Ask HN: How come there is no Kickstarter for investing? - <AUTHOR> I am willing to invest some money into risky startup-stage businesses. Naturally enough, I would like to invest in as many projects as I can in order to diversify my risks. Sometimes I am willing to invest/donate into a company that could serve an important social role or bring change without actually expecting profits. I suspect there are plenty of people like me.
The success of the Kickstarter site is stunning. I would like to see something similar for investment projects.
I am wondering why there is no such project. <comment><USER2> Securities regulations. As soon as you're issuing stock, there are many legal requirements, and you can't just advertise/issue stock to the general public without the same complexity that accompanies being listed on big stock exchanges.

If all you want from an 'investment' is warm fuzzies and perhaps some token product/service or swag – like Kickstarter campaigns offer – then Kickstarter itself can be the Kickstarter of donating to risky startup projects.

If you're an accredited investor and savvy about angel investing, you could see about joining a dealflow-matcher/community of angels like AngelList (<http://angel.co/>).

<comment><AUTHOR> There are many ways to raise money without selling company's shares: specifically, issuing securities (bonds are the simplest examples). There are many legal issues indeed but I still see none that cannot be resolved.

Example from profounder: [https://www.profounder.com/term_sheets/profounder_public- rev...](https://www.profounder.com/term_sheets/profounder_public-rev- share_term_sheet.pdf)

The distribution of commitment (money and time) vs number of people who are willing to give it for a startup project has a valuable tale that is underestimated in my view.

It seems to me that there is a big market for such projects and it is an opportunity for someone alert out there.

<comment><USER3> Even issuing debt (i.e. loans) still falls under the securities regulation just like equity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There sort of is: Profounder. More info here: [http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/30/profounder-launches-to- help...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/30/profounder-launches-to-help-small- businesses-crowdsource-fundraising) and interesting thread of whether this is actually legal here: [http://www.quora.com/Is-ProFounder-in-violation-of-any- secur...](http://www.quora.com/Is-ProFounder-in-violation-of-any-securities- laws-with-their-crowdsourced-model-for-funding-startups)

<comment><USER5> looks more like a microfinance operation like prosper or lendingclub than actual investment. profits above and beyond repayment go to a nonprofit.

<comment><USER6> There are two ways business can raise money on ProFounder, either through a Private Raise or a Public Raise. Private Raises do involve entrepreneurs offering securities (based around sharing a % of revenues), while Public Raises involve sharing revenues as well, but with the actual financial gain (above and beyond the original investment amount) going to a nonprofit. So, yes, investors can make "actual investments" on the site! More here: <http://www.profounder.com/about/how_it_works>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's nothing stopping you from entertaining pitches from smart folks on Hacker News. Hell, I'd be happy to go first, if you invited it.

The nice thing about this strategy for you would be:

\- even the dumb jerks on HN are generally really smart and working on cool projects

\- taking initiative will make the story about you, which will bring you credibility and a higher quality deal flow

If you end up posting an "Ask HN: Why should I seed invest in your start-up?" let me know, and I'd bite.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's against federal law. To invest in private securities you need to be an "accredited investor" in the eyes of the SEC, or an insider.

</comment><comment><USER9> We're working on a solution for this. However, the initial phase will only work in Europe as there is no need (except in the UK) for the investors to be "accredited". This venturebonsai.com service is aimed for companies looking for less than 1M€, with a share issue where individual persons can invest starting at 5000€ each. So in order to get 500K€ each investor investing 5000€, you need 100 investors. We actually have implemented the "EU regulation model" in order to take care of all the regulation related issues (like not offering the shares for more than 99 investors per country) and alike. Our blog is currently at venturebonsai.info. We call this (equity) crowdfunding, even though there are many intrepretations for what "crowdfunding" should and should not be...

</comment><comment><USER10> I think ownership and time are the major impediments. As an investor in a company, you're going to invest more than the small amounts that change hands on kickstarter, which will probably mean you want some degree of assurance in return for your money. So there's the equity part, which could be tricky to try to automate. And time wise, the projects that come up on kickstarter seem to be much shorter term than a startup would usually be, which just underscores the need for equity as a more formal commitment.

I'm sure there are ways around these issues, and I think it would be great if someone (you?) sat down and figured them out. But these are the reasons why it hasn't already been done, imho. If you can make it work, I'll definitely use it!

</comment><comment><USER11> It might have to do with the IRS definition of an 'Accredited Investor'.

<http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=1730480>

</comment><comment><USER12> I think it's more because you're a minority. Investment projects like this work because of the number of people investing at once. All invest a little and little is lost if it fails.

Kickstarter projects are cool and people love the idea of investing in something where they actually get to own a shiny gadget if it succeeds. Most startups are not and the thing that people own can take a long-long time to reap any value.

</comment><comment><USER13> It seems to me the challenges would be that a) it'd be a mecca for fraud b) attract people who shouldn't be making such risky investments c) make it hard for startups to stay under 500 investors for public disclosure purposes and d) be sued into the ground due to a) and b)

</comment><comment><USER14> Companies can have a very limited number of investors before they run foul of a different set of laws. So it does not make any sense to take small amounts.

How much are you thinking of investing?

</comment><comment><USER3> What about a Kickstarter community of only Accredited Investors? Sure, this would be very tough given the requirements... but not impossible.

<comment><USER15> I worked on a project like this a while back. The heavy regulations eventually broke the whole concept. We had built a system for startups to pitch their businesses, and the investors would have been limited to accredited investors (those with > $1M or who make > $200K/year for two years). They would have bid for startups in a Dutch auction format, like the way Google went public.

However, to do this you need to be not just a startup, but an NASD certified "broker dealer." This imposes a couple things that software startups aren't good at:

1\. You need $500K in the bank, just because of regulations. This means you need to raise much more than usual.

2\. Several founders/early employees need to study for and pass Series 7 exams, which is what you need if you're a stockbroker. At least one person also needs to study for a similar test for brokerage management. Coding + learning to be a stock brokerage was not easy!

3\. The associated legal costs were extremely high.

Kickstarter of course avoids all this by not dealing with any transfer of ownership so they don't need to worry about the government. They just sell access to creative folks, which is a good idea.

PS - Angel investors and VCs _hate_ this concept, which makes it much harder to raise money. We brought it in front of all the biggies and were well connected, and each one argued about the personal value of their involvement, which may or may not be true.

<comment><USER3> Awesome analysis. Honest to god, I get pitched this idea of a "social network for startups to get funded by accredited investors" at least once a month. A friend wanted me to develop this application for her, and was convinced every investor would be all over this. I wasn't able to show her the light, but I agree: Angels would hate this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Could you do this in Asia, or Ireland?</comment>


Ask HN: Free options for backing up database dump(MySQL) periodically - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Navicat, has a backup feature that you can schedule. I think Mysql workbench has a back up feature but I don't know if you can schedule it.

<comment><USER2> sorry, Navicat isn't free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Persona xtrabackup</comment>


Snowdrop – The Game Engine Behind the Division - <AUTHOR> http://www.polygon.com/2014/3/19/5524924/the-division-video-snowdrop-game-engine <comment><USER2> Missing "(2014)" in the title. Snowdrop has been known about for ages, there are demo's of it on Youtube... and it doesn't look all that good these days (my opinion).

<comment><AUTHOR> I was impressed. What do you think looks better in 2016?</comment></comment>


Hipchat-Maker Atlassian Prices IPO at $21 - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/12/09/hipchat-maker-atlassian-prices-ipo-at-21/ <comment><USER2> Most people don't know Atlassian - they know JIRA.

</comment><comment><USER3> hipchat-maker? really! they acquired that product. i think atlassian is more known for JIRA, etc.</comment>


Editorial: Dear Nokia, you cannot be serious - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/22/editorial-dear-nokia-you-cannot-be-serious/ <comment><USER2> MeeGo has a good chance of making Nokia a _lot_ of money and they really don't want to talk about why.

Nokia has been losing wealthy customers for years, but they dominate the market in Africa and Asia. Symbian seems hopelessly out of date, but it's also very frugal, which allows Nokia to cram a lot of functionality onto very cheap hardware.

If you look at the market from the bottom up rather than the top down, you see what MeeGo is for. It's not there to take on the likes of Android and iOS, that's why Nokia have gone WP7 for that market. It's designed as an aspirational upgrade for S60 users. That's prime territory, for a number of reasons.

Nokia are the only non-Shanzai manufacturer to really understand developing markets. The Nokia 1100 isn't just the biggest selling mobile phone ever, it's the biggest selling consumer electronics device, having sold over 250m units. The killer features of that handset are a really bright torch, a dustproof keypad and 400 hours of battery life.

The N9 hardware is outdated by design. The Cortex A8 that powers it is a relatively very cheap part. The N9 is a high-end handset in other respects, but that is entirely consistent with Nokia's model. Expect to see a feature- stripped version of the N9 shortly, with a plastic chassis, cheap LCD, basic camera and so on. The early adopters pay for the R&D, allowing Nokia to launch the cheap version at a killer price. Look at the E71 and E63 for an example of this in action.

Nokia are playing a much cleverer long game than anyone gives them credit for. They have more brand equity than all other handset manufacturers combined, albeit mainly amongst very poor customers. Nokia's future success won't be found by beating Apple, it will be found by beating the Shanzai boys.

<comment><USER3> I often read on HN that Nokia has an edge in developing markets.

But guess what was voted the "coolest brand" in a May 2011 survey of South African youth? Blackberry[1]! Any self respecting geek could have/should have bought an Android handset, or an iPhone. But the vast majority of my friends family are on BBM, so I got one. It is the new Facebook, or Mxit[2]. After getting BBM, I was amazed by how many people have Blackberrys. My sister traded her new iPhone for a BB, after realising how isolated she was. My granny, and my maid[3] both have Blackberrys. If Nokia had a special insight into developing markets, they would have realised that they are vulnerable in the messaging space and launched a messaging app long ago.

[1][http://www.newstime.co.za/ScienceandTech/Generation_Next_Nam...](http://www.newstime.co.za/ScienceandTech/Generation_Next_Names_BlackBerry_South_Africa%E2%80%99s_Coolest_Brand/26027/)

[2][http://thenextweb.com/africa/2011/06/14/why-mobile-social- ne...](http://thenextweb.com/africa/2011/06/14/why-mobile-social-network-mxit- is-twice-as-big-as-facebook-in-south-africa/)

[3]The average middle class South African family can indeed afford a full-time domestic servant

<comment><USER2> Nokia isn't trying to win you over - they're going after your maid.

<comment><USER3> Which is why I pointed out that my maid has a Blackberry as well. And the kids who voted for Blackberry as the coolest brand are probably largely in a similar demographic to my maid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've always thought that Meego would be a much better 3rd platform than WP7. Meego is a much better competitor to Android than WP7 is. Meego can go in the same places Android can go because of its opensource and free nature. It can be on everything and built by "anyone" just like Android. WP7 on the other hand can only be used on mobile phones, and even then only by manufacturers that either want to pay the license fee, or are "allowed" by Microsoft to use it (see the case of Microsoft allowing only certain manufacturers to use Windows 8).

It's a shame that Nokia won't give their best to make Meego succeed, because that would mean it could hurt WP7's adoption. Also, I'd rather see 2 of the top 3 platforms being open source, than 2 proprietary ones. I think it would be for the best for all of us.

<comment><USER5> Actually I think just the opposite. Meego is a poor competitor to Android, because of how similar they are. In fact Meego today looks too much like the Samsung skin on Android (it would be funny if Samsung sued Nokia over trade dress).

There's no reason to get a Meego device over an Android device. But plenty of reason to get Android over Meego, at least today.

Whereas with Windows Phone, it is fundamentally different than Android. There's a lot of reason to pick WP over Android (and vice-versa). Nokia can exploit that space for at least a few years -- at which point Meego might be ready to really differentiate itself.

<comment><USER6>
        There's no reason to get a Meego device over an Android
        device. But plenty of reason to get Android over Meego,
        at least today.

I'll be the first to admit I'm a highly atypical case, but this certainly isn't true for me. I want a UNIX userland on my phone, and for that Maemo/MeeGo is pretty much the only game in town.

<comment><USER7> I'm with you all the way, though I'm neither your typical user. I'm most definitely getting the N9 as soon as I can, and I really hope Meego survives. If nothing else I hope the community steps up and keeps it alive, while Nokia (or somebody else) if nothing else continues to provide hardware.I had nothing but Nokia phones from 1997-2010, but my last phone was an HTC, and unless Nokia keeps Meego alive, I'm pretty sure the N9 when I get it will be my last Nokia. It's been some enjoyable 13 years...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As they transition into their first act as handset hired guns, Nokia produce a sexy piece of industrial design featuring _the OS which caused them to finally throw in the towel_ , in a form so simple they couldn't screw it up.

And they didn't.

And they may have accidentally produced the second most interesting phone of the year? ...which also happens to be a dead end.

The N9 would be underpowered if it were released today; the trick where videos continue playing as they're swiped into the multitasking ether is cute, but time will tell how well it can perform those tricks when it's been piloted for a few days (or months) by a careless human without so much as a reboot, especially as compared to the dual-core, spec'd-out superphones it will have to compete against this Fall/Holiday.

Also, something something apps. Even if you _only need 10 of them_. I'm in the "you need the ecosystem to draw the developers to make the two or more third- party apps you give a damn about" camp.

All that notwithstanding, aesthetically and (to the extent that I can infer anything of value from the video demos up now) in terms of ui/ux execution, this thing looks really good.

Physically, it somehow looks as just I would expect of an object which, when slid across the surface of another, would cause music (or anything else) to come out of the second object. Even if it's an unexpected hit, in 5 years it'll still probably look like a 3303. But for now I think it looks more like the future than any computer we've carried in our pockets to date.

Regardless of the quality of the software experience, the hardware execution makes me feel like Nokia is positioned well in the role they're assuming. It actually makes me wish they'd compete directly against HTC/Samsung on Android as well, although admittedly I have no idea when, if ever, their agreement with msft would allow them to do such a thing.

If I could ignore the part of me which is fairly confident they'll release a slight variation on this running WP7 within the same general timescale that the N9 is on the market and shift most of their resources/support in that direction, I may actually have considered purchasing a Nokia in 2011 or 2012, something I would not have assumed at any point in the last 3 or 4 years.

</comment><comment><USER9> In February, Tomi Ahonen compared dropping MeeGo for WP7 to Microsoft in the 80s dropping the first version of Windows a few months before release, and going for Mac OS. Now I think he was right. I guess I'll just hold on to my 2330.

[http://communities- dominate.blogs.com/brands/2011/02/first-a...](http://communities- dominate.blogs.com/brands/2011/02/first-analysis-of-nokia-microsoft-alliance- wow-this-is-good-for-microsoft.html)

<comment><USER10> This is nothing like Microsoft dropping Windows. This is like IBM dropping OS/2.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Have Nokia actually committed to dumping MeeGo? It seems like if it achieves unexpected success there should be room to course correct.

For example, OS/2 was supposed to be Microsoft's future in the late 80s, and Windows was a stopgap. It wasn't even clear there would be a Windows 3.0 at all, until a couple of developers secretly took on the task of getting Windows running in protected mode ([http://blogs.msdn.com/b/larryosterman/archive/2005/02/02/365...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/larryosterman/archive/2005/02/02/365635.aspx)) .

<comment><USER12> No, they never said they would dump MeeGo. They said they would be dumping Symbian, and left MeeGo as a research project for "future disruption". Of course, they have stated to fully commit to Windows Phone.

Recently they have been backtracking a bit and promised to keep updating/supporting Symbian until 2016, but the plans for MeeGo are unclear. However, they have stated that they will continue providing OTA updates for the N9, but that doesn't really mean anything.

I'm sure they don't really know the place for MeeGo right now, especially with the pressure from MS and the current success of N9.

<comment><USER11> I don't think it's necessarily incoherent to keep both around as this might give them a way to more easily try out ideas without whatever overhead of having to fit into the MS platform. In the future there might be some degree of convergence, e.g. Microsoft will probably eventually open up the marketplace to native code (maybe at the same time they move to an NT Windows kernel) and Nokia could port Qt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Except the N9 doesn't use MeeGo, it uses Maemo. Harmattan is just the release that begins the transition to MeeGo.

<comment><USER14> You're right [0], but I think it's too much to expect the tech press to make this distinction. Does it really matter if the N9 uses MeeGo or a version of Maemo that is compatible with the MeeGo APIs? The bottom line is that Nokia has a compelling smartphone platform other than WP7.

[0] [http://sf2011.meego.com/program/sessions/harmattan-meego- com...](http://sf2011.meego.com/program/sessions/harmattan-meego-community)

<comment><USER13> Ah, I agree with that,but there are people lambasting nokia for not sticking with meego since it appears so good, when it's actually maemo.

<comment><USER15> It's also relevant because there's people lambasting Nokia for abandoning Maemo and wasting a couple of years on Meego with little to show for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> How much of the software on the N9 is open source?

<comment><USER17> The MeeGo platform is pretty open source. You can see the components the N9 uses here: [http://harmattan- dev.nokia.com/unstable/beta/Fremantle_Updat...](http://harmattan- dev.nokia.com/unstable/beta/Fremantle_Update7_vs_Harmattan_Beta_content_comparison.html) (lots of cool stuff if you're a Linux geek).

Nokia's "UX" and built in apps, however, are not open source.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> They even have a version with a keyboard: The N950

But they refuse to sell it. This looks like Stephen Elop tries to ruin it for us to help Microsoft.

</comment><comment><USER19> Isn't the fact that they're using Meego for this phone and instant admission of the inferiority of the WP7 platform?

</comment><comment><USER20> Does anyone really believe Nokia's actual product will look like that demo? I kinda recall this not happening quite a few times in the past.. (n97 anyone?)

<comment><USER12> Are you serious? How could they fake this? <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LphiRFvd40I>

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Isn't Samsung still holding on to Meego?

<comment><USER22> Samsung has their own Linux-based mobile OS: <http://bada.com/></comment></comment>


Mammoth Pirates: In Russia's Arctic north, a new kind of gold rush is under way - <AUTHOR> http://www.rferl.org/fullinfographics/infographics/the-mammoth-pirates/27939865.html <comment><USER2> Hi folks, I produced this project. Happy to answer any questions you might have!</comment>


Google Express plans to shut down its two delivery hubs, revamp the service - <AUTHOR> http://recode.net/2015/08/19/google-express-plans-to-shut-down-its-two-delivery-hubs/

<comment><USER2> Is there a good place to find info on all of Google's acquisitions and shuttered services? I think it might make for some interesting visualizations.

</comment><comment><USER3> Damn, I use them for Costco all the time.</comment>


Silicon Valley startups rein in spending and prepare for layoffs - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/2016/02/11/silicon-valley-start-ups-rein-in-spending-and-prepare-for-layoffs.html <comment><USER2> I found this particular quote from the article interesting.

> Margaret Quigley, 27, a techie with some coding experience, is on the hunt > for a job in San Francisco.

> Quigley, who previously worked at a popular consumer start-up, has been job > hunting for five months. She recently rejected one start-up's offer, a one- > to two-month tryout — without pay. Quigley said she has also rejected > multiple sales job offers and an offer that was in the right field but came > in too low.

I'm sorry but... what? Not everyone can do software development. This bit makes it seem like any person who is considered a techie can now land a cushy job.

If you don't know what you're doing, expect really bad offers. Maybe take an internship and make a name for yourself. I had to work basically minimum wage for about six months at my first startup gig and that propelled me to what I'm doing today. Not sure what that bit was about.

> It's a tough time to be job hunting in Silicon Valley, and things are about > to get a lot harder for individuals with certain skills.

I just got a job in the Bay Area so again, I don't think these are valid points in this article.

<comment> FLUX-YOU >If you don't know what you're doing, expect really bad offers.

An offer for a one/two-month tryout without pay has nothing to do with their skills. That's just someone trying to get some cheap labor.

<comment><USER3> Knowing what I make now I would consider 3 months without pay nothing to have my foot in the door. That being said I would never work three months without pay, but it's a risk some people are willing to take.

I don't see any reason why it has to be without pay. "Under market" maybe but not without pay.

<comment><USER4> Nobody should ever take unpaid internships. The whole concept is ridiculous and exploitation. Contributing to Open Source instead is a much better foot in the door and you don't end up working for free for others.

<comment><USER5> You'll likely meet (virtually, anyway) just as many influential people and won't feel horribly taken advantage of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So, "Startup" to them = private, bloated company?

I'm guessing they're talking about the "startups" who hemorrhage money on a trendy office location and uncomfortable chairs.

It'd be cool if we had a different name for being several rounds deep, private, and profitless.

<comment><USER7> Even if "we" (meaning HackerNews users or engineers) come up with a better term (e.g. "a company"), it won't get picked up by the media. Old media has schadenfreude for technology companies failing and they use "startup" as a code-word for their tone that tech companies are irresponsible, lazy, out of touch, and not doing "real" work. They have no idea what we do, how we do it, and they want to sell to their audience and themselves the idea that we'll get some comeuppance. It's telling the horse breeder that the "whole auto-mobile thing" is just a fad by people trying to ruin "honest work." It's gross.

For examples, I didn't even have to leave the linked article:

\- The link off the article: "Silicon Valley's reality: The party is over"

Yes, the whole 16 hour work-day for potentially valueless-shares "party." Excuse me if I'm not wearing my party hat. You'd never see "Coal miner's reality: The underground rave is over", nor would you see them taking a shot at executive compensation in the banking industry.

\- From the article: "Margaret Quigley, 27, a techie with some coding experience, is on the hunt for a job in San Francisco...there is literally Airbnb — for cats!...'Do I see value in the platform?'.. she has also rejected multiple sales job offers"

Ah yes, the non-programmer vague "sales techie" living in the modern day political and corporate Gomorrah and a trivialization of the tech industry. Yes, quip about some startup no one has heard of and avoid talking about a company like SpaceX that is inarguably changing the world by doing things at the scale of NASA.

\- "The candidate wanted more money, the opportunity to work from home three days a week and to set the hours. Six months ago the company scrapped free in- office yoga and massages."

Again, trying to paint tech workers (with these demands, he/she was likely an engineer) as spoiled, pampered children.

The rare/uncommon perks exist because it's hard to find people capable of doing the engineering work, and once you find those people, it's very easy for them to be ground down to a nub. Funny that CNBC isn't brave enough to talk about the perks that politicians receive from lobbying groups.

<comment><USER8> Paranoid much?

The media calls these large companies "startups" because the companies themselves do it. Because it makes them sound hip and trendy and worth investing in.

No doubt there are companies like SpaceX doing notable stuff. No doubt they are a minority. AirBnb for cats exists. Vessyl exists.

<comment><USER9> "Paranoid much?"

Well, remember what working in the media is like. It's an industry where writing opportunities are contracting, advertising is stronger than ever, pretty much all but the top tier of newspaper is writing clickbait, it's perceived that there's little prospect of it getting better, and they compete with Congress for major institution least respected by the public.

I wouldn't consider schadenfreude a paranoid theory, I'd consider it the expected outcome. It's hard to avoid wondering how much of the general tone of opinion in the media is a direct reflection of the fact that _they_ aren't doing well. (Are they worried about the "1%" precisely because a couple members of the .01% are buying up their entire industry, and they see the .01% showing up in the reporting chain? I've seen people similarly wonder if part of the reason academia is so pessimistic in their writing is that _their_ world really is in terrible shape and the sense of immanent collapse is scaring everybody.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Any kind of JavaScript, iOS or Android engineer getting laid of will get a job within a month if they want. Competent backend developers, devops, ML engineers also will have no problems finding a job. I recently went through a job search in the bay area and only applied at places I wanted to work and got a job at the first place I applied with phone interviews and in person interviews scheduled at other places.

The job market is really great right now. If you're getting laid off, now is a good time.

<comment><USER11> I'm not seeing a great hiring market right now for engineers in the Bay Area, at least as a high demand JS engineer. I took a look at testing the waters within the past month, I found the offers/opportunities a little wanting, and I am now debating whether to stick around at my job for a while even with some of its faults. The market looked a lot better a half year ago.

Getting hired is not a problem - getting a really nice job though is much more difficult, especially due to all of the companies that like to talk a nice game but are disguising weak aspects of the company such as leadership/management, quality engineering, work-life balance, etc.

An aside, that popup iframe with video on the top as you scrolled down is one of the most annoying dark UX patterns I've encountered in a news site. It is one of a handful times where I used Chrome's element inspector to set display: none.

<comment><USER12> > I'm not seeing a great hiring market right now for engineers in the Bay > Area, at least as a high demand JS engineer.

Can you explain this further? If by "high demand JS engineer" you mean "front end" and not just node (which is not bad or anything btw), and by "high demand" specifically you mean you are: * you understand JS well, doesn't mean we get to grill you on all the weird corner cases - but you understand the language * want to work with a modern stack (i.e. react, flux/redux/whatever, backbone, that sort of thing) * are mature and want to help grow a team, can communicate with PMs and all that effectively

we'd kill to hire you (250-300 person company.) Every friend of mine that has started a company asks me every time they see me if I know a good front end person (that isn't busy counting their RSUs at Uber, etc and isn't going anywhere.)

Our company (in general) and team has more than one designer focused on bringing a good experience to the table, before it even gets to the code level. To translate, that doesn't mean our reqs go from sales person to "make it do this now, code monkey", but rather we want to make good, long lasting products, in a thoughtful manner. And still, finding someone is tough.

So I find it hard to believe the hiring market for what you describe isn't great.

Personally, my experience is all back end. I consider myself a good engineer in general, and feel I could ramp up to being a decent front end engineer in 3-12 months time depending on how much depth we're talking, but think that things are specialized enough now that that would be a waste of effort, and plenty of people would still be better than me. However, from what I've seen, being a F.E. eng that understands CSci and what's happening under the hood should make you SUPER in demand right now.

I'm not trying to make this a hiring post, but if you'd like a fun job with a decent company trying to expand its front end capacity on this coast, with a relatively green field project (i.e. you get to build new stuff), and at a place making real money, not just selling to other startups, and not in a moon shot social space, PM me. If not, I'd still be curious why you think being a "high demand JS engineer" isn't a good spot to be in in the current market.

<comment><USER11> I do Node.js as well, although it doesn't show nearly as strongly in my background due to every company I've been at wanting my frontend skills. I get pinged heavily due to being a major non-Google contributor in the Angular community (code contributions to Angular.js, Angular 2, Ionic, and am involved in the teams for Universal Angular, UI Bootstrap, and UI Router).

Finding a job is still pretty easy - I don't dispute that. Finding one that pays competitively, respects work-life balance, and focuses on quality of engineering & getting product right, even if it means pushing deadlines a little later is much harder I've found, unless you look to the Google/FB/Netflixes. My current job meets most of those bars (a little less on the salary side, but I was willing to accept that for everything else), but only dissatisfies me on wanting to move faster & having more influence on tech choices.

While there are no shortage of companies that want to hire, most haven't put their best foot forward I've found. The market is still good for software engineers, but it's noticeably not as compelling as it was just a half year ago - I feel like the balance has tilted a little more to the employer's side in the employee/employer dynamic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's an age old-question but I still don't have a good sense of the answer:

When leaner economic times come around and tech companies downsize their work forces, they speak about culling "nonessential" employees and "growing smarter". How do they deal with the political problems of admitting to having hired a sizable number of "nonessential" employees to begin with, and, moreover, the obvious implication that their previous growth strategy was indeed "stupid"?

<comment><USER14> Let's say you have a company with 10 employees, and a revenue of 50 million. If you hired an extra web designer you could optimize your website and squeeze out an additional 1% = 500k. Worth it!

Times go bad, revenue drops to 10 million. You fire the non-essential designer and take the 1%=100k revenue hit. If you had fired an essential employee, your revenue would have dropped some double digit percentage, so those you have to keep around.

You expand/contract the business to the point where the marginal employee costs you the same as the marginal revenue they can bring in.

Well that's the theory for stable profitable companies. For startups I guess you'd have to think of the marginal _expected_ future revenue.

<comment><USER15> Ok, how does this work in the situation where you have hired management, the managemet gets paid the most, and their performance can't be accurately measured. Also you're not familiar with the marginal returns of the employees they manage.

<comment><USER16> The output of a manager is the delta in the output of the parts of the organization they control or influence. (Citation: High Output Management)

Of course that is hard to measure. It's all hard to measure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The interesting thing, to me, isn't so much what'll happen to the employees-- it's what's going to happen to all the SaaS and PaaS folks the remaining startups depend on.

When everyone and their buddy is signing up to spew cash into the coffers of services like Amazon, Heroku, and other hosted solutions (instead of doing it themselves), those services can spread and grow.

What happens, though, when that easy cash is no longer available? What happens when, for example, paying a lot for Docker or NPM no longer makes sense?

The outflux of customers has the--in some sense--real possibility of killing those businesses for the remaining users. Look at Github, for example, as a company trying to run ahead of the curve--it can happen.

I'm more concerned with what happens to ecosystems, like Node, that have VC- fueled companies as critical components.

I'd love to hear other opinions on this point of view.

<comment><USER18> who pays for npm?

<comment><USER17> You begin to see the problem. :|

More seriously, they're trying to move into the enterprise/private space--but they took on a hell of a lot of funding to accomplish that. Not looking great for the good guys.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I just like the last point: "There's still going to be major entrepreneurship going. Google itself was counter to the trend of the original dotcom bust."

</comment><comment><USER20> Startups that are born in or survive a downturn, they are more tight with better survivalism. When things get better they still have an advantage over other startups. Things go from tight to alright, alright and it doesn't affect them.

Tightly run ships, like smart remote companies without as much office space (lower salaries outside SV) or many employees or even generating revenue run will probably not even feel a blip in most cases. It is the ones that are a while from a product and paying the higher tag for office space, salaries and more for the chance to get funding in SV. If that funding isn't there for a while it could be problematic and is the risk with boom/bust cycles.

<comment><USER21> I've seen a couple of comments where expensive office space or other somewhat optional expenses are cited as reasons for going bust.

I'm curious, as I have no experience in this area, if that's really likely.

As an outsider, it feels like salaries would be the overwhelmingly largest monthly expenditure for most tech startups. Such that things like office space, even a lavish choice, wouldn't really be relevant.

If you were to break it down by "cost per employee" is there really a case where office space, perks, etc, really becomes the driver for failure? Where it is statistically meaningful versus the base salary cost?

<comment><USER22> I think your instinct is correct.

If you're in SF paying market rate, with say a dozen employees, presumably your expenses BEFORE office space are in the range of 200K/mo+.

Unless they're gold plated, your "lavish" offices would represent <~10% of expenses.

Space and perks itself doesn't drive failure I don't think, but they can point to aspects that do.

There are plenty of disciplined companies that appear to be "lavish" with space and perks. There are plenty of highly profitable tech startups that really scrimp on space and perks. It's tough to generalize.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's the crappy startups that will go away. That's a good thing for everyone, honestly.

<comment><USER24> It's not that clear cut, it can be random due to timing for startups that just raised. Name me some crappy startups you think will fail, I'll name you lots more that make a great product, but couldn't stay solvent either.

<comment><USER25> Yeah I was going to say good decisions aren't made when investors start to panic. Or consider GM maker of fine crappy cars. They went bust in 2009. Companies are often long expenses and short profits. Meaning they commit to certain level of expenses capital or otherwise, yet their profits depend on near term sales. Business dries up, balance sheet goes red and if they can't borrow money, they go belly up. Rock solid business, gone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> For startups planning to host their infrastructure on AWS, a better alternative might be to go with Google Cloud or other cheaper alternatives. This can significantly increase the startups runway, by lowering the operational costs. Google Cloud lacks some bells and whistles at this point but it shaves off 50% of your AWS bill.

Edit: Here is why Google Cloud can save 50% of your aws bill

"1X" is AWS

Compute:

VMs Price: 30% less + Per minute billing

Boot time: ¼ X

Network between VMs: Same region: 4X Across regions: 10X

BigQuery vs Redshift : ½ -20X

Big Data (Hadoop and Spark): 3X

Disks:

Read throughput: 1X Write throughput: 4X (Ephemeral); 2X (Persistent)

Local SSDs: Read throughput: 8X Writes throughput: 4X

Storage (S3): Throughput: 2X Latency: 3X (initial); ½ X (for subsequent reads)

<comment><USER27> _This can significantly increase the startups runway, by lowering the operational costs._

There is an old saying in business: "overhead walks on two legs." People are expensive; everything else is cheap in comparison. This is particularly true for most software companies, where payroll (and other expenses directly sensitive to number of employees) typically dominates every other expense.

There are software companies which do $100 million a year in revenue on $50k a year in infrastructure costs. Bloat that crazily for a B2C startup making, let's say, generous time-to-market and inhouse-expertise-required tradeoffs. Even if you're spending $50k a month on Amazon, shaving off half of that buys you 1~2 extra FTEs.

<comment><USER26> Let's look at Google vs AWS from people's time:

* Ease of use: Google Wins(Cloud Shell, SSH into instance from browser). Its far easier to spin up an instance and manage it on Google Cloud than AWS with VPC mess.

* Platform Cohesivity: Google Wins (See the comparisio below)

* AWS has 2 storage solutions with different APIS: S3 and Glacier; Compare that to Google. Just one storage solution to serve all needs. You get a backed in CDN for free!

* AWS has two queuing systems (SQS and Kinesis) and still require the developer / admin to adjust the scaling of infrastructure. Google has just one Pub/Sub. You get push notifications on top. No need to tune knobs to get extra scale. It just works.

* AWS load balancers and persistent disks need warming up before high usage. If you are running a website on global scale, you need to use DNS geo load balancing on top. Google load balancers are global (as opposed AWS regional load balancers), no need of DNS tricks. No need of prewarming. Google persistent disks need no prewarming. You can mount a single persistent disk on multiple instance and share data easily.

* Security: Google encrypts data at rest and at wire by default. Try doing that on AWS. Google takes care of SSH key provisioning and management. AWS: You have to do it by yourself.

* AWS NATs and micro instance are known to be unreliable. Google has live migration. If something goes wrong with instance they work their magic behind the scenes so that you don't have to worry about migrating the instance to another physical host.

* Automation: Instance id are not global on AWS. Have fun creating maps and stuff inside CloudFormation templates. Google Cloud resources are global. All resources (images ids) have a global identifier. No more messing with zonal vs regional vs global resources.

Google Cloud can save money by saving your time too!

<comment><USER28> I don't actually have much of an opinion specifically about Google Cloud vs AWS. I will say for your argument to make sense you have to first prove that 1) these differences make for cost savings that aren't a rounding error when it comes to employee costs and 2) these differences aren't overwhelmed by the smaller ecosystem (tooling, availability of talent, etc) of aws vs google cloud.

Also as a nitpick:

>AWS has two queuing systems (SQS and Kinesis)

This is a feature, they offer different promises/behaviors. In fact, Pub/Sub does _not_ offer one of the important ones that Kinesis does (strictly ordered delivery).

<comment><USER29> The latter use case is easily handled by Dataflow (something that AWS lacks. See [https://cloud.google.com/blog/big-data/2016/02/comparing- the...](https://cloud.google.com/blog/big-data/2016/02/comparing-the- dataflowbeam-and-spark-programming-models)).

One may also say that Google has a single Global seamlessly scalable durable message delivery service and Amazon has two that are neither global nor seamlessly scalable. Firehose is AWS itself admitting to this argument... And then there's firebase :)

<comment><USER28> I think dataflow is rad! But can you show me any bit of documentation that shows strictly ordered at least once delivery?

I don't _think_ it actually does that.

I'm not certain, but I'm reasonably confident that strictly ordered durable, globally replicated delivery would have to make extreme latency & availability comprimises.

<comment><USER29> Dataflow is a fault-tolerant deterministic processing framework, engine, and service, not a messaging queue, so it doesn't "do that" by definition.. wrong product :)

That said, one may order and dedupe the message stream with Dataflow using message metadata, time windows, watermarks and triggers.

PubSub offers at least once delivery semantics.

And I agree with your last statement.

<comment><USER28> Sure. I think it is fair to say that AWS does not offer a "Global seamlessly scalable durable message delivery service". What doesn't seem fair to me is to complain that AWS offers too many products, or to ding Kinesis for making normal/understandable engineering trade-offs.

It turns out that while AWS doesn't offer a single "Global seamlessly scalable durable message delivery service", Google doesn't offer a single strictly ordered, at least once delivery message delivery service.

Personally, I think thats ok, as a variety of solutions is great for all of us, but its hard to say one decision is better than the other when they are solving different problems.

<comment><USER29> I agree with you, but re-reading the original commenter's argument, he was saying that with AWS services you don't get seamless scalability, even though there's SQS, Kinesis, Firehose. I don't think he was complaining about the number of products, I think he was making a point that most AWS services don't seamlessly scale the way Google Services do.

There's an interesting blog in the works by one of our customers, who "surprised" PubSub with 4.5 million messages per second, and kept on this test for about a week. One hell of a load test :)

And this is especially true when looking at the product I work on, BigQuery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> But but what about all the articles 3 months ago that were saying we're definitively not in a tech bubble ?!

It reminds me of 1999 or 2000 were I saw at my local book shop a book titled something like "are you ready for the next 20 years of uninterrupted economic growth ?" written by 2 Nobel price winners, no less ...

Then there was the (should I say first ?) tech bubble pop one or two years later ...

<comment><USER31> The NASDAQ plunged from over 5000 in March 2000 to about 1100 in two years. That was a bubble. People getting laid off is not a bubble, if so, then we will keep having these 'bubbles' every year making the whole term meaningless.

The very fact that 20 people jump in and warn us at the slightest hint (like this) that this is a bubble tells me that we are not in a bubble. Even if people get laid off they will find work else where. Funny thing is that this article talks about laid off tech workers finding work in Finance, which as we speak is getting decimated.

<comment><USER32> How do you know if this isn't March 2000 all over again.

A tech bubble would look different than in 2000 because companies didn't go public the same numbers as last time. That blunts the impact a bit. But it also hides the impact. If VCs go into panic mode you won't know about it until start ups start failing in high numbers from running out of runway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Interesting viewpoint from Bischke: "startups doing something genuinely different just because there is no one paying them just to be another Uber for teddy bears".

This betrays a lack of trust that VCs are able to judge the value of a company. That they really only invest in companies because others invest in them. Or that they invest in something they are very familiar with and are unable to recognize technological disruption.

I've a startup so I've never been on the other side of the table, but I can't imagine that there is not also a survival of the fittest on the VC side. Perhaps being very early in a company doesn't pay off in an extraordinary fashion? How would the system not be autocorrecting for VC failure?

<comment><USER34> "That they really only invest in companies because others invest in them."

IMHO that's the business world in a nutshell. Being scared of innovation and changing the status quo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> 70% of what they are funding in SV is absolutely nonsensical, while 70% of what makes sense is not even located in SV. This percentage is bound to keep going up. SV will not remain the center of the technology startup world for much longer.

</comment><comment><USER36> \-- "Uncertainty in the tech industry is really pushing people back towards more certainty — working at a mutual fund, a bank, a hedge fund,"

Really? I left out the commentor name because of how stupid the comment is and how well banks and the like are doing.

Re: startups, a bit of culling isn't a bad thing, painful yes, but not every idea is pursuing above all else.

</comment><comment><USER37> Just goes to show that sound financials in a startup without lots of outside investment expecting outsized returns are often smarter choices.

What sucks is that many companies that are healthy and not facing layoffs are going to use all this doom and gloom news (that really seems to be trying to feed off itself and spark a downturn that is smaller than they want it to seem) to ride their employees harder, depress salaries, etc.

I strongly advise anyone with any power over salaries and such to consider strongly that if your business is healthy, continue paying a fair market wage. The job market is still strong, and your employees loyalty will disappear overnight the moment you start trying to knock down their pay if you are clearly not in the same boat as over-funded/valued startups and just trying to take advantage of the situation.

</comment><comment><USER38> It's been a rough year already for SV software companies. Tableau, the poster child for big data, had their market cap drop almost by half this week.

<comment><USER39> Isn't Tableau based in Seattle, not Silicon Valley?

<comment><USER38> Geographically, that may be the case. But because it's lumped in with a clique of SV startups, I don't think being in Seattle detracts from what's going on in SV is also affecting software companies in the rest of America.

(To be clear, I think "SV" implies the style of software companies found in SV that may be found elsewhere in America.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Oh noes, they'll have to think about office space in Fremont or Milpitas... the horror and, and the workers will have to contemplate moving and paying a low 2,000 for a 1BR in the lower East Bay, the cost savings horror...

But seriously, some trepidation like this in the market is probably good for stabilizing some of the office space and housing prices [employers being more fiscally responsible when leasing and employees renting more affordable places in the suburbs anticipating instability and reining in extravagant housing spending --I wanna be able to walk from my flat to the baa that charges me 16 per drink]

<comment><USER41> >employers being more fiscally responsible when leasing and employees renting more affordable places in the suburbs anticipating instability and reining in extravagant housing spending --I wanna be able to walk from my flat to the baa that charges me 16 per drink

This statement seems excessively judgemental. What exactly is wrong with someone wanting to walk from their flat to a bar to pay X for a drink, and pay what housing cost they are OK with for that privilege? And what's wrong with companies paying to be in the same environment? EDIT: rewording

<comment><USER40> Wrong? Nothing. Sustainable? Except for Hollywood; not very; something's got to give. It's not as if most are getting paid millions per movie and could afford a year or two without a job [or hit for an actor] The point is, it's a bit short-sighted. If the rents were a slight premium, sure, ok. But when they are exorbitant as they are it makes little fiscal sense [except for those who hit paydirt] but those likely bought houses and aren't renting.

In other words, save your money, maybe you'll have to commute and maybe the bar won't be as close or have all the cool people, but it's worth having money for when there is a collapse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> General macroeconomic scare mongering has an upside in that perhaps some fat will be trimmed. Those with a product or service with real value should remain standing.

</comment><comment><USER43> I wonder why [http://MatterMark.com](http://MatterMark.com) isn't covering more about this. I'd be interested in seeing what they have to say since their entire business is monitoring these trends.

<comment><USER44> They laid off a _bunch_ of people and went through a massive restructuring themselves. I'm sure they don't want to talk about it and draw attention to that.

<comment><USER45> Mattermark sounds exactly like the kind of startup-serving-startups that will be the first to disappear when the boom turns to bust.

<comment><USER46> @w1ntermute We are not the kind of company that will 'disappear when the boom turns to bust'. Despite what you and others may think, we do not just serve startups or various types of investors. We have many enterprise level B2B customers. Our business is NOT built on the backs of small, early stage startups, which we likely won't even sell our product to. Also, if there is a but, it'll be us reporting the trends on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I wonder if this will temper the growth of so many 'hacker dojos' or 'code schools' churning out entry-level developers/designers with promises of near 6-figure salaries.

</comment><comment><USER48> I want to read more news about startups, venture capital, Silicon Valley/SF on HN - 29 news on HN frontpage are about other topics (interesting for sure, but the balance is off).

<comment><USER49> Can you give some examples of stories that you feel should be discussed on HN, but weren't?

I see a lot of startup stories here. I fear that part of the problem is that stories get posted, have good discussions, and fall off the front page before many readers see them.

<comment><USER48> > I fear that part of the problem is that stories get posted, have good > discussions, and fall off the front page before many readers see them.

That's it, and I share your fear. I don't know how to solve it. Maybe it's what the majority wants on the top, maybe it's what a vocal minority with high karma points doesn't want (flagging/whatever negative news). I just see the end result. I would just like to get the big picture on the frontpage and not have to rely on algolia search for that.

One thing I realized is that HN front page has very different topics depending on which time I check HN. It shifts its focus depending when people tend to visit HN from east cost, west cost, europe, asia. A useful function would be to check out the HN frontpage how it looked at a specific time. Let's say I would like to see HN as it looked like 8am Pacific timezone yesterday. I know about [https://news.ycombinator.com/lists](https://news.ycombinator.com/lists) , maybe add another filter to that list.

<comment><USER50> _> A useful function would be to check out the HN frontpage how it looked at a specific time. Let's say I would like to see HN as it looked like 8am Pacific timezone yesterday._

sigh, kids these days. first of all, i'm sure this exists somewhere on the internet. start with archive.org and go from there. if not, witness:

0 * * * * curl [https://news.ycombinator.com](https://news.ycombinator.com) -o /tmp/hn-`date "+\%Y-\%m-\%d-\%H:\%M:\%S"`

for bonus points, version control it with github so everyone can see it. even better, send it into elasticsearch. hint: curl -X -F -H

you could implement a website that does this in literally an hour with today's tools. hell, you could even run it through some basic tools like python NLTK and matplotlib and twilio to text message you a fucking color-coded n-gram frequency pie chart every time it runs. you don't need ruby on rails, rabbitmq, redis, and a huge sql schema to do this, just a few lines of bash and python.

this would be more useful than 85.1% of startups operating today, which is probably part of the problem. feel free to steal it.

<comment><USER48> I can do that. But it doesn't solve the root problem.

It would be better if everyone can find insightful news stories and comment more. HN is so great because of the smart community and their comments.

<comment><USER50> okay, then take it a step further. train a bayesian classifier to automatically notify you of things you teach it to find interesting. this can be done in probably ~200 lines of python and 2 or 3 dependencies -- i did it at a previous job. they are remarkably effective at simple tasks like "you might like..."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Why would you accept an offer from a company if you can't see how they are or will make money and, by extension, continue paying your salary?

</comment><comment><USER52> > the best startups, like Google, come out of a period like this

Google isn't a startup. In fact, a company ceases being a "startup" once it finds a business model with which it can sustain itself. If a company can layoff a percentage of it's employees, slow growth, and still make money, they aren't a startup.

We really should stop putting ourselves in double binds with stupid statements like this and reject them when we hear others parroting them.

<comment><USER53> They're not saying that Google is still a startup.

They're saying that when Google was still a start-up / very young company, it thrived in the post dotcom bust after 2000.

<comment><USER52> I'm well aware of Google's history and the dotcom bubble that occurred from 1999-2003. I'm also aware that Google made $19M in revenue on a loss of $14 million in 2000 and I'm saying the company Google _was_ at that time can't be considered a "startup". It's a contentious point, clearly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Honestly just stop reading the news. They just make sensationalist headlines as click bait.

</comment><comment><USER55> this is no different then what happened in 2000/2001 companies with high fixed costs and little or no revenue went belly up

</comment><comment><USER56> The Pop that has been too long coming...

</comment><comment><USER57> G O O D.</comment>


Ask HN: How Do You Learn How to Cook Well(Michelin Star Level)? - <AUTHOR> I know how to cook, but I have a hard time finding resources about cooking well. It's pretty easy to find resources about programming design, philosophy, theory, etc. However, I can't say the same for cooking.
I find it hard to find books about the theory of cooking. Things that include cooking temperature, texture, color, taste, chemistry, etc.
What resource are you all using to learn how to cook well? <comment><USER2> A decent start:

[https://www.amazon.ca/Science-Good-Cooking-Cooks- Illustrated...](https://www.amazon.ca/Science-Good-Cooking-Cooks- Illustrated/dp/1933615982/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1470506465&sr=8-1&keywords=science+of+good+cooking)

The next step:

[https://www.amazon.ca/Modernist-Cuisine-Art-Science- Cooking/...](https://www.amazon.ca/Modernist-Cuisine-Art-Science- Cooking/dp/0982761007/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1470506516&sr=8-2&keywords=nathan+myhrvold)

</comment><comment><USER3> Have you considered "taking classes"?</comment>


Trying to be too (io)nice created a "killer" directory - compiler-guy https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/02/07/kdir/ <comment><AUTHOR> Watchdog timer on high priority process waits, triggering a temporary Monte- Carlo reshuffle of all process priorities... which will likely clear the deadlock 'eventually' without 'knowing' how it resolved the problem?

Then a running count of 'necessary Monte-Carlo reshuffles' within x time is a flag to research the cause and find a solution, while maintaining a running system?

</comment><comment><USER2> Does anyone know if the 'cmdline' hang she mentions ever got fixed? We still see this occasionally.</comment>


Genes underscore five psychiatric disorders - <AUTHOR> https://www.uq.edu.au/news/article/2019/07/genes-underscore-five-psychiatric-disorders <comment><USER2> This is an interesting claim but after reading the article I feel like I came out having learned nothing more than I did from reading the headline.

What genes were involved? What was the methadology? What is the correlation rate between these genes and the mental disorders. Given that things like autism and depression are so different, what is the physiological impact of having these genes - ie do they regulate a certain hormone, the strucutre of certain neurons?

<comment><USER3> The Press Release links to the article. This research is published in Psychological Medicine (DOI:10.1017/S0033291719001776). You can follow the link or resolve the DOI, it's an open access article and you can read the original: [https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological- medici...](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological- medicine/article/synaptic-and-brainexpressed-gene-sets-relate-to-the-shared- genetic-risk-across-five-psychiatric- disorders/73114566C699FA78AB07B6DE7A6775BC)

Like most papers in the field, they mined data and found some correlations, then wrapped a sketchy narrative around it. I wouldn't place too much emphasis on findings like these and actual mechanistic functionality of psychiatric disorders.

(my background includes lots of genomics and health, and I am profoundly disappointed to see press releases that overstate the significance of findings).</comment></comment>


How to Manage Your Team During A Crisis - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedailymuse.com/career/4-steps-for-managing-a-team-during-a-crisis/

<comment><USER2> Apple was in a terrible situation around the end of the 90's. Steve Jobs just became CEO and had to manage the crisis, both internally as well as externally (developers for Apple's platform).

This talk at WWDC 97 shows how Steve Jobs dealt with the crisis. There are some parallels with the article.

Steve Jobs @ WWDC 97: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnO7D5UaDig>

</comment><comment><USER3> My personal experience of managing a team during a crisis is not related to the IT field; however I believe it is still applicable.

I have found that team-members will sit tight and follow courageously a leader that is very competent in their field of work. I have seen very charismatic leaders fail in front of a crisis because their team didn't have faith in their ability to lead them through the storm. While the less charismatics but more competent leaders had their team members doing everything they could to support them.

It leads me to believe that charisma, politics and sensibility are all nice when everything goes well, but what really matters, in the end, is skills.

</comment><comment><USER4> How the hell did blatant content-farm fodder get on the front page of HN?

</comment><comment><USER5> These tips doesn't feel crisis-specific to me.</comment>


Octaspire Dern – programming language - <AUTHOR> Very much a work in progress, but still usable. Written in standard C99 and released under Apache 2.0 license. For a usage example (a simple game written with it, also WIP) see https://gitlab.com/octaspire/maze<p>No other dependencies than C99 compiler + stdlib and https://gitlab.com/octaspire/core <comment><AUTHOR> Oh, here is the link: [https://gitlab.com/octaspire/dern](https://gitlab.com/octaspire/dern)

<comment><USER2> Looks like a Lisp dialect from the video. Is there a language reference or other supporting documentations (the docs/ directory did not shed much light on the language).

<comment><AUTHOR> Some documentation is now available at:

[http://www.octaspire.com/dern/](http://www.octaspire.com/dern/)

and in

doc/book/Programming_in_Octaspire_Dern.html

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good 'Show HN'. Show HN guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)</comment>


Get Chrome For Mac Now - <AUTHOR> http://themindstorms.blogspot.com/2009/04/get-chrome-for-mac-now.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Not yet the official release though...</comment>


I made a website about the jacaranda trees of Maui, Hawaii - <AUTHOR> https://mauijacaranda.com/ <comment><USER2> Jacaranda trees are possibly the most beautiful trees for residential areas. I used to leave in South Africa in a street lined with jacarandas. Only disadvantage streets need to be cleaned often and if the flowers drop on a parked car they can stain the paint.

<comment><USER3> I will give you some alternatives to compare

Rata tree / flame of the North, a real Maui native tree. Metrosideros spp. (the name is not related with rats, Rata tree means Iron tree)

The Yellow, Pink, Rose and White lapachos, cousins of Jacaranda. Hadroanthus spp.

Flamboyant, Delonyx regia

Star Apple, Caimito. Chrysophyllum cainito. Golden leaves, purple edible fruits

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> OP's history [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cookingoils](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cookingoils) seems like a SEO(?) spammer to me.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you want Jacaranda trees galore.....

Try Pretoria or Johannesburg when it is too late to start studying for end of year exams....

<comment><USER6> Wow this is too real.

<comment><USER5> The Jacky Verandas are still bare... Get your butt behind a desk and start studying while theres time!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> They have thousands of these in South Africa. Not sure where they came from but they're non-native there too. They create a big mess.

<comment><USER8> > _Not sure where they came from_

South-central South America, according to Wikipedia [1].

I was wondering where they're from as they're also fairly common in my hometown of Brisbane, Australia.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacaranda_mimosifolia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacaranda_mimosifolia)

<comment><USER9> The canonical Jacaranda town in Australia is Grafton.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=jacaranda+grafton&source=lnm...](https://www.google.com/search?q=jacaranda+grafton&source=lnms&tbm=isch)

<comment><USER10> Having gone to see the cherry blossoms in Japan this year, I was wondering why we don't celebrate the jacarandas even half as much.

Grafton and a heap of other small towns all have jacaranda festivals and we're obviously really bad at promoting them.

The Brisbane Council classifying jacarandas as invasive weeds probably doesn't help either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Grafton NSW. And Casino. Also heaps in Brisbane. The curse of University of Queensland students, Jacaranda flowers means exams time. All through the city and the riverbank.

They send chemical cues and flower en masse but with temperature changes are also note breathing flowers out of season with leaves, worrisome.

</comment><comment><USER12> Oh that's what those trees are! They're quite beautiful in bloom. Thanks for your website :)

</comment><comment><USER3> I tortured one of those mexican creatures some years ago. Is a very beautiful, but frustrating plant able to stand more cold than expected, but decicuous in this case.

Each plant has its secrets. Have I mentioned that they smell like piss when dropping the leaves? Yup, Jacaranda trees reek in winter if the area is beyond their normal distribution and they sense any cold. Die to the ground and then resprout.

Apart of this, beautifull feathered foliage and even more beautiful flowers in a big tree with elm-like bark and nice hot-cake shaped fruits.

</comment><comment><USER13> Jacaranda trees in bloom are amazing. The whole 12th Ave. between streets 42 and 72 in Sabana Sur, San José, Costa Rica is planted with these trees.

</comment><comment><USER14> Nice! I grew up in South Africa surrounded by jacaranda trees. One of the things I miss now that I live in Europe

</comment><comment><USER15> Map does not scroll well on mobile

<comment><USER16> Home page could also use a, you know, picture of what a jacaranda tree is.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a few here ([https://mauijacaranda.com/places](https://mauijacaranda.com/places)) but ty for the suggestion :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Was wondering how this came up on HN, then I saw all the South African comments.</comment>


UBiome Dental Genome Kit Campaign [Citizen science] - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/79-dental-genome-kit/

<comment><AUTHOR> Citizen science FTW!</comment>


Welcome to the YC Demo Day App - <AUTHOR> https://demoday.ycombinator.com/

<comment><USER2> This is a new app that YC's software team made for people attending Demo Day, but since it's not public, there's not much to see here.</comment>


The Six Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security (2005) - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> This is (probably) the link: [http://www.ranum.com/security/computer_security/editorials/d...](http://www.ranum.com/security/computer_security/editorials/dumb/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Passwords that are restricted to a very short length and/or with a limited character set.

</comment><comment><USER4> Having to become a math major to get a CS degree.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you explain what you mean by this? I certainly am no math major, but I have a CS degree.

Also, how does this relate to ideas in computer security?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The link points back to this page.</comment>


Application Development in Go - <AUTHOR> http://jasonroelofs.com/2013/08/01/application-development-in-go/

<comment><USER3> Although the author touches on some real issues with writing applications in Go, I do not recommend this article. The author does not follow the recommended practice for writing Go applications and the author has misconceptions about the Go tools.

 _a developer can not expect anyone to individually go get 20-plus different packages_

Because the 'go get' command fetches dependencies recursively, there's no need to 'go get' packages individually.

 _the developer is forced to remember which packages the application uses, and which are other projects_

The 'go list' command will tell you the dependencies for an application: go list -f '{{.Deps}}' path/to/application

 _For Slartibartfast I decided to give this project its own Workspace, with its own $GOPATH, and put the entire Workspace into git._

This is not the recommended practice.

 _each package is expected to be in its own source repository_

A repository can contain more than one package. There's no requirement that a package exist in a repository.

 _go get probably works great for the needs inside of Google_

Google does not use 'go get' internally.

 _anything placed in the src /[package] directory gets compiled into the resulting binary_

Go files matching the build tags are compiled into the resulting binary. Everything else is ignored, including Go files that don't match the build tags.

That's enough nitpicking. The take away that I get from reading this article is that "How to Write Go Code" ([http://golang.org/doc/code.html](http://golang.org/doc/code.html)) needs improvement. The document was overhauled earlier this year to make it easier to understand. Apparently, it's not easy enough.

<comment><USER4> Articles like this -- even if they have errors or arguable non-best-practices -- should be recommended because they drive conversation. Thus far one of the most unfortunate things I've noticed about the Go community (and this is seen even in discussions about Go on here) is a silence that results from a fear of doing things wrong. That improves no one.

 _The 'go list' command will tell you the dependencies for an application._

Does it? I thought it simply showed every package in the application, not differentiating what is yours and what is not. If I am correct, in no way does it solve the problem that they were trying to address.

 _This is not the recommended practice._

They specifically note that it isn't the recommended practice, but that it was a compromise to make a more easily reproducible structure. It _is_ absolutely odd -- from a traditional developer perspective -- how the structure of a go application works when there are many dependencies, and I'm not sure what _is_ the recommended practice for actually source controlling that (though we know how individual packages should be managed).

 _Go files matching the build tags are compiled into the resulting binary_

Can you describe what you means? Such as

go build _github.com /mypackage_?

I've built several solutions with Go now and remain sure that much of what I'm doing is wrong, despite trying to find the relevant information.

<comment><USER5> > > The 'go list' command will tell you the dependencies for an application.

> Does it? I thought it simply showed every package in the application, not > differentiating what is yours and what is not.

How is that _not_ telling you the dependencies for an application? And differentiating yours from others ought to be trivial if you use the recommended directory structure with the path under /src corresponding to repository locations.

<comment><USER4> Many real applications consist of tens to hundreds of packages, tens to hundreds which might be in development in the application, and tens to hundreds which might be dependencies.

I fail to see how following the recommended directory structure (which is _assumed_ ) helps that, beyond that you can then correlate with a separate list of "things that are mine".

In a Visual Studio project, just to bring up a comparative example, I have my solution and projects. And then, elsewhere, I have nuget dependencies. There is absolutely no question which is which (nor is there any confusion on how to source control the whole, including that the dependencies include nothing more than pointers to their location/version). In my go project there are hundreds of seeming equals.

<comment><USER5> > I fail to see how following the recommended directory structure (which is > assumed) helps that, beyond that you can then correlate with a separate list > of "things that are mine".

If you are following the recommended directory structure, you don't need to "correlate" to "a list" of things that are yours, as all of your things will be under a path that corresponds to your remote repository, while external dependencies will be under paths that correspond to other remote repositories.

> In a Visual Studio project, just to bring up a comparative example, I have > my solution and projects. And then, elsewhere, I have nuget dependencies.

In Go, you have the solutions and packages under (e.g.)

      /src/github.com/corresation/

And then, elswhere, you have dependencies that aren't yours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> grey-area _First, a developer can not expect anyone to individually go get 20-plus different packages (Slartibartfast has more than 10 and growing), not to mention whatever 3rd party dependencies the application uses, to work on a single application._

go get fetches dependencies, so this is not an issue with go get, anything imported will be fetched.

 _There is no place to put such resources in the normal Go Workspace, as anything placed in the src /[package] directory gets compiled into the resulting binary and is not accessible or editable from outside._

It's quite possible to put resources into a go pkg folder without causing problems, and those are go gettable along with the code. I don't see the issue here.

 _Running go get for a package clones the repository at its current HEAD /master/trunk, with no way of specifying a version or commit you might want._

Go get doesn't (yet) get versions of packages, just fetches the master. This is something that's been discussed to death on the mailing list, there are plenty of threads:

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/golang- nuts](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/golang-nuts)

Some solutions to that are:

Go get everything once, and then stop using go get (the solution in the article, though he brings workspaces into it too, which is unnecessary) - <USER2> is problematic as he points out.

Put all your dependencies into subpackages, frozen at a particular version, I like this solution for now.

Put all your dependencies into your own repo, again frozen at a particular version, and only go get or checkout from there

Use something like gonuts.io to add versioning information (relies on the pkg authors to do this though)

Add versioning to go get to check out versions to a specific path.

It would actually be pretty easy to add version dependencies to Go by adapting the go get source. go get already versions for version of the _language_ by looking for a certain tag, but not versions of the package. You could just check out to a path like src/github.com/jasonroelofs/slartibartfast/1.0/ and use that path for imports. Someone should just go ahead and do it, to see how it works out - if it's popular, people will use it, and eventually it might make its way into the default distribution. The folks at Google just don't seem to see it as a problem so presumably their setup/usage doesn't hit this problem.

<comment><USER6> My fantasy vision, predating go, was publisher/project/version with /src and /bin below all that (separate bins and srcs). I am open to re-balancing that tree ;-), but somewhat surprised that version wasn't in from the beginning. Perhaps there were more worms in that can that I expected. (version should be constrained to x.y.z numeric form)

<comment> grey-area _My fantasy vision, predating go, was publisher /project/version with /src and /bin _

Yes in a way that feels more natural to me too - all your stuff is in one place, including src and binaries, not mixed up with other binaries/source and all under one version. The current scheme does follow unix conventions though and it's not too important.

The only persuasive criticism I've seen of versioning is that it doesn't deal with dependency hell automatically, however I'm not sure it can or should, and having simple versioning would be a nice step up from simply checking out master at the time you happen to go get, which means go get is not a reliable tool for fetching dependencies if you don't freeze them somehow (hence the contortions of this developer). It's not a huge deal though, and I'm sure it'll be addressed somehow at some point and the meantime there are various possible workarounds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We use per-project work spaces too and it has simplified a lot of things for us. The biggest reason for this is that our projects aren't just Go based, their are other languages in there, many different file types. Building the project doesn't mean running "go build", that's just one component of a much larger code base. A complete build for a web application means:

* compile the Go app

* compiling the Sass files down to CSS

* combining and minifying Javascript files

* minifying HTML files

* optimizing/compressing image assets

* etc.

These things need to happen together, and than are organized into the deployable file structure. Ofcourse this is all automated with scripts, but a single global Go workspace doesn't cut it. It assumes that the Go app is king, while in reality its just another component.

</comment><comment><USER8> An easier approach to the submodule problem is to use "git subtree" to copy in any dependencies of the project into your tree. Then (1) your project always builds against exactly the version of the dependency you tested against, and (2) if someone else deletes their repo it doesn't affect your project (unlike git submodules).

<comment><USER9> What if my dependency depends on something else and that something else breaks things when it's updated? Is there a decent way to lock all dependencies recursively?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have similar problems building Go apps for internal use. My solution so far is to use per-project $GOPATH and `git subtree` to manage the whole $GOPATH as a single repository.

The primary benefit of doing so is build repeatability: any dev can `git clone` the repo and build the app successfully after setting the $GOPATH to the repo directory. Changes in external dependencies have no affect on us until we manually incorporate them into our repo via `git subtree`. There is no need to `go get` and we avoid its associated problems (e.g. versioning, availability of remote repos, etc).

</comment><comment><USER6> It seems the go team chose a method that would produce zero name collisions under parallel development. That's the highest goal, but of course the burden of it is that paths below /src must be kinda long to support it. A "rare collision" solution could have been more concise without being as robust.

<comment><USER11> A common theme in Go is "Do important things the correct way," even if that equates to slightly more work for the developer.

People will inevitably argue about (a) what's really important, and (b) what's really the correct way. But they didn't create Go. It's clear where Go's creator stand on the issues.

<comment><USER6> I had a funny experience. Before I ever worked with Go a developer I'd worked with (and argued small details and big philosophies), told me "why don't you use Go? It seems your kind of language." From my later glances it seems like he was right. So I might be in the fortunate subset for which the philosophy matches, more or less.</comment></comment></comment>


Yik Yak's CTO drops out as the hyped anonymous app stagnates - <AUTHOR> http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/04/anonymous-gossip-app-yik-yak-is-in-trouble <comment><USER2> Shame! I used this a few years ago when it launched and found it fun. When they blocked it around schools I knew it was over. I'm 30 and live far from a school yet the app always thought I was at a school. That was when I stopped caring.

</comment><comment><USER3> They kept introducing stupid crap regression "features" that made the app less and less anonymous, defeating the whole purpose. If I wanted to talk semi- anonymously I would be using my college subreddit. Glad it's dying; it's a shame of a social app.</comment>


Ask HN Taking off a site that I made myself for a deadbeat client LLC - <AUTHOR> http://pastie.org/private/ezv2gokmti4dui7frhghq

<comment><USER2> You should not use your admin powers to disable deliverables prior to a lawyer suggesting to you that course of action. That has explosive legal and reputational risk. The only upside is that you get to squeeze a stone harder for water. Why would you prefer this over e.g. paying a lawyer ~$300 to send your client a payment demand letter?

In the future, do not do additional work when clients have tens of thousands of dollars of outstanding invoices. Favors for clients are wonderful things. You can do them when you have a contract in place that neither party is repeatedly breaching.

 _Talk to the board and try to work out a solution where they fire the CEO and we pursue a plan to actually get this company out of a ditch._

This is very unlikely to work, and the amount of effort is comparable to starting a new company. Why would you start a new company to collect $X0k in outstanding invoices? You can collect $X0k in invoices by working two weeks for someone who is not a bozo, then invoicing them for two weeks worked. It is faster and carries very limited execution risk.

 _If the above results in very little, I could try to sell the debt to a debt buyer. Anyone have experience with this? I found one that say they would buy it for 75 cents on the dollar, which I find to be pretty incredible considering it 's an LLC and I don't know how to collect from an LLC._

You won't successfully sell this receivable for 75 cents on the dollar, but if someone actually offered that, why are we even having this conversation? That implies that you are improved by tens of thousands of dollars for two hours of work, and then this never troubles you again.

But having some knowledge about debt collection, I predict < 1% chance that you'd actually sell that receivable for 75 cents on the dollar. Higher quality receivables -- with known good provenance, against people who have attachable assets -- routinely are sold for 5~10 cents on the dollar if they're at that age/maturity. You have an incredibly low-quality receivable. It is _old_ , against an entity with no assets, and (I strongly suspect) not supported by reliable paperwork which would ease the path to a default judgment and collection.

</comment><comment><USER3> Patrick is right about not taking self-help measures such as shutting down their site.

Check your contract:

\+ The contract might provide that you have the power to terminate the deadbeat client's rights in the deliverables (presumably, the Web site you built for them) after sending them notice and giving them an opportunity to cure their breach of contract.

\+ If you terminate their rights, that might well make them a copyright infringer if they continue to use the deliverables.

\+ That in turn _might_ give you ammunition to go after the owners personally, and not just the LLC, for the infringement (although that can be difficult to prove) [1].

\+ The damages from copyright infringement might include the LLC's profits arising indirectly from infringement. (Of course, this assumes that the LLC _has_ profits.)

In a famous case in the 1980s, the MGM Grand Hotel was found to have infringed the copyright of the musical _Kismet_ by including much of the fourth act in the hotel's floor show. (MGM had a license, but not for that use.) When the dust settled, the damage award ended up being 2% of the hotel's overall profits --- including those from the casino [2].

\+ If you can get, and record, a judgment against the LLC's owners personally, that might well [foul] up their credit score and make it difficult for them to borrow money.

\+ Of course, all this requires money, and lots of it, to pay a lawyer and (at least one) expert witness on damages. If the dollar amount isn't that much, and if neither the LLC nor the individual owners have much by way of seizable assets, then it'll be difficult to get a lawyer to take the case on contingency.

\+ And don't forget that no matter what you say are the facts, your client will _invariably_ counterclaim that _you_ did _them_ wrong and should be liable to them. That, too, will cost money to litigate.

\+ If you sue for copyright infringement and lose, you might be liable for the defendants' attorneys' fees -- while possibly not being able to recover your own fees even if you win.

Bottom line: Often it's better just to write off the debt, and next time get a deposit.

[1] [https://www.whdlaw.com/Publications/WHD_Attorneywritesarticl...](https://www.whdlaw.com/Publications/WHD_Attorneywritesarticle_1407_WTN.pdf)

[2] MGM Grand Hotel v. Frank Music Corp., [http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/tfisher/IP/1989%20Frank%...](http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/tfisher/IP/1989%20Frank%20Abridged.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER4> I kind of do not understand why this is being taken so seriously by the two previous replies. The person who posted it is not at all anonymous. yet the piece he linked to apparently is some strange attempt to be anonymous. This looks a little weird to me.</comment>


Haiti sms donation campaigns face 90 day delays - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2010/01/14/haiti-text-donation-campaigns-face-90-day-delays/

<comment><USER2> Looking at their most recent Form 990, the American Red Cross has over a billion dollars in liquid cash/savings, with another 1.5 billion in more fixed assets, and cash flow of over 3 billion.

90 days is nothing. Agitating for clearing the funds faster is just going to add overhead.

<comment><USER3> And even if they didn't have the cash on hand, they could probably get a bridge loan against the expected donations provided they can provide proof that the "the money is on the way".

<comment><USER4> This is called factoring and is common in corporate finance where Y net-N (payment after N days or Y% discount at 10 days) is standard operating procedure.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factoring_(finance)>

The Red Cross would sell their invoices from the telephone companies at a discount to a third party. Although, the possibility of fraudulent contributions may complicate this plan.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The Red Cross has a large operating budget, and knowing the donations are coming allows them to draw down their level of cash on hand.

</comment><comment><USER6> In South Africa these short code collection methods are insanely expensive. Roughly 50% of the transaction cost goes to the network.

I've seen now that the united states has monthly rentals on the shortcode? And they don't take a collection fee? Am I correct?

<comment><USER7> You're correct, the breakdown for a monthly SMS fee is $500-$1,000 (for a 'vanity' short code) _just_ to hand on to the name (think of it as paying $500 for a domain name of a random sequence of characters or $1000 for a domain of your choosing).

It doesn't stop there thought. Typically you have to pay an aggregator to send and receive messages from the cell networks. This usually costs thousands of dollars and is broken down between a monthly fixed cost or a cost per message (typically $0.04-$0.05 per outgoing message or $0.01 per incoming message).

But that's not for fund raising short codes. If you're a corporation, the cellphone companies take anywhere from 50%-75% of the amount that is to be billed to the customer; however, this number is much lower for non-profits. The caveat though is that not many non-profit organizations are approved for these lower rates; companies like mGive and MobileCause have to do a lot of work to get this clearance from cellular phone companies and act as an aggregator for non-profits.

Oh, and there's one more thing: the application process, which is a fucking nightmare. It takes 3-6 months to get a non-charging short code and thousands of dollars without any guarantee of approval. Worse yet, each cellular network has to approve of your application so if all US cellphone companies approve, but one like Verizon says, "No, sorry," you're screwed. When our company went through this process, one cell provider said, "No," at first, and then asked us for a sample of the SMS messages that we would send and receive.

Net net: its a fucking mess out there in the SMS short code world. If you want to see what a world of non-net-netruality looks like, look no further than cellular providers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Even if you don't have assets and flow to cover it... That's what <http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factoring_(finance)> is for and surely there's a company out there that'd do it for free / for publicity.

</comment><comment><USER9> <http://ConvoyofHope.org> is a highly rated charity with a warehouse in Haiti and people on the ground. A web donation is still pretty convenient, so if your looking to put your money to work ASAP, look them up.

<comment><USER10> I'd recommend Partners in Health, which has run a well-regarded hospital in Haiti for decades. More here: <http://www.standwithhaiti.org/haiti/news>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> But, knowing the money is coming is enough for lots of relief-related spending to occur: drawing down existing balances below usual levels, putting supply/travel purchases on credit, etc.

Even if actual cash is required, a 90-day loan backed by the certainty of mobile payments clearing should be dirt cheap, too. So this delay may not make much of a practical difference.</comment>


What Happened to Fan Bingbing, China's Most Famous Actress? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/13/world/asia/china-fan-bingbing.html <comment><USER2> The social score stuff is a bit freaky:

>A missing film star has been given a 0 per cent "social responsibility" rating by Chinese authorities, fuelling fears she may have been detained by state officials. [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/fan- bingbing-m...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/fan-bingbing- missing-china-arrest-social-responsibility-report-tax-evasion-x- men-a8532386.html)

I would say Orwellian but I'm not sure even even he came up with that kind of stuff</comment>