Facebook the Devourer - <AUTHOR> http://awardwinningfjords.com/2012/10/04/facebook-the-devourer.html <comment><USER2> I have 340 Facebook friends (I feel like this is on the middle-lower end of typical). I scrolled down several "pages" on my timeline and saw zero evidence of any those people --- who are predominantly friends and family, or people I went to high school with --- were playing anything like Farmville. Most updates on my timeline are people sharing pictures of the city they're visiting, or of their kids.

All of these people could, instead of sharing details of their lives with their friends, instead be spending time on 4chan anonymously grinding out memes. I gather from this post that I am supposed to feel bad about that.

Meanwhile: in a major city in the US, in a market dominated by the likes of McDonalds and Walmart, your odds of successfully starting a small business that depends on a retail channel are significantly worse than 50/50. Most people don't get a shot at starting any kind of business like that, and only a vanishingly small few get multiple bites at that apple. Yet I can use Facebook today to find out about meat specials at my butcher, or someone selling artisanal pickles, or a new theater company, or someone making custom knives as their hobby hoping to try to make a living doing it. And because of the stupid blue "like" button this article rails against, these hopeful businesses can do that without paying for pointless terribly-performing ads in major newspapers or on radio stations, and can have actual conversations with their customers. And again, I gather from this post that I am supposed to feel like this is a bad thing.

So I guess I'm saying: I'm not getting the author's point.

<comment><USER3> I'm guessing you long ago hid messages from Farmville and similar games and forgot about it. There's no way you know 340 people who don't play Facebook games.

 _Yet I can use Facebook today to find out about meat specials at my butcher, or someone selling artisanal pickles, or a new theater company, or someone making custom knives as their hobby hoping to try to make a living doing it. And because of the stupid blue "like" button this article rails against, these hopeful businesses can do that without paying for pointless terribly- performing ads in major newspapers or on radio stations, and can have actual conversations with their customers._

I used to "like" local businesses. But... every day I get ads in my news stream reminding me that my friends "like" Wal-Mart. And Amazon.com. Mostly Amazon.com, actually. Sometimes I think that if I just clicked "like" I'd get fewer ads _from_ Amazon than I currently get _for_ Amazon. Because on Facebook, even the ads have ads.

Now I hesitate to "like" anything because I feel complicit in helping Facebook spam my friends. I think it's cool when a single item goes into my friends' feeds saying that I "like" a local restaurant, but I DON'T want them to see recurring ads in their news feed with my name attached. I have one friend who posts very infrequently, and she is apparently one of the only Facebook friends I have who has "liked" Wal-Mart, so most of her appearances in my feed are promotions for Wal-Mart. If I only knew her from my feed, I'd know her as that girl who shills for Wal-Mart.

I admit it's irrational to avoid the "like" button when it comes to local businesses, because I've never seen Facebook promote a cool local business to me; it's too busy telling me about this awesome new thing called Wal-Mart that I might not have heard of. When I "like" the coffee shop down the street, I suppose Facebook applies powerful machine-learning algorithms to that information to determine that they should lace my friends' news feeds with slightly more ads for Amazon.com and slightly fewer ads for Wal-Mart. No real harm done, then, since my name won't be used, but it isn't something I'm thrilled to be part of.

<comment><USER2> How does it harm small businesses when people "like" Walmart on Facebook? You can't buy artisanal marshmallows at Walmart, and it's no cheaper for Walmart to collect "likes" on Facebook than it is for Hipster Marshmallow Factory.

I just don't see the controversy here.

<comment><USER4> it ruins your hipster cred.

<comment><USER5> Not if you "like" ironically.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _It devours everything it touches and produces nothing of value, including—ironically—their stock price._

It produces something of value to _me_. I live in CA, my parents live in NY. We're in different worlds. I can't possibly communicate what my world is like to them via a daily phone call. But I can share bits and pieces of info on Facebook that they see, and it's a wonderful medium for us to have shared experiences for things that otherwise would be extremely difficult to share.

It's a new mode of communication. Without it, I'd be alienated from my friends and family across the continent and in a few years we would have easily grown completely apart. With it, when I go back to visit, it's as if I never left. I can _actually_ exchange pictures with my grandparents, and they can _actually_ be a part of my life every day. Facebook _seriously_ impacts the direction of my life, with respect to family and friends.

One billion people realized this, consciously or unconsciously, and made Facebook a multibillion dollar company. At this point saying Facebook produces nothing of value is as delusional as saying that about Microsoft, or Apple, or Proctor and Gamble.

<comment><USER7> >it's a wonderful medium for us to have shared experiences for things that otherwise would be extremely difficult to share.

His rant doesn't touch this because that is the perceived value to individuals that facebook provides. Cannot really argue against that and I am glad people are able to use it like this. However, there is something in this "value" that bothers me and why I do not use facebook. From the facebook ad link at the beginning of his post:

"We make the tools and services that allow people to feel human, get together, open up. Even if it's a small gesture, or a grand notion -- we wanted to express that huge range of connectivity and how we interact with each other,"

The ad does not show that. It shows people doing things together. It shows real people interacting in a physical world. It shows physical, tangible, things. Not pictures of things, or short quips and a link to an article or an emoticon. The feeling the ad tries to carry across to the viewer is the exact reason that facebook is a terrible medium to "connect" in the human sense. Lets compare it to Apple's FaceTime ad (<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yatSAEqNL7k>). Not only is the product in almost every scene, but the ad shows exactly how it directly integrates and impacts peoples lives. The last scene with the sign language drives home the technology empowering humans to connect in an almost surreal new way. Another example is the Kodak Carousel scene from Mad Men (<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suRDUFpsHus>). How facebook goes from their Timeline ad (<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzPEPfJHfKU>) to "Chairs are like Facebook" is incredible to me. The commonality in all of these is capturing intiment moments between individuals. That is where the value proposition falls down with facebook. There is no sense of intimacy in the communication channel. A photo of your mom and dad probably has a different value to you than to your other facebook friends. It has very little to do with the photo itself as the photo has no intrinsic value either. It is the memories and emotions tied to it. That is the extent of it. Your mom doesn't need you to like the photo. Your friends don't need to see your comment saying your dad looks like a dork in that sweater. I argue that the passive nature and resulting noise to signal ratio makes facebook insufficient to build real human connections. For these things, not sure how facebook is better than email... it is no where close to live voice or video chat. Having a billion people on it means nothing when you only really want to communicate with 50 of them on a regular basis and only 1-4 of them at a time. Everything else on facebook is just self absorption and ego.

But I digress. His rant is really about how facebook is trying to make everything a part of its ecosystem. I can barely get older generations on email or MMS messaging let alone facebook. Trying to include facebook in every website serves no one but facebook and to what end? It definitely isn't user experience. Facebook is going the way of AOL as a ubiquitous term describing what the internet is and that is a scary thought.

<comment><USER8> Exactly. And this I hadn't seen:

 _We make the tools and services that allow people to feel human_

We need tools and services to feel human? I know it's marketing speak but geez.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > _Facebook ... produces nothing of value_

> _If Facebook disappeared tomorrow, nobody would give a shit._

There are plenty of people who would give a shit. You may not be one of them, but there are countless people who rely on Facebook to communicate with family members on the other side of the globe, or share their private pictures and memories with their loved ones, or just to keep in touch with friends who no longer live nearby. If that's not one of the best definitions of _value_ , by touching people's lives where it matters to them the most, then I don't know what is.

You may not use Facebook for any of those things, and that's fine, but when a _billion_ people log into Facebook every month to communicate with their friends and family, you can't possibly think that your usage is indicative of everyone else.

Facebook doesn't need to produce new knowledge or culture to provide tangible, long-term value.

<http://www.facebookstories.com/>

<comment><USER10> > there are countless people who rely on Facebook to communicate

They can try e-mail, IM, SMS, picking up the telephone, smoke signals. Let's stop pretending Facebook is so ingrained in people's lives that they cannot live without it. We're talking about a website that's merely a time waster.

> a billion people log into Facebook every month

I'd bet that number is way off once you account for spam profiles and how Facebook defines 'active' [1]

Edit: to satisfy ghost downvoters (HN, go figure) here is previous discussion on the billion users

1\. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4611734>

<comment><USER11> None of those are good for passive communication. No one said they "can't live without it." But it certainly adds value to a lot of people's lives.

<comment><USER10> Disagree. I feel e-mail can serve the same purpose but then some would argue the usefulness or value in 'passive' communication.

<comment><USER12> I feel like this has been hashed out a million times on HN. Yes, e-mail works. I could e-mail a photo album to people. But what if they want to comment on it? Either everyone gets spammed with hundreds of e-mails, or there's no group conversation. Add to that, being tagged in other people's albums. Facebook provides value to people. Not all people, but that's the way the world works.

And of course there is a value in passive communication. I want to see the photos my friend posted of his holiday. I don't want to have to look at them right now, though- I'm busy. So I'll look later. Ta-da: passive communication.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The thing I find myself hating about all of these anti-Facebook rants is that they all seem to operate under the assumption that Facebook has "subsumed" all of this functionality from the internet at large, which seems spectacularly false.

The number of people who "switched" from doing all of these things (blogging, IM, photo-posting, online gaming) on other sites to using Facebook for them is a tiny tiny minority compared to the number of people who never did any of them before.

It assumes that if Facebook went away, that all of these people would just go "back" to using Blogger, or Flickr, or AIM, or Armor Games, and the internet at large would be a better place.

I don't think that's even remotely true. Nerds can happily continue to use those services, and regular people will keep using Facebook.

Sure, someday there'll be a "new Facebook", and then people can complain about that walled garden.

People whining about Facebook feels very much like people whining about American Idol (or stupefying-ly popular CBS sitcoms). Like if 2.5 Men was suddenly cancelled, people would all start watching Mythbusters or assembling Arduinos.

Providing "free" online services to a billion people seems like a giant win for society.

<comment><USER14> > Sure, someday there'll be a "new Facebook", and then people can complain > about that walled garden.

I'm of the opinion that Facebook isn't going to get trumped by anything but an NGO. :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Nitpicking, but missing disclosure:

OP works for a company named Instrument that does work on several things for Google. Google is a competitor to Facebook.

       My name is Thomas Reynolds. I'm a Technical Lead at Instrument, lucky denizen of Portland, active Crossfitter, a foodie, a cocktail enthusiast and all-around nerd.

       http://weareinstrument.com/work/

       In late 2011, Google came to Instrument and tasked us with designing an online product experience for the global launch of Google's first phone with Android 4.0, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus.

       Partnering with Google, we crafted a new identity for their "Developers" brand to educate and inspire those who embrace their open-source platforms.

       To welcome the arrival of one of the biggest days in sports, we created "Game Day", in partnership with Google, to speak directly with football fans around the world about the many helpful features of Google Search.

<comment><USER16> How does Google and Facebook compete directly? Also, why does working for a creative agency that does occasional work for Google merit disclosure?

<comment><USER17> Err.. you are aware of Google+ yes?

<comment><USER16> I feel that's a bit like saying a heavyweight boxer and a lightweight boxer are competitors

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > Remember Facebook?

This delusion that Facebook is somehow dramatically more replaceable than Google or Amazon is kinda amusing. There are plenty of other places to buy online and plenty of other places to search. I can't imagine the mental contortions that are required to hold both of these beliefs at once: "Facebook is replaceable," and, "Google is irreplaceable." They are both replaceable, but it would be tough in both cases.

<comment><USER19> Google has a search algorithm that outperforms any other. Their value proposition is that they can help you find what you are looking for better than their competitors can. Amazon has a vast network of suppliers and infrastructure. Their value proposition is that they can provide better selection and delivery than their competition. In both cases, the value is provided by the company.

Facebook is a website that lets you share text and images with your friends. Their only value proposition is that they have a lot of customers: the value of facebook is not provided by facebook. What makes them valuable is simply inertia, and if they lose that inertia they are dead. They have no technical advantage to the competition.

<comment><USER20> Google has almost no lock-in at all for their main economic engine, search.

If a notably better competitor comes along tomorrow, within a year the whole money empire could crumble. People would just go to the new place, one at a time.

Facebook has TREMENDOUS lock-in. For any new place to have value, it's got to have the majority of the people Facebook has change over in a very short timeframe.

The problem with technical advantage is that when it's gone, it's gone.

<comment><USER21> I want to argue that the lock-in for Google is pretty huge.

Consider this web ad from three days ago from Microsoft:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNWuOJXP-R4>

It makes the claim that in blind tests people choose Bing to Google nearly 2:1. Which is a pretty bold and substantial claim. Question: Do you believe that? Does this new info make you want to try it and set bing even one week as your default search engine? Do you even care? (Notice also that I linked to the bing account on Youtube, a subsidiary of Google, and the chances are high that you are either browsing with Chrome or use Safari/Firefox which use Google as default search.)

<comment><USER22> I was working at Google when this Bing campaign went live. People didn't believe this, so they spent some money on Mechanial Turk, so that people do the "Bing challenge" and report results. I recommend doing that, if you have some disposable money.

I'd say, though, that the ads network is the bigger lock-in for Google, because it's vastly superior than alternativea.

<comment><USER21> Uh, nice. What was the result of the Turk people?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I don't see what's bad about Facebook. 99 percent of the content is gossip, siloed, tucked neatly in a corner of the Internet, covered with ads. Would you rather have any idiot's rants and raves about their boy/girlfriend all over you search engine results? Long live chit chat, but keep it where it belongs.

Incidentally, ill thought features like the timeline or apps like the Washington post that try to turn the site to a news site or a personal mausoleum will fail and be retracted few months later

<comment><USER14> > Incidentally, ill thought features like the timeline or apps like the > Washington post that try to turn the site to a news site or a personal > mausoleum will fail and be retracted few months later

The Washington Post app has been around longer than a few months.

<comment><USER23> yeah usually it takes about 12 months for facebook to overhaul any previous design.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm interested to see how future generations perceive Facebook. For many in the current generation, Facebook became the place to reconnect with people they'd lost touch with since school ... sometimes a few years apart, but sometimes even longer. Today's children will grow up with those connections in-place. They won't need to re-connect because they'll always have been connected, so will it have the same appeal, or be used the same way?

</comment><comment><USER25> I dislike facebook myself and for a lot of the same reasons but this guy is dead wrong that no one would miss it.

If facebook disappeared overnight, it would cause millions of people to come unglued. People are addicted to the connected/sharing nature of facebook and the level of withdrawal would be dangerous.

</comment><comment><USER26> Why on earth does this have upvotes.

1\. Thomas Reynold's post comes across as a pathetic childish rant.

2\. If you don't think connecting with your friends is valuable then don't write a blog post about it, keep it to yourself, because I don't give a shit what you think.

<comment><USER10> Damn straight. They'll have to pry your right to emote, see baby pictures and gain acceptance from peers out of your _cold, dead hands_!

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I reap enormous value from Facebook and frankly feel that the tradeoff is well worth it.

Anytime I see an update in my feed that is either inane, useless, irritating, cloying, etc., I simply update the settings for that user's updates to "Only Show Important". After over a year of cultivating my feed, I am treated to a birds-eye view of the experiences of important people in my life every time I log into Facebook. This is nothing short of miraculous to me.

</comment><comment><USER28> Of course we can replace facebook. If you think about it, we don't really need a "social network" - all these things can be done via e-mail, xmmp and irc (all of which are standard open protocols). Use mail groups instead of "pages" and "communities", set up your mail client to neatly arrange incoming messages in folders and voila. Use xmmp for private conversations. Use irc for group conversations. It's easy.

The thing is, most non-technical users won't be able to do it. Can you imagine your grandma using irc?

The value of facebook and similar social networks is that they unlock the power of internet communication for people who would otherwise be unable to use it.

<comment><USER29> In other words, Facebook provides more usable and discoverable interfaces for the tasks you list. But you omitted a few tasks that are not practical at all using the tools e-mail, XMPP and IRC provide:

Passive broadcasting / timeline: Share a status update with your friends, without putting it in an inbox or otherwise forcing them to actively dismiss it. People read your update if they happen to see it, but are not obligated to.

Events: Invite people to an event and let everyone see a convenient headcount and list of all the Yes/Maybe RSVPs.

Friends of friends: Discover new connections among the people you already know—for example, that Bob and Sally are acquainted even though you've never seen them together.

Photo tagging: Label each person in a group photo in a listable, searchable way. By viewing photos others have tagged, refresh your memory of who someone is.

At current there is no integrated, open protocol that would solve the above use-cases in an even remotely adequate manner, even if everyone on earth used it. We're left with two options. Surrender control to centralized social networks like Facebook, who _have_ solved the above problems, but only within their walled gardens. Or simply go without these benefits and opportunities.

Both choices are unacceptable to me, and long-term, I suspect most hackers will feel the same way. That's why I strongly hope for the Tent protocol, or something like it, to succeed. <https://tent.io/blog/tent-basics>

<comment><USER30> >Passive broadcasting / timeline: Share a status update with your friends, without putting it in an inbox or otherwise forcing them to actively dismiss it. People read your update if they happen to see it, but are not obligated to.

That's what IRC is all about

>Events: Invite people to an event and let everyone see a convenient headcount and list of all the Yes/Maybe RSVPs.

Easy with calendaring

>Friends of friends: Discover new connections among the people you already know—for example, that Bob and Sally are acquainted even though you've never seen them together.

Yes, that's fair. Is that actually useful though?

>Photo tagging: Label each person in a group photo in a listable, searchable way. By viewing photos others have tagged, refresh your memory of who someone is.

Perfectly doable with traditional online photo galleries.

I don't think facebook makes much possible that is impossible without it; the value is all in the integration, as well as the convenient interface you mention.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Facebook, at its core, is about private (hah!) networks of one's friends and families. It was always designed to be insular, to form self-selecting groups. It's a platform that's inward looking. The inability to create and publicize new content with it to the Net at large is a feature, not a bug.

<comment><USER32> That's the thing that's been bugging me for the past year or so. I don't know about other people, but it's clear to me that Facebook's default privacy settings — the way it's nicely set up so that you overshare with the whole world — is NOT how most users would use it.

So why keep it around, Facebook?* From my vantage point, it's kinda evil, and it's anti-user. Why can't you stop being Twitter and just be an awesome private network?

* (rhetorical question)

<comment><USER30> Most users want to be able to share with their friends with zero friction, and put a higher value on this than keeping things private. I really think facebook's defaults are reasonable for the vast majority of their users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is one thing that has always made me skeptical about FBs survival.

The majority of it's use seems to be for very short term things, like friends sharing what they are currently doing.

There is little value in most FB posts that are years old. As opposed to wikipedia which is a gradually building blob of knowledge.

Let's say FB was down for a week, many people would use G+ instead for their social networking needs and how many would come back?

<comment><USER34> For an individual, Facebook's value is in the connections that people have formed on the site. If Facebook was down for a week, there'd be people searching confusedly for the next social platform That Everyone Uses.

Would Plus receive more traffic? Well, yeah. But so would Twitter and other social networks. My mom, for one, would return to sending email jokes instead of resharing Facebook stuff. She doesn't know what Google Plus is. I imagine a large number of other individuals are in the same boat.

Would people return to Facebook after a week? Assuming the connections between users aren't broken, I imagine so. It'd take more than a week to reconnect to that coworker from seven years ago, but who I still enjoy talking politics with about once a month.

So, in other words: Facebook's biggest asset is that it has a crapton of momentum. Keeps its one billion users on the site more and more is going to keep that momentum up. Switching from Facebook to the new thing would be more of a collective hassle than the demise of MySpace. That doesn't mean it won't happen, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Metcalfe's law. This is really pretty valuable though. Not many people are likely to hang around on an empty social network no matter how great the UI. Personally I'm pretty fed up with Facebook, but living abroad it is still quite simply the easiest way for me to stay in touch with a lot of my friends.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I totally agree with this, Facebook solved purely a social problem and this makes them subject to being at an existential risk of no longer being socially relevant ("cool").

Unlike say, Google, who started their massive empire by solving a technical problem; search.

</comment><comment><USER36> Umm. Really? \- the arab spring \- a father sharing his son's first steps with the world \- learning of the death of an old, lost friend \- telling the world you are ok after your hotel has been bombed in Mumbai \- watching your nephew learn to ride a horse. \- learning about steve job's death and feeling the entire world grieve \- discovering a new book to read \- trash talking your friends about just how bad the Montreal Canadians really are

Staying connected to the things that matter. Remembering your life.

<comment><USER37> The thing is that Facebook doesn't connect me to things that matter, it just connects me to lots of things. If my best friend would have been in Mumbai, he would have let me know he was fine through other means. If some acquaintance was in Mumbai, if it weren't for Facebook, I wouldn't even know they were there in the first place. And I don't want to! I mean, I really don't feel the need to know the lives of 400 different people! I don't have the emotional energy to actually empathise with all of them. If my brother has a kid, I'll make sure to visit, but I really couldn't care less about the kids of all these people I met once in a bar.

<comment><USER30> >If my best friend would have been in Mumbai, he would have let me know he was fine through other means.

Maybe your friend's more technical, but for many people the easiest way to send a piece of information to several of their friends/family at once (at least if it includes a picture or something) really is facebook.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> People get bored of looking at the same thing for too long.

The combination of HTTP, Browsers, HTML, etc provides a broad canvas for artists, designers and makers to paint on. Facebook and Twitter are trying hard to take all of these amazing experiences, content and sites and package them up into a wall post or tweet. This is going to get boring for the majority of users and another solution for finding great content will catch our collective interest.

<comment><USER30> I found the greatest advantage of facebook - particularly in contrast to myspace - was that it presented the same set of information consistently. No personalized theme, no background music - everyone's page looks the same, which makes it so much easier to see the content (which is what's important). The rest of the web can look like an explosion in a paint factory by comparison.

If anything I think the greatest counter is the rise of twitter bootstrap, giving lots of content across the rest of the web a minimal, consistent look.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Think at the problem of communities like HN: as more users are arriving the quality of submissions and comments inevitably starts to be impacted.

Now think at Facebook as this exact process on steroids. Facebook is different because almost all the other sites on the internet where there is production of user-generated content is frequented by the elite of the internet users.

Facebook is different, a big percentage of facebook users are not really internet literate, they think the internet is confined into facebook, a few common sites they visit, plus searching with google when needed. They don't have a blog, don't write into forums, don't know reddit, they don't even know _how_ to properly use a search engine.

So the quality of Facebook reflects a lot the average quality of their users, and with 1 billion users this quality is not exactly very high. Sorry, average people may be good at parenting, at helping you, at getting their work done, but the process of content production is something the belongs to an elite. Most people will just share pictures, write non-sensical status messages, and so forth.

</comment><comment><USER40> I'm not sold on this post's content; despite my bias against facebook, it a convenient place to share common photos with friends, invite friends and acquaintances to parties, and it does keep me appraised of acquaintances' life events.

Can't think of anywhere else that would let me know that a guy I played club frisbee with in college recently got married. I never would have found out otherwise. You can argue that I didn't need to know that, but you can't argue that it keeps certain people on your extended network closer.

A lot of his argument is against the silly stuff they made for kids: farmville, frequent status updates, apps, gifts, etc. I can relate. Facebook has continually lost value since the year I joined, 2004, as a college freshman. This does coincide with their opening it to high school students, then the general population, apps, games, etc.

All that aside, what a fantastic URL! Slartibartfast would be proud.

</comment><comment><USER41> If you want to hate on Facebook there should be less focus on Facebook the tool, which is a useful communication service, and more focus on Facebook the company, which is horrible.

Terrible business model, "shadiness", and being part of an ongoing mass of wealth evaporation (Zynga, as we speak) is what bothers me the most about Facebook.

<comment><USER32> That's a good point. I miss the "social utility" days of the service. In that sense it's hugely valuable. (One of the best things about the internet, really.)

It's the push for users to overshare/go frictionless/"Like" the internet etc/viral gaming stuff that makes me uncomfortable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Misleading analysis.

If nothing else, Facebook is obviously entertaining to many people, so this is a bit like arguing that entertainment has no value and we should just work all the time.

Wouldn't work itself be pointless in that case?

</comment><comment><USER43> It is amusing how this title Facebook "the Devourer" reminds one of some dark Hindu deity, such as Kala [Time] the Devourer:

"At the dissolution of things, it is Kāla [Time] Who will devour all" (Mahanirvana-tantra, cited in David Kinsley, Tantric Visions of the Divine Feminine: The Ten Mahavidyas, p. 122.)

Better known is Krishna's theophanic revelation to Arjuna on the sacred plain of Kurukṣetra: "Behold, I am become death, the destroyer of worlds," which is also translated, "I am terrible time [Kalo, from "Kala"] the destroyer of all beings in all worlds" (Bhagavad-Gita, 11:32). Oppenheimer reportedly quoted this very line immediately after first nuclear detonation in history at Trinity Site, New Mexico in 1945.

Surely Facebook is too trivial to merit such cosmic appellations and apocalyptic titles as "the Devourer." Such language is best left to poets, seers, prophets, and mystics. In the context of discussing the technology industry, it is wildly hyperbolic.

</comment><comment><USER44> I agree absolutely and have been trying to delete my Facebook account, but to no avail. How does one delete his Facebook account? If you know, please tell me. I have asked facebook to do it more than once, but they won't even respond to me. The best I have been able to do its deactivate my account, but it gets reactivated frequently and I have to go deactivate it again. Any help out there? Please respond via email firstname.lastname@example.com as I do not frequent this forum enough to see a reply.

</comment><comment><USER45> It's either this or HTTP. I like the current level of abstraction the net has, I wouldn't like seeing it transforming in a closed platform on a single domain. I made radnation.com to be another place to be or thing to do in the internet, what we need is more indie sites like these creating different dynamics of use and features that are unique enough that copying all of them would be hard for a site like Facebook, then letting FB do one thing and stick to it.

</comment><comment><USER46> Facebook (and now DataStax) has given me Apache Cassandra, and for that, I will be eternally grateful. Why did Zuck release it? It's so valuable and disruptive, feels like a "becuz I can" move.

I don't even keep a Facebook account, so to them I must be just about the worst moocher ever. :P

</comment><comment><USER47> Another top comment that makes no sense. Alas, karma does not necessarily correlate with intelligence.

The point of the blog post is clear. There are other methods to do what people, such as middle-aged ones, now use Facebook for: sharing photos and text blurbs.

Knowing this, Facebook is pretty silly since you're posting all your private stuff on some kid's website. You do not know him and he doesn't know you. To him, you are just "Dumb fucks".

Can photos be shared by email? Can photos be shared via peer-to-peer? What is Skype? It's peer-to-peer. But it's not used for sharing "files". Years ago Google had something called the HELLO protocol. Anyone remember that? There are many ways to share personal photos and private text blurbs, not all of them are widely used. Posting your private photos and text blurbs on some kid's website seems like one of the dumbest ways to do it, especially when the kid calls people "[d]umb fucks" for doing so.

<comment><USER30> Ease up on the hate pal.

You know why people share these things by posting them on someone else's website? Because it's orders of magnitude easier than the alternatives. It lets millions of people _do something valuable they otherwise couldn't_ , not because it would be technically impossible for them to do it but because they don't have the skills. That's the value facebook provides.

<comment><USER47> Hate? I'm not the one who called users "Dumb fucks."

If what you say is true (and I believe it is), then the solution is not FB but better skills, i.e. education.

True value would be teaching people the skills they need so they do not have to subject themselves to someone like Zuckerberg and a "company" like FB.

While you may see altenatives as difficult, that is only your opinion. It is not fact. Stop making assumptions about what users can and cannot do. Stop tricking them like FB does. Let's teach them.

Let's deliver real value.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> You my dear chap make a lot of sense. (really) I would like to friend you on Facebook ;-)

</comment><comment><USER49> Just one thing: If they were the best and brightest, they would not have let themselves lured into Facebook :-) Maybe another reason why not much interesting stuff is coming out of Facebook!

</comment><comment><USER50> There are plenty of reasons Facebook sucks, but you didn't hit on any of them. The one thing Facebook does well is allow people to share stuff and produce some value to those who receive it.

</comment><comment><USER51> the dig at the stock price is so ridiculous. i mean, yes it's dropped since the IPO, but it's still valued at over USD 40B. which is a lot.

</comment><comment><USER52> Good rant. I draw the line at booty calls.

<comment><USER53> right, ok, but on what side of line are you standing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> If I were to share this on my Timeline, do you think the author's head would explode?

</comment><comment><USER55> say what you will about the post, but that new FB commercial is an embarassing joke

</comment><comment><USER56> At least someone had the motherfucking balls to write this article. Good for him.

</comment><comment><USER57> Oh look. Another blog post decrying the evils of facebook that is in reality saying "I don't like facebook, therefor it offers no value whatsoever to anyone else," like it's some universal truth.

A lot of hacker/geek types seem 1. to hate facebook and 2. to be unable to empathize with anyone who doesn't share their dogmatic technological beliefs. Can we stop this already? Most people on facebook enjoy using it. Most people on facebook get tons of value from it. Most people on facebook aren't on reddit or hacker news, so they get a lot of new content from things lifted from those sites and posted to facebook. I don't understand why it eats at people so much that other people enjoy something they don't like.

This is just a cynical blog post by someone angry that something he doesn't like is popular.

<comment><USER8> _Can we stop this already?_

No we can't.

Imagine yourself going back to the 80s and explaining the Web to someone. It's as close to utopia as you can get. Most people probably wouldn't believe it. But it's real, it's here and it's amazing.

I'd argue that Facebook undermines a lot of what makes the Web great. And since it's being confused with the Web itself, by being so popular and pervasively devouring, it could be a treat to it.

Us nerds have failed, for whatever reason, to provide a decent competitive way to share stuff that's more aligned with the ethos of the Web. But that's not a reason to excuse Facebook.

But I disagree no one would give a shit if Facebook went away tomorrow. I for one would throw a big fucking party.

<comment><USER58> While I generally agree with you, I think people like us are somewhat to blame for not providing an alternative to FB that is as easy to use. I also blame my friends, relatives and acquaintances that have been so easily seduced, but I'm not sure that's fair.

Thankfully, my parents are too old to have any interest in FB, and my siblings are equally as cynical (aka "weird").

<comment><USER14> > I also blame my friends, relatives and acquaintances that have been so > easily seduced, but I'm not sure that's fair.

It's really not. That's like blaming people for driving cars before autonomous cars came out.

<comment><USER59> It's more like blaming people for eating at Chick-fil-A.

They're supporting a company that is, in our eyes, committing a moral wrong. The difference, in the case of Facebook, is that they aren't necessarily aware of this moral wrong.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Matt's DOM Utils—an HTML DOM library with tangible browser support - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mkmcdonald/Matt-s-DOM-Utils/

<comment><AUTHOR> Though the GitHub repo was posted, I would prefer visitors to go to the project site, which is linked in the repo description.

I wanted GitHub to absorb most of the page hits since I'm only on shared hosting.</comment>


Talk by Founder and CEO of Omniture - <AUTHOR> http://vimeo.com/8080459 <comment><USER2> "A truly rich man is someone whose children runs into their arms even when they're empty"

"My daughter one time said... We were leaving church, like a church party. We were driving home, in the car. And she didn't want to go home. She was like 3 or 4 at the time. I don't want to go to Mommy's house. I don't want go to Mia's house.

OK, we'll go to Daddy's house. OK.

We pulled into our house and she started freaking out crying. Why? She thought my house was the office.

And that's when I realized I needed to start pulling back.

To step it up, be a baller at home"

-Josh James

</comment><comment><USER3> Great video. Josh James is one very busy guy and I heard you should appreciate every minute you can get with him.

Both the Omniture founders are super intelligent and family oriented guys. John Pestana is one of our Investors and Advisors for our startup (<http://www.IActionable.com>). We met him through the BoomStartup program (<http://www.BoomStartup.com>). I've also had the chance to talk to Stephen Liddle (the presenter at the start). He has lots of experience with complex architectures.

I recommend you check out the other videos too - [http://byuebusiness.blogspot.com/search/label/Entrepreneursh...](http://byuebusiness.blogspot.com/search/label/Entrepreneurship)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm 30 minutes into it right now, and wow. I normally don't watch videos, I prefer to read, but there's lots of gold in here. Lots on how to keep up with your family, research new subjects, build and sell companies, increase sales... just really really good.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've always been obsessed with this talk. He's such a good, honest guy. When I first saw it, I wrote up some thoughts here: [http://clayschossow.com/2010/03/great-talk-by- entrepreneur-j...](http://clayschossow.com/2010/03/great-talk-by-entrepreneur- josh-james-founder-of-omniture/)

</comment><comment><USER5> As a new father, the most important thing for me was how Josh demonstrated you can succeed in the startup game and still maintain balance in your family life.

</comment><comment><USER6> Great great video. As a new father and a girlfriend who complains about me working to hard that was inspiring.

</comment><comment> brown9-2 Anyone know if the slides are posted anywhere? I'd like to see the list of books and magazines that he refers to reading towards the 18:00 minute mark

</comment><comment><USER7> This was posted here a few months ago. Since then, he's been one of my favourite businessmen. This talk is gold.</comment>


Anatomy of a DNS Lookup – Part II - <AUTHOR> https://zwischenzugs.com/2018/06/18/anatomy-of-a-linux-dns-lookup-part-ii/ <comment><USER2> If you are curious about the low level details of DNS, you might want to check out an article I wrote about how to build a DNS server from first principles: [https://github.com/EmilHernvall/dnsguide](https://github.com/EmilHernvall/dnsguide)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Part I is here:

[https://zwischenzugs.com/2018/06/08/anatomy-of-a-linux- dns-l...](https://zwischenzugs.com/2018/06/08/anatomy-of-a-linux-dns-lookup- part-i/)

</comment><comment><USER3> _" The --read-environment flag is undocumented, and is there so that systemctl can play nice with it. A lot of people hate systemctl for this kind of thing."_

Is such undocumented behavior an intentional, acknowledged policy of systemd?

Or is this just something that got overlooked and will/should be documented sometime?

<comment><USER4> Its not a part of systemd, its a part of ifupdown that was added to aide Debian's transition from SysV to systemd. Seems unfair to me to count this against systemd; there are other less intrusive ways this could've been done, and "allow reading configuration from env vars" is probably a good thing anyways.

[https://github.com/wido/ifupdown/commit/c29820f370a4905b8366...](https://github.com/wido/ifupdown/commit/c29820f370a4905b836660ee4cf0162cdafdac66)

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here.

It may be unfair, I didn't mean to imply any kind of judgement. 'This kind of thing' was vague, but was intended to get over the fact that systemd is taking over more and more of the OS, and people don't like this. Whether this is good or bad I'm fairly agnostic on. At least it's managed and a standard.

<comment><USER5> I'm not one to flame on systemd but I have to correct you there - it's not a standard, it's a single implementation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One of the first things I do on any ubuntu box is

apt-get purge resolvconf

</comment><comment><USER7> Cool Ian!</comment>


Logic Programming (Prolog, ASP, etc) and GRAKN.AI (a distributed knowledge base) - <AUTHOR> https://blog.grakn.ai/isa-graql-logic-program-8af1258054a4 <comment><USER2> Small nit:

> If the application requires constant knowledge updates, having a database is > much better than revising and reloading a Prolog program.

Most modern Prologs support the ability to assert and retract facts, so you basically get an in-memory DB to run clauses against continuously.

Other than that, really cool stuff! Love to see logic programming applied in new and interesting ways.

<comment><USER3> I'm curious if they should have built on top of JMAP by Fastmail: [https://blog.fastmail.com/2014/12/23/jmap-a-better-way-to- em...](https://blog.fastmail.com/2014/12/23/jmap-a-better-way-to-email/)

It's possible this was far too close to the original email protocol to make sense though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is why we can't have nice things:

"Find all the people who are named 'Titus'"

<pre> In Graql:

match $x isa person, has firstname $y; $y val is "Titus";

In ASP:

match(Person) :- isa(Person, person), has(Person, firstname, "Titus"). #show match/1\. </pre>

Why can't it simply be "FIND people NAME 'Titus' " ?

<comment><USER5> I am neither Byrd nor Friedman but I will try my best.

The short answer is that it doesn't compose very well, especially when doing relational programming.

Let's say that `people` is a record of some sort, and not a relation. That is, when we extract people, we get records of data which we can manipulate, and not a set of functions which let us relate the records to each other. Now, imagine a logical query which has the following steps:

        exists p :Person
        guard p.name == "Titus"
        exists gp :Person ? isGrandParent(gp, p)
        call scan(gp)
        return gp, p

How is this actually going to be executed? Well, you can imagine that first, we'll fetch a Person record, then we'll check if the name is "Titus", and then we'll fetch his grandparents, calling `scan` on each one. (No, I don't know why we would scan grandparents. Here in the USA, we actually let them skip the scanners.) Seems easy, right? What if we make a tiny swap...

        exists p :Person
        exists gp :Person ? isGrandParent(gp, p)
        call scan(gp)
        guard p.name == "Titus"
        return gp, p

Crap, this isn't the same program. We'll scan every grandparent, even ones without grandkids named Titus.

Relational operators are supposed to commute, but these ones don't commute! What happened? Well, accessing a runtime-computed non-relational fact, like the name of a person here, is an impure operation. It doesn't compose.

So! What's the right answer? We have to express the person<->name connection as a relation rather than a record:

        exists p :Person ? personHasName(p, "Titus")
        exists gp :Person ? isGrandParent(gp, p)
        call somePred(gp)
        return gp, p

Byrd's thesis glosses over this point and simply says that we should already have internalized the impurity of `project` or other projection operators.

Edit: I fixed some typos. Also, this paper [0] on my paperstack has Friedman as a co-author and purports to solve this problem in a generic way by adding pure symbolic constraints to miniKanren.

[0] [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1701.00633.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1701.00633.pdf)

<comment><USER6> Great point about compositionality, thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My wife is Indonesian and has only one name, her give name or first name. No surname. How do you address that in the example? A modifier of sorts?

<comment><USER6> Good point. The declaration is just an extra constraint. It specifies what you can insert not what you have to insert. So in your example you can just insert some of the resources.

<comment><USER7> Thanks. I didn't realize it wasn't strict about empty fields. More like a form with lots of fields.</comment></comment></comment>


Why a Small Change in Gender Ratios Has a Large Effect - <AUTHOR> http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/02/revisiting-the-marriage-supermarket.html

<comment><USER2> _relatively small change in the sex ratio (m:w) from 50:50 to say 40:60 should make such a big difference_

That would be a relatively very _large_ change. Of course that would have massive implications for the dating pool. Small would be from 50:50 to 49.99:50.01.

<comment><USER3> The article claims that even a change from 50:50 to 48.7:51.3 (19 men, 20 women) would have a very large effect. But I doubt the marriage market is liquid enough for a change that small to have a large effect because I don't think it would even be noticed. I agree with you that a change to 40:60 is a large change. That's a change you can't help but notice in your dorm and your classes, so that's a change that is likely to affect your behavior.

<comment><USER4> I think the abstract game described by the article implies that one wouldn't directly see the change in the gender ratios, what one would see would a person who had become "desperate" and and began "underbidding". Once one person starts "underbidding", the effect can cascade as other feel pressure to match the "bids".

However, the big question is whether a dating site would be arena where that kind of dynamic would actually play out.

It's worth noting that in the present housing market, there's a also a mis- match between people looking to buy houses and available new houses. However, the banks and Real Estate dealers have managed hold back the flood-gates of desperate offers through various means - so market structure can put a damp on these ratio effects. I've evolutionary psychology theory that talks about the social pressure on women to not "sell themselves short" and this is another effort to control market structure to prevent the effects described in the article - but since Internet dating sites are a purely individual matter, they may be where ratio effects come into play.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I attended a certain technical school in the Northeast at a time when the undergraduate male:female ratio was _at least_ 60:40, and I never noticed the men there making drastic changes in their behavior for the sake of attracting female classmates. I just went without a girlfriend for most of my time there, and the longest-term relationship I did have as an undergraduate was with a woman who was not a student.

</comment><comment><USER6> One problem: humans, even in western societies, aren't strictly monogamous. Men and women both can, and not infrequently do, have more than one partner, even when married.

<comment><USER4> That's not a problem for this argument. Rather, this argument is one explanation - women accept the "male" model of having more sex as men gain more leverage in the relationship "market" through scarcity.

Of course, another explanation is the men and women have sex for "their own pleasure" and "their own reasons". That somewhat begs the question of what those reasons are. But that could OK.

Sorting out social, biological and "personal" motivations is complicated and interesting problem.</comment></comment>


Elaine, a 81 year old woman, doing open source etiquette right - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/zachleat/Raging-Netflix-Queue/issues/13

<comment><USER2> I wish we had more users this motivated.

<comment><AUTHOR> I totally agree! But this also proves that it's not that hard to follow "the rules".</comment></comment>


The Go Oracle: a source code comprehension tool for Go programs - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/golang-nuts/CwdIJZs6Tfc

<comment><AUTHOR> It does have VIM/EMACS integration:

[https://code.google.com/p/go/source/browse/cmd/oracle/oracle...](https://code.google.com/p/go/source/browse/cmd/oracle/oracle.vim?repo=tools)

[https://code.google.com/p/go/source/browse/cmd/oracle/oracle...](https://code.google.com/p/go/source/browse/cmd/oracle/oracle.el?repo=tools)</comment>


Ask HN: How do you get to be really good? - <AUTHOR>

There seems to me to be an endless supply of "how to learn a little" about almost every programming language there is.
But these things have limited usefulness to me. I know how to get really good at certain things. I've had along habit of being very good at things. I did not go to school for comp sci. I studied violin, music theory, philosophy, and statistics.
But how do you get to be really good at software development?
I've studied Python as a language extensively. I feel like I know it extremely well. I know the idioms and patterns. But I don't know what to use them for.
I've read all the normal books. I've read about design patterns. I feel like I've read all the things, but something just isn't clicking.
I just have no real clue about building software. I feel like I have all the tools and no idea what to do with them. Give me a specific task, great! I can do that. Tell me about a feature you want! Great, I can do that.
But I just don't really know how to get to the next level. I don't know how to get to that place where you can say, "Yeah, I want our api to look like this!" I can make the api look like that. But I don't know how to make that decision.
Not sure if this makes any sense. But there have got to be some HN readers that either currently feel the same way, or have in the past and have some thoughts.
So? How do you get to the next level? <comment><USER2> This isn't gospel. This is just my opinion based on observations I've made from working with or against people that are considered "great".

You don't know what you don't know. Someone could say something with shocking clarity, that not only answers a question, but answers it in such a way that you understand a seemingly complex problem right away. The person that answers that question could be perceived as having an expert level of knowledge on said subject, but in reality they might have been in your position mere months ago and just happened to come across the answer. They might only know a fraction more than you do on a subject, but knowing that one thing makes it all fall into place.

Ultimately, it comes down to having the right experience. Someone could design a fantastic API and be lauded as a great architect, but this could be the first success from a long line of failures. The best thing I can suggest, from my own experience, is to decide what you want to learn, and to work towards getting experience in said subject. Reaching "that" level is hard, because the goal-posts always change. As I said at the start, "you don't know what you don't know".

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I really appreciate that perspective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't want to sound rude, but you just need to get a job. All the problems in the world will come to you to be solved, so you get all the chances you like to apply your knowledge and eventually get to be really good.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm a senior developer. Having a job isn't the problem. The problem is how to get better.

<comment><USER3> Hey, I'm not saying getting a job is the problem. I'm saying getting a job is the solution, at least that's what I've figured out during my career.

Maybe I could've simplified and said just practice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Once you've reached an advanced level of knowledge about any given language, my experience is that the best way to get better is to find someone who knows more than you and learn from them. Pair coding works well for this.

If you have a job that exposes you to these people, that's great. This often gets confused with "having a job is the best way to get better," but it won't help you one bit if you're the best at what you do for your company.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I really appreciate this. I had a job where I was pretty much the best at what I was doing (not Python; SQL Server). I really wanted to get better at Python, so I got a job doing Python. My boss has a serious understanding of this stuff, and I'm learning a ton. He's really showing me how much there is to learn.

I guess I'm just impatient to get better faster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> 2 things stand out: \- You use words like reading, studying etc. I think you enter a territory where you can only learn further by doing, and not by reading. \- It sounds to me that you need practice architecting applications. Seeing how many features and logic fit together, what the underlying principles of a system are, and then thinking how things would be different from multiple angles.

Good luck on your path !

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. This seems to be a common sentiment here in this thread.

It seems that the answer is to keep doing what I'm doing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You don't master a subject by reading about it. This is an issue with this new "wikipedia/whatever" generation, they think they know everything because they read about it but truth is, you don't know shit until you actually use something.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think I'm part of a new "wikipedia/whatever" generation. I'm 35, and I'm on my second career after spending 25 years as a professional violinist.

I know that you have to use things to understand them. But on the other hand, you don't just go out and take a chainsaw for a spin without trying to figure out how it works first.

Well, I feel like I know how it works. I just don't know what to do with it. Hmmm, should I cut down a tree? Or should I cut down a house? And what's the real difference?

Are you suggesting that I should just go around willy-nilly and cut things down with my new technology chainsaw? Then I'll know shit about how it works because I've used it?

I'm asking a real question here because it's not one that is easily google- able. Perhaps it's not easy to answer. I feel like there's a dearth of material available that addresses the question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't think I'm quite at the level of knowing the language as you are, but I'm the same way about knowing how to do something if it's assigned to me as opposed to figuring out how to make the decision to make something the next step.

</comment><comment><USER8> The most important parts of getting good is lots of practice and the ability to tell good results from bad ones. All professionals gets roughly equal amounts of practice so there is no use competing on that front. Therefore the only reasonable thing to do is to practice judging things.

You want to get better at designing API's? Then start writing down comprehensive critique for as many API's as you can. List good and bad traits and explain your reasoning. This will build understanding about the parts needed for an API to be good.

When you are done then you should apply your newfound judgement on projects over and over again since good judgement is nothing without practice.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is one of the biggest complaints from my students. We have so many beginner books that show you the basics, for loops, if statements, variables etc..etc.. but don't show you how to create a widget. We need more intermediate books that skip all the basics and just show you how to create things. So whats the solution till then? Start searching through github on a particular language and see how the rockstars do it. If you can read code then you should be able to learn how to create widgets and lookup whatever you don't understand.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think you have to work on something that interests you and develop around it. You will probably easily be able to get something simple running, but then you will have troubles in some small details, that will make you learn new things.

And try to do it all by yourself, so you will be pushed out of your comfort zone faster, and have to deal with things you don't deal with at your work place.</comment>


Ask YC: Does web advertising really work? - <AUTHOR>

The real question is: When was the last time you were inspired to buy something by an ad you saw on google adsense?<p>I can't recall any time that has happened to me. I also have a friend who has spent a couple hundred on google adwords at one point, without really seeing results. With this bit of disappointment in mind, my question is - does advertising on the web work? <comment><USER2> From a retailers point of view, yes, if you do it right i.e. phrase your ad well, go for the niche keywords (cheaper, higher quality leads), have relevant landing pages (ads go direct to the product buy page, not higher level category page).

If you also provide a product people want at a price point they are happy with (and ideally with service they cannot complain about - fast shipping, good dispute resolution policy, etc etc) then once they see your ad/page, they generally buy.

I actually manage about $100K of adwords spending each month for about 25 client sites which do about $2M gross revenue per month and have seen good increases with the campaigns I have managed.

Many of the clients initially managed it themselves but got poor results. My _basic_ tips would be...

[1]. ALWAYS have metrics in place to mesure campaign effectiveness (visitor volumes, keyword search terms, click-through paths, conversion rates). you can use google metrics (urchin) for free but it is worth paying for a decent service from a cheap provider like zstats.

[2]. tailor ads to _specific_ products, not a broad range.

[3]. use the free google adwords analyser to find niche keywords (cheaper, better).

[4]. make sure your site looks the part (professional)

[5]. try and sell your more unusual products first, as these are generally harder to find online, sell more, and best of all raise awareness for you i.e. return custom, and free word of mouth advertising.

Hope this helps.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's a funneling thing - 10000 people see the ad, 100-300 people click through, 2-3 people complete a transaction. A/B testing on ad copy and landing pages can fine tune the process.

Check out AzoogleAds.com, ShoeMoney.com, etc.

</comment><comment><USER4> Obviously it's working. Anyone using PPC seriously is tracking ROI on their keywords and if they weren't getting a profitable return, they wouldn't be buying keywords.

</comment><comment><USER5> Your title is misleading vis-a-vis your "real question." They aren't even in the same ballpark. and it's ridiculous really - it's the fallacy that "Just because I don't click and my friends don't click, then no one clicks."

Here's your question re-phrased:

Ask YC: Does spam really work? The real question is: When was the last time you were inspired to buy something by spam email?

I can't recall any time that has happened to me. I also have a friend who has spent a couple hundred on spam at one point, without really seeing results. With this bit of disappointment in mind, my question is - does spam on the web work?</comment>


New Data Shows Why the WSJ is Wrong About the Startup Cash Crunch - <AUTHOR> http://www.betabeat.com/2011/10/13/why-the-wsj-is-wrong-about-the-startup-cash-crunch/

<comment><USER2> The story conflates the problems with walking dead VCs, many of which were formed during the dot-com bubble, with what is going on in the early stage startup world.

There are more deals and more cash going to Internet startups than ever before. The lower valuations and struggling companies are a natural and healthy end result of the boom in early stage funding for social/local/mobile companies that took place during 2009-2010.

<comment><USER3> Spot on. It's different this time.

Sure, it surprised us all when revenues and earnings turned out to actually matter in 2000, but it's 2011 now, man, and the future's so bright I've got to wear shades! The fact that I can download 14,511 apps that allow you to share photos of your cats is the only indication you need that we're living in the post-earnings era.

Making money is for squares. As long as you can line up that Series P round, the party's still on, man. Rock it, don't block it.

<comment><USER4> "Making money is for squares. As long as you can line up that Series P round, the party's still on, man."

What's sad is I think many entrepreneurs are taking this seriously. They think "starting a company" means raising a ton of money, working on cool projects, and never once thinking about making real money.

It's getting harder and harder to call these projects companies or businesses.

<comment><USER5> What's also sad is that those very entrepreneurs are sometimes right (youtube, skype). It makes it harder to be critical of that strategy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The most important thing to do with any article is to Google the name of the reporter.

Pui Wing Tam's only MO is writing poorly conceived hit pieces on Valley companies and personalities.

Here she is literally going through Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff's garbage: [http://blog.sfgate.com/techchron/2006/11/17/valleywag- takes-...](http://blog.sfgate.com/techchron/2006/11/17/valleywag-takes-aim-at- benioff/)

Here she is beating up on every CEO who's not Zuckerberg or Chad Hurley (title tag: "Struggling CEOs"): <http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119741476977621971.html>

And here she is saying "Venture Capitalists head for the door" -- in 2009, no less!: <http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124416376153487535.html>

The woman is just a hack who writes the same article over and over again.

<comment><USER7> Another tactic is to look at the sources quoted in the article. In the WSJ article yesterday, the primary source was Naval from AngelList -- who has a better view of early stage financing than anyone I can think of.

Unless she distorted or fabricated his quotes, I think there may be something to the story.

<comment><USER8> Naval sees one small slice of a very large market.

Given the bleak macro economic picture, funding has probably fallen on Angel List, where a lot of doctors, lawyers, and non techie investors look for deals.

But the overall picture for early stage funding, as concrete data shows, did not get any grimmer over the last two quarters.</comment></comment></comment>


Noam Chomsky: The world is at the most dangerous moment in human history - <AUTHOR> https://www.newstatesman.com/world/2020/09/noam-chomsky-world-most-dangerous-moment-human-history <comment><USER2> It is curious to have omitted Duterte and Erdogan from the list.</comment>


Summary of the Amazon DynamoDB Service Disruption - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/message/5467D2/ <comment><USER2> "It was impacting a relatively small number of customers, but we should have posted the green-i to the dashboard sooner than we did on Monday."

Amazon. No. Please listen. You should never post a green-i. Green-i means nothing to anyone. It's a minimization of a problem. You should change the indicator to show that there is a problem. If there is a problem, that is what the indicator is for. Customers don't care about whatever weird internal political pressure causes you to want to show as little information as possible on that dashboard. Customers want to know that there is a problem, and we will totally be able to figure out if it is small or large on our own.

<comment><USER3> What's with this all-or-nothing attitude? What is so wrong about different severity levels?

Green-i: Some small percentage of customers are affected, but most of you have nothing to worry about. So if you are a customer having problems and see this notice, you are re-assured that you are not crazy. And if you are NOT seeing problems, you probably won't. Amazon has not always been the best at posting this information quickly enough, hence a commitment to be better at messaging for those customers

Yellow: A significant amount of customers is affected. Potentially serious problems, and if you haven't seen them yet, don't be surprised if you will. Start monitoring your service health and preparing for a failover to another region.

Red: FUBAR. Happens rarely, but when it does you'll probably know even before your application alarms - you'll notice when half the internet shuts down.

<comment><USER2> different severity levels are fine. That's what the indicator is for. Decorating the indicator, normally completely incorrectly, with a tiny _extra_ indicator, is incomprehensible. That's why you've never seen a tiny red light in the upper corner of your green traffic light. Your 'check engine' light is not green with a tiny extra indicator in the corner. The metaphors go on and on.

Customers are totally not interested in the fact that some other random customer may not be experiencing problems and that amazon has a wide variety of services, some of which may not be affected in certain geographies. Customers go to that panel with one express goal: to discover if the problems they are seeing with their servers could be related to them. It is a triage check. The question is not, is Amazon super great and are the availability engineers the bestest on average over time? The question is, what the fuck is going on?

Amazon has suffered catastrophic unavailability, and the green-i has appeared belatedly, an hour or more into the problem. Because as revealed in this post, it is manually put up by engineers. Manually!

Manually!

<comment><USER3> The question of timing of the green-I is valid, but different from your original complaint.

In your hypothetical scenario, the customer that is going to the panel to "find out what the fuck is going on" is not going to miss the indicator i, and will read the description of the message.

<comment><USER4> I don't care what that "i" indicator is; if you're showing green while you're impacted, your status board is useless and I'm going to Twitter and HN to see if you're broken (which is what I already have to do for AWS).

<comment><USER5> When we've seen problems, some of my clients go there and see green and say "Amazon shows they're fine - it must be your code or something you did or didn't do - fix it". Well... it's green but it's not fine. And there's little I can do to demonstrate to someone that it's not code but infrastructure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _We did not have detailed enough monitoring for this dimension (membership size), and didn't have enough capacity allocated to the metadata service to handle these much heavier requests._

As much as I admire and rely on AWS' scale to build architectures and fault tolerant applications, it can't be ignored that the marketing towards going "full cloud" doesn't take into account how hard it is to build resilient architectures in the cloud.

I see those disruptions events as stop signs: when the cloud itself fails to scale, I rethink a few decisions we all make when surfing those trends.

[http://yourdatafitsinram.com/](http://yourdatafitsinram.com/) also comes to mind.

<comment><USER7> How is it any harder to do in the cloud than on a rack in a warehouse? At least you don't have to muck about with cables and phoning power companies up.

<comment><USER8> You call up IBM. You ask for a mainframe solution for two sites. You get experts to set it up for you with your application and such. You don't worry about downtime again for at least 30 years.

You call up Bull, Fujitsu, or Unisys for the same thing.

You call up HP. You ask for a NonStop solution. You get same thing for at least 20 years.

You call up VMS Software. You ask for an OpenVMS cluster. You get same thing for at least 17 years.

Well-designed OS's, software, and hardware did cloud-style stuff for a long time before cloud existed without the downtime. Cloud certainly brought price down and flexibility up. Yet, these clouds haven't matched 70-80's technology in uptime yet despite all the brains and money thrown at them. That's a fact.

So, shouldn't be used for anything mission critical where downtime costs lots of money.

<comment><USER9> This is absolute cobblers. I worked in an IT team that had a pair of IBM mainframes that were fed and watered at crushing expense and for which even the tiniest software change required a colossal waterfall project.

One day, they failed. One went offline - for reasons never revealed, at least to me - and the secondary didn't come up. Radio silence, kaput. But an airline that housed mainframes in the same DCs had their booking system fail at exactly the same times (with national headlines to match).

The myth of mainframe uptime is exactly that. La-la-land for hardware & services salesmen.

<comment><USER8> Appreciate the counterpoint. Could in fact be a myth or legend. Lots of money to justify spreading disinformation, too. Maybe an anonymous survey by a reputable organization is in order that tries to break down what issues people have and don't have along with specific metrics. Then compile that into a big picture.

Meanwhile, the companies I've worked at all had mainframes without trouble from them that people said. Problems were virtually always the app developers or the pain of doing 21st century stuff with 60's-80's architecture or legacy code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As this post is on, Dynamo is experiencing error again:

6:33 AM PDT We are investigating increased error rates for API requests in the US-EAST-1 Region.

Source: [http://status.aws.amazon.com/](http://status.aws.amazon.com/)

<comment><USER11> Some services are reporting problems now. Starting with the same set as last time such as Heroku and lots of services that depend on it:

[https://statusgator.io/events](https://statusgator.io/events)

<comment><USER4> DynamoDB, Cloudwatch, EC2, Scaling, and Elastic Beanstalk are all impacted currently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A pretty good post mortem, but one worrisome final comment:

 _" For us, availability is the most important feature of DynamoDB"_

I would think that durability should be the most important feature of DynamoDB; better to have intermittent outage, or reduced capacity, but not have data loss - but perhaps there is something about DynamoDB which suggests availability is rated more highly than durability?

<comment><USER13> I suspect they're simply trying to reassure customers that this size of outage won't happen again, not make some kind of deep mission statement..

<comment><USER14> If this is true (and I think you're right), then pronouncements about "the most important feature" are probably not timely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > but we should have posted the green-i to the dashboard sooner than we did

Use full orange or even half orange circle or something else if you want to convey 'subset of customers may have issues'. If possible move 'having issue' items to the top - this way people do not have to scroll down to see whats broken.

<comment><USER3> Not enough granularity with a yellow icon. I feel like if only <1% of customers are affected, a yellow circle isn't warranted - that's for the 5-20% impact case

<comment><USER16> Unless you're one of the <1% of customers.

The whole point of status page is to to help determine if the issue you're experiencing is on your side or the SaaS, and not to show as much green as possible.

The way currently AWS status page works it simply fails to provide any functionality and might as well be shut down.

The colors on it start to change when you already see tons of articles about AWS being down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _Unavailable servers continued to retry requests for membership data, maintaining high load on the metadata service._

It sounds like the retries exacerbated the situation. I wonder if they use exponential backoff?

<comment><USER18> It's amazing how frequently this seems to happen. A lot of the huge downtime events I've read about have occurred because of failures in the systems used to recover from failures.

It seems that perhaps more time/effort needs to be spent testing the systems (and the use of those systems) which are critical for handling failure. While building them, it's easy to dismiss their scaling requirements on the basis that they shouldn't ever be under significant load.

<comment><USER19> This is a classic, even because those software parts usually are the least tested in a variety of conditions, even when they are relatively well tested. It's very hard to simulate real failures.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Looks like a fair number of key aws systems rely on DynamoDB -- and further, the same system used by customers. I wonder: do they have any inclination to decouple these dependencies to prevent correlated outages?

<comment><USER21> I don't think they rely on Dynamo, they rely on an internal metadata service that Dynamo just happened to overwhelm with too many large requests.

<comment><USER20> From the 2nd sentence:

> ... subsequent impact to other AWS services that depend on DynamoDB ...

And the metadata service is part of DynamoDB:

> The membership of a set of table/partitions within a server is managed by > DynamoDB's internal metadata service.

<comment><USER22> I just asked the question in a separate post before seeing yours, but I questioned this as well. Would it have been better to have a separate instance of DynamoDB independent from the one customers are writing to? I understand this is added cost/overhead, but it would have resulted in isolating the failure to the customer side only, I'd think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I noticed that in the "Impact on other services" bit, that CloudWatch and Console were affected, becasue they were dependent on DyanmoDB. Now, I don't pretend to know DyanmoDB to well, but it seems to me that having your monitoring application dependent on one of the things you would be monitoring is a strange circular dependency.

Would it have been wiser for Amazon to implement a completely separate instance of DynamoDB for service offerings that depended on it? Or is this just simply cost ineffective? Help me understand, thanks. =)

<comment><USER23> CloudWatch is a monitoring service that AWS offers publicly. It is different from the monitoring service that AWS services use internally.

source: was on an AWS service team for several years

<comment><USER24> It's still a problem even if it's not the internal monitoring system. Customers use CloudWatch to detect problems with DynamoDB and get notified. This dependency means customers may not get notified if CloudWatch does not work as expected due to a DynamoDB problem.

<comment><USER25> There are different forces at play.

On one hand, one can design a service with minimum dependencies to survive other services' outages, but that means duplication of effort and increased cost, as well as slower delivery of features. Or one can focus on adding value.

It seems though, from the update, that CloudWatch is going to have some sort of caching for most recent data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > We did not have detailed enough monitoring for this dimension (membership > size)

It is often the case that you aren't monitoring the metric that would have told you the world was about to end. However,

> their processing time was near the time limit for retrieval

This is a specific response time with a known, fatal, limit. Not seeing that trend seems unfortunate.

</comment><comment><USER27> "We did not realize soon enough that this low overall error rate was giving some customers disproportionately high error rates."

Critical lesson for running multitenant SaaS services at scale: you need to monitor not just overall error rates, but individual tenant/customer error rates.

</comment><comment><USER28> Does anyone keep stats on service outages for AWS, Axure, Google, et al?

<comment><USER11> I currently track a lot of this through my project StatusGator which alerts you on outages: [https://statusgator.io](https://statusgator.io).

Most of the historical data isn't shown publicly but I could probably do something with that.

<comment><USER28> The historical data would be quite useful for companies when deciding which cloud providers to contract with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Hmm, we are seeing very high request latencies with DynamoDB in multiple accounts and can't even load the DynamoDB console...Anyone else?

<comment><USER30> I can load the console, but it's very, very slow. And creating a new table takes forever, then spews error text over the interface in a way that makes it clear they never intended for an error to be displayed this way.</comment></comment>


ReactOS 0.4.9 released - <AUTHOR> https://www.reactos.org/project-news/reactos-049-released <comment><USER2> Sometimes I wonder why every single release of ReactOS seems to make the front page of HN. Then I'm quickly reminded of how well-written, interesting and detailed the release notes are. It's like reading through an adventure story where the contributors are heroes. More open source projects should have this.

<comment><USER3> I agree other FOSS operating systems should get the same coverage as ReactOS.

<comment><USER4> I suppose it's because ReactOS is replicating Windows, that is, it awakens fond memories of old activists (times when MSWin was the private enemy number one).

Nowadays, I guess the new activist would be more bothered by something that can replace Android (or Apple for extra kudo).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It amazes me how they were able to move forward all these 20 (!) years without losing motivation.

<comment><USER6> It also seems that migrating to GitHub paid off too, as seen in the release notes:

> Since the transition to GitHub, the project has also received many pull > requests from old and new contributors alike.

<comment><USER7> It's funny that Microsoft now hosts the source code of both major Windows implementations.

<comment><USER8> Nobody perceives ReactOS as a threat at the moment, but I wonder what Microsoft's stance would be if the project developed much faster, for example by receiving funding from a bigger institution...

<comment><USER9> Cut Windows licensing charges for corporates to ensure that the total cost of ownership of Windows is lower than ReactOS. IMHO ReactOS should target corporates who have old Win32 apps still running on XP or Win7 that they can't or won't migrate to Win10.

<comment><USER10> There should be a ReactOS crack team out there, helping people with such things. I have seen in the corporate world, virtual machines running Windows XP, carefully hidden from the watchful eye of the Nazgul, I mean corporate IT. Why? Some function or other can not run in newer versions of Windows.

However, such a ReactOS installation would hardly be blessed by IT either... not anymore than a random Linux installation. :-/

Where I think ReactOS _could_ shine is in the embedded realm. In that realm, you often have custom development anyway. 100% compatibility is often not needed. You might have product initially done on Windows Win32, then tweaked to run on Windows CE (or whatever they call it nowadays). Instead you could tweak it to run on ReactOS and call it day. Since ReactOS can take standard Windows drivers, getting BSP support should be feasible.

Also, ReactOS should offer EC2 images like Ubuntu does:

[https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/locator/ec2/](https://cloud- images.ubuntu.com/locator/ec2/)

<comment><USER9> I've seen that too - but with corporate IT dept support - at a large UK mortgage lender running a loan origination system initially built in the 90s with an MFC Win32 GUI. Over the years the system has been so heavily customised by the vendor that it's practically bespoke. Migrating the existing system to run on modern OSes, or adopting a new system would be a huge expense, and can't be justified by any rational cost benefit analysis. IMHO there's a huge overhang of legacy Win32 GUIs out there. I'm hoping they'll fund my retirement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Has anybody tried running some old computer viruses on it?

Or what about those "tech support" calls you get, where they try and take over your Windows computer? It would be fun to follow their instructions in ReactOS, mainly out of curiosity (and to screw with them).

Seriously, next time you get a call from one of them, give them an excuse to ring you back later; then install Virtualbox, ReactOS, some mic and screen recording software, and wait.

<comment><USER12> A few people have done this, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xr220CbJTQc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xr220CbJTQc)

It usually confuses them a lot.

<comment><USER13> This doesn't look like ReactOS was involved in any capacity other than its logo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It'd be hilarious if Google started donating to the project. No endgame in mind, just trolling to get a paranoid reaction out of Microsoft.

I've heard that Steam OS was partly created to nudge Windows out of its windows gaming intiative during the Windows 8 era.

<comment><USER10> At the very least, Steam OS was kind of a far off hedge. Like building a fallout shelter in your back yard. Pretty cheap, kind of spectacular, very low chance of it being used. But, boy, should the need arise you'd be happy to have it.

<comment><USER15> I don't think that was the original intent, just what it came to be after it was clear that Microsoft wasn't going to aggressively dismantle the open* nature of Windows as a platform. Based on Microsoft's language around the Windows App Store and UWP at the time, and just being Microsoft, that was a reasonable concern.

*That is, open for anyone to develop and release software for without going through a third party.

<comment><USER16> What a waste of time and energy the Windows Store and UWP are. I've yet to see any apps on there better than the pre-existing standalone ones, and the developer messaging on that front has been all over the road. At various points C++, C#, and JS have been touted as the way to go forward, but from where I sit everybody is still banging on Win32.

<comment><USER17> The big holdup with UWP, IMO, is that they strictly limit access to the file system. And if you want to give an UWP program access, up comes the age old win32 picker dialog.

If MS really wanted UWP to take off, they should have bundled a UWP file manager on par with explorer, and a matching picker.

As it is, UWP is just another .NET dumped on top of the same old win32/NT base.

<comment><USER10> From a technology standpoint, no it's not. UWP is very much closer to the Win32 roots than .NET ever was. UWP is COM+ basically, with a thin wrapper.

From a marketing, developer's and practical point of view, I agree with you 100%. They bet _so_ much on UWP, yet their footsteps falter the last mile. UWP is like running an Android emulator on your PC - you have 2 different worlds at once. Really weird and it must confuse "normal" users much more than us who know a lot about both the history and the technology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've just tried to install it as a VirtualBox VM, and it kinda works! I had to select a different network adapter for the network to work, and the screensaver screen made the system unresponsive. But it's still impressive.

I totally love it that it has a 50/50 chance of getting stuck in the login screen like a Windows 98.

<comment><USER19> What did you do to get the network working specifically? I was hoping that adding the legacy network adapter would do it, but it prompted and subsequently failed to install an ethernet driver after I did.

<comment><USER18> Use PCnet-FAST III as mentioned in their wiki: [https://www.reactos.org/wiki/VirtualBox](https://www.reactos.org/wiki/VirtualBox)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Anyone here tried running ReactOS full time?

<comment><USER21> I tried with limited success on a very old laptop (on the previous release):

* USB drives didn't come up correctly - it couldn't see anything past the "root" hub (as an end user it was just a USB port on the laptop).

* Wasn't able to connect to the internet using either the Belkin wireless card or the standard ethernet port.

* Stability was relatively impressive, didn't handle lack of RAM too gracefully though.

As there wasn't an easy way to get any kind of media into the laptop, I gave up. Getting either of those working well could at least extend the usefulness to being a great writing machine. Gvim + LaTeX and I'll be fully away.

Half the time I think a person wanting to rip off Windows (I know, I know) would be better off writing a Windows 95/98 looking X11 window manager and hacking it to only use Wine. Seemingly for free you would get tonnes of hardware support and the obvious benefits of Wine. You could even emulate the "upgrade whilst shutting down" behaviour to update Linux underneath. I think you could quickly end up with something that would pass at first glance.

<comment><USER22> > Half the time I think a person wanting to rip off Windows (I know, I know) > would be better off writing a Windows 95/98 looking X11 window manager and > hacking it to only use Wine. Seemingly for free you would get tonnes of > hardware support and the obvious benefits of Wine. You could even emulate > the "upgrade whilst shutting down" behaviour to update Linux underneath. I > think you could quickly end up with something that would pass at first > glance.

This was attempted once with "Lindows" (later renamed to "Linspire" after the inevitable Microsoft lawsuit). Wikipedia informs me that they're actually still around in one form or another and owned by Xandros these days.

<comment><USER10> Lindows was interesting. Windows was much more relevant then, not as much web stuff going on, no mobile apps. Unfortunately, Wine was not very feature complete, so it fell on its face quickly.

<comment><USER21> In what sense? I think Wine is pretty good on most applications up to a year ago as long as they're not games?

<comment><USER10> Lindows launched in 2001 IIRC. At the time, Wine didn't have regression testing, so someone hacked up a simple test-runner in C, called it "winetest.exe", ran the tests on Windows 95, 98, NT 4 and XP, and submitted it the Wine project.

The idea was to capture how actual Windows works, so Wine could implement how Windows _actually works_ , not how you'd think it works just from looking at API docs.

[http://test.winehq.org/data/](http://test.winehq.org/data/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The main point seems to be compatibility with Windows device drivers. Otherwise, Wine on Linux should suffice. (?)

<comment><USER24> The two projects collaborate a lot, documenting and implementing APIs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> A thought I just had:

ReactOS would be an intereting concept to "containerize" old windows apps to enable them to run in a public / private cloud environment.

Basically a way for people to "modernize" (at least the way the apps are managed if not the apps themselves).

</comment><comment><USER3> The big test would be server mode to take on Windows Server. Samba and WAMP.

<comment><USER26> One day it may well run the Linux subsystem.

<comment><USER27> Does WINE work in WSL?

<comment><USER28> Better still, could WSL work in WINE?

<comment><USER29> In the future, who knows... at present there is none of the infrastructure in Wine to make that happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> What I wrote about CHKDSK at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17592182](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17592182) still applies. (-:</comment>


Silicon Valley prodigy arrested by FBI for alleged fraud - SG- http://mashable.com/2015/05/21/joshua-newman-arrest/?utm_cid=mash-com-fb-tech-link

<comment><AUTHOR> "Newman is said to have lured investors by misrepresenting his own ability to pay back funds, [...] He then used the funds to pad his own finances or pay back earlier investors."

What? Why would you pay investors #1 back if you were planning to screw investors #2? Or was he planning to just take ever bigger gambles?

<comment><USER2> His initial investors were likely complicit or he wanted the relationship to persist for future deals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Even if he's innocent, I found his lawyer's statement quirky:

      "All of his business ventures have been legitimate and well-intentioned.
      While his ventures were not always as successful as he hoped they would
      be, he never did anything to justify the over-reaching charges issued against
      him today.["]

I can't envision how this statement helps him.</comment>


The rise of fake gurus (2020 documentary) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9Gpr7PEnbs <comment><USER2> WOW great video. I learned a LOT and I wish everyone would see it.</comment>