MobileMe to iCloud: Lost in Translation - <AUTHOR> http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/mobileme_to_icloud_lost_in_translation/ <comment><USER2> So some of mobileme is rightly dying (web hosting/gallery), most of it is coming to all of us for free in a cloud server-based package, and he thinks it won't include iDisk? He says Back to my Mac/iPhone are very popular, then later says they have a "minimal chance of survival". Sensationalist, self- contradicting article.</comment>


China destroys 30k 'incorrect' world maps, claims Indian terrority - <AUTHOR> https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/china-destroys-30000-incorrect-world-maps/article26642135.ece <comment><USER2> Anyone who has worked on mapping software knows that China has all these special rules you have to abide by if you want to sell there. You basically end up with two separate products: one for China and one for the rest of the world. It's not just that you need to show borders a certain way, but also you need to exaggerate the size of certain islands and show some things where they don't actually exist. They even use a different coordinate system so if you get latitude and longitude from a GPS you cannot plot them on a Chinese map without applying a mathematical transformation To the coordinates beforehand. Lots of special case code and parallel data!

<comment><USER3> Wild. Any idea why?

<comment><USER2> No clue—I just wrote the code. If I had to guess, CN probably justifies it as a national security thing.

If you want to learn more there seems to be a Wikipedia article [1] that mentions some of the rules and the coordinate system.

1: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_d...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_data_in_China)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Almost 30,000 "incorrect" world maps, showing Taiwan as a separate country > and wrong depiction of the Sino-Indian border, were destroyed by the customs > authorities in Qingdao, it said.

> "What China did in the map market was absolutely legitimate and necessary, > because sovereignty and territorial integrity are the most important things > to a country. Both Taiwan and South Tibet are parts of China's territory > which is sacred and inviolable based on the international law," Liu Wenzong, > professor from the department of International Law of China Foreign Affairs > University said.

<comment> crooked-v > showing Taiwan as a separate country

Fun fact: the government of Taiwan would also object to these maps. Both the RoC and the PRoC claim that all of China (mainland + the island of Taiwan) is actually one country, but disagree on who's rightfully in charge of it. This is also what both governments use to justify allowing civilian travel between them, with a polite legal fiction along the lines of 'that's still China over there so you can go there, even though that territory is controlled by those people we don't like'.

<comment><USER5> > Fun fact: the government of Taiwan would also object to these maps. Both the > RoC and the PRoC claim that all of China (mainland + the island of Taiwan) > is actually one country, but disagree on who's rightfully in charge of it.

Another fun fact: the RoC would probably give up its claim to Mainland China if it could, but it can't because the PRC would interpret that as a declaration of independence:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_status_of_Taiwan#Pos...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_status_of_Taiwan#Possible_military_solutions_and_intervention)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What is the point of displaying the point of view of a scholar from China (from International Law of China Foreign Affairs University), and omitting to offer views from scholars of the other affected territories?

</comment><comment><USER7> Note that India is similarly picky about maps concerning territory it doesn't control, though admittedly, it's happy with censoring maps or having people print disclaimers, and doesn't destroy them completely.

Economist maps showing the India/Pakistan/China boundaries in Kashmir are regularly censored.

Any country which claims land needs to never give up its claim as a bargaining chip. India and China just go to extremes over it including privately produced content.</comment>


Ask HN: Disk Encryption for Mac OS X - <AUTHOR>

Hello,
I have a Mid-2014 13" Retina MacBook Pro 2.6GHz Intel Core i5 with 8gb memory + SSD hard drive running 10.10.3 Yosemite.
I was using FileVault 2 included in OS X by default for full disk encryption, however, the performance was absolutely abysmal. Does anyone have any alternative suggestions or suggestions on how to make FileVault actually a reasonable option?
kernel_task was consuming 80-150% of cpu power on a regular basis and was simply slamming my otherwise rather powerful machine.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> I would take that to an apple store. I have a mid-2012 retina Macbook Pro at home with full disk encryption turned on, and I never see anything remotely close to that kind of usage.

</comment><comment><USER3> FileVault is completely transparent for me here. I can hardly notice any performance hit.

Now, if only Apple can fix the incessant graphics freezing...

</comment><comment><USER4> I have an almost identical configuration with full disk encryption turned on and I haven't experienced this issue.</comment>


'An alternative exists': the US citizens who vowed to flee to Canada – and did - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/01/us-citizens-move-to-canada-presidential-election <comment><USER2> So apparently very few people actually ever follow up on their talk of leaving the country when someone they don't like gets elected.

And the people who do tend to leave after those who don't complain so much about it on Twitter and the likes?

Kind of reminds me internet communities, and the people threatening to 'leave forever' after a major flame war/disagreement. Just as they're usually back within a week, so are the people threatening to 'quit' the country.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you're afraid of POTUS you should stay in the US.

The president's power abroad is much bigger than his domestic power. He can bomb a village in Newfoundland if he really wants to. But he cannot even stop and search someone on Times Square.

<comment><USER4> > But he cannot even stop and search someone on Times Square.

Yes, he can: [https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights- governments-100-mile-b...](https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights- governments-100-mile-border-zone-map)

And in the past, if you weren't white: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/12/stop-and-frisk- viol...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/12/stop-and-frisk-violated- rights-new-york-city-judge-rules_n_3743236.html)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Inline C in Python - <AUTHOR> http://quasiquotes.readthedocs.org/en/latest/c.html <comment><USER2> This is great. Wasn't too clear on exactly how this is used from the documents (e.g. do I just run 'python') - didn't seem that there where any 'imports' either.

Found this example which seems a little clearer: [https://pypi.python.org/pypi/quasiquotes/0.2.0](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/quasiquotes/0.2.0)

<comment><AUTHOR> I was considering linking to the README (the index of the readthedocs page) but I wasn't sure if that would highlight the C inlining as much as I wanted. To summarize from the readme: After `pip install`ing the package, you can run quasiquoted code by including `# coding: quasiquotes` and then running under the normal CPython interpreter.

<comment><USER3> This still doesn't make it easy to understand how it is executing. Is there a hook on import that detects the file in which it's imported, searches for the # coding language pragma line, and then actually alters the text of the source code before the Python interpreter resumes parsing the rest of that file?

Initially I thought this was something like James Powell's "astexpr" literals example (towards the end of < [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2O7yj- Nh6AY](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2O7yj-Nh6AY) >), which would require actually implementing a new C-API type, adding parser logic for its literals, and recompiling Python.

If you can add a comment or two to clear up my confusion, I would really appreciate it.

Great work on this!

<comment><AUTHOR> I think some of this might be addressed in the implementation section of the docs. [http://quasiquotes.readthedocs.org/en/latest/impl.html](http://quasiquotes.readthedocs.org/en/latest/impl.html) To summarize: there is no import hook or ast parsing happening. Instead, this works by manipulating the way python reads the bytes and converts it to strings. When the raw bytes are read, it looks for token patterns that match the syntax of a quasiquote. It then replaces those patterns with normal function call syntax that is valid. A cute thing that can be done (that I need to document) is that you can "translate" any python from quasiquotes by doing something like:

'[$qq|this is the body|]'.encode('utf-8').decode('quasiquotes') "qq._quote_expr(0,' this is the body')"

<comment><USER3> Ahh, that makes sense now. So it's leveraging the built-in hook for custom decoding. I actually did not know that the `# coding: utf-8` happened at parse time, nor that it allowed for custom decoding function.

I'd be very happy to help better document this stuff in the code. Searching around, there are not very many good documents describing how to create and register a custom decoder.

I have read and re-read your setup.py file a few times now, and followed the trail to the .pth file and to the locations where codecs.register is used. But it's still not clear to me how this functionality gets "installed" such that the decoder hook that parses your decoder's name ("quasiquotes") is able to map that back to the search_function from the installed module's source code.

Basically, how does the codec registry become permanently aware that "quasiquotes" maps to the search function in your installed package?

<comment><AUTHOR> The .pth imports a file which at module scope registers a search function with the codec system. This function checks if the name is 'quasiquotes', if not, return None otherwise return a custom object that defines all the methods needed to turn bytes into string objects or go the other way. Because it is a pth in the site-packages, it gets executed at interpreter start. If you wanted to chat more about this you can email me with the email on my gh page. Not sure how long hn threads normally stay up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> wow that is pretty nuts! do you think it would be possible to add a quasi quoter that could inline cython?

<comment><AUTHOR> Cython would definitly be possible. It would probably work the same way the C quasiquoter does where it creates a function that accepts the scope and then executes the code. It would even be easier because it wouldn't need to do a first pass compile to get the missing names. I will try to work on this soon.

<comment><USER4> thanks! looks really cool

btw - I suspect a different title might help get more traction on hn - inlining C isn't that interesting (scipy.weave has done this for years) but this approach to inlining is super cool, and can be extended to other langs. none of this is obvious from the title</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Twitter Bot Posts Top HN Posts - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/HN_HotTopic <comment><AUTHOR> Every hour the bot gets top HN posts with >35 comments and tweets a random one.</comment>


Safari to snub new security certs valid for more than 13 months - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/02/20/apple_shorter_cert_lifetime/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is only for newly issued certs:

> _The policy was unveiled by [Apple] at a Certification Authority Browser > Forum (CA /Browser) meeting on Wednesday. Specifically, according to those > present at the confab, from September 1, any new website cert valid for more > than 398 days will not be trusted by the Safari browser and instead > rejected. Older certs, issued prior to the deadline, are unaffected by this > rule._

Digicert statement:

* [https://www.digicert.com/position-on-1-year-certificates/](https://www.digicert.com/position-on-1-year-certificates/)

They're not really against the idea, but it seems that Apple made an unilateral decision.</comment>


Show HN:MusicaLibre - a quickly hacked SoundCloud free-for-commerce music player - <AUTHOR> http://karelbilek.com/musicalibre/

<comment><AUTHOR> I will add I made this as a part of larger Czech Pirate Party campaign that teaches business owners how to play free music and not to pay the copyright monopoly extortion money. But I already like it so much I am putting it here.

Also it's not a nice piece of code, but hey, I did it during one night.</comment>


A bogus study on code review - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wesleyac.com/posts/bogus-code-review-data <comment><USER2> I've read this and similar posts on this study a dozen times in the last few weeks. I think the data is poorly interpreted and what you're really seeing is that shorter pull requests elicit better feedback (in this case "more defects per line").

In my experience running code reviews, shorter pull requests, presumably due to their reduced effort necessary to understand, tend to get better review, review that is more than just superficial style/linting errors.

In light of that, I always encourage developers to aim for the shortest reasonable changeset - and make it very clear to them that 2 line PRs are totally acceptable - on my current team, we go as far as to encourage tricks like rewriting (local) Git history and cherrypicking to ensure that is the case. Continuous integration and good unit tests help to ensure that strange states generated from that process are still good and I find the costs are far outweighed by the better reviews.

Another little lesson I've learned managing that process is to encourage the submitting developer to highlight problem areas in his own code: when I submit my own code for review, I'll actually do the review first, line-level highlighting areas I wish the reviewer to pay attention to. This will only work if you can trust your developers to not try to "sneak something by," but if you can't do that, you've probably already lost. Developers generally know what they weren't sure about during the process, where things are going to be difficult to understand and where someone else on the team is going to have helpful contributions to the quality.

I think it is important for developer-managers to remember that programming is largely a craft and developers largely want to be proud of their output. People _like_ producing "good code" and it is easy to align the goals by having the process help improve their craft.

<comment><USER3> In regards to your last sentence - as a developer, I _like_ solving business problems, and coding is just a tool used to get there. What makes me proud is when end users are able to use the application and it solves some problem they have, and as a side effect, produces revenue for the company.

Religious adherence to processes gets in the way of that and if they block me, I'm happy to shove them to the side and get executive support to do so. My experience with code reviews is that they are 95% style nitpicks, 4% ways to make code cleaner and simpler, and 1% real bugs which impact end users. I only value the 5% myself. From a cost/value perspective, I haven't been sold on the value of doing code review on everything.

Not all developers feel that way, sure. But it is a mistake to assume all developers are driven by the same things.

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure I assumed developers are driven by the same things. A careful reading of my last sentence did not define what it meant for code to be good or by what process you would be proud of the output, I think that is a product for you, your team and leadership to decide. Perhaps my use of the word pride was too strong, the core of my philosophizing there is that software development on a team is a social endeavour and that code review _can_ be a very effective alignment mechanism.

Someone further down the page suggested that the style nitpicks arise from a lack of understanding and familiarity with that piece of the codebase. I think that is often true and a factor to be considered both when allocating code review and when setting expectations regarding code ownership and cross- functional understanding.

I've also provided some suggestions for how to tune down the "95% style nitpicks" elsewhere on this page - it is a problem, but with appropriate tooling and expectation setting, it can be reduced to a small fraction of total code review output. It would be dysfunctional for a team to spend time on that stuff when we've all agreed it isn't high ROI. I agree that code review _can_ be done very poorly, but your observed ratios are not a fixed property of the world of code review.

Let me be clear: I am absolutely not advocating for a process that motivates nerding for the sake of nerding - I push back on a whole wealth of that sort of behavior. I am a business person motivated by producing sustainable teams that produce real value in the form of solutions to problems. I just feel that is a high-dimensional problem and certain kinds of technical debt can come at extreme cost and can, at times, if done correctly, be mitigated with processes like code review.

<comment><USER3> That is a fair rebuttal - perhaps my opinions are shaded by the fact that I've worked for several companies and none of them have a code review process which isn't 95% style nitpicks - the idea of one which lacks those has always been a hypothetical thing in my mind, and not something which I've seen in the real world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This needs some signal-boosting!

I would trust someone with a sharp eye like that to review my code much more than I would trust the author of the original article.

The PDF that requires an email can also be found here without giving one: [https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/feb0/0dd349ad701e1e4045282b...](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/feb0/0dd349ad701e1e4045282b1bd10073718a7c.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER5> It's also really important to define defect during these reviews. I worked at a company where code reviews would identify lots of superficial errors like indention, improper documentation, and missing metadata. You want these in quality code based, but if this counts as a defect, it's not as important as serious bugs being identified and corrected.

<comment><USER6> A real code review takes a lot of time. With the time available typically you can only find superficial things like style.

<comment><USER7> Not sure why a review would take so much time, mine typically take 20 minutes and I do two a day.

We ignore formatting (which can be formalized with a linter should we choose). Basically i check every line for reasonable error handling, review the whole for reasonable algorithm/data structures and i'm done.

What am i missing?

<comment><USER6> It probably depends on the work you are doing. We do test harnesses for hardware and most reviews are the result of a lot of experimentation and learning about protocols. In order to understand that code you need to know the characteristics of the device you are interfacing with. This may take weeks for a reviewer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A lot of the comments here imply that style can be fixed with a linter, but what about the style of things other than syntax, like choices in variable names, DRY-ing through mixins vs composition, grammatical style in code comments, etc.

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't like code reviews, but it has a few benefits:

Pros:

1\. Developers pay more attention to what they throw over the wall as a completed tasks because they _will_ get grilled on it.

2\. Reviewing other people's code is good for learning a new system.

3\. It keeps creating of methods that already exists to a minimum and boosts proper code reuse (of existing, difficult to find code).

Cons:

1\. It takes a lot of time.

2\. Petty arguments over style rather than technique. It can devolve into minutia / trivia.

3\. Once a developer "gets the idea" of how the organization wants coding done, it becomes more of a seemingly pointless routine.

I suggest code reviews for a developers first 3-6 months, or when working with new (to them) modules / subsystems. After that, skip it (unless they are slow to conform).

<comment><USER2> Con 2 has historically been the biggest problem for me. If any experienced people have good methods to help me mitigate that problem on my teams, I want to hear it.

We've done a few strategies at places I've managed code review:

1\. Insist on linting (in Javascript, eslint-config-airbnb) and opinionated style guides/automation (in JS, Prettier), and have the team buy in on "let's just not even debate this and just do what it says."

2\. Have programmers highlight problem areas (structural/architectural/clarity) in their own code before submitting the PR. This is draws the discussion to the high ROI locations quickly, while not prohibiting the reviewers from catching more minor issues.

3\. Clearly indicate that the goal of code review is to, yes, impart style and feel on the rest of the team, but largely to avoid duplication, resolve bugs and improve everyone's skill. It is a within-team visibility and knowledge sharing process that also happens to catch meaningful defects.

<comment><USER10> I found that the best coded reviews are always from small change sets. They tend to have more comments on what the code is doing rather than what the code looks like. Sometimes this can't be done though.

I'd also say that if your team is commenting only on style in code reviews then they don't understand that part of the code base very well. It isn't a bad thing but presents a signal that they could spend some of their work day understanding that part of the code. Keep in mind the culture of the team needs to allow this to happen. It pays off in the long term.

One of the best reasons for code review, hammered into me by two very experienced developers, is high visibility of changes and the opportunity to learn more about what other developers are working on. Don't underestimate this benefit.

Ultimately every code review doesn't need to have a high net benefit for it to be good for your team.

On a side note we didn't have any style guide at my old workplace but found that our code reviews were incredibly high quality for core components. Part of this is culture and the other part is the people you work with.

<comment><USER2> With some reflection, I think you're correct on the understanding problem.

The problem has always been inconsistent - some code reviews are worth thousands of times more than others - and a determining factor may be how invested the particular reviewer is in that piece of code, how well they understand the surrounding ecosystem and things of that nature.

As a concrete example, it has always been rare that a backend API change PR doesn't get great feedback from the frontend team that is dependent on it. The visibility is a core benefit here and the clear process to collaborate (especially if done early, low cost with individual small changes) is essential to the return on time investment.

For the record, I agree, I think a strong culture of code review is the most valuable process I've added to any development team. In my grandparent post, I was merely drawing attention to a potential spot for improvement, I hope no one took it as against code review as a process.

<comment><USER10> That's very true. I've seen code review when it's a bit more relaxed and most of the reviews are comments about style - only a handful of people provide useful comments about what the code does.

In your defence, it's hard to find out a way to fix a bad code review process with a team. I'm unsure how to really tackle that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> 93% of statistics are made up on the spot.

In all seriousness I have found it's not the number of reviews or that they are done consistently. I have found that the most helpful reviews are all the ones where really good code is reviewed by lots of people that has all of the things that organization considers a good practice. 1 Review like that does a lot more good than 25 reviews by lesser skilled coders.</comment>


Python: Using Turtles for Drawing Circles - <AUTHOR> http://www.blog.pythonlibrary.org/2012/08/06/python-using-turtles-for-drawing/ <comment><USER2> I think it's important for us to know how to show the power of computers and programming to kids. This is a great tool to achieve that since python is so abundant in the unix world.</comment>


Ask HN: Are there any viable carbon-capture techs? - <AUTHOR> This year is looking to be again the hottest on record, and carbon production isn't slowing at any sensible rate. Are there any viable carbon-negative capture techs around or in development? <comment><USER2> Yes. It's called "tree". Works rather well. The only problem is that it produce a very poluting di-oxygen compound and also some very dangerous dihydrogen monoxide compound.

[https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/oxygen#section=Saf...](https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/oxygen#section=Safety- and-Hazards)

Signal: Warning GHS Hazard Statements H335: May cause respiratory irritation [Warning Specific target organ toxicity, single exposure; Respiratory tract irritation - Category 3] Precautionary Statements P261: Avoid breathing dust/fume/gas/mist/vapors/spray. P271: Use only outdoors or in a well- ventilated area. P304+P340: IF INHALED: Remove person to fresh air and keep comfortable for breathing. P312: Call a POISON CENTER or doctor/... if you feel unwell. P403+P233: Store in a well-ventilated place. Keep container tightly closed. P405: Store locked up. P501: Dispose of contents/container to ...

Behavior in Fire: Increases intensity of any fire. Mixtures of liquid oxygen and any fuel are highly explosive. (USCG, 1999) Excerpt from ERG Guide 121 [Gases - Inert]: Non-flammable gases. Containers may explode when heated. Ruptured cylinders may rocket. (ERG, 2016)

[https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/oxygen#section=Tox...](https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/oxygen#section=Toxicity)

Cough; dizziness; sore throat; visual disturbances at very high concentrations. At 100% oxygen for more than 24 hours: symptoms above plus weakness, fatigue, pain in joints and muscles, numbness and tingling in arms and legs, palpitations, headache, nasal congestion, ear disturbances, nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, fever and swelling of mucous membranes. On contact with liquid: freezing burns.

[http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html](http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Very good!

Trees are of course the perfect carbon capture approach, only problem is we seem to value the land more than the trees that grow on it.

Also, afaik, carbon capture by trees only partially solves the carbon issues we have from burning fossil fuels, which some say needs an approach more towards the sequestering end of the spectrum.

Im interested in carbon extraction from the air which can then be used for carbon fibre creation, but this seems like a new area of active research.

It would be great if we could increase the amount of land devoted to trees but Im not sure thats possible for a variety of reasons sadly.</comment></comment>


Holy Crap, Is This Mark Zuckerberg's Embarrassing Childhood Angelfire Website? - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5993535 <comment><USER2> What's embarrassing about it? It's a 15-year-old's website and it looks cleaner than most of the web from that era.

Plus, at least he didn't mention his Asian fetish on this one (unlike his old Synapse website: [0] Off topic, but isn't referring to someone who is presumably his girlfriend as "my Chinese girl" kind of offensive?)

[0] <http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/31/zuckerberg-d-angelo/></comment>


Looking for someone in the Boston area to work with - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually live about 40 minutes NW of Boston (Carlisle), and would love to get together with a couple other folks to kick around ideas with and work together on web apps with - and if things work out, co found a startup with.

Right now I primarily work with Ruby on Rails, but I also like online marketing and doing design every once in awhile. I have a lot of ideas I've been sitting on for awhile, and soon I'll have enough saved up that I'll be able to take time off and really work on them. I absolutely love Rails and would love to have a successful site that I could have 100% creative freedom with. My idea of relaxing after a day of client work is to work on one of my side projects :)

My email is daniel at flyingmachinestudios dot com (my web site hasn't been updated in awhile. my excuse is that I've been too busy, and I really haven't had to) .

Good luck to everyone who got accepted, and everyone who (like me) didn't :)

</comment><comment><USER2> Working on what area?</comment>


Yale researchers conducted an experiment to turn conservatives into liberals - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2017/11/22/at-yale-we-conducted-an-experiment-to-turn-conservatives-into-liberals-the-results-say-a-lot-about-our-political-divisions/ <comment><USER2> FYI, Bargh (the author of this editorial) has been pushing these sorts of priming effects for a long time. Many of these (most famously the "priming people with elderly-related words makes them walk slower" study) have not held up under subsequent replications.

Clearly this doesn't mean that the studies Bargh is describing here are similarly flawed – but he has shown a strong resistance to admitting his mistakes, and so I'm less inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt here, particularly when the original studies aren't linked anywhere.

Further reading:

[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2012/01/1...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2012/01/18/primed- by-expectations-why-a-classic-psychology-experiment-isnt-what-it-seemed/)

[http://andrewgelman.com/2016/02/12/priming-effects- replicate...](http://andrewgelman.com/2016/02/12/priming-effects-replicate- just-fine-thanks/)

[http://andrewgelman.com/2016/09/21/what-has-happened-down- he...](http://andrewgelman.com/2016/09/21/what-has-happened-down-here-is-the- winds-have-changed/)

<comment><USER3> Thank you for pointing out the issues behind "priming". The cult of believers that's grown up around Daniel Kahneman and others (including many in the Positive Psychology) field is distressing. To Kahneman's credit, even he recognized issues within the field back a couple of years in an online post.

Some issues that come to mind in this field are 1). Scientists who want to be famous, do TED talks, and get that sweet sweet consulting money instead of humbly contributing to the field and 2). The ethical issues all of this has when these findings are applied to things like Facebook, various apps, etc.

Also to take a page from the gender movement, what's with the binaryness of liberal and conservative? Those were handy labels at one point, but they've utterly failed to catch up to the world we're in. A lot of liberals are now arguing for a more aggressive foreign policy, while conservatives are starting to back unions (conservatives and unions tends to unite every 60 years or so around the issue of immigration). These labels are old and useless.

<comment><USER4> > A lot of liberals are now arguing for a more aggressive foreign policy...

Would you please provide your evidence for this? Or do you mean a lot of Democrats are arguing for a more aggressive foreign policy?

<comment><USER3> I should have said Democrats you're correct, I used "liberals" as a tenuous shorthand. Look at Clinton's approach to Russia vs Trump, although confusingly this is reversed in the case of China.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for clarifying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article argues that conservative views are correlated with fear/concern over physical safety, and that increasing the feeling of physical safety moves conservative views toward more liberal views.

If true, it makes me wonder whether the balance of conservative and liberal populations confers survival value to the whole population. Surely there are times when there is more or less risk to our physical safety. Perhaps the liberals tend to be more blind to it when risk is more probable; and perhaps the conservatives overestimate it when it is less probable. Might we need the presence of both views to keep us safe when we're at risk and to loosen the reins for exploration when we're in less danger?

<comment><USER6> Yes, this is a very accepted theory. A country with only Liberals would cease to exist because they would be invaded or be unwilling to enforce any sort of borders or law. Even if no external threats exist, it will eventually succumb to the tyranny of minorities.

A country with only Conservatives would die of stagnation, forever condemned to follow tradition and existing dogma. New ideas would be quickly squelched and the country would succumb to the tyranny of majority.

The interesting thing about the United States is that you get to see almost both ends in different states. In some places, police departments are essentially unwilling to enforce the law lest they be called racist/sexist/ableist/anti-immigrant/anti-Muslim/anti-poor. In other states, an individual can not only openly carry a firearm but also stand their ground. Cross another state border and misgendering someone could constitute a hate crime. Another border over, a KKK or Neo-Nazi rally is not only occurring, but actively allowed under the idea that free speech triumphs over hate speech.

It is a fascinating place and time, and I wish I could be around in 200 years to see how the experiment evolves.

<comment><USER7> \- actively allowed under the idea that free speech triumphs over hate speech

I thought that as long as it was speech, it was allowed, period. Seem to remember something about a first amendment...

<comment><USER8> SCOTUS has routinely smacked down the notion of unlimited free speech without consequence. Hate speech is legal and generally allowed on public property as with any speech. Speech that incites violence against others is not.

So for instance it's legal in the US to say "Group X is subhuman and shouldn't be allowed to marry" but it's not oka to say "We should go murder Group X now.", especially when you have the means and motivation to do it. For instance while it is very common to make threats against the US president regardless of party, it's often seriously reviewed for obvious reasons and is not considered protected speech.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a single, non replicated experiment in human psychology, with a viral result.

These are all prime risk factors for studies that turn out to impossible to replicate.

Doesn't mean this _has_ to be one of those, but I wouldn't change any major life philosophy until this has been confirmed a few times.

</comment><comment><USER10> I don't see a clear mapping of fear to either side in particular, more that they fear different things. For instance, a liberal might be more fearful of guns, while a conservative might be more fearful of foreigners. A liberal might be more fearful of economic hardship, while a conservative might be more fearful of crime.

These are just generalizations, of course.

<comment><USER8> The article said the "study" was specific to physical threats versus other threats. Conservatives were more likely to sway towards liberal positions if their physical safety was secure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Back in the days of high crime rates, they used to say a Democrat is a Republican who has never been mugged. Maybe they were on to something. Same way George W Bush had an approval rating over 90% in the days after 9/11.

<comment><USER12> A republican was someone who was the victim of a crime. A domocrate was someone falsely accused of a crime.

<comment><USER13> Yes, you have huge amounts of karma, so yes, you're right that you don't need to care about the downvotes. That said, someone who has been here as long as you have and has accumulated as much karma as you have presumably does actually understand how to raise the level of the discussion, even on complex political topics where it's frequently difficult to do so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> For more on suggested influences on political position, see New York University social psychologist Jonathan Haidt's TED talk _The Moral Roots of Liberals and Conservatives_ :

[https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind](https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind)

</comment><comment><USER15> This entire study is based on the completely false and contrived idea that politics is binary. There is not some sort of line with "liberal" and "conservative" ends that people fall along. Its a false paradigm created and perpetuated by those with vested interests and/or those who have been conditioned to believe this is the case.

For example, take the most important of all issues - war. If you are against war, is that a liberal or a conservative position? Most American "liberals" hail Obama as the the great liberal champion. From Afghanistan (where his first act in office was to triple the number of troops) to Libya (where he launched countless bombings and missiles and toppled the central government) to a massive increase in robotic drone assassination globally, he was a big proponent of war. Is being against war a conservative position? A brief look at our last "conservative" president (not counting our current president who seemingly has no coherent ideology) George Bush destroyed Iraq with his illegal invasion, invaded Afghanistan and massively expanded our global military footprint.

The same question can be asked about a wide variety of the most important issues. Are you a liberal or a conservative if you oppose the police-state (constructed by "conservative" Bush and massively expanded by "liberal" Obama). If you are against central banking and a centrally controlled economy, does that make you a liberal or a conservative (the same group of supply-side economists have been running the FED, the SEC, and every other lever of the economy since the 90s, throughout all administrations - including currently with "liberal" Gary Cohen running things for Trump).

The simple truth is that there is no ideological definition, because the terms "liberal" and "conservative" have virtually no meaning in modern society, and simply morph into matching whatever positions are currently held by Democrats and Republicans. Pretending that ideology can be pegged along this binary Democrat/Republican paradigm is very useful if you are a Democrat or a Republican, but not useful at all if you seek to understand the human pysche.

</comment><comment><USER16> Interesting, this resonated with me. I'm a "conservative" from the view of modern liberals (strictly speaking I'm a classical liberal or libertarian- I support gay marriage, the end of war, the end of drug wars, the elimination of income taxes, hard money, open borders freedom of speech and gun rights) ... and I will openly admit that the primary motivation for many of these beliefs is a feeling of a lack of safety.

I don't like humans being abused, physically or mentally, and I feel that happens way too much in our society, and all of those positions in one way or another are attempting to end abuse.

I know many liberals feel their positions are based on similarly wanting freedom (at least when I was a liberal that was my motivation)... which is why I think the great divide is largely due to wedge issues being shoved down our throats.

<comment><USER17> I think wedge issues are perverted to be the centerpieces of modern conservatism to create an easier path to adhere out of fear. Reasoning about the issues you mentioned is much more difficult than bite-sized strawmen ("sharia law is coming to america!").

I think the issue comes down to a conflict of motivations between the politicians and the voters. The voters may desire safety, but the politicians who offer them safety have no accountability to deliver on that, nor do they tend to actually do so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Other way round would have had equally interesting outcomes. Wonder why they choose this particular direction.

</comment><comment><USER19> Disclaimer: it's hard to take any effect seriously anymore until it's survived meta-analysis. Having said that, I'll bite...

1\. Some of the most conservative people I've known were my sports teammates (football, baseball, and basketball). Due to their above average physical abilities and training, these were also the people least at risk for being bullied, physically harmed, etc. Seems at odds with the study's effect right?

2\. I'm quite liberal in my political and social ideals and yet I'm deeply skeptical and cynical when it comes to trusting other people, groups, nations, etc. to safeguard my best interest, i.e., I feel "conservative" in many ways too. Bernie Sanders is sort of my spirit animal. How should the study's effect play out for people like me?

</comment><comment><USER20> Similar observation has been made in the Wall Street.

When people get their "Fuck you money" (subjectively enough money that they feel safe and can keep their lifestyle and status) they turn more liberal.

</comment><comment><USER18> > the amygdala, is actually larger in conservatives

This[1] seems to be the source study on 90 "young adults"

Seems like( not sure if same name or what) this paper is authored by british actor colin firth who seems to have no actual research qualifications on his wikipedia page.

These people clearly have an agenda. Gross!!

1\. [http://www.cell.com/current- biology/abstract/S0960-9822(11)0...](http://www.cell.com/current- biology/abstract/S0960-9822\(11\)0..).

</comment><comment><USER21> Interesting experiment, though part of me wonders how different countries and their general political leanings are affected by this. Why are both American political parties more right leaning than their European counterparts? Would such an experiment have different results based on where/what culture it was being held in?

And what about the fact politics has multiple dimensions to it? What makes someone more libertarian or authoritarian?

<comment><USER22> One difference might be that continental US have not been invaded in modern times. Within living memory, most of Europe was invaded and occupied by foreign powers. This may be part of the reason that nationalism and pride in the military etc (perhaps until recently?) has been much less prominent in northern Europe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's important to note that the original paper ([http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1002/ejsp.2315/fu...](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1002/ejsp.2315/full) \- sadly behind a paywall, though it may or may not be available on scihub) specifically caveats the finding as only related to social progressivism, not economic:

> As predicted, making Republican participants feel physically safe increased > their liberalism on social issues, but their stance on economic issues was > unaffected. Contrary to predictions, however, Democrat participants' > attitudes (both social and economic) were unaffected by the prime. This is > presumably because Democrats (and liberals) are chronically lower on threat > perceptions than Republicans (and conservatives). This pattern of results > mirrors that found in prior work, which has shown that experimentally > inducing threat does not affect conservatives' responses, but causes > "liberals to think like conservatives" (Nail et al., 2009).

Still an important result and (IMO) something worth researching further (EDIT: especially given questionable replicability of the researcher's previous work, as posted by other commenters in this thread), but less impactful.

</comment><comment><USER24> This bears an uncanny resemblance to the "Great Operation" from We[0].

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_\(novel\))

</comment><comment><USER25> I know many who fall in the conservative end of the spectrum and who are entrepreneurs and have taken tremendous risks for extended periods. "Fear makes you conservative" is catchy though.

<comment><USER26> Even if the article is bunk, I think you're conflating different kinds of fear. You can be afraid of the dark without being afraid of heights.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Make them judges. Almost all judges become less conservative and more liberal over time on the bench.

</comment><comment><USER28> For some reason "60 out of every 1,000" sounds a lot worse than "6 out of 100"

<comment><USER22> Would it be correct to say that '60 out of 1000' has more predictive power than '6 out of 100'?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> What did they do? Force them to read?

</comment><comment><USER30> So the genie just grants _me_ invulnerability to physical harm? What about everyone else?

</comment><comment><USER31> If conservatives are people who are dominated by physical fear, why are so many American soldiers conservatives?

<comment><USER32> > If conservatives are people who are dominated by physical fear

That's not what the article is saying at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> As always with these announcements from academia, I'll remind people that it's going to take years before we can industrialise this process.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is interesting, but doesn't feel like anything new, at least in retrospect. Fear is a well-worn tool in the conservative political playbook.

Where this is interesting to me is in the possibility that fear generally drives a swing toward conservative attitudes, regardless of the alignment of the politician that wields it. In that case, left-leaning political campaigns could be self-sabotaging by engaging in dirty pool or attack ads. If this dynamic described in TFA is really repeatable, you might see a campaign that doesn't attack and just cranks up the optimism to 110%. Whether that's viable in this modern world is up for debate.

There has definitely been an element of this at the _core_ of the Obama, Sanders, and Clinton campaigns, but on the outskirts you continued to have attack ads and fearmongering over the GOP candidates (or over primary challengers).</comment>


Programmer distillation - <AUTHOR> http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2013/01/22/distill/

<comment><USER2> I agree with the author, but the petroleum analogy was extended way too far and muddles the issues. Here are some specific topics that the umbrella of the analogy covers that could have been addressed:

a) How important is 'cultural fit'? Should Paypal have not hired an otherwise talented engineer because they called basketball 'hoops'? [1]

b) Hiring Generalists vs Specialists

c) How to evaluate candidates

As the questions get more nuanced, the answers can be far more compelling. For example, you might come away agreeing with this article but not realize you're subconsciously using the inaccurate heuristic Y to look for programmers. But if the answer to c) is that work sample tests are the best way to evaluate candidates [2], it's much harder to ignore.

[1] [http://blakemasters.com/post/21437840885/peter-thiels- cs183-...](http://blakemasters.com/post/21437840885/peter-thiels- cs183-startup-class-5-notes-essay)

[2] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4613543>

edited for formatting

</comment><comment><USER3> These kinds of posts make me happy and sad at the same time. Happy because I agree with every word with every fiber in my body. Sad because literally 100% of the industry as far as I can tell is exactly as how she explains in the article. I can't even remember how many phone interviews I've done over the past 8 months... Despite the fact that I have over 50,000 lines of code on my github account and 5 years experience, I'm told I'm "not what we're looking for".

<comment><USER4> I'm sure you'll eventually find out. That's the crazy thing: this kind of non- sense shows how we're basically nowhere when it comes to matching talent with companies.

The headhunter business, especially in IT, is already a huge one. But it's really just in its infancy. In a better world there would be sites doing the matching, not unlike online dating.

I don't worry for you because I know there are several good fits for you and eventually you'll find one.

But still, it really sucks. At the same time it shows there's just so much yet to be done...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> We'd need to decouple work and wages. Someone told me there is no such thing as working illegally in the US. There is only illegally getting paid. I am sure we can find work for everyone but how much is the compensation?

Perhaps we ought to guarantee a certain amount of money to everyone whether they be Warren Buffet or Joe Schmucks. Then, we'd get rid of the minimum wage.

I had a similar conversation with a coworker this morning. What job would have the most people applying for if no job paid any money? In other words, if salary and job were decoupled, what result would we see?

<comment><USER6> Wow, did you not even think for a second about the consequences?

 _We'd need to decouple work and wages_

Well what incentive would people have to go to 11 years of college then to become a surgeon? What incentive would a start-up founder have to work 80 hour weeks for years on end if there was no chance to get rich off of it?

 _What job would have the most people applying for if no job paid any money? In other words, if salary and job were decoupled, what result would we see?_

The job which required the least amount of effort. The more difficult or time consuming the job, the less applicants there would be.

<comment><USER7> No, it's an interesting idea. People would do what they _wanted_ to do as opposed to what they _had_ to do in order to earn a living. I can look to my wife as an example. She's a horse trainer. She makes very little money (pretty small market for clients to start with), gets injured frequently: sometimes badly, but absolutely loves the work.

There are many of us out there who really like what we do and would do it even if we weren't paid, as long as we still had a source of income

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> " _Our rejected candidate ... represent[s] diesel fuel. It's also capable of moving stuff around. Just look at all of the Mercedes and VWs and pickup trucks, semis, trains, and everything else out there. It doesn't "burn" quite the same way, but from 30,000 feet it all looks the same_ "

There are two solutions to the question of culture: one at 30 000 feet and one at the microeconomic level. At the portfolio level yes, diversification is good. At the company level, however, focus tends to produce better results. Diesel won't burn in a petrol car.

The only thing that can be empirically agreed upon regarding effective company cultures is that having one matters (more than which one you have) - this is another way of saying having a set of correlated values. Ideally, an economy (or portfolio) would contain a diversity of cultural heterogeneity, ranging from prone-to-blind-spots monocultures to attention-deficit giants.

That said, it is good to continuously question the efficacy of measures at measuring the intended characteristics and what constitute that set of characteristics.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've been trying to make this exact point to my current company as we try to hire operations people.

I really liked the refinery analogy, and think it will come in handy. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on it.

</comment><comment><USER10> At this point, you should probably just cut Google in on part of your book revenue. :D

<comment><USER11> Not all of my posts are about them. I'd say most of them probably aren't these days. This one certainly wasn't. This one was inspired by a story which made it onto reddit or HN (can't remember which) about how North Dakota now looks bright at night from space due to petrochemical flares. That got me to learn about flaring, and the whole distillation tower concept and so forth. Before I learned about that, I had no idea crude oil could be turned into so many different things. That in turn got me thinking about "using all of the buffalo" - everyone's probably good _somewhere_...

Meanwhile, HN has these YC company job postings which can be completely ridiculous, and it's impossible to discuss them to call them out on their insanity.

If I write a post about something and it makes you think about a certain company, that may say more about your impression of that company than anything else. See also: <http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2012/03/03/corp/>

<comment><USER10> Oh, I had just assumed that you meant either Google's focus on academic credentials or their down-the-rabbit-hole programmer interviews by "testing for attribute Y", considering all of your other thinly-veiled "maaaan, google is so fucked up now" posts.

I guess my reading of your posts is tinted by my mental classification of you: "great ex-google writer and programmer who had too much common sense to keep working there".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The whole article is written about how the author wishes productivity to be, but doesn't go into analysis on how the world actualy works, and why.

These are completely unrelated things.

Wishful thinking won't make every wannabe programmer able to create every product. For a real life example, google for the articles on people failing fizzbuzz-test when applying for programming jobs. The distillation is used to separate "non-programming sheep from programming goats".

<comment><USER13> I don't think the original author means you should hire people without any related knowledge. But if a company is looking for a JEE programmer they could probably hire a programmer with another background as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It really depends on what stage the company is at. Unless you're Facebook / Google / Microsoft you're better off with a a bunch of full stack programmers than a bunch of specialists.

Even at FB/GOOG/MSFT the specialists only really work well on established product lines, and not skunkworks type projects. The cost of communication overhead is simply to high for specialists to work well for most companies.

Also, you can usually rent a specialist for the few days you actually need them to tune up your DB server, etc.

<comment><USER15> _Unless you're Facebook / Google / Microsoft you're better off with a a bunch of full stack programmers than a bunch of specialists_

Sometimes when I read job listings for "backend dev" or "frontend dev" I start to thi I am the only full stack guy out there. Thanks for helping me feel less alone.

<comment><USER16> Ditto. But moving further and further from frontend these days... can't remember the last HTML I wrote. More time on HA clustering, continuous integration, build systems, multi-provider cloud management infrastructure, emerging kernel features, network-device-agnostic network connectivity rulesets... blah.

<comment><USER15> I spent a few years detached from the backend before reestablishing myself as full stack.

Also, the more I think about it, the more I think that CI, build systems, and infrastructure are necessary and important facets of being a full stack programmer.

Emerging kernel features? Probably not so much :)

<comment><USER16> Depends on the complexity/size/requirements of your CI system/infrastructure. I am mostly interested in the kernel features for LXC/virt: see <https://github.com/globalcitizen/lxc-gentoo> .. damn handy for rapid and efficient virtualization of complex infrastructures on limited hardware.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The only universal answer for "generalist or specialist?" is that there is no universal answer.

Sometimes you want a generalist. Sometimes a specialist. Sometimes you want adaptability, sometimes adaptation. Sometimes coverage, sometimes convergence. Sometimes generality, sometimes optimality.

As for analogies ... I prefer the pin factory, myself.

<comment><USER13> I think most companies actually need more generalists (especially for web and mobile). Lots of companies switch between different technology stacks every couple of years. Sometimes you don't even have choice e.g., when a new phone OS becomes popular.

This is different when you are looking for someone to work on one task for a short while. But if you are looking for long term employees you should look for people who are good at adapting to new technologies and have good basic programming skills.

<comment><USER17> Really, it depends. For every small startup that needs a good full stack generalist to rush to different fires, there's a lot of medium and large companies that need a <whatever> guru to come and tune their production system.

Horses for courses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is the whole full stack generalist / specialist dichotomy a correct one?

I'm bootstrapping and I can do a lot by myself: setting up Linux from scratch, installing & configuring the DB, the proxies, the webapp server, the firewall, write administration scripts, set up the SSH tunnels, do the coding, do the HTML+CSS... Full stack "generalist" way. (Heck, I can even build the server myself if needed).

But at the same time I'm definitely a "specialist" in some fields. For example I've been holding my SJCP (now Oracle) Java cert since the last century and I've been coding in Java since more than 10 years and I know some Java frameworks inside out.

Sure I'm not a DBA nor a Unix sysadmin specialist but I'm both a generalist in that I can still do it if needed and yet I'm a specialist in certain programming domains.

I mean: aren't all generalists still specialists in some particular domain?

Maybe too that HN is representative in that a lot of the entrepreneurs in IT will tend to be "full stack"?

As a side note, sometimes it sucks to be "full stack" because people ask you to do things you'd rather not do, because you're the one in the company (startup) knowing that area the best. It doesn't make you very good at it, but by knowing it more than the next guys, you get to do it.

As a second side note, when working for bigger structure, I've noticed that the DBA, for example, or the Unix sysadmin, do really like it when they realize they're talking with someone who understands what they're doing. Heck, I've helped Unix sysadmin troubleshoot Java webapp server issues because they weren't that familiar with Java ; )

<comment><USER15> _Is the whole full stack generalist / specialist dichotomy a correct one?_

Maybe it's not a dichotomy, and more of a spectrum.

Also, there's the idea of a "T-shaped person" who is broad in many areas and goes really deep in one. I would take A T-shaped person over an I shaped person, all things being equal.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: I'm looking for a technical co-founder/partner. - <AUTHOR> I read HackerNews almost daily, and I always enjoy the articles and the discussions about startups, software and code.  So, I'm hoping that there might be a similarly minded HN reader out there who is looking for their next big thing.
As a preface, I've had a lot of software developed, but I've never worked full-time on software with a co-founder/partner.  Much of this is new to me, so I would definitely be open to comments or ideas about the way I'm performing this search from other members of HN, especially about the responsibilities I've listed below.
The Offer : In one sentence, I'm looking for someone to work with me to build a Software as a Service business based in Japan.  I'm experienced at IT sales, running a business and managing people.  I have a large network of contacts in Japan, and Webnet IT has a large 'built-in' active customer base that are interested in software that provides value to their operations.  Webnet IT is still my main operation, however I plan to spend a large portion of my time on this project once I find the right technical partner.
Here are some basic guidelines that are important to me :
- Skill Sets.   I am not a coder.  I have plenty of experience on the IT infrastructure side, and I've been running an IT business for 7 years, but I have no coding skills beyond basic scripts, basic PHP/MySQL and HTML.  I'm hoping to find someone who is passionate about coding, and has either the experience in creating SaaS systems, or the periphery experience and the ambition and ability to create this level of application.
- The Idea.  I have a number of ideas based on software I've developed and our customers requirements, but I'm open to discussion.  I see this as something we'd generate and agree on together.
- Personality and Capability.  I imagine we'll be spending a lot of time working together, and as a result, personality and attitude (and a sense of humour!) are paramount.  This goes both ways - you need to be comfortable and happy working with me.  I don't really mind about your background.  I don't place too much stock in degrees and certificates.  I'd be much more interested to hear about your personal software projects, your personal wins and your work experiences.
- Compensation. I'm open to ideas on compensation structures. If we get as far as discussing compensation, we can work out a fair and reasonable structure based on who you are, what you want, and what you can contribute.  Naturally, "I want a large base and no revenue sharing or company percentages" is a very different conversation from "Give me a place to sleep and X% of the company".
- How we work together.  I imagine that at the start, we'll discuss our ideas over Skype.  I'll show you examples of the software I've designed and developed, you'll do the same for me.  We'll put together a basic arrangement, and we'll do a couple of small projects to get an understanding of how we both work.  When this goes well, we'll see if we can agree on a basic product road-map.  If this goes well, we'll put together a plan to launch, detailing responsibilities and milestones.  By this stage, we should have an agreement in place.  Work begins.  Within a few months, we'll need to be spending a good amount of time working together.  As such, I'd like for you to be willing, happy and able to move to Japan.  As we get busier and as we acquire customers, I'd be hiring more developers and support staff, most likely working under you.
Bio : Like any relationship, or perhaps even more so, the co-founder/partner type relationship is based on trust and understanding.  As such, here is a brief biography to give you an understanding of who I am.
My name is Jason Winder, I'm Australian, I've been living in Japan for 8 years, and I run a business named Webnet IT that provides IT services to foreign companies in Japan.
Introduction : I was lucky enough to get a 2nd hand clunker computer when I was a kid.  For the technically curious, it was a x8086 with a green TV as a monitor, two 5.25 floppy drives, no hard disk and about 128K memory.  I grew up breaking, fixing and learning from this computer. From the experience gained from this PC over the years, I landed a job working for a large company out of high school.  I then found work at a smaller company in Australia, then I moved to Japan.  I worked for various IT companies for a couple of years, then I started my own company, Webnet IT.
Webnet IT : I didn't go to university, but I love learning.  I started from a blank slate in regards to entrepreneurship.  I've built up a consulting business by learning incrementally about business, sales and marketing.  During this process, I designed software and systems that automate mundane tasks, and assist us doing things like generating quotes, invoices, sharing information with our customers, and many other things. Through this process, I've discovered I have a passion for developing software that helps people perform complex tasks both simply and efficiently.  I'd like to build on this and develop useful software to sell to people.
Side note : My main PC these days is an Apple 15" MacBook Pro. I built my home PC myself, it's an Intel Core2Duo 3.06GHz running Windows 7 with 2x24" monitors.
You Would Be Responsible For
The technical and architectural infrastructure, Initially all coding, Eventually managing a small team of coders, Brainstorming ideas, and Creating a product roadmap with me.
I Would Be Responsible For
Sales and marketing, Funding, General hiring and Management, Accounting, Brainstorming ideas, and Creating a product roadmap with you.
I imagine these responsibilities will evolve over time, however I think it's important to do some initial general planning on expectations and responsibilities.
If this describes you and your situation, or if you have any comments or thoughts, I would be very happy to hear from you.  Please contact me at email@example.com.
Thanks for your time reading this.
Jason
tl;dr
95%Biz/5%Tech guy looking for a Tech guy. btw Japan. <comment><USER2> I must say this is a lot more intriguing and value-based than most of the other:

      1) I'm an idea guy.
      2) I need a code monkey to clone ___.
      3) Profit.

Thanks for being upfront and geninue (imo).

I would certainly entertain the idea of working with you. I'm a 37signals kinda guy and roll with tha saas model. We can definitely get a feel for one another, but have to be honest and say, while I am not _opposed_ to moving to Japan, its one of the super-huge obstacles that would make this _actually_ working out quite a long shot, since what if we make it all the way to that point, it doesn't work out down the line, and I am out on my ass in Japan?? Hey wait ... that actually sounds really damned fun - Email is on the way!

P.S. Been seriously working on a pretty solid idea of my own, it should work just as well in Japan.. but I guess that's what the email is for!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks very much for your reply. I'm glad thats coming across. I'm certainly not an MBA with a game changing idea that I'm 'allowing' someone to work on - quite the opposite. The idea itself is important, but the execution is the critical component.

I'm also down with the ultra clean 'as few features as possible' mentality, so I'm looking forward to having a chat with you.

Agreed - there are worse situations than being unencumbered and single in Japan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Funny how it is always "business guy looking for a coder" but never "coder looking for a business guy".

Probably your post will become much more readable if you drop the two leading spaces on your bullet points, that way they become inlined instead of in a scrolling div.

Another thing you could do is limit the line length with hard returns.

<comment><USER4> _Funny how it is always "business guy looking for a coder" but never "coder looking for a business guy"._

Clearly this is due to business people being more aware of their limitations than coders are. ;-)

<comment><USER5> Actually I know coders looking for a business guy with a condition that he is a former coder. For instance, reading HN is a plus for a candidate.

Ha ha only serious. The job is located in the EU, in a country with one of highest GNP in Europe at the moment.

<comment><USER6> Why can't you just say 'Its in France' or 'Its in Germany'?

<comment><USER3> Because it is Romania, Hungary, Czech republic, Poland, Serbia or Croatia.

<comment><USER5> My point exactly. It's Poland. But this way folks here got 2 pieces of information at once: one about my selfish proposal and another about the situation in Europe ;P

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What makes you particularly qualified at sales and marketing other than not being a "tech guy"?

<comment><USER8> Why the snark?

Somebody who hasn't gone to university and managed to keep a business afloat for 8 years _has_ to have some skills in sales in marketing. Otherwise you just don't make it. Starting a business and sticking with it for a couple of years is not that easy, and it probably makes him a lot more qualified than most of us here.

<comment><USER7> I don't know about Japan, but in America, you can register a company and keep it "afloat" for as long as you like, even if it doesn't do anything.

<comment><USER3> If you read the introduction you'd see that this person is (1) not in America and (2) has been living of his company for a long time.

That doesn't come close to having a dormant entity, and to try to equate it with that is disingenuous.

<comment><USER7> (1) I did notice. Why do you think I mentioned Japan?

(2) He never stated how much revenue his IT consulting activities generated.

This person is quite eager to qualify his potential partners (that's a sales technique, btw), but from reading the pitch, the only thing that's clear is what he doesn't bring to the table. Promises of help with future marketing and funding do not justify equity to me, but things might look different to someone else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've been thinking awhile that i might make a similar post to this one at some stage. Not being a programmer and beginning a startup that requires programmers without one at hand already is quite difficult. That being said I personally would never do a pure software startup. However of late i've come up with plenty of good business models that have a software element but also requires skills that I have outside of what they try to teach in a commerce degree. With that situation it seems a more equal partnership and also allows a greater sharing of the main company functions, something that helps down the road. I would suggest you look at doing a startup where you can really contribute to the actual creation of the product/service.

The other thing about writing these pleas for help/founder is that you've got to show a little leg. "Software as a Service business" is hardly going to bring the hordes knocking down your doors. Even if you don't want to give your ideas away at least narrow down the areas of your interest because your much more likely to attract someone good if they already share that interest.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your reply and your thoughts on startup business models.

The reason why I didn't go into detail about some of my ideas, is that I'm still flexible about the idea and the direction. I'm not looking to hire a developer, I'm looking for a co-founder. I have a whole bunch of ideas based around all sorts of pain I've had setting up a small company, and I've built systems to alleviate much of this pain. But maybe the co-founder is passionate about something else that also fits in with what I'm doing. Thats why I'd like to discuss ideas over Skype and/or email.

I'm not looking for hordes either - I'd be very happy with one person who is on my wavelength and has the programming experience where I have the complementary business skill set, contacts, and experience.

Good luck with your venture !

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Long time listener, first time caller. Seems like my copy and paste from Google Docs generated an interesting horizontal scroll. For a slightly easier to read version, please check :

[http://blog.webnet-it.co.jp/2009/11/14/im-looking-for-a- tech...](http://blog.webnet-it.co.jp/2009/11/14/im-looking-for-a-technical-co- founderpartner-for-a-saas-solution/)

<comment><USER3> See above why, HN uses indentation as a 'sign' to switch to 'this is code' mode.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Just to clarify: "As we get busier and as we acquire customers, I'd be hiring more developers and support staff, most likely working under you."

You mean that the developers and support staff would be working your co- founder, right? Not that _you_ would be working under this person? I read it the wrong way the first time.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the natural progression would be to have the additional developers working for the project lead.

I see how that could be mis-read, my mistake. What I was trying to say was that I'm looking for a partner who can help run the technical aspects of the company, including management of the subsequent technical staff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Whoever gets together with this guy could potentially learn more in 1 year than they've learned in the past 5. International business experience, candid honesty, and flexibility are fairly difficult to procure. Is there risk? Of course.

</comment><comment><USER12> learn how to code

</comment><comment><USER13> I really like the tone of your proposal, and I'd take you up on it, except I'm not really a "software as a service" type of programmer. ruby, python, css, rails, and stuff like that are not my forte. I tend to deal more with lower- level unixy technologies: TCP/IP, shell scripting, C++, servers, multi- threading, and so on. If somebody has the same general idea but needs my type of programmer, I'd love to hear from such a person.

(semi-off-topic: pg seems to frown on job postings here by non-yc companies. Not sure if this post qualifies as that. If this isn't welcome on the front page, I really wish there was some part of news.yc where this type of thing could go.)

<comment><USER3> > pg seems to frown on job postings here by non-yc companies.

Is that true ? I've seen quite a few of these 'looking for co-founder' posts and never heard anything negative about it.

And I would find that a serious point against Paul if it were true but since I can't recall a single instance of that do you have something to back that up with ?

<comment><USER13> jacques, you are obviously the exact type of person who should be hanging around here, but you are really too quick to get bent out of shape over unimportant things. just a couple of minutes ago i read a comment from somebody who described dealing with you as 'talking to a brick wall.'

there have been more 'help wanted' ads killed here than i can count. i'm not going to back to find any now, because of your tone. the ones phrased more as 'looking for cofounder' tend not to get killed, but that seems a pretty minor distinction.

<comment><USER3> What to you is 'unimportant' matters a great deal to me.

If PG would limit access to the forum or kill of posts that would get people connected or employed I'd be out of here in a heartbeat.

I find the suggestion that PG would 'frown' at that a _very_ strong statement against him, and from what I've seen so far I would expect the opposite. That's why I asked for some proof of that sort of behaviour, it is completely contrary to what I would expect. That's a simple follow up question, trust me, when I get bent out of shape you'll know about it.

If there have been more 'help wanted' ads here killed (by PG) than you can count that would diminish not only my view of Paul Graham but also of Y-Combinator as a whole.

What other editors do is not my concern here, PG was singled out specifically.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Financial Service for People Fed Up With Banks - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/09/technology/a-financial-service-for-people-fed-up-with-banks.html?ref=technology <comment><USER2> I tried opening an account with Simple, as I heard all the buzz around the company and it seemed like they had a nice mobile app. A friend got me an invite to their service (it's invite only right now).

So I fill out their online application, and they say they'll get back to me. Cool. A few days later, I get an email saying that they'll need additional verification because I've been a victim of identity theft in the past. What? I've never had such problems, and I checked with my bank/etc. and they didn't find any problems either.

So they want me to get notarized copies of a bunch of documents- I go do that, which costs me $50+ in fees. I send the documents to them.

A week later, they contact me again- there's no way they can open an account for me, for undisclosed reasons, but I can call their support to learn more. OK, I call their support, and a (very nice) guy tells me that it has to do with me not being a US citizen and my SSN being different in some way (? I've been living here for almost 3 years now, working, being paid, opening bank accounts, etc. without ever having a problem). He apologizes, and that's it.

Of course my $50+ in notary fees are lost.

They've been more problematic to me in 2 weeks without even having an account than all of my banks that I've had accounts with for years combined.

So yeah, so much for "a financial service for people fed up with banks"

<comment><USER3> I got an invite, went to the sign up page and then found out that I have to have an iPhone to use it.

Cmd-W.

<comment><USER4> The funny thing is the linked article shows an Android screenshot. But from googling around, it looks like no such app has been released yet.

[http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2013/01/09/business/SIMPLE...](http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2013/01/09/business/SIMPLE2.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The Simple goals[1] feature has helped me save a ton of money FWIW. It basically just hides money from you, and show's you this "safe to spend" balance.

I actually look at this number, because the iPhone app loads quickly and only requires a 4 letter passcode after logging in.

I set really agressive goals and when I notice I'm getting down to the wire on "safe to spend" I make a conscious effort not to buy a coffee, or whatever else.

If I saw my real bank balance, I'd shrug and say, "Oh, what's 3 bucks for coffee?"

[1] <https://simple.com/blog/Simple/announcing-goals/>

</comment><comment><USER6> This is the same company that had a service failure where you couldn't withdraw money from your account recently because their ATM cards wouldn't work and they have no bank branches. I don't think you want to be an early adopter.

</comment><comment><USER7> When you're dealing with your money you're adding a whole other layer of 'switching costs'. Maybe I'm at a point in my life where I care more about net income over getting into the nitty gritty of every transaction, but it's been painless using Chase in NYC, going to ATMs or using a credit card, and taking money in and out for online transactions. Is there a pain point I'm missing here or is this better suited to someone with kids, a mortgage, etc.?

</comment><comment><USER8> What are people "fed up" with exactly?

Overdraft fees? All banks ask you to opt-in. Is that really the thing people are "fed up" with? I find it hard to believe these people have much money, and why Simple would want these idiots.

I have no issues depositing my money quickly, withdrawing my money, and accessing a transaction log. My bank even provides a mobile app to do this. I was asked to opt-in to overdraft, and all the charges were explained _very_ clearly. I bank with Chase.

<comment><USER9> It might help to try to understand the target demographic rather than handwaving them as idiots. I have a decent amount of money, and I'm most certainly fed up with my institutional bank. An increasing share of my money is making its way into my Simple account for a number of reasons:

1) Banks do have you opt-in for fees, but typically through opaque changes to terms and conditions. When my bank was acquired, I started getting fees for, e.g. using other ATMs. I'm sure they sent me something in regards to this, but who the hell actually reads legalese? Contrast that with simple. When the new year rolled in, they updated their terms and conditions with an email that explained its effects in plain english (in a manner reminiscent of Creative Commons licenses.)

2) Simple has ATMs _everywhere_ since it's part of Allpoint.

3) Their apps are just beautiful. Dealing with financial matters is probably the thing I dread most in day-to-day endeavors. Simple completely changes that equation; it makes the process actually pleasant.

4) From a political perspective, I just find most banks (including my institutional one) deplorable. Their role in the financial crisis, and their behavior afterward deserves repercussions. Simple has an unsullied history.

Say what you will, but I'm happy to give Simple my money given the experience thus far. And clearly others are too.

<comment><USER10> > Simple has ATMs everywhere since it's part of Allpoint

To be frank with you, Allpoint is pretty shit wherever I've lived. I don't want to have to go to some dilapidated 7-11 to use their ATM. I want to use any ATM I see on the street with no fee. It turns out I could get that with either USAA or, apparently, Charles Schwab.

> Their apps are just beautiful. Dealing with financial matters is probably > the thing I dread most in day-to-day endeavors. Simple completely changes > that equation; it makes the process actually pleasant.

Can't really comment, except USAA and ING Direct (soon to become Capital One 360) both have perfectly usable web sites, and USAA's web site is even an acceptable Mint, if that's what you want. (Personally, I use spreadsheets.)

> From a political perspective, I just find most banks (including my > institutional one) deplorable. Their role in the financial crisis, and their > behavior afterward deserves repercussions.

Isn't Simple backended by an institutional bank?

<comment><USER9> RE: USAA, Charles Schwab, etc., this is a fair point. All of them have solid reputations. Any idea which one provides the highest interest rates?

> Isn't Simple backended by an institutional bank?

This is a good point, the answer to which I'm unsure.

<comment><USER11> From the article: __Simple is actually not a bank. It has deals with CBW Bank and Bancorp, federally insured banks, to hold its customers' money. __

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Although I'm happy to see someone attempt to do what Simple is attempting to do, I don't think any sizable amount of people will be willing to drop their bank and move to an alternative that doesn't allow cash deposits. I have two bank accounts I regularly use: one is a regional bank based in Texas and the other is Wells Fargo.

I hate my Wells Fargo account but I keep it open so I can deposit money and I can receive account transfers easily from other people. Even with this setup I sometimes find it difficult to get the money where I need it (specifically out of my Wells Fargo account into my regional bank account) without hassle (and fees).

Anyways, the MVP if you will for a bank that I would switch over to would be one that allows me to deposit from anywhere (checks from home, cash from any ATM anywhere that accepts deposits), withdraw from anywhere, and transfer to any other account in a timely fashion.

</comment><comment><USER13> I've been exploring the idea of starting up a bank. The big banks here in my country are so inefficient and I'm hoping to simply make a better banking experience for consumers, hopefully via their mobile phones. Can somebody shed some light on a few questions I have?

#1: I have absolutely no business background. Do I need to get an MBA in order to understand how banks work from the back-office, and maybe the legalities? Reading this article, the Simple co-founder apparently had an MBA. I'm a programmer by trade (Java, Android/iOS, a little of web).

#2: Should I consider Simple a competitor or should I think of banking as a very local kind of industry, like e-commerce? I don't want to build just another Simple clone, and considering Simple's success, if they scale up here in southeast Asia, I don't want to be just a copycat.

<comment><USER14> You should. The market could benefit from new participants.

1\. You don't need an MBA to understand banking. While the importance of regulation and compliance ("legalities") is paramount, it isn't something you learn from an MBA program.

2\. It depends. Simple isn't a bank. If you were successfully issued a charter, you could likely surpass Simple, et al. from an innovation and feature perspective. FYI: <http://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/banking_12779.htm>

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> How is this better than a credit union?

<comment><USER16> I think a lot of people are missing the core of Simple. It's the "Safe to Spend" Idea. I've used simple for the past 8 months and it's helped me get into an even better mindset about saving/allotting money. I used to bank with PNC and use their budgeting tools but the safe to spend idea is just that; money you are free to use.

EDIT: For added perspective I'm an early twenties recent college grad.

Just the other day I realized that I had a credit card payment due and it was slightly higher than I expected (Holiday Spending) and I went into a minor panic as I was a little frazzled in paying it. I logged into simple and that's when I realized that I created a goal that was my credit card limit. This meant over the past month I had already slowly been paying down the bill without even realizing it. Everyday a small portion of my safe to spend was put into that goal. I made the payment without even "rebudgeting". That was a great feeling. I'm living well within my means but I feel like I have more money than ever. Simple makes it easy to keep yourself in check. I have a few items I plan on purchasing in the near future and I just created a few goals so that when the time comes I'll already have paid for it.

Lastly, the at a glance view of your finances without much ado is GREAT. I have an automatically generated daily average income/spending for the day/week/month/year averaged over various periods. I have graphs that show me how my funds have fluctuated and I'm starting to see some patterns in my spending habits. I've haven't banked like this before and I'm excited to see where else they can help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The company missed a valuable window of opportunity to gain a lot of traction when there was strong anti-bank sentiment. People anxiously waited for invites that took too long to come, and when they finally did, there were problems.

Meanwhile the economy has improved, and let's face it, when there's sufficient fund sloshing around in our checking account to make those pesky fees non- issues, the big banks are not that bad.

In addition, many banks have cleaned up their act under pressure from regulators and customers, so now you have much smaller pool of people who are still willing to switch their banks out of spite.

In the end, this was a business that could've taken off and sustained for awhile had their timing and execution been better. After all, once people switch banks, they stick with them.

</comment><comment><USER18> I've been a Simple customer and have nothing but good things to report. As a bank, they provide pretty much all basic services, except for perhaps cash deposit (something I haven't needed to use in years). You can use any ATM out there. You'll probably get charged a fee by the ATM itself, but that's something I can live with. Most of the time, I try to get enough cashback when I get my groceries to cover my very minimal cash needs.

Where Simple really shines though is in two areas:

1) General non-sucky-ness. It's not a single feature, but rather the quality of the overall experience. The support features makes it really easy to write a textual query right in the regular dashboard or mobile app, and they usually reply within hours. There's no calling robotic phone lines and spending 30min in menus or on hold… The website itself is beautiful and extremely usable. Unlike, say, Bank of America Online, the emotion you feel while navigating simple.com is delight, not frustration and exasperation.

2) Goals and Safe to Spend. When you open either the app or the website, there is a very visible balance amount. The trick is, it is not your actual account balance, but rather what Simple calls your Safe-to-Spend balance. Simple has a goals section, in which you can set up goals you wish to achieve by a certain date, as well as reserved funds (eg. an emergency fund). Simple takes all of that information into account, as well as recurring bills such as rent payments and subtracts it from the money it considers safe to spend.

It's great, it has really had a positive impact on my finances. I've never been good at budgeting, but through the way Simple handles Safe-to-Spend, it has kind of forced me into better consumption patterns.

</comment><comment><USER19> I am not in US, so I cannot open an account here. But Prima Facie, this seems like another Bank to me. Ofcourse, they are trying to simplifying a few things. But they do not have the kind of scale larger banks do, say Citibank etc. So I'm guessing once they reach a level where they have a lot of customers, their system will be forced to become more convoluted due to operational overhead.

</comment><comment><USER20> I am typically very lenient guy, but in this case I would say this is complete fail. What Simple is trying to do is extrapolate the problems people have with bank - e.g. overdraft fees, evil sequencing of transactions etc and market service based on it - whereas they have their own list of shortcomings and (as of now) lack of ability to be a real alternative to be a Bank.

</comment><comment><USER21> I tried signing up for Simple, and the entire experience was pretty terrible. I realize that they're a new company trying to tackle a big problem so I wanted to cut them some slack, but the ways in which they messed up are hard to forgive.

Last July, I got my invitation to use Simple.com, which I'd been really excited about for over a year. I start signing up, and instantly I'm surprised by how their signup form is both the most visually attractive form I'd ever used on a website, and how it barely worked. I ran into three different bugs just with the initial signup form.

One of the bugs was that it asks what type of smartphone I have. When I selected Android, it said to submit the form, but that they don't have an Android app yet. No problem, I don't care about a mobile app. The problem is that when you selected Android, the form broke and there was no way to submit it. I'd already spent several minutes filling out the form (including giving them info on my other bank account to transfer money into Simple) and I didn't want to lose all my info, so I just said that I had an iPhone so I could continue signing up.

Then I get to the next screen where it says that the only way to continue the signup process is to install the iPhone app. Of course I couldn't do this, so I emailed their support explaining that I'd mistakenly said I have an iPhone because of a bug with their signup form. I get a response back saying that if I don't have an iPhone, there's no way to use Simple, so I'd have to be added to the Android waiting list.

One problem: they'd already taken the money out of my other bank account. I assumed that they hadn't done this because I'd never actually signed up or agreed to their terms or anything like that (you agree to the terms via their app). I actually only know that they transferred money out of my account because a different support person emailed me in November asking why in the world I wasn't using my Simple account. I responded saying that I'd already talked to them about this, and I didn't have an iPhone. That person told me that I didn't need an iPhone and that I could use the service by logging in online. I forwarded her the email from a different Simple support person contradicting what she said, and she just dismissed it (basically saying, "yeah, that's not true") without apologizing or offering an explanation.

So I tried resetting my password online so I could log in, only to run into yet another bug with their software. The password reset feature was completely broken. So I emailed the support person saying that their password reset feature didn't work. She ignored the issue (no apology, no explanation, nothing) and just told me that I don't need an iPhone without explaining how to actually get into the software, or why I was given incorrect information earlier.

That's where we are now. I've been run in circles by their customer service, I've encountered a half dozen different bugs, and that's without even being able to log in! My next step is to call their 800 number, but I'm already completely fed up with the experience and I won't be a customer of theirs regardless of the resolution at this point. I've been frustrated by every bank I've ever dealt with, but none of them have been as bad as Simple so far.

I seriously hope they get these kinks worked out so that other potential customers don't have the experience I've had.

<comment><USER22> I've had a similar experience with their support. They asked me why I wasn't using the account and I mentioned no ATMs near me and no Android app and they directed me to the web site and didn't address the ATM issue.

IMO their online banking is pretty cool but the so far their customer service has been worse than every other bank and credit union I've used.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> It figures that the guy who started this is Australian. Australia has some of the worst banks in the world in terms of customer service. Last week I was in a bank (Commonwealth Bank of Australia) with my wife attempting to negotiate a better deal in terms of her account fees, which I believe are exorbitant at approx $10 per month for a basic savings account w/online banking. She'd been with them for 25+ years and had a reasonably significant account balance. They didn't budge on anything, even after she asked them to close her account. I was totally appalled at their attitude.

<comment><USER24> How do I down vote you? You're writing off an entire country's banking system with one personal example?

I have my own example of banks in Australia, and they're some of the best I've ever dealt with.

Banks in the US on the other hand...

There's no reason to have an account with a bank in the US when you can have one with a credit union. Unless you're really rich and don't care about fees.

<comment><USER23> I'm not writing off all Aussie banks, but I think I have the right to an opinion on the matter ... I've had bad experiences in terms of customer service with a number of them over a period of 30 years. Bankwest, Bendigo, CBA and Westpac to be exact. Many friends and family have had similar experiences to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I feel like banking is a bad problem for the modern startup that relies on speed of implementation over security concerns.

I'll be happy to see them win, but I'd rather not be a Guinea pig.

</comment><comment><USER26> So it's an analytics front-end for an account with Bancorp? (<http://www.thebancorp.com/about/>)

</comment><comment><USER27> Three years from now, some bank will probably buy them out for their data analysis capabilities.

</comment><comment><USER28> oddly enough they declined my application due to "negative" or "closed" bank accounts. I have been a member of federal credit unions, big banks, have a job and credit cards yet they also denied me. super weird!

</comment><comment><USER29> Anyone aware of a UK alternative?

Mint is US only and the closest thing in the UK we have to that is lovemoney, which falls short in many areas. I'd love to hear from anyone who has experience with alternatives.

</comment><comment><USER30> The question is why call it an online business when every sign-up request has to go through a manual evaluative process?

I requested an account almost 10 months back. No response yet. I forgot about your service completely.</comment>


Ideas Waiting to Happen - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2003/1027/127_print.html

<comment><USER2> creative ideas is one thing and implementing those ideas is what matters most.</comment>