I pay a discounted rate?

People already pay >$49 a month buying lunch, if you're trying to find out if people would pay that much monthly for lunch services - yes of course they would. Your offering has to be better than whatever they're currently eating however.</comment>


Show HN: Reportr - Your life's personal dashboard - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/SamyPesse/reportr <comment> k-mcgrady I really like this. Had a quick play with the hosted demo before the Application Error started appearing. Going to install it on a server myself tonight. It would be great if there were more 'offline' activities. I see you plan on adding RunKeeper. I'd also like to see Nike+ and other wearable trackers (FitBit, Withings scale etc.). I noticed a minor bug in the hosted version, so I filed an issue.

</comment><comment><USER2> I've been thinking about building something like this for ages but never got around to it.

I'm working on a book about deploying rails applications and was hacking together a script at the weekend to extract words written per day from the git diffs. Will link it up to a version of this so can easily chart it and see when I'm slipping.

Looks like a great tool, good work!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Instance example at [http://www.reportr.io/](http://www.reportr.io/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I've integrated reportr into my small counter app over the weekend: [https://github.com/janhancic/CigaretteCounter](https://github.com/janhancic/CigaretteCounter)

Really love the thing and hopefully I'll contribute some more in the future.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's an interesting idea and kudos for making it open source. But ... what need does it serve? Is there any killer app?

A startup usually has a dashboard to keep track of metrics, which show if it's on track for it's goals. Is that the idea here? Keeping track of goals?

<comment><AUTHOR> It helps you visualize your activity online and offline: activity on twitter, running, coding activity, ...

It's not a startup, just a tool, I built for myself, it's for people, not for startup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is an amazing project, thanks for building this, I'm going to try this out. Naveen, cofounder of Foursquare, has been tracking his life - [http://api.naveen.com/](http://api.naveen.com/) in a similar way.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've built and have been using something very similar internally but it's not nearly as visually polished. Thanks for this!

</comment><comment><USER7> This looks cool and I want to contribute. I look forward to messing around with this at lunchtime :)

</comment><comment><USER8> I like the look of this, though the install your own link does not work?

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh.. I forgot to change the href value to the github url..

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Host it on Clever Cloud so no more "application error" ;)

</comment><comment><USER10> reportr.io is empty on firefox.

Console [http://pastebin.com/XtACx3AR](http://pastebin.com/XtACx3AR)

</comment><comment><USER11> This looks like a great start, but I'm wondering if there are any working personal dashboards already in existence. Any recommendations?

<comment><USER12> what's your definition of "working personal dashboards"?

just curious :)

<comment><USER11> An online application that tracks online and offline tasks, personal analytics, events, contacts and goals and presents it visually on a single screen (I like rainbows and unicorns too).

Reportr isn't actually operational I take it, since I get an application error every time I try to sign up.</comment></comment></comment>


Marketing vs. Growth vs. Growth Hacking - <AUTHOR> What I realize growth is
Marketing is introducing your product to the user.
Growth is connecting users to the value of a product.
Growth hacking is a non-traditional approach to quickly connecting users to the value of product with minimal resources
For Example:
Marketing: Onboard users to the app by using traditional marketing channel like paid marketing, SEO, PR etc. Growth: Onboard users and help them quickly arrive at the value from the product itself by using marketing, Coding/engineering and most importantly, data. Growth Hacking: This is similar to the Growth but Growth hacking is much more relevant for startups with resource constraints. This does not take into account, how it will effect the long term metrics. In the Scale stage of a Company, 'growth hacking' becomes 'Growth' with resources and a long term strategy.
Let me know how you define. <comment><AUTHOR> [https://medium.com/@santudey/marketing-vs-growth-vs- growth-h...](https://medium.com/@santudey/marketing-vs-growth-vs-growth- hacking-25d07183913)</comment>


Ask HN: Alternatives to a cell phone for spontaneous communication - <AUTHOR> After years of reading articles like [0], I'm finally considering getting rid of my cell phone. However, I still like being able to call and text people out of range of a free Wi-Fi network. What are my options for achieving this? Are there companies building something in this space?<p>[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18857220 <comment><USER2> Kinda tough to replicate the service of a nation(global)-wide cellular comms network when that's what everybody on the other end of your calls and texts are using...

One option might be to use a non-cellular device (like an iPod Touch) connecting to a cellular hotspot with a "burner phone" sim (with a useable data plan)? "They" could still track that cellular device, but it'd up the ante quite a bit, since it would be very hard for an attacker to know the number. It wouldn't be "Screw you NSA, I've 'gone dark'!!!" secure, but it's probably stop a repo man or malicious ex from paying a bounty hunter to track you.

If you're prepared to drop the "calls" but, and fall back to just text messaging - have a look here: [https://www.thethingsnetwork.org](https://www.thethingsnetwork.org) \- there doesn't seem to be _quite_ enough coverage where I live to get reliable connectivity out of that assuming 2-3km LoRa range (although it seems like if I put one in at my place it'd fill in a coverage gap quite nicely...)

</comment><comment><USER3> Apple Watch with LTE isn't technically a cell phone, although you still need an iPhone if you go that route. You can just keep it plugged in at home all the time though.

</comment><comment><USER4> On the ham radio side, Winlink 2000 is a mesh radio network that allows email transmission over radio frequencies. It runs parallel to the internet with nodes that interconnect the two networks. You do not need to be a ham radio operator to use the Winlink system - only if you intend to stand up a node with transmission capability. For more info see [https://winlink.org](https://winlink.org)

</comment><comment><USER5> Assuming you're OK with moving to an internet connection for replies, FLEX pagers are a reasonable way to receive alerts. You can even do something nutty like put an SMS/MMS gateway on an android phone, with notification or encrypted messages delivered 'last mile' over the pager network.

I dream of a device with WiFi, LTE, and FLEX, with the ability to power on/off each subsystem individually.

</comment><comment><USER6> Just get a faraday pouch/box for your phone? Turn it off, put it in the pouch/box, pull it out and power it on as needed.

Or just turn it off when not in use.

</comment><comment><USER7> I see two options that address the concerns and goals realistically.

1\. Put a dumb phone in a faraday bag for 99% of its life.

2\. Keep a physical phone book and ask strangers or businesses to use their phones. Paying your way, of course.

</comment><comment><USER8> What about a computer or tablet with a cellular modem on a cash-paid plan and a Skype account or similar service?

</comment><comment> d--b Maybe check how sailors do it when they're in the middle of the ocean?

<comment><USER9> Expensive satellite communication networks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> For non-commercial use you and your friends can become ham radio operators.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do have a license, actually. I'm not sure I can convince my relatives to join in on the plan, though. It would certainly work between friends with cheap Baofeng portable radios, though the range sure isn't cross-country.

Edit: range wouldn't be cross country on VHF or UHF, which is what Baofengs use.

<comment><USER11> You could build a relay system that lets you galavant across town while sending and receiving messages between your handheld radio <-> house/apartment <-> internet.

<comment><USER12> You can, but not in any secret way, at least not without breaking FCC rules. Encrypted comms on Amateur radio bands aren't permitted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Could get a satellite connection

<comment><USER14> it will be super expensive</comment></comment>


Mindustry sets a new standard for Open Source videogames - <AUTHOR> https://write.as/simone-robutti/mindustry-sets-a-new-standard-for-open-source-videogames <comment><AUTHOR> Resubmit from this thread, where I copied the link wrong (HN doesn't allow you to delete links that have comments):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21352092](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21352092)</comment>


It's Official: Avago Buys Broadcom in $37B Deal - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com.au/avago-to-acquire-broadcom-for-37-billion-2015-5

<comment><AUTHOR> The reason for the deal: as the WSJ noted yesterday, "growth has been hard to come by for Broadcom, a 24-year-old company that makes communications chips for tablets and smartphones, and supplies the Internet links for cable- television and telecommunications devices."

As to why Avago is likewise excited to close the deal, "Avago has been likened to health-care companies such as Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. that are based in foreign tax jurisdictions and also have become voracious acquirers."

So Broadcom is merely the latest "notch on the bedpost", funded with billions in new debt.

<comment><AUTHOR> The press release also mentions $750 million "synergies" in the next 18 months which should translate to about 2000-3000 layoffs.</comment></comment>


D-Term: Mac app to automatically contextualize command line with focused window - <AUTHOR> http://www.decimus.net/dterm.php

<comment><USER2> Placing you automatically in the working directory of the active app is a neat feature. These pop-up/pull-down consoles are common in "alternative" Linux window managers, e.g. Ion3 comes with one built-in (hit alt+space), and there's 'yeahconsole', 'guake', etc., to add the functionality to others, but afaik none of them can do this directory magic.

</comment><comment><USER3> I use cdto, which is a nice simple script that opens up the current Finder location in Terminal.

<http://code.google.com/p/cdto/>

DTerm is more feature-rich, of course. Slick, too. I'll give it a try.

<comment><USER4> cdto is great to have! To reverse this type "open ." in the terminal and your finder will open in that directory too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> @stuntmouse: We're aware of this issue, and it's due to a limitation in Safari. We have an open Radar with Apple on it.

@jaustin, @Groxx: DTerm isn't really meant to be a full-on TTY or a transparent wrapper for a shell. It's more of a shell substitute (which allows it to do things like splitting out the results from the different commands that something not managing its own jobs couldn't do), and can kick over to a full Terminal anytime you need. Think of the analogy DTerm:Terminal::Spotlight:Finder.

While we're not likely to change its "shell substitute" nature, we are indeed interested in making it formally set up a TTY (though it already handles stuff like ANSI color/formatting codes and whatnot), we just haven't gotten around to it yet. Once you understand where the line is drawn it doesn't really impede functionality as you can go to a Terminal anytime. But if you're a TTY guru and would like to help with us getting that into a future guru, drop us a line.

@Groxx: The action menu contains a number of nifty commands. Try playing with modifier keys, too!

<comment><USER6> We have nested comments here. You can reply directly to these users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This looks great! I'm going to give it a try.

 __Edit __: 30-second overview: I enabled automatic updates and sent in the requested anonymous system profile--but both are strictly optional. The default hot-key selection is excellent (Shift+Command+Enter). The set of preferences is small, but useful: font, hide dock icon, hot-key choice and behavior (open/close). The Accessibility pane asks you to mark DTerm as "Trusted" in order to correctly present its window in apps other than Finder. I didn't even realize that it was running again until I tentatively tried the hot-key. It works, it's small, fast, and it works invisibly. Very nice, kudos!

Personally, I'd _love_ to see support for Ctrl+r from BASH. Also, I wonder if there could be some way to use URLs from browsers.

<comment><USER8> Agreed, this is awesome.

I do find that I keep pressing 'up' in order to get to my recent commands and being disappointed. I guess implementing that goes along with implementing ctrl+r.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Since I found this through a comment here a little while ago, it's become part of my regular toolset. Especially with TextMate, where it'll pick up the folder of the item you're working on. I can run an operation on that file / folder really quickly, without needing to mess up the terminal window(s) I typically keep handy. (I'm usually doing Ruby / Rails work with TextMate)

My only real desire (and I know there's a way to do it, I just haven't done it): a way to open a regular Terminal window from dterm. That'd get rid of my need for any "cdto"-like script. Something so I can use `term .` .

Word of warning to users: it's not a TTY. Sometimes this can cause unexpected behavior in a program meant to be run from the terminal, and it's not interactive at all. (I ran across this when my code forked right after printing - Terminal prints normally, this prints as if going to a file, so it printed after forking the buffer)

<comment><USER10> To open a terminal simply press cmd + return.

<comment><USER9> o_O

/me tries

Had to hunt for a while to see where that's listed, now I can't believe I missed it. Many thanks for pointing it out!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A nice compliment to Visor. I wish it played better with Safari's download window though.</comment>


A Penny Saved: Psychological Pricing - <AUTHOR> http://blog.gumroad.com/post/64417917582/a-penny-saved-psychological-pricing <comment><USER2> I love buying when prices are quoted in even amounts, especially if they include the tax. It makes me sad that we humans are so affected by tactics like this and that sellers (rationally) take advantage of them.

<comment><USER3> Me too. I know I'm in the minority with this, but I much prefer to do business (repeatedly) with a firm that isn't employing bullshit tactics. It would be interesting to see a study that reflects the whole cost-per-customer, since resorting to such pricing tricks means you're inevitably attracting consumers who are extremely price driven and who may be harder to upsell or retain.

<comment><USER4> There's a burrito chain in the northeast US called Boloco, and while their prices seem pretty arbitrary, all of the post tax prices are always whole dollar amounts. It's the only place I know of in Boston that does that.

<comment><USER5> As a Brit, I was amazed first time I went to the States with this idea of shops not putting the actual price you're going to pay on stuff.

I don't care how much money the shop is getting, as opposed to the state. All I want to know is how much money I'm going to be spending to get the thing, and I don't want to have to do calculations to work it out.

<comment><USER6> As an American, I'm used to our system, but I don't like it ... but, the tricky part in the US is that sales tax(es) aren't national, so prices differ at state, county, city, and sub-city areas. I single café can build the tax price into their prices, which I do see occasionally, but there's no way to advertise a price of a something, including the tax, nationally (or even across all of my city, Minneapolis, for example).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am hesitant about the value of the data in the chart. It sounds like out of all the products sold via Gumroad, the .99 products convert better than the .00 products. Couldn't that just mean that the sellers who use .99 are savvier with pricing and probably also doing other things to market their products better?

Better data would be the same product sold in .99 and .00 versions. I imagine the conversion rate differences wouldn't be so dramatic in that chart.

<comment><USER8> Good point. I'm sure studies have been done and merchants set such prices accordingly.

This guys appears to have reviewed a number of studies and concurs. BUT...he also thinks that "round" pricing may support luxury branding better. That's partly why you probably can't do simple pricing difference between the same product at the same store.

[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110906144036.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110906144036.htm)

More about the topic: [http://www.quora.com/Pricing/Do-prices-at-99-instead- of-1-00...](http://www.quora.com/Pricing/Do-prices-at-99-instead- of-1-00-result-in-more-sales)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interestingly, in Australia where taxes are in the sticker price, most retail prices are .99 or .95. When I was in the US, where the taxes mean you have no idea what the checkout price will be, it was weird to see so many prices at .29, 39, .59 and so on.

I assume it was tax-related, because forking over cash and getting shitty amounts of coins back is not something that's common in Australia, but a necessity of the way Americans do retail - and a .99/.95 regime helps avoid that. There's no 'leave a penny/take a penny' tray in Australian retail culture, for example. This reasoning is admittedly idle speculation, IANARetailer.

<comment><USER10> > There's no 'leave a penny/take a penny' tray in Australian retail culture, > for example.

There wasn't one when I was a boy in the US, at least not that I remember. I think that they started to be a thing around the time I graduated college, and of course they're now everywhere. Just today I paid for some coffee and got back an integer number of dollars because the clerk made up the cost. Of course, it was in her interest, because I throw change or a dollar into the tip jar when the tab is small enough that the tip is less than a dollar.

<comment><USER11> I down-modded you because references to when you were a boy and when you were in college without actual dates are meaningless to everyone else.

<comment><USER12> I really don't think that's worthy of a downvote, though. Being deliberately obscure with dates and ages can even be interesting sometimes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This gave me a great idea for a defensive firefox plugin, maybe even just a greasemonkey script:

Any number that looks like a price (currency sign nearby with a .99) is automatically rounded up to the next integer when displayed in the browser.

</comment><comment><USER13> I always round prices up that end with .9x. On Kickstarter when prices are $79 I count them as $80. Saving me that minor calculation makes me more likely to buy something, it simply removes an annoyance. Is that really un-normal?

<comment><USER14> I'm not sure. I also do this, but maybe something is happening, even to us, subconsciously.

Maybe the effect goes away if we walk away and remember the price as $80, though.

<comment><USER13> I think one effect might be that when you don't look to closely at something, and later remember the price being just what's before the decimal separator.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't know about this. The post compares items where the seller chooses to price at whole numbers versus where the seller chooses to subtract a penny. It seems to me like a more likely explanation is that less savvy sellers who produce lower quality products are more likely to price at whole numbers. A 100% jump in conversion based on a change of 1 penny seems kind of absurd to me.

If anyone has done controlled tests of this effect and seen comparable results, I'd love to hear about it.

</comment><comment><USER16> I would love a once-and-for-all answer on this topic. Hell, even a rule of thumb like "If you are positioning your product for the mid to high end market, go with X"

<comment><USER17> That's why A/B testing is always a good idea. Try it both ways and see which converts better.

<comment><USER16> I'd love to but I don't have enough traffic to conclude this in faster than like, a year.

<comment><USER18> In that case make your best educated guess and focus on something that matters a lot more to your business right now - driving more traffic to your business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> As an alternative hypotheses, whole number prices are so rare that they might actually less familiar and it's this that causes the lower conversion rate.

</comment><comment><USER20> British supermarkets have plenty of products priced at round pounds, or £x.50. This is particularly the case with BOGOF deals, e.g. two packets of cheese might cost £3 whereas individually they may cost £1.89 each. Why is this?

There are two reasons. The round price is an honest price, nobody has tried to fiddle the price to look less than it is by putting the 99 in there. Secondly, for those shopping to a budget, e.g. not planning to spend more than £20, then it is a lot easier to add up round figures than lots of £x.99's.

The one that I don't understand is £x.95. Why would a retailer want to put (say) a thousand items through the till at £x.95 when they might as well be £x.99? 1000 * 4p is £40. That might not seem a lot of money, however, at minimum wage(!), that is enough for some extra pair of hands on a busy Saturday.

With online retail a lot of websites charge round figures for delivery and services such as gift wrapping. I can see the sense in that, however, it would be good to see an A/B test from a major retailer to see if getting that wrong means more customers bailing out at checkout.

<comment><USER21> Speaking of "two for $X", i've noticed plenty of shops leave it to the consumer to assume that they have to buy two when in fact the price of one is $X/2.

Safeway does this a lot.

<comment><USER22> Back when I worked at Target, it was also this way. As I understood it, the system simply did not allow for a multiple item discount. The "3 for $4" ads did always say, in fine print, something like: unit price $1.33.

What got me was that a 12-pack of certain replacement razors was more expensive than three four-packs. I distinctly remember that one, having done a double take and checking my math with a friend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> When I played on World of Warcraft Auction House the main advantage of this tactic was the fact that it placed your items before all evenly priced items. I've exploited that for a while to move large amounts of inventory.

</comment><comment><USER24> "At Gumroad, we'll stop just shy of letting you charge tenths of cents (come on, gas stations, that's cheating) or allowing the font on your change to be smaller on-screen."

Does that mean they won't allow it in the future?

</comment><comment><USER25> As a consumer I'm pretty aware of this tactic. I probably still fall for it, but I also notice and think better of sellers that don't use it.

</comment><comment><USER26> Any idea why Wal-Mart uses .88 in their pricing?

<comment><USER27> Some retailers use the last digit to encode information about the price, like whether it's controlled by the manufacturer, whether it's a seasonal price, or whether its been marked for clearance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> "geoduck clam", ha.

</comment><comment><USER29> That's the Anchoring Effect. It's not just about 3.99 appearing cheaper than 4.00. It appears cheaper than 3.00 because the 9's make the 3 look small.

$3.29 appears especially cheap. The cheapest-looking price point between $3 and $4 is probably $3.19 or $3.29. ($3.09 isn't as cheap-looking, because the '0' adversely anchors the 3.

There is a trade-off in the appearance of simplicity, of course. If you're selling cars, for example, you get more mileage (no pun intended) out of $29,500 than $29,999.99. Restaurant menus are one example of that, wherein whole numbers ending in '8' and '6' seem to be favored (18, 28, 36).

<comment><USER30> > That's the Anchoring Effect. It's not just about 3.99 appearing cheaper than > 4.00. It appears cheaper than 3.00 because the 9's make the 3 look small.

Compare [http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21588057-scientists-t...](http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21588057-scientists- think-science-self-correcting-alarming-degree-it-not-trouble)</comment></comment>


Why dental insurance is pretty much a scam - <AUTHOR> http://www.collegetimes.tv/dental-insurance/

<comment><USER2> "Despite there being no such thing as "vision insurance" ..."

yes there is. vsp, for example.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great read. Thanks.</comment>