Visualising the 'incidents' in Australian migrant detention centres - <AUTHOR> http://behindthewire.theglobalmail.org/

<comment><AUTHOR> See [http://www.theglobalmail.org/blog/day-by-day-in- detention/63...](http://www.theglobalmail.org/blog/day-by-day-in- detention/635/) for additional context.</comment>


Instagram tells third party apps to cease using 'insta' and 'gram' in their name - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2013/8/19/4638778/instagram-tells-third-party-apps-to-cease-using-insta-and-gram-in <comment><USER2> I got this mail earlier today, too. My Instagram client, "InstaDesk" obviously infringes on these guidelines. I really would have wished that they employ these new guidelines for all future apps, and don't require tens of thousands of past apps to change their name and confuse their users. What's with web apps like webstagram, where users are used to enter the domain. Do they need to change their domain? They will loose their Google search rank, and they will confuse tons of users.

For me it is similar; I'll have to update the @instadesk Twitter and Instagram accounts, care about a domain, rename the app, and probably confuse tons of users that start the app by entering the name into Spotlight on the Mac, and suddenly, after the newest updated, the spotlight search will result empty and they'll think the update deleted the app.

It is all in all an awful situation.</comment>


Why don't UPS drivers turn left? - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/895691/ups-drivers-dont-turn-left-and-it-saves-them-10-million-gallons-of-gas-a-year/?utm_source=atlfb <comment><USER2> Two wrongs don't make a right, but three rights make a left.

I wish more city drivers remembered that. It's difficult to make it a habit-- even I struggle to remind myself to just go around the block sometimes--but it's just so important to remember. A disproportionate number of accidents (especially deadly pedestrian accidents) happen on left turns. It's also often less stressful to go around. A little bit of patience goes a long way. You don't need a computer to tell you that.

The worst is when people stop short, or cut across lanes, to take a left. And similar to swerving to catch an off-ramp or fork, just indefensible. Shooting offenses....

</comment><comment><USER3> I wish route-finding apps (Google Maps, Waze, etc.) more heavily penalized left turns and aggressive/risky maneuvers in their route-costing algorithms, if they do at all.

Waze in particular is frustrating, as it aggressively routes you down side streets with the intent of saving you time, but following its route always seems to result in trying to turn left across two lanes of fast traffic (or pull straight through four lanes) with no traffic signal a minute or two later.</comment>


HTML Parser – Flat HTML to Pug, Jinja2 and Blade Templates - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/app-generator/html-parser <comment><USER2> I wonder how many people just upvoted this based on the keywords in the title.

Because... the github repo is empty. There's a readme and a license file, it was created 9 hours ago, has a bunch of typos, and contains as many references as possible to "AppSeed".

To confuse matters more, the "cutting edge html parser" link (what???) links back to this seemingly empty repo.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sorry for the typos. I will update the readme. I was working on the tool for more than 1 year. A short demo here:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnO1AozqyPA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnO1AozqyPA)

</comment><comment><USER3> Using a GitHub repo as a marketing platform for a paid service asking $159/month. Great work. Not.

</comment><comment><USER4> Great work! A readme with a link to a landing page linking back to the readme.

<comment><USER5> All of the app-generator repos are the same, as far as I can tell: [https://github.com/app-generator](https://github.com/app-generator)

What gives?

<comment><AUTHOR> This DEMO shows more:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnO1AozqyPA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnO1AozqyPA)

I'm working on this for more than 1 year

<comment><USER4> What's the purpose of this submission though?

<comment><AUTHOR> I mean the work behind, is more than a slim readme. Still testing & improving the tool. When I have something usable, I will commit the sources.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Co founder negotiation  - <AUTHOR>

My partner had a previous company which had a loss and was a money pit. He wants our new venture to pay for part of the bill because we are basing off of previous design and concept. The problem is that this guy doesn't know much about technology and the previous company was basically a learning lesson. Any suggestions dealing with this negotiation. <comment><USER2> Hope you're not too committed to this partner. Based on the way you've described it, I'd run screaming from getting in bed with this individual.

Let's try a marriage analogy for giggles. My girlfriend is divorced, and she has a lot of bills from the former marriage. She wants us to get married and pay off her bills because that marriage was similar to what this one would be. She doesn't know much about men and the previous marriage was a learning lesson.

</comment><comment><USER3> My personal opinion is that if you are negotiating with a cofounder then the relationship may already be off on the wrong foot.

Cofounders should be figuring out what the other person wants and needs, not what they can get. Treating the startup as a finite pie just doesn't make sense.

If it must be addressed for the sake of fairness, any sort of previous IP should be handled as a loan from the new company with terms highly favorable to the new company's growth, e.g. a note payable in four years with a low interest rate because if the idea has significant value the payoff from the new company's value will be significantly greater than the loan amount, and if it has little value, then the company will probably be defunct when the note comes due.

With two of you, it should be 50-50 with a vesting schedule or walk away.

</comment><comment><USER4> The two entities are completely unrelated, except for having him as an employee of both.

If the first venture was truly a _company_ , as in a corporation, then frankly any vendors/bills related to that can be left hanging without making him personally responsible. I know this isn't the "ideal" thing, but it happens frequently.

If he personally guaranteed any debt for that company, then that is is _personal_ problem and has no bearing on your new company (which I hope for multiple reasons is being properly incorporated).

I don't see where it makes much sense to handicap the new venture to cover his personal issues, that is what is usually chalked up to "learning experience" and is, if anything, part of the value he brings to this new venture vs. a person with no experience. Or, to put it another way, if it were not for that experience he might have zero value in the current case, in which he would have the same debt obligations, but no potential income to cover them...

</comment><comment><USER5> To offer somewhat different advice, you could simply try and value his earlier efforts, not based on how much he's lost on his earlier company, but on how much the knowledge is worth to you.

For example, if you two started out as 50-50 partners and wanted to buy this knowledge from someone else, how much would you pay for it? Divide that cost by two, and that's how much you should "pay" your cofounder, whether in equity or cash.

The common wisdom is 50-50 no matter what, and it's a good rule of thumb; you don't want to feel like you have more or less at stake than he does and vice versa. If you're going to compensate him for his previous work, issue debt from your new company or pay upfront; I'd avoid changing the 50-50 split as much as possible.

And, of course, as other posters have mentioned, it could be that your current negotiating position indicates something negative about your cofounder, which is possible, but I don't think that's necessarily true.

<comment><USER5> On second thought, forget what I said about dividing the value by two. Brain fart.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd say... lawyer up?

</comment><comment><USER7> If you haven't seen it already, grab a copy of "Getting to yes". It's a quick read and research based.

Best of luck.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> thanks guys!</comment>


Favicons in Safari with OS Mojave - <AUTHOR> Favicons in safari are now a thing in Mojave! <comment><USER2> I think you mean "in tabs". Safari has always supported favicons: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Favicon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Favicon)

</comment><comment><USER3> If there ever was an example of how Apple has let their browser languish.

</comment><comment><USER4> 10 years too late...</comment>


Would You Take an 8% Pay Cut to Work from Home? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-07/would-you-take-an-8-pay-cut-to-work-from-home <comment><USER2> I would take an 8% raise. If I'm working from home, that is one less capital expense the company has to invest in me, in the form of office space and office perks. I would not volunteer to work from home if it had any chance of decreasing my productivity. As such, that is more money in the company's pocket that they should reinvest back into the employees so they have the option of replicating office perks back at home (equipment, coffee, snacks, things like that).

<comment><USER3> Really? You dont consider working from home a perk?

<comment><USER4> Is it a perk to work in a company's office? Where you work should not modify your compensation.

<comment><USER5> My company probably spends millions to rent it's office. It also has a kitchen with a lot of free food and coffee available. So, they'd probably save a lot of money to have a smaller office with fewer people in it, and I'd spend more money on coffee if I worked from home. There are certainly pros and cons for both, and costs associated with those things.

<comment><USER4> I admit, I'm biased. My day job is fully remote (the entire company), and the company treats us extremely well. In return for saving them rent on an office space, we have no commute, the ability to work from anywhere with an internet connection, and so on (vacation time is easier to use when you're already living somewhere exotic versus having to travel from some major metro in the US). Saved office expenses are dollars that can go into growing the business or employee perks. I don't mind paying for the coffee; I'm still ahead thousands of dollars a year from not needing a car and commuting each day. To each their own of course!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sure, I would take an 8% cut of an average Silicon Valley developer salary as a remote worker :)

Hint: I'm in the EU.

</comment><comment><USER7> 8% less than a Bay Area market-rate salary to be able to work from wherever I want? Sounds great. There are co-working spaces all over the place now. Get a floating desk at one of them and you can still get that office atmosphere when you need it.

<comment><USER8> This is the one area where I think a pay-cut _might be warranted_. If the cost of living is sufficiently different from the employer's location and my own, I'd expect a pay cut.

However, the impression I get from the article is that people are willing to take the pay cut of the prevailing wage they'd expect to be paid for the same job in the area they currently live. I live in a suburb of Detroit. I'm employed full time for a US/UK/Australian company working for a team in the UK and am paid at around the market rate for the area I live in. I accepted this job with a pay increase from my previous employer who also paid me at around the market rate for where I live despite my working from home for several years. At no point did my previous employer ask me to take a pay cut when I started working from home, nor did they reduce the compensation increases/bonuses once I started working from home.

My work from home arrangements at my previous employer were "semi-official". The company had a defined "work from home policy" and outside of myself and one other member of my team, it was expressly forbidden. I began working from home by using the "rockstar method" \-- I became a critical member of not just my team, but the organization. I was given flexibility to conduct my work in whatever manner I required as long as my obligations were met (which they always were). I left that team, though, mainly because part of the agreement was that I keep quiet about working at home. I was located in an office that no other members of my team were in, so this meant not making it obvious during conference calls because management didn't want to receive grief from other high-performing team-members who were disallowed from working at home due to upper management disliking the practice (they routinely performed work- site walk-throughs to see how many empty desks there were). This "butts in chairs upper management" style spoke a lot to how the company was managed -- in general -- and was ultimately the reason I left. I'm still cautious of this if for no other reason than habit, but mostly because it is unprofessional to have children yelling or dogs barking in the background of a teleconference where people are already expecting you're only half-paying attention, anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What a strange short article.

As a remote worker I'd suggest paying people their market rate and then some. Finding good remote workers is very difficult.

<comment><AUTHOR> By accepting remote work, they open the candidate pool to the whole world. You compete with people having potentially much lower living costs. Why would they pay "market rate" if they are in a city with high rates?

<comment><USER10> There are challenges and costs employing remote workers in significantly different timezones. So you mostly compete with other workers in nearby timezones.

<comment><USER11> I live in France and work East Coast hours. My time zone is my problem, not the employer's. The 'boss' needs me for a 6pm Eastern Time meeting? I'll be there. If I am employee, I work when I am needed; my location shouldn't be their concern.

<comment><USER10> Most people are not excited to work super weird hours. More power to you, I guess, but I wouldn't be pleased to be asked to attend a meeting at midnight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am sure many developers (and not only) enjoy coming to the office, having free coffee, socializing with their colleagues, doing pair programming, etc. On the other hand, for some, working from home gives them an opportunity to be _much_ more productive. This is like working in a private office, with the door closed. That is, unless, of course, you have a lot of distraction, such as having to do chores or kids running around and making all kinds of noise. Many escape to the office for that exact reason.

<comment><USER13> How about working from home 2 days a week, where everyone agrees with those two days are?

So you still have in-person collaboration on the other 3 days, say, Monday Wednesday Thursday.

<comment><USER11> Then I'm stuck living within commuting distance of the employer -- that means a position I could be perfect for would be ignored. That limits the talent pool to those that are willing to work in a particular location. That also means companies have to locate to insanely expensive locations just to be around talent -- which is less money that goes into growing the business.

Face to face is overrated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A lot of people travel 2 hours per day in a commute. If they take the train, it can be around 3900 a year in season ticket rail passes. No one pays you for it. What a bloody waste of time.

</comment><comment><USER15> I would take an 8% paycut to be free of the nonsensical 9-5 schedule.

</comment><comment><USER16> I've been working remotely for the last few years, and I don't miss the office at all. However, I wouldn't really mind driving to work or taking a train. You get some time to listen to podcasts, or think, or just do nothing and clear your head. I have to actively make time for that now that I work remotely. Sometimes I get too busy and forget to do nothing for a while.

There's also something nice about traveling to and from work, where there's a separation between work and home. I've just moved into an apartment where I have one room as an office, so that should be nice.

Another thing is that when you're freelancing as a software developer, sometimes you can turn that into a pay raise. It works especially well if your plan is to have long stretches of time without paid work, so you can work on your own side projects. There's also some clients who are happy for you to work 20 hour weeks, which is very easy to get used to. I find context switching to be really hard though, so I prefer to work two 10 hour days. And sometimes I enjoy going full-time on a project for a few months, and then taking a long break for a few months.

But yes, I would still be prepared to take a pay cut in order to work from home. Well, if "home" includes anywhere in the world.

<comment><USER8> I hear ya on the podcasts. When I had a 2-hour round-trip commute for several years, I listened to a few hundred audio books. Up to that point I had read probably two fiction books over the course of my entire life (outside of required reading for school)[0].

After a few years I could hold my own in conversations about literature and found myself really enjoying some of the classics. I find it almost impossible to listen to audio books when I'm not driving or doing some muscle-memory exercise like cutting the lawn/driving/riding a bike, so without that consistent drive time, I haven't gotten to enjoy a good book in several years. It's not even worth downloading them any longer because I know it'll take two years to finish one book and I'll forget where I left off between listens.

[0] I'm a speed reader (skimming/scanning style, not the "gimmicky" speed reading that is advertised these days) and find it difficult to read fiction without using my training. Speed reading fiction is like turning to the back of the book to see how it ends before starting the book -- it ruins fiction -- so the only fiction reading I enjoy is narrated to me (by Scott Brick, if I'm lucky) on Audible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I can say without a doubt YES, because I did exactly that 3 years ago. It ended up being about 10%, and bit drop in quality of insurance. After three years at home I can't imagine going back to working in an office again. I'd take another pay cut to stay working at home until the day I retire, or die (which may come first if I keep taking pay cuts to work from home).

I save so much time and money working from home, but by far the best thing is being able to manage the kids and other assorted family stuff would just be impossible if I wasn't here.

</comment><comment><USER18> I drop about ten percent of my pay, after tax, to get to and from work. So this would be a pay rise. Yes please.

<comment><USER19> That seems a lot, how are you getting to work?

<comment><USER18> Train, about 50 minutes platform to platform. It's cheaper than living closer.

They're expensive in the UK. It's not uncommon to see people spending four thousand pounds and up for their annual train ticket.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I took a 8% pay cut to work from home when I accepted a new position. The company said they couldn't match my currently salary but living in NY and being able to move to a lower priced housing and not having to pay for the commute more then made up for the loss in income. Not to mention the peace of mind and flexibility of working and not having to deal with the NYC commute, I think it's been well worth it personally.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'd hate to work from home , I just don't find it as a benefit. Home is home. The office is where the work happens. I like to keep these things separated..

<comment><USER22> Office space is cheaper per sq ft that residential in most US cities. If I was a long term remote worker, I would rent a small office somewhere. It is also easier to deduct off your taxes that way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've been working remotely for the past 6 years. More and more I am having to compete with offshore, and with the boss's expectations that working "in the comfort of your own home" means you deserve a pay cut.

I make it a policy of mine to visit the office once or twice a week for design and planning, so the social aspect keeps me sane. I find it a good balance.

I've recently started looking for a job for the pay increase due to cost of living pressures and because of the culture prevailing of bosses needing to see butts in seats it will most likely be on-premises.

We've been priced out of the market for housing, so we have to live further out. It would involve three hours commuting a day. The pay increase is almost negated by the erosion of your hourly rate when you factor in time and expense of the commute. Not to mention the time being in a car and train rather with my kids.

</comment><comment><USER24> Drawing conclusions from call center jobs (the article) to developer jobs is fraught with problems primarily as call center jobs are about delivered service time (availability for and handling of calls) and developer jobs are about delivered value (written and/or deleted lines of code).

</comment><comment><USER25> I am taking an indirect pay cut staying with my current employer which allows for remote work rather than getting a much higher paying job that requires a daily commute. Working from home 4 days a week and then going into the office around 10 am after traffic settles is definitely a perk. A daily commute would probably require me to buy a newer vehicle which would definitely eat into any gains in salary anyways. My employer has struggled lately with layoffs so I am constantly evaluating my job prospects. So instead of commuting I am building up my consulting business.

<comment><USER8> I've seen this play out a few times and I hesitate to offer advice only because I don't wish it to be taken negatively, so please accept this as respectfully as I can offer it.

I worked at a company that performed layoffs about every 6 months of around 10% of the staff of the entire company for around 17 years. You're doing the right thing by constantly evaluating your job prospects. The risk you've taken, now, though is that you've made yourself less visible and easier to lay off. Your manager will feel less badly about letting you go because you're not around to be reminded of. By taking a 4-day work-week, you're also getting less done which will further make the case for "not needing you". The staff who is not working at home -- assuming they are not allowed to do so -- will also start to resent the fact that you've been treated specially and may start to sabotage you subtly/unconsciously (or if they're particularly nasty people -- intentionally). This will further make the case for why you should be the next to go.

There is a large plus-side though, particularly if you're like many HN readers and are employed in software development -- you are in a good position to find a remote job elsewhere. Hiring _good_ remote employees is difficult and makes employers uncomfortable because it's hard to know how someone will fare with a work-at-home position. One of the key factors looked for in _any_ position is experience and you can now state on your resume/in an interview that you have experience working, successfully, remotely. That experience is further bolstered by the fact that you're employed by a struggling company who routinely lets people go and _you 're still employed there despite being a remote employee_. I'd _strongly_ advise updating your resume if you are not interested in consulting full time or putting enough energy into your consulting business to be able to transition to it full time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Working from home may sound good only to those who haven't done it for a longer period of time. Having flexible hours is good to have, but only when you really need it (e.g. family visit, some delivery, some time off). Cut itself makes no sense, at least here in Denmark (Lithuanian here) if you work at the office you don't have to worry about food and coffee - at home you would.

<comment><USER27> I've worked from home for 6 years now.

Maybe my situation is a little different - I have 3 kids and my wife is a stay at home mom.

It's been great and I highly recommend it if at some point you realize you are a family man (or woman).

<comment><USER8> It's kind of amazing what it does for your marriage. I've seen both sides of it, myself. In both cases, my wife was also stay-at-home.

My first marriage was actually _damaged_ by working at home. My wife was an introvert and I think having me around all the time hurt things (we were not particularly compatible to begin with which was exacerbated when I went from working 50-60 hours a week away to working most days at home).

My current marriage is greatly helped by it. There's nobody I'd rather share my time with than my wife and she feels the same. A lot of people will say what I said in the last paragraph applies to them -- they'd hate their spouse if they had to spend every waking minute with them and couldn't get away from time to time, but her and I thrive in the situation. I think it helps that her dad and mom were both small business owners who ran things out of their home and worked together on everything. It helps me because my wife is non- technical and by being around while I'm working/talking on conference calls, she understands more about what I do and the things I struggle with at work so she can offer more support/understanding to me than if I had to explain it all to her (it also avoids me _having_ to spend hours explaining things). My four children _love_ that I'm at home at all times. Even though they're respectful of the fact that I have to work and try not to bother me while I'm busy, they know I'm there if something important comes up. This is especially important since two of my children are step-'s and we're blending a family. The complexity of emotions that kids go through is helped by the stability of the fact that I'm seen as "always present" in the moment and at the time.

<comment><USER27> Yep, I understand your situation. Somehow I lucked into the second situation that you outlined. I think I'm exceedingly lucky that I missed the first situation - it seems to be the common case these days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've been remote working for the past 10 years or so.. with a large part of it for a mostly remote company.

However, When first got into remote working, I accepted a lower amount for the benefits outlined.. but then learned nobody else did... So I short-changed myself.

I wouldn't now.. either I take the rate I need with WFH provision, or I don't take the gig.

</comment><comment><USER29> I just took a fairly large pay cut (more than 8%) to work remotely.

Is there a distinction between working remotely and working from home?

<comment><USER30> I think so, traveling and adventuring through the world while working seems more worth a pay cut than just not needing to drive to an office.

<comment><USER31> > _traveling and adventuring through the world while working_

I have been trying to do this for years, and it's much harder than it sounds on the surface. I'm in West Africa now, for reference.

When you work for a company (or even just take a contract of some form) the company wants you to be available on their schedule. So you have to live the hours of the country you're "working for".

This gets really hard when you have travel days (or weeks), when you want to go someplace remote, have limited or no connectivity, want to do something with locals in the plae you're in, want a social life, etc. etc.

Maybe you can do it if "traveling and adventuring through the world" means staying put in a large city in a more-or-less developed country, but otherwise, it's very hard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I would not want to work home even if i got a 8% raise.

Working at home is boring, and unmotivational.

</comment><comment><USER8> Absolutely not. I've advised everyone looking for remote work to _never_ undercut their salary or treat the remote job as a "perk"[0].

There are downsides to working at home -- disconnection from the team (if the team is not entirely remote), additional pressure to be deliberate about social behavior, the elimination of the lines between "work" and "home" and having to keep yourself in check to make sure you don't end up just "working all of the time" and the perception that working from home _isn 't working at all_ which is often the case when an employer thinks that they can reduce a person's salary if they offer them the opportunity to work from home.

The problem with accepting a lower salary is that you're opening yourself up to a working environment where the bosses _believe_ they're doing you a favor and will expect more in return than just that salary. There's a risk that they will respect the work you do _less_ or assume you're _on a perpetual vacation_ because you're working from a home office rather than a building they've paid for. Your work and contribution should speak for itself and your management should understand that it takes a special skill (and valuable) skill set to work from home successfully. By treating it as a perk, these facts are ignored.

After 7 years of working in an office, 4 of working split between home and office and 7 working exclusively from home, I can say from my own, anecdotal, experience that working from home makes me _far more effective_ at the job I'm tasked with. To start, switching to working at home eliminated a 2-hour round- trip commute. That time didn't all get shifted to work, but at least half of it did. Because I work from home, I have the most effective tools for doing my job with me at all times. When I was in the office, I had two workstations that I did most of my work on and a laptop that I rarely used except when at home. Working in development, I tended to have moments of inspiration hit at non-work times (9:00 PM) and when that'd happen, I'd look at the laptop and run through in my mind all of the things I'd have to set up to be able to take advantage of that inspiration and would often think "yeah, I'll just wait until the morning". And by morning, that inspiration had expired. Because I do my entire job at home, I can take advantage of this inspiration without any friction, now. I'm currently employed by a team that is entirely located in the UK. One of the reasons I was hired was because I'm located in a time-zone that matches many of our customers. This benefits my employer which makes a pay-cut inappropriate.

In the office, you've got an unofficial social pressure to keep the same schedule as your coworkers: 8-5 with a noonish lunch, usually. There are several "personal things" that can't be done over the internet still, today[1]. These places often have a day or two a week to accommodate day-job folks, but you'll be waiting in line with _all of the others_ about five times longer than you would if you picked a more ideal time[2].

All of this equates to _more time available to work_ and I probably work an average of 50 hours/week without even trying. The difference is that at home it _feels_ like a 40-hour work week and sometimes it feels like far less than that. To my _family_ it feels like a _much_ shorter work-week because I'm home for them. I can sit in the living room and work while my kids play. I can be there when the little things come up. My kids will tell you "daddy's always there" because ... well ... I am! They can even sit in on a conference call and get to know what it's like to have a career.

This is not to say that there aren't downsides for the employer. There's less collaboration[3] and collaboration intensive work may suffer as a result, especially if the work-from-home employees don't have the required skill set. It's also too easy to focus on those downsides. It's better to look at it as a trade-off. Less facilities costs, more work time, greater "focused time", and (probably) happier employees. Employee happiness can equate to better work product and there are few things that will have a bigger impact on employee happiness than work-time/location flexibility provided it's managed properly. Management _has to be better_ , too. No longer can you rely on "butts-in- chairs" management where a person's contribution is determined solely on how frequently you peer in and see that person working. Effectiveness has to be measured by project completion and more concrete variables.

[0] There's one case where this doesn't fit - cost of living. If you're taking a job in New York and you live in South Dakota, I wouldn't expect to be making the same amount of money as someone who is required to find a place to live in NYC and accept the accompanying expenses. This is one of the biggest perks to _accepting_ remote employees -- the ability to hire in a cheaper part of the country from where "the office" resides and comes with much of the same benefits (and fewer of the downsides) of off-shoring to a cheaper-labour country. I also work in software development which I believe is one of the (many) jobs that can be done remotely with little sacrifice on the side of the employer and many benefits for both employer and employee. It probably doesn't fit similarly for many other jobs.

[1] Some driver's license related things, dropping off equipment at Comcast/Verizon's hell-hole, almost anything to do with a mortgage, that missed package that needed to be signed for requiring you to go to the Post Office, UPS or FedEx, doctor's office or lab work needing to be done and on and on.

[2] I've learned 1:45-2:30 is the sweet spot - the bank teller has no lines, the mortgage broker has nobody in their chairs, the salon will let you walk in without an appointment and see you immediately and even the DMV (Secretary of State in MI) will have about 5 people in front of you. Service is also better (particularly at the DMV) because the staff isn't stressed -- often having just returned from lunch.

[3] It's hard to argue that you'd get the same level of collaboration having entirely remote staff than you do when there's a shared, common, office. But given the right tools, collaboration doesn't have to be a problem. There's also the issue of over-collaboration. There are times when _I need to keep my head down and be able to work on complex code without interruption_. When you have a shared office -- especially some of these "Agile-type" offices where there's no separation between employees -- the office culture can become one of interruptions.</comment>


UTF-8 bit by bit (2001) - <AUTHOR> https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/UTF%2D8+bit+by+bit <comment><USER2> Here's a potentially random question: Is UTF-8 essentially a fancy way of representing arbitrary precision BigInts where the character-to-integer mapping is specified by Unicode, and which coincides with ASCII encodings on a certain range of numbers?

<comment><USER3> UTF-8 is a "fancy" way of representing 32 bit integers in a self-synchronising byte format.

I can see an extension to 7 bytes (by making the leading byte 11111110 which I think would still be unambiguous) going up to 37 bits, but at 8 bytes you'd start getting collisions in the byte patterns and would lose the self- synchronising properties.

<comment><USER4> You could in theory extend the pattern up to 42 bits:

        0xxxxxxx
        110xxxxx 10xxxxxx
        1110xxxx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx
        11110xxx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx
        111110xx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx
        1111110x 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx
        11111110 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx
        11111111 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx

<comment><USER3> True, not sure why I figured FF was not an acceptable LBP.

Possibly because I assumed you'd need a special continuation byte and all of them would be unavailable, but the existing continuation bytes work fine so that's just not correct. FF could even lead to special patterns of continuation bytes allowing for smuggling more data in there I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This leaves a question: what of 0xFF? It can't be a "trailer", and has no trailing zero required of a "locomotive". No worries, it's simply forbidden.

<comment><USER6> If you are processing UTF-8 and can't handle "forbidden" (for example you are in a language with no exception handling, or this is code which has a must- never-fail constraint) you should treat whatever forbidden sequence you've encountered as U+FFFD ("Replacement Character") and continue. The replacement character is commonly visually represented as a black diamond with a white question mark inside it, so humans will recognise that this means something went wrong, while a machine can't confuse U+FFFD with any letter, digit, white space, or other commonly used element it may be treating specially so this prevents many potential attacks on a parser.

The article is unfortunate because it's actually handling a common non-UTF-8 encoding in which U+0000 is encoded differently so as to keep C-style null- terminated string semantics while allowing the NUL character. You should probably avoid the necessity for such semantics.

<comment><USER7> This special encoding of the null character is Modified UTF-8 and is used by various Java and JVM APIs and in Java class files.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8#Modified_UTF-8](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8#Modified_UTF-8)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I found this analogy of trains and railcars good but I'm lost on this bit

(110)00000 (10)000000 => C0 80

EDIT: OK I asssume he's referring to C and octal here and not a hexadecimal and decimal numbers?

<comment><USER9> Binary 11000000 10000000 = hexadecimal C0 80.

<comment><USER8> Thank you, got it now!

I think he might have been clearer if he'd said

"To represent a NUL byte without any physical NUL bytes, we _don 't discard the indicators and instead_ treat it like a character above ASCII, which must be a minimum two bytes long 11000000 10000000 => hexadecimal C0 80."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One small fun fact: utf8 uses big-endian.</comment>


Handbook of Applied Cryptography (2001) - <AUTHOR> http://cacr.uwaterloo.ca/hac/ <comment><USER2> This is _old_ cryptography. This book should not be quite as bad for its readers as Schneier's Applied Cryptography (which includes many ciphers which were known to be broken at the time, with little hint of that fact in the text), but it's still old-fashioned.

E.g.

\- Chapter 7 "block ciphers" doesn't even _mention_ CTR mode, but does mention CFB and OFB. Modern cryptosystems all use CTR mode, and no new system I'm aware of uses CFB or OFB.

\- Chapter 8 "Public-Key Encryption" doesn't even _mention_ elliptic-curve cryptography, despite almost all new cryptosystems being based on that in some form or another. This chapter also doesn't appear to mention RSA padding, which is crucial to a secure RSA implementation.

\- Chapter 9 "Hash Functions and Data Integrity" doesn't mention anything newer than SHA-1. But SHA-1 is thoroughly deprecated, and will be broken in the next few years.

Just buy a new book instead; I hear good things about Cryptography Engineering, and I liked "An Introduction to Modern Cryptography" (more mathematical, less engineering-focused).

<comment><USER3> What about the updated Cryptography engineering book by Schneier et al? Do you have any experience with it?

<comment><USER4> [http://sockpuppet.org/blog/2013/07/22/applied-practical- cryp...](http://sockpuppet.org/blog/2013/07/22/applied-practical- cryptography/)

<comment><USER5> Aside from Stack Exchange, are there any other good cryptography Q&A forums:

[http://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=votes](http://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=votes)

[http://security.stackexchange.com/tags](http://security.stackexchange.com/tags)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you are looking for a free book about applied cryptography, in my opinion this is the best you can find:

[https://crypto.stanford.edu/~dabo/cryptobook/](https://crypto.stanford.edu/~dabo/cryptobook/)

<comment><USER7> And Dan Boneh's Coursera course is excellent too (maybe one day he will get around to doing the endlessly postponed part 2).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Some chapters in this book (e.g. Chapter 4) contain very useful knowledge about practical algorithms for working with the underlying mathematical objects used as cryptographic primitives. Some that I found particularly useful in studying elliptic curve cryptography was the section on irreducible polynomials over finite fields.

</comment><comment><USER9> Anyone have any thoughts on Communication System Security ([https://www.crcpress.com/Communication-System- Security/Chen-...](https://www.crcpress.com/Communication-System- Security/Chen-Gong/9781439840368))?

I learned quite a bit from this book in undergrad which is also written by a UW professor (Guang Gong).

</comment><comment><USER10> 2001? Call an appeal to authority but I'll wait and see what tptacek has to say about this.</comment>


Would you rather use: QBasic + worlds best IDE or (favorite language) + Notepad - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2005/01/its-the-ide-dummy.html <comment><USER2> I could hardly disagree more. Surplus complexity is a cognitive tax. I want to use the simplest tools which get the job done so that I can focus my attention on the problem, and not on the machinery I am using to solve the problem.</comment>


Developers don't do cover letters - <AUTHOR> http://adamhallett.com/?p=1405

<comment><USER2> I've never written a cover letter. In fact, I've only needed a resume once in my life so far (I'm 31, been employed steadily in the field since I was 15) - and that was just so the company could "keep it on file." (I have no idea why it mattered to them - they had already hired me before even seeing one!)

I hope this trend continues for me. :)

</comment><comment><USER3> "He said it was refreshing that someone took the time to write a cover letter because 99% of developers don't bother."

I find this hard to believe. I might believe that 99% of applicants don't. But not 99% of developers.

<comment><USER4> I believe it. I know many programmers who are very passive interviewees, too. "It's his job to interview me" said one friend, a man I recommended for an opening at my then-workplace, The man was obviously far better than I am, though he had been unemployed for the previous year (in part due to his poor interviewing skills.) When he got rejected, after talking to both my friend and my boss, as far as I can tell, the boss was kinda busy and distracted, and my friend just passively answered the questions he was asked rather than using those questions as a way to jump in to some story bragging about himself like I would have. Also, my boss was suspicious that the only job on the resume for the last few years was working for me.

Now, my friend was able to finally get an employment agency to notice him, (one that did not know that my business, at the time, was probably less than a $10K/year affair) and as the man really was good, he was able to leverage that in to a full time job and has been working since.

The thing is, programmers use those sorts of sales skills a lot less often than other professions do, so many good programmers almost entirely lack those sales skills, which can be a huge problem if you get stuck in a situation where you don't have someone else nearby who knows you are good.</comment></comment>


SSB Rooms: a new server type for Scuttlebutt - <AUTHOR> https://www.manyver.se/blog/announcing-ssb-rooms <comment><USER2> Manyverse still has the direct friend-to-friend invites, right? I'm pretty sure Patchwork still doesn't have this :/

If I could connect to the friends I know in person first, that would be great.

I think social networks gain momentum by being useful to real friendships and then the discovery aspect kicks in later. If it's all about finding random internet friends, it's going to set the tone for the whole life of the network.

All of the long-time users will be cemented in their random internet relationships and will be hesitant to then mix their real life relationships into that later on. It's just normal that these different social circles organize and it's normal that people don't typically mix them.

<comment><USER3> To me, it's the other way around. Most of my real friendships were initiated by contacts on social networks. This is the only way I could have met a number of wonderful people who live far away from my city.

And transparency, (tunable) FOAF features is exactly what made it possible rather quickly. If anybody here remembers FriendFeed, they had this mechanics well-polished. (They also invented the Like button.)

<comment><USER2> >And transparency, (tunable) FOAF features is exactly what made it possible rather quickly

I'm interested in hearing more about what "FOAF" is and some examples of what you mean :)

<comment><USER4> At a guess I'd assume `FOAF` = `Friend of a Friend`.

<comment><USER2> Probably, thanks.

Iris (built with Gun) has "degrees of separation" as well. [https://iris.to/](https://iris.to/)

I believe SSB does have degrees, but I'm not sure how many.

<comment><USER5> They like to call the relationships "hops" in SSB. I think Manyverse replicates only 2 hops (the people you follow directly and then the people they follow), but the desktop client replicates 3 hops.

<comment><USER2> I think the reason that SSB isn't super well documented yet is probably because the protocol is still subject to change and not yet set in stone. I think Manyverse tweeted something about how SSB might get mutability and a delete propagation message in the future even.

Regarding "degrees of separation". I think it makes sense to have the degrees be

1\. "I have met this person in real life, known them for a long time, and can confirm that they are who they say they are".

2\. "I only know this person through the app, but we both like and respect each other and are friends"

3\. This is either a 1st or 2nd degree relationship of one of my 1st or 2nd degree relationships.

So theoretically 1 and 2 are the same, the difference being you like scanned a physical QR code verifying 1 and know them IRL for example.

That way the degrees can double as a "web of trust" that serves as identity verification.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does anyone know of an HN room or pub we can join? I've been wanting to try SSB out but never really clicked with a community.

</comment><comment><USER7> Apologies, @staltz could you expand more? Is this centralized? Or federated, along the lines of Mastodon?

Why not do this decentralized? Should be possible. NAB (p2p Reddit) does something similar with GUN via "spaces" that are under a public key, but requires no centralized host/server/etc. should be trivial to do the same in SSB.

<comment><USER2> Seems like it's federated and if you really connect with someone you meet, you can probably choose to become "friends" and store each others' directly, bypassing that federated/centralized server.

<comment><USER8> SSB as a _technology_ is about as decentralized as it gets. All posts are stored locally, you can write posts and replies and do everything offline. Then when you share some medium with other peers, they gossip all their updates, as well of the updates of their friends and friends of friends.

That medium _can_ be a shared wifi (if it allows UPD multicast) or it can be bluetooth (only for manyverse so far... desktop bluetooth gossip is haaaard) but at the moment, the shared "medium" is often an internet server. These servers ("pubs") are not any different from normal ssb peers, they just expose a public IP and don't have NAT.

There's two issues that people take with pubs:

1\. They make the ecosystem less decentralized, moving it more towards a sort of federation. But it's not like you _only_ connect to the pubs you select. Usually an ssb application will connect to many different pubs that it knows about, so there's no single point of failure there. 2\. Following a pub means that you get blasted with a fire hose full of random strangers' (everyone who signed up for that pub, plus their friends) posts, which take up space on your drive, and (more importantly) need to be verified and indexed locally. That makes onboarding very slow and tedious, especially on mobile devices.

Rooms relate to the latter. They're an easy way to have a pub server that only connects you to the group of people you want to be connected to. Well, if you don't share invites to it around freely that is. And it's simple to set up, even for less technical people. Maybe think of it like a NAT traversal with extra crypto. Like that, onboarding a friend onto SSB is a bit more elegant: you still give them an invite, but to a room for a social circle that they already fit into, or even a room just for you and them. Now instead of having to let the device sit and digest a thousand feeds over night, it only gets the feeds they would want to know about. It's much more like local off-grid onboarding.</comment></comment></comment>


HPE wants Oracle to pay $3B for breach of Itanium contract - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/article/3077320/software/hpe-wants-oracle-to-pay-3-billion-for-breach-of-itanium-contract.html <comment><USER2> Several years ago Oracle posted some very amusing HP internal documents about their Itanium efforts:

[http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/features/itanium-346707.h...](http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/features/itanium-346707.html)</comment>


Ask HN: How did you hack the press when you launched your startup(s)? - <AUTHOR> How did you get on TC, RWW etc? Did you know your journalist before pitching him/her? How many signups/users/downloads did the post refer? How did it affect the future of your startup? <comment><USER4> I launched a t shirt line a bit ago and got press in a decently hackerish way. The t shirts were geared toward gamers so I went to Alltop.com and scraped all of the blogs in the sections of gaming, t shirts, etc.. Used amazon turk to turk for the emails of those blogs, about 300 or so. Created a unique promo code for a percent off that was derived from the blogs name in the url. Used mailgun to construct and send the emails to all of the bloggers. Since the code was personalized, most thought they were receiving a personal email. The end result was about 15 blogs writing about the shirts, some of which were referred to me by the original bloggers, some of which held contests. One even interviewed me at a larger blog she does a column for.

<comment><USER5> Please, expand in the amazon turk to turk for getting emails.

<comment><USER4> On Mturk you upload a spreadsheet of the urls. Set up the "hits" so as to ask the worker to go the url and try to find a contact email. If they find the email they enter it in the "hit", if they find a contact form, they select contact form, if there's nothing they enter in an X or something else, you can decide. For just an email you can pay anywhere between 1-3 cents. For 300 urls you get this done in a day usually. You can put in filters for the quality of workers, I usually keep them pretty strict. You are suppose to go back and check the quality of the workers and approve or reject an answered "hit", though for the $3 - $5 that you'd be paying for this, it's not worth it, just approve all. After the turking you end up with a spreadsheet of all the urls and emails.

<comment><USER6> Is it possible to setup a turk where an ad is submitted to a message board? If so how?

Thank you

<comment><USER4> Not entirely sure what you mean. Mturk has an api, a lot of people use it for quality assurance, like checking images for nudity or stuff like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's not just about hacking the press. Sometimes it's plain just learning to interface with people and having a unique angle on a story.

Most press I've seen from friends being TC'ed is minimal. Unless your customers are people who read TC, the effect is minimal to converted customers. They had a ton of visitors which might have increased mindshare. TC can be a vanity metric if you're not careful, especially if TC's audience is not your paying customers. It helps be legit in having (some) press coverage, but it doesn't last if you can't back it up and delight people.

If you're doing what everyone else is doing to get coverage in the same places, the chances are greater you'll end up like everyone else (a startup that doesn't get where it needs to).

Focus on learning who your customers are, where they truly hang out, get their attention in those places, be it through story placement or advertising since not all sites use adsense, and some very successful sites have their own advertising engines.

Quality of eyeballs on your site is a far better metric to pursue than quantity.

<comment><USER8> Yes, I think most first-time entrepreneurs have a fantasy about how all they need to kickstart the viral growth is a bit of coverage in the major tech blogs. But the reality is that unless your site is squarely targeting early adopters (the ficklest of markets) and your product is knocking the socks of jaded San Francisco tech hipsters (well-nigh impossible against such perpetually-bored countenances), then this coverage is going to net you next to nothing.

In the reality you should take the time when your traffic is small to reach out to customers and get early feedback and polish the product as much as possible. The more work you put into based on real feedback from real users before the numbers get big, the greater the quality of the first impressions as your target audience trickles in.

Once your product is good enough, there are many ways to get users in. Press is one of them, but in my experience it comes on its own and is not worth putting much time in compared to more targeted user acquisition. In general, word of mouth will always always be the best, and that takes a great product.

<comment><USER9> Very well said.

<comment><USER10> Let me say it clearly: I've had more visitors from being featured on HN than from TC and mashable together.

I'm not even talking about the conversion rates and the quality that HN brings over TC/Mashable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I agree with J45, but if you really want to get press, here are some strategies that we used early on.

1\. Do searches on Google News for topics or companies you compete with. See who has covered them and create a spreadsheet with their names, contact info, etc -- This tells you they might be interested in what you have

2\. Reach out and personalize -- Show them you've seen and taken time to understand their perspective on the industry or competitor. In a nice way, suggest an angle that you feel is more interesting or which often gets overlooked which hopefully dovetails with your product and piques their interest. This helps the blogger/journalist think about the storyline and whether readers would find it interesting quickly and not your X, Y, Z feature which only you care about.

3\. The angle should ideally be something you have unique insight into. It might be directly related to your product or just something you have data on because of your product.

4\. Use data as possible. There are lots of unsubstantiated claims out there so journalists/data appreciate useful facts supported by data. Warning: Don't make data/facts up or don't try to draw inane trends from 2 data points as smart journalists/bloggers will see through that. Yes, hack doesn't mean being dishonest. You're trying to build a relationship based on trust so don't be short-term greedy and try to kickstart things on a lie.

There are some downsides to this. The biggest being that your data might get featured and not your company. This may not be what you want. But, at the same time, you may become a resource for the journalist which means mentions over time, they may come back to you for additional data and you get mentions. This has happened for us. We're a data company so we might not be apples to apples for you, but we're a go to resource for journos/bloggers and see mentions 1-2 per week in a slow week in major media because of early legwork we did (note: our press page is hopelessly outdated so don't judge us based on that)

Hope this helps. Good luck.

<comment><USER12> Journalists do not see through BS data. Any data is good data for news hits.

In a previous life I created data for media, and my attempts to provide correct analysis and context were disregarded or shut down.

<comment><USER11> Perhaps, but we're optimizing our journalist/blogger relationships for the long-term, i.e., when they have a question on X topic, they will call us first. Sure - they might not write about everything we offer them, but we want everything we send them to be seen as credible, interesting, and sometimes contrarian. I'm not sure a few extra press hits will be worth the hit to credibility of taking a short cut.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Just honestly build these relationships. I use Twitter and events to do it, just speak to journalists honestly about what you're working on without full on pitches.

Roughly 25 useful tech journalists are following my progress via Twitter and I regularly reply offering my perspective on stories. With a few from time to time I'll ask for their advice when they can add value and eventually when I have something fit for a piece I'll get in touch having already validated my experience and progress.

It's much better than cold emailing asking for a story about your launch. They want to help you but you have to help them finding a story out of your launch. If they know a little about your history it will help this is why building a prior relationship helps.

<comment><USER14> Upvoted becuase this is the sinsible approach to the issue. Though it takes time and the OP may not have enough time to nurture a relationship. Good points regarding how to interface with the press.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> At Newsvine, we capitalized on an opportunity when John McCain and his campaign people hijacked some graphics from my MySpace design tutorial without permission. He referenced/hotlinked images hosted on my server on his own MySpace page so one day I "hacked" his site by changing the graphics. The prank got us on TechCrunch immediately (no surprise), the local news in Seattle (kind of a surprise), and then featured on The Daily Show (huge f'ing surprise and still a career highlight!). Here is the coverage:

TechCrunch: [http://techcrunch.com/2007/03/27/john-mccains-myspace- page-h...](http://techcrunch.com/2007/03/27/john-mccains-myspace-page-hacked/)

Local News: [http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2007/03/king-5-co...](http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2007/03/king-5-covers- mccain-myspace-prank)

The Daily Show: <http://www.mikeindustries.com/scratch/dailyshow.mp4>

<comment><USER16> OT: But wow at the blog spam on the old TC articles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's not as "hack"-y as a HN reader might like, but the bottom line is you should help your journalist tell a story. That's their job, so make it easy.

When we launched Precorder, we got little (and so-so) press by describing a newly launched app w/ X Y and Z features.

When we started telling writers that we saw the camera technology used to capture great white sharks jumping out of the ocean and ported it to iPhones, we were covered by Kottke (<http://kottke.org/11/01/precorder>) and other influential photography bloggers who immediately triggered a long wave of follow-up press.

<comment><USER18> This, this, this. If you subtly lay out the possible angles and all the interesting data for a journalist, they will be that much more likely to cover your product. Don't make them do too much research.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The key thing which helped me reach bloggers was understanding that they're not interested in covering my start-up, but in getting more people to read their blog. Give them all the materials they need to write a good post - <USER2> story, something personal, good images, video, and you have a much better chance to get covered. Good materials helped me increase my success rate by about 5X. Even though most of your future users will not come from TC or RWW, it builds your company resume. It's much easier to approach medium-small blogs with a TC/RWW reference, than the other way around. It also helps when raising (more) money.

</comment><comment><USER20> This AirBNB Mixergy interview is a must-watch - they explain how they hacked their way onto top news sites like CNN & NYTimes (start watching at 31 minutes in):

<http://mixergy.com/airbnb-chesky-gebbia/>

They explain how to get press coverage using the "pyramid" method: start at the bottom, with small bloggers in your space. Email them, ask them to cover you. Then move up the chain. At the top of the chain are the big media people like NYTimes, CNN, etc.

<comment><USER21> good share

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Do something outrageous. Something so big, so daring that people will not have an option but to cover the story. Though this takes balls/ovaries of steel and a clear and defined strategy to reduce to amount of negative press you will get. It should also be done off-line, as in outside. Internet news get less coverage than real world news. If your outrageous idea happens somewhere real (like in San Francisco) then people will be able to relate to time/place where the news happened. Something that is lost on cyber space.

Just don't do anything too crazy. You don't want to go to jail or hurt anybody. Keep it legal and moral, and you should be on your way.

 _Edit_

Also, giving early access to smaller blogs/bloggers will allow you to create a given amount of buzz around the product. When reporters research your offerings (using Google for 99.99% of the work), they will get a lot of favorable hits about your product from these smaller blogs. Plus since they are smaller, they dont take away from the big news chance they might have with your story. Just be careful about who you contact, and be aware that some people will write about anything. They might write nicely about you in one post, and then praise Hitler in the next thus putting you in very very very very bad light.

</comment><comment><USER22> We "hacked" Fred Wilson's blog for PR, which in turned helped us get to TechCrunch. Here is the story:

Without the knowledge of Fred, we created an automatic podcast for his blog, AVC.com, using our API. We had no idea how he would react. It was weeks of effort, time, and money spent to build AVC.fm with the hope that Mr. Wilson would love us (or at least not send us a cease and desist!) And then, there was the tweet that made the weeks of brainstorming, trials and errors, and late nights, all worth it:

"AVC.fm, the unofficial blogcast of @avc created by @VoiceBunny avc.fm via @VoiceBunny." by — Fred Wilson (@fredwilson) February 21, 2012

Fred tweeted our work and our name to his 207,000+ fans. That day, VoiceBunny.com got a huge amount of visits, with most coming out of Silicon Valley. We, of course, reached out to Fred right away and a few emails later, you can now hear AVC.fm right on Fred's blog at AVC.com.

Before you get into the "how" of a PR stunt, you must first figure out the "why". You don't want attention just for the sake of attention. You have got to capture the attention of the right people. And for VoiceBunny both Fred and his audience were the right audience.

The VoiceBunny team is a big fan of Fred Wilson's work and especially his blog, AVC.com, but we didn't always have time to read it everyday. So, we thought it would be great if AVC.com had a podcast so we could listen on our commutes or while we were working. So we thought, let's make one for him! What better way to show off our technology and get the attention of the VC community? Mr. Wilson is a big supporter of the "freedom to innovate" and that's why we felt creating AVC.fm was the perfect project for VoiceBunny.

So, since Mr. Wilson publishes under a Creative Commons license, we did not have to worry about getting his permission first. The VoiceBunny API automatically pulls the text from AVC.com after Fred posts and posts a project. One of our voice talents accepts the project and uploads a finished read. It is then screened for quality and automatically uploaded to SoundCloud and AVC.fm.

We wanted to make it very obvious we did this as a tribute, not to capitalize on his name or work. Yes, we did it to show off our technology, but, we created something of value to him and to the community. We also made it very easy for him to add to his blog if he chose to do so. We included a link asking, "Are You Fred?" that included instructions on how to embed the widget onto his blog.

On his blog, Fred said:

"In any case, I like they way they used a stunt to get my attention. So much more effective than sending me an email saying "I'd like to come talk to you about a new project we are working on". So I'm going to start auto-embedding the avc.fm voice overs at the end of the posts on AVC (via the SoundCloud embed of course)."

You can read his entire post at [http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/02/feature- friday-listen-to-thi...](http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/02/feature-friday- listen-to-this-blog.html)

<comment><USER23> "(or at least not send us a cease and desist!) "

Actually being sent a cease and desist by Fred would have given you an angle to get publicity if things didn't end up the way they did. But I'm actually a little surprised that since you say "The VoiceBunny team is a big fan of Fred Wilson's work and especially his blog" you should have known that it was highly unlikely he would have done something like that.

Outcome 1: What happened, you got what you wanted

Outcome 2: Cease and desist - if that had happened, may hay with it. Mentioning if anyone else has this outcome.

Outcome 3: Ignore your "hack". The worse outcome. But in that case you have to be more proactive and approach him, several times (once again if you understand the way he rolls you realize he declares email bankruptcy and actually appreciates follow up emails.

<comment><USER22> Thank you Larry. You are right. If Fred didn't like what we were doing, probably he would have not sent a formal "cease and desist". He is not that kind of guy ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Perhaps you're asking the wrong question. It often should be "How do I get ___ to be interested in reporting on me?" rather than "How do I get on?"

Think of it as a value equation: you want the reporters to help you get press and make people think you have something cool on hand; they want something cool to share with their readers.

So, one way to do it is - as most of the comments have suggested - <USER3> guerrilla tactics to get to the journalists/writers/topics that are often covered.

But, what if you created or generated something that is really unique and content-worthy? We did this recently with my product, and ended up with an unsolicited TC piece.

How'd it work? We showed-off the types of awesome things our product could do, and it caught the writer's interest.

So, I'd say find a way to show-off why what you're doing deserves coverage, and then take some steps to help get that in front of people (that's where Twitter, HN, etc. comes into play).

Also, quick note, but the traffic you probably expect from TC coverage may not be accurate.

</comment><comment><USER25> I made comics deriding IT recruiters; this was to promote my programmer- testing web app (now defunct). This HN thread persuaded me to find them in the blog archives. Here they are: [http://www.flickr.com/photos/46384225@N00/sets/7215763148518...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/46384225@N00/sets/72157631485182590/)

There were also text articles on the blog, one of which was even on the HN front-page for over 24 hours (it reported some friendly social-engineering by a then-competitor, now a YC company). The comics significantly outperformed the text articles in terms of engaged readers, though I didn't run the whole thing long enough to be of any practical help.

My partner and I are releasing an iPhone game soon, and we're planning to repeat this experiment but with somewhat longer-form comics. The idea is to communicate the human story behind the making of the app. If anyone is interested, my email is in my profile.

<comment><USER26> Loving those comics, are there more?

<comment><USER25> Thanks! These are all I made.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm building a tool that helps you figure out which journalists you should target.

It figures out which journalists write about your space / niche, and also figures out what their reach is and how busy they are.

If you're interested, shoot me an email: joseph at metaoptimize dot com.

</comment><comment><USER28> I made a satirical hot or not type site called hipster or homeless. Perez Hilton retweeted it and I ended up using that to as a segue to contact different news organizations. Being in the SF Bay area, there is an omnipresent homelessness problem here, so NBC bay area decided to relate the website to raising awareness of the homelessness problem. They did a news segment on it and interviewed actual homeless people. [http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Hipster-or- Homeless-124...](http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Hipster-or- Homeless-124735334.html) is the segment.

</comment><comment><USER29> The system I'm working on got press via the local news a few times (they love running scrappy tech startup stories, so it was one 30 second Channel 5 type interview and a news story). There wasn't a direct bump in sales because of it.

Everything I work on is B2B so 100% of sales are done via a conversation and not someone landing on the site and clicking "sign-up" so YMMV. The news articles was only important to solidify ourselves as a legit operation, and not really for the press it generated.

<comment><USER30> We had similar success! CBS local Pittsburgh Website Simplifies Car-Buying [http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2012/08/17/local-website- simp...](http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2012/08/17/local-website-simplifies- car-buying-experience/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> What we did was ensure we could have a story behind the product we were building. From the start we knew exactly what angles we can approach the press with for our app. In fact the timing was perfect for us and we managed to get a lot of good press (AllThingsD, CNET etc).

Unless you have the perfect product don't expect anything but a spike in downloads/visitors to your product. For me it has been an excellent learning process and every time I release something I get better and better at it.

</comment><comment><USER32> All they want from you is pageviews. Just come up with something that has a high chance of getting them pageviews.

A probably easy angle would be, "Rejected from YC, now Bigger Than Jesus". A well-baited hook for HN and bonus SEO on YC.

</comment><comment><USER33> bring them something they can use, like stats, insights, or an edge on a story that no one else has. they have pressures like everyone else from their bosses to produce and deliver, and they're competing for an editor's story approval. help them be your story's advocate by being their source for data and insights that's unique.

<comment><USER34> To add to this (and as patio11 has said several times in his articles) OKCupid does this with regularity, and has provided a people with great deal of entertainment and information value, and have been covered many times in the press. They've also possibly indirectly helped their business doing this.

<http://blog.okcupid.com/>

KISSMetrics is another:

<http://blog.kissmetrics.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Step 1: Live in San Francisco (or at least have a remote office there). Physical, accessible presence is key.

</comment><comment><USER36> I've had some success with <http://www.helpareporter.com/>

Reporters post there looking for sources for their stories. If you match what they are looking for, you email the reporters.

I've gotten myself and my co-founder quoted in a bunch of publications this way. Hard to tell how much traffic they've generated though since it's been mostly print publications, so no link.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the significance of ommitting "the" when referring to products? - david-cako I notice Apple has a tendency to oddly exclude articles/determiners in phrases like "do not restart [your] Apple Watch", or "meet [the] iPhone", and to oddly include them in other cases -- "the biggest update for 'the Mac' yet".
This is something I've always found very interesting, as I imagine there has to be some practical explanation for it in terms of branding or image.
I can't imagine this has any relationship to trademark dilution, because these are very well recognized as Apple trademarks. <comment><AUTHOR> By omitting the article the noun will become a name, and by extension, a person. This will allow you to grow a more personal relationship with it.

<comment><USER2> Then why does a Windows machine say "Please do not shut me down?" as opposed to "Please do not shut your PC down?"</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Need feedback on my idea to improve long, threaded discussions - <AUTHOR>

A reddit discussion with thousands of comments:
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/gpvqg/is_anyone_else_mad_that_people_are_using/
My attempt at trying to improve discoverability and readability:
http://threadit.blazingrails.com/discussions/7 <comment><USER2> Your attempt to improve on threaded discussion shows nothing without javascript, and many people would simply just move along rather than granting an exception for you.

<comment><USER3> Most people do not care that this is javascript only. So is Facebook. However, it feels kind of slow - I'd much rather scroll.</comment></comment>


Are cloud services the new subprime mortgage? - <AUTHOR> http://www.huyng.com/?p=80

<comment><USER2> No; more like the new microcomputer.

</comment><comment><USER3> Every start-up that relies on someone else (eg. Twitter) for part of their core competency is subject to the whims of that company. The risk of that happening is something that every developer must consider. Places like the App Store are relatively safe, one would think. Google closing down services certainly brings up questions as far as developing an API utilizing less popular services.

This reduction also creates opportunities. For example, Evernote made it easy to import Google Notebook data, thus gaining off of Google axing Notebook.

<comment><USER4> Google, and developers who make use of their APIs, are in a real catch-22 there. The service can't become popular unless developers make use of it and help grow it, but you don't want to spend time developing against an API that isn't already large enough that it's not going to go away.

I always thought/hoped that Google had a large enough and mature enough infrastructure (including people, process, tech) that it could support a lot of essentially one-off services (at least as far as income generating goes) because the core services are so big. And that this infrastructure would give these smaller things time to incubate and gain significant traction. There's something to be said for a small service that's been running and been available forever, that its existence is stable and the choice is secure. Things don't seem to be getting a chance to properly incubate though.</comment></comment>


Launch HN: Daybreak Health (YC S20) – Online counseling designed for teens - <AUTHOR> I'm Alex, one of the cofounders of Daybreak Health (www.daybreakhealth.com) along with Luke and Sid. We help teens feel better, build skills for life and achieve their goals through online counseling. Our licensed counselors provide evidence-based counseling to teens through online video sessions, messaging, and a mobile app.
The evidence supports that behavioral therapy like CBT and DBT is effective. It works to treat diagnosable conditions like anxiety and depression, and it also works to help young people feel happier and achieve their goals [1][2][3][4][5]. But too often teens don't get the mental health support they need because it is stigmatized, difficult to schedule and attend, and expensive. At Daybreak we bring counseling to the teen on a digital device and we charge less than half the cost of a traditional therapy session.
In October of 2018, my younger brother nearly lost his life due to the lack of accessible mental health resources supporting our young people. He is not alone. 1 in 5 teens struggle with a diagnosable mental health condition, but estimates suggest that up to 1 in 3 actually struggle with anxiety - or between 6 and 10M total teens [6][7]. That means the odds are greater than 50% that if you are the average parent raising a family in America with 2 kids, one of your children will struggle with a mental health condition in their teens.
To make matters worse, 80% of teens who need mental health support do not receive care today [8]. This results in deteriorating academic performance, increased rates of juvenile crime and substance abuse, and suicide rates that are at an all-time high. Every day, 17 young people commit suicide in the US. It is the #2 cause of death among 15-24 year olds, after accidental injury and ahead of homicide [9]. This isn't a niche problem.
Our current system makes mental health support nearly impossible to get for a teen. Stigma makes it hard to admit to yourself you want support, let alone talk about it with your parents. There is a shortage of therapists who specialize in adolescents, making it hard to find a therapist that is close enough to drive to on a weekly basis. Private practice therapy averages more than $200 per session. Even if you could afford to pay, you're going to be met with 2-3 month wait lists. And when you finally do arrive, you sit on an awkward couch in an environment that you may not be comfortable in.  That is why an average of 11 years pass between when a teenager first needs mental health support and when they eventually start receiving it in their 20s or even later [10].
That is why we started Daybreak Health. Everything we've built is designed intentionally for teens and their parents.  Teens can download the Daybreak mobile app and are instantly connected to a live guide (Mon-Fri 7am-7pm) who asks about mental health goals and needs.  After a video assessment where we loop in the parent, we create a plan and match teens with a counselor based on goals, needs, interests, hobbies and more.  Once matched with a counselor, teens meet with them once a week through a 50-minute video call, and can message them on a daily basis through the app.   Our counselors help teens develop emotional life skills and work towards goals in a personalized plan that has thematic focus on teen-specific areas like school, healthy relationships and more.  Teens can also meet with small moderated groups of other teens on those same topics.  And parents are a core part of the process, starting with the assessment, through planning and regular progress reports.  For all of this we charge an $89/week subscription, less than half the price of a single 50-minute session in traditional private practice.
Dr. Neha Chaudhary, our lead Clinical Advisor, is a foremost expert on adolescent mental health and co-founder of Stanford's Lab for Mental Health Innovation. Together with her and experts from UCSF we have designed a program for teens grounded in clinical science, while at the same time reimagining the way it is delivered to teens.  The core of our clinical program is rooted in evidence-based methods like DBT and CBT, but we have taken these approaches and brought them into an easily digestible online experience.
But there is a problem: stigma around mental health stops people from sharing their great experiences with counseling, so its benefit is under-appreciated. If you know any parent or teens who might benefit from counseling, make sure they know about its benefits. And if you have thoughts about how to solve the awareness problem, or any stories you can share that may help us better understand the needs of teens and parents, we would be grateful. Thank you!
Sources:
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00057...
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3073681/
[3] https://acamh.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1475...
[4] https://acamh.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/camh.1...
[5] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0963823060118209...
[6] https://www.cdc.gov/childrensmentalhealth/access.html#ref
[7] https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/any-anxiety-disor...
[8] https://www.cdc.gov/childrensmentalhealth/access.html#ref
[9] https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/suicide.shtml
[10] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361014/
Visit us at www.daybreakhealth.com <comment><USER2> I may not have anything actionable to say, but I can at least tell my side of the story. I am a teen in the US mental health "system." It has been quite a ride to say the least. I was living with debilitating anxiety and depression going into a new school, but I didn't even know it. I am thankful for my parents for calling a crisis number to get someone to talk to. It has been a tough few years trying to regain the time I was left untreated. Medication and regular (individual and group) therapy has been a huge help with anxiety and depression, as well as my ADHD and schizophrenia. I am finishing up my time at a therapeutic high school and will be attending RPI in the fall (at least for now it looks like I will be going to campus, yay!). It has been a struggle, but because of the support I have received, I am in a much better place than I was.

During the whole quarantine, I have had no complaints about online therapy (unlike online school). I can say personally you do not lose out by going the online route. It is certainly more convenient, and because it is (mostly) one on one, you don't have the issues that come with a 50 person zoom call. I really appreciate that you get parents on board because having an open dialog is extremely important.

I have two specific questions though: (0) How will you deal with crisis situations? How are you planning to take on the legal responsibilities that come with that? (1) Any potential solutions to improving access to psychiatrists and medication? Therapy is just one piece of the puzzle to my ongoing recovery. Medication really helps, but I am concerned that these teens might miss out on that important part.

Thank you for doing what you are doing. If I did not get help, I probably would not be here leaving this comment today.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much for sharing your story. It is stories like yours that inspire us every day, and that will inspire more teens and parents to seek treatment. And I'm happy to hear that your treatment has put you in a better place, and you are headed off to RPI. To address your questions:

1) Crisis situations: safety is our #1 priority. We create a safety plan that includes coping skills, strengths, local resources and people to contact. If a crisis situation arises we have this in advance as a resource. We recognize online can create more challenges than in person for maintaining a safe environment, so we also refer patients who we believe might need more intensive care to in person treatment.

2) We firmly believe telehealth is a great vehicle for psychiatry. We haven't quite arrived there yet, but it is on our 'roadmap' to have psychiatrists. And in the meantime, we refer out for teens who need medication support.

Thanks again for sharing your story!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Integration with medical systems would be amazing; my friends at top tier universities (e.g. Berkeley) want mental care but aren't sure if it's covered

from my experience there has been a constant refrain about CAPS (Counseling and Psych - usually called CAPS in school systems) departments everywhere being

1) hard to access 2) underfunded 3) unresponsive

super excited for this product :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! We would love to work with CAPS departments. Out of curiosity, do you have any people you could introduce us to who might be able to tell us more about CAPS at specific schools?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Congrats on the launch. I think this is an important issue and it is good to see some focus on this area.

How did you arrive at your pricing? I am curious how, if a therapist normally costs $200 per session, you can offer it at less than half that price? Are the counselors certified differently? What's unique about Daybreak that makes it cheaper to offer therapy?

Another question I'm curious about - do you address medication at all? How does that work, do you have psychiatrists that patients can talk with? Or is medication out of scope?

Congrats again!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the kind words.

On Pricing - our counselors are certified to practice and pass a rigorous interview process ensuring the highest quality. All are licensed to practice in California and have 5+ years experience working with adolescents. The primary differences are: 1) real estate (our therapists work from the comfort of their homes, so we don't have that cost), 2) cost of living (because we can work with therapists in varied geographies, their cost of living may be lower than in the highest demand/need geos), 3) value prop (adolescent-focused therapists want to work with us because of our flexibility and focus on teens which is rare to find)

On medication - today we refer out if patients need medication. It is an area we are actively thinking about how to better serve in house!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Access to healthcare is a big challenge in the US because of cost: your pricing seems to be very accessible but I'm curious if you have any specific ideas around how you can make therapy more accessible to people who can't afford these prices.

I guess my question is whether your vision is a digital version of traditional therapy, or if you see your mission as making therapy more accessible which _currently_ is digital traditional therapy but could evolve substantially over the coming years?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the great question about access: access and quality are our twin aims when it comes to delivering mental health support to teens. The product is in service to those aims.

So to answer your question: our current product reflects what we think is the best solution to increase access to therapy while maintaining quality. Over time, as we learn more, the product could evolve to become even more accessible (e.g., more digital) if we are able to maintain quality with that solution.

One other piece I'll say on access: for a healthcare company the 'insurance plans' control the keys to access. From Day 1 an important part of our strategy is pursuing reimbursement so that the cost of our services reaches $0 for teens and families who need it and cannot afford the out-of-pocket cost. We are not there yet, but it is our goal!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great job! What would you say are the most challenging gaps between online sessions compared to traditional in-person sessions? What are your plans to bridge the gaps?

<comment><AUTHOR> Very important area to explore. Let me first start by saying the the evidence suggests that telepsychiatry is as effective as in person therapy for adolescents (article link below), and our data shows that it is more engaging as measured by session attendance and number of weekly engagements.

That said, there are three primary challenges in the online environment.

First and most simply, it is harder to create rapport online. We require for that reason that all of our teens use the video sessions (in addition to messaging and the app), and we place high importance on the match itself (which we can do since we have a group of diverse counselors across California geos). We also place high importance on the therapeutic alliance and give our counselors techniques during training to develop that online.

Second, privacy can be a challenge in small or crowded homes. We work closely and set expectations with parents to ensure that our teen clients receive privacy during their session times.

Third, online counseling is still primarily best for mild to moderate acuity. At the more severe acuity levels, or with psychotic disorders for example, we haven't yet nailed how to treat online effectively and safely. We screen members during the assessment and refer them out if in-person counseling is better. We also put an emphasis on our online safety plan, which gives us knowledge of parent whereabouts and trusted contacts in the case that a crisis situation does escalate.

Link to efficacy of telepsychiatry in adolescents: [https://togetherthevoice.org/wp- content/uploads/2020/04/AACA...](https://togetherthevoice.org/wp- content/uploads/2020/04/AACAP-Telehealth-Clinical-Update.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is cool. Do you have any documentation around the security controls implemented to protect sensitive communications between patients and therapists? Among others? I presume this is ultimately still protected information under HIPAA

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. This is an important question. You are exactly right that under HIPAA, there are a few basic data protection requirements. These encompass administrative, physical and technical requirements. A few examples of the technical requirements: all protected data must be encrypted at rest and in transit, each medical professional authorized to access PHI must have a unique identifier to monitor access, and automatic log-off must be implemented to protect data. We've architected from Day 1 to be able to meet these needs. You can read more about HIPAA requirements here: [https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for- professionals/security/laws-re...](https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for- professionals/security/laws-regulations/index.html)

<comment><USER8> Amazing - you all are doing vital, lifesaving work! Curious - did you determine that you needed to use any existing software systems to help with regulatory compliance, such as any big-name EMR solutions and/or single-sign- on with the same? Or were you able to meet HIPAA requirements with standard web application tools & stack? Do you feel any choices of language, database, even things like advisory board, etc. made this easier to do?

<comment><AUTHOR> Working with existing software systems make this compliance much easier. Many of the big name service providers (Twilio, Sendbird, Auth0, Heroku, AWS, etc) have out-of-the-box HIPAA compliancy. And working with an EMR is tablestakes for a healthcare provider, we definitely did not build that from the ground up! Our work is about bringing these solutions together into a unified UX and ensuring compliancy / security across the stack, while gradually introducing secure and compliant native functionality. Language itself does not have a huge impact (we've seen it done in many different languages), but having the right advisor can make the build process a lot easier if they know what to look for!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Congrats on the launch!

Question: your site emphasizes a "guarantee of good counselor match". Importance of a rapport and trust between coach and teen (especially) is hard to overvalue.

How does this guarantee translate into practical terms? Is it a guarantee to have access to/try all currently available coaches before making the choice, or more like a "money back" kind of guarantee?

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely agree the rapport and 'alliance' between the two is paramount!

How it practically plays out: teen members can switch between counselors on our platform if they are not satisfied with their first match. If they don't find a match that is a fit within the first few sessions, we do offer a money back guarantee.

We do also focus in the upfront assessment on gathering the input we need from both the teen AND the parent to make the matches we select higher quality. This input includes goals, needs, specialty areas, interests and hobbies -- among other inputs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "That is why an average of 11 years pass between when a teenager first needs mental health support and when they eventually start receiving it in their 20s or even later."

As a medical student interested in psychiatry and rehab, that is mindblowing and touching.

I really with you the best with this!

</comment><comment><USER11> I'd also love to learn more about increasing access for young people. I spent many years working with low income teens and unfortunately this pricing is entirely out of reach. Do you have any plans to offer free services for the young people most in need who could never afford to pay out of pocket.

I've also worked with young people whose parents, even if they could have afforded it, didn't believe in therapy and weren't willing to support their child's efforts to obtain it. So yet another reason why access is super important.

Just as a reference point, I run OkaySo, we offer free support on sex, relationships, and identity to young people. Happy to chat and connect. elise at okayso dot co (not com)

Thanks for this work!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your great comment and for your important work at OkaySo.

We recognize that our current pricing, while an improvement over private practice, is still out-of-reach for much of the country. Our plan is to: 1) continue to evolve the product to reduce cost of care while maintaining quality, 2) pursue partnerships with health plans and eventually Medicaid (which covers the lowest income teens) so that our services can be offered for free to those teens. We are very open to other funding models to increase the access of our services for teens as well! I'll reach out to learn more

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Thanks, this is a vital service, especially now when many teens are struggling and virtual is the only option. Designing specifically for virtual may be an advantage over therapists who usually work in person, but are now trying to do the same thing online, but may see challenges in adapting their approach. I didn't see this on your FAQ. Can your counselors prescribe medications, or make referrals if they think it may be needed?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the kind words! We do believe designing for virtual first offers a lot of advantages vs. tacking it on to a traditional practice.

You ask a great question, and we'll add it to our FAQ. We currently refer out for the medication prescription needs, and are evaluating bringing the capability in-house.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Are y'all hiring JS devs at all? I'd love to work for a company with such a great mission.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the kind words about our mission! We aren't currently but that may change in the next 6 months. Can you shoot me a note alex at daybreakhealth dot com and I will connect you to our CTO?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> What's your current understanding with the problems and/or pitfalls of psychiatry? Serious question.

</comment><comment><USER15> There is very noticeable lag when navigating the site. Clicking the counselors link takes seconds to open. This on a top of the line android phone.

I strongly suggest you do performance a/b testing.

<comment><USER16> It seems that template they use is just terrible.

It is not trivial for this service how your website looks. It should provide some confidence that you know what you are doing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you both for the usability feedback, on both the performance and the UX side. We will absolutely take that into account in future iterations. And agree 100% with performance testing!

<comment><USER15> Btw, I dont think the site is terrible. The lagging made it hard for me to learn more about the product. Hope it didnt come off as snarky

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm pretty skeptical about online therapy. Creating yet another abstraction between human and human seems to be going entirely in the wrong direction.

One of the big issues with the lockdown was that many municipalities considered substance abuse meetings (AA and others) as non-essential. These types of programs do not work anywhere near as well online. Meanwhile liquor stores remained open as essential.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the push, this is something we think about a lot.

I'll start by saying that we look to data to drive our perspective here. The the evidence suggests that telepsychiatry is as effective as in person therapy for adolescents (article link below), and our data actually shows that it is more engaging as measured by session attendance and number of weekly engagements than traditional therapy benchmarks. The way teens engage with the world is changing (to more digital), and rather than try to swim against the current, we hope to reach the most teens by meeting them where they are, and then changing their behavior in ways that matter. Our programs do focus on the importance of things like limiting screen time and developing healthy relationships.

Ultimately I won't disagree with you -- in-person is at least as effective and for many people can be more effective. However, what we are hoping to do is increase access to those people for whom going to an in person session might present to high a barrier, whether it be geographically, financially, or from a stigma perspective.

Article on efficacy of telepsych: [https://togetherthevoice.org/wp- content/uploads/2020/04/AACA...](https://togetherthevoice.org/wp- content/uploads/2020/04/AACAP-Telehealth-Clinical-Update.pdf)

<comment><USER18> Actually, online therapy can be _more_ effective than in-person:

[1] [https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5...](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370\(20\)30186-3/fulltext)

[2] [https://healthsci.mcmaster.ca/news-events/news/news- article/...](https://healthsci.mcmaster.ca/news-events/news/news- article/2020/07/08/therapy-delivered-electronically-more-effective-than-face- to-face)</comment></comment></comment>