The land grab for farm data - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/06/the-land-grab-for-farm-data/ <comment><USER2> I'm the lead software architect at a major agricultural and construction equipment manufacturer. I deal with this stuff every day.

I'm not aware of any efforts to make collected data available but what I can say about the company I work for is that we largely view the data the farmer or operator's personal property. We don't transmit it back to any data center presently but we do have ways to copy the captured data off to a USB stick for post processing which a number of 3rd party precision farming applications are on the market to read it.

What I can say about the data is that it's voluminous. Our software collect all kinds of data besides just precision farming data. For example, CAN bus faults, GPS history (vehicle guidance), weather conditions (temperature, humidity), etc... And the way the data is collected follows no industry set standard - it's pretty much proprietary formats.

Also, much of our data collection is stored locally in a binary format to save space and improve performance. We have tools that move the data back to a flat file/text format for post processing.

I'm not involved with the 3rd parties that use the data but my guess is that someone has shared with them the formats and such.

<comment><USER3> Yes, this is a common problem to all industries. Formats can be figured out or obtained from the OEM, then a gateway is created to transform into a digestible format (my guess some XML schema). In the article, the author states his company [1], where in the tech section he describes this very scenario.

[1][https://www.farmobile.com](https://www.farmobile.com)

<comment><USER4> I've dealt with something similar, working for a small publisher in niche markets. We've got dozens of customers, some on third party platforms, and others with their own proprietary data formats. I built a platform to convert their data to our own format. Usually that part is easy. Mapping their categorization to our own is the time-consuming part.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >Farm data is expected to be a $20–$25 billion revenue opportunity, but we haven't yet determined how the data can be collected, structured, stored and shared, let alone monetized.

For crying out loud...

<comment><USER6> That was really funny to read. "We have no idea how money will be made off this data, but it's going to be around $20-25 billion/year" rofl

<comment><USER7> Silicon Valley = Pied Piper :)

<comment><USER8> To be fair the potential for reduced bandwidth usage by Pied Piper users could add up to billions of dollars alone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Farmers tell me, "Look, I know that my data has value because everyone wants > it. The part that frustrates me is that companies want my data in return for > some undefined 'value.' Meanwhile they are often upselling me for additional > services that would not exist without my data."

Sounds like a good description of what's been going on across the economy for 20 years. Farmers are asking the same question many others are asking: how can I keep more of my own data's value for myself?

<comment><USER10> Two thoughts:

1\. This is tough, because the value of a single _data point_ ("my data") is pretty much zero. The value is in the aggregate. Of course, without any data points, the value of the data is then zero. So the sum of the value of the individual data points does not equal the value of the data as a whole.

2\. There's value to you in _my ability to sell you more things_. Which sounds nonsensical, but hear me out. If I'm able to sell you, it means you see value in that product or service greater than its cost. _I would not be able to create that value for you without your data._ So it's a help-me-help-you situation.

<comment><USER11> For #1, I'd imagine that farmers already belong to (or could form?) a farming or agriculture association, and one of the [additional] responsibilities could be data collection, anonymizing and selling to other parties. The association, similar to a labour union, could also potentially hire a 3rd party to do this work on their behalf provided they still retain ownership over the data, but at least the overall coordination and aggregate value would be captured on behalf of the farmers and not the vendors.

#2 would be fulfilled more easily by the association provided there was enough true representation of member interests and concerns.

<comment><USER12> Well, but neither the farmer or agriculture association are capable to actually collect the data - the data is generated as a byproduct when all kinds of systems do work on the farmer's fields, but it is generated by and within all these third party systems.

Aggregation and cleaning up of all that heterogenous data would be even harder, and _that_ is definitely not the task for anyone who doesn't make their core business (I mean, none of the involved big companies is able to do that yet) creating and maintaining that capability can be practically done by a couple competitors worldwide, but not by every regional association duplicating the effort.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Idea: Co-Op program

Farmers join a local Co-Op, say "Iowa's Data Co-Op". The Data Co-Op then sells to the highest bidder, then after a small management fee returns dividends to the participating farmers.

The Data Co-Op partners with equipment integrators to build data collection devices and data transformations.

<comment><AUTHOR> Local farmer groups are already a thing, where farmers get together to share research, look at properties with trials running on them etc. [1]

The question your have to answer before trying to sell any of this "info", is who, other than the farmers themselves is going to find it valuable enough to buy?

[1] [http://gga.org.au/group/northern-agri- group/](http://gga.org.au/group/northern-agri-group/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> And here's what the American Farm Bureau Federation is doing about it.[1] See their Ag Data Transparency Evaluator.[2]

The parent article totally ignores the major farming organizations.

[1] [http://www.fb.org/issues/bigdata/](http://www.fb.org/issues/bigdata/) [2] [http://www.fb.org/agdatatransparent/](http://www.fb.org/agdatatransparent/)

</comment><comment><USER14> AG are the original data science folks. SAS was started to help farmers analyze crops 40 or so years ago.

</comment><comment><USER15> I could see myself dedicating my life to making software to help farmers organize their farm data and sell it. Anyone know of companies that do this?

 __edit: I 'm a full-stack application developer with a lot of experience working with non-techy business owners and proven success as a problem-solver. I'm interested in getting into this industry as a technical project manager. Email me if you're looking for such a person (it's in my profile). I'll be in contact with the companies in the comments below, too. Thanks!

<comment><USER16> Yes, FarmersEdge (disclosure: I know the CTO) is a big player. I think, in a roundabout way, Monsanto is one of their competitors through acquisitions, though I'm not sure of their market placement wrt FE.

I think ag is an underrated software industry. It's ripe for disruption, but you need to do it in a way that makes sense to farmers, which can be tricky for at least a couple of reasons!

<comment><USER17> Could you go into those reasons?

<comment><USER18> It is a commodity business with very thin margins. Farmers for the most part have zero pricing power for their commodities. Whatever you propose must "pencil out", as farmers say, and it needs to be a clear benefit. It should reduce or option-away risk, not add to risk.

Professional farm management companies might be a good place to start, because they have business analysts that have the time to understand your product and can deploy at scale across multiple clients.

Hertz farm management (Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska) is one example. Typical client is the children that inherited dad's farm but don't have the time and expertise to manage the land, which is typically leased to farmer-operators.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Precision Planting HQ is 2 corn fields away (~5 miles) from the house I grew up in in rural Illinois. Maybe I shouldn't have moved to the west coast to chase startups...

<comment><USER20> Check out climate.com We are building the tools for farmers to use all these data. We have offices in SF, Seattle, Chicago and St Louis if you are interested.

<comment><USER19> And Morton, IL! About 15 miles from Precision Planting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> What I think is going to be most interesting is companies/banks/insurances agencies being able to gleam information without going through the farmers at all. Not by subverting them and going to the machinery manufacturers, which is already happening, but just by using other sources of information, such as satellite imagery.

It's already possible to predict yield potential through biomass/NDVI monitoring via satellite, and given that imagery from a source such as LandSat is freely available, or something like Planet isn't that expensive once your a bank/insurance agency I'm certain they must already be using.

Once you can predict yields reliably via satellite, you can start to predict supply for certain types of grain in different regions, or to a lesser extent, countries as a whole. This data is useful to investment banks and insurers, as well as organisations such as CBH[1], that handle the entirety of Western Australia's grain export. They currently determine potential yield by sending out a grower survey, and asking the farmers to predict yields themselves.

I think the idea of anyone "stealing" our data is overrated. The data from our farm[2] is specific to our farm, and as long as where not farming in such a way that is detrimental to our partners (such as banks/suppliers), such that we were trying to lie about yield potential, or resource usage, I'm not sure what value could be stolen by anyone with our info. In fact we openly share all the trial work we do, so that everyone in the community can learn and benefit.

[1] [https://www.cbh.com.au/](https://www.cbh.com.au/) [2] [https://hectare.ag/nook](https://hectare.ag/nook)

</comment><comment><USER21> This seems to confirm just how important the price of data is for ML & AI based startups. Methinks there is a market alone for data companies, not even those that are necessarily doing anything productive with said data, just collecting it.

Also raises the question of whether its possible to bootstrap a data science, ML, or AI startup, given the high expense of purchasing that data.

<comment><USER22> There is actually a thriving industry in data collection and these range from companies that provide tools for you to do your own data collection and those who will collect the data for you (or provide pre-made datasets). Full disclosure, I work for one such: Scrapinghub where we provide tools, platform, and data services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm not sure the farmer should be getting in the way of data collection. Regional and global optimizations can be mined from a large enough set of ag data. Do we really want to nickel and dime research this way? Its a fair question.

I know; there's a sense of ownership. But farmers are just one participant in the chain of data management. They just happen to be the one person residing physically over the land. So they could charge rent on data. But should they?

<comment><USER24> The point is that everyone except farmers are profiting from the data the farmers are helping to collect. Perhaps the better question is "why should everyone _except_ farmers get to nickel and dime research in this way?"

<comment><USER23> I didn't read that. I read that no money was changing hands; just agreements. And of course the farmers benefit greatly; that's the whole point of it all, to make better yields.

<comment><USER24> Why do you think increasing yields greatly benefits farmers? If the pencil industry doubles its output, do you imagine their profits will increase twofold?

<comment><USER25> Note he said better rather than increase.

Better could mean anything from maintaining current output with less costs to increasing the quality of your crop.

<comment><USER24> The phrase "better yields" is exactly synonymous with "increased yields". A crop's yield is its volume, measured in bushels. There is literally no other way to interpret this.

Citation: I grew up on a farm, and my family has farmed for at least 200 years.

EDIT: This is a particularly weird reason to downvote me...

<comment><USER23> And that'd be pedantic. Better can be more cost-effective, cheaper in time or money or equipment or quality of land required. I grew up on a farm, live on one now, my family has farmed for 300 years, so I guess I win?

<comment><USER24> You seem to think you're disagreeing with me, but everything you said is consistent with my description.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Banks are seeing the bear market coming - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/this-is-not-a-normal-recession-banks-ready-for-wave-of-coronavirus-defaults-11594746008 <comment><USER2> Here's a non-paywalled article about this: [https://finance.yahoo.com/news/big-us-banks-unwilling-to- cal...](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/big-us-banks-unwilling-to-call-the- economic-bottom-yet-220552720.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> [http://archive.li/mu6Cd](http://archive.li/mu6Cd)</comment>


HN now mostly readable on mobile - <AUTHOR> https://news.ycombinator.com <comment><USER2> The comments don't render correctly on FF on Android. They all render one after another and it's impossible to tell which comments are replies and which aren't. :(

<comment><USER3> Yes, that's totally broken. Sorry; we'll fix it.

<comment><USER4> Can you also switch from the current indentation layout (via images in a table) to a div-based layout where all subcomments are inside the element of the parent comment?

Like, currently it's

	Text1

	Text2

After it would be

Text1

Text2

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wouldn't mind HN upping the indention when I have an iPhone 6+ in landscape mode. Its kind of hard to tell parents and children.

<comment><USER6> A way to collapse replies would also be appreciated. Sometimes I just want to read the top-level comments and scrolling through dozens of replies to find the next topic of discussion can be frustrating.

<comment><USER7> I'd like to second this one. Sometimes the top comment ends up being one of those that spawns a gigantic and completely unproductive conversation, and it would be nice to be able to move past it easily.

<comment><USER8> I've been using this minimal extension for a while solely for that: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news- collap...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news- collapsible-c/hockhafcdegocajmjhafgjncjpodihkd?hl=en)

It's definitively something that should be built in though.

<comment><USER7> That looks pretty good. Thanks for the link. Unfortunately it doesn't help for iPhone reading, though. Stupid Apple....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Some deeply nested conversations get the formatting hammer after a certain depth. A gentle slide to the right suddenly becomes 2" or more, with text jammed into half an inch of screen width.

</comment><comment><USER10> Now if I only can stop fat-fingering down all the great posts.

<comment><USER11> Yep - it would also be great if HN provided an indicator of which way you voted. As it stands, I'd say I probably get it right about 75% of the time, but who knows? It's impossible to tell if you've upvoted or downvoted a comment still; and especially on mobile, I bet I get it wrong pretty often.

<comment><USER12> How long do you have to be on the site or how much karma do you need in order to downvote?

<comment><USER13> About 500 karma to be able to downvote comment, I believe (you can't down vote submission).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Can the upvote and downvote triangular arrows be given more separation? On my Firefox Mobile, they appear together vertically close together and I fear I may tap on the wrong one.

</comment><comment><USER15> Whooooooo! Thank you dang and team. I have been very critical of the site's mobile unfriendliness in the past. Now I can use this as an example of a small change that makes a big difference. Certainly better late than never. You have probably saved me thousands over the lifetime in new glasses and contacts.

</comment><comment><USER16> On Windows Phone (I know, fringe audience, but I love it), I need to slightly adjust the zoom level on the comments view pages. The viewport is slightly narrower than the page's content, by about 15%.

But otherwise, and even with that small matter, it's a change that makes mobile use easier. Reading has always been fairly easy on mobile in my opinion, but clicking the right thing (e.g., the comments links) required either zooming or very careful aim. It's nice to not have that challenge any more.

I will echo the request for a bit more indentation for child comments. But I also understand the hesitation to add too much indentation given the narrow viewport.

<comment><USER17> On a Lumia 920 right now, and it looks fine to me.

<comment><USER18> Lumia 640, looks fine for me too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Doesn't work on my tablet, I get the desktop website with tiny letters. If I zoom in, I have to scroll horizontally to read the comments, which is a pain in the butt.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm surprised this wasn't announced officially by dang. I spent some time the other day searching for the official announcement of HN's new responsive design, and just figured I must've missed it.

<comment><USER11> There was an official thread a week ago, asking for feedback (which was mostly positive): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10489499](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10489499)

<comment><USER20> Ah, thanks! That makes more sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Seems like the last week or so the comment indentation has been worse on Android with Chrome on a 7" tablet. It used to be a larger indent. Now I can't tell who's replying to what without thinking about it.

</comment><comment><USER22> Unfortunately, it seems that the it broke the iOS client, Akepa . I'm sure other clients are also affected.

<comment><USER23> They've been telling client developers that they should move from screen- scraping to using the API ([https://github.com/HackerNews/API](https://github.com/HackerNews/API)) for a while now. I don't know if that's the problem with this specific client, but you may want to check with the developers and see if it is, and if so, what their ETA is for getting onto the API.

<comment><USER24> The issue with the current API is that it's read-only, so clients can't completely migrate to it. Using a combination of the API for reads and scraping for checking responses to writes makes things a bit difficult.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I just found this out by trying the site in mobile Chrome for the first time in months. Pleasant surprise!

</comment><comment><USER26> Welcome to 2013, HN!

</comment><comment><USER27> Awesome, thank you,

</comment><comment><USER28> And now we get massive text. Responsive

</comment><comment><USER29> Thank you</comment>


Ask HN: What's the current state-of-the-art for personal email? - <AUTHOR>

With Google Apps going non-free, I'm jolted back towards hosting my own email to get a little bit more flexibility.<p>So, what's the best setup at the minute in terms of email servers, spam filters, etc? Are there any good web UIs? Does anything provide something similar to Gmail's filters? <comment><USER2> If you host your own email, you may need to know more and do more than you think you need to do.

I tried it for awhile, it was easy to set up with postfix.

The problem I ran into is that large services like gmail and linked in would not _send_ to me. They weren't rejecting mail _from_ me; they wouldn't send _to_ me. I think because I didn't do enough with <vague> reputation mechanisms </vague>, but I never really knew because I realized I wanted to receive mail _now_ , not when I eventually worked it out.

That's just one surprising (to me) example. Mail has a reputation for being easy to get started and hard to get right. I think that's a deserved reputation.

I forward my domain's email to fastmail.fm, a paid service. I'm happy with it.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure what the current best stack is for email (last time I hosted my own, the setup involved UUCP), but my ideal setup would be as follows:

\- continue using Gmail as the main account

\- have a catch-all on my server which simply forwards to the Gmail account

\- for sending mail, have a regexp that when matched, will rewrite the 'from' username to that

As an example of the last point, if my subject has &hn& at the beginning, remove that string and change the from address to 'email@example.com'.

I believe this should be possible with postfix. What I'm not sure of is if Gmail will flag my servers for the steady stream of spam being forwarded (I'd prefer to let Gmail's filters handle all spam).

</comment><comment><USER4> I use a commercial hosting service which includes email. It provides as options SpamAssassin and Spamdyke, which work as well as can be expected. Spamdyke's graylisting does a nice job of keeping out much spam, more effectively than anything else.

The hosting provider provides a web interface in addition to IMAP, but I use IMAP clients, primarily Thunderbird, rather than web interfaces to email.

What the provider does not have, and I'd very much like to have, is IMAP augmented by Sieve.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've been using altomail for a while, it's nice. It's just a somewhat bugged preview, but I got impressed. I'm still figuring what they want in exchange for the service (it's free right now).

Anyways, it is just an UI on steroids, AOL didn't have the guts to roll their own new service.

</comment><comment><USER6> <https://fastmail.fm> does a good job and charges vary little, based on what you need.</comment>


Generating Sequences of Primes in Conway's Game of Life - <AUTHOR> http://www.nathanieljohnston.com/2009/08/generating-sequences-of-primes-in-conways-game-of-life/ <comment><USER2> I don't understand how this can keep all the information needed to keep track of what number it is on, in an area it has access to, especially seeing as it has a constant time of 120 generations between each number.

If it goes for unbounded integers, then, because the distribution of primes isn't cyclic, it has to have infinitely many states it can be in, right?

Does the machine grow over time?</comment>


I am addicted to YC News - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> The content has the highest signal to noise ratio of any other social content site out there. This is likely because the audience is more focused.

<comment><USER3> The fact that comments may be viewed during the YC app process probably has something to do with creating a focussed audience. But, how much?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think the reason that I like to check it a lot is to see what intelligent people think about the things that I say. So the first important component, in my mind, is that the majority of the members are smart. Secondly, by allowing people to reply to replies and assign karma points (admittedly not a novel idea), smart people can reinforce the parts of my replies that they find smart and ignore the parts that don't interest them.

I think the inability to vote topics down avoids some of the problems that Reddit has encountered, where people camp out and vote submissions down in order to make their own appear higher. I think a more mature (on average) user base helps to accomplish that as well.

Finally, I think that most people must have heard of YC news through either pg's site or through YCombinator itself. Anyone interested in those two things are cool in my book, and should produce good discussions.

</comment><comment><USER5> i have to agree, I find my self checking in many times throughout the day. I never really got into Digg or Reddit because there was so much irrelevancy to the submissions and with so many users it never felt like your posts got much face time with readers. YCom News is focused, comments are honest and not to long, and you get the feeling that the people on the other end are smart and doing really cool things.

</comment><comment><USER6> The absence of spam and drastically off topic material is a huge plus for the site. We've pretty much stayed on topic, and I think Paul has said they have human moderators whacking bad submissions or comments. The voting helps with that also of course.

<comment><USER7> The amount of spam they've been killing has actually been substantial for the past week. (Mostly the same couple spammers; I don't know why they haven't banned their IPs yet). I've been keeping showdead turned on because I'm curious about seeing how the situation evolves, but once spam reaches about double its current volume I'm going to turn it off because it'll be too annoying.

Edit: Maybe they've banned them now; the new queue is currently clean.

<comment><USER6> I wish the Reddits had been doing this. We ran into some bizarre impeachment behavior a few weeks ago. I think they're proud of running an open and market- driven site, but sometimes that can go wrong. Shirky's essay at <http://shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html> sort of describes this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> its also simple

in todays el-explosion'ary 2.0 scene simple is usually left out

there are no tags, avatars, profiles, subgroups, contacts, thingamwhos and fake promises

</comment><comment><USER9> I used to check YC News every time I exported a new .swf with the Flash IDE (because it's so horrendously slow and sometimes even crashes the IDE--I figured I'd make use of those 10-20 seconds [which unfortunately often turned into 5-10 minutes of web browsing--AAAA!]).

Now that I've removed that step from my workflow, I check much less often. :-)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Maybe it will get me into trouble at work. If it does, I will just start a starup. Wait, I am starting a startup in any case

<comment><USER10> What about the site makes it most addictive for you?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think its because its so dynamic. I am always on here seeing whats new or what changed. It also helps that I am really interested in the content on the site

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I hope they don't actively promote this site. The community is small, insightful, and focused. It should stay this way.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. It already seems like more people are adding stories creating more noise. When news.ycombinator.com started, I could read all the stories in the list. Now its seems like there are too many.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The intellectual feeling I get here is something I really miss from Reddit's early days. Granted, YC News doesn't cover everything I care about, but like startupguy said, the signal to noise ratio is amazing. I just dropped Reddit from my bookmarks bar because I only have so much time and the S/R ratio is falling for me.

</comment><comment><USER8> i have to agree as well, which is why i thought it was kinda like the new digg, course i dont really read digg any more.

what i find in yc news: inspiration, fresh, new, professional development, stuff to think about, its almost a good excuse for browsing vs say drudgereport,

i see alot more 2.0 newness mentions as well, i usually go to emilys hub for that

it feels more fresh, and i feel like it matters more than random dude check this out digg like stuff

</comment><comment><USER13> I am also loving YC News - very focused, top-notch content. Hopefully it wont get too popular to the point where we see digg-type spam. I like it just the way it is.

</comment><comment><USER14> anyone placing bets on how long it will take for news.yc to devolve into digg territory?

(danw, remember I asked this about justin.tv, and the answer turned out to be about 18 hours after I asked...)

<comment><USER10> I don't think it will. PG has no reason to let news.yc devolve into the current reddit situation, so presumably if it starts to then it will be corrected.

<comment><AUTHOR> Its funny how PG's bussiness is creating and selling businesses. I guess I can't sell YC tough or can he?

<comment><USER11> I don't believe he intends to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think that vertical news is the way forward, because its focused</comment>


The men and women who brought curry to Birmingham - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-42542081 <comment><USER2> At the risk of giving away some closely held secrets here. An absolute pro- tip: use a Pressure Cooker when making meat based curries. In 20 minutes, you can have a dish that tastes as if it were slow roasted all day long. Can only speculate as to the science involved. But for goat and lamb that desired result of a tender, rope-y texture is readily achievable by even though most inexperienced cooks. Consult YouTube for technique. It even works great with that Japanese-style "Golden Curry" base you can find in the international foods section of your local grocery for $2.99 ;)

<comment><USER3> Haha, pressure cookers aren't really a secret. They are found in most households in India. In the U.S., for years there was an irrational fear of pressure cookers exploding so they never really caught on until the Instapot came along (which some people don't realize is a pressure cooker). The fact is, pressure cooker tech is very old and remarkably safe. It's been "beta- tested" by millions of people in India.

The science is simple: water vaporizes at 212F/100C at atmospheric pressure. But if you increase the pressure, the boiling point increases [1]. This means instead of cooking temperatures maxing out at 212F, the cooker lets one achieve higher temperatures. This is why pressure cookers are able to cook faster -- the temperatures are simply higher.

Meats cooked with pressure cookers tend to come out more tender (if you don't let them dry out) in a shorter amount of time.

[1] Water phase diagram. Notice that on the vaporization-condensation part of the curve, when P increases, the T crossover point also increases [https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-chem-atoms- first/chap...](https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-chem-atoms- first/chapter/phase-diagrams-2/)

<comment><USER4> >In the U.S., for years there was an irrational fear of pressure cookers exploding so they never really caught on until the Instapot came along (which some people don't realize is a pressure cooker). The fact is, pressure cooker tech is very old and remarkably safe. It's been "beta-tested" by millions of people in India.

I have a feeling that the recent popularity of the InstaPot will make pressure cookers much more popular in years to come.

<comment><USER5> I don't. The instapot still takes plenty of time for the actual eating to be ready as you have to wait for the pressure to release.

<comment><USER6> Why not twist the valve to release pressure quickly?

<comment><USER7> 1\. It fills the room with steam. 2\. It makes the food bubble up onto the lid so you have to clean it (the lid usually remains perfectly clean because only steam touches it).

I only use quick release for delicate foods like steamed vegetables.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> UK-Al05 For any non English people who might be a bit confused, Birmingham is known for being Indian and balti (balti triangle) capital of the UK.

</comment><comment><USER8> Ladywood Road and Steelhouse Lane are relatively fairly close together. The nearest Coleshill Street that I could find, though, is over in Sutton Coldfield.

</comment><comment><USER9> The use of the term "curry" drives me nuts. It's just an all encompassing word for Indian food, culminating in that dreadful "curry powder" spice blend the Brits came up with. Spend some actual time in India, and you'll see there is an infinite number of sauces and flavors.

<comment><USER10> To me the term Curry just means "spice mix" in some form (paste, dry) or in the context of cooked food, a sauce based on such a mix.

It's important to remember that when people talk about "Indian food" in the western world, we usually mean the British adopted version, not the authentic stuff.

Similar to how many use the term "mexican food" when they talk about the food more properly named "Tex-Mex"

Perhaps there should be a Tex-Mex type term for UK-style Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi dishes that isn't just "Curries" or "Indian".

<comment><USER11> >"Indian food" in the western world, we usually mean the British adopted version

That seems to be the contention of Brits, at least, though it's a claim fraught with much contention.

Many of the early Indian immigrants to the US were Punjabi and so it is the dishes or variations of Punjabi cuisine that are considered icons of "Indian food" in the US.

With subsequent waves of immigration from Kerala and other regions of India and growing pressure to differentiate many more regionally-focused places have sprung up in the US, at least for the general public.

A Chettinad restaurant recently opened near me, though I've yet to try it.</comment></comment></comment>


Email: Will we ever get over it? Even Social Media worships there. - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2009/07/27/the-social-web-prays-at-emails-altar/ <comment><USER2> Well, I'm by no means a heavy email user. I get maybe one email a day that I care about... and that's on a good day. I don't bother with notifications and aggregations and all that mess (or social networking for that matter). But in any event, the advantage email has is that your inbox is an aggregator and that email is ubiquitous. Email is already preconfigured, preprogrammed to work with anyone. Sure, you may be able to make a nicer way to get notifications and updates from certain sites (though I still can't for the life of me figure out why you'd want to), but will it work with every single site in existence and with every single person in existence and with every single other technology in existence? No? Ok, I'll stick with email then.</comment>


Your Web, Half a Second Sooner - <AUTHOR> http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2011/03/your-web-half-second-sooner.html <comment><USER2> It's even faster if you just block the ads.

Plus, as soon as everyone starts blocking ads, we can start building products that are user-oriented instead of advertiser-oriented. (Why yes, I _do_ pay for content that I want to read.)

<comment><USER3> Advertising isn't inherently evil. At its best it actually adds value to the viewer. Consider the ads in bridal magazines or during the Super Bowl.

Perhaps the NYTimes can pull off a paywall (we'll see soon enough), but most content producers can't. So where does that leave us? Micropayments? Would you really want to pay to Tweet?

<comment><USER4> Neither quite here nor there: I noticed recently that DuckDuckGo has signed up with Carbon Ads for their website advertising, and I _really_ like it.

I've been an ardent ad-blocker for years now, and I'm actually glad Carbon Ads gets past the filter, because the ads it shows look great, somehow manage to get my attention without competing for it, _and_ are showing some pretty neat services that I hadn't heard of before.

<comment><USER5> +1 for niche ad networks that know their audiences.

I recently added Influads (similar to carbon) on one of my side projects, and I actually got a complement about the ads from a user! That was the last thing I expected.

<comment><USER6> I love these ads because they work as a filter for new products I might be interested in.

The ad networks are selective about the companies they accept.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think the subtext here is that they're trying to speed things up, while Facebook seems to be slowing down every other page I visit by two seconds or so.

<comment><USER8> Best fix is to use the NoScript extension for Firefox and in Advanced->ABE add the following so FB crap only loads when you visit facebook proper:

      Site .facebook.com .fbcdn.net .facebook.net
      Accept from .facebook.com .fbcdn.net .facebook.net
      Deny INCLUSION(SCRIPT, OBJ, SUBDOC)

To be fair, isn't Facebook moving towards using iframes (similar to what this article talks about) and away from fbml - facebook markup lang?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Translation:

We were slowing down the internet by more than 1/2 a second on every page. Now we're doing it less.

Less bad is more good, yes. I wonder what life is like without AdBlock, though.

<comment><USER10> Like using an iPad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am actually adblocking show_ads.js, so that makes the web even faster for me.

<comment><USER12> Actually, it's statistically indistinguishable, according to Google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm surprised Google is only doing this now. The most interesting thing in the article is "...JavaScript used by more than two million publishers...". I thought AdSense had greater distribution. e.g. There are over 100,000 new domains registered every 24hrs for the dot-com TLD alone.

<comment><USER14> Despite the vast number of domains added per day, domains that are monetized are only held by a relatively few individuals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Offtopic, maybe: I've taken to blocking _all_ JavaScript using NoScript. I don't want random strangers from the Internet running programs on my computer. Besides, disabling JavaScript has made my browser so fast it's not even funny. Pages load instantly, runaway scripts no longer take 25% CPU, pages don't try to autorefresh every 5 seconds. And, of course, no Google or FB ads.

<comment><USER16> Good idea! But how often do you use sites that need JS? e.g. real estate sites, google maps

Also: can't you just disable JS in your browser, for the same effect?

<comment><USER15> > _But how often do you use sites that need JS? e.g. real estate sites, google > maps_

That is why I use NoScript. I can temporarily enable JS on any page with one click.

Turns out I don't need to enable JS on 99% of the websites I visit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> A little pretentious, but it's a great news to see that sometimes, ads seller are thinking about optimizations (I'm looking at you, flash banner ads)

<comment><USER18> I vowed to never surf again without Flashblock after some ads started automatically yelling at me with sound and video.

<comment><USER19> Everytime I load my homepage (Yahoo UK) on my desktop (a G4 Mac Mini), I can hear the fans speed up dramatically to cope with the additional CPU burden introduced by the Flash ads.

It makes me wonder how much energy is spent on a) spinning the fans to serve these ads b) forcing people to upgrade their otherwise-perfectly-capable computers

Globally it probably equates to quite a big figure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Interesting that they took the approach of injecting iframes inside the page instead of deferring the ad call via something like a DOMContentLoaded event. Using the DOMContentLoaded event would even allow them to request all advertisements on a page in a single call.

</comment><comment><USER21> It'd be nice of Facebook was so focused on speed - the like button slows down every webpage I've ever put it on dramatically.

<comment><USER22> Have you tried using their async API?

<comment><USER23> is there something like an async like button? quick google search didn't turned anything up

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> tl;dr: Adsense loads asynchronously now.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm surprised this isn't getting more play. This is _huge_.

</comment><comment><USER26> And by "Your Web", they mean "Our Web".

</comment><comment><USER27> What's a really great way to both speed up your site and make it look more professional?

Don't put Google ads on it!

</comment><comment><USER28> "The old show_ads did lots of work: loading additional scripts, gathering information about the web page it was running on, and building the ad request to send back to Google."

Tracking users and crushing privacy. Sucking down clock cycles all over the world. You didn't think you got that for free, did you?</comment>


Fake Horoscopes - Crazy Idea (But is it legal?) - <AUTHOR> http://www.fakehoroscopes.com/ Does anybody know if that's legal? ... <comment><USER2> If you believe the faintest in scientific principles all horoscopes are fakes.

Why should this be different?

<comment><AUTHOR> These horoscopes are actually faked by _you_ , sent to _your friends_ anonymously. That's the difference...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> what's crazy is giving out your friend's cellphone number to a service that fails to mention how they might use that number in the future. Here's a potential horoscope for you: "I see SMS spam in your future." :-)</comment>


Indian billionaire announces phone with unlimited data&calls almost for free - <AUTHOR> http://indianexpress.com/article/technology/mobile-tabs/reliance-jio-jiophone-ril-ambani-top-points-4g-lte-feature-phone-4760621/ <comment><AUTHOR> Security deposit: 23$ (Approx)

Monthly charges: 2.5$ (Approx)

Phone is a feature phone with inbuilt Apps</comment>


Ask HN: Tools for teaching basic electronics/electricity - <AUTHOR> What is the best kit for teaching my nine year old daughter about electricity / basic electronics? <comment><USER2> LittleBits looks like fun.</comment>


Can Algorithms Help Us Unlearn Workplace Biases? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/us/algorithms-learn-our-workplace-biases-can-they-help-us-unlearn-them.html <comment><USER2> Of course it can! You can train any bias you want into your neural net. The question is how long your engineers will buy it, and whether the socially acceptable default position, that men and women should expect identical outcomes given identical opportunities, is actually true - because that is neither theoretically not empiricially verified, despite what outlets like NYT [and third wave feminists in general] are desperate to have you believe.

Before you flag and downvote, please seriously consider my last point, a reckoning may be quickly approaching Western society. We have taken for granted the conflation of equality of opportunity with equality of outcome - how will Western society respond if (I'm not saying when, but if) neural nets consistently predict gendered differences? Will we revert some of our recent assumptions regarding human nature, or will we collectively insist that the data is bad until it is massaged to show the results we expect?</comment>


BBC Journalists strike.  The end of traditional news hits mainstream. - <AUTHOR> http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21495821

<comment><USER2> I didn't know what a "compulsory redundancy" was so here's the definition: <https://www.gov.uk/staff-redundant/overview> Basically it means letting someone go because the position they hold is no longer needed, not for underperformance etc.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Yes it's a bit link-baity but the first I as a Brit heard of it was when I sat down to watch the late night news round up Newsnight and they say we cannot show you this, we are on strike

But I realised that even Newsnight, one of the most respected programmes hardly matters now. The news as in that which western media see as important I can get from. Dozen sources, and that which they don't I can get from al- jazera

It's what we have always known will happen. It's just interesting to note it is happening in front of me on the sofa.</comment>


Stack Overflow for Food. My new site for food questions. - <AUTHOR> http://answers.qwertykitchen.com

<comment><USER2> I echo all points so far. Nice idea.

Your name doesn't speak to your audience. What % of foodies know what 'querty' means? My guess: very few (in contrast, stackoverflow is a great name, because it is a phrase that has significant meaning to the target audience). If you're targeting gourmet chefs, something like burntgarlic.com would be analogous to stackoverflow.com, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thats actually a really great point. I guess we thought people would know what qwerty meant. A hybring of food, and computers. Something we will really think about.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps you should focus your target on simply foodies, rather than foodies + computer geeks. Simplifying will pay off when making decisions in the future. Rather than thinking "what would a food-lover/computer geek want?", you should be asking "what would a food-lover want?"

<comment><USER4> I'm guessing the food-lover audience is broader and probably more appealing. burntgarlic would be a cool domain name. As a computer geek, some of the food questions I've always had rarely relates to anything computer related. Here's a few:

how to remove skin from tomatoes, peppers, etc? some chefs use open flame, others use submersion in boiling water.

when should one use a mortar over a coffee grinder for creating custom mixed spices?

Yogurt is added into Naan bread for body, why does this work and what other non-dairy alternatives can we use for similar effect?

In what cases would rice wine work better than grape wine (for saute dishes).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It is a good idea, but there are issues with the execution. I'll outline them below.

The most critical problem is that your site has serious SEO issues. Stack Overflow was built with the goal of having crawlable questions and answers. That's how you build traffic and usage. Your questions are loaded with some AJAX, which means that the search engine will never see them. Even worse, your content will look stale to Google and be indexed very infrequently.

My suggestion: Even if you create a sitemap.xml file (which is one solution), your files will be indexed slowly. You will need to mess with the crawl frequency manually with Google Webmaster Tools. This is less than ideal. The ideal solution is to actually create a crawlable site. You should invest some time and money into learning about SEO and perhaps hiring someone to audit your site.

Next, a little harsh criticism: If you are targeting foodies, you should design your site as such. It's not a very attractive site, let alone designed correctly.

<comment><USER5> "Your questions are loaded with some AJAX, which means that the search engine will never see them" I'm looking at the site with noscript on, and everything seems to be fine. Did he change things since you posted, or am I misunderstanding the issue.

<comment><AUTHOR> Its built to degrade gracefully. So if you view the site without javascript it should still work. So yes google should be able to pick up all the content. Ajax was hopefully a better user experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't know if its just me but I think the color scheme and design is very ugly. If its a website about food, you should use some nice and warm colors and design elements which makes me hungry!

<comment><AUTHOR> What are design elements that make you hunger?

<comment><USER6> A little bit of googling turned up this:

[http://www.logoblog.org/wordpress/hungry-restaurant-logos- th...](http://www.logoblog.org/wordpress/hungry-restaurant-logos-that-make-an- impact/)

There's also an article a while back which talked about how the Aqua theme in Mac OSX was designed so that it will "make your mouth water" to look at it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A noble attempt, but it is extremely sparse. Hire a designer to get in there and give you a high quality design, make sure he leaves areas for you to run ads as you'll need to so that you can run that sort of site.

<comment><AUTHOR> What kinds of things can a graphic designer, I assume you meant graphic, give me that I couldn't do for my self?

<comment><USER7> If you're graphically inclined then go ahead and take care of it yourself, but based on the sparse layout and simplistic design I thought you would need one.

Even StackOverflow and the others are nicer to look at, but remember you're appealing to food geeks and so they are more visually inclined. Part of cooking well is the presentation.

<comment><USER4> +1 for presentation. If I go to a restaurant and order a dish that looks like crap, it generally tastes like crap too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I created an account, and received the password via an email which came, I presume, from your personal email account. No name, just the address, voidfiles@...

Even if you use your address, I think it would look better if you made it come from, e.g.:

      QwertyKitchen.com <voidfiles@...>

<comment><AUTHOR> Point taken, I fixed that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> as a foodie and a programmer my only suggestion is: we like pictures of food. if you can incorporate that cleanly in your site (fetch pics related to the question, display as nice thumbnails) then your site will look much more inviting.

</comment><comment><USER10> I don't think your target audiences would understand (or need to) What RPX is.

I think it would be more obvious if you just show the AOL/Google/Yahoo login interface on that right column.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, its in the works, I just added the rpx thing today wanted to see how it worked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Favicon is the default drupal one and the "About us" is a 404. whoops

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed, I had a lot more basic problems then I thought posting this up to HN has been really helpfull in less then an hour.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Did you use an open source software to build your site? Or it is 100% your code?

<comment><USER12> I just saw it is built in Drupal...did you use a special module?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes I used a bunch I will make a list.

<comment><USER12> Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Uh, horrible glaring typo? What's an anwser?

<comment><AUTHOR> I fixed the spelling mistake. You really didn't know what I meant even if it was misspelled?</comment></comment>


Is Facebook the new Internet and how soon before Microsoft tries to buy it? - <AUTHOR> http://blogmaverick.com/2010/04/22/is-facebook-the-new-internet-and-how-soon-before-microsoft-tries-to-buy-it/ <comment><USER2> I suppose Mark Cuban thinks Facebook is going to turn into a 1991 AOL: a one- stop shop for all things internet, a lens through which you experience everything. This is the same Mark Cuban who said that Twitter will replace Google for searching... I think he's a little out of touch with how people use these services.

Facebook is attempting to expand in scope because they're ambitious, but at the end of the day, they're just a social networking site. As a matter of fact, they're really just a template for people who don't want to go to the trouble of designing their own webpage. Which is a great service, but that's all it is. Oh, and it's easy to link to other people's web pages.

Facebook and social networking are exciting today the same way EBay was in 2000: the medium is the message. You went to EBay because it was novel and fun. Soon enough, Facebook will have reached it's potential the way EBay has.

<comment><USER3> > _I suppose Mark Cuban thinks Facebook is going to turn into a 1991 AOL: a > one-stop shop for all things internet, a lens through which you experience > everything._

For everyone I know that actually uses Facebook [1], this is essentially true. FB users don't do things on the net. They do things on FB. Excursions to sites/services outside of Facebook are the exception.

I've been calling it "AOL all-over-again" for a few years now. (I'm behind the curve, I'm sure; I don't do social networks).

[1] Subtracting out those who use it for professional reasons.

<comment><USER4> Gotta agree on this one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Though I'm not ready to call facebook a fad, or undercut it's significance, I will go out on a limb here and say the way the website works was pretty novel for a while, but it's lacking in innovation.

The ability to check your friends status? Ok, pretty cool. Connect with old HS and college friends? Ok, that's sort of cool too. But more and more I find myself withdrawing from actually participating in the micro of the site, and using it more as a macro tool for my own identity. I don't have a facebook now because I actually use it, or gain much from it, rather I simply have it because, well, everyone else does. And it comes up on Google when people search my name.

In other words it's a part of my general online identity, along with my personal website, twitter, posterous, etc. I'm not saying I use these tools like a lot of others might, but I'm also trying to drive home the point that it's just another of many identity tools that I have at my disposal.

Now I'm not sure about Facebook taking over my complete identity, as in being my de facto online presence, because I have huge issues with the way facebook is going about retaining its control over the data generated from their users.

I think if facebook wants to stay relevant they'll have to keep entering new domains on the web, and certainly they have plans for location-based services, and other stuff down the road.

For the time being now though, the entertainment of watching status updates on my phone, or browsing peoples wall streams just doesn't seem economic to me in terms of building something people would use on the order of a Google search engine. Sure some people may be spending a lot of time on there, but to me it looks more like an illusory fixation with comparing oneself to others than something that I can get real use out of.

(With my Mac I run a business and organize my entire personal and professional life, with Google all of the worlds information is literally at my finger tips, with Facebook I just found out that Stacey's new dog took a leak on the carpet and that Steve thinks avatar was a great movie; there's a big difference there.)

<comment><USER6> As I have related in another HN thread, I actually enjoy the friend-mash-up aspect of Facebook. I am more than twice as old as the median HN participation age (I'm pretty sure), and I have lived in more than one country, so I have friends from various eras of my life and various places. Now on Facebook I post a lot of links (some of which I learn about here on HN, with a hat tip in gratitude) and friends comment about those links, with all sorts of interesting discussions with diverse viewpoints. Friends of mine who have never, ever met one another are good virtual friends as they meet up in my discussion threads. There are even FB friends of my FB friends who have asked me to become directly FB-friended by me (a request I have honored) so that they can get in on all the link postings. This has been a fun and unexpected aspect of FB for me. I block ads on Facebook and all other websites, and I use Facebook Purity to block other FB annoyances. I never, ever play FB games or do anything on FB that directly costs me money. I like the way I can free-ride on FB and enjoy a service monetized by people who have less intellectual ways of having fun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't think Facebook is buyable right now. Consider how wide the PDF of its future values is. There is a chance that Facebook will be bigger than Google. I'm sure many of you have reasons why it won't happen, but it is plausible. It's certainly what Facebook management is shooting for.

Alternatively, Facebook could be out of fashion in 2 years. Don't forget that we work in a fashion industry. It wouldn't even be worth its last post-money valuation.

So the expected value of Facebook lies somewhere in between and that expected value is radically short of management's dreams. They don't need cash and they seem to be executing well. This is not a recipe for strategic acquisition.

I think Facebook will remain private and independent for as long as it can. If they are on a path to success and need more cash, they'll IPO (remember those?). If they keep their user base, but can't scale their monetization, they'll be bought by somebody who can (a search engine). The worst case isn't pretty because they don't have the backstop that has been supporting MySpace through its troubles (music).

<comment><USER8> No they have a better one (connect).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> When was the last time you surfed the net? 5 seconds ago.

Can you remember when you just clicked around looking to discover new sites or a site to occupy your time? Yes, I remember this morning.

Now ask yourself when was the last time you sat on your couch or laid in bed clicking the remote looking for something to watch on TV? I remember last evening quite well.

Finally, how long do you regularly spend on Facebook ? Zero, nada, nuttin'.

How much time do you spend checking out your Wall, your friends' Wall and hopping from profile to profile checking people out? First, I thought the previous question was "finally"...Still, Zero, nada, nuttin'

And, I'm not alone, not by a longshot.

I've heard non-tech news commentators make the mistake that Facebook is somehow a distinct technology than the Internet on which it lives. I think the author of the article is similarly confused. Does he/she see cars as the new freeways?

Facebook loves to try and define itself as "a platform". I guess to see one's self that way, one must deny or ignore the actual platform on which one depends. For the gullible in its ranks, that characterization seems to work well.

</comment><comment><USER10> So, will Facebook destroy the Internet or simply change it's identity? Change it's identity, haha, get it ... ahem... (:P

Personally, I don't like where this is heading. I deactivated my account (can't delete it outright for some reason!) so I should no longer have a presence on facebook. However, this is not the case since I can log back in and my account is instantly re-activated. Whatever I shared on that site previously will always be there.

The privacy concerns are a serious problem and I think people need to critically look at this and decide if this is what they want their Internet experience to be going forward.

<comment><USER6> _I deactivated my account (can't delete it outright for some reason!)_

I haven't tried this myself, but here

<http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=16929680703>

is supposedly advice on how to permanently delete a Facebook account. Maybe some HN participant will do the experiment and report back to us how it goes.

I do know (from my son trying the experiment) that Facebook account deactivation is very rapidly reversible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Google has minimal if any connection to their users."

I think, at the very least, almost every Gmail and Android user would disagree. Not to mention users of search, docs, voice etc. etc.

</comment><comment><USER12> "If you are like most, you kill more time hopping around on Facebook than you do exploring the Net."

Uhhh...not even remotely applicable to me, unless by "the Net" he is referring to a Sandra Bullock movie.

<comment><USER13> The article did say "like most", not "like all".

<comment><USER12> I think it's safe to say more people click "the Net" than Facebook all day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> loup-vaillant > Facebook knows more than all of us like to admit about its users. They have > our personal information […]

People will eventually realize what a dystopia this is. So my guess is that Facebook (and similar services) will become obsolete soon (within a decade or two). Just sell easy to use personal web servers[1] that you just plug into the wall, and they are toast ($99 is much cheaper than my privacy).

[1] By "easy", I mean esier than Facebook itself. By "personal", I mean at home (virtual private hosting is _not_ personal).

<comment><USER14> > _$99 is much cheaper than my privacy_

To you and many of us certainly, but do you really think that's true of the average user? Especially given the tradeoffs (most residential internet connections would be terribly slow and unreliable for such a purpose) it seems very unlikely that the average person, who has only the vaguest understanding of technology and probably hasn't given much thought to their privacy, would be enthusiastic enough about this idea for it to take off.

<comment> loup-vaillant Fixing the asymmetry of our internet connections will require political effort. But we don't need the reliability. We already know how to make suitable backups, like fall-back MX.

"Average user" mostly means "clueless user". This is unacceptable. Everyone should know a minimum, like the difference between a web browser and a search engine. When they do, they will easily see the privacy problems.

I agree $99 is too much for most people. But this is only the current price of a Sheeva plug. I think we can eventually lower it down to $30, which would be more like it.

We have both the hardware and the software. Packaging the whole only takes a dedicated GNU/Linux distribution (or even just a meta-package). So, without the political and teaching issues, Facebook and Gmail could be made obsolete within the year. With them, we'll need a decade. But, to quote Eben Moglen: "It's not that it can't be done".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Microsoft already bought a chunk of Facebook—$240 million worth back in 2007. That purchase gave Facebook an implied valuation of $15 billion.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/25/technology/24cnd- facebook....](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/25/technology/24cnd- facebook.html)</comment>


How to Get Your First 1,000 Customers - <AUTHOR> https://www.backblaze.com/blog/how-to-get-your-first-1000-customers/ <comment><USER2> > There is a fine line between persistence and annoyance. I once had a > journalist write me after we had an announcement that was covered by the > press, "Why didn't you let me know?! I would have written about that!" I had > sent him three emails about the upcoming announcement to which he never > responded.

And that's the reason folks why people follow-up. People might share a deep repulsion towards them and until recently, even I abhorred the idea. But, I have seen people I emailed respond a few weeks after I sent a follow-up—the point when I assumed I am pestering and the other guy is getting infuriated. My email wasn't about selling something, it was a small question around someone else's work but the general principle applies.

I am not courageous—salesman-type courageous—to send more than one follow-up but I have consistently seen people winning big deals in the third or fourth one. It's undeniable that many people will get vexed in the process but there's hardly any salesperson in the world who didn't annoy that many.

<comment><USER3> Yev from Backblaze here -> Gleb (author) and I have both had that (writers missing our emails and then being shocked that they missed a story) and it really does make your heart sink a little bit. We've adjusted our pitch schedules as well based on the writer and how responsive they are (and what their contact preferences are - some like 2 weeks notice, others like 2 days, etc...).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've done PR for startups and this is one of the best, most detailed guides I've seen about how the sausage is made.

I would add:

Getting good PR in premiere outlets will give you so much more than just the first 1,000 customers. It can open the door to all kinds of opportunities, from being invited to speak at the conferences your customers attend, better recruiting, being noticed for partnership and business development deals, an being top-of-mind if you start looking for funding.

Embargoes are a tricky logistical detail, if you're using one, you don't want to leave any room for error. So aside from mentioning it in the pitch, also include something like "Embargoed until 4/13/17 at 8am California time" in stand-out font at the top of any fact sheet, press release, etc. that you share with the journalist and be sure to mention it in all your confirmation emails.

Once you get awesome PR, figure out the best way for it to live on your site going forward. I see lots of startup landing pages these days with logos like TechCrunch, Wall Street Journal, etc across the bottom but no links to said articles. I can understand why, for conversion rate optimization, you may not want to include the links on your landing page. But for ultimate credibility and (possibly SEO juice) consider having a separate section on your site for press where the actual links to the articles can be found.

<comment><USER5> What are a few "premiere outlets"?

<comment><USER4> TechCrunch, Recode, Fortune, NYTimes, Wall Street Journal, Wired, MIT Tech Review, to name a few. Of these TC is the one you would typically go to for announcing your launch or new funding. The others don't tend to cover launches of brand new startups and have a higher bar but there are other angles you might use to pitch them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've always thought that the best way to launch is a Show HN and a reddit post on some related subreddits. Is this a better option for the launch of a productivity app?

Surely a productivity app launch can't be that interesting for news.

<comment><USER7> I've found reddit to be a questionable place to get customers. Traffic, sure, but customers? Not so much. If you want to spike up your traffic for a few hours, post on reddit. But the conversation rates from reddit traffic are a fraction of the rates coming from other sources, in my experience.

<comment><USER6> I've read many posts that suggest your same conclusion, however people seem to have very positive things to say about reddit ads in terms of conversion rate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What is the exact meaning of 'exclusivity' in this context? If I give an editor exclusivity on some piece of information, does it mean that I literally can't publish it anywhere else, including my own website?

(BTW, I'm a happy Backblaze customer since their launch. Thanks guys, you're incredible!)

</comment><comment><USER9> So this is odd. This post is currently sat at 44 points but zero comments?

<comment><USER3> Yev from Backblaze here - sometimes we jump-start the conversation by saying, "Hey, we're monitoring the thread if you want to chat." \- but you beat me to it, I hadn't even noticed it was posted until I saw a tweet a few minutes ago by a HackerBot :D

<comment><USER3> Also it's kind of a long post, maybe folks are reading it before commenting? The title doesn't really give too much away :D

<comment><USER10> Confirm.

Sometimes though when things are really interesting but long I'll go back, upvote and then continue reading to prevent it from dropping off the page.

This is especially true if it is a story from /newest

Also with a few web sites I _might_ upvote it first and then read it :-|

<comment><USER11> > Also with a few web sites I might upvote it first and then read it :-|

I can neither confirm nor deny that I do this too but I can say that I think it makes sense to do this, and I would go as far as to say that I think it's _healthy_ for the HN community that stories get upvoted by people who have not yet read the story in full, as long as it doesn't happen too much -- while a story might turn out to be lacking or even factually incorrect in some way I think there is opportunity for interesting discussion to be had as long as the _topic_ at hand is interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is yev from backblaze around?

<comment><USER3> Always...though HackerNews has a horrendous system of notifying me when I'm mentioned (non) so sometimes I miss these :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've had a surprising amount of traffic using a simple referral program.

<comment><USER14> Can you elaborate on how you have implemented this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Related soft piece on getting your first 100 users:

[https://medium.com/@mobitar/how-to-get-your- first-100-users-...](https://medium.com/@mobitar/how-to-get-your- first-100-users-9f9d21e1b6e6)</comment>


Functional approaches to dependency injection (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/posts/dependency-injection-1/ <comment><USER2> Can someone clarify if this author's methods are actually inline with the core principles of functional programming?

I've been doing OOPs from very early in my career (I run into FP from time to time but never as a core of my own work), and much of the example he's implementing here seems like make-work simply to enforce a specific paradigm. Am I missing something?

For example, at first his concepts seem brilliant, until you get to the refactoring steps, which feel painful.

Is this the end result of high-level extreme veteran coders use of FP? With OOPs, simple inheritance & factories seems like it would solve all the dependency issues he's addressing.

<comment><USER3> I've always found ScottW to be pretty pragmatic. If Martin Odersky favors multiparadigm programming that nonetheless leans toward object-oriented methods, Scott Wlaschin favors leaning toward functional methods as a default.

As far as whether he's in line with "core principles of functional programming", that's maybe a phrase that's well-designed to start a fight. Even more so than in object-oriented languages, different ways of doing things tend to cluster around different functional languages. In broad strokes, what he's doing seems fine coming from a F# developer. I think it would translate well enough to Haskell, though I'm nowhere near as experienced in that language. In Clojure, on the other hand, I'm guessing you'd want to do something completely different.

</comment></comment><comment> default-kramer > The downside of course, is that there are now five extra parameters for the > function, which looks painful. (Of course, the equivalent method in the OO > version also had these five dependencies, but they were implicit). In my > opinion though, this pain is actually helpful!

I'm definitely in favor of making dependencies explicit, but I wish there was a typed language that allowed me to avoid mentioning "less important" dependencies when I want to. Logging is a perfect example:

        function log(msg: string) =
            ImplicitDependencies<ILogInfo>().Write(msg)

Let's imagine that "ImplicitDependencies" is some special keyword. The compiler would give the "log" function a type of (string -> (implicit ILogInfo) -> unit). But my code is allowed to say that its type is (string -> unit) if it wants. Now if I use this "log" function in UpdateCustomerProfile, then UpdateCustomerProfile gets an (implicit ILogInfo) parameter too.

The compiler would also give me some way to designate a function as "root level" meaning that all implicit dependencies must be resolved. I'd imagine something like Racket's parameterize for this. ([https://docs.racket- lang.org/guide/parameterize.html](https://docs.racket- lang.org/guide/parameterize.html))

The idea is, most of the time, I don't want to keep mentioning logging in my type signatures. I just want to silently kick it up the call stack.

<comment><USER3> This is where I start to like Scala's traits. Being able to declare a class "with logging" and automatically get a pre-configured loger handle with no extra ceremony needed, is really convenient.

It's also unprincipled as heck, from both an object-oriented and a functional perspective. I think my alignment in the logging department might be chaotic good.

<comment> default-kramer Nice, I don't do much Scala so I never thought about using traits for that! Is that a common pattern?

It seems similar to traditional OO dependency injection, except without all the ceremony of adding a constructor parameter and corresponding class member to hold it.

<comment><USER3> I'm not entirely sure how common it is.

It's a case of multiple implementation inheritance, so I could see a lot of people balking at it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For languages that support monkey patching you don't dependency injection.

A lot of the design patterns I used to adore and look at as if they were rare gems in a sea of bad code. Over time my opinions have changed. Many patterns are good, but I don't really like to think of those as patterns.

A pattern implies repetition. Something that you can used each time you have a situation that warrents it. In my opinion, this openly contradicts "Don't repeat yourself".

So I think we should start trading design patterns for simple and well designed languages. No code always beats good code.

<comment><USER3> > For languages that support monkey patching you don't dependency injection.

What am I missing here? We've _got_ to be working with different definitions of the term "dependency injection" or something.

Using monkey patching as a complete replacement for dependency injection seems absolutely bonkers to me. The codebase I'm imagining when I here that is one where no module's run-time behavior can be understood by simply reading its source code, because every single one of its run-time dependencies is being monkey patched in from some where else entirely. It's also one where, to take the same class and instantiate two different copies with two different sets of run-time dependencies, I'd have to do something wacky with the monkey patching instead of just creating them with different constructor arguments.

<comment><USER4> I know what you're talking about, I realize that's how most people think of as monkey patching. That's what I thought at first. But when I tried structuring a python project with Dependency Injection it seemed overly complex.

Instead of just making modules I had to put everything in a class. I had to write code to decide what things are being injected where. It didn't look like python anymore, so I stopped doing it, and I've never had problems, and I've written much less code.

I only ever use monkey patching for testing. People talk about how it makes it easier to switch out other implementations, but in reality it's easier. You just import a different module.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not once have I ever seen a codebase where OO 'design patterns' have led to ease of development or modularity, every time they have made development worse. These principles should be kept as far away from functional programming as possible.

</comment><comment><USER6> If F# had taken OCaml's module system, functors would be the obvious way to do dependency injection, and would have been supported out-of-the-box.

I realize there were difficulties in integrating with the rest of the .NET platform/ecosystem, but it's really too bad that the module system was left out, as it's one of the best parts about OCaml.

<comment><USER7> What can you achieve using OCaml modules that you can't do using objects with a constructor in F#?

<comment><USER6> There are a few advantages of modules. One is that they can encapsulate types along-side functions/values. Also, it can be advantageous that functors are applied at compile time.

The really cool one though is abstract types. You can distinguish types purely in the type system, with no change to run-time representation, using module signatures that don't specify the concrete type of a type entry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sadly there has never been Part 2.

<comment><USER9> It does seem like most of his efforts were redirected into his book lately, which is understandable. I picked it up a while back and have to say I'd recommend it.</comment></comment>


Online usability testing platform-UXtweak. Feedback wanted - <AUTHOR> https://www.uxtweak.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Start-up. Online unmoderated task-oriented UX studies, user recordings with advanced filters in search, tree testing, card sorting, prototype testing(BETA). It also has solutions for recruiting real users on your website and reward feature to motivate them.

Please, check it out. Any feedback and tips for our platform and how to get it out to the world will be very appreciated.</comment>


Create PE/VC investor list in 3 clicks - <AUTHOR> https://privateequitylist.com <comment><USER2> Great website! Up-to-date investor base and very user-friendly

</comment><comment><USER2> Great website! Up-to-date investor base and very user friendly</comment>


Ask HN: What are some ways of proving yourself to a startup? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a college senior, business development/marketing/sales background with a couple NY based startups and I'll be relocating to the Bay Area in May. I have two favorite startups (both YC funded) that I am extremely intrigued by. These products/services get my heart pumping and I don't want to work for anybody else. I know I can help them grow (I've done it for much less interesting value propositions).
I told them both I'd work for low/no pay remotely to prove myself before I relocate. I had a Skype chat set-up for one (which I got blown off) and I gave my cell phone number to the other who hasn't since called me.
I'm thinking about doing this: what if I sell/market their product and show them I am capable? Send them a list of customers I found for them, it would be like free lead generation? One company is B2C so this would be a little bit more difficult. My biggest issue is I couldn't approach these prospects as working for the company since this would be unethical. But maybe I can work around it?
What do you think? <comment><USER2> Read Tristan Walker's letter to the founders of Foursquare: <http://justtristan.com/post/7696394458/two-years-ago-today>

</comment><comment><USER3> It might help if you imagine yourself as the startup and them as your target market. What are their needs? Where's the pain? You suggest lead generation but maybe they have enough leads and the bottleneck lies somewhere else.

Don't be afraid to be honest and ask them directly, although not in a vague "how can I help" way. The more you research about their needs, the more confident you can be that you really are a good fit for them. If you produce some tangible results, hopefully they'll feel the same way.

I'm no expert but in my experience employers value what a candidate has done more than what they say they can do.

</comment><comment><USER4> You've got your foot in the door so that's awesome. I think the direction you are thinking of is correct. Try to run a small experiment for the B2C company for customer acquisition. Say spend 20 bucks on google ads and measure the results. Run other types of marketing campaign to get customers. Whether you fail or succeed, send the founders the results(it will help them save time by not working on a channel that doesn't work). This way they see that you actually give a damn about them. Remember: You don't need permission to help.

</comment><comment><USER5> > I told them both I'd work for low/no pay remotely to prove myself before I > relocate.

Interns get paid more than "low/no pay". I can't know this for sure, but that point might have came across as "desperate for experience" rather than "excited about [company] in specific".

Don't undersell yourself; and as others have pointed out -- build something to show to the founders (prototype, experiment, or just something they would find neat).

</comment><comment><USER6> I think you're choice of actions are perfect.

I wouldn't worry much about not having an official company name behind you - I've done this type of product validation a few times for my own ideas. In many cases, the customer is so focused on the value proposition that the company name is irrelevant. Again, it depends on the size of the transaction and whether its a B2B or B2C.

Should be fun, good luck!

</comment><comment><USER7> A good way to get their attention might be to build a complementary offering, perhaps even competitive offering yourself. If you are so passionate about the product, you should be able to hack it up quickly. These days pretty much anything can be built for a pittance of $ and time!</comment>


Making $114 a day mining Bitcoin in Jakarta - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/16/blockchain-smashers/

<comment><USER2> How much did he spend on the 105 GPUs?

From this calculator: [http://dustcoin.com/](http://dustcoin.com/), you need about 60,000 KH/S to make $114 a day (excluding power cost). One of the most efficient $/hashrate GPUs for litecoin mining is the ATI 7950 at about $210 a piece and ~600 KH/s. 105 * 600 KH/s = ~60000 KH/s = ~$114, so it works out. That's $20,000. So if you spend $20,000 you can buy yourself a job that pays $114 a day. It will take 6 months just to break even. Better hope the difficulty hasn't increased enough in that time to make your GPUs irrelevant (hint: it probably will).

Keep in mind that I was very generously excluding the very significant cost of power, the very significant cost of all the motherboards/cpu/ram/power supplies to run those GPUs, and the power and space required to cool them. Realistically we're looking at more like $50k.

>"Currently I'm making about 60 litecoin per day," he said. "I've kept 95% of the mining profit since April and once the major exchanges start accepting LTC, others will follow, and price is expected to soar. So that 60 LTC could turn into $1,500."

This is absurd. If he thinks 60 LTC will be worth $1,500, he should spend the $20,000 he spent on GPUs on LTC instead. He'd turn $20,000 into $250,000 with no work required (another hint: assuming you can turn $20k into $250k in 6 months with no work as a sure thing is also absurd).

<comment><USER3> The returns on BTC are atrocious, however, selling shovels to this industry seems wise.

He'd make far more money if he wrote an e-book on how to cram 105 GPUs into your apartment to mine BTC.

<comment><USER4> an illustrated e-book. I would pay to see how an apartment houses 105 GPU

<comment><USER5> Probably best attempted in somewhere like Siberia rather than Indonesia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> FTA: > Electricity in Jakarta, Indonesia costs three cents per kilowatt hour. That's 30 cents less than power in the US and Europe.

Uh...Power in the US costs 30+ cents/kWh? In which part of the country??

In Ontario, Canada, the price is about 6.7 cents/kWh during the night and peaks at 12.4 cents/kWh in the afternoon.

[http://www.ontarioenergyboard.ca/OEB/Consumers/Electricity/E...](http://www.ontarioenergyboard.ca/OEB/Consumers/Electricity/Electricity+Prices)

<comment><USER7> The article certainly seems wrong. Other than Hawaii which is an obvious outlier (36.61) the most expensive mainland electricity in the US is in California at 16.71.

[http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm...](http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_5_6_a)

In the Europe the story is quite similar. The country with the most expensive electricity is Denmark at 29.5 but most vary between 10 and 20 cents.

[http://www.energy.eu/](http://www.energy.eu/)

<comment><USER8> It is wrong. The links you provide seem to be more accurate. I write software that deals with monitoring power (powerhouse dynamics). We have customers in a lot of states, and to estimate their costs they have to input the cost per/kWh.

In the US power costs usually between 8-12 cents per kilowatt hour. There are extra costs if your commercial which can add 10-20%.

We've found that power cost, especially commercial power is oddly hard to estimate with "demand charges" and rates varrying with time... There are a few companies compiling this cost data in detail which we'll likely be buying soon.

<comment><USER9> I know in the Bay Area Commercial rates charged by PG&E are lower than Residential. Never understood why.

Actually, our electricity in the SF Area is very expensive. I don't know why. One half of our power is from Dams. I think it's 1/2.

Actually, I think they charge us so much is because they know we will pay.

To all the Élon Musk fans, I wonder what your PG&E bill will be?

While I'm on this subject--yea, I'm an electrician, don't heat your house with elecrtic heaters. They will really eat up the kilowatts, and look into Radiant hydronic heating if updating. My bill is 1/4 of what it used to be. You can install yourself, if determined.

<comment><USER10> I learned this the expensive, hard way.

I had a studio in Paris that only had electric heat. 2 months after it started getting really cold I got the electric bill, $250. After that I shut off the heater at the breaker, bought a portable heater and a jug (20L) of kerosene for $80. That jug lasted 2 winters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sounds like the only people making money off of bitcoin mining are the manufacturers of these increasingly more powerful ASIC mining hardware. Once one gets developed and released, it's only a matter of time until it costs more in electricity than it's mining. Then, lo and behold, they're ready with an even faster/more energy-efficient one.

<comment><USER12> When the gold rush happens, sell shovels!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> $114/day is actually a very good income income in Indonesia. For comparison, fresh grads are paid around $200 - $1000 a month (excl. bonuses) depending on the company (better pay for established, international corp).

The only problem I see is the reliability of the electricity provider itself. There are frequent surges and parts of Jakarta are known to experience regular rolling blackouts.

</comment><comment><USER14> Article title is wrong, these are Litecoins not Bitcoins.

This might pay off mining 60LTC per day and hoarding them. The guy who started Litecoin now works for Coinbase, which may adopt Litecoin and will no doubt start a gigantic speculation bubble this Indonesian dude can cash out with [http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/08/litecoin/](http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/08/litecoin/)

<comment><USER15> If Litecoin goes up in value, he is far better off just using all that money to buy Litecoins now when they are cheap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> $114 a day is equivalent of $14.25 working 8 hrs/day. I think there are many ways to make $14/hr without investing in expensive equipment (which will also need to be replaced eventually running that hot). Actually, person that is capable of building such thing and keeping it working could probably easily fetch much more than $14/hr.

<comment><USER17> Ah, but what does $114 a day buy you in Jakarta? If it pays for your housing and expenses, that's not a bad way to spend an extended beach vacation...

Edit: Also, depending on how you want to look at it, the hour value is a bit off. $114/day * 7 days/week / 40 hours/week = $19.95.

<comment><USER18> Also, it doesn't exclude the option of a day job + the $114 you get "for free" once you've set up the farm.

<comment><USER16> As far as I understood from the article, this thing is not set up and forget affair, it requires maintenance. I imagine if you leave it and some cooler breaks, it could very well cause a fire or melt down completely.

<comment> daniel-cussen Not really. If one cooler breaks, the card shuts off on its own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Indonesia mainly runs on thermal power, it is kind of sad that those crypto currencies indirectly encourage making profits out of cheap labor and the planet itself.

source wikipedia: [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_Ind...](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_Indonesia)

<comment><USER20> Err...

If Indonesia uses thermal power then using the electricity generated from it has little negative environmental impact.

Additionally I'm unclear where anything is "making profits from cheap labor". The miner benefits from the low cost of living in Jakarta, but making that out to be a bad thing is like complaining that housing in Kansas isn't as expensive as New York.

<comment><USER21> > If Indonesia uses thermal power then using the electricity generated from it > has little negative environmental impact.

Thermal as in burning fossil fuels, not geothermal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> '105 GPU system ' it'll be redundant is about a week or two when ASICs hit hard

<comment><USER23> He's mining litecoin which isn't easily mined by asics. Any GPU bitcoin mining is already very unprofitable.

<comment><USER24> Actually, ASIC mining bitcoin is fairly unprofitable at the moment :/ A 60GH/s BFL machine nets 0.11 BTC (about $15/day at current exchange rates) right now.

Bitcoin difficulty has risen MASSIVELY lately.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> We run BitcoinASICHosting.com to provide mining hardware co-location and management.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is part of the fundamental flaw of bitcoin. It privileges the wealthy who can afford ever-faster and ever-more-expensive computer hardware.

<comment><USER27> You don't need to mine in order to use Bitcoin.

Mining is a business, many businesses are capital intensive.

<comment><USER26> I never said you need to mine, but wealthy people who can afford ASIC miners and the energy they require have a much easier time acquiring BTC.

<comment><USER28> Having enough money that you can invest it (in hardware or business processes) to make more money for yourself is an advantage over those people who barely have enough money to live on.

I don't consider this a design flaw in the concept of money itself. The same goes for BTC.</comment></comment></comment></comment>