Architectures that will inspire your programming - <AUTHOR> http://andrzejonsoftware.blogspot.in/2013/12/the-four-architectures-that-will.html <comment><USER3> This article really interests me - mainly because over the last 10 years, I've sort of adopted (independently) a mish-mash of what here is described here as the 'clean architecture', domain-driven design, and the 'ports and adapters' approaches. I have employed these concepts on a dozen or so SaaS products, and the resulting schemes have have worked extremely well, and have been rock- solid frames to work from.

However... I think there's a risk in adopting these types of models without having some experienced context in them. Software design has a huge amount of 'art' to it. And, it's so easy to reach the complexity tipping point - <USER2> it all come crashing down. For instance, I remember back in the mid-90s when the design patterns book was all the rage. And, shortly thereafter I'd find code just jam-packed with factories and builders and observers and adapters in multiple layers. It was a mess. Similarly, I can see someone reading these and then going out and creating a 'devices' namespace, a 'controllers' namespace, etc. and filling them with all too many classes and interfaces. I can even predict the rise of the 'framework' maven archetype that creates a bunch of extraneous excess.

Listen, I've been there and done that, and it just doesn't work well. It just creates a lot of architectural noise. It creates a mess for your development teams. I've learned this the hard way. Trust me.

What I recommend is starting very, very slowly. Just like when DI was the rage, and everyone would leap to integrate the most popular DI engine with all its xml configuration files and heavy weight complexity. When, in fact, all you really need at first is a couple of interfaces and a builder class in the entry-point. Don't set out to create an architectural behemoth.

That said, I still think a solid 'domain model' should be at the core of it all. If anything, spend a lot of time defining the domain. Work with stakeholders (product managers, subject matter experts, managers, field and support, even developers, etc.) to get it down. Write unit tests that help make the domain very fluent. In my opinion, it's better to have a small core of very well defined domain classes, then trying to boil the ocean. Start small and focus on the quality of the entities.

Again, this is just from my trial-by-many-errors experiences.

<comment><USER4> Many of these architectures are focusing on keeping the domain model away from frameworks and libraries. And I see _considerable_ pushback on HN and elsewhere towards this idea. I find this trend anti-intellectual (you do want to get better at your craft, don't you?), and contributing to the rapid commoditization of development: settling on "Good Enough" architecture (cough, Rails) so devs can be easily interchangeable.

What's alarming is that our languages have gotten far more powerful, but we seem to be reluctant to learn concepts from the past to further propel our understanding of how we solve problems. It seems that improvements in thinking only come when we're force-fed 'progress' by a well-marketed framework with sufficient clout.

<comment><USER5> I think it's a backlash against complexity, and also some of the backlash is because there is a naiveté that we have outgrown (anytime you outgrow naiveté you look back on your former foolishness with some resentment). _Not_ to say that these architectures are completely bad, by any means. But these 4 architectures can "remind" us of 2 problems:

(1) Times when incidental complexity derailed us (whether we ourselves were the misguided ones who pushed it, or whether someone else inflicted it upon us is beside the point), and

(2) Times when we thought some architecture or idea was an amazing insight, and then later we found out it was only good due to other limitations in our environment/toolset/mindset. (For example, "design patterns" seemed like the greatest insight ever to the Java programmers at the time, but eventually everyone realized they many of them were just workarounds for Java's limitations. They were elegant in a world of single-inheritance OO, but not that insightful at all for functional programming, or languages with closures, or data-driven imperative programming).

So it's a "once bitten, twice shy" feeling. And an anti-hype protection cloak.

Note: I'm not saying these architectures are never a good solution. I'm sure there are cases where they are a great fit. But they still _remind_ us of these issues, so they still trigger a bit of a backlash.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for posting this, as I was going to do write more or less the same thing.

Over the years (nearing two decades at this point) I've increasingly put emphasis on reducing complexity, instead of increasing flexibility (which is what most "architectures" aim to do).

Software doesn't fall down (usually) because of a lack of flexibility. It falls down because it becomes nearly impossible to _reason_ about the system as it becomes more complex.

In the old days we adopted this idea that refactoring code was always going to be nearly impossible. So we used plugins, really insane separations of concerns, and lots of decoration all to combat that boogeyman. All at the cost of any hope of building a sensible mental model out of our systems.

It's not that "architecture" is bad per-se, it's just that most of these approaches create instant complexity and it's just not needed (usually). Instead finding sensible patterns and taking advantage of simple language- level constructs to maximize reusability are the only tools you really need.

<comment><USER7> Just out of curiosity, have you used any of these specific architectures on any real world projects and failed? If so, would you mind sharing your experience?

I'm currently reading up on DDD and thus far one of the main goals is to reduce complexity so you can easily reason about the software (reduce the mental load, understand the domain). Though I'm still in the early chapters of the book, thus far it has constantly reinforced this idea via layered architecture, modularizing code, aggregates, etc. There's nothing DDD specific about these ideas. I believe DDD is just about proper OO design.

<comment><USER5> I've seen projects that regretted going down those roads. I can't say they failed because of it (sad truth be told, several of them failed because they were in such a dysfunctional corporate environment that they were doomed before the project even started).

CQRS can go wrong if you try to do only 90% of it instead of 100% of it. A crude analogy: consider a nation choosing to change the side of the road its cars drive on. So the US wants to switch over to driving on the left. Well, it pretty much needs to be a universal switch, or there are going to be ugly problems. CQRS is sort of like that. It changes so many assumptions that "percolate" through the whole architecture, that it's pretty much an all or nothing thing. So if there is any dissension amongst the team, you're likely to end up in a 90% (or less) situation and start having problems.

Plus, CQRS is complex, especially if you try to do it with a relational database. And the complexity is something you will have to carry, and it will weigh you down. (The ever-present caveat -- there are situations where CQRS can be a good approach).

DDD is interesting. It has so much appeal to it. Parts of it almost read like developer-porn. And there is a lot of wisdom there. However, it too brings complexity. It is not "the simplest thing that could possibly work." Rather, it suggests you and your team really invest some mental cycles projecting the future and trying to design a domain object model that will suit your business for a long time.

That analysis could be valuable. It's hard to argue that thinking ahead is a bad idea. However, many teams, in the process of performing that deep DDD analysis, have lost their way and gone overboard with unnecessary complexity. Maybe the flaw is with developers' innate vulnerability to the siren song of complexity moreso than with DDD itself. And I'm sure many have succeeded with DDD. But many teams have lost their way with it too, and usually by letting complexity get out of hand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I hate to be self-promotional, but if you are interested in Uncle Bob's Clean Architecture, I would love it if you took a look at Obvious Architecture ([http://obvious.retromocha.com](http://obvious.retromocha.com)). It's a working implementation of his ideas in Ruby, but the same structure can easily be done in any OO language. Actually, the implementation would be a lot easier in a language like Go or Scala that has things like type checked interfaces built in.

</comment><comment><USER9> First rule: When you write text and introduce an acronym (e.g. DDD), please define what it means to the readers. This is an article with multiple acronyms but no definitions for them.

<comment><USER10> I'm sorry! It's fixed now, thanks!

<comment><USER11> Thanks for the very interesting article. Sorry if its a sill question but I'm a little bit confused. As someone who is barely starting with node.js, I'm curios if this would be a good architecture for a node.js app, or am I getting this wrong?

Sorry if the question is not clear, I can clarify if necessary :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Thanks for posting this. I'm halfway through Eric Evans book on DDD and have two others in my queue. I find it strange that there's very little discussion about DDD here on HN.

Do you have any recommended resources on CQRS?

<comment><USER10> I recommend watching Greg Young's talks on DDD/CQRS

[http://skillsmatter.com/expert-profile/open-source-dot- net/g...](http://skillsmatter.com/expert-profile/open-source-dot-net/greg- young)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Where does JPA fit into Clean Architecture? Seems like annotation-based persistence straddles several boundaries, or else you code your entities multiple times as both "real" entities and DTOs.

<comment><USER4> There's still coupling, which may or may not hamper isolated testing. So it is a bit less pure, but perhaps much easier to sell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Any comments on DCI?</comment>


Ask HN: Did HN remove the barrier to upvoting posts older than 15 days? - <AUTHOR> <comment><AUTHOR> Previously, I wasn't able to upvote old posts of user, if I did upvote it'd redirect to add to my favorite posts. Now, the upvote button upvotes.

Did the change came recently ?

<comment><USER2> Yup, last night. Upvotes after the time window has expired are now recorded, but they still don't alter the point total. From a user point of view the only effect should be that you'll see the upvote arrow disappear (i.e. the standard indication that you upvoted this item). We'll see how this works for a while. If there are unintended consequences we might revert it.

We did this because users seemed to dislike being told that voting on an item was closed. Before we added that message, the software used to just silently drop votes on old items and no one complained. It was an interesting case of giving more info leading to a worse experience.</comment></comment>


The Spies Next Door - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonian.com/articles/people/the-spies-next-door

<comment><USER2> True story--

I wrote an article for Byte Magazine around 1980, back when that was a big deal. It was a technical article about something I won't mention and it got a lot of good reviews and I made a minor bit of money for it.

A few weeks later, I received a postcard from someone claiming to be a university professor in Budapest, Hungary. He said he loved the article and was wondering if I could send him copies of it to read. I was a bit surprised because Hungary, then, was a communist country and you just didn't communicate such things to them.

A week or so later, I got another postcard from someone in Budapest making the same claim and also wanting a copy of the article.

Wanting to be a good citizen and patriot, I felt someone needed to know about this so I called the FBI. They invited me to their offices in one of the new, cool Federal buildings so I thought this would be fun. Getting inside, though, showed they still painted the walls that boring, 50s, pea-green.

In just a few minutes, I was escorted to a back room by an agent. On the table he had a folder with copies of the postcards and article I had sent them earlier. He was a nice guy but I noticed the cheap suit he wore; not wool but nylon or some other "plastic" material.

We talked for a bit about what the article was about and how these Hungarians may have come across it and why they were writing me. My last name is Hungarian so that may have been part of it.

He said, this is step one for such people to make contact. If I sent copies of the article, they may write back and ask me more questions, or ask me about other articles, technical info, my family, how I'm doin', and so on. One day, I may get a phone call: "Hi, I'm a friend of that university professor you were writing and he asked me to stop by and say Hi!" but that would probably never happen so don't worry about it.

So he asked me to send copies of the article to him anyway just to see what happens. Wanting to be a good citizen and patriot, I said, "Of course!". I thought it would be fun!

Weeks went by. My wife went to bed right after dinner with a bad cold. I went in the other room to watch TV with the sound turned down. The phone rang.

"Hi! Is this, icantthinkofone?". (Not my real name.) The voice on the other end said he was with a publishing company I had never heard of. He had read my article in Byte, thought it was very good, and wanted to know if I could write a book about other technical subjects ... like disk drives.

I felt like someone grabbed my chest with their fist. A pall fell over me and I started to sweat. There was an article in the EE Times about how the Soviets were after disk drive technology just the other day. Was this a Hungarian spy?! I had no way of knowing. I never heard of his company. I asked him to send me a sample book to examine their writing style. The next day, I called the FBI.

A week later, I received the book. The FBI confirmed the caller was legit. I never heard from my Hungarian professors again. The FBI never called me. What I thought would be 'fun' was one of the most frightening moments in my life. (And I never wrote the book.)

<comment><USER3> Freaky.

How do you know the caller was legit, just because they sent you a book? :)

<comment><USER2> It took a couple of days for the FBI to get back to me that he was legit. I'll edit the story.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> They have omitted the best part of the Glomar Explorer story, the cherry on the cake (I am Russian, so please excuse me for inevitable bad grammar).

The cover story wasn't just "deep ocean mining". They needed to be more specific to explain the unusual equipment. CIA has created an entire fake geological industry for this operation — manganese nodules mining (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manganese_nodule).

Manganese nodules do exist for real, but they never have been easily recoverable enough for commercial exploitation. CIA had started the operation to convince the scientific community otherwise. They flooded the geological and mining industry periodicals with hundreds of fake peer-reviewed papers describing some details of nodule recovery process, to make it appear doable. First, it served as the explanation for Glomar Explorer activities; second, they created a distraction for Russians and other nations, who enthusiastically started they own nodule mining projects (all abandoned after the operation details leaked).

Russians bought it fully. In our periodicals, we had many enthusiastic articles about the future of deep ocean mining and endless sources of rare metals. Then, it vanished abruptly. I can't even imagine the fury of Russian intelligence when they had learned the details. And who knows, what other peer reviewed scientific publications today are just a cover story for some big spy game?

</comment><comment><USER5> With all these tales about people getting involved with spooks, the only thing that comes to mind is this passage from Chuang Tzu:

 _There was a man who had an audience with the king of Sung and received from him a gift of ten carriages. With his ten carriages, he went bragging and strutting to Chuang Tzu. Chuang Tzu said, "There's a poor family down by the river who make their living by weaving articles out of mugwort. The son was diving in the deepest part of the river and came upon a pearl worth a thousand pieces of gold. His father said to him, 'Bring a rock and smash it to bits! A pearl worth a thousand in gold could only have come from under the chin of the Black Dragon who lives at the bottom of the ninefold deeps. To be able to get the pearl, you must have happened along when he was asleep. If the Black Dragon had been awake, do you think there'd have been so much as a shred of you left?' Now the state of Sung is deeper than the ninefold deeps, and the king of Sung more truculent than the Black Dragon. In order to get these carriages, you must have happened along when he was asleep. If the king of Sung had been awake, you 'd have ended up in little pieces!"_

</comment><comment><USER6> _And then: "Oh, wait a minute—we haven't refreshed the closed-circuit TV."_

 _"They were looking at old images," Sharp says. "They refreshed the closed- circuit images and . . . gone."_

There you go. Working for the CIA is just like web development.

</comment><comment><USER7> Some more background on the sunken russian sub recovery mission:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Azorian](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Azorian) [https://www.cia.gov/about-cia/cia-museum/experience-the- coll...](https://www.cia.gov/about-cia/cia-museum/experience-the- collection/text-version/stories/project-azorian.html)</comment>


Europe's largest IT firm to scrap internal e-mail - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2011/11/europes-largest-it-firm-to-scrap-internal-e-mail.ars <comment><USER2> I'll be interested to see if this works...</comment>


Japan allows people to return to Fukushima - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/31/japan-fukushima-idUSL1N0MR0MD20140331

<comment><AUTHOR> If it's safe for residents to return, perhaps Shinzo Abe would like to move his family there, along with the rest of parliament as a sign of confidence and show of solidarity with ordinary people?

Meanwhile other reports claim that the radioactive "black soil" patches are being found all over the place, many contaminated with plutonium.

[http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201206...](http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201206140067)

 _" The highest level of radioactivity detected--about 5.57 million becquerels per kilogram--came from black soil collected in the Kanaya neighborhood of the Odaka district of southern Minami-Soma. In 36 out of 41 locations in Fukushima Prefecture where black soil was collected, the radioactivity level exceeded 100,000 becquerels per kilogram. If that level was found in incinerator ash, it would have to be handled very carefully and buried in a facility that had a concrete exterior separating it from its surroundings."_</comment>


An Unexplored Area of Artificial Intelligence: Smart Mirrors – Analytics Insight - <AUTHOR> https://www.analyticsinsight.net/an-unexplored-area-of-artificial-intelligence-smart-mirrors/ <comment><USER2> The article makes some pretty bold claims, especially those regarding home/consumer use I find pretty doubtful.

> With time, we all are going to have a Smart Mirror in our homes sooner or > later, in light of the fact that the cost of a typical mirror will be > similar to a Smart Mirror,

The only way I see that to be true is for a large manufacturer of smart assistants subsidizing them in order to gain any relevant market share. Smart mirrors are neither new, nor more "AI" than smart assistant displays.

From a privacy perspective, 75% of my mirrors are in rooms where I would want to avoid a corporate controlled camera at all costs (bathrooms, bedrooms), immediately disqualifying any augmented reality features.

Smart mirrors will likely see more use in point of sales and outdoor at tech, sure. But that doesn't make it more interesting than what it is, a display behind a mirror.</comment>


Actually Useful Horoscopes - <AUTHOR> http://actuallyusefulhoroscopes.tumblr.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Also explanation of the idea by authors of the site: [http://lesswrong.com/lw/5tc/rationalist_horoscopes_a_lowhang...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/5tc/rationalist_horoscopes_a_lowhanging_utility/)

<comment><USER2> In other words, it has nothing whatsoever to do with astrology. They are just taking the traditional format of the "daily horoscope" and trying to make it a means to "give good (generic) advice", or some such.</comment></comment>


Hacker News basics? - <AUTHOR>

So I've used Hacker News on and off for a while but there's a questions I have long wondered.
First off, is there a guide/manual or something I should read? May answer it.
Downvoting. Is it limited to only people with good karma? If so, how good? <comment><USER2> The Hacker News welcome message

<http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html>

gives an overview of the community experiment here, summarizing the site guidelines.

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

The Hacker News FAQ

<http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html>

gives some additional details about how Hacker News is administered. The welcome message distills the basic rules into a simple statement: "Essentially there are two rules here: don't post or upvote crap links, and don't be rude or dumb in comment threads."

The The Unofficial Hacker News FAQ

<http://jacquesmattheij.com/The+Unofficial+HN+FAQ>

by Jacques Mattheij (a high-karma veteran user here) gives his personal answers to questions that are frequently asked about the forum settings and features here.

</comment><comment><USER3> There are Guidelines and an FAQ at the bottom of the page.

Downvoting limited to high karma, someone said 501 currently and increased periodically in a recent discussion although I have no way to verify.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ahh. I was looking on a page where the footer didn't show. Thank you.</comment></comment>


Show HN: GoTeam – Simple Video Meetings - <AUTHOR> https://goteam.video <comment><AUTHOR> This is an alternative to Zoom. Some background: I work for Lookback, and our main thing is doing video recordings of remote user research (UX) sessions. For the "remote" part we use our in-house built WebRTC server network. At some point last year we got fed up with Slack calls, Zoom, Appear In, etc and said to ourselves "hey, we got this tech ourselves, let's use it!" So we've made this chat and used it for our meetings for over a year now, and it is time to share the joy :)

We share it for free now and we hope it will take off. If it is successful, we will think about bandwidth costs and monetization later. One thing this does give us already now is "free testing" of our Live server infra. The idea is an old one, that any meeting room can be created on the fly like [https://goteam.video/whatever-you-want](https://goteam.video/whatever-you- want) Performance wise we regularly have meetings with 20+ people, how this scales out is yet to be determined (please tell me if you find a limit!). If it takes off, we also plan to build native mobile clients (no cross platform frameworks).

Details: It's a full mesh network built on AWS where we put a server in every available AWS region. It's not using WebRTC peer-to-peer but instead opts for client-server. This obviously has privacy drawbacks, but recall our main business is _recording_ live sessions, so even if we don't (yet) allow recording of meetings, the solution is mainly for that scenario. However our experience is that client-server typically works better for meetings spread out over the globe because AWS internal transits are much faster than the open internet.

We're trying to do privacy right, I wrote some about it here: [https://tinyurl.com/y9mv9jgm](https://tinyurl.com/y9mv9jgm)

Happy to answer any questions about the tech or otherwise!</comment>


Gun Homicide Rate Down 49% Since 1993 Peak; Public Unaware - <AUTHOR> http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/05/07/gun-homicide-rate-down-49-since-1993-peak-public-unaware/

<comment><USER2> It's interesting that 6 in 10 deaths recorded as "gun homicides" are "gun suicides". This is technically correct, but most people tend to think of a homicide as a person being killed by someone else.</comment>


Microsoft CRM 2011 Beta - <AUTHOR> http://offers.crmchoice.com/CRM2011Beta-Landing

<comment><USER2> I think this can't be more than a showcase for silverlight. I run linux and winxp so I cannot even try without the hassle of getting silverlight for xp.</comment>


Biopharma has abandoned antibiotic development - <AUTHOR> https://endpts.com/biopharma-has-abandoned-antibiotic-development-heres-why-we-did-too/ <comment><USER2> From the article, "Public measures designed to incentivize development of new antibiotics are woefully inadequate."

This is the issue. Relying on private entities to provide (R&D, clinical trials) for what are ostensibly public goods (antibiotic resistant bugs puts every person at risk) brings the real risk of market failure.

The NIH is making some progress on this front.

[https://aspe.hhs.gov/system/files/pdf/258516/ProgressYears1a...](https://aspe.hhs.gov/system/files/pdf/258516/ProgressYears1and2CARBNationalActionPlan.pdf)

It appears that overprescribing existing antibiotics to people and livestock is a leading cause of rising drug resistance, both of which can be addressed by policy changes.

<comment><USER3> It seems like overprescribing to a cow is such low hanging fruit.

I understand that if my 5-day-old child marginally needs antibiotics, that the doctor may prescribe to appear active.

But couldn't sensible legislation end over-prescription to livestock overnight? Is this really an issue of beating the cow lobby?

<comment><USER4> The "cow lobby" is large multinational corporations... so yes it's an issue beating their lobbyists. Also, a side effect of antibiotics is weight gain in livestock - so even legislation that ostensibly outlaws use for the direct purpose of directly adding to profits, language in regulation is generally kept for medical purposes of "reducing disease" among herds. Disease that is at a high rate because of high density feedlot practices...

<comment><USER5> > a side effect of antibiotics is weight gain in livestock

Original article in Nature: [https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11400](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11400)

<comment><USER4> There have been quantitative calculations for antibiotics taught for years in ag departments, and known among industry practitioners. Farming is a highly quantitative industry, and any agent of growth promotion is tracked carefully along with feed energy & cost inputs. Today you may have to go back to older documents to see talk about it in a more open manner though.

Here's a more industrial type of analysis paper (2003)

[https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of- agricultu...](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-agricultural- and-applied-economics/article/productivity-and-economic-effects-of- antibiotics-used-for-growth-promotion-in-us-pork- production/63959BF885FCE4C2E8C55BBFF566F8F5)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A reminder: Poor sanitation in underdeveloped countries is part of what is breeding antibiotic resistant infections which then get exported to more developed countries thanks to the modern ability to get from pretty much anywhere on the planet to pretty much anywhere else on the planet that people typically reside in about 24 hours (or less).

The last time I said this, someone apparently thought I was being racist and classist and saying mean things about "those people" overseas. I'm not.

I'm saying there are other ways to tackle this issue and one is by supporting hygiene programs worldwide, including here in the US when the revival of sometimes deadly _Medieval Diseases_ is associated with the homeless crisis we are having.

<comment><USER7> > Poor sanitation in underdeveloped countries

It's not just poor sanitation. It's that in underdeveloped countries antibiotics are completely uncontrolled, available without a prescription for almost nothing. This availability promotes misuse.

<comment><USER8> Better sanitation and hygiene would help with that as well, though. People would no longer get sick with lots of infections that can easily be prevented in other ways, and the habit of overprescribing antibiotics would disappear.

<comment><USER7> People take antibiotics prophylactically all the time even here in the US. They'll do so in the developing world too unless stopped with regulation restricting use of antibiotics to cases where they'll be effective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> >Achaogen ($AKAO) and Paratek ($PRTK) both had NDAs approved for novel antibiotics and saw their stock prices drop sharply in response to the news, as investors anticipated all those pesky expenses related to commercialization.

I was around for most of Achaogen's implosion. Some key points not mentioned in this blog post:

1.) In the ~12 months leading up to FDA approval, Achaogen started burning their capital at a rate that was, frankly, insane. Financial decision-makers were definitely counting their chickens before they hatched, and this ultimately seems to have resulted in massive cuts to opex (e.g. sales positions) that snowballed into abysmal revenue once Zemdri hit the market.

2.) The FDA approved Achaogen's product, Zemdri, indication for complex UTIs (cUTI), but not for bloodstream infections (BSI). The latter indication is much more lucrative. My personal opinion is that this factor alone wasn't responsible for the poor sales numbers, but it was certainly a huge contributor to the problem.

</comment><comment><USER10> There's no guarantee that there even are further broad spectrum antibiotics possible.

As far as I understand, what's needed here is (first) fundamental research, then discussion of promising ideas, then maybe you can rely on private companies to perfect and bring to market new molecules.

Thats a far cry from other drugs for other diseases where there is a futile set of fundamentals to pick over and small research groups spinning off from universities regulatly.

Every time I've heard of new prospects, it's either been reexamining old methods (like plagues) or new fundamental work (sampling and sequencing new bacteria, studies on fungi).

So instead of "incentives", we should just man up and fund some biology and stop wasting what we have already on farm animal fattening programs and the worried well etc.

</comment><comment><USER11> If the public knew about this problem, if it were marketed to them there might be a solution. You'd likely need some policy changes too. But if I could choose between an insurance that supported and supplied new antibiotics I'd jump at that insurance over one that did not. I'd happily pay more to be covered for something so fundamental.

Obviously there would be a lot to iron out but I think there is an opportunity for health insurance companies to make a good amount of money off of that.

I'm guessing however that existing policy would make this impossible.

</comment><comment><USER12> So much of the modern corporation has been outsourced...including nearly all research. Most animal research today and Phase II trials are done...in China/India.

The evidence that these studies are largely faked due to the pressure put on the staff and management there has been piling up for years. I would recommend "Science Mart: Privatizing American Science" by Philip Mirowski for more on this.

</comment><comment><USER13> > and that larger players would correspondingly re-enter the market, hungry to > pick up first-in-class antibiotic programs.

Does this mean their business model is basically always going to be getting acquired by one of the big pharma firms?

<comment><USER14> Yes, This is essentially the only model in Pharma and bio-med.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Public fund, public production. Take antibiotics research out of the IPR domain, and put it back into public health funding.

</comment><comment><USER16> Tldr: privately funded research is not working.

I don't understand why antibiotics research can't be done at (publicly funded) universities?

<comment><USER8> It's comparatively difficult to do applied research with _grant_ funding, which is what most "publicly funded" universities tend to rely on. For this sort of high-value research, what you want is _prizes_ so that success can be rewarded after the fact, even when the usual "market" mechanism of selling drugs is not working very well for whatever reason. Current policy approaches provide 'development incentives' of some sort as OP mentions, but clearly these are not enough.

<comment><USER4> Or crazy thought, expand the number and duration of grants to research this area...

<comment><USER17> You can't rely on researchers to make a product out of their findings (running trials and getting approval) and that's were the big costs are.

<comment><USER18> Not in the current job climate, but if (say) successfully shepherding something through FDA approval were treated like a Nature paper, I bet you'd see a lot more researchers trying it.

The problem with the prize idea is that this stuff is _expensive._ Most academic institutions don't have a mechanism for doing something "on credit" and hoping to win a prize that covers the costs and then some. Some companies can, but the optics of giving prizes to BigPharma also aren't great.

<comment><USER8> > Most academic institutions don't have a mechanism for doing something "on > credit" and hoping to win a prize that covers the costs and then some.

Some do, actually. It's called an "endowment". Unless by mechanism you meant an internal _policy_ to allow for this - but that's the sort of stuff that can be changed with relative ease.

<comment><USER18> I chuckled a little at "relative ease" (nothing involving university legal stuff is easy) but ran some numbers to see how feasible that would be.

The median Phase II trial costs about $10M and has a 30% success rate; Phase III costs a lot more (say 2x that), but has better odds (58% advance to approval, and 85% of those get approved). Neglecting Phase I and everything before it, the expected cost is therefore about $16M (over ~3 years) and gets you an approved drug 15% of the time.

There are only 11 individual universities (plus three university systems) with endowments over $10B, but a surprising number with endowments in the $1B range. The draw rate on endowments is usually capped at 5% so that the principal remains intact, giving you around $50M for the entire university's endowment income.

A single trial would therefore consume about 10% of the endowment income per year--and with a 15% success rate, it's probably not going to win anything. There's no way a university president is going to let a group of researchers make a gamble like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The healthcare and pharmaceutical industries sure seem to have a lot of market failures.

</comment><comment><USER20> A typical failing of short term economic thinking:

Superbugs are virtually certain to kill a huge number of people, because virulent resistant strains gonna Black Death.

But we can't get a payoff within a quarter or whatever the payoff window for the seed money is? Eh, don't bother investing.

This is where the government must step in. Oh right, gubberment baaaad.

Seriously, if these have promise they should be funded for 10 years by a multinational conglomerate.

I mean, maybe the Chinese government will step in. You know, the only forward- thinking major government in the world? What a world.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're missing the main point of the article.

If you invent a great new antibiotic, it won't be used unless absolutely necessary.

<comment> ur-whale This is a great summary of the article and should be the top comment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Ah, reminds me of investing (poorly) in Amplify Biosciences in late 2017...

Since acquired by Armata pharma, which trades around 4 a share, cap of 40M.... I lost 90% of my investment, oh darn, was a bad investment in hindsight.

Looking at that chart in the article, not too surprised the rest of the market in big red territory.

</comment><comment><USER22> > Under the Affordable Care Act, hospitals must pay a penalty for each > hospital-acquired-infection (HAI) occurring within their in-patient > population. As a result, if a patient dies from a superbug > contracted during a procedure such as surgery, the official cause of > death may be instead listed as "Complications from Surgery." > Consistent and systemic undercounting of illnesses and deaths from > resistant infections further discourages the development of new > antibiotics as the number of patients who need these medicines may > appear to be very small.

Sounds like the regulatory environment is overriding any market forces or customer needs.

<comment> crooked-v > Consistent and systemic undercounting of illnesses and deaths from > resistant infections

That's not "regulatory environment goes too far", that's "regulatory environment doesn't go far enough".

<comment><USER7> Pick _any_ problem that regulation causes and you'll find some people saying that the real problem is that the regulation doesn't go far enough. You can listen to these people and expand regulation an indefinite number of times until you end up with a full command economy --- and we all know how well command economies work.

<comment><USER11> Poorly crafted regulation tends to cause more harm than good. That's why turning to regulation as the solution must be done with care.

On the other side. Unrestrained markets tend to do more harm than good. That's why turning away from regulation must be done with care.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Psychology Cannot Be an Empirical Science - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2016/01/02/can-psychology-empirical-science <comment><USER2> As a psychologist I get what the article is aiming at. But psychology is a science and clinical psychology has made remarkable progress in the way we treat mental health problems.

In the last 50 years clinical psychologists have figured out effective psychological treatments for almost all mental health problems and manualized them so a professional can know or easily look up the best way to treat a disorder.

It took us forever to get here was because psychologists keeps insisting that every single person is so special that we could never compare them to anyone else.

Which simply isn't true.

Most of my depressed patients share similar background and stress in their life. The same is true for patients suffering from social anxiety.

The biggest problem in therapy today is the lack of practitioners, not that we don't know how to treat disorders. We figured that out using empirical psychological research.

</comment><comment><USER3> I can't understand

</comment><comment><USER4> We changed the URL from [http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs12124-015-9339-x](http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs12124-015-9339-x) because it doesn't look like the paper is available, to what seems to be the best popular post on it.

<comment><USER5> This abstract and for-sale page loads for me just fine, in case people want to spend the $40 retail for the article.

The Discover blog link is a good backgrounder, and the comments are as interesting as the article. ;)</comment></comment>


You inspired my sci-fi novel. Care to download a free copy? - <AUTHOR> Hello HN and the rest of the open source community.
Your willingness to freely share your skills, your experience, and links to interesting essays and posts was part of the inspiration for my novel (and helped me make a living with Javascript, HTML and CSS for the past few years.)
I'm making the ebook version of my science fiction novel, The Last Breath, free (for October 12 & 13, 2016 only) as a way to say thanks. <comment><AUTHOR> Can you help a brother out? Let's see if we can set an Amazon record for sci- fi downloads in a 24 hour period. A big burst of downloads of my book from Amazon opens the door for other marketing opportunities. I'd really like to make a living at writing so I can keep doing it. Your help can make the difference. Here's the direct link to the book on Amazon: [https://www.amazon.com/Last-Breath-Charlie-Magee- ebook/dp/B0...](https://www.amazon.com/Last-Breath-Charlie-Magee- ebook/dp/B01H5W517W/)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the free download! I've only read the first few pages so far, but it looks intriguing. I can really identify with your protagonist, who is skeptical of the latest technology trends. Hopefully, I'll have some time to read it this weekend.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's the link to more info on my blog page: [http://mageewrites.com/thank- you-hacker-news-github-stack-ov...](http://mageewrites.com/thank-you-hacker- news-github-stack-overflow/)

</comment><comment><USER3> No link?

<comment><AUTHOR> Man, you are too fast! [https://www.amazon.com/Last-Breath-Charlie-Magee- ebook/dp/B0...](https://www.amazon.com/Last-Breath-Charlie-Magee- ebook/dp/B01H5W517W/)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How does Apple keep its secrets? - <AUTHOR> Building something like a new line of macbooks is not a task for a team of 5, including the software department there should be many people and they all have families who probably know a bit. How does no press have a reliable source for a bit of leakage?<p>I think I discussed this before on HN, my wonder about how open secrets of the industry don't make it to the press. I understand this for more niche things, but measured by the amount of press the two word statement "stay tuned" of cook stirs up there seem to be a lot of people focused on apple. <comment><AUTHOR> found a bit of info: [https://www.quora.com/How-does-Apple-keep-secrets-so- well](https://www.quora.com/How-does-Apple-keep-secrets-so-well)</comment>


Apple's widened ban on templated apps wiping small businesses from the App Store - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/08/apples-widened-ban-on-templated-apps-is-wiping-small-businesses-from-the-app-store/ <comment><USER2> There are two sides to this:

1\. Templated apps that spam the App Store just to increase revenue. For example, games that just swap out some assets and rebrand as an entirely new experience. 2\. Templated apps for small organizations such as cities and universities that differ significantly in content, but not in design.

Obviously, it would be advantageous to let through apps of type #2 while blocking #1–the issue is finding a good boundary between them. I feel that the differences in content should be what really sets apps apart, instead of their design.

<comment><USER3> Why not let the user rating/review system work? If an app lacks value, it will get a poor rating. User's can then avoid low-rated apps.

I guess I just don't understand the Apple mentality in general that removing my choices and capabilities is better for me somehow.

<comment><USER4> If I submit ten copies of the same game with different background colors, then all of them would get the same rating, because all of them provide the same value/quality. If the game's not poor, it will not get a poor rating.

Nonetheless, Apple would (rightly) want to ensure that this doesn't happen, since all the duplicates provide negative value, crowding out the competition, harming discoverability. _On their own_ each of them would provide value, the problem is in duplication.

<comment><USER5> Allow "hidden" apps which could be only found via direct link.

For the legitimate template apps described in article this should be ok as users are likely dedicated and can find the link to app for example via website.

<comment><USER6> Yes, I think that's exactly what they should do.

Apple wants to have absolute control of what users are allowed to install on their own devices. Maybe that's justifiable as a way to avoid malware, and maybe it's also reasonable to extend the "evilness" check to cover apps which would drain the battery or interfere with other apps.

Apple also entirely reasonably wants quality control on what apps they're willing to advertise on their "store front".

But I think there's no justification for using the "store front" quality bar to block what users are allowed to install. If an individual or organisation is willing to pay to have an app developed for their own customers/staff/associates/family/whatever, Apple shouldn't be applying more than the "evilness" check before they permit people to install it.

(Alternatively Apple could agree to sign apps which pass the "evilness check" without hosting them, but they'd probably want to be able to remove them if they spot malware later rather than relying on some kind of certificate revocation. They could charge a reasonable fee to cover review and hosting costs.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't have a strong opinion either way about Apple's stance, but why do these restaurants need an app at all? You can do online ordering and Apple Pay with a website.

If the companies had tied their fate to the web instead of the App Store they wouldn't have this problem.

I'm usually pro native apps for things I use every day but I'm not going to keep an app on my phone for a restaurant.

<comment><USER8> Because searching for an App within App Store with Logo shown in restaurant is infinitely easier for majority of users then typing www. whatever this is they couldn't spell.com

QR Code solves this problem by simply having the user scan.

I dont think restaurant needs its own App. But there are definitely some advantage to having a App Entrance to your restaurant.

I think this is a problem worth solving.

<comment><USER7> I doubt that anyone in the almost 10 years that the Apple App Store has been opened has ever said that searching through it is easier than searching Google.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why do these small businesses need apps rather than web sites? Reading the description of these templated apps, they seem to to be the low quality kind of web site replacement that doesn't offer any extra functionality over a web site.

<comment><USER10> Push notifications require an app, which is likely a big reason for wanting to get users into apps.

<comment><USER11> > Push notifications require an app

An app isn't required if you use a browser that supports push notifications.

[https://developers.google.com/web/progressive-web- apps/](https://developers.google.com/web/progressive-web-apps/) [https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/codelabs/push...](https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/codelabs/push- notifications/)

<comment><USER12> On iOS the only way to get a push notification is via an app. Mobile Safari doesn't support push (or service workers).

<comment><USER13> I think you might be correct. Until someone else corrects me, I found this in Apple's documentation about website notifications and Safari Push Notifications:

"This document pertains to OS X only. Notifications for websites do not appear on iOS."

[https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Ne...](https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/NetworkingInternet/Conceptual/NotificationProgrammingGuideForWebsites/Introduction/Introduction.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This seems to be part of a PR effort on the part of people making the app- creator apps.

Apple is cracking down on spam apps, in which someone creates dozens or hundreds of nearly-identical apps. That's why the notice says "Your app provides the same feature set as many of the other apps you've submitted to the App Store, it simply varies in content or language."

So if you're a company creating one app for each of three dozen restaurants, yeah, but that's spam. Solution: each restaurant publishes their app under their own account. Problem solved!

But that would remove lock-in by the spam vendors, so instead they begin a PR effort.

<comment><USER15> This is exactly it. Apple is simply requiring that apps be published under the proper owner's account rather than under the accounts of the app mills that generate them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The notice by Apple states 'Your app provides the same feature set as many of the other apps you've submitted to the App Store'.

IE spam

But according to the article it's against apps creates using a template.

I don't think you get these notices if you use a template to build one app, just when you submit hundreds of the same apps.

</comment><comment><USER17> Two viewpoints:

1\. I wonder if this could be used to target things like React Native. Is there an incentive for Apple to push devs to use Swift/ObjC/Xcode to keep them on platform? Is RN's platform agnosticism a threat?

2\. Native apps are horrible and mask deficiencies in both web apps and device makers. The web should be good enough. Apps also create a walled garden which is antithetical to an open internet.

<comment><USER2> > Is there an incentive for Apple to push devs to use Swift/ObjC/Xcode to keep > them on platform?

Of course. It creates developer lock-in.

> Native apps are horrible and mask deficiencies in both web apps and device > makers. The web should be good enough.

I'm going to have to disagree with you there. Web apps (yes, I'm including React Native here) are always inferior to a well-designed native apps. They perform significantly poorer, don't take full advantage of UIKit, and, based on many companies' engineering blogs, require a significant amount of effort to solve issues that just don't occur with native apps.

<comment><USER17> I agree on all your points about web apps vs native apps. I should clarify, native apps are fine, but the _requirement_ for native apps due to poor performance of web apps is horrible. At least give me PWAs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This does seem unfortunate especially considering the enforcement doesn't target Apple's parter IBM which the article says develops similar apps. I guess the answer is that for many of these apps they need to make their own without a template or just encourage use of a mobile website.

<comment><USER19> They pay the protection money.

<comment><USER20> They do better than just pay protection money.

[https://www.cio.com/article/3133945/hardware/ibm-says- macs-s...](https://www.cio.com/article/3133945/hardware/ibm-says-macs-save-up- to-543-per-user.html)

screenshot [https://screenshots.firefoxusercontent.com/images/db98b0b7-1...](https://screenshots.firefoxusercontent.com/images/db98b0b7-15c5-432a-832c-d9a915bc8a62.png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Anyone have any idea on how this will affect the new Salesforce mobile? They recently unveiled this huge thing where you could rebrand their app and deploy it to app stores through config only. I'm about 50/50 on "this is going to ruin it for them" and "Salesforce can throw money at it to be a silent exception"

</comment><comment><USER22> Seems that the bigger companies are getting the more they focus on shutting businesses out of economical ways of becoming more efficient where technology is concerned. Many of these smaller businesses are simply developing a means for the convenience of their customers to do what they currently undertake but in a more time consuming manner. Yes, they hope to gain new customers but moreso they are are trying to provide a service to their existing customers. Shutting these smaller businesses out will just make it harder and more expensive for them to ever compete with the big competitors in their respective industries.

<comment><USER22> I don't like the spammy apps but I do think there are good smaller businesses who need some of these services. I guess the challenge is finding the balance between helping small businesses and cutting down on the spammers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Seems like a great opportunity for them to migrate to the web. None of the examples provided seem to require features that aren't available in all major browsers.

The web is open and accessible! I find it incredibly frustrating when random services expect me to install their shitty mobile app. I don't want to use any walled garden if I can avoid it.

I'd view this as a small victory for the web.3

<comment><USER24> People on a limited data plan for with bad net access may not want to incur the charges of a big fat webpage

<comment><USER25> it'very possible to have an app with webview only, so absence of app does not neccessarily mean less data traffic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Glad to see Apple take a stand on all these spammy templated apps.

</comment><comment><USER27> Winning hearts and minds. I wonder if they considered how this might make small businesses feel about using Apple products.

<comment><USER26> Well it's "winning hearts and minds" of users who accidentally download these spammy template apps.

<comment><USER27> There's likely a mix of legitimate ones and spammy ones.

For example, the app needs of small family owned restaurants likely don't vary much. A templated app that does coupons, menus, take out orders, maps, etc, likely works for all. Why build a custom app from scratch?

<comment><USER4> Having every restaurant I frequent having a separate app sounds like a very, very bad thing from the user perspective.

If you're not adding any new functionality, what benefit does having this app give the user? If "A templated app that does coupons, menus, take out orders, maps, etc, likely works for all." then it should be _one_ app on my phone for _all_ such restaurants, not a separate one for each.

Having separate apps is intentionally getting worse user experience just for the sake of restaurant branding/advertising, so the needs of users and restaurant owners conflict here. The whole point of a walled garden is to steer the growth towards something that users want in the end, so if that's your example, then Apple _should_ be putting in work to ensure that we don't get to a future where each small family restaurant has such an app; I'd want Apple to ensure that the needs of users prevail even if that's not what the restaurant owners want.

<comment><USER28> > The whole point of a walled garden is to steer the growth towards something > that users want in the end

That's incredibly naive. The whole point of a walled garden is to steer growth towards something that benefits the owner of the walled garden.

<comment><USER15> Your response is a bit naive too. Isn't the most beneficial thing for Apple (the owner of the walled garden) for their users to get the information they want easily so that they can spend money there? The better and faster the conversion happens, the better Apple makes out both financially and in repeat business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Other than AppMakr that's listed in the article, I believe there are many other 'app making' companies that are affected. One of our active app store apps was built using Appery.io but we haven't received a notification like the one shown in the article.

<comment><USER15> If you publish the packaged app under your own account, you wouldn't get the notification. The issue is the companies are flooding the store with these apps that are barely different, even in content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> apple should work on improving their app store search instead of this

</comment><comment><USER31> Church app company that has successfully pivoted to still service churches within the new rules: [https://aware3.com](https://aware3.com)

</comment><comment><USER32> I do not understand why they do not switch to "progressive web apps". What are their disadvantages compared to native apps?

</comment><comment><USER33> This is text book antitrust. Apple runs the most profitable app store, not being on it can severely impact the bottom line of businesses. It's abusing app store leadership and picking winners on a whim, while hypocritically campaigning for net neutrality.

FTC, BBB, Justice department - take note

<comment><USER34> Apple owns less than 20% ([https://www.idc.com/promo/smartphone-market- share/vendor](https://www.idc.com/promo/smartphone-market-share/vendor)) of the smartphone market, and you can access site-based services via safari.

It's a far cry short of monopoly.

<comment><USER35> Ah, yes, Safari. The only web renderer allowed on the platform.

They may hold 20% marketshare but it's an important 20%. Trusts and anticompetitive practices have multiple forms as well.

<comment><USER34> Yes, it's an important 20%. The gap between "important 20%" and "monopoly" is enormous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Ted Liew is always on-the-ball and challenging DC bozos. Props.

</comment><comment><USER37> So, Apple in it's esteem of for the "rich" people, doesn't care about the SMB next door that isn't a million dollar company?

This is actually quite concerning. What's the motivation behind this? How can SMB's improve ordening if Apple despises the web and bans "niche related" apps?</comment>


Show HN: Facebook Timeline on steroids - <AUTHOR> http://ScrollFriends.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Everything 100% clientside (jQuery + JSON API's), hosted on Amazon Cloudfront, in other words pretty scalable.

Screenshots:

Newsfeed: <http://i.imgur.com/oyEdm.jpg>

My own wall: <http://i.imgur.com/iUAsq.jpg>

Photo albums: <http://i.imgur.com/iIDKa.jpg>

Search for 'Joyce': <http://i.imgur.com/6I104.jpg></comment>


Ask HN: How do you learn about the business aspects of running a startup? - <AUTHOR>

In a few years I'd like to found or co-found a startup but I don't have any business experience and I don't plan on getting an MBA. I've picked up a few things from reading HackerNews and have skimmed through a few books on starting a small business, but none focus on internet startups and they're more of a "Take this survey and if you mark four or more check boxes, you may have the traits necessary be an entrepreneur"-type books.
What's the best way to learn about the nitty gritty details of running a business? I'm talking things like hiring and paying employees, purchasing insurance, paying taxes, etc.
Essentially I'm looking for any books, blogs, or resources that will demystify the second part of this equation:
1) Make something people want (internet style)
2) ???
3) Run a successful, multi-person small business <comment><USER3> The best training regime for X is actually doing X. If you want to work in TV you get a job as an assistant. If you want to be a ski instructor, go work at a resort. Etc.

Go work for a successful, multi-person small business, the kind you want to build yourself someday. Study it from the inside. Be useful & dedicated, ask questions, and make it clear you want to learn as much as you can.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great advice, but alas, I am not in a position to do that at the moment due to prior commitments.

I'm interested in learning as much as I can right now so that when the time is right I'm as prepared as I can be.

<comment><USER4> Don't be so sure you can't do something now. It isn't very hard to set up an LLC or an S-corp, and it costs almost nothing, assuming ~$150 isn't much to you. Save the money you would have used buying a few books and use it to actually set up a company for yourself. Then you can get started with the IRS and an EIN so that you can have a bank account. That's pretty much it at first. Then you can build web products under the LLC and take it from there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The best way is to have no fear. Do your best to treat people right and build something with a vision of the future. Figure out what is impossible and do that. People may not want it right away, but concentrate on building something they not only want, but are willing to pay for.

Subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and Financial times. Read as much of them as you can.

As far as books go, I recently put together a business reading list, here are some that you may find interesting:

The E-Myth revisited (note: this is e as in entrepreneur, not e-commerce, basically it's about building a franchise and enabling yourself to focus "on the business," that is, making it better, advertising, managing, rather than "in the business" which for programmers would be programming...)

Built to last : successful habits of visionary companies (note: some of them have failed)

Confronting reality : doing what matters to get things right (haven't started reading this one yet, funny huh)

An empire of wealth : the epic history of American economic power (haven't started)

Good to great : why some companies make the leap--and others don't (some weren't so great)

An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations, by Smith, Adam, 1723-1790. (goodness, this is 300 years old and still dead on and an easy read)

Microtrends : the small forces behind tomorrow's big changes (haven't started reading yet)

Negotiate like the pros : a top sports negotiator's lessons for making deals, building relationships, and getting what you want (good book, especially if you know anything about sports, which I don't, but still enjoy reading)

Who : the A method for hiring (This is a good one for helping to find talented people to join your team, short easy read)

Why we make mistakes : how we look without seeing, forget things in seconds, and are all pretty sure we are way above average (haven't started reading yet)

</comment><comment><USER6> One of my first year Engineering courses, "Engineering, Society, and the Environment", was complete BS and an utter waste of time, but I did end up retaining exactly one thing from it: the course made the distinction between "Knowledge separated from experience" and "Knowledge embedded in experience".

While working on my first startup, I was reminded over and over again of that distinction. Near the beginning, I read - and understood, I thought - <USER2> blog posts and comments here about the startup experience. Many times, though, I got to a point where I experienced something I had read about - and found that I understand it on an entirely new level.

What I'm getting at is that you're looking for written resources - "Knowledge separated from experience" - while asking for "The best way to learn", which IMO is to "just do it". You can't learn programming just by reading books, I would be surprised if business skills are any different.

I realize this might not be very helpful, and if there are any good resources I'd love to see them too, but... step 2) really is "keep trying until you succeed and figure it out along the way".

</comment><comment><USER7> Find advisers and mentors who have run and scaled small businesses. Talk to them casually and ask if they'd be willing to offer advice on occasion. That's how I did it, and I built to 15 employees while avoiding many (but not all!) of the common business basics blunders due to their assistance. If you find their advice valuable, you can even formalize a relationship with these advisers and provide a token number of warrants in exchange for a bigger time commitment.

I'm always happy to help people get started so feel free to email me.

<comment><USER8> +1. /me running a business. Have discovered the tough way, there's no alternative to mentors/advisors. Running a business involves too many variables. No book/blog can ever cover the entire gamut of probabilities. The only way is to have ready access to a person already doing/done that and ask. Cheers and all the best :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Jump in head first, when something comes up that you don't know, crack open Google and do a search. If you can't find an answer, go ask around the more knowledgeable people you know or post on HN

</comment><comment><USER10> Books are a good start. Here is a (very) short list of must reads.

1\. 4 Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank (Recommended by Marc Andreesen and many others, for starting a company you only need to read the first half)

2\. Innovators Dilemma by Clayton Christensen (Understating whether what you are doing is a sustaining or disruptive innovation)

<comment><USER11> Here here. Most startups get to step 2 without ever achieving step 1, and so they flame out. Get '4 Steps to the Epiphany.' Drop everything and read it. All will become clear.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just ordered it off Amazon -- looks like a great book. Thanks.

<comment><USER10> Good blogs that follow the 4 Steps Model are:

Steve Blank (author of the book) - <http://steveblank.com/>

Eric Ries - <http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/>

\- An advisee/investment of Steve Blank, started IMVU.com, Venture Advisor at Kleiner Perkins) His blog has become somewhat less useful lately though as he's been using it mostly to promote his "Lean Startup" classes.

Sean Ellis - <http://startup-marketing.com/>

\- Has applied 4 Steps model at many companies, consults on "Customer Development" with VC backed companies

Also Venture Hacks is a great place to start. Check out the archives at <http://venturehacks.com/archives/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's not hard - just ask someone. Seriously. The mechanics aren't particularly hard, and if you act in good faith, the vast majority of mistakes are fixable. Step one is by far the hardest (assuming you're including "selling it to customers" in the "make something people want").

</comment><comment><USER13> I've been a contract software developer (in Australia) for a few years now and have been doing this via a company that I set up. Creating a company to contract through certainly creates work and (in Australia at least) there is no tax advantage in doing so - but a lot of the basics of running a company (particularly tax, insurance, accounting and director obligations) are now second nature to me. I've found this a great way to learn.

</comment><comment><USER14> I know this isn't any help to you personally, but if anybody reading is in the UK then the Business Link website (<http://www.businesslink.gov.uk>) seems to be a great resource.

</comment><comment><USER15> Find a good accountant - s/he will take care of your tax issues. Accountants also see businesses come and go in large numbers so if you find one who chats up his clients you will have access to interesting pool of information.

</comment><comment><USER16> Just jump in and try. You'll probably fail a few times. You learn and get better and try again. Eventually you'll get it. Or not, in which case time to try something new!

</comment><comment><USER17> I've been getting my business education by making mistakes running businesses.

</comment><comment><USER18> just do it, one man show -> you take all responsibility, if it fails, it's all yours.

btw, don't confuse MBA with actual business experience.

</comment><comment><USER19> Blood, sweat, and tears.</comment>


Swedish (centre) right-wing party's new logo wasn't quite thought through - <AUTHOR> https://www.liberalerna.se/ <comment><USER2> Site is down for me, so if anyone else is wondering what it looks like: [http://www.svtstatic.se/cms- image/cachable_image/1461423486/...](http://www.svtstatic.se/cms- image/cachable_image/1461423486/svts/article8032492.svt/alternates/extralarge/bilder- liberalerna-jpg)

</comment><comment> T-A "Right-wing"? The Swedish "liberal" party is more like a lukewarm social democratic party for white collar workers who don't identify with the classic blue collar constituency of the latter.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hence the "(centre)", but according to Wikipedia: "...it has since the leaderships of Lars Leijonborg and Jan Björklund in the 2000s become more conservative and positioned itself clearly on the right"[0]

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberals_%28Sweden%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberals_%28Sweden%29)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> B/c it looks like a dildo?</comment>


Advice I Wish I'd Been Told (1999) - <AUTHOR> http://web.archive.org/web/20090502012411/http://wwwstage.valpo.edu/english/vpr/mcdonaldessay.html <comment><USER2> I'm not knocking this article, but when original title is so vague and clickbaity, would you mind filling in some more information in the HN submission?

<comment><USER3> TIL: A way to measure generality in texts [http://research.create.usc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1...](http://research.create.usc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1100&context=nonpublished_reports)

Bad headlines (cryptic, general, and clickbaity) are common, not only in HN. Is there a good solution? (good = better than moderators)

There have been more than a couple of TLDR applications/apps mentioned here before.

<comment><AUTHOR> There is a relatively simple solution: tags

<comment><USER3> Reminded me of a solution by one calculus student to an optimization problem:

"(...constraints...) How should the fence be built to minimize the cost of the fence?"

Student answer: Don't build it. Cost=0.

Sounds almost like a Koan.

<comment><USER4> Answer: Make Mexico pay for the fence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's probably irrelevant to HackerNews, but whatever. Thanks, it's exactly what I needed today. I've been telling myself to write clearly, directly, and in utilitarian language for so long that I almost forgot the love of language.

<comment><USER3> >Irrelevant

Not quite [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

Thought: recommendation engine based on your upvote profile?

<comment><USER6> Vehemently no. I enjoy the unfiltered, random view and don't want somebody else deciding how to tweak the personalisation algorithm.

<comment><USER7> HN _is_ filtered. The main page is a list of article which have been selected and upvoted by small unrepresentative subset of the population. I agree that it's not personalized though.

<comment><USER8> >HN is filtered.

Not relative to what everyone else is seeing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm glad this sort of lateral-thinking-esque thing can still make it to the front page. I don't write poetry, but this seems serendipitously related to other things I've been thinking about.

I've been getting into lifting weights a lot over the last year, and something I read recently changed the way I've started performing the exercises. I've started focusing more on the movements I'm doing, resisting the lazy desire to just go through the motions. It seems to me to be a kind of "avoiding the abstraction," instead lasering in on what's actually going on with my body. It has the tendency to bring out an ecstatic state as well, which is a nice bonus. It feels like a much deeper relationship with the thing I'm doing.

<comment><USER10> That deep attention to what you are doing sounds like "flow" \-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's concept of optimal experience. See his talk here: [http://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow?lan...](http://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow?language=en)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> [Writing] advice I wish I'd been told.

<comment><USER12> They wrote about advice for writers, but with a grain of salt this seems apropos to any creative art, design and construction of digital systems included.

<comment><USER13> Whilst reading, I wondered how the first guidance, "avoid abstraction", could apply to creating programmes, especially in commercial settings.

"Purple", "poetic" or "tangental" function, variable and class names litter my personal projects. I enjoy coming up with these things immensely, at the time. Often, later, I rename them to more directly communicate their intended use. Which way exhibits "better" poetry?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> That also applies to life and whenever you try to create anything.

</comment><comment><USER15> Is the hyphen meant to be there in "ab-stracted" ?

Or is it some artifact of publishing perhaps?

If it is meant to be there what do people think is intended by it? Just to emphasise it? Something else?

(also, no need to use archive.org; the original is now at [http://www.valpo.edu/vpr/mcdonaldessay.html](http://www.valpo.edu/vpr/mcdonaldessay.html))

<comment><USER16> In the archive.org version, the word "abstracted" is broken across two lines. That's why there's a hyphen.

<comment><USER15> Thanks but it's not for me; it's on a single line in both.

So .. some publishing/web artifact as I supposed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I skipped over the first paragraph as was semi-confused to see "Resist Abstractions" as point #1 in a HN article.

</comment><comment><USER18> * A poem works best, for me, when the writer doesn't tell, but when he or she invents combinations of specific words to show us old facts in new ways. *

I have a similar saying for philosophy; that it is to put the wrong words in the right order. I guess it applies to poetry too, or only.

</comment><comment><USER19> Advice about writing is oft written in some of the most purple and interminable prose. This article is no different.

</comment><comment><USER20> Buy Google stock would have been Good advice then.</comment>


Voyager 1 Fires Up Thrusters After 37 Years - <AUTHOR> https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2017-310 <comment><USER2> Why is this posted again? This is from the 1th december 2017.</comment>


What to do when an $8 million gorilla launches 3 weeks before you - <AUTHOR> http://drstarcat.com/archives/163

<comment><USER2> Love this quote from the article... I actually had to re-read it to make sure I got it right:

"If you're an investor, I'm looking for a partner to help me make Clicker the Ask.com of online video guides. I think you'll find SetJam is a real bargain!"

<comment><USER3> Good catch!

I don't think it's a nice quote because it's about Clicker losing. Doesn't sound like a convincing pitch. The whole "let's not read the article because I might not like what I see" attitude also doesn't inspire confidence.

His honesty and frankness is cool, though.

<comment><USER4> Maybe sometimes you have to know when to focus on your product, and when to focus on your competitor's. What he said sounds pretty straightforward: they were busy, in a critical part of their business development, and he knew that looking at their knew competitor would just distract him from what his team was already doing.

He didn't ignore it altogether, he just waited for the right time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's no such thing as "8 million dollar gorillas". Companies with 8 million dollars in funding are monkeys just like you.

The gorillas make more than 8MM in _profit_.

<comment><USER6> I think of 'gorillas' as having revenues in the _B_ illions or customers in the millions...

I guess everyone has a different concept of the boogeyman?

<comment><USER5> I guess I'm just trying to say, you might change up your strategy competing against Cisco, Microsoft, Google, or even Salesforce.com. But an 8MM round from a competitor probably shouldn't alter _anything_ about your plan, unless it's to capitalize on the attention their inevitable vanity launch will generate.

<comment><USER6> I totally agree, Thomas. I was just trying to take the bounds of the spectrum a bit further. I tend to work in areas with strong network effects, so tens of millions in funding or profits is really nothing. It doesn't affect our strategy at all. We usually just have to be wary of the true behemoths (Google, Nokia, Microsoft, etc.) that can wield enough force to actually change the market.

On the other hand, we sometimes also have to be wary of the tiny, unprofitable startups that have gotten enormous mindshare in the market for some reason. This, of course, is relatively rare - but it happens. The majority of companies are in the middle of that spectrum, and they're the ones that tend to piss away millions without affecting us in any way whatsoever. Except maybe for pointless patent skirmishes. I _hate_ the US patent system with a red-hot glowing passion that knows no bounds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> When spotlife.com launched the demise of Camarades.com/ww.com was widely announced, spotlife was backed by heavyweights Logitech and Philips ($30M).

Spotlife went under many years ago, ww.com is still ticking along. Don't say it can't be done. Be prepared to put in a lot of time and effort though. And forget about finding external capital for the moment.

<comment><USER8> It's good. How is ww.com doing now? I'm actually in a similar situation with openphotovr.org - the competing services from Google and Microsoft turned out to be not nearly so popular (or well-implemented) as I'd feared, and it almost makes sense for me to start pushing the site again.

<comment><USER7> Slowly dying, and has been doing so for the last 5 years or so. There is a lot of competition out there and we've shrunk little by little.

We're in talks with a company about some major move though, so maybe we can get it to be top of the line again without breaking the bank.

To be honest, in spite of making tons of money from it I really can't get excited over webcams any more, it's been enough. Time for fresh blood.

<comment><USER9> You know, mentioning that ww.com is NSFW would've been nice. I just visited the home page and was greeted by a picture of some guy touching himself. Gross.

<comment><USER7> That's another excellent reason why I want to get rid of it. Sorry about that, it definitely isn't intended to be NSFW but there always seems to be people that find great fun in shocking others.

Once again, my apologies. We try what we can to keep the jerks out but it is altogether an impossible task to continuously monitor 400+ video streams for abuse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> When your competitor has raised $8M in funding and you barely have $50k you get the feeling that it is not a fair competition. (And it can not be fair, no matter what you say...). But when your product gets better reviews, you suddenly become more optimistic.;)

<comment><USER11> And being more optimistic is the scary part especially when you don't have enough money. I wouldn't care much about how much money the guerilla's have got.

Have been through both positive and negative end result on two different products.

On a ecommerce product discovery site ReviewGist.com - we had a technically superior product, reviewed on TC and host of other big tech/startup blogs. But sustenance, financial muscle to extend reach matters a lot. Other VC funded companies marched past us long ago.

On a facebook book reading community "Books iRead/weread.com" we were new, small and of course used no budget. We bet the biggies in the market like goodreads, shelfari, librarythings who were there for long time on internet and well funded.

When it is consumer oriented business there can be wonders. But it is definitely a big red alert to watch for the biggie constantly. You get lucky if they don't do things right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> also, clicker seems to be getting a lot more publicity. this is obvious considering they have more money, PR people, or whatever, but you should work on some basic attempts to get your name out there. why aren't you on crunchbase? googling "set jam" sends me to a website on proper handling of cherry jam. The way to win against the gorilla is to use your position as a PR move and write to dozens of blogs, forums, and newspapers (even those old things on the tree-based substances are still read, especially when content is placed online).

You are definitely facing unbalanced competition, the way to beat the bogeyman is to enhance your product's value proposition and use every opportunity for free PR

edit: I do understand the company is called "setjam" not "set jam" but, I imagine many others do not

<comment><USER13> Believe me, this is what really scares me. I feel like a lot of the startup game has turned into a popularity contest, and I've never won a popularity contest in my life. If you look at my twitter stats or blog traffic, you can see that I just write about geeky things that no one cares about. Promoting myself just doesn't come naturally.

My hope is that by listening to our users and focusing 100% on them, we can build a better product and that will be enough. In the end though, I'm the CEO and I've promised my team to get the word out so our efforts aren't in vain. I've set myself to tackling the PR problem with all the intensity I bring to our product. I hope it's enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If anything they could be over funded. I wouldn't call them a gorilla unless they were someone big like Yahoo, Google, Microsoft or have proved themselves in the market over 6+ months.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is a bit inane, given the N billion dollar gorilla already in the room is the people that actually own/licence the content.

</comment><comment><USER16> Very simple: go raise $8-12M based on Lanzone creating a market for a web- based TVGuide. Almost every market worth being in has two winners (think cola, search, fedex/ups, burgerking/MCdonalds, etc).

Also, on exit have two players in the market will help. they will probably not want to exit under $100M and you can carve out the quick exit at $25M.... or not.

the best thing to do is:

a) raise some capital ASAP b) focus on your product c) focus on users and what they think of your product d) focus on distribution (i.e. consider strategic money maybe).

best jason

<comment><USER13> Thanks Jason. That's pretty much the plan, though I'm focusing on "b" until Tuesday, "c" for the rest of my life at SetJam, and going to work overtime to make sure "a" happens in spite of putting it behind "b" and "c".

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Firstly, don't characterize competition as a 8MM gorilla, when they are a startup.

Second, don't worry about competition. Focus on your users. Listen to them. Iterate rapidly. Add features request by your early users.

The other way to think about it is the facebook > twitter status update* as a product. Taking one component of a successful product and making it a product.

* comparisons to fb might not be completely accurate since one of the founders, apparently had the idea for twitter when folks were updating their IM clients.

<comment><USER18> _Firstly, don't characterize competition as a 8MM gorilla, when they are a startup._

Even when they raised $8M in funding?

[http://www.dmwmedia.com/news/2009/09/15/clicker.com- launches...](http://www.dmwmedia.com/news/2009/09/15/clicker.com-launches-web- tv-guide-$8-million)

I think the word _startup_ is the one misplaced :)

<comment><USER17> _Even when they raised $8M in funding?_

Yes. $8MM doesn't mean they have customers/users.

<comment><USER18> I dont quite understand the relevance of that? $8M is probably a lot of money from where this guy is sitting :)

<comment><USER19> It's amazing how much money rich organizations can waste, and how much time they can spend on the wasting.

They can get tempted to reinvent a better wheel for $$$, rather than reusing existing wheels for cheap; then they get sucked into a time/money sink of epic proportions while the simpler solution grows like a weed.

Not what always happens, but what can happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If you have 50k in the bank that is not small change for a startup. That is plenty for you to show off your skills and get things going. Just because they have 8 mil and can hire a ton of people, does not necessarily mean they will be able to execute at your speed. They may have countless discussions, meetings, changes, upgrades, etc... that keep them from releasing product. I've built stuff in a few days with a friend that some companies can't build in 2 months due to the endless meetings and other such nonsense.

Focus on your users and give them what they ask for and remember this: To an end user Yahoo and mydinkysite.com look the same, they have no idea if there are 13,000 people backing it or just you. 10,000 servers or a shared hosting account. All you need to do is give them what they want better than the competition.

You can buy/rent a lot of talent in the valley, but you can't buy is domain knowledge acquired by talking to your users! Engage them and they will give you ideas that are will give you an edge.

</comment><comment><USER21> Funny. I had started working on something similar as a way to learn Django. Was going to use Netflix as my master data source and dapper to scrape Hulu, XBox 360 (on xbox.com) and various lists of iTunes movies. This was going to be a project over a few weekends.

I'm not sure I see where the business model is. The value zap2it and the actual TV Guide bring to the table are by offering original content, something more like Entertainment Weekly. That doesn't seem to be in the plan for either company.

That leaves the affiliate model he mentions, and I can't imagine Netflix, Apple or Microsoft are offering an affiliate model. Hulu also seems doubtful, as an affiliate program for Hulu would be huge news. Perhaps Amazon? After that, it's all small potatoes.

Anyway, good luck.

<comment><USER22> The business model is to position themselves as a media site. With organic growth and tons of good content pages, you can make really good CPMS. So if you have good traffic you can make good money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think the auther is unncessarily hung up on Clicker, which doesn't even seem to be out of private beta yet. His real competitor is SideReel, a television stream aggregator with huge penetration right now.

<comment><USER24> i agree, sidereel is the best site out there for this, but the sad thing is the more popular it becomes, the less likely it will be good and have the best source and be able provide things that an 8m funded company can't. *hint hint.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Here is another option for you. Look long and hard at your business and your partners. Decide if you want to compete w/ Ask.com (maybe you do) and also entertain the possibility of switching directions and doing something different.

Maybe some of the code is reusable? Is there a better idea? Ask yourself if you were to start today, what you would do.

We went through a similar situation and we changed direction. We were lucky to have a flexible and talented team, and looking back on it, it was the best decision we ever made.

</comment><comment><USER26> out press them, watch this interview from mixergy with the founders of hotornot.com

[http://mixergy.com/hotornot-bootstrapped5-million-profits- ja...](http://mixergy.com/hotornot-bootstrapped5-million-profits-james-hong/)

once hotornot bootstrapped from the guys front room- funded competitors sprung up everywhere. He talks about getting his site to be the first article that newspapers carried about such a site

<comment><USER27> I've been at a company that successfully pulled this strategy off. We effectively made the press think we were the leader in our space. This was incredibly helpful in raising capital, but it horribly failed at getting us closer to profitability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> No doubt clicker.com has a lot more people required to make a single decision. In the beginning, when there many critical decisions, this is a disadvantage.

Another thing setjam has going for it is time -- it can grow at its own pace, I suspect. Clicker.com is more sink or swim, and the clock is already running.

</comment><comment><USER29> The media loves a good fight. Otherwise they are bored to death just copying press releases.

So you have a good angle to play. At this point, I would shoot to get a free ride on the buzz they are going to get short term, and see them die from overweight within 2 years while you zoom past them.

</comment><comment><USER30> Isn't it unfair to say that they raised "$8 million on a PowerPoint like it's 1999"? It definitely was harder otherwise SetJam could create something in PowerPoint too.

<comment><USER13> Yes. It is unfair. They raised the money based on Jim's experience as a CEO of a publicly traded company. Still, it's not really how the startup game has been played in quite a while.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> There can be only "Many"!

You don't have to be No.1 or the only one to be successful. If you are a player, I think this is good enough. And good luck!

</comment><comment><USER32> Funny thing about competition, if the market is big enough and the competitors are good enough, there's plenty of room.

 _At TC50 Clicker demonstrated a product that has about every bell and whistle you can imagine. SetJam is stripped down to the bare essentials. I'll let our users tell us what they need instead of deciding for them._

How about that, he's already found a classic way to differentiate. Sounds like a great starting point. I have a feeling they'll do well.

<comment><USER33> > ... if the market is big enough and the competitors are good enough, there's > plenty of room.

... and if there are no big huge network externalities creating a winner- takes-all market.

<comment><USER34> _are no big huge network externalities creating a winner-takes-all market._

Facebook did not kill off other social networking sites and it's got far more externalities than most websites. Once the market is large enough you only need own a tiny slice to make a small profitable company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> How much does a gorilla cost? Like, a real one?

Given that it's probably a gray market at best, I'd guess that one or two particularly impressive ones have traded for $8 million. To Kim Jong Il or somebody. Seems reasonable, right?

</comment><comment><USER36> An $8 million gorilla only matters to the extent that you are a monkey.

You're not a monkey, so I don't know what you're doing defining yourself in reference to a gorilla. Probably not "a lot of good".</comment>


The Rise and Maybe the Fall of Influencers - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/10/fashion/kendall-jenner-fyre-festival-pepsi-bella-hadid-influencers.html <comment><USER2> The available mega influencers (Jenner and Gomez) are scarce. The dilution of brand image begins with conflicting brand associations with the same influencer. While reach is far and wide, at a great cost, the better approach would be to attach to lower level influencers that have smaller impact when their image begins to misalign with the brands. I have a hard time believing agencies haven't been utilizing multiple approaches to utilizing the varying influence across the spectrum instead of putting all their eggs in one basket with one mega influencer. I don't quite understand the point of the article and how the utility of influencers could collapse? There will always be a new face to exploit, no?

<comment><USER3> > I don't quite understand the point of the article and how the utility of > influencers could collapse?

Some industries are ok with blatant sponsorship and some are not. Compare the video game industry awards ([https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2016/12/02/the-good- th...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2016/12/02/the-good-the-bad-and- the-cringeworthy-of-the-2016-game-awards/#5aad60931f42)) to the oscars.

People can be fickle about these things as the industries are being established. If fans decide it's unappealing to see obvious cash-ins, the 'influencer' industry may be overvalued. Whether or not they do probably has a lot to do with whether these scandals are memorable.

<comment><USER4> Also, excessive promotional campaigns can eat into the reputations of the people and brands involved, or even cause a broader loss of trust. For example, Geoff Keighley will probably be forever known as the Dorito Pope because of his over-the-top product placement for Mountain Dew and Doritos, and every video game article, review, Let's Play or shout-out that is seen as excessively positive attracts rumours that the person was paid or otherwise rewarded for doing it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> NYtimes questioning influencers because it undermines their own content, HA!

From the article: PewDiePie, a YouTube star who had signed deals with Disney and Google and then was discovered to have made anti-Semitic statements.

...100% bullshit smear campaign by the WSJ not mentioned...

Influencers must create trust and manage their own base, just like any other brand. The losers at the end of that stick are ad driven media outlets like NyTimes and Google. People creating content is not going anywhere and neither is the power of social media. Sure some top end influences are practically just product pushing robots, but this landscape will even out to be more genuine and niche based.

The long ugly decline of traditional media grasping at straws is not over, the revenue will continue to plummet. The title should be "The continual fall of the MSM as the internet continues to erode it's value."

<comment><USER6> you realize NYT is having record profits? because they are doing real journalism? And you also realize pewdiepie actually did make crude anti- semitic jokes? yes, WSJ over-reacted but he wasn't guiltless. Writing Holocaust/Hitler jokes isn't funny and shouldn't be tolerated.

<comment><USER5> No I don't realise that, because its not accurate.

NYTimes: Print advertising revenue in 2016 fell 16 percent, driving a 9 percent drop in total advertising revenue. For the quarter, print advertising revenue declined 20 percent. Digital advertising revenue rose 6 percent last year. Adjusted operating profit, the company's preferred method for assessing performance, fell to $241 million last year, from $289 million in 2015. Operating profit dropped to $102 million, from $137 million.

^ Says everything you need to know about what is going on, and jokes, although crude, are jokes.

<comment><USER6> They had more subscribers added in the 3 months after trump was inaugurated than all of 2015. So those numbers are essentially fake news

[https://qz.com/901684/thanks-to-trump-the-new-york-times- add...](https://qz.com/901684/thanks-to-trump-the-new-york-times-added-more- subscribers-in-three-months-than-in-all-of-2015/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Who cares. Who cares if the face on vogue Germany isn't German, or the one on vogue US isn't American. Get over it. Who cares if people become indifferent to paid influencers.

It's part and parcel of globalism which lifted hundreds of millions out of abject poverty and gave rise to middle classes in India and China. Course we can go back to nationalistic tendencies.</comment>


Real Life Prisoners Dilemma with $100k at Stake [vid] - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3Uos2fzIJ0

<comment><USER2> _Spoiler warning_

When watching this the first time the facial expression at 2:29 clearly gives away the outcome. The pinched lips is a classic poker tell for discomfort in honesty. While in a poker game an experienced player can hide or mix in false tells, this completely jumped out at me.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not actually the Prisoners' Dilemma - the payout matrix is wrong, but close enough, and gut wrenching. From the interviews after it seems that there's some baggage from the earlier parts of the game.

Interesting to see it (or something close enough) in action.

<comment><USER4> Not the classic payoff matrix, right. But isn't the end result the same? The best answer to split is steal (100% > 50%). The best answer to steal? Well, they look the same (you get 0% no matter what you pick), but you don't know what your partner picks. And steal is the dominant strategy. So in the end you should pick steal. And that's a classic prisoner's dilemma. Any faults with my logic?

(This all obviously assumes that your utility is equivalent to the amount of money. It might not be. You might value not coming across as an asshole pretty high.)

<comment><USER5> In general, yes. Stealing is the way to go. <http://lesswrong.com/lw/tn/the_true_prisoners_dilemma/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow, somebody is going to be friendless for a very long time. But in my opinion, it's better to be betrayed than betray someone.

P.S. Please don't spoil it for those who haven't seen it yet.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's quite interesting how emotionally involved I got watching a couple of these. I had to stop because it was making me angry.

When I first read about the Prisoner's Dilemma in a Douglas Hofstadter book (probably Godel, Escher and Bach although I'm not sure) I went around reading everything I could about it as I felt it was saying something important about society. Today I'm not entirely sure that's the case but it still fascinates me...

</comment><comment><USER8> Can anybody explain what's the most rational decision?

I believe that you should always call "steal". On average (assuming you don't know what the other person will choose) you get more money (1.0 if you steal versus 0.5 if you split) and you can never be betrayed.

More than that: each player decides whether the other player takes any money or not. However since the players decisions are independent it doesn't make sense to say 'split'.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, stealing would be the most rational thing to do (in the strict sense, disregarding any feelings of guilt a person might have).

This game really illustrates the importance of repeated games and quid pro quo in human relationships. What makes human society function is that we can actually create binding contracts, and that we increase trust with people over time, on the basis of mutual give and take.

<comment><USER4> "Yeah, stealing would be the most rational thing to do."

But only if your utility (roughly) corresponds to the money involved. The sums of money might just be big enough for that to be (roughly) true.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: I've just downloaded all HN posts as CSV for analysis - <AUTHOR> https://www.kaggle.com/santiagobasulto/all-hacker-news-posts-stories-askshow-hn-polls <comment><USER2> What are you going to do with it? Cool if I use it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, of course. It's public on Kaggle.</comment></comment>