Ask HN: Why do tech startup owners do not own the majority of their stock? - <AUTHOR> Why tech startup owner do not own majority(51%) stocks?<p>What's then their motivation? It means they are just employee and can not take major decisions. <comment><USER2> If there aren't any constraints like VC funding, co-founders, employees (that want equity) then yeah, it would be pretty logical to keep more than 50%.

In reality, you need to make compromises, it's better to have < 50% of something rather than having > 50% of nothing.

BTW: They probably still have "decision power", because they have a board seat, which means they have influence over the company and are not just an "employee" as you stated.

</comment><comment><USER3> Don't get hung up on 51%, or 50%+1 share. Not all shares are equal. A company can issue a single voting share and 99 non-voting shares, and that gives the owner of the 1 voting share complete control despite only owning 1%. It's much more complicated than any simple example can illustrate.

To answer the question though, founders sell equity to raise money. When you've sold 50% the next time you raise (or give stock to a new employee, or reward a mentor, etc..) means you're going to own less than half the company you started.

<comment><USER4> I still don't exactly understand what the value of a non-voting share is. What rights does it confer, exactly. Why do I want to own it?

<comment><USER5> You still own a share of the company. If they pay dividends, you get one.

<comment><USER6> But if you can't vote about whether they pay the dividends... what is preventing the owner of the voting share to simply never pay dividends, and transfer the profit to their own pocket using some other method, for example giving themselves a really high salary, or starting a new company and transferring the profits there?

<comment><USER5> When you are making decisions on behalf of a corporation, you legally have to make the best decision for the shareholders. There's a lot of wiggle-room in that, but the courts will see through the most egregious stuff.

So if you own non-voting shares and the voting shares decide not to give dividends and instead buy a useless corporate yacht for themselves to use, you can sue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I suspect there are two main reasons: 1) Dilution comes with the game when going the VC route (which founders may or may not have realized ahead of time) and once you've started down that path, it's hard to reverse course since you often don't have the cash to buy out investors. So their ownership gets diluted away to obtain funding to keep the lights on and/or with the hopes of cashing out down the line. 2) The plan was always to cash out ASAP. Many startups aren't being built for the long run and more than a few are just attempts at a quick cash grab before investors figure it out so they don't care that they get diluted as long as they get a payday (a.k.a. a 'liquidity event') since that was the plan all along.

You are right that once you lose control, you are just an employee and there are many cautionary tales about what can happen from losing control to getting booted out of the company you founded. As a result, there are some companies (notably Google and Facebook) where the founders made sure to retain control. So it's just a matter of priorities and deciding what one is willing to put up with to achieve their objectives.

<comment><USER8> > Many startups aren't being built for the long run and more than a few are > just attempts at a quick cash grab...

From a VC's perspective they would rather take a loss on a short term investment than waiting 15 years for your investment to pay off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If there are two shareholders, one of whom has 51% and the other of whom has 49%, then there are meaningful ways in which the minority shareholder is not really a decision-maker.

It's pretty different if there are 10 shareholders and you hold let's say 40% of the shares, in which case you might only need one or two people of nine to agree with you.

</comment><comment><USER10> Because they sold shares to investors for money they dearly needed to build the company.

</comment><comment><USER11> When you found a startup and take VC/angel/investor money, the point (from a financial perspective) is the exit. If you're planning to make $10 million USD during some liquidity event, does it matter if your share was $10 million stake was 1% or 100%?

<comment><USER12> Of course it matters. In a bad/mediocre exit scenario, most of the money goes to pay back preferred investors. Common winds up with scraps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> They do, when they put in 51% of the capital needed to grow the business (i.e., they bootstrapped the company). In each funding round you can generally expect 15-25% dilution, and then employees will receive options as well. By series B-C most founding teams will own less than 50% of the business.

Also, remember that different shares come with different voting rights. You can not own 51% of the economic value of a company but still have 51% of voting shares.

</comment><comment><USER14> The ownership of a corporation is apportioned by stock; control is apportioned the same way modulo any side-agreements and restrictions. A tech startup founder frequently does not own a majority of the issued stock because stock has been traded to investors to provide working funds and capital and allocated to key employees to ensure they have some skin in the game.

</comment><comment><USER15> Founders typically start out with majority >50% ownership, but over subsequent funding rounds and employee stock options have to slowly give up ownership %. How much they give up depends on their strength at the negotiating table every fundraising round. The better the company is doing the less they have to give up to close investment, and vice versa.

</comment><comment><USER16> There is this old joke, where a businessman is asked why he's not mad about his wife cheating on him, and he answers "It's better to own 50% of a valuable asset than 100% of a worthless asset."

</comment><comment><USER17> You are correct that it is indeed preferable to own 51% of the shares. Being able to do that and raise the amount of capital you need, however, is the tricky part!

</comment><comment><USER18> 49% of a growing company is better than 51% of a failed company.

49% voting shares plus 51 other investors is still de facto control.

</comment><comment><USER19> because most founders are in the business of raising money not building companies/making products</comment>


Ask HN: What stake should I have in a company when I'm developing for free? - <AUTHOR>

I've been working on a website for some guys I know based on an idea they had. The premise was that I do it for free and I get to own part of the business when it goes live.
Does anyone have any experience with this sort of thing? What % of ownership should I have?
This is not my idea, but I've spent 100's of hours developing their site for them while I've been on break from study. <comment><USER2> I guess the best way would be to agree on a chunk of biz _before_ taking on any work.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've known one of the guys for over 10 years, and he has paid me promptly for odd jobs in the past.

I didn't see any reason to fear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I would say split it with all of them IF you're in it together and they start to work with the site now (marketing and so on).

<comment><AUTHOR> It's looking like that is the most likely outcome. I just wasn't sure if I was selling myself short by letting it be an even split when I'm the one doing the hard yards right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 50%</comment>


IncubatorIncubator: An incubator for incubators, co-working spaces, etc - <AUTHOR> http://incubatorincubator.com/

<comment><USER2> I'm hardly a YC fan boy _(not a hater either, I guess indifferent)_ but I didn't really find it that funny.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sup dawg. I heard you like incubators.

</comment><comment><USER4> So, who else noticed that the form actually works and applied?

</comment><comment> space-monkey Hey! That was my startup idea...

</comment><comment><USER5> Too many gems in here to count.</comment>


Namebox - sell your unwanted or unused domains - <AUTHOR> http://namebox.io/

<comment><USER2> Few suggestions.

Make "Browse domains" more prominent, not just in the footer. Have domains under that somehow ranked. I'd suggest having price listed on click or on visit, so you can grab on that data. Remove "any amount" \- that's psychology 101.

(plug & rant pending) I'm firmly believing synthmeat.com will some day be worth much - [http://namebox.io/dsirijus](http://namebox.io/dsirijus) \- so I'm squatting. Why is there a negative sentiment about that? It's an investment, like any other.

<comment><USER3> Or just have example domains you're offering right now show up faintly on your landing page.

(plug & rant response) I'm much more freaked out by burnakitty.com. What are you planning to do with that domain?

<comment><USER2> Burn prints of cat images per request and for a fee.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> $24,999.00 for freepopemail.com?

Somehow I can't see a business based around free mail from the Pope ever earning that much revenue.

<comment><USER5> free-pop-email.com in case you were being facetious.

<comment><USER6> Next you're going to tell me expertsexchange.com isn't about gender realignment.

<comment><USER7> Once they linked me to penisland.net

<comment><USER3> Their pen selection really lacks something. It's sorely missing in high end pens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does this offer an escrow service for transferring domain ownership?

Being able to list and browse available domains is nice, bootstrapping negotiations is nice too, but the purchase closing is _the_ most tricky part and the ownership transfer via a third party is an absolute must. GoDaddy offers a service like this and it costs few hundred $ per transfer.

<comment><USER9> Why not just use escrow?

[https://www.escrow.com/services/domain-and-website- escrow.as...](https://www.escrow.com/services/domain-and-website-escrow.aspx)

<comment><USER10> It's "escrow.com", not "escrow". They try to do a funky thing with their logo to separate the escrow part of it from .com, but they aren't brash enough to leave off the suffix. If they did, I don't think it would fly.

I searched for "escrow.com" reviews and found some negative ones. So there's one reason why someone might not use it.

Another reason would be that as a general escrow service they may not understand the domain escrow process as well as a company that only does DNS escrow.

<comment><USER11> "I searched for "escrow.com" reviews and found some negative ones. So there's one reason why someone might not use it."

With all due respect (as they say) does this really add anything helpful to a discussion? It's like "I've searched online and people say that wordpress has security issues..."

First of all, as pointed out by others in this thread, that is not the case with escrow.com who I have personally used over the years (and seen used) for numerous transactions. And it is who people use for these transactions, is a specialist licensed in all 50 states (no small feat). Additionally the process is as close to bullet proof in terms of protecting both buyer and seller. And they aren't so large (ala ebay) that if you have a problem you can't get someone on the phone to rectify. Lastly, the President (Brandon Abbey) replies to emails (and in fact adopted a suggestion that I had into escrow.com service).

"Another reason would be that as a general escrow service they may not understand the domain escrow process as well as a company that only does DNS escrow."

Let me assure you that they know that process very well and the industry has responded to that. They are used by buyers, sellers, attorneys, everyone. I get the point you are making which in a general sense can be a valid one. But not applicable here.

<comment><USER10> > With all due respect (as they say) does this really add anything helpful to > a discussion? It's like "I've searched online and people say that wordpress > has security issues..."

I wasn't arguing against escrow.com. I was arguing against the comment I replied to, where the author presented escrow.com as an obvious choice, with the incorrect name, and no reasons in support of using them.

That's why I said "might" instead of "should". My point is that one can always find reasons not to use something, in absence of reasons why they should use things.

I don't want my comment to be taken without taking into account the comment I replied to, and if that's the only way people are going to read it, I retract it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Domain squatting made easy?

<comment><USER13> Yeah, that was my reaction as well. Why legitimize and enable domain squatting?

<comment><USER14> I don't think this makes squatting any easier than the existing tools to sell domains. I'm giving the creator the benefit of the doubt and assume they did this because, like me, they probably have tens of domains they don't plan on ever using.

<comment><USER15> >because, like me, they probably have tens of domains they don't plan on ever using.

So, you mean, small-scale squatters are okay; large-scale squatters are not?

<comment><USER16> It's not squatting. Squatting is registering a domain for its own sake. Sometimes you register domains for projects and then those projects never get off the ground. I have a dozen domains (I defensively registered all the top TLDs) expiring in 4 days for just that reason.

<comment><USER17> Squatting is squatting is squatting. You may have registered with the intent to use it but now that you are not using it you think you deserve money for the ability to rent it?

<comment><USER18> Do you deserve money for your old car that you are putting up for sale? You obviously don't use it anymore. Or renting out that extra room in your apartment? Why do you deserve money for that?

The person owns the domain, they can do with it as they please. So if they want to rent it out, then they can ask money for it... It's your choice if you agree to their terms and make any exchange.

<comment><USER17> All in all, drawing comparisons between something like a domain and real world objects are disingenuous at best. I'm not going to detail how apple.com is different from your Ford Pinto.

You do not own a domain. That is false right off the bat. And no, you cannot do with it as you please. For example, buying a trademarked name and then trying to extort money out of the owner of said trademark is not allowed.

If you are renting a domain with the sole intent to deprive someone else the ability to use it unless they pay an extortionist fee, that is wrong. It goes against the free spirit that the internet was built on. The fee charged is at least in part to prevent a massive "land grab" of domains that are to be sold off at absurd prices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> A lot of these seem super overpriced. Not that that's a fault in the platform.

I hope people don't squat on domains to try to sell them on this.

<comment><USER20> I think a lot of people like me buy domains planning to do something with them. Eventually we realize that time is limited, but we still hang onto the hope of eventually finding the time to do something with the domains.

I'm guessing they are overpriced because people don't actually want to sell their domains, but they would happily do so if someone was to offer a good chunk of cash for them.

That's my logic anyway. I never bought any domains with plans to sell them, but this site was so easy to use, I threw them up there and put big prices on them, just in case :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Million dollars for unwanted domain?

This could work so much better if you could only ask below the registration price.

<comment><USER22> I liked it.

Or if the domain is N years old, the max price should be (N + 1) * registration price.

Also a simple DNS that I could point the domain to and it would serve a simple page stating the price and linking to namebox.io.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I tried adding one of my domains (read.io), but having to create DNS records for every domain I own is a huge pain.

I'm building a similar service now, which automates everything through WHOIS and DNS resolution. The feedback on this post has actually been really helpful.

</comment><comment><USER24> I think it would be valuable to see other potential bids, in case you wish to "raise your maximum" and discourage unnecessary competitive pricing. Browsing a list of domains that are overpriced would be very inconvenient after the first page.

</comment><comment><USER25> Really nice and well done. However, there are multiple services like this – it would be cool if there would be a cap on how much you demand for a domain, like $200 or something. That way this really would be the place to load of domains and give them to someone who might have more use of them than me.

Those complaining that this makes squatting easy – not true. I myself have collected 30-40 domains over the years for projects that I want/will/should build – but never have built... I keep renewing the domains "just in case", but if I could list them for $50 to $200 each and know that someone else will use them for a good purpose, I would.

</comment><comment><USER26> The simplicity of this service and the free listing model could make it a real contender as a Flippa.com alternative. As others have already commented, there is still a lot of room for improvement (payment methods, improved bidding system, etc), but I could definitely see this in future iterations of the service if it were to gain enough traction.

As an immediate suggestion to the developer, it'd be nice if the registration, login, and dashboard areas were secured (HTTPS). Everything appears to be transmitted over HTTP at the moment.

In any case, kudos on the launch - this could definitely shape up to be a pretty solid service.

</comment><comment><USER27> Being able to sort/search by the price domain sellers have set is not terribly useful. There are too many people out there who think their reg price only domain is worth $1 million.

<comment><USER28> >There are too many people out there who think their reg price only domain is worth $1 million.

That's a problem in every domain market-place. People soon learn that unique != priceless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Isn't the ass going to fall out of this market once ICANN starts issuing an increasing number of TLDs? Seems like "sell" would be the dominant intent amongst squatters

<comment><USER30> Nothing really changed when .info, .biz, .pro, .xxx, etc. hit the market.

There are trillions of dollars in marketing behind .com, and we will likely see no change in the standard user mentality (type brandname.com) for generations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> $200 for "urrl.us" ? I wonder how much sh2.us would fetch ( currently hosting my ramblings [http://www.sh2.us](http://www.sh2.us) )

While I like the idea of a simpler domain sales option (since GoDaddy is a spammy nightmare) at present, I think what would really help would be a domain valuation service. It's pretty hard to put an amount on something when you're not sure how much it would really fetch on the market.

</comment><comment><USER32> You could refine the search, if a search for e.g. coin would also show results containing *co.in. I am thinking of something like [https://domai.nr/](https://domai.nr/) Does this sound feasible?

</comment><comment><USER33> There are already very successful domain trading platforms around ([http://www.sedo.com](http://www.sedo.com)). I can't really figure out what namebox's unique value proposition is.

<comment><USER30> Twitter integration! Seriously the reason I prefer Sedo and BuyDomains is that I don't have to deal directly with or have my personal info given out to buyers.

I used to have my email address listed on some domains I had for sale, and after rejecting a ridiculously low offer ($40 for a 3 letter .com) had some 14 year old kid and all his buddies emailing me and calling me at all hours to try and harass me into accepting it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> This is great and hopefully opens up domain listing from folks here on HN. Demand for domains is only increasing, and as someone that handles private buying/selling for startups I see more and more of this need.

</comment><comment><USER35> Seems pretty simple to use.

Since I have a couple unused domains I decided to list them here for any suitable amount - [http://namebox.io/chaz](http://namebox.io/chaz)

</comment><comment><USER36> 1.I can not add any domain now.

2.There is a bug.

when I clicked the blank area of the box "You haven't added any domains yet. Add one.", an "edit domain" pop up dialog came out ...

</comment><comment><USER37> Putting in a plug for the domains i have for sale. I have to renew a bunch today could use to sell one or two

[http://namebox.io/gscott](http://namebox.io/gscott)

</comment><comment><USER38> Of everything listed (mine included), task.io is clearly one of the better domains posted. I don't doubt that everyone has a story behind their ideas, but this was one of the few with a clear purpose.

</comment><comment> apa-sl I cannot verify my domain fashioner.com - TXT record was successfully added to DNS 18 hours ago, I've checked it by char by char using some outside DNS records viewer.

</comment><comment><USER39> Seems pretty simple to use.

I added a few domains to see how it goes > [http://namebox.io/dangelov](http://namebox.io/dangelov)

</comment><comment><USER40> Put hackerspot.org up there. Lets see how this works :)

<comment><USER38> The ideal resource for hackers with glaucoma!

<comment><USER41> I have put up hacki.ng. I noticed that I have started getting dud purchase requests from buyers. I.e. the email address gotten from the purchase mail from namebox.io is false I.e. it doesn't exist. What does the owner of this service intend doing to curb this?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> The domains I added seem to be on my profile but have been removed from the browsing list.

Any idea why?

</comment><comment> apa-sl Please allow people to login using their alias OR email address! I have alias only login :-)

</comment><comment><USER43> Being able to sort by URL length would be nice.

</comment><comment><USER44> I think the "Any amount" listing is a bit vague. You should make it required to have at least a minimum amount. For example, video.io sells for "Any amount" but I doubt that can be taken literally.</comment>


Inside the Mac OS X Kernel: Debunking Mac OS Myths - <AUTHOR> http://chaosradio.ccc.de/24c3_m4v_2303.html <comment><USER2> I'm 10 minutes in so far and I'm beginning to lose patience, not only with the interminable history lesson, but also with the unbearable level of smug.

<comment><USER3> wait to get to the end, but the talk actually gives some points where XNU is slow

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm looking for text, not video. I can't be bothered to watch something that I can read in a fraction of the time.

<comment><USER5> A summary and PDFs of the contents of the presentation are available at [http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2303.en.h...](http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2303.en.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Terrible video player. It's one of those generic Flash players which one sees pretty much everywhere, but it's incapable of skipping in the video properly for me, the times are often wrong, the fullscreen is buggy.. Just a horrible experience.

</comment><comment><USER7> I would also check out Amit Singh's book on the subject, "What is Mac OS X?".</comment>


Show HN: Checklist of over 100 directories to submit your startup - <AUTHOR> https://www.eggradients.com/startup-directory <comment><USER2> AKA how to lose time pretending you are working for your startup. Much better spending the same time acquiring a single customer by talking with people, doing things that do not scale [1].

[1] [http://paulgraham.com/ds.html](http://paulgraham.com/ds.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Why do you think that my _particular_ audience frequents either of these directories? Entrepreneurs should go after their customers, first and foremost. Submitting to irrelevant directories is not only lost time. It's dangerous because it suggests that we are doing something useful and that we don't have to chase the real audience anymore.

<comment><USER4> I'm always wary of startup founders sharing startup launches to each other. Big red flag. Completely skews all advice/critique/reception.

<comment><USER5> Yep, I posted my website asking for critique, half the users were complaining about my 4s load time and didnt mention a thing about the information presented.

Thousands of people use my website a week, apparently they dont care about 4s load times.

My actual audience has bothered me to create more content more frequently.

<comment><USER6> Only on HN I heard that my products were ugly. None of thousands of users ever reported that.

<comment><USER7> Yep: I have a side project that I used stock bootstrap with. People on HN invariably complain about that. Actual users? Not one, ever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A couple years ago, I saw a similar submission list for startups. Having recently launched, I took the list very seriously — checking out the sites and ranking them in order of desirability, then submitting to a couple sites each week with language that I had tailored to appeal to each site based on what they covered.

Nothing happened. A month or two later, I decided this was a waste of time. But before closing the remaining browser tabs (which were the ones low on my priority list), I decided to submit a one-sentence description to the remaining sites.

The next morning, I heard back from one of the sites [1], which not only wanted to feature my startup [2] — they also wanted to license our technology to make their website easier to read!

If there's a lesson to be learned from this N=1, it's that shorter is sweeter when it comes to pitches.

1: [http://www.springwise.com](http://www.springwise.com)

2: [http://www.beelinereader.com/individual](http://www.beelinereader.com/individual)

<comment><USER9> It sounds like the lesson you learned was to find and pitch potential customers. If that isn't the top of a founder's priority list, there's a fundamental problem occurring.

<comment><USER8> Any site that has a decent amount of text on it is a potential customer of ours, so all of the websites we submitted to could have licensed our tech.

The only difference is that I used a short pitch for the last ones and long pitches for the first ones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Whilst this is pretty handy, I balked at the "let us submit for you for $89". Like - eek! Really?!

Also - the "get the pdf version" is really a dark pattern since you're not allowed to download it without first paying some non-zero amount that you laughably get to choose. Might be a bit nicer to say, "buy the pdf version".

<comment><USER11> Interesting, I actually found the $89 a bargain given how long it will take to just create accounts on all these services before I can submit anything. That alone will take hours.

My worry is just that this service will quickly get marked as a spammer and probably blocked or downvoted as a poster in many places.

<comment><USER12> Agreed. $89 is basically 89 cents per submission. My time is worth a lot more than that. I would be glad to pay for this service (and probably will) just for the backlink juice.

<comment><USER13> _I would be glad to pay for this service (and probably will) just for the backlink juice._

You should be _very_ wary about doing that. Some of the link in the list are news sites (eg Mashable). If someone at a news site sees you're spamming them they'll be a lot less likely to cover your startup favourably in the future. While you might get some 'backlink juice' out of it, you could also be burning some very valuable bridges.

<comment><USER12> I don't think the chance is high that someone is going to NOT cover my company because they remember that some months prior I submitted a link to their site.

<comment><USER13> _You_ didn't submit the link though. When a journalist does a quick search of their email to see what correspondence there's been before they won't see you. They'll see Eggradients, and whatever Eggradients put in that initial submission. That might be something great. Equally it might be terrible. Imagine if it said "Eggradients client ACME STARTUP is really good. Please contact Eggradients if you would like to know more!" Do you really want that to be the first contact your startup has with the media?

<comment><USER12> And that would be different from a standard PR company submitting me...how?

<comment><USER14> One is spammy, the other isn't

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So you advertise that you'll submit people's stuff to hackernews for money, on hackernews? I guess nice of you to give the admins a heads-up for the anti- spam systems ;)

</comment><comment><USER16> How is this SEO spam on the front page?

<comment><USER17> I like how SEO articles like this one are trying so desperately to not seem like SEO scumlording anymore due to everybody realising over the past few years that it's mainly a very grimy/scummy industry full of fraud and grubbers. Go look at the google trend for "SEO" [1] (isn't very statistically rigorous, but y'know...).

[1] [https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=s...](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=seo)

<comment><USER18> Isn't this just a minor pivot of now obsolete SEO directory spam?

Submitting to show HN, Crunchbase and /r/programming will require 3 dramatically different entries and info. I don't believe that's achievable for $89 unless you want to do it badly. What cost your reputation?

<comment><USER17> But the linked startup is about SEO, i.e. spamming/abusing these communities to generate links, by offering a paid service for it.

EDIT: I understand your comment now, yes it is. How this startup got funded I have _no_ idea, it's a decade-old SEO "sh*tlording" technique :/

<comment><USER19> You assume it is funded. It could be a lone wolf with a submission script, or access to cheap labor. The site itself is hosted on a site builder, and payments are via Gumroad. (none of that is bad, but doesn't scream funded)

<comment><USER17> You are right, should of maybe included "if so". But still, surprising someone would think covering up SEO shitlording with such a thin veil would fool anybody. From the other comments here, it seems that the reason SEO is just generally negative in 90% of its aspects, has been forgotten. People have a short memory these days, and I'm sure that if people on HN have forgotten, then it won't be long until we have link spam, algo spam, cramming, bots, trackers, and the whole SEO shitlord shitlist back on the table.

Apologies for my French. It's just that HN is a lot smarter than this...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm amazed at the number of startups about startups.

<comment><USER17> _obligatory HN comment about selling shovels in a gold rush_

No but this is such a pattern in human history. Don't fight war, sell the weapons. Don't mine bitcoin, sell the cards. Don't start a startup, start a meta-startup (startup about startups). Easy $$$! Basically be the parasitic side-liner supplying to the often-fruitless follies of mankind.

<comment><USER21> It's not too bad as long as you're making something genuinely good. I'm not likely to ever make it big as a musician, but that doesn't mean Ableton or the company behind Reaper are being shady by selling me software.

<comment><USER17> Of course, I was talking about being suppliers to rushes/"fads", i.e. the industries/sectors that appear out of nowhere for fordubious reasons and with ill-thought, i.e. wars, cali gold rush, 2002 internet companies, bitcoin, MOOCs, Javascript frameworks. All these are bandwagons that arose and quickly develop/devoloped to have many suppliers that exploit the confusion and hysteria.

Take a look at GPU company stock prices over the past 2-3 years for me will ye' ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> What's the benefit of directory submissions? 5 visits? If you think are doing it for the magic word called SEO, think again

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for all the comments. Gave me a lot of idea about the Q&A section on the web page which I building these days.

The only reason I built the Submit Checklist is that create a feedback generator. For this reason, the sending process takes a month if you willing to pay me to submit for you.

Enjoy the list

Have a nice day

</comment><comment><USER8> What's the point of "submitting" to f6s? I only ever use them when I'm entering into a startup competition run through their site. I never thought of them as a place to submit startups other than this.

Seeing a site like this on the list makes me question the usefulness of other sites that I've not heard of.

edit: Also, some of the FB groups are either completely inactive (last post was months ago) or are satire (one sentence startup pitches).

<comment><USER23> I'd argue what's the point of submitting to 99% of these? Drive by visits rarely net anything, and I'd be willing to bet most of these won't even generate drive bys.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is neat!

To all of the naysayers - submitting to messageboards is a perfectly fine way to get the word out about a product! Plus, I'd expect it to help with its googlability. There's no question that it is better to talk to actual customers, but where do you even find these people? How do you get them to talk to you? How about message boards with communities of different people looking to try out new ideas as a start?

<comment><USER25> If you don't know how to reach your market you have already failed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> What would be more interesting to me would be a list of places/social media that my customers frequently visit, and then grab my company name on those sites. Plenty of times I've asked customer how they've heard about me, and then I race to that platform only to find out there are no good names related to my product left.

</comment><comment><USER27> Wow, this reminds me of the days in the late 90's to early 2000's where you would make a Windows downloadable application, and submit it to the hundreds of near identical software sites.

</comment><comment><USER28> Why do I would like to submit to these directories if my startup were not for developers? AFAIK, this would only attracts more copycats than real users.

</comment><comment><USER29> I would not submit to every directory, but definitely a good starting point just to get some backlinks, SEO juice, and mentions here and there.

</comment><comment><USER30> You're sure to have troubles if put your website into that.

But congratulations to the author for the work and the Show HN.

</comment><comment><USER31> wasnt there a startup that submits your site to all these directories for you for a price?

</comment><comment><USER32> > 1 month proces

Typo btw</comment>


Why former English majors shouldn't write Yelp reviews - <AUTHOR> http://ensignau.tumblr.com/post/13752720078/why-former-english-majors-shouldnt-write-yelp-reviews

<comment><USER2> Yelp are not in the review business. People who read and write reviews are not their customers. Yelp are in the "Convincing businesses to pay Yelp to game reviews" business. Businesses are their customrs.

Under the circumstances, a "false negative" like this is irrelevant to Yelp's business. In fact, false negatives are good for Yelp: They have an incentive to present mixed reviews to businesses who can then pay to filter the negatives out.

</comment><comment><USER3> The problem is, a single review is more or less worthless. Unless you give a variety of reviews (1 through to 5 stars), you are a pretty useless signal. There's no way they can see if you are a discerning critic who only gives 5 stars if it's the best meal you've had in years, or a Homer Simpson type who'd give 5 stars to Burger King the time they accidentally upsized your fries. Or that the restaurant in question requested people review it if they loved the experience.

The disadvantage to this approach is that only the pretentious wankers who review every meal they have get any real pull. Funky places that cater to people with strange tases will lose out, because OMG the garlic was almost RARE!

</comment><comment><USER4> Optimization-by-proxy rears its ugly head once again.</comment>


Thirsty Cities Drill for Water - <AUTHOR> https://pulitzercenter.org/reporting/thirsty-cities-drill-water <comment><USER2> Rapidly depleting groundwater aquifers are a slow-moving, but impending humanitarian disaster.

In particular, Western US states have seen particularly rapid depletion in recent years that could threaten the viability of cities and agriculture in the coming decades.

Popsci overview: Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56140.Cadillac_Desert](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56140.Cadillac_Desert)

USGS Report: [https://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2013/5079/](https://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2013/5079/)

Fictional horrorshow: The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi

<comment><USER3> Came here to say this. Kudos on the links.

I'll just add: and with fracking, it only gets worse. 500+ chemicals injected into the aquifer, that took millions of years to become what it is... it's hubris thinking this isn't a problem.

<comment><USER4> Fracking is about 5000 ft down, aquifers are generally 500 to 2000. What's the mechanism for the contamination?

<comment><USER3> You just pointed out that the drilling is through the aquifer. And, as pointed out, they reinject waste products. Does anyone believe there is zero contamination?

<comment><USER5> Yes, of course there can be contamination, but it's not guaranteed. First, you are drilling through the ground water. Second, you broke through those layers to go do. Hopefully the tech and practices in the field prevent this. But we know it does happen because some people have had their water ruined. Plus, we know it has strong potential because of state legislatures being encouraged to make laws protecting the drillers ( _not the home owners_ ).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ground water depletion is a big problem. The issue generally is whenever lower level ground water is cannibalized without giving it enough time to replenish water level tends to go deeper. This turns into a vicious cycle and destroys the ecosystem it sustains on the surface. Many parts of India people are drilling 500+ ft. to tap into ground water and now that everyone is forced to dig even deeper.

<comment><USER7> Should throw in a mention of land subsidence too

<comment><USER6> Yeah land subsidence is also big in so many places and can cause permanent structural damage to the building or infrastructure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Groundwater use by cities is more economically productive than it's use by agriculture. The former should be privileged in the inevitable allocation conflicts.

<comment><USER9> If you price farmers out of the water market, they will produce less food. Can you imagine what happens when we start having large scale food shortages?

<comment><USER10> You just don't know about sustainable agriculture and drip irrigation. So, your comment isn't well informed. We won't have a good shortage. The smart farmers will figure a way out.

<comment><USER11> How do you know whether they know about drip irrigation?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Marc Andreessen Puts His Money Where His Mouth Is - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2009/07/02/technology/marc_andreessen_venture_fund.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2009070611

<comment><AUTHOR> Andreessen: "Facebook will be bigger than Apple."

Wow.</comment>


(3Blue1Brown) How to solve 2D equations using color - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7FxPsqfkOY <comment><AUTHOR> I highly recommend anyone browse through the videos on this channel, everything is explained so well and the visuals are amazing.

<comment><USER2> Yeah I've been on a number theory kick lately. Just became a patreon today.</comment></comment>


Designing the Instagram Logo - <AUTHOR> http://blog.instagram.com/post/50415159302/mackey <comment><USER2> That's pretty cool. It's great to see people share some of their process.</comment>


Trump orders General Motors to make ventilators under Defense Production Act - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/27/trump-orders-general-motors-to-make-ventilators-under-defense-production-act.html <comment><AUTHOR> Background story: GM wanted $1 Billion to retool a factory...and the number of possible ventilators kept changing. [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/26/us/politics/coronavirus-v...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/26/us/politics/coronavirus- ventilators-trump.html)

</comment><comment><USER2> GM was bailed out by the Federal Government and the taxpayers. Now it's time for them to bail out the taxpayers.

</comment><comment><USER3> Anybody with technical knowledge about the process of setuping the production of these ventilators ?

I'm pretty interested if asking car manufacturers about it makes any sense at all. What's the realistic timeline ? The bottlenecks ?

<comment><USER4> Car manufacturers would be really effective, though far from efficient. Under our current conditions, it makes sense to use car manufacturers.

Car manufacturers rework and reuse things all the time. There are always new models coming out, mainly to look different from previous models. Lots of parts get repurposed, being used for very different vehicles. Lots of parts get redesigned each year, often for small improvements.

Car manufacturers also have great small-volume production for engineering prototypes. It isn't as cheap as normal production, but it can be put to use immediately.</comment></comment>


Schema migrations merged into Django master - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/django/django/commit/9aa358cedd1ad93c0f4c20700db7016651dc0598 The Kickstarter:<p>http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andrewgodwin/schema-migrations-for-django <comment><USER3> I'd like to point out that this is just a first working version, and there's still some work left to do, but I'm very relieved this is finally merged!

<comment><USER4> Is this pluggable? Can users stick with South (or whatever migration backend) and still use the same API?

<comment><USER3> No, this is a complete rewrite and a different way of doing migrations than South currently does. There should also be a South 2 eventually that is mostly compatible with this new migration design, for those stuck on older Django.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is exciting for Django, and it's exciting for OSS in general, as it demonstrates the viability of crowdfunding (certain) OSS development.

Congratulations to Andrew and to all involved.

<comment><USER6> For reference:

[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andrewgodwin/schema- migr...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andrewgodwin/schema-migrations- for-django)

[http://www.aeracode.org/2013/8/23/plan-comes- together/](http://www.aeracode.org/2013/8/23/plan-comes-together/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> And here are the docs: [https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/migrations/](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/migrations/)

<comment><USER8> Migrations are per-app, but the command is shown as

      python manage.py makemigrations

Using South, it was

      python manage.py schemamigration app_name

How does django know which app to build migrations for?

<comment><USER3> It does them all at once. The new system knows about interdependencies, so if you have ForeignKeys between apps it'll make all of them in the right order.

<comment><USER9> So if I understand correctly, "makemigrations" will convert all apps to use migrations except apps which were created using previous versions of Django?

<comment><USER3> It will prompt you if an app doesn't yet have migrations and ask if you want it to. That prompt is currently a bit aggressive - asking you every time - <USER2> that will be fixed soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If any devs read this, for MySQL, you may want to consider using the update method adopted by many larger companies - something like pt-online-schema- change (or make the alter method pluggable so someone else can).

Basically, create a table as a copy of the old table, set up triggers to update the new table as data pours into the old table, alter the new table, and then do a rename.

This buys you some rollback capabilities, but more importantly it limits the impact on production traffic as the alters run. Of course, this is only really an issue on tables with hundreds of thousands of rows, but it's better than the naïve approach.

<comment><USER11> I've come to think this is something that I'll do earlier rather than later on projects moving forward. The last few projects I've worked on have put this off "until we get bigger", which inevitably ends up affecting agility and the types of migrations you're willing to do and when you're willing to release them. As complex as the approach is, I think I'd rather bite it off early in future projects.

Or, use postgres!

<comment><USER10> Personally, I don't start worrying about it until it actually becomes a problem (i.e. when an alter actually takes more than a few seconds to run). At which point it's easy to migrate to using pt-online-schema-change.

Then again, I do most of my DB maintenance manually (I have DBA experience), so while I do use Django in production, I have less need to rely on generic automation tools.

Or use PostgreSQL, Oracle, MSSQL, or... lots of options there.

[EDIT] As a final thought on the topic, never be afraid of making schema changes, even in MySQL. It may require a bit more work to implement, but there are a bevy of solutions (most of which can be automated) which can limit or eliminate the "pain" caused by such alters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I started coding Django a couple of months ago and was blown away when I attempted to add a field to an existing model only to get yelled at. StackOverflow comments told me that South was the only way to go. I guess I just couldn't believe it wasn't an already existing feature. It seems that adding fields is common enough to be needed early on...

Happy about the news!

<comment><USER13> In the past (not sure about now) the Django docs (and thus, I have to assume, the devs) were somewhat against automated migrations. The rationale was that the developer should understand his or her data models and do migrations manually to avoid problems caused by mistakes made by the migration machinery. Obviously this attitude has changed, perhaps because of the success of South and the fact that most people would rather have the process automated, even if it causes occasional weirdness.

<comment><USER14> It was documented as something that was _desired_ , but not something that would go into Django core until the dust settled as to what the best approach was; it's not something to hurry into.

What's been implemented now is significantly better than what South had. If they'd just decided to adopt South, that wouldn't have happened. Thus, it's good that it happened. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Fantastic work! I've been following the blog posts and it was interesting to understand the decisions you made along the way.

Also, thanks for supporting Oracle straight away. When you first mentioned the kickstarter I noted the possibility that oracle support would either lag or be missed entirely, effectively making oracle support in django a second-class citizen.

I'm starting a new project in a few weeks (on Oracle RAC), so I'll try to test as much as possible.

<comment><USER16> I'm also using Oracle, and have long lamented the lack of South (or anything like it). I will be a happy test user for this as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> A bit OT, but how do you guys handle database changes between multiple branches? Say I added some fields in branch A through multiple apps and then I need to go back to the master to do a fix. How do you revert the changes before checkout master?

<comment><USER18> If you write backwards migrations as well as forwards, South will do that for you, so presumably the Django migration system will do as well.

<comment><USER17> I know this. But I'm wondering if there is an easy way to do that, like a checkpoint that I can rollback all migrations to a specific point.

<comment><USER19> Some people just choose to use separate database names for each branch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "Migrations specify which other migrations they depend on - including earlier migrations in the same app - in the file, so it's possible to detect when there's two new migrations for the same app that aren't ordered."

This is a fantastic feature. I've worked on projects that use a South fork that only uses a migration number, eg 0003.py, specifically to cause version control to trigger a merge conflict.

</comment><comment><USER21> Finally, but too little too late in my opinion.

I love python, but I would rather use Rails for web stuff at this point. So many 3rd party libraries are needed to do what Rails can do right out of the box.

<comment><USER22> That's fine. Some people consider Django bloated. Some prefer flask. Others will prefer something with more stuff included than Django. It sounds like you never were really the target audience for Django?

<comment><USER21> What exactly is the target audience for Django? I actually love using Python and the Python design philosophy. If I'm not part of the target audience for Django, who is?

<comment><USER23> Well django is already very big.. so the target audience is people using Django ;-) It's a very stable, python-based, web framework with a huge community and widely supported. Some python hackers find it too big with too much bloated features. As far as I'm concerned, anytime I start with a smaller web-framework I need to add mostly all django functionaly the next few days so meh.

IMHO, for new projects, DJango is clearly one of the top contestant.

<comment><USER24> Yep. If half the world complains it does too much and the other half that it does too little then maybe it's got it about right ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Dumb question here. Instead of keeping all these migration files why can the migration just compare the models to the database directly and make he appropriate changes?

<comment><USER15> For a couple of reasons that I can think of. You might want to do a rollback. You may have multiple copies of the database (various dev versions, staging, production), and multiple changesets might build up in one environment before progressing to another which must be specifically ordered. There may be changes that need to be manually coded or tweaked, and you need some intermediate structure for that to happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> So what about data migrations? In the docs I couldn't find something about it. And it's pretty important for a complete migration tool, isn't it?

<comment><USER27> Not sure what you mean. South has something called a "data migration". However, the only difference between "data migrations" and "schema migrations" is that data migrations do not include a dry run. Dry runs require transaction support. Not all databases have it (MySQL).

Other than that, what is your definition of a "data migration"?

<comment><USER28> data migration involves mutating data in the table. for example, consider a timestamp column that was originally recorded in some local timezone but that you need to convert to store everthing in UTC + offset format. No changes to the table itself, but a fairly significant change to the data.

you could manage that operation using a Python script, but it would potentially be slow and might make it hard to take advantage of database specific features. A data migration tool allows you to describe this operation in succinct declarative code and then the migration tool will figure out how to get the database to do that with maximum safety and efficiency.

or you could do it in raw SQL as well, but thats a bit uncomfortable if your project has used the ORM interface for all database operations. you'd also have to write different SQL for each backend. a data migration tool can generate the correct SQL for any backend you plug in.

<comment><USER27> Understood. But I cannot imagine a data migration framework that would be anything more than a scaffold for custom functions.

Imagine the difficulty involving forward and backward data migrations. I cannot imagine a way to automate this.

In any case, you can't have it both ways. Either you do it in SQL, or you do it in Python using the ORM. There isn't a third option.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> People still argue over Flask vs Django.

Django is a working car, the comes with a lot of features, and is more difficult to customize (and you eventually have to start hacking at it for custom features).

Flask is the assembled chassis, engine, steering (no frame, body). It's up to you to build it into a car of your choice.

Eventually though you will have to look at tuning the base system for your special special system.

</comment><comment><USER30> So is this slated for 1.7 now? Or is it still on track for 1.6?

<comment><USER31> It's for 1.7, always has been.

<comment><USER30> Ok. But it hasn't always been, according kickstarter ([http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andrewgodwin/schema- migr...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andrewgodwin/schema-migrations- for-django)) 1.6 is mentioned, and "1.7 at latest". Considering 1.6 isn't out, I was hoping for it!

<comment><USER31> Noted, apologies. 1.6 is in beta and feature frozen, and it's certainly been the plan for a while to target 1.7.

I wouldn't sweat it tho - the 1.5-1.6 cycle has been pretty quick, and I'm sure as soon as the migrations work is ready and tested the Django core team will be pretty eager to push a 1.7 release.

<comment><USER30> I'll work on tempering my excitement :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I briefly read the doc in the changeset, but couldn't find if the migration files from South are compatible with this new bultin migrations. Does anyone know that?

<comment><USER33> No, south migrations are not compatible, you'll have to collapse your south migrations down and start with these.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Yes! My £50.00 was well spent :-)

</comment><comment><USER35> Awesome, Django might be usable out of the box now. :)

<comment><USER22> Yes, for people who couldn't type

        pip install south

<comment><USER35> That's why I specified "out of the box." It doesn't make sense for there to be completely mandatory extensions like South -- they should be bundled in, fitting with the "batteries included" culture of Python.

<comment><USER22> I don't really feel out of the box when I type

        pip install django south

<comment><USER35> Regrettably, how you feel doesn't change the well-understood and long-standing definition of "out of the box."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Welcome to Rails circa 5 years ago! :)

<comment><USER37> Except no, Rails doesn't have this. Not even remotely close.

Rails still makes you write your migrations by hand. It also forces you to distribute your critical constraints, validations and dependencies over a usually incomplete model class, and incremental migration files.

In Rails/AR there is _no place_ in the filesystem to find out about the currently declared schema.

It's a fundamentally broken design.

<comment><USER38> db/schema.rb

<comment><USER37> schema.rb contains an _incomplete_ reflection on the current SQL schema. No references, no relationships.

If you don't know the difference between AR and a declarative ORM you may want to refrain from dropping smarty oneliners.

<comment><USER36> At absolutely no point in our dev team's existence did we find a huge need to have more than the model files and/or schema.rb as a schema reference. If you can't infer what you need to from there, then maybe web dev's not your bag, baby

<comment><USER37> _then maybe web dev 's not your bag, baby_

Over the past 15yrs I've written web-apps in 7 different languages and a wide range of frameworks.

From your comment I can infer that you know Ruby on Rails, and that's pretty much it. Maybe you should reconsider your tone?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> workhere-io Somewhat related: Are there any plans to integrate Alembic into SQLAlchemy?

<comment><USER39> It's about as integrated as it could get while still being a separate package, since it's written by the author of Alchemy.

Most users of SQLAlchemy tend to use several libraries anyway, as opposed to one framework (the Django style).

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> This is great news for Django - congratulations to all involved!

</comment><comment><USER41> Neat. Once this hits a stable release, does it mean that South should be considered deprecated for new projects?

<comment><USER3> For anything on Django 1.7 (the version it will come out in), yes, South will no longer be needed. Older versions of Django should get a South 2 in the next few months with a lot of this code backported.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> But does it work with custom ("initial") sql?

This was one of the failing points of south in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER43> Why wouldn't Django just use South instead of creating ever more dependencies on itself?

<comment><USER44> The migrations support for Django is being written by the author of South, based on everything he learnt on that project. It's essentially South 2 but baked in to Django.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Now let's get rid of WSGI and make async signals possible!

<comment><USER46> Are you trying to combine WebSockets or realtime communication with Django? I'd look at Cody Soyland's excellent work on this. [http://codysoyland.com/2011/feb/6/evented-django-part-one- so...](http://codysoyland.com/2011/feb/6/evented-django-part-one-socketio-and- gevent/) or look at the Django example in gevent-socketio [https://github.com/abourget/gevent- socketio](https://github.com/abourget/gevent-socketio)

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I absolutely love python and I'm using it daily but Django seems so....outdated?! Biggest web framework needs someone to raise funding via kickstarter to build a schema migration?

2013 and you still can't build a REST application without installing 3rd party code? I mean c'moon there's angularjs, emberjs, knockout, extjs etc etc etc out for years don't you see a light at the end of the tunnel or you're the type of team that build more tunnel?

Sorry to say but news like this just make me sad. Still happy I chose flask + sqlalchemy for my website. Django is somewhere in 2004-2005 still. I lose the admin of course but I hate general things anyway (one size fits all type of thing).

<comment><USER48> I recently built (more or less) a REST API and a Backbone front-end using Python. Why would I want to use Django to do so when there are so many other (more appropriate) options? Does Django really need to be a framework that does everything?

I started before Flask supported Python 3, so I used bottle, psycopg2 and a bunch of other python packages. Knowing what I was interested in accomplishing, I was pretty easily able to stitch together these libraries to create a solid, to-the-point codebase.

Having spent a bunch of time working on various backbone-heavy apps with Rails I don't have much interest in using a big, full-stack, opinionated framework to act as a REST API. There is so much overhead and so many opinions to work against.

<comment><USER49> Couldn't agree more, especially when you're basically speaking JSON with some authentication/authorization. I even question myself when using Flask-Restful vs just making my views return straight up JSON....but...that's a different discussion.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why is Angular 2 size acceptable? - <AUTHOR> The recent release of Angular 2 + Router weighs in at a whopping 697k minified. How does this represent progress considering Angular 1 + Router minified is only 166k? Is this really acceptable for CPU-constrained mobile devices? <comment><USER2> At that size you are probably still getting the initial, unoptimized experience. There are tools that already work under the hood, though not quite surfaced for easy consumption quite yet, which perform Angular 2 template compilation as part of your build process therefore avoiding the need to ship a substantial chunk of the JavaScript to the browser. This shrinks download size, and also makes applications start faster. You can play with it today, using a seed projects like the one I link below. Sometime soon (work in progress, did not announce) the official Angular 2 CLI will also make this very easy.

[https://github.com/mgechev/angular2-seed](https://github.com/mgechev/angular2-seed)

Build time template compilation helps a lot, though depending on what all features you're using the base size might still be bigger than Angular 1. Still, for most applications the dominant cost is not the number of bytes on the wire, it is the development labor to make it an application work. A2 so far appears to be very strong on this axis.

<comment><USER2> There is also an excellent talk on Angular 2 application download size, from the Angular Connect conference in London this week.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VnV7R4Ncwc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VnV7R4Ncwc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I guess it would depend on what you're using it to build. If you're using it via Ionic framework to build an appstore-bound app, then maybe not so much. However, if your focus is a Progressive Web App for universal use, then it's definitely a problem.

I'd actually like to know what impact that TypeScript has on all this?

</comment><comment><USER4> You can always use something else.

That said, CPU-constrained doesn't matter at all when it comes to size, an 1MB codebase could use less CPU than a 200K one.

Memory-constrained on the other hand, yes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Individually, yes, I can use something else but if the tech press is anything to go by Angular 2 is the Next Big Thing especially for corporate devs itching to turn Javascript into Java/C#.

<comment><USER4> Angular 2? It's all about React now, and I think, in the future.</comment></comment></comment>


What We Know About the 92M Americans Who Aren't in the Labor Force - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/10/21/what-we-know-about-the-92-million-americans-who-arent-in-the-labor-force/ <comment><USER2> This article doesn't really delve into the percentage of the population that "doesn't look, but still wants a job". This population is the most important one as far as generational wealth and health is concerned; retiring and disabled boomers are to be expected.

Part of this is an intentional misrepresentation of the employment numbers. In order to be counted as "unemployed" you must first have had stable "employment". Thus, people just out of high school or college that are unable to find their first job (which is often extremely hard to come by) are not counted as unemployed, despite being so. The other problem is that after unemployment benefits expire, people aren't counted as unemployed anymore, so the unemployment stat goes down, but the percentage not in the labor force goes up.

Employment indicators U3/U6 are remarkably poor for depicting gainful employment in the wake of economic depressions; they're meant to measure unemployment that is expected to be transient. Super long-term unemployment, difficulty finding a first job, and underemployment are not adequately measured, though the part-time employment stat is somewhat taken into account.

<comment><USER3> I think the whole point of the article was that we need to know more about that percentage of the population that "doesn't look, but still wants a job", because dismissive explanations are insufficient.

Does anyone on HN have suggestions of possible explanations for some of that percentage? I don't understand it. Is it people who wanted a job, but gave up looking? Other situations that would fall into this category other than simply "lazy"?

<comment><USER4> Sometimes, people would rather see themselves as _lazy_ or _free spirits_ than admit to disability. I was acquainted for a time with a homeless man who seemed able bodied but had a mental health issue. He quit his job and walked away from his worldly possessions to get off the zombifying drugs required to make him employable. I have a different disability but made similar choices, so I am sympathetic. But he was very resistant to admitting that he was too handicapped to hold down a job. I knew him a while before that became clear to me. And it isn't anything you would infer at first glance. If you saw him, he looked tall and strong and able bodied, he sounds intelligent and is intelligent and the degree to which he is not mentally sound is just not obvious to casual inspection.

I have two adult sons who have never had jobs. They also look hail and hardy. They both have some issues. We are still trying to work out how they can make money in spite of being basically unemployable.

I suspect this happens more than is recognized. My handicap was not identified until age 35. I got called "lazy" a lot until I had a diagnosis. I am a woman and was fortunate to be able to hide out for many years behind the title of _full time wife and mom_.

<comment><USER2> I am really curious now. If you are comfortable, can you inform us what your handicap is called?

<comment><USER4> My official diagnosis is "atypical cystic fibrosis." Does that matter? It could be ADHD. It could be ASD. There are plenty of things that can significantly interfere with your functioning that can be missed, especially if you are above average intelligence.

Twice exceptional individuals very often have seemingly "average" performance outcomes and the degree to which it tortures them to just achieve "average" goes largely unnoticed by people who presume them to have an excess of ego for thinking they deserve something better in life.

<comment><USER5> > Does that matter?

No, but when someone alludes to something without saying what it is, curiosity is aroused in people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There is a portion of the spectrum that seems like it is in the "wants a job, but is not looking" category that is not properly represented. I am in sub- category of "wants a gainful future (after being laid off - essentially forced into early retirement - from a long aerospace career) but is not looking for a job (either in the sector I left, or in the service sector). Aerospace is notorious for ageism, and I have no future there. I will not look for a job as a barrista or a clerk at Home Depot, so, no, I am not looking.

I am however trying to create my own future as an entrepreneur and build my own company. This effort being bootstrapped, on my own dime, using funds that should have been reserved for retirement. There is a lot of solid engineering talent and experience that is laying dormant - I am trying to counter that by building my own asset/company.

<comment><USER7> Aerospace is ageist towards the older people? That's interesting, I'd think that experience would be the most important factor in that space.

<comment><USER6> Once you top out the salary range, and are close to 55 (the earliest age for reduced retirement benefits) they look for ways to shed you. It happened to me, and many other colleagues. I have worked on a lot of great projects such as B2 Bomber, Space Shuttle, UAV Global Hawk and many satellite programs. That does not matter; once you hit the age/wage criteria, you better have great connections or you could easily see yourself filing for unemployment.

<comment><USER8> That's nuts. You're more proficient and efficient with that experience, which should compensate for the wage difference between you and a less experienced colleague.

<comment><USER9> Its short term, bottom line thinking. If you force them out at reduced retirement wages, that saves pension money you can then bonus yourself with. You don't care that you are firing your most competent people, because they are just resource slots you put new, cheap college hires into. They arent as good, but whatever. You have 2000 of them. They are good enough, right? You can then bonus yourself with that salary savings as well.

The company will eat itself to death, but that will take years, and you'll have left to do the same to other companies, using your "success" at this one to prove you need an insane salary at the new one. Repeat, over and over.

<comment><USER6> Yes. But imagine this on a scale of the big defense contractors. They won't 'eat themselves to death' as you put it but they are big enough (especially after major consolidations in the 90's) to sustain this behavior indefinitely.

Unfortunately a large part of their business model relies on fulfilling their commitment to seat engineers on programs as promised in the contract they signed with their customer, i.e., the USG. Filling seats is more important than achieving quality engineering outcomes. There are three big-time losers in that equation: [1] the taxpayer, [2] the "lifer" employee, and [3] the warfighter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Huh, I've seen consistent material over at Zero Hedge[1] indicating that since 2007 the cohort that has made the most job gains is over the age of 55.

" _...while the elderly workers in the US have risen by a whopping 7.4 million since the start of the Depression in December 2007, workers aged 25-54 are down 4 million!_ "

As shown in this chart:

[http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/im...](http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2015/08/Jobs%20by%20age%20group%20LT_0.jpg)

If there's a person here with a good handle on how the WSJ article and the noted Zero Hedge article relate to one another, I'd be very interested in your perspective.

[1] Article source, August 2015. [http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-07/prime-aged- workers-...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-07/prime-aged-workers- tumble-july-workers-55-and-over-surge-new-all-time-high)

<comment><USER6> What is the nature and quality of the jobs these post 55 people have taken. Do the jobs they land in compare favorably with the jobs they were displaced from? Did they go from professional jobs to service sector jobs? This distinction is important. As a forced-into-early-retirement, former aerospace engineer, I am curious, and I will check your links later.

As for my future, I am trying to create my own asset/company and I don't see myself reentering the workforce as an hourly wage earner again.

<comment><USER10> From the data I've seen, yes, they have gone from professional jobs to service sector jobs - or, at least the data indicates that those are the type of jobs that are being filled during recent memory. It's been a hunch of mine that the displaced older workforce's jobs simply don't exist anymore (layoffs due to technology, better for investors) and the service sector jobs would normally be for the younger population as they 'move up' through the ranks...but they can't get in...those spots are taken by the over 55 group. I think that they almost have to work, e.g. no retirement savings, unwilling to move to rural/low-income areas where their SSI might be sustainable. Vexing.

<comment><USER6> The social implications of this scenario are going to be devastating.

I'm doing my best to prepare for my own future (as one of those laid off early) by learning software development to supplement my systems engineering skill from aerospace. I do not forsee myself becoming a barrista.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> But the "in the labor force" category includes people who are forced to work part time so they don't collect benefits, get bumped from job to job, have unreliable hours, make less than the cost of living, etc.

The graph should be split:

\- Has a reliable full time job with benefits

\- Has a minimum wage job, or is a part time employee/contractor making less than $20-30k a year.

<comment><USER12> It's not shown here, but the Bureau of Labor Statistics does further break down workers into full-time, voluntarily part-time, and involuntarily part- time [1]. Numbers for part-time workers below are for September 2015.

        Part-time for economic reasons (6 million)
            Slack work or business conditions (3.6 million)
            Could only find part-time work (2.1 million)
            Other (0.3 million)
        Part-time for noneconomic reasons (20 million)

[1] [http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t08.htm](http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t08.htm)

<comment><USER11> Thanks, so depending on how you count unincorporated, self employed workers, you get between 3.5% [1] and 9% [2] of the labor force underemployed (not looking at salary). I suspect there are more Uber drivers than successful independent consultants, but we don't have data about that.

That's better than I expected.

[1]: (6036) / (2357 + 146464 + 19656) [2]: (6036 + 8357 + 820) / (2357 + 146464 + 19656)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The impact of this is going to become so obvious when interest rates start going up.

Let me explain. Ultimately, how much money the workforce is making matters to consumer spending. People may be ok not having a job, because they have some way to stay at their standard of living. But unless a bunch of them are sitting on family trusts, it also means they don't have a growing amount of money to spend.

Yet consumer spending has been growing steadily for the last 5 years. How can that be? The likely scenario is really cheap debt. The kind that disappears when interet rates aren't basically zero anymore.

We've shoved a lot of stuff under the "free money" carpet. When the Fed bumps up the interest rates, all those spiders are going to come out to play.

<comment><USER14> Just curious, what do you mean by 'free money'? Most loans I've seen over the last few years vary from anywhere between 2.5%+ (houses) to 17% (credit cards). I don't think anyone would think of those as 'free'.

I would think the interest rates going up would actually encourage people to save more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> 18-22 year olds looking for a job would be more interesting. This measures post high school and the "in college" fraction.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, I think these brackets could use reworking for present-day interpretability. Working-age population traditionally starts at 16 in U.S. government statistics, since that's the traditional age where both mandatory schooling, and most child-labor-law restrictions ended. However the first part of that is becoming less true: currently only 30% of states still allow you to legally leave school at age 16. Another 20% have extended mandatory schooling to age 17, and 50% to age 18.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm most surprised about the all the retired 16-20 year olds.

</comment><comment><USER17> What about entrepreneurs starting a business that is not yet profitable? Is that something the government doesn't care about or are the numbers just too small?

<comment><USER18> They're counted as employed.

<comment><USER17> Not if there is no investment and no one is getting paid anything yet.

<comment><USER18> Not true. If you work for yourself and you're losing money and you get polled by the CPS, you would rightly report that you are self-employed, and you would be counted as working.

[http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm](http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm)

It doesn't matter if there are investors or a profit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> TLDR: They're students, retired boomers, or sick middle agers.

<comment><USER20> This comment is overly reductionist -- 'disabled' is a code word for long-term un-employable.

Just eyball the proportion of working adults in the 50 to 60 year range. It is only ~5x the number of disabled. In other words, that is a huge %--maybe 20%--of potential workers in that age bracket.

Any employment process that disables 20% of its workforce would be normally considered a problem.

But instead we call the un-employable 'diabled', to sweep the data under the rug.

It almost certainly helps keep other people in their jobs, tho (like burecrats and academics).

<comment><USER21> >'disabled' is a code word for long-term un-employable.

Correct. This is the legacy of the Clinton era 'welfare to work' program: we moved people from welfare to disability.

This will grow as automation takes hold of ever more industries. "Disability" is the U.S.'s first step toward guaranteed minimum income or a negative income tax. We will never have enough jobs for everyone in America, so we need to figure out what we're going to do to keep the economy going.

<comment><USER22> It really has nothing to do with "keeping the economy going". The purpose of "disability" insurance is just like that of Social Security originally-- keeping people from destitution and poorhouses. It's not a good thing, but an unavoidable thing.

<comment><USER21> >It really has nothing to do with "keeping the economy going".

Not sure what you mean. When we give poor people money, they spend it. That's good for the economy. Welfare and disability are definitely good things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I have a neighbor who used to work as a landscaper. The money was decent (in SF); his specialty was masonry. Then a couple of years ago, he decided to drop out. Claimed he had MS and started getting SSDI checks of about $2K/month (I think). After he dropped out, I've seen him lift 100lb stones; frequently, he'll drive down to Arizona for fishing trips with buddies; and recently, he drove cross-country to Georgia for a HS reunion, and made it from Albuquerque to SF in 1 day. All this, despite having MS. I feel, if he can do all these activities, he can damn well work; but he's been able to fool the system for the last 3-4 years.

If you look at the SSDI stats: [https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/dibStat.html](https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/dibStat.html) it is interesting to see that when the Financial Crisis happened, the number of applicants jumped drastically; a 34% increase from 2007 to 2009. And as the economy has picked up recently, the number of applications has gone down; a 15% drop from 2010 to 2014.

While I do support the idea of a "safety net", I don't like the idea of people dipping into SSDI when they don't feel like working (or can't get work).

Added later: (1330PST): A lot of people are saying that he could just be having a good day or two. Maybe; but he has enough good days (when I see him), there's no reason that he would not work on his "good days". Secondly: my last conversation with him (3-4 weeks ago) was about how he could go about getting a cash-only gig, and he wanted my opinion (me being a tech guy). I recommended Postmates/TaskRabbit, but he shied away from those, opting for cash gigs from Craigslist. Maybe the 1099 would have ratted him out? I dunno.

<comment><USER24> This is infuriating.

My mother is 58. Her lower spinal column was collapsed, and she's had it reconstructed using titanium plates and screws during a 6 hour surgery. She has been denied for disability by the Social Security Administration twice, and currently has to wait ~500 days for her next appeal ([https://www.ssa.gov/appeals/DataSets/01_NetStat_Report.html](https://www.ssa.gov/appeals/DataSets/01_NetStat_Report.html)) in front of an panel of judges (this backlog is caused by Congress providing insufficient funding to process said backlog).

How the hell are people who don't need disability getting approved, and the people who don't need it are stuck in purgatory?

<comment><USER25> He doesn't know whether his neighbor needs disability or not, he's just guessing. MS symptoms are really variable. The fact that he has a few good days doesn't mean he can hold down a steady job.

<comment><USER26> That's been our experience with my uncle who has MS.

It started as periodic attacks in his late 30s, where for anywhere from a day at a time, to about a week at a time, he'd have significant difficulty getting out of bed and moving around (and definitely couldn't drive). But then he could go for weeks at a time being totally fine; usually about 4-6 weeks, and in one case a full 6 months. This already started making it hard to keep employment, though, since employers tend not to like random unscheduled absences that are likely to continue indefinitely into the future (even if they understand the reason). Fortunately, he was a lawyer, which is an area where at the time it was relatively easy to find flexible part-time work. That worked ok for a number of years. Once the attacks got more frequent though, even this no longer worked out. Also he was no longer able to maintain a driver's license. So by his mid-40s he went on disability, even though he was still ok probably 50% of the time. He would definitely have preferred to keep working in some capacity if it were possible, because it gave him something to do, and even his previous part-time job paid more than the $700/mo disability gave. By his late 40s he definitely couldn't work in any capacity (started having mental issues in addition to physical ones, and full-time physical ones), but there's a few years there where it seemed unfortunate that we don't have a way to better accommodate people who are somewhat but not really fully able to work.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hledger entries with Haskell and Elm - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/narendraj9/hledger-serve <comment><USER2> If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good "Show HN". Guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

Curious if there is a story behind its development or plans for future features.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I plan to make it independent of hledger command. So, that I can do all the stuff on mobile. But currently I want to be able to fetch things in emacs so that they can be added to the main journal file. When there was no authentication it was easy, but now since Yesod uses a session cookie for keeping you authenticated, I am wondering how I can make emacs fetch the entries. I would have to have something like api keys and two kinds of authentications. One from the website and the other with a query parameter.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Recommendation for a .net dev: Python, Ruby, or PHP - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> From a language standpoint Ruby and Python are certainly more interesting languages than PHP. Most .Net devs I talk to find php a bit kludgey. I recommend installing a virtual Ubuntu machine on your windows machine and playing with Python for a few days. I found "Dive into Python" to be a great resource for learning <http://www.diveintopython.net/>.

From there, if web is what you are interested in, take a look at django. The django book and official django tutorial are both great places to start. Happy hacking!

<comment><USER3> I'd recommend Python and Django too. I've been developing JEE applications for 8 years now and recently started a project (www.freedomsponsors.org) with Django. Django makes things so simpler and faster to code. I'm in love with it!

If you take that on, I'd also invite you to do a little collaboration on it - FS is free on Github (github.com/freedomsponsors). It might give you a feeling of what's it like. And I could definitely use some help :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been working with .NET for 10 years. I've also developed smaller projects with Java, PHP, Ruby and Python, among other languages. I would recommend you take a good look at Python. Read the Zen of Python[1]. If it makes sense to you, try it.

[1] <http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020/>

</comment><comment><USER5> Why not try all three over a few weeks? It doesn't take long to get them installed in order to play around.</comment>


Ask HN: How worried do you get over bugs in your code?  Is this a mental health issue? - <AUTHOR>

Just how worried do you get?  And what do you do to try to alleviate your worries?  Does it work?
Obviously extensive testing, static typing, code review, and revision control help, but that doesn't mean that your worries are sufficiently low in practice.
I wonder if there's a mental health issue to be studied here with potential solutions specific to software developers. <comment><USER2> Might want to stick "Ask HN: " in front of the title. I thought this was an article at first, hesitated to click.

<http://paulgraham.com/start.html>

What it means specifically depends on the job: a salesperson who just won't take no for an answer; a hacker who will stay up till 4:00 AM rather than go to bed leaving code with a bug in it; a PR person who will cold-call New York Times reporters on their cell phones; a graphic designer who feels physical pain when something is two millimeters out of place.

<comment><USER3> So you are asking if there is a correlation between mental health and worries about bugs in your code? Given the fact that coding leads to watching the sun rise from your desk chair, the hope that this particular algorithm saves the world, and a disturbing reliance on Totino's pizza rolls as sustenance, I would say yes, the connection between mental health and code is not a coincidence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Do you mean worry that there may be major bugs that you aren't aware of, or worry over bugs you know about but haven't fixed yet (for whatever reason)?

<comment><AUTHOR> The former.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Isn't worrying about bugs just a more narrow version of worrying about making mistakes?

<comment><AUTHOR> But in code, the smallest of mistakes can introduce major flaws into your product.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Ngrx demo with sources and accompanying article - <AUTHOR> https://brakmic.github.io/ngrx-demo/ <comment><USER2> Link appears to take me to a page with no actual content.

Did you post a link to a private repo that we can't see?</comment>


Ask HN: What's the best interview process you've had? - <AUTHOR> I blew up at a recruiter who was trying to get me to take a BS IKM test. I am awful at taking tests, and I've worked long enough you'd think they believe I knew how to code. <comment><USER2> Recruiters are just doing their job. If you don't want to take tests, that's your prerogative. Demand for talented devs is so hot you can get away with it.

As for the _best_ interviews: probably the interviews that I thought were just a conversation over a beer or coffee that I didn't realize was an interview until half-way through... or until the person (the person with hiring authority) point-blank offered me a spot on their team.

This gets to another point about which I've been meaning to blog: the articles about "the best languages for getting hired in 2020" overlook or ignore the importance of the human network. How many recruiters you know and how frequently you stay in contact to keep up with local market demand even when you're not looking for a job is invaluable. Not every company puts out their openings to all recruiters: it's always best to cast a wide net and intelligently analyze the companies/positions/offers. Recruiters deal in this market every day all day... tap their knowledge for all it's worth and offer to present lunch & learn talks at their offices to make them better informed about technology (which makes them think of YOU first when premium openings cross their desks).</comment>


Generating Commencement Speeches with Markov Chains - <AUTHOR> https://blog.floydhub.com/markov-chains/ <comment><USER2> > Click this button to open a Workspace on FloydHub where you can train a > Markov chain model to generate "commencement speech style" sentences in a > live JupyterLab environment. The commencement address dataset of ~300 famous > speeches will be automatically attached and available in the Workspace. Just > follow along with the speech_maker Jupyter notebook.

That's pretty cool.</comment>


Learn programming with CLARA - <AUTHOR> https://clara.forsyte.tuwien.ac.at <comment><AUTHOR> Short clarification of the link:

In order to help beginners learn programming we have developed CLARA - a tool that automatically generates feedback for simple programming problems.

We need help for evaluating and improving CLARA. Especially valuable will be help from beginner programmers.

On the link you can find a web interface, where you can attempt to solve some easy programming exercises, receive automated help and tell us how useful the generated feedback is. We estimate that solving an exercise takes around 5 min.

Thanks</comment>


Social Networking Goes Open Source With Insoshi - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/29/social-networking-goes-open-source-with-insoshi/

<comment><USER2> This may be just the TechCrunch blurb, but if they really want to be the WordPress of social networks, using Rails will be a problem for them.

Part of the success of WP is that it uses PHP and MySQL, two technologies that are ubiquitous, and that installing it is a simple matter of dumping some files on some shared hosting space.

Installing a Rails app, on the other hand, is nothing to sneeze at.

<comment><USER3> Our model will probably end up being more like MySQL than WordPress, but that's a harder analogy to understand. In any case, though, we think Heroku (<http://heroku.com/>) is a game-changer when it comes to hosted Rails apps.

<comment><USER2> A MySQL model actually makes more sense. Thanks for clearing that up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This could be a lucrative space, especially in the enterprise. While the field is a bit crowded, I think Insoshi differentiates themselves by providing the source code, and for secure intranets that is a necessity.

<comment><USER5> I know of two other open source social networks that also offer their source code: Loved By Less and Buddypress.

Here's the problem I have with Insoshi and Loved By Less: They don't seem (as yet) to offer any kind of architecture to modify and extend the code base. If you want to customize, you are altering source code.

Contrast this to Wordpress, which has an awesome plugin architecture and an extensive system of hooks to allow for customization, all without touching a line of source. Though I haven't seen BuddyPress source, I am hopeful that it follows Wordpress's suits.

It is the ability to customize and extend, coupled with a super powerful and slick admin system, that has made WordPress such a successful venture.

That's my opinion at least, from an admittedly cursory review of the source code on these projects.

<comment><USER3> _They don't seem (as yet) to offer any kind of architecture to modify and extend the code base._

That's part of the plan. Remember, WordPress wasn't born with plugins and hooks; it grew them.

"Release early, release often", right? This is the "early" part. :-)

<comment><USER5> Awesome, go get 'em. I think you'll have some stiff competition from BuddyPress, particularly since they've got a head start on the extensible platform, but I wish you guys the best... it's anybody's game at this point. Ning is really the platform to beat, in my opinion at least.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Congrats on TC, Michael, Long - and thanks for helping me to get up & running with Insoshi a while back.

As far as I'm concerned, a business like this (mysql/wordpress for social networks) was bound to happen. I'm just glad it's written in Ruby, running on Rails, version controlled via Git, and founded by the guys who taught me Rails (via RailsSpace).

There's loads of enterprise social networking consultancies popping-up, and they all want their own custom made platform , written in the latest web development framework, to sell straight in to the SMEs. Insoshi should fit the bill quite nicely. The only major question is how hosting services fit in to this (WordPress.com?), but I'm sure the guys already have this planned out.

As for the WordPress plugin comparison; Rails already has a convenient plugin architecture, so there's no reason why Insoshi can't piggyback this, at least for the time being.

</comment><comment><USER7> "the code he released under an MIT License in July 2007 should be considered the first RoR open source code."

I hope that's a typo. If the writer honestly believes that sentence, he has no business writing for TechCrunch (or anyone, really).

I think he's talking about "the first RoR open source code for a social network." But even that is a sketchy claim. I've contributed to open source RoR projects that were loose social networks as early as 2005.

<comment><USER3> He meant the latter. RailsSpace was to my knowledge the first open-source source social networking platform in Rails (with the profiles, friending, avatars, blogs, etc. that we associate with a modern social network). Mark certainly didn't mean to imply RailsSpace was the first open-source project in Rails.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can someone explain the difference between this and <http://lovdbyless.com> to me?

<comment><USER9> Lovdbyless is impressive, but it is mysql-specific and depends on some non- standard plugins to work (one of them is proprietary, somebody correct me pls if I've understood it wrong).

Insoshi on the other hand is DB agnostic, works beautifully out of the box with sqlite3 (or mysql) and does not require any esoteric plugins.

Elimination of unneeded dependencies is a major requirement for me so I consider Insoshi a winner.

<comment><USER10> I am pretty sure that lovd is db agnostic. And it uses no proprietary or "non- standard" plugins. Can someone tell me what a "non-standard" plugin is? For that matter, what is an "esoteric" plugin? This smells like fud me.

<comment><USER9> >And it uses no proprietary or "non-standard" plugins

It does. [http://ostatic.com/158658-blog/is-lovd-by-less-really- open-s...](http://ostatic.com/158658-blog/is-lovd-by-less-really-open- sourcess):

"Lovd by Less touts itself as an open-source platform for social networking. And indeed, the software itself is released under an open-source license, and provides some useful functionality. However, restrictions on some of its essential plug-ins raise questions about its actual licensing status."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There was also a German Open Source (CC licensed) social network that launched last week: [http://inside.gruenderszene.de/2008/04/18/open- socialnetwork...](http://inside.gruenderszene.de/2008/04/18/open- socialnetwork/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> as much as rails isnt my weapon of choice, i really think this could be big. anyone have a demo setup somewhere to play around with?

<comment><USER3> The developer site for Insoshi is here:

<http://dogfood.insoshi.com/>

It's not just a demo site, though; we're using it to coordinate the project itself. Contributions should be incorporated into the live site within a week or two. You can find the source code at GitHub:

<http://github.com/insoshi/insoshi/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> well done dude, remember talking to you at the Joe Kraus dinner, nice to see the execution!

<comment><USER3> Thanks!</comment></comment>


The three Facebooks (one of them executes 26.13 MB JavaScript) - <AUTHOR> https://petermolnar.net/the-three-facebooks/ <comment><USER2> I'm a bit confused as to why you're getting 26 MB of JavaScript, that number sounds insane even for a React application.

I tried this right now and I'm getting 3.1MB consistently on the same desktop page with caching turned off.

<comment><USER3> I suspect it is a cache if visited pages or something like that.</comment></comment>


A startup burned through $700,000 in 10 months then lied about back pay - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/wrkriot-burned-700000-allegedly-lied-to-employees-2016-8 <comment><USER2> Extensive discussion of this story yesterday, in which everything mentioned in this article was covered:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12379518](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12379518)

But this article might still be useful, since it provides a summary for those who don't want to read through yesterday's 470 comments.</comment>


MIT Closes 'Food Computer' Program After Scientists Raised Doubts - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/13/business/media/mit-closes-food-computer-project.html <comment><USER2> Pay/PI walled.</comment>