Ask HN: How to Sell Software? - <AUTHOR> I have spent over a decade building software working as engineer and working with product/Business Analysts in enterprise (FAANG or FAANG alike companies). I can confidently say that I can build software with features that delight customers. However, I don't understand how to sell software.
1. How to find customers?
2. How to sell?
Let me know your experience and how you learned to sell software.
Cheers. <comment><USER2> Asking myself the same question, it seems hard while starting out especially for B2B.

A "good way" seems to be to cold call / cold e-mail businesses that would benefit from the product. This is sadly considered illegal in germany. The only way to get in contact with them would be if they sign up for a mailinglist, which needs a lot of marketing money. Maybe someone knows other good ways?

Attending events, conferences, etc. is not possible either during the pandemic.

2020 doesn't seem to be a good year trying to start a company :(

<comment><USER3> Cold calling businesses is definitely not illegal in Germany if you got the contact info from their website.

<comment><USER4> and every german business (or business operating in germany) is mandated by law to have contact information on their website.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Realise this is as big and open of a question as a salesperson asking "how do I code". So hard to know where to start!

I am still learning myself and for me selling online not face to face is the focus. I have failed a few times to get anything off the ground but technically people have paid me money so I have sold software! But usually less than the time and money I have put in.

My next move is to understand more about market validation and research, or how to get in the shoes of potential customers. Hopefully that'll increase the chances of my next thing making money.

If you want to sell as a job rather than start a business that might be another question entirely I'll leave that to the sales people to answer!

</comment><comment><USER6> I have no clue, but this is what I have tried, and what I'm now planning:

I built an open-source multiplayer online system; I made a game with it, together with a company that had an IP and used Unity, that sold 250.000 copies almost for free.

Now that the system was proven I tried selling it to bigger B2B clients, but failed because I didn't really want to. Instead I'm moving into making things closer to the consumer, a HTML5 client for 2D and a C+ client for 3D.

Recently I realized, if I don't have a way to charge customers the whole stack is not going anywhere so I'm now in the process of adding subscriptions through github sponsors and prepaid through itch.io.

Now my engines (2D and 3D) are nearing the point where making the games is the only remaining thing to do and getting started on that beyond solving the technical unknowns is really hard, procrastination hides in the undecided subjective details.

However I believe that the only thing you can do is to make good _finished_ products and learn. Eventually you will get a break and then you'll have to handle the other side of the coin: being successful. Which BTW is harder than most think.

The hardest part is to make the software so good that you are not ashamed of selling it. Then having the courage to actually sell it, put a price tag on the thing! The rest usually happens automatically eventually; people can sense if you want to sell things, and they will exploit that, in other words: people will buy what they can afford if they sense a good deal.

Selling works best if you are confident: the interface is proven and has little friction, but you need to figure that out manually by doing it. B2B and B2C are surprisingly similar if you remove the wrapping, it's still about "how much of your time will they take away"!

The end goal is to build something that works and makes money without taking any of your time.

TLDR: Figure out your interface so that underlying complexity can be provided simply without friction while pushing closer to the end customer!

The rest is luck.

</comment><comment><USER7> The question 0. to prepend to your list is: "How to dissociate between value of something to someone and the effort to implement it?". It appears that engineers are cursed of a chronic dismissive attitude toward things that weren't hard to make, because a lot of the most valuable things were hard to make.

This brings us to one helpful mindset is to get out of our own head, and consider the value of what we build from the perspective of the entities we build for. I say entities because I have this thing that I can delight a system whose input is the output of a differential amplifier I build with really low distortion, or a plant looking forward to being watered since the last time it has been.

So, after all that touchy feely stuff you probably know very well, as you have been building things that delight customers for a long time... Here are things you can do:

1\. Get into more sales meetings if you can in order to witness and pick up from what people who consistently do it.

2\. Offer technical help to your own salespeople and marketing people who are selling the very product you built. You have deep technical knowledge and you can be of real help for them to explain things. They will tell you about common objections or questions that prospects are throwing at them, and your input can be valuable. Why a specific bug fix or feature is important, etc.

3\. Learn from your own salespeople and marketing people about how they're selling the product/features you built.

</comment><comment><USER8> Based on my experience, it's hard if you've never done it before but it gets easier when you absorb the learnings.

Firstly, it starts with identifying a problem/frustration that your customers will value. You'll need to be very specific because what does selling "software" really mean? Focus on what your users can do with your software and how you can help them.

As others have pointed out, B2C is also different than B2B but within B2B, there are many sub groups within it. For example, company size and industry.

To find customers, it helps by knowing who your users are? Are they developers, analysts, etc.? Then you'll also need to know how your users can purchase software - is it their own decision? Their boss' decision? IT's decision?

To be able to sell to enterprises, your product needs to be incredibly valuable (order of magnitude better than their existing process). However, that's just the beginning for enterprise sales. You'll need to demonstrate and prove your product and in most cases, business stability before getting the sale. However, the average contract values could be $100k+ to over a million in enterprise. You also have the option to expand to other teams within the same enterprise.

To be able to sell to smaller companies or startups, it's an easier journey but nonetheless, in most cases, you still need to prove the value of your product.

</comment><comment><USER9> I used to sell software and I used to be a developer. Happy to jump on a call to share some frameworks + approaches if you'd like. My email is in my profile.

</comment><comment><USER10> [https://www.unusual.vc/field-guide](https://www.unusual.vc/field-guide) Full disclosure: I work for AppDynamics and this is our founder's VC field sales guide.

It perfectly articulates on a high level, how to build a sales force and the metrics / GTM for B2B selling. Another thing to keep in mind is your product and target audience. This will help you figure out your Pipeline Generation. Feel free to PM me, I have been in B2B software sales (I was also a software engineer previously) and I would love to help / guide you.

A16Z - Love their blogs and articles. Here is my favorite one for Enterprise Selling: [https://a16z.com/2020/07/29/growthsales-the-new-era-of- enter...](https://a16z.com/2020/07/29/growthsales-the-new-era-of-enterprise- go-to-market/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Read books. See what works for you. The firs thing is to decide acquisition method. Inbound or outbound?

Inbound is great if you are well known inthe space. Else it's slow. If you don't have a large network reach out to people.

Find the right channels that would work for you. Read [https://brianbalfour.com/](https://brianbalfour.com/) he has a page for learning to be customer acquisition expert. Lots of good recommendations.

Most companies survive on a single channel. So you must find which one is that for you.

If your only way to reach prospects is ads, you must have a good price on your product . High LTV to support CAC.

If your users are active on LinkedIn. Then try apps like clickedIn.

If your prospects read emails (e.g. marketing, swe ) then try cold outreach. Read more on lemlist.com

Join Facebook groups where SAAS founders hang out. You might find more tricks.

If you dont have sales experience then focus on product led growth. Read the book.

Regardless of sales, you must have good grasp of marketing even if you intend to drive product led growth.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER12> 1\. It's easier if you have worked in the domain. If not make a list of top 50 companies who might need your product. Use linkedin to find the CXOs of those companies who have the power to say yes or no. Approach them thru mutual contacts or directly.

2\. You have to explain the benefits of your product. Benefits should be much greater than the cost. Good thing with SAAS is that commitment needn't be long . One popular theme is "your software increases efficiency" of employees .

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER13> You should take a look at "Founding Sales: The Early-Stage Go-To-Market Handbook"[0] by Pete Kazanjy.

I haven't read the book myself, but I know some of the other books Holloway has published are high quality and filled with great advice.

Disclaimer: I am writing an unrelated book that will be published on Holloway early next year.

[0]: [https://www.holloway.com/b/founding- sales](https://www.holloway.com/b/founding-sales)

</comment><comment><USER14> Just call and email your target market. Honestly most of the time people don't want to do it, but that's all you have to do. And it's hard. But hammer away at it. Also approaching clients on LinkedIn. You can arrange to speak at events as well and produce great content for online marketing, but in the end, just contact people directly.

</comment><comment><USER15> What type of software are you selling? Are you selling to the enterprise vs. a consumer. Two very different sales methods.

</comment><comment><USER16> >1\. How to find customers?

>2\. How to sell?

>Let me know your experience and how you learned to sell software.

IMHO, you've got this backwards. If you don't know the answers to these questions you shouldn't be writing the software. It means you haven't identified demand or market fit. Do that first and then write your software.

</comment><comment><USER17> Ladders and funnels.

Figure out how to get people into the funnel. Then figure out how to get them to climb the ladder.

Think of motivation.

Also, go read the Way of the Wolf. Best salesbook there is.

If you have time, any video about Dan Kennedy on youtube is gold. Study the content of the videos.

</comment><comment><USER18> watch the videos on startup school from YC [https://www.startupschool.org/curriculum](https://www.startupschool.org/curriculum)

they are also on YouTube if you don't want to signup

</comment><comment><USER19> Since I don't know anything about what you are selling, other than it being software, the advice is going to be generic.

I work as the technical counterpart to a bunch of sales reps, so I can't speak to #1, but I can help with #2, I've seen what makes good reps and bad reps and have gone through lots of training with them.

When you're just getting started in a new industry, it's important to understand how your customers buy software. Based on your price point things are going to be drastically different. Can a solo engineer pay for and expense the software or are you going to have to work your way up the chain to get the C-level involved in the purchasing decisions? The sales cycle in these two cases will be on complete opposite ends of the spectrum.

If it is B2B, what types of companies are you targeting? 10 person startups or 100,000 person massive corporations?

It is important to understand your landscape.

From the personal side, it is ideal to be empathetic towards your prospects. Understand that (at least initially), the people you are selling to don't care about you and are only talking to you because they are interested in a solution to a problem they are facing. Far too many people try selling before they understand what the prospect is actually trying to solve.

Rather than jumping on to a call with a prospect and demoing your tool and every feature under the sun, don't try to sell them at all on your initial conversation. Instead, spend your initial call with a prospect on understanding their problem and what they are currently doing. Try to understand how this problem actually affects them. If this is purely a nice to have, you probably aren't going to have any luck with the sale. But if you can discern that this is a $100k problem for them and your software is $10k then you'll know this is worth pursuing.

You may get pushback that they just want to see a demo, but if your product is like many enterprise tools, it has a lot of features to check all the boxes. Just showing up and throwing up all the features in a demo is the way to ensure that nobody is enjoying it. You would have to give a boring generic demo and the prospect would have to hear about a bunch of features that aren't relevant to them.

Instead, when you spend the first call understanding their problems, when you present your own solutions in future conversations you can actually target their specific needs. It's a much more compelling story when you are demoing to their exact needs rather than your assumptions about what people want to hear since everyone is different.

There is a whole lot to sales, and I could go on for a long time about tips I've learned. But I think most important of all is to build relationships with people. Genuinely try to help them solve their challenges and you'll gain trust and respect from your prospects and customers.</comment>


Six Days in North Korea - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/06/10/world/asia/north-korea-photos-video.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> For those who would like to follow North Korea on a more than casual basis, these sites are likely to be of interest:

* NK News ([http://nknews.org](http://nknews.org))

* DailyNK ([https://www.dailynk.com/english/index.php](https://www.dailynk.com/english/index.php))

And perhaps especially since this is HN:

* North Korea Tech ([https://www.northkoreatech.org](https://www.northkoreatech.org))

<comment><USER3> [https://www.facebook.com/dprk360](https://www.facebook.com/dprk360)

<comment><USER4> [http://38north.org/](http://38north.org/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> NY Times team did a great job of making this responsive. It works really well on mobile.

That said, this is best viewed on desktop on a huge monitor. It looks gorgeous. Really, beautiful job to their front end team, consistently delivering this kind of experience.

<comment><USER6> And yet the video was awful in every way. It cut too fast, not allowing us to fully appreciate what was going on, and it had no playback controls so if you missed anything you have to wait for the entire thing to loop back up. Did you see the blue box that trapped the foot? I don't know what that was.

<comment><USER7> It covers your shoe with a polythene shoe cover. Mostly used in hospitals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> You do realize that everything in these pictures is thoroughly and carefully pre-selected and even engineered for display purposes, right?

(I was born in the Soviet Union. It is mostly unknown for Western people how much propaganda matters in totalitarian countries, and how little it has to do with reality).

<comment><USER9> Having been there on holiday myself, the only way to ensure that everything is pre-selected and engineered would be to effectively shut down the entire city (indeed, every city and town I went to), and create a kind of bubble around each of our buses (and, when we switched to foot, around each pocket of walking tourists); fake cities filled with actors, all standing and doing nothing until someone shouts "The bus is almost visible" at which point they break into action like a pack of extras on a Hollywood set, pretending to be walking somewhere as the bus passes, only to stop as soon as it's out of sight. Everyone's life on permanent hold, just waiting to show the tourists what it looks like when people walk on the pavement. What glory for the Fatherland that is!

To say that "everything in these pictures is thoroughly and carefully pre- selected and even engineered" is simply not true.

<comment><USER10> >effectively shut down the entire city

So.. you guys were carefully corralled in the city? N Korea is mostly rural, with most of its population barely able to get enough calories to eat. Pyongyang is a propagandist show-room and is full of connected party types. Your average N Korean doesn't live that lifestyle. This is all fairly well documented by various sources, mostly via the oral histories of defectors:

[http://www.amazon.com/Nothing-Envy-Ordinary-Lives- North/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/Nothing-Envy-Ordinary-Lives- North/dp/0385523912)

[http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable- Odyssey/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable- Odyssey/dp/0143122916)

If you care to discredit these works, I will argue with you on a point to point basis. I have read both and other sources that describe the regime and everyday life in North Korea. Perhaps we can also get Dennis Rodman in here too but clearly you both are on the same page.

Sadly, I find North Korea cheerleading often to be a biased political position tied to the usual pro-China HN crowd that finds fault with everything the US/EU do, thus anything the US/EU are critical of, must be good and any criticism of these regimes must be "western propaganda."

<comment><USER9> _So.. you guys were carefully corralled in the city?_

No. We travelled through rural regions as well; small towns and so forth. I saw (but did not go into) numerous very small villages. Those were not much more than a collection of buildings, generally with a dirt track leading to it from the road we were on.

In the city, whilst walking with our two guides, the distance between the front walker and the rear walker was on the order of a hundred metres at times. When I went there, it was a significant national holiday. Some of the exhibition centres we went to had literally thousands of people flowing through them while we were there. We were in the crowds, mixing in with the people attending. Huge flows of people. At a military parade, we stepped off the bus and stood with the crowd to watch. On the underground, we stepped onto the carriages with the locals who were waiting for the train. A funfair in Pyongyang; huge, huge queues outside and inside. Enormous numbers of people milling about and again, our group wandered through them.

I saw numerous signs of deprivation and malnutrition. I saw extensive evidence of a massive solid fuel shortage in recent years. I saw a lot of things that made it clear that the nation is, in many many ways, truly grotesque. I also saw an upright stuffed alligator on wheels holding a drinks tray that David Koresh of Waco fame had sent as a gift.

I would hazard (but of course do not know) that I know more about the subject than you do (both before and after travelling there I read an enormous amount of the available literature and various collections of conference proceedings), and I have the additional evidence of my own eyes.

The western media LOVES to spin stories about the DPRK, and the western public LOVES to read them. There is a lot - a LOT - wrong with the DPRK, but the media seem to be able to write pretty much anything they like and people want to believe it. You know what, go there and see it for yourself. Run in the Pyongyang marathon. Do a cycling tour.

<comment><USER10> >I would hazard (but of course do not know) that I know more about the subject than you do

I have read two books from defectors, who I imagine had more personal involvement and first-hand experience than some western tourist who fancies himself an expert because he went cycling there once.

Tourism isn't the wonderful learning experience you make it out to be. Its, by its nature, 100% artificial. You have no skin in this game. You can walk out at any time and your money is coveted so you get treated and handled a certain way compared to a local. Tourism doesn't teach you jack shit about the country you're visiting and I say this as someone with two passports who visits his parent's native country frequently. I am not an expert on that country even though speak the language, have family there, etc. I just dont have skin in the game and when I'm there I'm treated like a tourist - not a local. I dont ever have to interview for a job there, deal with the authorities really, pay taxes, deal with the local mafioso/crooked cops/bad government past a superficial level, deal with any of the everyday grind outside of tourist framework, serve in their military, etc.

I wish more North Korean apologists understood this. Instead we have an online army of Dennis Rodmans trivializing the human rights catastrophe in North Korea because the food they were served was okay and the locals all smiled as you drove past in your air conditioned bus.

<comment><USER11> I'd be skeptical of some of the more outlandish defector testimonies. They have a strong incentive to exaggerate and invent stories, and owing to the relative seclusion of North Korea, it's pretty easy to not get called on it.

Many of the defector testimonies also comes from the mid 90s, when North Korea was undergoing a famine, and while that famine was _really_ severe, it was still 20 years ago and their malnutrition levels have plunged precipitously since. If it were still that bad today, probably the regime would have collapsed already.

Tourism in the country is very controlled, but it's not 100%. Kernels of truth will slip through. Honestly, the propaganda and the truth is quite easy to distinguish, too - their propaganda is very unsophisticated and pretty blunt and not every tour guide is a mindless brainwashed automaton.

<comment><USER10> >They have a strong incentive to exaggerate and invent stories, and owing to the relative seclusion of North Korea, it's pretty easy to not get called on it.

So anything that contradicts North Korea state propaganda must be untrue? Oh, ok.

<comment><USER11> You know, you could just swap the phrase "North Korea state propaganda" with "American impeeeerialists" (you must draw out the e) and you'd sound exactly of like one of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was always fascinated by cars in North Korea - what brands do they use? How do they get there? What do you have to do to drive one? Exactly how uncommon are they? Who fixes them, and how do they know how? If the supreme leader is driven in a Mercedes, how do they get the parts for it?

I come from Poland where during communist times cars were really hard to come by, you had to wait 10 years on an official list to be allowed to buy one, but people always managed to get by somehow. Most models were of course of Soviet production, but an odd western car would sometimes appear, imported through friends of friends of someone in the party. Obviously NK is completely different, but I still find it very interesting, and it's hard to find any information about this anywhere.

<comment><USER13> An article from 2014 suggests the government use at least one Mercedes, and probably bought it via Russia or China. I'd guess they just drive it over the border...

Maybe parts don't count as "luxury vehicles", in which case they can buy them from Europe. Alternatively, China/Russia.

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/northkorea/11...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/northkorea/11013338/Mercedes- limousines-spotted-in-North-Korea-could-breach-UN-sanctions.html)

<comment><USER14> China produces compatible parts for almost every car, including Mercedes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The empty freeway from the window was the killer shot for me. Imagine if you showed the average citizen there a picture of LA or even Beijing during rush hour.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, its so interesting to see those types of pictures. I'd be fascinated to hear what North Koreans think of the freeway system in their country since few people use it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Hey, I've been there!

I ran my fastest marathon ever while being tailed by the paddy wagon, suited up and bowed down before the embalmed body of Kim Jong Il, locked and loaded to shoot at chickens, and tripped out in psychedelic halls of mirrors in the DPRK - North Korea.

Here's how it all went down...

[http://jeffreydonenfeld.com/blog/2015/06/exploring-north- kor...](http://jeffreydonenfeld.com/blog/2015/06/exploring-north-korea-and- running-the-pyongyang-marathon/)

</comment><comment><USER17> I am impressed that Pyongyang appears in Google maps [https://www.google.com.pr/maps/place/Ryugyong+Hotel,+Pyongya...](https://www.google.com.pr/maps/place/Ryugyong+Hotel,+email@example.com,125.6923056,13z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x357e1d28b1b75405:0x283ff682d04744d6) I was looking for the giant Ryuyong Hotel in the center of town.

<comment><USER18> Clicking on some of the landmarks around the hotel, they have some Google reviews. The reviews for the Pyongyang Arena makes interesting reading.

[https://www.google.com.pr/search?q=Pyongyang+Arena,+Pyongyan...](https://www.google.com.pr/search?q=Pyongyang+Arena,+Pyongyang,+Corea+del+Norte&ludocid=9068691185340548019#lrd=0x357e1d31fa7eca45:0x7dda7695c7f083b3,1)</comment></comment>


Kohana PHP 2.3.x Framework Tutorial Part 1 - <AUTHOR> http://www.dealtaker.com/blog/2009/04/23/kohana-php-23x-tutorial-part-1/ Start learning the Kohana PHP framework from the ground up. <comment><USER2> For the record, I use an extensively modified Kohana core system in my PHP programs.

However, other users should be reminded that authors of Kohana have a less than perfect track record with sanity. They have been previousely singled out for stupid/insulting class names (Naked_Women) as well as bizarre content (machine gun firing cats, hardcoded to show up on some URLs).

But I digress...

<comment><AUTHOR> We've all come up with names that are odd at one time right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I currently use Kohana 2.3.x for all my projects and highly recommend it. The 2.3 branch is very stable and is now managed by a team of developers that are committed to a stable API.

Some of my favorite features are: * very clean and well-documented core * autoloading libraries * completely modular (cascading filesystem) * integrated and easy to use ORM that can be used along side standard DB and query builder libraries. * very easy to customize * centralized template controller and views * very knowledgeable and helpful community * growing third-party module repository

<comment><AUTHOR> I like that they don't force ORM on you. Personally I think the ORM is lacking and can cause things to be more complicated to do.

<comment><USER3> I typically use ORM for most models. But create custom DB methods within the model for more complicated queries. Having the standard DB library methods available within an ORM model makes Kohana very flexible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I cant wait to get the rest of the tutorial done and show off all the awesomeness that I have found with Kohana.</comment>


Strategy decay in the world of TV production - "The cost of making a one-hour drama episode has tripled in the past 15 year" - <AUTHOR> http://www.theequitykicker.com/2007/05/10/strategy-decay-in-the-world-of-tv-production/ <comment><USER2> The sad part is that for hollywood cheap means reality and game shows. They've just about abandoned the idea of inexpensive scripted content.

On the bright side, new distribution channels will make it so that non-broad- appeal shows like firefly, arrested development, etc will be capable of profitability.</comment>


Cloud Dataflow SQL and Cloud Dataflow Batch Flexible Resource Scheduling Release - <AUTHOR> https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/data-analytics/streaming-analytics-now-simpler-more-cost-effective-cloud-dataflow <comment><AUTHOR> So I have a bad history with Cloud Dataflow.

I like BigQuery and Flink a lot, but a lot of companies seem to be switching over to Cloud Dataflow. In my experience Cloud Dataflow's cost is really unpredictable and DataPrep's pipelines (on DataFlow) were far more inefficient compared to an equivalent DataProc Spark pipeline, Spark on Compute Engine, or just plain BigQuery.

In addition:

Apache BEAM's overhead itself is a lot: [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1907.08302.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1907.08302.pdf)

Switching from Dataflow can incur massive cost savings: [https://lugassy.net/how-moving-from-pub-sub-to-avro-saved- us...](https://lugassy.net/how-moving-from-pub-sub-to-avro-saved- us-38-976-year-ec6c33ea7d08)

Right now I'm sorting out a solution either using GKE, Managed Instance Groups, or Cloud Run to create a completely preemptible scale to 0 pipeline instead. But it's sort of like reinventing the wheel, the compute choice is just the task manager in flink and the "orchestration engine" that you set up to manage your Cloud Tasks/Pub Sub and Cloud Build solution is reinventing Flink's Job Manager. I miss the clarity of Flink and Beam but I can't find a cheap scale to 0, preemptible instance only, solution.

Whats your experience been?</comment>


How Houston Regulates Land Use - <AUTHOR> http://marketurbanism.com/2016/09/19/how-houston-regulates-land-use/ <comment><USER2> I don't know if it's Stockholm syndrome or not, but every one of my friends that are from Houston prefers the way they do it compared to every other city (like Dallas where I live).

<comment><USER3> I mean it seems like Houston does get a lot right. The off-street parking and mega blocks though are really where it gets it wrong. That said, how much do people actually want to walk around in Texas? It's fucking hot down there most of the year say compared to Boston or NY which are only really unbearable for small portions of the year. I was in Austin a month ago and I was really unhappy walking half a mile in the heat compared to say Boston where I'll walk two or three miles to cross the city and not even think about it.

<comment><USER4> (Texan here) -- if we had some decent shade and short distances to walk, it'd be a lot better. You get used to the heat after a while; also if walking culture took off people would adapt to a more traditionally Mexican schedule of not being out right smack in the middle of the day.

<comment><USER5> Texan here, myself and several people I know never got used to the heat. It will never be acceptable for me to want to walk to lunch, even 10 minutes away, when it means coming back drenched in sweat and smelling terrible.

<comment><USER6> If you smell from the sweat of a lunchtime walk, I would suggest a different deodorant, seriously. I have sensitive skin and can't wear the kind of antiperspirant with aluminum in it. It took me until relatively late in life (early 30s now) to find the combination that works for me: crystal rock deodorant plus one of the "natural" spray kinds.

As for the sweat, a good wicking t-shirt will let it evaporate quickly, or if you need to wear a button-up shirt, a good cotton undershirt will keep your outer shirt nice and dry (usually).

<comment><USER7> Air conditioning solves the problem perfectly well. 10 minutes walk in 98 degrees with high humidity.. every part of your body is soaked in sweat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Houston does mandate off-street parking

This is a terrible thing that cities badly need to get away from.

Going further cities need to get away from mandating parking period.

There's a 400+ unit condo building that was approved in my town in 2014 and it's still under construction because of course every unit needs parking and they're building a massive underground parking lot. The fact that this building is on a major bus corridor, less than a 10 minute walk from existing rapid transit and it's adjacent to a future site for rapid transit expansion is ignored. There's honestly no reason to build so much parking here and yet the rules mandate that we must add parking everywhere. This increases the costs of housing as well and people must pay for this regardless of whether they use it or not.

<comment><USER9> You are clearly not from Texas. Nothing is 10 minutes away. Public transit is a joke. I realize this is a chicken/egg situation, but it's probably not changing anytime soon here.

Honestly, it's not an issue (in Houston) at all. I like driving and the fact that everywhere has parking is perfect. If I'm going out I just pay for the uber and call it a night. It's cheap enough down here anyways.

<comment><USER10> That's great you like driving, but what's upsetting is you demanding everyone else pay for your free parking.

Nobody is saying parking should be illegal, just that people shouldn't be forced to build it if they don't want it.

Edit: People more informed than myself have studied how forcing everyone to build parking makes housing less affordable.

[http://www.portlandoregon.gov/bps/article/420062](http://www.portlandoregon.gov/bps/article/420062)

<comment><USER11> First, we have some of the cheapest housing in the US.

Second, the law will Have to change in the next 10 years.

Third, if we do it right, Houston can become the city with the most green space in the country if we require that 1/2 of any replaced parking lot just become semi-public green space.

<comment><USER10> That's cool, but making people travel through lots of green space still has the net effect of reducing the ability of transit to serve customers and forcing longer commutes.

I'm glad housing is apparently affordable there. My views are probably affected by my experience growing up in California.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's hard for coastal people to understand how cheap land and housing is in the interior of the U.S. What constitutes a down payment for a tiny home on the coasts will buy a virtual mansion with a ranch just outside of Houston. There's almost zero economic and social pressure to create the kind of cities we're used to on the coasts (or in Europe or Asia for that matter).

<comment><USER10> The point is that you're pretty much forced to partake in automobile ownership because everyone else decided buildings should have to be spaced ridiculously far apart. This is either directly, through density maximums, or indirectly, through zoning and parking requirements. Houston may have cheap housing, but it also appears to have much higher commute costs than most US cities.

[http://cityobservatory.org/introducing-the-sprawl- tax/](http://cityobservatory.org/introducing-the-sprawl-tax/)

Anyway, I don't think we even disagree, really. I like green space too. I just hate laws that pretty much force everyone to have a horrible commute because living close enough to your job to walk or cycle, or having enough people in the same space to support transit, is almost illegal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It is strange the zoning laws. Here is a sex shop right by the galleria. which is an upsacle mall. you can see the dillard's in the background. there is a neiman marcus across the street.

[https://email@example.com,-95.4587679,3a,75y,2...](https://email@example.com,-95.4587679,3a,75y,234.13h,86.55t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1svaoxVQ6kmoQzbxg2-AcV7Q!2e0!7i13312!8i6656)

<comment><USER13> It used to be a burger place :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I lived in Houston for several years, and there's a lot of great things happening there. I've always liked the lack of zoning, while also hating how common and strict the private covenants are (I never knew why they were more onerous in Houston, but knew they were).

I also think Houston is well-placed to become one of the truly great American cities with only minor shifts in policy.

Those huge roads? Shrink the lanes and paint on bike lanes (which is effectively free, since the lines are repainted every few years anyway), and you've got green urban transit options everywhere. It's already relatively safe to bike most places in Houston, certainly in all the neighborhoods, because the roads are big enough to accommodate bikes even without lanes specifically marked. I used to bike to class when I was in college...about 10 miles each way. None of it was particularly hairy or scary, even compared to "bike-friendly" towns like Austin.

There's also a surprisingly large amount of green and park space in Houston. The bayous that are concrete-filled could be ripped up (some parts of the Houston bayou system were concreted over in the 70s and 80s, as a failed attempt at flood management), and turned into hike/bike trails (they already get used that way...there's dirt foot paths along the top of every Houston bayou I can remember).

The train and bus system needs _massive_ improvement (or, it did when I last lived there or visited), and the car culture needs to be killed, as this author notes. But, there are some very good, very walkable neighborhoods in Houston. I couldn't afford to live in them, but I enjoyed the street festivals and such that happened in them. Again, some minor tweaks to policy could allow more of those neighborhoods to thrive. The lack of zoning means that retail and restaurants often exist right along side neighborhoods; which is the ideal for a walkable neighborhood.

Traffic is obviously a huge problem for Houston, but that's true of every major American city. It was particularly pronounced while I was living there, as two of the biggest highways were under construction for several years (also common in growing cities).

In short: I'd love to see Houston get more of these things right. It was a good city that treated me well. My first attempt to get a real job turned out great, the cost of living is on the low side given the scale of opportunities available and the benefits of living in such a big city (great art scene, great music scene, great food, etc.). I moved to Austin after a few years in Houston, and while Austin also has a lot going for it (I would even say it's the first and only city I've ever really _loved_ ), it has felt like it's been going the wrong direction the whole time I lived there and the years when I didn't. Every once in a while, it'll get something right (like going to a 10-1 district-based city council instead of at-large, or being pretty good about bike lanes and bike safety), but on the whole the things that make Austin great are in decline. Artists and musicians are leaving because they can't afford it, black and brown folks have been pushed out to Round Rock or Georgetown or other surrounding cities again because they can't afford it, and music venues are shutting down left and right because they can't afford it and the new (very wealthy) downtown and surrounding area residents don't like the noise. My desire to live in or visit Austin has dropped to almost nil in recent years.

<comment><USER15> Your comment is basically "Houston would be great if it did a whole lot of things that there is t a snowballs chance in hell happening." If you can talk about "killing car culture" in Houston with a straight face it's hard to take the rest of the comment seriously.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, funny post. It's not going to happen. Houston has never had a culture of proactive urban planning and intervention. I grew up there and the city always had a vibe of people just living there to make money and one day leave. In my 30 years all that happened other than freeways and road expansions was Discovery Green and Buffalo Bayou park trail expansions.

<comment><USER14> As the article points out, Houston _is_ proactive about urban planning, when it comes to cars. The city _requires_ , by law, parking (and huge roads). Miles and miles and miles of parking. Veritable oceans of parking lots. All mandated by the city. That's intervention and that's urban planning. It is _bad_ urban planning, but it is urban planning nonetheless.

So...yeah. I agree it's unlikely to happen any time soon. But, that's true of every city I've lived in: The things that most need to change have the most political pressure _not_ to change, and so they won't, and that aspect of the city will continue to suck. SF won't change the things it needs to change to resolve its housing crisis; Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles, won't do anything to change their car addiction; etc.

So, I probably agree with you. I wish for a better Houston, because there's a lot of like about it, but I don't have high hopes of it actually becoming a better Houston.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Outside of complying with space-consuming regulations and certain special > urban bonuses related to lot size, Houston doesn't regulate density.

What are "space-consuming regulations"?

<comment><USER18> Large minimum lot sizes and mandatory setbacks (the space between the curb and the front of your house).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> What impresses me is how _brown_ the city of Houston is. Everything looks dead or dying like a zombie apocalypse. Seriously, will that city even be viable in 20 years?

<comment><USER20> Where in Houston? My experience was that Houston was had lots of green space.

<comment><USER19> I'm talking about the photos in the article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I dislike the lack of zoning in Houston. It means you want to buy a home, but it's right next to a strip club, so it ruins the deal. You want to live in a nice and expensive neighborhood, but then a developer comes in and builds a 6 story apartment building right next to your two story house. And the lack of zoning means the traffic on the street of that apartment complex becomes horrific because there's now twice as many people living on that block.

You see a lot of mixed-income neighborhoods in Houston - places where people are building $700,000 homes where 80% of the same street are 1000 square foot shacks with people living in them making $20k a year. Luckily for them, their lots are worth half a million dollars. I don't know if this is the result of the lack of zoning, but I don't see this happening in other cities in Texas, so I have to think it's somehow related.

<comment><USER21> >You see a lot of mixed-income neighborhoods in Houston - places where people are building $700,000 homes where 80% of the same street are 1000 square foot shacks with people living in them making $20k a year. Luckily for them, their lots are worth half a million dollars. I don't know if this is the result of the lack of zoning, but I don't see this happening in other cities in Texas, so I have to think it's somehow related.

This is a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" kind of thing. If neighborhoods are income-segregated, there is no end to opinion pieces about this awful late-capitalist crypto-apartheid. If neighborhoods are mixed- income, then the hand-wringing is about rich people living behind walls next to a shanty town.

<comment><USER22> There's clearly a correct answer here: repeal segregation laws. Why on earth is my government forcing lower income families out of neighborhoods they want to live in?

<comment><USER23> What are you talking shit? Income segregation is not enforced by government (except, ironically, for zoning laws)

<comment><USER22> Yes, zoning laws. Density restrictions were designed to segregate by income.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask YC: (< (/ signal noise) too-low) - <AUTHOR> T
I've been a member of Hacker News (actually Startup News when I joined) for over a year now. I've learned a lot here and been exposed to a lot of interesting ideas. Recently, however, I've often seen the front page have at least 10% of the stories be either more Reddit-worthy or be submissions discussing how to combat Hacker News deteriorating into just-another-news-site.
With the value I'm getting from Hacker News being much lower than it was when I joined (and up to a couple months ago), I think it's time for me to go. There have been several posts I've seen on the front page where I've wanted to say, "Well, this is definitely it," but I think it's better this way, to just keep it to my own submission and leave.
Best of luck to everyone on their ventures and in your lives in general. If I ever get something going, I'll be sure to mention it here first.
Thank you for some great discussions. <comment><USER2> I'm not upset with the front page changing-- I think it's still just as awesome as before, and I'm sure Paul and the moderators are doing a great job at keeping the crap off.

What I am worried about are these increasingly common AskYC posts reflecting on News.YC. This post, for example, is a somewhat self-centered broadcast of BrandonM's exit. I hope this doesn't become a common practice, because this is the kind of stuff I don't like seeing on the front page.

There's certainly a ton of awesome conversation still going on. But I wish the community would feel like off-white paint again: unnoticeable and non- criticizable. It's what the people in the community say that matters, not the color of the walls.

<comment><USER3> That is one real change. There are more Ask YC type posts on the frontpage than there used to be. I've been thinking of measures to fix that. One possibility is to have a karma threshold for posting them, but I don't want to silence new users. So I think what I may do is make gravity stronger for Ask YC posts: make them have to get e.g. 2x as many points to stay at a given position on the frontpage.

<comment><USER4> Good Ask YC posts are among my favorite on HN. Many news stories offer little meat for discussion--they're straightforward. My feed reader catches most interesting news, already, so for me, the discussion provides the greatest value.

To keep the baby not the bathwater, what about putting up the submission-level down arrow, but only for Ask YC submissions?

<comment><USER5> I don't think down arrows would be enough. Unfortunately a lot of new Ask YC posts are opinionated and people vote as means of identifying with the post rather than as a measure of interest or quality. Its interesting how well the poll system reverted the up arrow to a quality measure rather than an agreement measure in polls.

Most of the objectionable AskYC posts could probably be shoe-horned into polls by editors - just with 'agree' or 'disagree' options.

Maybe every post could have additional [agree] [disagree] buttons, because a lot of poor quality submissions are equally opinionated.

<comment><USER4> The missing thread-level down arrow does prevent reddit-style polling. Pg might not like this suggestion because a worse nightmare might be "vote up if you like candy" threads.

If the down-arrows were karma-restricted to ensure adequate assimilation, though...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My 2 cents: I think you're overreacting and being a bit melodramatic by "leaving" and going out of your way to make a post about it instead of, say, just not voting up or reading posts you aren't interested in (or just leaving). It's not like your sentiment isn't expressed in some way already several times a week. The only thing more annoying to me than noise is noise about noise. Yes, I see the irony in my saying that.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sorry to seem melodramatic, but I didn't feel like I was only speaking for myself, and I hadn't yet seen a post like this. For a while I thought others were overreacting when they were saying that HN was changing too much, but lately I think I know what they're talking about. Several times I've clicked through and read about half of a story only to find that it was a waste of my time, and judging by the names on the comments, most of the story's score is coming from new members.

I'm not saying the community isn't good for a lot of people, I'm just saying that it's changed enough that it's no longer what I came here for. I would apologize for making this submission, but it seems that enough people agreed with me that it did make it to the front page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's hard to quantify, but there have been changes on HN over the past year. I do suspect that's going to be as hard to change as it is to quantify, however.

I think that this is partly, because a lot of the truly great content has already been posted. Hacker and geek culture is really a small town once you get over the big learning curve. There are only so many PG essays, Greenspun essays, Spolsky articles, Jargon file content, _The Cathedral and the Bazzar_ , _In the Beginning Was the Command Line_ , PMarca blogs etc.. that can be posted. After the bulk of these got posted, the early adopters started having to work harder to find content that was as good. As they say, the low hanging fruit is easiest to pick.

I know that this has been true for myself, at least. I put a lot of hard work into finding great content and posting it on Hacker News. But, the well for me is running dry. It's harder to come across articles/essays/posts that are as good , because there are only so many great, game changing articles about hacking and startup life that have been written.

So, I've changed my focus from trying to post great articles, to trying to improve the quality of comments that I can post. And, I'm spending more time getting through school so I can get to work on my startup instead of just reading about them.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can you list some of the stories you didn't like seeing on the frontpage? (You can probably still find them by clicking on More at the bottom.) I'd be curious to know if they're statistically distinguishable from older frontpage stories.

<comment><USER8> IMHO, the biggest concern is HN going the reddit way. So here's a stab at trying to fix that:

\- If we can get the list of the top 10-50 hostnames (xkcd, etc) posted on reddit, and deny publication of those hostnames on HN, the signal to noise ratio should go up (how much I don't know?)

\- Obviously, some good posts would be missed, but it's alright to have a few false positives, since this is a website of aggregated news and not email

What do the folks here think?

<comment><USER2> I don't usually come to News.YC for the links, I come for the comments on the articles. Your idea would prevent News.YC comments on popular articles, so I disagree.

<comment><USER8> That's a good point.

In which case, how about NOT awarding karma for posting links for those hostnames, and award karma for the comments. what do you think?

<comment><USER9> instead of/besides a fixed top 10 sites, I would add any site that has been on techmeme. If it's been on techmeme everybody here has probably heard of it already.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm getting more disappointed with the front page as well. It's not necessarily the quality of the content, but the fact that too many posts stay on the front page for too long. Something about reading the same piece of "news" for 2 or more days really irritates me. If I was at least on the same computer it wouldn't be too bad, as visited links would get marked. But I read this site on my desktop, laptop, phone and work computer.

I've mentioned this earlier and requested the ability to dismiss items for view (archive), but pg didn't seem to think it was a good idea and/or worthwhile to implement. Every time time I see the same story on the front page 2 days in a row I get this sudden urge to add

127.0.0.1 news.ycombinator.com

to /etc/hosts. Sooner or later I'll go ahead and do it, and not return until HN gets archiving and keyboard shortcuts.

<comment><USER3> Stuff doesn't stay on the frontpage any longer than it has in the past. If anything the frontpage changes faster.

<comment><USER11> I also have the feeling that some news stay on the frontpage for a longer time than before. My hypothesis is that it happens because nowadays stories get more points.

Paul, can you check this? The average points of news that reached the frontpage, the points of the max. scored piece of news, etcetera?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I, for one, think that this site has gotten much BETTER in the past year. It's the first (and last) I go to every day. It's got just the right mix of outside content, intellegent discussion of that content, "Ask YC" threads, and self- examination.

I sure hope I don't upset anyone, but here goes:

1\. BrandonM, I recognize your name from encountering you many times in interesting threads. Sure hope you'll reconsider. We'd miss you.

2\. BrandonM, you've been a member for 369 days and have posted an outside submission 8 times. AFAIC, your complaint carries no weight. If you don't like the content here, submit more better content.

3\. If anyone sees a thread they don't like, don't vote up or click on it.

4\. If you're tired of what I call "self-examination" threads, don't vote them up or click on them.

5\. Personally, I find the threads discussing this site the most interesting. Here's why. Even though most of us are hackers, we're also users. (We'd better be, or we'd lose all perspective.) The one thing we all have in common is that we are users of THIS SITE. We NEED to keep talking about it. It provides valuable feedback to pg, and interestingly, it provides us much better feedback about each other. I learn more about how you guys think and work from your comments in these threads than any other type. Not sure why, just the way it is.

6\. If you're concerned about the content here, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. I surf about a dozen other sites throughout the day, and whenever I see anything interesting, I submit it. I don't feel like I've gotten everything out of the story until I get feedback here. Many stories die quickly (I'm disappointed), but many others take off. If you find something cool somewhere else, don't keep it a secret; let us know about it.

7\. Vote!

8\. Visit the "new" page more often. Lots of good stuff falls out of the top 30 to a quick death. Maybe we need a more prominent link to the new page, a "split screen" default, or more than 30 new links.

9\. Starting a software business takes a lot more than good hacking skills and raw intelligence. You need passion, perserverence, thick skin, and big balls. Don't like something (here or anywhere else)? Shut up and do your part to make it better. Whiners don't belong here.

Sure don't mean to offend anyone, especially you, BrandonM. At least you had the balls to say what others must be thinking but won't say. And you gave the rest of us a chance to get a few things off our chest. Thanks. Hope to continue to see your name around here.

<comment><USER13> Good comment.

I notice that your karma is over 4000.

Could it be that you're just one of the "chosen few" who are supposed to represent the community at large? If so, it would stand to reason that your karma would go through the roof and you would be finding the site more and more interesting.

I wonder if the reverse holds true: if by choosing the "holders of quality" it also has the effect of choosing certain personality types as being "anti- quality" In other words, when a site gravitates to being represented by a select few (which we all know happens) does it also tend to completely turn off people of opposite personalities and tastes?

This is probably not such a big deal with a low volume of articles and submissions, ie, everybody gets a chance to make a difference in the conversation. In a 10-article-per-day site, everybody's opinion can get something on the front page. But as the volume increases, individuals get lost in the system and those that don't exactly match the opinions of the select few feel more and more isolated.

Just wildly speculating here. I didn't mean to criticize you personally, just using your account and comment as an example. Hope that is okay.

<comment><USER12> "Could it be that you're just one of the "chosen few""

I've never been "chosen" for anything in my life. That's why I'm a hacker. With few exceptions. everything I've ever had or accomplished has been a result of hard work and perserverence (good thing I love what I do).

"represent the community at large"

Ha, if only it were true! I often wonder if I'm the most contrary person here. I've never "audited" my comments here, but I'd be willing to bet many of them were "against the common grain".

A little background: I have absolutely NO formal computer education. I was a math major in a college without a computer science department. I have written tens of thousands of original programs in many technologies in over 80 companies. I don't fully understand social networking, or ad based revenue, but I do know how to build what users need. I don't blog, facebook, twitter, instant message, or text. I often worry that I don't fit in here, because I feel so different from the "typical" member, if there is such a thing.

My karma score is a direct result of participation, nothing else. Anyone can do it. I have no idea (nor do I care) if that score "entitles" me to anything. I love it here. I sit at my terminal from 12 to 16 hours 6 or 7 days per week. Except for the few precious hours with friends and family, THIS is my social life. Don't even have to get up to interact with other humans, alt-tab does it.

Yes, you are wildly speculating. But that is okay. How else would we know about things unless we talk about them?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I _feel_ like there's been a slight creep in people posting articles about recession, polictics, current events because they believe that these things are important to this audience. It all still falls within "Hacker News".

I think people may have formed an internal model about the sort of things they think appropriate for this (or any such site) and get concerned when a submitted article doesn't conform to this. I feel it occasionally on programming.reddit.com, sometimes there are articles there that seem to be on there purely because it mentions the word "computer" or "internet".

But to my surprise when I visited archive.org and pulled up the front page from just over a year ago I see:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20070221033032/http://news.ycombi...](http://web.archive.org/web/20070221033032/http://news.ycombinator.com/)

There really isn't much change at all in the sort of articles being posted.

Out of curiosity, where will you go instead of HN? I've not encountered anything better than this place yet - the high comment quality especially.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pulling up that page. I have to take the opposite viewpoint, though, and say that I like that page much more than the ones I've seen recently here. Of course, back then, it was all startup-related, so that makes some difference.

I'm in the US, but I'm fed up with our politics and recession, and seeing how flawed the system is is just depressing. That's why I only visited the politics sub-Reddit for about a month before I quit going, and now I see some of the same discussions here in submissions and comment threads.

I also think you're right about the internal model. For me, though, my internal model of Hacker News isn't just about what I think is appropriate in a website, but what I think adds value to my life. When the site doesn't meet the model, it is inherently less valuable to me.

I will not go anywhere instead of Hacker News. I might pop in a couple times a month to see the "hacker sentiment" and to be referred to some interesting blog posts, but my overall goal is to waste less time on the computer and spend more time getting real things done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Ironically, this is a typical reddit post too. And why do you think that posts suggesting different strategies to combat noise are not worthy your attention? This is #1 problem for any news site, and this one of the best communities to discuss and test approaches to solve it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that the first 100 comment threads discussing strategies to combat noise were worth my attention. While the ideas have gone nowhere, though, and the discussions have kept coming, it has gotten a bit old.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Brandon,

Thanks for the personal observations.

I find that I never make such a black-or-white decision: usually I have periods of increased or decreased usage which eventually peters completely out. So it's interesting to see someone who is either participating or not.

Don't let the commenters bug you -- one of the not-so-good traits here is that they sometimes seem to have a bit of a self-admiration society going on. It's not unusual that your post would get criticized. I found it right on-target for what I liked about news.yc -- some person making an observation about the market/program/philosophy-of-business and then asking others for comments. I remember some great AskYC and AskPG questions. Don't seem to see those a lot any more -- at least not as much as before. People who provide honest negative feedback are doing a great service for a community like this. PG owes you thanks for taking the time to rant a bit on the way out.

<comment><USER16> _PG owes you thanks for taking the time to rant a bit on the way out_

I disagree, and here's why. PG is clearly benefiting from this bully pulpit as a means to recruit startup founders. Especially in the midst of Startup School (the periodic anti-September of YC) and a waning interest in risky ventures as the economy contracts, it serves as a barometer. Plus the type of crowd that sailed in from TechCrunch has been revealed (if that is the right word) as generally free of merit. I do not believe that judging news.YC as if it were yet another social news site (YASNS, if I have to use the phrase ever again) is appropriate, and hence the rant is perhaps less valuable than it would be on, say, reddit.

As BrandonM noted, it's still the best source for news that interests this particular subset of the public. However, as another poster noted, perhaps the interesting observations that previously lay unnoticed have been exhausted, and the hard work of turning over new stones, starting new companies, and learning new things must begin.

There's only so much you can learn in the library. Eventually you need to get in the laboratory or out in the field. I suspect that is as much to blame for the change in interest levels as anything else.

(JMHO)

<comment><AUTHOR> You may have something here. Maybe part of the reason that some of the older users (myself included) are becoming less satisfied with Hacker News is that we're starting to get restless. We already know that we want to work on startups, we already have some great tips and resources, we already know the power of high-level languages, and now we are just biding our time, waiting for... what?

I know that describes me, to some extent. For me, I think the original Startup News was liberating. It was a fresh voice I'd never heard before saying that I don't have to graduate school and go get a job in industry; I can actually do what I want and make a lot of money doing it. After a year of hearing that and getting some helpful tips along the way, perhaps it's just time for me to go _do_.

<comment><USER16> _waiting for... what?_

Hard to say... but lord knows I hope that you'll have a better idea as a result of perusing the better offerings of the site. I have found it useful to compare my performance against the theoretical optima that I see documented here, rather than just the work of other developers, in order to push myself. Hell, that's why I went back to grad school in the first place (and went into methodology, eventually succumbing to math envy, as it happens).

 _perhaps it's just time for me to go do._

If you look on the front cover of your copy of SICP, the little yin/yang has 'eval' and 'apply' halves. Another endlessly useful shorthand metaphor, IMHO... It's always tempting to go too far in one direction or the other, but fortune seems to favor those who balance the halves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I was thinking the other day that there must be some ideal homogeneity level of a social news site. If homogeneity was zero, then there would be nothing separating news.yc from every other community in existence: 4chan, or the catholic church, or rec.food.drink.tea, etc. But if the homogeneity was one, that is if the community were perfectly homogeneous, then clearly no one would get any value out of that either.

The only reason I mention it is that you can actually kind of measure this. If news.yc was perfectly homogeneous, then the new page and the front page would be exactly the same. So you can measure the percent homogeneity by dividing 25 by the number of new submissions since the oldest item on the front page. I would bet that there is some ideal number.

</comment><comment><USER18> Point one:

A question for everyone criticizing Brandon for being a "Drama Queen" (my choice of words, not yours). Which one of Paul's "levels of disagreement" applies?

Point two:

You can make the argument that his "suicide note" is contributing to the problem, but unless he has a flotilla of sock-puppets voting it up, his note is on the front page because the people here--on aggregate--vote things like this up.

Which means that he's right! If the community does not want to read this kind of thing and discuss this kind of thing, it would be voted into oblivion.

You can hardly blame him for 27 of the 28 points it currently has.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope, no sock puppets, and I definitely didn't mean for this to be as depressing as a "suicide note". I was mostly curious to what extent older members feel the way I do, and at what point they, too, would consider leaving. Not that I'm trying to start a trend or anything, nothing like that, I'm just curious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I can understand your decision, but I think "leaving" news.yc might be a bit drastic.

I've been reading hacker news for months now and I personally haven't noticed a dramatic drop off in the quality of posts. The signal to noise ratio has gone up and there are a lot more "meta" posts recenty - posts to news.yc about news.yc.

Despite these things, I still find quality information on a consistent basis. HN is pretty timely...I'm as likely to read something first here as I am on reddit or digg or any other social news site. The posts tend to be more start up oriented and many of the technical posts are of a better quality than I'd find anywhere else. Despite the noise, there is still a lot of legitimate value on news.yc

I'm not trying to ask the question "well if you don't like hacker news, what site is better?". That would only start an argument based on preference. Instead I'm asking "Isn't some startup focused social news, even with a high signal to noise ratio, better than none at all?". It's possible that at some point, there will be so many worthless posts that sifting through them will be more trouble than it's worth. But at this point, it seems to me that there are still interesting posts and insightful comments everyday on news.yc and it's still a ways away from not being a valuable daily read.

</comment><comment><USER20> _> I think it's time for me to go._

No offense dude, but this made me think of ESR.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm curious, what will you do in place of the time spent on ycnews?

<comment><AUTHOR> That is a great question. I just might start my first real blog and make the first post be something along these lines, not just in regards to Hacker News, but other time-consuming activities as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The problem may be that the growth of users and, it follows, submissions is independent from the growth of HN-worthy postings. That is, there isn't enough good content for everyone to make good contributions.

As more "poor" submissions are made, the "mediocre" submissions begin to look better and the community standards are lowered.

</comment><comment><USER23> Although there's been a influx of new users, I would conjecture that there are still more veteran users than novices.

If this conjecture is the case, then the solution for the "problem" on HN would be for the veteran users to vote more aggressively on the "good" submissions. After you've been vectored off to an interesting Web page via a submission, don't forget to come back to HN and vote it up.

Veteran users can use their frustration with front page stories, and turn it into determination to find better stories. This way, everybody wins :o).

</comment><comment><USER24> Keep it real.

btw, your profile says to email you, but the email field in the profile is only visibile to admins. You have to list it again in your about me if you want it to be visible to the public.

<comment><AUTHOR> Added. I didn't realize that e-mail was only visible to admins, although I supposed I should have guessed that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The biggest problem that I have noticed most recently has been all the complaining about quality reduction. If there is any reason to leave it seems like posts like this always on the front page. I think the karma system will work things out in the end and all of this just makes the 'problem' worse.

<comment><USER26> > I think the karma system will work things out in the end

Karma systems have an awful track record, from my experience. It is not a solved problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This idea sounds controversial, but I think folding news.YC into a section on reddit (at least in name) would prompt people to post the irrelevant fluff on reddit, and keep news.YC on topic.

I'm sure there are many reasons not to do this, but the idea still has merit, IMO.

</comment><comment><USER28> I can understand this. I've just joined. I'm not sure that I'm benefiting in really reading this feed over digg or slashdot. I'll give it a few days before I determine that.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would still choose this site over the alternatives. Before Startup News, I never visited news aggregating sites (except through Google searches), and it will probably be the same after.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> #f

<comment><USER30> I don't get this comment. explain, anyone?

<comment><USER31> Scheme's "false".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I agree. This isn't dig, this isn't Reddit, nor should it be.

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm also phasing out of HN.

</comment><comment><USER34> Come on. Grow up. Change is good.

<comment><USER35> "Change is good" is one of those things people say but don't actually mean. Not all change is good.

<comment><USER36> But surely diversity is our strength?

<comment><USER37> Ignorance is Strength

<comment><USER37> Why is this downmodded _and_ the parent downmodded? I was making fun of the parent. If the parent is bad, I was right. It should go one way or the other.

<comment><AUTHOR> Making fun does not add value. Hacker News is not about who's right, it's about making a point rationally enough that others can see where you're coming from.

See <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=149052>

<comment><USER37> You just linked me to a thread I wrote half a dozen comments in? Did you read it? :)

Certain types of making fun of things make for valid comments. In this case, I was pointing out the striking similarity between what he said, and 1984.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that, I somehow missed the reference. As for the comment thread, I did read it a few days ago, but I don't typically go back and re-read comment threads. Also, I don't tend to recognize names until I've seen them a lot. I was making the (apparently wrong) assumption that as a relatively new user, you weren't familiar with Hacker News karma-assignment trends.

I had already voted all three of the posts up, anyways, because I felt the highly-negative karma was a bit unfair.

<comment><USER37> People missing the reference was kind of my guess, but I wasn't sure. Thanks.

And, yeah, I knew that asking why the downmodding would be downmodded. It's ok. It was worth it.

And I expected you had read the comment thread and just didn't remember my name, but it was still funny ;p

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Scholars have known for ages that the best way to get the riff-raff to leave you alone is to make what you're doing seem extremely boring. :)

</comment><comment><USER39> "be submissions discussing how to combat Hacker News deteriorating into just- another-news-site"

Irony?</comment>


Gamers: TwitchTV wants you to quit your day job - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/video/twitchtv-partner-program/

<comment><USER2> That headline out to be taken out back and shot.</comment>


Caltech Potato Chips (1996) - <AUTHOR> http://www.async.caltech.edu/~mika/potato/potato.html <comment><USER2> Blast from the past! If you think this kind of less traditional circuit design is cool, you should also check out some of the more recent stuff in low-power asynchronous architectures:

[http://vlsi.cornell.edu/research.php](http://vlsi.cornell.edu/research.php)

[https://web.stanford.edu/group/brainsinsilicon/neurogrid.htm...](https://web.stanford.edu/group/brainsinsilicon/neurogrid.html)

[http://paulmerolla.com/merolla_main_som.pdf](http://paulmerolla.com/merolla_main_som.pdf)

<comment><USER3> And if you want to get an asynchronous chip you can play around with today, check out the GA144 from Greenarrays. I believe this is currently the only commercially available asynchronous processor. [http://www.greenarraychips.com/home/products/index.html](http://www.greenarraychips.com/home/products/index.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> TI famously brags (and has videos demonstrating) that you can power an MSP430 off a lemon.

<comment><USER5> And the msp430 has two internal clocks/oscillators! (iirc)

<comment><USER6> MSP430 is a cute little bugger! I also liked the TI's MSP430-derivative evaluation platform that was bundled in a... watch[0]. eZ430 Chronos was my first smartwatch, and it's still somewhere in the closet, still running off that same coin battery it had when I first bought it few years ago.

[0] - [http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/EZ430-Chronos](http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/EZ430-Chronos)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In the _Portal 2_ video game where the main character throws the erstwhile antagonist (now uneasy ally) GLaDOS computer "chip" into a potato, is that joke connected to this at all?

<comment><USER8> I was wondering the same thing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> _By comparison, today 's (January 1996) state-of-the art technologies have feature sizes of about 0.25 microns._

And today (November 2015), chips manufactured on 14 nanometer (0.014 micron) processes are shipping in volume.

</comment><comment><USER10> Well, that was certainly an enriching read.

More seriously, we've done this before. Old Usenet thread about asynchronous PDP-10s and PDP-6s:

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.sys.pdp10/wqWlZQ...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.sys.pdp10/wqWlZQ6m9Ew)

</comment><comment><USER11> So the processor computation rate increases/decreases as voltage does? This could have interesting applications, such as a treadmill that allows you to compute (run games? watch videos?) more the faster you run, or a phone that gradually decreases the power supply to its processor to conserve power as its battery loses charge.

<comment><USER12> No, but higher voltage allows for lower gate propogation delay.

<comment><USER11> I'm afraid that I don't understand the difference...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Do not confuse with Potato Semiconductors, which make famous high-speed chips: [http://www.potatosemi.com/](http://www.potatosemi.com/)

Sadly, I've never had the chance to try these Potato chips.

</comment><comment><USER14> More at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10612349](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10612349).

</comment><comment><USER15> "that's two potatoes in series" \- rarely one comes across such a combination of words. I'm still laughing.

</comment><comment><USER16> Funny, I still have all that exact test equipment shown in the photos, with the exception of the meter in the upper right.

</comment><comment><USER17> "Sorry for the long post, here's a potato." That must be one of the earliest examples of that meme!</comment>


Hammurabi: Classic game of strategy and resource allocation - <AUTHOR> http://www.hammurabigame.com <comment><USER2> It seems like if you sell off a little land in the first few years to plant as much land as possible, you'll keep having enough wheat everything going. Within a few years you'll be able to buy that back and then some.

And then you have a plague.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't get why people criticise the game here. If I understand correctly it's not really a remake but a copy of an old game which was simply made available to us with all it's flaws, bugs and other happy memories.

<comment><USER4> Hammurabi has been my go-to project to recreate in many of the languages I learn since the 80s. It's just complex enough that you can usefuly experiment with various features of a new language.

IMHO it's a case where the bugs are a feature. It's simple to implement but there are numerous small ways you can tweak it to make improvements. That make it a fantastic project for learning to program because completing the initial clone version is really just the starting point.

<comment><USER3> I think that's a really smart way to improve your coding. Recoding an old game is nothing too hard but offers enough challenges that you really need to use the features of the language you are learning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Seems to depend a lot on RNG. If you get lucky with a good harvest and a plague in first couple years, it's smooth sailing to the end.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I got two plagues and was able to do extraordinarily well. Not sure my subjects would entirely agree thought because, you know, plagues.

<comment><USER7> Same here, two plagues and end up with a quarter the population I had earlier, and yet apparently that's really good:

Hammurabi: I beg to report to you, In Year 11, 0 people starved, 3 people came to the city. The city population is now 64 The city now owns 797 acres. You harvested 4 bushels per acre. Rats ate 494 bushels.

In your 10-year term of office, 0 percent of the population starved per year on average, .i.e., a total of 0 people died!! You started with 10 acres per person and ended with 12.453125 acres per person

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> People loved me when I let 2.5% die of starvation but ended up with almost 11 acres per person, and hated me when I kept every single person fed but ended up with 8 acres per person.

<comment><USER4> The graveyard isn't a constituency with many votes.

<comment><USER9> It was for LBJ.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I remember we had to play this game in high school, back in 1983. I had a political science teacher who thought this was a very clever game. He was fascinated with the primitive simulations that were available then. There was another one where we had to manage a restaurant, buying ingredients and selling meals. I did very well with that one. Funny how everything became a lot more sophisticated within 10 years. 1983 was still the era of personal computers that had 16 to 32 k.

<comment><USER11> Reminds me of the Lemonade stand BASIC game on Apple ][. It was trivial to beat once I found out you could allocate negative funds to advertising and your account would end up credited. Then the stand just became a front operation laundering money through the print shop.

<comment><USER3> Although exploiting such kind of bugs is often reason to lose the fun in the game I really love the idea of having a lemonade stand for money laundering reasons because in the garage behind your stand you print money instead of ad flyers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I really don't see how it can be seen as a favorable outcome (A fantastic performance!!! Charlemagne, Disraeli and Jefferson combined could not have done better!) when over a 10 year period, my population has dropped 62% and the state has sold off 16% of its land just to feed its people. Obviously that's not sustainable.

</comment><comment><USER13> Yep, I first heard about Hammurabi in the book _Basic Computer Games_. Per the wiki, it was the first computer book to sell a million copies.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC_Computer_Games](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC_Computer_Games)

</comment><comment><USER14> This game seems horribly buggy. It deducts bushels even when your move is rejected ("Thank again!".) Currently I have -2 bushels, but I don't think the concept of credit was intended to come into play.

<comment><AUTHOR> I normally try to kill everyone off and sell everything off anyway but I haven't noticed the bug you're experiencing.

<comment><USER14> It disallows the move, but still deducts the resources. I don't have access to a real computer at the moment, but I imagine the bug would be easy to identify in the JavaScript.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The randomization is VERY sever in this. On 5 new games, always doing 2000 food and 800 seeds, i get a Year 2 bushel total of: 748, 800, 1650, 2800, 4000.

That is a 536% swing in return for [seemingly] identical starting conditions.

</comment><comment><USER16> I translated to Scheme at my blog: [http://programmingpraxis.com/2010/07/27/hamurabi- bas/](http://programmingpraxis.com/2010/07/27/hamurabi-bas/).

</comment><comment><USER17> I guess you do well if all your people die from the plague on year 10.

</comment><comment><USER18> I would like a game like this, except that you play a central bank.

</comment><comment><USER19> So, it now 404s which is a shame. I love these games. Does anyone know of a collection anywhere? Ideally, something I can download?

<comment><USER20> A playable version at archive.org [1]. And the Wikipedia page [2] has links to source listings. Apparently there was a Dylan port, but that 404s for me as well. And code listing for a BASIC version of it [3].

[1] [https://archive.org/details/msdos_Hamurabi_1996](https://archive.org/details/msdos_Hamurabi_1996)

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamurabi](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamurabi)

[3] [http://www.dunnington.u-net.com/public/basicgames/HMRABI](http://www.dunnington.u-net.com/public/basicgames/HMRABI)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The best approach is to go all in buying and selling land when the prices change. Ended with more population and more land per person.

</comment><comment><USER22> It's discrete time stochastic dynamic programming problem.

</comment><comment><USER23> I played this on a Tiki 100 back in the early nineties :)

</comment><comment><USER24> Would be cool if you could play longer than 10 years!

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.apollowebworks.com/russell/samples/hamurabi.html](http://www.apollowebworks.com/russell/samples/hamurabi.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> aaand the server is down

</comment><comment><USER26> Minor typo: it currently says: "Hammurabi: Thank again." on invalid inputs instead of "Hammurabi: Think again."</comment>


Show HN: Vanilla – A simple way to share any event. We're covering Google I/O - <AUTHOR> https://vaniila.com/sng/7PRAyL <comment><AUTHOR> We are three dedicated individuals who are devoted to simplifying technology and sharing information with the world. So we thought we would share with you our latest project.

We started this project because not everyone has the time to watch a live video stream or even attend the live event. So we decided to solve the problem by making a simple, interactive way to get started with our first MVP. We called it Vaniila Moments. Moments are snapshots of time expressed in your words and vivid photos. Imagine being able to share all your moments from last night's party, this week's tech conference, or next month's political debate. People can then check out all the stories you've created and easily browse back and forth through your timestamped moments. Your stories will not get lost in a giant feed of posts. Instead, they stay as stories should-organized and kept-in-place.

The first prototype is still buggy, and missing a lot of features. We thought sharing early prototypes with online communities provided a lot of feedback and encouragement. If anyone has any questions about the product, I'd be happy to answer them or send us an email (at) firstname.lastname@example.com.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> We will be back live for the Google Developer Keynote, so come check out the key highlights and while you're at it come chat with us. [https://vaniila.com/sng/BpE7yN](https://vaniila.com/sng/BpE7yN)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone, we just finished covering Google 2017 Keynote. You can still take a look at our highlighted moments. Feel free to ask us anything here.</comment>


Google +1 Button Performance Review - <AUTHOR> http://www.aaronpeters.nl/blog/google-plus1-button-performance-review

<comment><USER2> In short, and as a rule with all scripts, load scripts asynchronously / non- blocking when possible, including Google +1.

        <script>
        (function(d, t, g, s){
        g = d.createElement(t),
        s = d.getElementsByTagName(t)[0];
        g.async = true;
        g.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js';
        s.parentNode.insertBefore(g, s);
        })(document, 'script');
        </script>

Load it as far up your page as possible, as to benefit from the parallelism early on and not hanging it off the end of or extending your page load.

<comment><USER3> I suppose these are JS performance tricks?

\- Define g and s as parameter even though they're only given a value inside the function

\- Pass document into the function instead of using it from global scope

\- Insert a script tag in front of the other script tags on-the-fly using insertBefore, instead of simply doing <script async src="...">...</script>

Pretty interesting. Care to explain a bit?

<comment><USER4> From the comments:

"As for your question, we pass in `document` that way to prevent unnecessary scope lookups. We could've used `var d = document` inside the IIFE, but that would trigger an additional scope lookup. For `'script'` it doesn't matter; you could initialize that inside of the IIFE if you want."

<comment><USER5> It's premature optimization. The extra time taken for a scope lookup is completely insignificant compared to the network costs in loading the script.

Perhaps if this was inside a tight inner loop, I could understand, but here it's completely unneccessary.

<comment><USER2> Is it premature or unnecessary, if the methodology comes natural? Why not get into the habit of reading and writing Javascript with optimization naturally ingrained into the first pass? The optimization(s) may not be immediately necessary here, but there's no harm in practicing these patterns in all facets of language use, unless we want to have a separate conversation whether the patterns are detrimental to syntax.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Someone at Google should get a slap upside the head for not getting this spot on.

Google is evangelising performance on one hand and making careless errors on the other...

<comment><USER7> Yeah, how dare they say the lowest-performing option first in an in-passing comment! What if the user knows nothing about performance and stops there! Their page will load 8 milliseconds less quickly! Amateur hour!11!

(</sarcasm>)

<comment><USER6> From a brief reading, it's potentially worse than an 8ms slow-down if you take all the issues into account. Have I misinterpreted?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The ironic thing about Google's +1, which is meant to get you more clicks on SERPs (as you'll see your friends +1's [1]), is that as Google now use site speed in their ranking algorithm [2]. adding the +1 button to your site would actually make it rank lower.

There's another performance review of +1 here [3], which compares it to the Facebook Like button. Steve Souders (who's written books on web performance) has detailed and compared a few other 3rd party JavaScript buttons and widgets here [4].

[1] [http://adage.com/article/digital/google-adds-button-foray- so...](http://adage.com/article/digital/google-adds-button-foray-social- search/149645/)

[2] [http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/04/using- sit...](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/04/using-site-speed- in-web-search-ranking.html)

[3] [http://www.artzstudio.com/2011/06/googles-button-is-slow- and...](http://www.artzstudio.com/2011/06/googles-button-is-slow-and-so-is- facebooks/)

[4] <http://stevesouders.com/p3pc/>

<comment><USER9> I firmly believe the crawler won't download the plusone library for a few reasons.

\- It may not run javascript at all.

\- It doesn't need to be checked for malicious content.

\- If all else fails, it might have it cached already.

Even if external assets are computed into a site's speed, the overhead is negligible when it comes to search ranking.

<comment><USER8> Google Instant's previews show the +1 button, so I see no reason why Googlebot wouldn't too. I guess Google wait until window.onload fires instead of just timing the server sending the 1 HTML file. Google could also use data from Google Toolbar users but I doubt they do.

As the article says, even with a primed cache, the +1 code slows down page load. It also said the overhead can be 2 seconds. If you're aiming for fast then that could double your page load time. External assets are _very_ likely to be calculated into a sites speed as they generally take up quite a bit of the page load time.

Of course, no one knows how much of an effect page speed plays in Google's algorithms. My bet, however, is that adding +1 to a fast site could easily make it drop a few places in the SERPs. If your site is already quite slow then an extra 2 seconds may only be a few % slower.

<comment><USER9> You're assuming search ranking is primarily based on speed. It might weight the ranking, but relevancy must be still dominant.

I mean, come on. Sites with maps, ads, or even big images can take up more than two seconds. It's not a big deal. Your analytics tracking code slows everything even more.

And it's the same network, the crawler might just go to the next server room.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Another problem is you can't directly access the div after the iframe is loaded if you want to apply styles to it. I had to use Javascript and look for when the div is loaded and then position it.

</comment><comment><USER11> I always see suggestions to put script tags just before </body>, or the inline script that generates a new <script> node. Why does nobody ever suggest using the defer attribute? My understanding is that the defer attribute will do precisely what you want - start loading the script now, but not blocking anything else on the page.

</comment><comment><USER12> If the latency cost of multiple requests is so significant couldn't google just lump everything into one (base64 encode the image)?

<comment><USER13> IE7 doesn't support base64-encoded images, and IE8's support is limited.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Google has added the +1 option to all their search requests / results, I'm sure if the performance was such an issue they would of found a way to fix it as it would degrade their page load times, granted I'm sure it's not the same 'exact' code.

<comment><USER15> The +1 widget on the search results page and other 1st party pages is different than the +1 widget for 3rd party publishers. 3rd parties have to use an iframed widget to prevent click fraud.

<comment><USER8> Does it prevent click fraud? I wonder if you could place +1 inside a div with style="opacity:0" and position it on top of a link saying "Free cheese" or similar.

Edit: you can. This example [1] has opacity:0.3 so you can still see it. It seems as though it would be trivial for an attacker to put the +1 button over every link on a page. You may even be able to have one tracking the mouse cursor.

[1] <http://jsfiddle.net/prJG8/1/></comment></comment></comment>


Linux kernel memory management, part 1 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/0xAX/linux-insides/blob/master/mm/linux-mm-1.md

<comment><USER2> They haven't gotten to the good part yet. Linux uses all available free memory for disk caching. Pages which are read cache can be freed when memory is needed. The problem is that there are cases when something needs memory, and the cache space can't be freed due to some transient locking situation. This results in a kernel panic.

This has never really been fixed, just mitigated by trying to keep enough memory free that the kernel doesn't get itself into that corner case.

<comment><USER3> I've not heard of this and searching doesn't seem to throw up anything relevant. Do you have more details? Maybe a link to the LKML discussion?</comment></comment>


Google vs. Bing: Correlation Analysis of Ranking Elements - <AUTHOR> http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-vs-bing-correlation-analysis-of-ranking-elements <comment><USER2> My theory about alt text showing as correlated to higher ranking is that it's a result of people optimizing their pages. SEOs have been saying to add alt text for a while, and it's easy to do compared to changing URLs or a domain name. It's hard to prove whether it's a cause or an effect, but my gut feeling is it's an effect.

</comment><comment><USER3> Lots of data there, I wish I were smart or educated enough to know what it means. Totally unscientific of course, but I've not found Bing to be as good for me. Then again, maybe I'm just more familiar with Google or they have subtly influenced what I think I need to what they already provide.

</comment><comment> doc-film offline

<comment><USER2> works for me</comment></comment>


Show HN: UserTesters.io - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I think your doing it backwards. The offer should be flipped. The service home should be geared to companies that want testers. Users who want to be testers will also be able to see the link to become one and earn money. Also, consider re-submitting this because the link needs to be copied/pasted.

<comment><USER3> I am actually working on a similar product, [https://testzap.com](https://testzap.com) Not launched on HN as of now .. will do that in couple if days. We already got around 500 testers will start looking for companies now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How do both options here differ from the numerous options out there today? (One Google hit gives a long list)

I remember my company used a service, forgot the name, where you could also specify which type of users you wanted to test. How many of each, what devices, etc.</comment>