I was once a Facebook fool - <AUTHOR> http://public.numair.com/2011_fbfool.html <comment><AUTHOR> Wow, well, this got way more attention than I wanted.

First, to be clear -- I have nothing against the guy who took Dave Morin's job (who wasn't supposed to be named -- Amazon CloudFront didn't bother to invalidate its cache when I uploaded the final edit of that paper). He played his cards right, came out hundreds of millions of dollars ahead, and then he _got out_. He's not in this to control your social life or anything, he just played the Silicon Valley game and got his.

The issue is really about the people who _are_ trying to control your social life, and who are trying to convince the sort of people who read Hacker News to use them as a stable, reliable piece of infrastructure for your projects and businesses. My story is just one datapoint of so many -- most of which are private, but easily discoverable by quietly asking around the Valley -- that should help you realize that Facebook is definitely _not_ the company you want operating the world's social infrastructure. The code might work, the pages might render, but on a deep social and ethical level, Facebook and its platform are _not_ web-scale.

Also, the "sharecropper" and "beware of your platform" arguments don't apply here. Social infrastructure isn't like being a developer for the Playstation -- this is very basic and very global stuff, similar to water or power, and you shouldn't have to question its integrity. I shouldn't get dirty water, or my power shut off, because the CEO of the utility company allows his/her VPs to play God. There's a reason these guys don't call themselves a "social utility" anymore... But anyway, that's a whole 'nother subject, and I'd rather be coding (or socializing!) than writing.

And to all of the people who question why I would even publish something like this -- chill out bro, I'm just obeying Zuckerberg's Law! /disconnect

<comment><USER2> I didn't get what you mean by 'not web-scale'

<comment><USER3> i guess his point was that the reason the web works at all, or tcp/ip, or email, or any of the really successful platforms - is because of certain contracts of openness and (essentially) fair play that are built into the very structure of how they are built.

this openness allows them to scale to that level and without it you can't get to truly global scale.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I once worked for a startup that got screwed trying to build a Facebook music platform - promised the world, then the rug was pulled out from under us (by both the labels and FB, and our two major investors were the labels themselves... it was quite ridiculous). I think we were probably just a pawn used as leverage for their negotiations with other players.

Anyway, yeah, I have little doubt that this story is legit.

<comment><USER5> Heres a link that may help to debate your doubts: [http://www.allfacebook.com/talking-with-facebooks-music- mast...](http://www.allfacebook.com/talking-with-facebooks-music- master-2007-07)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> As a facebook app developer i am aware of what shaky ground it is. I must attest the best days of the platform was when Morin was in charge, people were actually flocking to make apps and the platform was adding features. Ever since he left, feature pruning started, policies were not enforced, facebook changed their designs every month and the platform team inexplicably started reinventing the wheel. Then at some point facebook banned our AdSense revenue stream, and soon after they required 30% cut of our virtual goods.

We have now switched to an external website using facebook connect and are happy with it. I am thrilled that Google+ is building a competing platform.

<comment><USER7> This could be an important differentiator for Google. Let's hope that the competition will heat up on this.

<comment><USER8> If you're looking to Google for a solution then I think you're looking in the wrong direction. Just look at the latest crop of anti-competitive complaints against them -- like Yelp for one.

<comment><USER7> Well, at least for now they are the underdog, so it would be in their interest to be more open in the "social" space.

The Yelp case, whatever you may think about it, is in a completely different realm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's not especially interesting that Facebook made a deal for a music app (and subsequently supported that deal over a competitor). This is business, not charity.

What's interesting to me is that iLike -- the success story of early platform days -- was being promoted heavily from within Facebook itself. If you read the press at that time, you'd have been excused for thinking that the Partovi brothers were the victims of a random lightning strike -- just two guys who got lucky with a tiny little app. I know that in Seattle, everyone was buzzing about how iLike was caught so "unaware" by their traction that they were borrowing servers from local companies just to keep up. Now it turns out that the "overnight success" was at least somewhat pre-ordained.

It's just another bit of practical evidence about the origins of business success in the Valley. Your rolodex matters a lot.

<comment><USER10> If everyone had known from the start that Facebook would make that kind of deal and kick all other apps of the same kind out, it would have been OK. But running a platform that is supposedly governed by rules and then using underhand tactics like these to kill apps arbitrarily is not OK.

It puts a big question mark on Facebook as a platform and I think the author of the article is right that everyone should think very carefully before building on top of that sort of "platform".

<comment><USER11> You run this risk when you build on or using any type of platform. If you build something that is hugely successful you might get acquired by the platform provider, or if it's cheaper they might build it themselves.

<comment><USER12> You can generalise even further: when going into a business partnership, weight up the risks that the other party will become competitors in the future. That seems to be what is happening between Apple and Samsung at the moment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm not saying the author is wrong here but I think he's unfair in attacking just Facebook.

The one thing I learned from my time in the valley is that EVERYONE is looking out for themselves. That isn't meant as negatively as it sounds. People go there to prove themselves. Either by making money or making their mark on the world (which is why people like Sean Parker stick around even after they've made money). But whatever the case they're in it to win at all costs.

That's why people work 18 hours a day and pour every cent they have into their startup.

But that's the relevant point. If people are going to give up everything in their lives to win you can't assume they'll then hinder their chances by looking out for your needs. In this story the author is upset because Facebook decided they had a better chance of winning by partnering with iLike. But could you really expect any company in the valley to act differently?

There are plenty of places in the world where the environment isn't as competitive and if that appeals to you then you should go there. But if you decide to start a company in the heart of the startup world you should expect everyone to be working towards their own goals and plan accordingly. That means NEVER relying on ANYBODY more than you have to and ALWAYS having a backup plan.

<comment><USER14> You can look out for yourself without lying, cheating, or backstabbing others. You can operate as a moral, ethical person, and not have to mislead people, or break your promises.

Looking out for yourself is not the problem, dishonesty is.

This becomes a bigger problem when dishonesty becomes part of the culture.

<comment><USER15> > without lying, cheating, or backstabbing...not have to mislead people, or > break your promises.

From my time in the valley, I'd say dishonesty, misleading clients, breaking promises, not delivering on time, all of that is very much a part of the sv culture.

At Sun, we'd tell all our clients that Microsoft was evil, out to crush us. Our CEO Scott McNealy sent around a famous email about the sizes of MS & non- MS file formats. "Sun will win" had 12 chars * 1byte/char = 12 bytes as a textfile, 24 bytes as an Openoffice file, and 100,000 bytes as an MS powerpoint slide! While entirely factual, it was quite a dubious example, considering that internally within Sun, we happily used Wintel machines, used powerpoint for presentations, emailed Word files around instead of PDFs, and dissed openoffice as a piece of junk :)

When Java was in its infancy ( 1997-2000 period ), a lot of promises were made & fell by the wayside. Sun was building up its consulting arm, so we'd go out to customer sites and say Yes Java can do this, that and the other. Then we'd come back & Javasoft would tell us, look this feature is simply not part of the forthcoming API. Sometimes they'd get an old wise Unix/C hacker to write C code to do whatever was necessary beneath the covers, and then write a JNI wrapper atop that and thus claim Hey Java can actually do telnet & ftp natively ( Ha!).

I had to deal with a lot of graphics code that was routinely promised & arrived DOA. One of the primary requirements for most financial sevices firms was a table widget to display spreadsheets. AWT didn't have one. Someday there was suposed to be something called Swing, and it would have a powerful table API that would rival the MFC widgets in its power. That's what Sun told us, and that's what we as Sun consultants sold to all our Wall Street clients. But the damn thing took so long to build, every firm had their own proprietary table APIs.

At GS I worked on something called GSTable ( God those horrible memories make them go away! ) So this godawful GSTable was a homecooked solution to display tabular data. I started with something stupid - create an array of Label ( AWT labels ) and put them in a Panel. This created m x n + 1 components per table - too heavy & memory intensive. Then when Swing came out & didn't have a table, we made m x n JLabel's and put them into a JPanel. Over the summer, a Princeton computer graphics intern coded up a canvas ( just 1 custom Component ) that overrode paint() and drew all the cell contents. That worked so well, GS made the teen a six figure offer while he was still in his junior year. All he'd have to do is maintain that table widget! He wisely turned them down & went on to become a computer graphics heavyweight. Meanwhile, I worked on that GSTable as it went through various iterations, until it was actually capable of displaying rows and columns with different sizes, which was apparently a very common requirement in finance. Then finally the Swing JTable arrived! I was like Hallejulah end of all my misery! But alas, Sun's promises & its deliverable were so far apart. That JTable couldn't display multiwidth rows, the paint code was riddled with scaling bugs, it was a bloody mess. There were actual fuck this and fuck that blocks of code in the repaint...the frustrated Javasoft developer wrestling with repaint math! So we stuck with the GSTable. Then IBM came out with their SWT, you had Marimba with their desktop widgets...but everytime we decided to adopt something as the standard, that company would just vanish into thin air...Marimba decided it wanted to get out of AWT widgets business and stick to push technology so that was that...so many broken promises and toy widgets, certainly none of them worth the hundreds of thousands of dollars in license fees.

Everybody likes to paint wall st as a paragon of evil while the poor honest tech genius slogs away in the valley working on the cutting edge of technology. In reality, greed is rampant on both sides, money flows from main st to wall st & from there on to the valley. Everybody's got his fingers in the cookie jar.

<comment><USER16> Who was that "Princeton computer graphics intern" and what did he build afterwards?

<comment><USER15> Dude...its all such a blur..I'd have to rent a time machine and hit the computer graphics depts at all the ivies. But I did find some JTable code from way back then, in the bugfix archive [http://www.mail-archive.com/classpath- email@example.com/msg018...](http://www.mail-archive.com/classpath- firstname.lastname@example.com/msg01839.html)

public void setRowHeight(int rh, int row) { setRowHeight(rh); // FIXME: not implemented }

So that was actual code that Sun shipped. A method setRowHeight(rh,row) that allowed you to change the height of row number 'row' to 'rh', instead changed the height of ALL rows to 'rh' because the alternative was too hard and therefore not implemented! So much for multi-height rows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Sharecropper woes:

[http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePla...](http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePlace)

<http://raganwald.posterous.com/the-freedom-to-eat-pizza>

[http://weblog.raganwald.com/2004/11/sharecropping-in- orchard...](http://weblog.raganwald.com/2004/11/sharecropping-in-orchard.html)

<comment><USER18> Sharecropping is kind of a weird analogy to use here.

In farming, sharecropping is the low risk way to grow your business. It is the landlord that takes on much of the burden if the crop fails. But with small risk comes small reward.

In technology, "sharecropping" is the high risk venture. The landlord here assumes no risk at all if your application fails. The burden falls squarely on you. However, with the high risk, if you hit it big, the payoff potential is huge.

So while there are some parallels, from a business point of view, working with someone else's platform is nothing at all like sharecropping.

<comment><USER19> Huh?

Sharecropping exists when landowners have limited access to capital, but extensive land holdings and abundant access to indigent labor. It was a technique devised to keep the tenant around until after harvest time.

Poor farmers have lots of children, and the large resulting labor force gives the landlord an incentive to evict the tenant or jack up the rent immediately after harvest. It was popular in places like Scotland, Ireland and the Reconstruction South, so you can be sure the system is/was more beneficial to the land owner.

<comment><USER18> Sharecropping is an arrangement with a land owner who rents out their land to a farmer for the payment of a percentage of the crop instead of cash.

It reduces the risk for the farmer because they only have to pay based on what they are able to grow instead of a fixed amount as seen in most cash-rent arrangements. The landowner stands to lose if the crop is a failure, but can make more if the crop is a success.

The term may also come with some historical meaning, but that is what sharecropping has come to mean today.

Edit: Down vote me if you wish, but that is what sharecropping is in the rural community. Speaking as a farmer, sharecropping is a great way to access land in a low-risk way. I don't know why sharecropping land is seen as a negative.

<comment><USER17> I accept that in response to abuses, the practice may have evolved over time. However, that does not in any way diminish the value of the metaphor, because the _vast majority_ of people who encounter the word "sharecropper" think of the kind of farmer who can be evicted after harvest and often were.

Further to that, I _strongly suspect_ that most of those who are aware that the practice has evolved since those draconian times read the metaphor and immediately grasp that the metaphor refers to the historical meaning of the word and can go on to extract value from it without belabouring a pedantic point.

I will go further and challenge you: When you read the above posts, were you unaware of the historical behaviour of landlords and sharecroppers? Is it news to you that this practice was so abused that the word has pejorative overtones even though the practice may have evolved in modern times?

Or is it simply that you wish to share with us the interesting news that times have changed for farming sharecroppers even if they haven't for developers on proprietary platforms?

<comment><USER18> The term computer used to mean a person who sat at a desk doing mathematical calculations. When someone talks about their Amazon computing cluster, I don't picture a huge office building full of people putting pen to paper, crunching numbers all day long, even though that is exactly what computing cluster would have meant at one point in time.

When the term sharecropper is used, one will naturally turn to the meaning of sharecropping today, not hundreds of years ago. I am familiar of the stories of "sharecroppers" of the past, but sharecropping does not refer to those people anymore. Words are evolving all the time and present day usage is what is important when communicating with others.

<comment><USER20> The term sharecropper has two meanings.

The first one is the modern day practice. "He's a sharecropper because he uses share cropping in his business" refers to the modern day agricultural practice. Whatever economic system they use is irrelevant.

In almost all other cases, particularly in regards to Technology, it refers to the old school practice of share cropping and is using it as such.

Present day usage has nothing to do with it. It is all about context. If 80% of HN agree that sharecropper means X, then it means X. Sharecropper in this sense has become a piece of jargon among business and technology folks.

<comment><USER21> The old-school practice is the same as the modern-day practice: the landlord rented his land to tenant farmers in exchange for a share of their crop. randomdata's statement:

> In farming, sharecropping is the low risk way to grow your business. It is > the landlord that takes on much of the burden if the crop fails. But with > small risk comes small reward.

is just as true of sharecropping in 1911 as of sharecropping in 2011.

The difference he draws between sharecropping on a farm and sharecropping on a web site doesn't make sense, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> 'Chamath had been previously known to me from my friends at Winamp as "the guy who fucked Winamp," (after Winamp had been sold to AOL) and seemed like a pretty lame dude.'

Does anyone know more about this back story?

<comment><USER23> I too would like to know more. The more I learn about them the more I see AOL as a fucking disease.

</comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 _While Dave Morin worked quietly and bravely to defend me against the moves of iLike and Facebook executives to shut down Audio, he eventually found himself as a casualty in a greater power play quietly orchestrated by Sean Parker and Mark Zuckerberg, in which he was demoted and replaced by Chamath Palihapitiya._

Do the two guys that run the company really need to "orchestrate" a "power play" to promote one person over another? I think this sounds far more Machiavellian than it likely was.

<comment><USER24> Growth company, big money over the horizon, you don't want to see another lawsuit coming from your employees.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> "If you are entrusting your life data to Facebook, or if you are depending on Facebook and its platform for your livelihood, beware."

I think you should always be careful when you are entrusting any third party with your livelihood. You can only plan so much, but when your business plan requires that one crucial system and you have no way to even have a contingency plan, then you have to realize that it could easily be a make or break deal at any point in time.

<comment><USER6> On the other hand that doesn't mean you can avoid them altogether. In the ideal case, you have the option to choose among competing platforms. The problem with facebook is that since the end of myspace, it's still the largest web app platform.

<comment><USER26> For how long? I casually mentioned deactivating my facebook account over dinner in Mexico last weekend. Two strangers from elsewhere in the world perked right up as they had just done the same thing. None of us had any specific reasons; we just 'felt' like turning it off.

So, it doesn't matter if Facebook is evil or not - I simply don't like it, and it seems that others share that sentiment. I had seen notable figures for a recent up-tick in deactivations, but I was very interested to find other people flipping the switch with a shrug.

How much time should I invest in anything exhibiting that kind of trend?

<comment><USER24> Would be cool to have a website that list people who just turned off their facebook account :).

The latest Facebook Timeline feature is creepy and I'm starting to think in your direction as well. But having said that, I'd like to know what my friends are up to once in a while and have casual sudden conversation with them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is not endemic to Facebook. It applies to any platform. Apple, eBay, Amazon, etc.

When you build a business on their platform, you don't have a business. You have a product on their platform and it is _their_ product. They are simply taking a hands-off approach and reaping the benefits. They can shut you down at any time and they will, when it suits their interests.

That is the key here. That conflict of interest. Most of the time, it isn't an issue ... but when it comes to the surface, you will be thrown under the bus.

Also, the customers you think you have ... they're not your customers. If you went to a different platform, those customers would _not_ come along. The customers, they are _their_ customers, not yours.

<comment><USER28> _This is not endemic to Facebook. It applies to any platform. Apple, eBay, Amazon, etc._

I'm not sure this is really true. If you build a regular application for Windows, Linux, or OS X, Microsoft, Red Hat, or Apple can't control whether I install your application. No one "approves" Firefox for OS X. Curated, for lack of a better term, applications only appear on particular platforms -- cell phones, sub-sections of websites, and so forth.

<comment><USER29> The desktop is moving in this direction as well. Your example of OS X is shaky in particular, given the App Store. Even if it's still _possible_ in the future, acquiring apps outside the official channel will be exceptional, done only by enthusiasts.

<comment><USER30> I was going to say the same- I bet it would have been done long ago if, for example, MS thought they could get away with it.

I'm curious as to how the law is going to interpret this in the future. The closed ecosystem of ios may be a bad (in my mind) precedent.

<comment><USER31> The time has come when Microsoft _does_ think they can get away with it. All Metro apps on Windows 8 will have to go through their app store approval process.

<comment><USER30> I really hate this trend. That's one thing good that Java brought to the table. Everyone had Java installed, so getting my apps "installed" was just a matter of getting them downloaded.

If only _this_ was the year of the Linux deskto... oh, nevermind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Sobering to see a story in which the record labels are, in comparison, the good guys.

<comment><USER33> Definitely not the good guys. While I totally sympathize with Numair's story, I can actually see scenarios where both Numair and Chamath would be telling the truth.

We were sitting in the record label's offices with the biz dev guys (and even the CEO!) telling us how great this partnership was going to be, and somewhere else in the building the general counsel was issuing threatening statements. The business side had very little control over the legal side.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> See Gruber[1] on being a middle man. If your business is reselling someone else's content on someone else's platform, you're going to get fucked right quick.

[1]: <http://daringfireball.net/2011/03/dirty_percent>

</comment><comment><USER35> A google search about numair faraz turned up this article [http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/26/motorola-insider-tells- al...](http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/26/motorola-insider-tells-all-about- the-fall-of-a-technology-icon/) . An interesting read mainly because it was brave.

<comment><USER36> or one could conclude that he has a history of publicly blaming higher-ups and corporate management for failures in which he was involved. what's brave about embarrassing your boss and your company publicly? or making unsubstantiated claims about conspiracies against you?

<comment><USER17>
      what's brave about embarrassing your boss and your company publicly

Without saying anything about his character or motives, it is a given that public criticism of your current or former boss and/or company will have negative consequences for your career.

Knowingly doing so is brave and/or foolhardy regardless of whether your motives are noble or crass.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Interesting article and definitely a good read. But I find it interesting that it has broken the top 20 most upvoted articles of all time on HN and is threatening the top 10. This probably has to do with f8 and whatever amount of "upvote inflation" that may be taking place as a result of more users being on HN (6 of the top 10 all-time most upvoted links are from this year. Only one in the top 20 comes before 2010). Timing is everything I guess.

1 1638 Steve Jobs Resigns as CEO of Apple [2011-08-24]

2 1324 Boot a linux kernel right inside your browser. [2011-05-17]

3 1262 Introducing Word Lens [2010-12-17]

4 1232 Today you, tomorrow me [2010-12-14]

5 1196 Google Buys Motorola For $12.5 Billion [2011-08-15]

6 1129 A new approach to China [2010-01-12]

7 1100 Ooops. [2011-06-16]

8 1083 So A Blogger Walks Into A Bar… [2010-09-21]

9 1004 Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight [2011-07-29]

10 994 Twitter Bootstrap [2011-08-19]

11 940 Thoughts on Flash [2010-04-29]

12 929 Violated: A traveler's lost faith, a difficult lesson learned [2011-07-27]

13 906 Chosen: A javascript plug-in that makes long select boxes user- friendly. [2011-07-22]

14 859 I was once a Facebook fool [2011-09-23]

15 856 Osama bin Laden Is Dead [2011-05-02]

16 850 I don't learn anything on HN anymore, bring back the upvote count [2011-04-28]

17 832 How I Hacked Hacker News (with arc security advisory) [2009-06-03]

18 827 Bored People Quit [2011-07-12]

19 822 33GB of public domain JSTOR articles, and a manifesto [2011-07-21]

20 808 A lesson on the importance of encouraging your children with their projects [2011-07-13]

<comment><USER38> > _the top 20 most upvoted articles of all time_

I don't think that's an accurate list, as it excludes [dead]ed articles. Zed Shaw's "Programming, Motherfucker" received 870 upvotes: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2355427>

<comment><USER39> what is the link to the deaded article

<comment><USER39> <http://programming-motherfucker.com/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I recall Chamath Palihapitiya also figured somewhat prominently in the Beacon saga. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Beacon#Privacy_concern...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Beacon#Privacy_concerns)

Edit: I see the FA has been edited, now referring to him as "AOL Guy"

<comment><USER41> He also replaced 'iLike' with 'the "competitor"' and 'Sean Parker and Mark Zuckerberg' with 'senior Facebook executives'

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Not the first interesting tell-all by Numair: <http://public.numair.com/2006_parker.html>

</comment><comment><USER43> This is not new, there are tons of tales online of Facebook cutting off apps because they were working on a competitive product. Just this summer a ton of photo apps got their access removed with no explanation, only to find out that Facebook was revamping their galleries.

</comment><comment><USER44> My own Facebook developer story...going from 21MM MAU to less than 500k. In our case, we were booted off of key pages (profile pages) and replaced by Facebook's own functionality.

[http://www.paulallen.net/advice-to-facebook-time-to- launch-o...](http://www.paulallen.net/advice-to-facebook-time-to-launch- operation-baby-come-back/)

I do think Platforms, in the long run, if they want to win, need to treat developers fairly and honestly, as much as possible. Like other developers, I'm glad to see other social and mobile platforms to build for.

</comment><comment><USER45> "I was sitting in Jimmy Iovine's office; Jimmy personally called the GC of Universal"

That's worth the price of admission alone. Sounds like fun!

</comment><comment><USER46> Here's a prediction: Since facebook "senior executives" are so fond of central planning, i.e., personally picking winners and losers for kickbacks, instead of creating a level playing field and letting the users pick the best services, its very likely that facebook will suffer the same fate as other centrally planned entities...viz., run into the calculation problem (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem>). They'll make one big miscalculation that will be the end of it. The most obvious miscalculation is mismanaging security, letting in a potent virus that takes down all or enough of facebook's servers.

</comment><comment><USER47> Numair also has a very interesting read of a homepage. <http://numair.com/>

"Live your life as though it is the world's best-kept secret, as though you are living in an amazing TV show with an audience of one."

</comment><comment><USER48> Every time i read something like this, I think about the fred wilson quote about being someone's bitch. Anyone have that direct link?

<comment><USER49> I had no idea what you were talking about. But Googling "Fred Wilson bitch" gives this: [http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/23/fred-wilson-be-your-own- bit...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/23/fred-wilson-be-your-own-bitch/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I've never seen or heard Sean Parker speak, so this really just reinforces to me that Justin Timberlake is a douchebag.

</comment><comment><USER51> I did not realize until this point that it was this very Numair who wrote this brilliant answer on Quora [http://www.quora.com/Why-is-it-so-difficult-to- build-a-music...](http://www.quora.com/Why-is-it-so-difficult-to-build-a- music-startup/answer/Numair-Faraz)

</comment><comment><USER52> I definitely sympathize with the story - that just flat out sucks... but... Making a "feature" product is always a bad idea, IMHO, for reasons even beyond the ones the author points out. You should never build a feature for a product, if history is not a lesson on its own - very few of them make a successful exit. At any point, the company might decide they can do it better than you or it would be cheaper to build the feature than acquire you - or, most importantly, your hacks and external servers might not mesh well with their vision of an integrated platform.

</comment><comment><USER53> So, is getting "Zuckerberged" now a legitimate synonym for getting screwed?

<comment><USER54> How about just shortening it to getting "Zucked"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> "If you are entrusting your life data to Facebook, or if you are depending on Facebook and its platform for your livelihood, beware. In the real Facebook world, there is no trust, and there is no friendship -- there is only money and power. Think really hard -- really, think -- before trusting Facebook or its employees with anything. Don't be a Facebook fool."

You have perfectly worded what I have felt. I've watched Facebook evolve into Big Brother over the past few years. People seem to have no idea that they don't see us as beings but as bytes.

</comment><comment><USER5> I agree with, But it also means that in this industry you have to have a backup plan of some sort. He knew the character of Sean Parker and his antics. The man is a player and always will be.The industry is a relentless field of battle. Doesn't excuse leading someone on though.

i know to well of having a business partner lead me on while he worked other projects.

But i dont think Facebook as a company should take all the blame for that one person.

</comment><comment><USER56> tl;dr: Facebook offerings are skewed by corporate politics and whoever can score a better partner deal.

No surprises here. Large companies are heavily staffed by biz dev people whose job it is to make partnership deals. The key essential ingredient in all partnership deals, the brass ring, is "exclusivity" without which there often is no deal to speak of. This particular individual unfortunately was not awarded exclusivity.

</comment><comment><USER57> It seems like doing any sort of business around the Music Industry is a massive pain in the head, and liable to get you sued/shut down easily.

<comment><USER5> This is true.Being originally from the Bronx NY i have been in connection with a few people who know how FAT JOE does business.

Allegedly Puerto Rican and African American rappers from the Bronx were getting signed to FAT JOES label and then being kept on the back burner for publication.

Turns out the plan was to make sure to not have any new rap icons come from the Bronx so that he can get all the notoriety of being the Bronx icon. The music business is no joke. This is a true story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Why is Facebook special? Twitter supported bit.ly and Google supports Google Reader. They all act the same.

<comment><USER59> google reader is google's own product. what is your point with that?

<comment><USER58> And that is why it is first result for keyword reader? or feed? They use search to support RSS. Not to mention Checkout. And those messages in Gmail about Firefox being not optimal? It's is the same thing: using one product to support another one. I dont give a damn if Chrome is google's or not.

I want to say that they all do that. I don't support it, but it's not unique for Facebook.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> [http://magazine.lankahelp.com/2011/01/21/chamath- palihapitiy...](http://magazine.lankahelp.com/2011/01/21/chamath-palihapitiya- a-proud-sri-lankan-in-higher-post-in-facebook-company/)

</comment><comment><USER61> Aren't there laws against things like this?

<comment><USER62> Against bad-mouthing big, powerful, businesses? Yeah, I think so.

<comment><USER63> I believe that "bad-mouthing" does not imply "lying". There are no laws against vilifying, criticizing severely, speaking unfavorably of big, powerful businesses as long as you have some backup in facts.

Edit: Supreme courts (or equivalents) in most countries make it very clear in their verdicts that protecting the right to expose scoundrels is very high on their priority list. _Especially_ if the scoundrels are big and powerful. Public interest and all that.

<comment><USER64> Big powerful businesses maybe, but apparently you can tell the truth and still have to pay damages to individuals: <http://www.startribune.com/local/117805398.html>

<comment><USER65> That trial court verdict is extremely anomalous (I say as a lawyer from the same state) and is being appealed.

[http://www.minnpost.com/braublog/2011/03/14/26584/johnny_nor...](http://www.minnpost.com/braublog/2011/03/14/26584/johnny_northside_damn_right_were_appealing_60000_judgment)

[http://minnlawyer.com/jdr/2011/03/21/is-the-special- verdict-...](http://minnlawyer.com/jdr/2011/03/21/is-the-special-verdict-form- to-blame-for-the-johnny-northside-verdict/)

[http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/news/2011/06/06/johnny- northsid...](http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/news/2011/06/06/johnny- northside-60000-judgment-upheld-northside-blog-suit)

<http://www.rcfp.org/newsitems/index.php?i=12002>

[http://www.citmedialaw.org/blog/2011/60000-ruling-against- tr...](http://www.citmedialaw.org/blog/2011/60000-ruling-against-truthful- blogger-tests-limits-first-amendment)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Congratulations I think you are now the all time #2 behind the announcement that Steve Jobs is leaving!

</comment><comment><USER67> I was once a Facebook fool, now I'm just a Facebook tool.

</comment><comment><USER68> Seems strange that Chamath was 'evil' wanting to get his friend's business in as the music app for facebook, but it was totally fine when the author was getting his friend in? Seems like a double standard

<comment><USER69> I missed the part where the author asked his friend to have other music apps pulled on order to promote his own app? Apparently this is what Chamath did, and what Morin tried to keep from happening.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> This is a great insight, thanks for sharing!

</comment><comment><USER71> Facebook, the world's easiest site to hack, is on the front page 3 times yet again today. But the links are not about hacking, they are about how great Facebook is.

I submit to you that this is not hacker news, but rather victim news.com.

Good luck fuckers.

</comment><comment><USER71> Facebook was designed to provide corporate America with your email addresses. There are over 400 known hacks. Every-time you click on a link to Facebook - it's moron+1.

</comment><comment><USER72> Nasty business so watch your back

</comment><comment><USER73> Too much DRAMA.

</comment><comment><USER74> Could have happened at any other big company. No biggie. "Facebook" here is just headline making. I don't deny it being u-g-l-y and bad, just that it's not a Facebook issue.</comment>


3 Black Teenage Scientists Had a Breakthrough, Then Came the Trolls - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2018/05/05/608558338/3-black-teenage-scientists-had-a-breakthrough-then-came-the-trolls <comment><USER2> For those who doubt the validity of initiatives aimed at encouraging minority/women in STEM, here is an example of why they exist.

</comment><comment><USER3> The online voting abuse began earlier. The vote was posted everywhere on Twitter telling to vote for the black girls. Nobody seemed to care about the actual projects.

<comment><USER4> Oh, that makes it fine then.</comment></comment>


Epic Privacy Browser Supports Addons – Suggestions for More? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.epicbrowser.com/?p=65

<comment><AUTHOR> Let us know what else you'd like. We've gotten many requests for 1password who we hope to support soon. We get many requests for various privacy addons which are redundant with Epic and more of a privacy threat than a boon.</comment>


Blackthorn: a 3D game engine in Common Lisp - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/blackthorn-engine-3d/

<comment><USER2> Pretty disappointed that it is unrelated to this[1].

Looks interesting though. Pity I don't remember enough Common Lisp to be able to hack on this.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackthorne></comment>


A dietary supplement makes old mice youthful, but will it work in people? - <AUTHOR> https://www.statnews.com/2018/03/22/dietary-supplement-makes-old-mice-spry/ <comment><USER2> The compound in question is nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN).

Back in 2016, Keio university in Japan started a human study on its effects on aging: [https://www.keio.ac.jp/en/press- releases/2016/Dec/27/49-1931...](https://www.keio.ac.jp/en/press- releases/2016/Dec/27/49-19313/)

I haven't heard anything since about what happened to the study.

<comment><USER3> Exactly nothing. NMN failed exploratory trials multiple times. (Similar to resveratrol.) It is just that the regulations ate not being published due to not being interesting to investors and sponsors.

NMN might be useful for people with niacin metabolism issues perhaps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you are old enough to remember the hype about resveratrol and sirtuins, that eventually resolved to nothing at all of any great use for human medicine, this is basically the same people singing the same song about roughly the same area of biochemistry. On the face of past events, they can't really be trusted to tell you how great it is and how promising it is, so just read the facts and compare with other studies.

About the most one can say about this is that manipulation of NAD+ levels is a better exercise mimetic than manipulation of sirtuins proved to be. What it helps to do is explain some of the underpinnings of studies that show a great deal of muscle loss is secondary aging - i.e. disuse. It also suggests that loss of capillaries is a more important mechanism in sarcopenia than other groups believe to be the case, though I think it very possible that this is secondary to stem cell activity loss. The evidence for stem cell decline to be the primary cause of sarcopenia is very good. [1] There is a faction that thinks capillary loss is important in all tissues. [2]

Go look at the studies showing resistance training to be pretty effective in seniors before getting excited about NAD+ boosters. The resistance training is probably cheaper and better. One still has studies such as the one showing that dietary nicotinamide doesn't do a great deal in mice [3] - like sirtuin manipulations, it helps fat mice a little, but is distinctly unimpressive otherwise.

Remember that calorie restriction extends life by 40% in mice, but probably five years or less in humans - the effects of all these stress response related mechanisms of metabolic manipulation work through a few overlapping core processes, and scale down with species longevity. That's why I see them as a dead end in comparison to other strategies.

[1]: [https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/news/story/4788/stem-cells- ma...](https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/news/story/4788/stem-cells-may-be-the- key-to-staying-strong-in-old-age.aspx)

[2]: [https://doi.org/10.1159/000477402](https://doi.org/10.1159/000477402)

[3]: [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmet.2018.02.001](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmet.2018.02.001)

<comment><USER5> There are quite a few supplements that operate to boost NAD+ levels.

The one I take personally is [https://www.iherb.com/pr/Thorne-Research- Niacel-250-Nicotina...](https://www.iherb.com/pr/Thorne-Research- Niacel-250-Nicotinamide-Riboside-60-Veggie-Capsules/69577)

For general background on the science + nutrition approaches, see [https://www.selfhacked.com/blog/nad-important- increase/](https://www.selfhacked.com/blog/nad-important-increase/)

<comment><USER6> I see Thorne has for $39 and Amazon has for $79. Looks to be same product, so I don't understand why it's so much more at Amazon.

<comment><USER7> There are 125mg and 250mg versions at those two price points.

<comment><USER6> They are both 250mg. The expensive one has "vegetarian" in the name. I can't find any explanation anywhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I heard about this on NPR last week - even if it could make old people's blood vessels youthful, it seems like it would be better to just make the person change their diet and their exercise regimen, assuming exercise was possible. This chemical only affected blood vessel health. This is only one component of health. Bone density requires load bearing exercise. Another recent study pointed out lack of exercise led to nerves to major muscle groups fading away with lack of use - led to muscle loss - one has to use those muscles to use the nerves, age related muscle loss can be staved off by exercise of the muscle groups in question.

<comment><USER9> The supplement or the pill has magical abilities though. Many people who will say "I die when I die" when told to diet or exercise will take a pill with no complaints.

And as a hobby dieter & big loser: Once you realize diet is something requiring long-term conscientiousness, the truth and enormity of the change can hit very hard. It is an emotional roller coaster that can just as easily make people more fat than when they started.

<comment><USER10> If they don't care about their own health and longevity I would argue their lives shouldn't be extended against their own will.

Should we also give free houses and luxury cars to people who refuse to work?

<comment><USER11> If they are willingly taking the pill then it's not "against their will" at all?

The difference is crucial.

Is it true that you have to work, put in effort for most things in life? And that people need to learn that? Yes.

But isn't it also true that the science is largely an endeavor of decreasing the amount of work people need to put in to achieve the same result in some area? If you look at almost all of the history - that is also true. This is just another installment of that same centuries-old trend.

Science wants (and should rightfully want) to make a pill that will make something require less effort (staying healthy for long time). If some people would not put in the big effort, but would put in the small effort, given the opportunity - than all the power to them. It's the ultimate goal of science anyway.

<comment><USER12> Is that what science seeks, or is that what society necessitates science seek?

Take Type 2 Diabetes. Science is putting a significant amount of time and money to "cure" it. The sad irony is, we have a cure. Yes, that takes - evidently - too much effort. But isn't that a matter of perspective?

Cancer is also a byproduct of diet and lifestyle. Seems to me that cancer is more difficult than changing diet and lifestyle.

The point is, science is forced (so to speak) to seek things that are already found. "Easy" or not, what other unintended consequences does "easy" create? Science should be seeking best solutions, at which point it could move on to other things.

<comment><USER11> I'm not sure what the problem is with "society necessitates the direction of science".

What else do you propose the science be directed by? What else is really there? Are there any other real reasons for science at all?

Science is for us, the humans, the society. Studying things with no reason or benefit for the society, somehow detached from humanity, for what, some vague abstract reasons? I'm not sure I would want to put my effort into that, either in the specific sense, or even in the more implicit sense of funding it through my taxes.

Doing science for the sake of science? What's the point?

Looking at the question from another perspective though - I think a good direction for science would to study how would it be possible to make people take the extra effort, make the difficult choices - that would lead to a natural resolution of many of their problems (like exercise would lead to less cancer). But in this specific case, stopping science from looking for anti- cancer pills, for example, does not seem like a proper way to go. Willingly preventing progress in making lives easier with low-effort methods like pills (if they really do work) does not seem like the best way to promote otherwise healthy behavior.

<comment><USER12> No problem. Provided the bigger most important things have been solved. When first world science is "forced" to focus on self-inflicted first world problems, __and__ that focus is accepted, if not encouraged, then something is seriously wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> 1\. Headline ends in "?". The answer is "no".

2\. Longevity breakthrough discovered in mice. Mice biology doesn't bother picking the low hanging fruit of longevity. Said breakthrough picks some of that low hanging fruit. Chances are near-certainty it won't work in humans.

<comment><USER14> > Chances are near-certainty it won't work in humans

Still an interesting result, even though it can't be applied directly to humans. I'm not familiar with the field, but it sounds like an extraordinary feat to be able to rejuvenate an animal.

<comment><USER15> It might sound that way, but it's really not difficult to rejuvenate mice. The metabolic burden associated with living longer is not worth it for wild mice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm not a biologist so here's a dumb question. There's a lot of talk about replicating the study experimentally but do we simply not understand biology well enough to make a theoretical analysis? Basically can we not understand on a fundamental level why it works in mice and why it might or might not work for humans?

<comment><USER17> The short answer here is yes. We're constantly working to get more complete models, but surprisingly big effects can come from surprisingly small pieces of the puzzle. We still don't even really understand how Tylenol/Paracetamol/Acetaminophen works!

A great example of the gap between our current models and what would be sufficient comes from the COX-2 inhibitors (Vioxx/Celebrex). Ibuprofin (Motrin/Advil) and other NSAIDs modulate both COX-1 and COX-2 receptors in the body to reduce inflammation, but inhibiting COX-1 also causes stomach damage. The early COX-2-specific inhibitors were designed from the ground up using our best models, which were thought to be well-understood. Unfortunately, after several years on the market, it was discovered that this also came with a large increased risk of heart attacks and strokes.

The body just has so so many moving pieces, and while we're getting better, it's going to be some time before we are able to base these studies entirely on theory, and when we get there we'll be able to skip the mice entirely!

<comment><USER18> Is somebody maintaining the relationships between compounds, genes, and their high-level effects somewhere? I'm aware of biological pathway diagrams (e.g. KEGG), but they seem so unreadable, and for me they don't connect the dots between substance and effect.

<comment><USER17> The relationships and high-level effects are maintained in our body of literature. It's hard to resist wanting to put it all in some sort of megachart, but even the pathway diagrams vastly simplify the real interactions. The reason they don't seem to connect substance and effect is because often the substances are very far removed from effect, or may not lie on a known pathway at all.

It's still very much a "we don't know what we don't know" situation, which is both intimidating and exciting. There's a lot to be done before our models are even adequate, but we at least get to be part of that learning process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> A link[1] to the actual research says "Treatment of mice with the NAD+ booster nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN) improves blood flow and increases endurance in elderly mice by promoting SIRT1-dependent increases in capillary density, an effect augmented by exercise or increasing the levels of hydrogen sulfide (H2S), a DR mimetic and regulator of endothelial NAD+ levels."

[1] [http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(18)30152-1](http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674\(18\)30152-1)

</comment><comment><USER20> I think the future of age-related research is going to focus on inflammation. There is already a term for it: Inflamm-aging[0].

[0]: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4963991/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4963991/)

<comment><USER4> A good recent paper on sources of inflammation in aging:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5850851/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5850851/)

As it points out, the most obvious and promising of current prospects for reducing inflammation is the selective destruction of senescent cells. Though I think that the clearance and recreation of the entire immune system, to remove all of the senescent, exhausted, misconfigured, etc, immune cells is also a promising path, albeit further away from being safe enough to apply to old people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> _" In the latest advance, biologists reported on Thursday that a molecule already sold by supplement makers (even as scientists scramble to understand it) restored youthfulness to blood vessels in 20-month-old mice, an age comparable to 70 years in people..."_

So which supplement is it?

If it's already sold by supplement makers, have there been any reports of similar effects in people?

<comment><USER22> There was a thread a year or so ago on HN where some people mentioned that they narrowed down their supplements to NMN and something else and were happy about that.

<comment><USER23> I believe it was NMN and Resveratrol (or Pterostilbene.).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've been considering taking these supplements but I'm concerned about increased risk of cancer. Have there been updates on this since the publication of this study? [https://siteman.wustl.edu/pathway-linked-slower- aging-also-f...](https://siteman.wustl.edu/pathway-linked-slower-aging-also- fuels-brain-cancer/)

<comment><USER25> Just skimmed the article, and it seems to me that they are more looking into this to find a treatment for brain cancer than making a direct causality from the supplement itself. Basically when someone does have brain cancer, they could limit NAMPT to help in treatment. That's how I read it at least, maybe I'm misinterpreting. There is these quote:

"We didn't directly demonstrate that taking NAD+ precursors makes tumors grow faster, but one implication of our work is that if you want to take anti-aging NAD+ precursors, you might want to keep in mind that we don't yet understand all the risks."

"Furthermore, the scientists found that glioblastoma cells responded to radiation therapy – a standard therapy used to treat the disease in people – by increasing expression of NAD+ pathway genes, and that inhibiting NAMPT before dosing the cells with radiation made them easier to kill."

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This article prompted me to research and write a plea for my friends to take this supplement (I've been on it for a few months, before that took Nicotinamide Riboside, NMN's precursor):

Please consider taking NMN for health and longevity. Nicotinamide Mononucleotide (NMN) is a direct precursor of NAD+ which broadly activates/energizes the Sirtuin pathways. Previous interventions either activated only one of these pathways[1] or activated them less effectively[2].

Why all the fuss about Sirtuin pathways? Well, it makes sense that your body would have a built-in maintenance system, right? It seems the seven Sirtuins are that.

Take SIRT6, for example. Evidence points to it being essential to / directly enabling DNA repair[3], and telomere maintenance[4], while reducing gluconeogensis[5] and inflammation.

SIRT2 supports insulin sensitivity through multiple pathways[6], and helps regulate proper cell division, i.e. in the ordinary case, helps prevent the formation of tumors[7]. __IMPORTANT NOTE __This may only be beneficial if you don 't already have cancer - in the other case more SIRT2 could help to stabilize your cancer cells in their division and increase proliferation.[8] So please, talk to your doctor.

One more, because I'm enjoying this: for SIRT3, researchers studied a population and found that genes enhancing its production where "virtually absent" in men older than 90.[9] Mice bred to lack SIRT3 developed breast cancer, and the researchers proposed "that SIRT3 is ideally situated to function as a mitochondrial fidelity protein, and by extension, loss of function could result in a damage permissive and tumorigenic cellular environment" [10]

That's three of seven. Other multi-SIRT effects include:

* possibly preventing stroke and improving recovery in its aftermath [11]

* being essential to retinal function / vision [12]

So Sirtuins are important, and they're powered by NAD+, but NAD+ availability declines as we age, reducing their ability to play that role, and contributing to consequent decline and dysfunction with age. Supplementing NMN helps offset that decline, to keep those systems working as they should.

So I'm calling it here. My best minimal health / longevity stack is: NMN, Kado-3, and Magnesium.

If you want to add another for good measure, look at bioflavonoids Quercetin or Apigenin, both inhibitors of CD38, one probable cause of age-related NAD+ decline.[13]

Thanks for reading. Live long and prosper.

Disclaimer: I'm an engineer, not a scientist or a doctor, so my preference is to support actions which I expect to work, rather than ones which I know with certainty will work. Ergo, this is not medical advice, this is my judgment based on my limited and potentially misguided analysis of the human body as a system.

Footnotes:

[1] As with Resveratrol, which activates SIRT1

[2] As with Nicotinamide Riboside, which is the precursor to NMN and externally mediated by NAMPT, etc. NMN needs no co-factor.

[3] "SIRT6 is [...] is _required for normal base excision repair of DNA damage in mammalian cells_. Deficiency of SIRT6 in mice leads to abnormalities that overlap with aging-associated degenerative processes." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirtuin_6](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirtuin_6)

[4] "We propose that SIRT6 contributes to the propagation of a specialized chromatin state at mammalian telomeres, which in turn is _required for proper telomere metabolism and function_. Our findings constitute the first identification of a physiological enzymatic activity of SIRT6, and link chromatin regulation by SIRT6 to telomere maintenance and a human premature ageing syndrome." [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18337721](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18337721)

[5] As with Metformin, which has evidence for longevity effects.

[6] "SIRT2 inhibits adipogenesis by deacetylating FOXO1 and thus may protect against insulin resistance. SIRT2 sensitizes cells to the action of insulin by physically interacting with and activating Akt and downstream targets." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirtuin_2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirtuin_2)

[7] "SirT2-deficient animals exhibit genomic instability and chromosomal aberrations and are prone to tumorigenesis" [http://genesdev.cshlp.org/content/early/2013/03/04/gad.21134...](http://genesdev.cshlp.org/content/early/2013/03/04/gad.211342.112)

[8] "Our data suggest that SIRT2 is the sirtuin predominantly involved in breast tumourigenesis and prognosis. It indicates that SIRT2 acts as a tumour suppressor or tumour promoter dependent upon breast tumour grade." [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24183459](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24183459)

[9] [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S088875430...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0888754304003088?via%3Dihub)

[10] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3711519/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3711519/)

[11] "NMN and NAD treatment also enhanced proliferation and differentiation of cultured neural stem cells in vitro. Knockdown of sirtuin deacetylases (SIRT1, SIRT2, or SIRT6) significantly reduced the proneuro-genesis effect[...]. Thus, we provide the first evidence that Nampt–NAD cascade is not only crucial against acute brain ischemic injury but also important for postischemic regeneration." [http://stroke.ahajournals.org/content/strokeaha/46/7/1966.fu...](http://stroke.ahajournals.org/content/strokeaha/46/7/1966.full.pdf)

[12] "We further demonstrate that the NAD+-dependent mitochondrial deacylases SIRT3/SIRT5 play important roles in retinal homeostasis and that NAD+ deficiency causes SIRT3 dysfunction. These findings demonstrate that NAD+ biosynthesis is essential for vision" [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5104206/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5104206/)

[13] "These findings suggest that the efficacy of NAD+ precursors may be enhanced by co-supplementation with CD38 inhibitors" [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S155041311...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1550413116302443) [http://www.timelesslifemag.com/index.php/2016/06/29/querceti...](http://www.timelesslifemag.com/index.php/2016/06/29/quercetin- apegenin-may-slow-down-the-escalating-nad-consumption-by-cd38-as-we-age/)

<comment><USER11> Do you have a blog? ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm confused, as already mentioned at the bottom of the article, there are other supplements to boost NAD+ like nicotinamide riboside.

Is this research pointing to NMN having a greater impact on NAD+ than nicotinamide riboside ?

</comment><comment><USER28> So if one were to try taking NMN as a supplement but had no idea which brands were legitimate, what should they do? Go off Amazon reviews? Recommendations anybody?

<comment><USER29> I use Amazon reviews but I try to stay conscious that sexy labels/marketing influences people. When in doubt, stick with the high quality, no additives, stuff like Thorne.

<comment><USER30> Yeah also pay attention to the review dates. I wanted to buy a lightning / audio split cable for my iPhone. I noticed the vendor had 800+ 5 star reviews and none for 1-4 stars. Then I noticed all the reviews had been entered in the previous 3 days. /fakereviews

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The risk of causing autoimmune diseases due to increased sirtuins seems like it should give companies like Elysium Health some pause on this. It is possible the risks are low, but that is an incredibly severe, permanent side- effect.

That said, they know far more about the compounds/molecules involved than I do.

</comment><comment><USER32> FOXO4-DRI seems much more promising with less side effects (none known) than NAD+</comment>


Android Errors in Real Time - <AUTHOR> http://www.bugsense.com/live

<comment><USER2> It's staggering how many of these are NullPointerExceptions. Java needs nullable types.

<comment><USER3> I would have thought this is just because Java forces you to catch most exceptions. It's only the RuntimeException subclasses (which includes NullPointerException) that are unchecked. And a good deal of those are quite obscure. I really wouldn't expect to see many occurrences of FileSystemAlreadyExistsException or MalformedParameterizedTypeException.

There are also the Error classes (including OutOfMemoryError) that wouldn't automatically be caught, but there aren't many likely candidates there either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very useful info, if it's accurate. Mostly nullPtr exceptions, signs of sloppy programming. One pitfall IMO of Android is how easy it is to push apps to the market.

<comment><USER5> It's more a failing of mainstream programming languages having nulls.

<comment><USER4> Oh totally agree, I just think more care could be taken since these are obvious issues, and have been for relative ages now. I just hate how easy it is to slap together an apk and throw it on the market, though Play Store's vastness is nice for the keen users.

<comment><USER5> The alternative is the horribly restrictive iOS app store. As a user and as a developer, I prefer Play.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> great stuff!</comment>


How to Trick People into Saving Money - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/05/how-to-trick-people-into-saving-money/521421/?utm_source=twb&single_page=true <comment><USER2> Interesting idea. Shame that the fees are so insanely high.</comment>


Play poker with investors, not roulette - <AUTHOR> http://www.aaronkharris.com/poker-and-roulette

<comment><USER2> x-post from comments:

There is an analogy here but it's not that you're playing poker against investors. As a startup founder, you are the house. You are trying to attract players who will place a bet. If your startup is a good bet you want to attract poker players who will play against each other and bet big based on the odds. If your startup is a bad bet, you want to attract roulette players who will play against the odds and bet against you.

Good poker players play based on statistics and pot odds. They want to bet the same way they would if they had all of the information in front of them and could calculate that the exact odds are in their favor. If you have a great startup, a.k.a. a favorable hand/game for making an educated bet, you want to show as much information as possible and attract poker players. It's okay to let dummies play, too, as long as they're not reckless drunks, and you have nothing to lose in showing them all of the available information, too. And the winning outcome is when your poker playing investors win their hand, and tip you big as the dealer.

If the odds are stacked against your company, you need to deceive players into thinking you're a good bet or attract players who don't know any better. That requires either hiding information or, worse, bluffing. Roulette players have the odds stacked against them and are just gambling, either because they believe in getting lucky or lack the ability to play a game of skill. So, if you have a bad startup, you're trying to attract gamblers and give them less information so that they think they have a chance of winning even though it's a long shot.

Basically, you're not playing poker against the investors. You're just trying to attract players. The kind of players you want depends on the game you're offering. If your game is a good one that educated players can make money at, give them all of the information. If your game is stacked against the players, attract drunkards and don't tell them how bad their odds are.

<comment><USER3> Hey joey -

Overall that's the point I'm making. What I'd say, though, is that trying to deceive players is a bad strategy over the long run despite what might seem like short term benefit.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I don't condone it. I was just saying that if there were any reason to share less information it's when you're not a good bet.</comment></comment></comment>


RAPT: A physics-intensive HTML5 Platformer - <AUTHOR> http://raptjs.heroku.com

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a game I created with 2 other students for Mozilla's Game On competition. It works best in Chrome or Safari, but is generally playable in Firefox 4. If you sign up for an account, you can make your own levels and share your levels page with anyone!

<comment><USER2> This project is far and away the best thing to ever come out of CS32 at Brown. The HTML5 version is more than enough forgiveness for neglecting to to reply to the e-mail I sent you on May 18, 2010. ;)

<comment><USER3> It's pretty great, though if I had a Solaris box handy I might pit it against the networked multiplayer Zelda game a CS32 team wrote in '97. ;-)

<comment><AUTHOR> That sounds awesome, and it came way before Four Swords!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Feel of the game is very similar to this Ninja game (<http://games1.org/flash- games/NGame>) done in flash. Its amazing how much can now be done in HTML itself.

<comment><USER5> For anyone wondering, this is "N" by Metanet software[1] (remember the developer name, as the game is impossible to Google). There's a paid version on XBLA, personally I prefer keyboard controls.

[1]: <http://www.metanetsoftware.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You seem to need to play each level twice, which is kind of annoying. I eventually made it 150% through the first level, then closed the tab.

I probably would have kept playing if there was a single player version.

</comment><comment><USER7> Nice physics. The WASD control is unplayable in a dvorak mapping, though. I had to give up on the first level.

</comment><comment><USER8> I like it. Performs well and it's entertaining. Although I must admit I have some difficulty getting my right and left hand to accurately control both characters at the same time. That's not so much an issue with the game as it is with my lacking motor control though.

</comment><comment><USER9> That's good :) I'm playing with Javascript gaming/coding at the moment, so this is very educational. Thanks.

Some single player gaming would be great, although huddling round the keyboard is very (very) social :-)

</comment><comment><USER10> Totally awesome. HTML5 rocks</comment>


The rise of 'pseudo-AI': how tech firms quietly use humans to do bots' work - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/06/artificial-intelligence-ai-humans-bots-tech-companies?CMP=share_btn_tw <comment><USER2> The 'Wizard of Oz technique' may be great to snow investors, but also serves to increase competition as competitors view it a as space that can be automated.

I argue one should over estimated the amount of human level involved in producing a product. No one wants to enter a market with tons of up front costs and lots of messy humans to deal with.</comment>


The Disappearing Right to Earn a Living - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/11/the-right-to-earn-a-living/546071/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> I know where I live they recently legitimized what used to be nonsense schools. Most of them offer courses for blue collar work tickets. Most of the people that own and operate these 'colleges' have ties with government. Shortly after these became recognized as rwal colleges suddenly you needed tickets to do the most ridiculous things. My wife was talking to a patient at her work once who was complaining because she couldn't find burlesque work because you need a ticket and a license to get jobs.</comment>


Failed CIA Project "Acoustic Kitty" - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_Kitty

<comment><USER2> This has to be a joke. There's no way that the CIA would expect a cat to do what they want.

<comment><USER3> Two points:

* This was from the same period in which the CIA attempted to assassinate Fidel Castro with exploding cigars, and administered a couple of grams (not micrograms or milligrams!) of LSD to an elephant, just to see what it did. They were, not to put too fine a point on it, thrashing around without oversight. (Ranelagh's book, cited in the Wikipedia references, is well worth reading for more on the subject.)

* They had a real, perceived need to listen in on diplomats' conversations in noisy environments (Washington cocktail parties). Cats have very sensitive directional hearing and are less likely to attract suspicion than parabolic microphones. And the fifties and sixties were the heyday of interest in operant conditioning and brainwashing in humans -- and the use of techniques like Skinner boxes for training animals in quite complex behaviour patterns.

In other words: we may point and laugh today, but at the time (a) the Company was so far adrift from reality that this wasn't particularly weird by CIA standards, and (b) it's a classic case of "we need to accomplish (a)", "(b) is a possible way of accomplishing (a)", "okay, let's throw all our resources at (b) (however outlandish and weird it might sound to a sane by-stander)".

<comment><USER4> WWII had some real interesting research into using animals as weapons. The "Bat bomb" (thermite + timers + bats) was far cheaper than the nuke but about as effective as a physical weapon vs a city. However, it would have been less effective as a psychological weapon and would not have killed as many people. The other notable use was using a homing pigeon to guide bombs. They would peck where the ship was.

<comment><USER5> Post-WWII has trained dolphins, which're still used so far as I know.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_dolphin>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Tax dollars at work ;)</comment>


How to store time-series data in MongoDB, and why that's a bad idea - <AUTHOR> https://blog.timescale.com/how-to-store-time-series-data-mongodb-vs-timescaledb-postgresql-a73939734016 <comment><USER2> tl;dr

\- MongoDB good for some things, but not time-series data

\- In fact TimescaleDB sees 20% higher inserts, up to 1400x faster queries, and a much simpler query language (read: SQL)

\- But if you still want to store time-series data in MongoDB, this post presents two different ways of doing so, with trade-offs</comment>


Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Is_Beautiful

<comment><USER2> From the wikipedia page: "It is often used to champion small, appropriate technologies"

I personally * LOATHE * the phrase "appropriate technology".

In practice, this term is usually used by elitist first worlders condescending to second and third worlders. I scoff at the idea that some sociology grad student in the US knows more about how "the street" should use technology than actual people, living their real lives in Laos, or Kenya, or somewhere.

Further, the "appropriate" technology is usually "really clever" crap. "Oh, wow, we can dig a 10 foot deep well using nothing more than a piece of PVC pipe and five hours of labor!". ...and yet, you'd never catch these first world people getting their water supply from a 10' deep hole in their backyard - they're totally in favor of chlorine, municipal water, and more.

"Appropriate" is a word that parents use to correct five year old children.

First world adults using it to correct others, when they won't put any skin in the game themselves, rubs me the wrong way.

<comment><USER3> "you'd never catch these first world people getting their water supply from a 10' deep hole in their backyard - they're totally in favor of chlorine, municipal water, and more."

Wells are actually pretty common in the US. It depends on the water table and population density of an area.

<comment><USER4> Also in rural Australia & Ireland.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Decentralization may be nice, but it's generally much _less_ efficient. Consumption would rise dramatically. Per-capita consumption decreases as centralization increases. Remember this from last year? <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=619099>

Also, the book says:

      [S]ince consumption is merely a means to human well-being,
      the aim should be to obtain the maximum of well-being with
      the minimum of consumption. The less toil there is, the
      more time and strength is left for artistic creativity.
      Modern economics, on the other hand, considers consumption
      to be the sole end and purpose of all economic activity.

Consumption is a word that covers all kinds of ends. Unless you can create _ex nihilo_ , artistic creativity is a consumptive endeavor.

<comment><USER6> > _Decentralization may be nice, but it's generally much less efficient._

Depends entirely on the business in question and the technologies and human factors involved. There's a reason most dentists work in small practices, but electrical power and processors are made in large capital-intensive plants.

<comment><USER7> Actually I think a big dentist-center would be a cool thing. Less money wasted on competition, easier ways for patients to get a specialists opinion if needed, cheaper access to supply, more efficient use of dental technicians / staff in general.

I guess the scale of centralization is the real question.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Seems like feel-good nonsense.

I hate this sort of thing. Capitalism has delivered huge benefits in terms of prosperity, advancement and health. We've got to the point where someone willing to accept a lowered standard of living can take lots of time off and use it to focus on other things that are important to them. (The fact that people continue to toil to get more possessions just shows where their priorities lie).

Unfortunately there's always a small contingent who think that all this advancement is terrible and we'd be better off living the kind of "simple but happy" lives they condescendingly imagine people in the third world live.

</comment><comment><USER9> Definitely a great book. If you're interested in human-scale development, you should definitely check out the writings of Leopold Kohr (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Kohr>). E.F. Schumacher (of "Small is Beautiful" fame) was one of his students and Kohr writes even closer to the bone.

His books (my favorite: "The Overdeveloped Nations") are not only extremly insightful but actually fun to read.

</comment><comment><USER10> I have been meaning to read this for a _long_ time...

Doesn't it say that there is something wrong with the scale of things in the first world (and point that out using energy consumption stats?)

</comment><comment><USER11> The book is a nice read and pretty inspiring. I even gave it as a gift to a friend a few years ago.

Though e.g. in power plants big tends to be more efficient than small.</comment>


Users Love Microsoft, Yahoo Search -- When It's Branded With A Google Logo - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/users-love-microsoft-yahoo-search-when-its-branded-with-a-google-logo-2009-5 <comment><USER2> This effect has actually been observed for quite awhile. For some inexplicable reason, people associate Google with integrity and correctness. We've observed people get objectively better results from non-google sources and then say Google's was better. When asked why, they basically special plead the case for Google (e.g., "This isn't what I meant to search for but it's very interesting." is evidently a real excuse offered).

It's a very weird effect. Ignoring everything else, Google certainly wins at cultivating brand loyalty. They're up there with Apple's brand loyalty in that respect.

<comment><USER3> There might also be another effect. Both Microsoft's search (under the MSN name) and Yahoo's existed before Google's. Google came along and really beat all the search engines that exited in terms of result quality. Microsoft and Yahoo have since upgraded their algorithms and gotten a lot better. However, people still associate the two as being the poor engines compared to Google's that they used to be. People's subjective evaluation of quality isn't just based on current results, but experiences they've had which might no longer apply due to changes in the product. There's no reason to include Yahoo search capabilities from 6 years ago in one's evaluation of Yahoo's results, but that's how people's minds operate.

I think that's why Microsoft desperately wants to rebrand their engine (over and over) so that people will think it's something new that they should evaluate for the first time rather than the pre-Google product that they found inferior to Google.

<comment><USER4> Yahoo first search engine was google embedded into yahoo. Before that, yahoo was just a searchable directory of websites. Later yahoo switched to their own search engine ouverture.

<comment><USER5> I'm pretty sure that was AltaVista, not Google.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In the article they make it clear it's more than just the logo. They also use Google's page layout. That could help too. The colors are not the greatest, but it's quite clear.

<comment><USER7> There has to be something said for this. There is barely any noise on Google's pages and pretty much everyone has used Google for the past few years. That means that everyone is used to a search engine with very little noise. Yahoo, MS, and Ask don't exactly have "flashy" search pages but just glancing at their pages, you can see more distractions. I think this just amplifies the thought that Google is better.

Going to another search engine just feels weird.

<comment><USER8> Both Yahoo and MSN have noise-free interfaces you can use. See <http://search.yahoo.com/> and <http://search.live.com/>.

<comment><USER9> Noise is also what you are not used to seeing. Yahoo!'s loho & drop down boxes & hints seem a lot more noisy.

I think part of it is because they are. But part of it is because unfamiliar is noisier then familiar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> 'Bing' is actually an OK name -- it works as a verb, and you can easily imagine a positive "bing! you've found it!" ringing sound.

But is it still 'Live.com' search under a different name? Because they're not yet doing simple things that would make it easier for me to switch:

[3 liters in ounces] -- Google shows the answer, Live.com just miscellaneous results without the answer

[ambidesterous] -- Google shows correction, useful results and typo results; Live.com only random typo results

[ambidextrous] -- Google includes a distinguished dictionary 'definition' link at a predictable place in the header; Live.com only provides that mixed with other results and suggestions

[define:ambidextrous] -- Google provides a special list definitions culled from various sources; Live.com just normal results. (I use the 'define:' operator often.)

Why aren't MS and Yahoo at least aping these little easy-to-do things so that a switch is as painless as possible?

Until they do, I have the impression they're not even trying, because no product manager has created a list on a whiteboard of every way Google is better and said: "give us rough parity in every single one of these". (That's no way for a tiny startup to differentiate itself, but while trying to chisel off market share in this mature market, Yahoo and MS have the budget and need to do this.)

<comment><USER11> "Bing" is an okay name, but Google's starting to become a genericized trademark. It'll never legally become one but once your brand has reached genericized trademark status you have a lot of brand power. And that brand power is even more powerful online. It's one thing if you have a store shelf where Kleenex and generic kleenex are right next to each other. It's different if you're sitting at a computer thinking, "what site am I going to use to google for facial tissues?".

There's a marketing concept--I've forgotten what it's called--where people will think of a small number of brands for a given category. If a brand gets in your brain this way it's viable. That's why we see so many silly commercials that just say things like "Nike" with some sort of vaguely inspiring imagery, or irrelevant things like polar bears advertising Coca- Cola. It's not a matter of actually convincing anyone to _buy_ the product, it's just to get their attention and get the brand name in their working memory, so the next time they think "I need to get new sneakers" or "I want a fizzy drink", their brain will enumerate the possible brands and something constantly shoved into their mental attentions like Coke will come up instead of RC Cola, even though they're next to each other on the same shelf.

With search engines, Google is in the enviable position of being the _only_ search engine that comes to mind. No one thinks anymore, "I need to go to a website that will help me find fizzy drinks on the internet. Which sites do that? Ask Jeeves? Google? Windows Live Search?". They just think, "I'm gonna google me some fizzy drinks".

<comment><USER12> This reminds me of Evite. It's one of the websites geeks like to reinvent, but it's such just an uphill climb.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So on my main computer I've actually switched to Yahoo.

I've found about the same quality of searches most of the time but occasionally it just fails to give me what I want and I fall back to Google. For general purposes I would say that yahoo might even be slightly better. It seems to give me a bit less junk in my top 10 results.

Even with Yahoo's new interface it still seems messy relative to google.

</comment><comment><USER14> Google results are terrible for me. The same queries that used to work in 2001 no longer work. The only reason I don't switch is because of the layout.

<comment><USER15> Really? Which search engine works for you, then?

<comment><USER14> None actually.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If true, this strengthens the case that Google's monopoly is dangerous. The defence of Google's market dominance has always been that users are not locked in to Google and would switch the moment something better arrived. If Google have built a brand loyalty that transcends that then they would be virtually impossible to challenge.

<comment><USER17> Just because you can't compete with them it doesn't make them bad guys. When google came into the market it didn't go to the government to say, hey Micrsofot is too big and that msn search engine is too good, if only you guys could disadvantage our competition!

<comment><USER16> True. I'm not passing judgement or using subjective terms like "bad guys", I'm just saying that the OP highlights what a robust monopoly Google has and that the counter arguments that some have offered are wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> They should save those $100M, Bing will be another failure.

<comment><USER19> hate to say it but bing does have that nice noun usage that google does, bing it, let me bing that for you

live search and msn never enjoyed that</comment></comment>


Relatives know I do "business", so I constantly get told stories like this. - <AUTHOR> http://xkcd.com/

<comment><USER2> Sadly, it's possible to patent an "idea" without ever having to produce a working prototype or demonstration.

Also, a link to the particular strip: <http://xkcd.com/827/>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Meaning they think that corporations somehow stole their ideas, and complaining that companies won't accept their great business plans.</comment>


Introducing Fly Edge Apps - <AUTHOR> https://fly.io/articles/fly-edge-applications-global-javascript/ <comment><USER2> I don't fully get it. What does the "edge" here means? How is it like a CDN? How is this different than Heroku/GCloud?

<comment><USER3> We're still learning how to best describe this.

Edge is a bit of a marketing term, we all might end up using something else to describe this down the road. Edge normally means "servers that are very close to your users".

CDNs are specialized edges for caching HTTP content. Edge Apps are a lower level concept than CDNs, but you can picture the same thing. We have servers all over the world, we distribute your code to them, your users connect to whichever is closest to them.

Heroku, and most of gcloud, are location specific. You deploy code, it runs in Ashburn Virginia, your users traverse the internet to connect to your apps (which adds latency).

Our Edge Apps are most likely to replace a CDN, not replace your app hosted on Heroku. Lots of our customers run centralized apps and then write JavaScript to enhance them by caching partials close to users, or optimizing content as it gets shipped to users.

<comment><USER4> I got most of the way through the page assuming it was something to do with Microsoft edge. Perhaps worth at least one line early on in the page to give a bit better idea what it is?

<comment><USER5> Edge, the term, is really popular in IIoT/5G space. It's now a continuum of services - Cloud, Fog/Edge, Mist, Dew. I agree that some of it is just marketing jargon but Fog/Edge as a concept is now well understood. References: (1) Open Fog Consortium ([https://www.openfogconsortium.org/](https://www.openfogconsortium.org/)) (2) Edge Computing ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_computing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_computing))

<comment><USER6> I don't know it. So others who might otherwise be interested might not know it as well. So it would be nice to provide a small hint. That should'nt be that hard. As a startup, you cannot afford arrogance, if you want to succeed.

<comment><USER7> Definitely not meant as arrogance. We'll make it clearer, it seems like there's a bit of that confusion here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's been fascinating to watch this startup pivot to find product-market fit over the past year. First I heard from them, fly.io billed themselves as a way to avoid multiple subdomains (blog.yourcompany.com, app.yourcompany.com, etc.), and now they're doing serverless edge deployments. This actually makes me trust them more, as they seem dedicated to build something that provides value.

<comment><USER7> Thanks, that's appreciated!

It's not such a huge pivot. The "one hostname" was checking for interest in this area and it worked well. Putting stuff under a single hostname seems to be something people want to do.

At its core, the previous product was a flexible, globally distributed, load balancer. We built all these middleware, features we wanted and people might also want. In the end it was untenable: supporting such a large variety of small building blocks was going to be hard. Building new middleware all the time was also becoming a pain, changes were required in multiple components for each middleware.

This new "edge app" product gives the same flexibility, but puts the power (and burden) into the developer's hands. You could build our entire previous product on this new platform.

Note: [https://onehostname.com](https://onehostname.com) still exists and runs on our new platform. However, the article it points to is for the old product. The source for it is available here: [https://github.com/superfly/onehostname](https://github.com/superfly/onehostname)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Sounds great.

When I think about using this, the main question that comes to mind is about the scale and scope of your infrastructure, compared to Cloudflare, for example, which recently came out with a way to run JavaScript at the edge, and has more "edge chops," as a company, than I could ever ask for. I say this having started a YC company that advertised "scalable" hosted apps, but planned to deal with the actual scaling as it came up. With start-ups, you never know when you are just using an MVP, you know?

This is a new enough type of thing (edge apps) that it's not going to become a commodity overnight, but it seems like the kind of business where, once there's competition, small customers will care about developer experience, but larger customers will care more about price and performance. This is the problem with "easy-to-use" developer tools and services; customers with money can burn a few extra developer hours getting a more complicated service configured.

All that said, Fly sounds legit and innovative. :)

<comment><USER3> Oh definitely, we have a huge credibility grind to get through. We have the benefit of a successful exit doing hosted DBs at scale, at least, and I'm not sure I ever would have jumped into something like this otherwise. It's big hairy infrastructure, and really expensive to even get started.

For bigger companies, one of my pet theories is that they're going to want to run private edges. Shared infrastructure at every other level is passé, the trend is really to "own" the OS on up. This is part of why our runtime is open source, it's a reasonably good way to get into bigger companies thinking about these problems that don't want to be exposed in the next "bleed" event.

We're running in 15 datacenters at the moment which is (a) way more than most companies can manage and (b) not nearly as many as Fastly/Akamai/CloudFlare/*CDN. So I think we're in a good spot to win devs and startups over. And again, open source. We all love our OSS runtimes. :D

(note: I was a tremendous Etherpad fanboy)

<comment><USER9> Interesting to hear!

Thanks for the EtherPad love. (I'm finally working on my next app!) There's something a bit AppJet-like about Fly. I also really think this model could be the future; do you even need an "application server" if you have Fly and a datastore? I'm really looking forward to what you come up with for persistence. At AppJet, we had something called "magic storage" where you could access the "database" via proxy objects, with no explicit database calls. I wouldn't do it quite the same way now, but I can imagine some really neat JS persistence APIs that strip away the usual impedance mismatches between application logic and database, especially if the data is "right there" at the edge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> When you say "it's everything you need to build your own CDN", you mean "in pure software, with infrastructure provided by Fly", right?

<comment><USER3> Yes that's it. You write a caching service, we run it all over the world. That's probably worth its own article.

<comment><USER11> mainland china on the roadmap?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> We moved to use Fly.io over CloudFlare for providing SSL on custom domains for our customers. CloudFlare gave us a quote of over $2500/month and Fly.io was free of cost. The onboarding was spot-on, we got to talk to one of their engineers to understand how their system worked. Setting it up and going live was a breeze. Has been working flawlessly since then. Kudos to the team! I strongly recommend them!

</comment><comment><USER13> This is really neat--congrats on the launch. Can you tell us a bit about the infrastructure behind it? Is there any spin-up time, like AWS Lambda has? Presumably "fly.cache" persists between requests, but is other memory shared between requests?

<comment><USER3> Sure! You can even pick apart the code if you want: [https://github.com/superfly/fly](https://github.com/superfly/fly)

There's no warmup time. We spent some time with various OSS FaaS tools and that was pretty killer. When you deploy, we build a v8 snapshot of your code, then push it out to all the Edge Servers. It's already in memory and ready to rock when a request comes in — less than 1ms to get to your code for most apps.

fly.cache does persist, although it will vary per region (that's a surprising thing we learned about CDNs, cache contents vary per region quite a lot). It's volatile so you shouldn't rely on it for durable data storage, but you also pay for what you use so we have a strong incentive to not evict cache data any more than you request. :)

The global context _can_ be shared between requests but you can't really count on it. There's no guaranty that one request will run in the same context (or isolate or server) as a previous one.

We have some ideas for more durable and structured storage down the road. Building APIs that are location agnostic is fun, but a little mind bending.

<comment><USER13> Cool! There's obviously some competition coming from the various CDNs and cloud providers, but it's an interesting space and I wish you guys the best. I haven't really wrapped my head around the use cases yet (almost need a distributed edge database before it _really_ ramps up the value) but I'll be playing with this for sure.

<comment><USER3> We're still discovering the use cases ourselves! We totally agree about an edge db, though.

Right now it's _best_ suited for building proxy-like applications. Aggregating APIs, speeding up existing apps without touching them, user aware caching, etc.

But we're getting constant pressure to expand the scope of what they do, too, which is pretty exciting.

<comment><USER13> Thinking about this some more: it would be very straightforward to implement a leveldown API on top of fly.cache. That, paired with something like PouchDB, would give you an edge database. You could have one big centralized CouchDB server with a bunch of PouchDB clients at the edges.

Hmmm...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> How does Fly compare to the forgotten grandfather of serverless ... Google App Engine?

Edit: just read that GAE only runs apps in one region [1]. That's odd because it seems one benefit of tying an app to GAE's cloud storage API would be the ability to leverage google's distributed data preeminence.

1: [https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/locations](https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/locations)

</comment><comment><USER15> Very cool to see this catching on, similar to the Edge features rolling out of Cloudflare and Fastly. I've been doing similar things with Nginx + LUA, and I'm curious about the performance of your V8 runtime. Also, where are y'all located? I'm looking for a change and this is a domain I'm highly interested in.

<comment><USER3> We actually started experimenting with nginx + Lua way at the beginning. It was a great way to build a poc.

v8 is fast, surprisingly so. In an http request/response cycle you can write and awful lot of JavaScript logic in v8 without adding perceptible latency.

We have a small office in Chicago, but are mostly distributed. :)

<comment><USER16> I just watched your presentation at NWCJS. I was aware that Node was just the ES api implementations on top of v8 and libuv, but your presentation elucidated the exact mechanisms behind the Fly runtime and actually the Node runtime as well.

Seems like y'all are in a good position to expand the native bindings and add some of the more experimental ES proposals faster than Node. Got any details on the Fly roadmap?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Congrats Fly.io! I really like your new direction.

Could you help share how this will differ from Clouflare's Web Worker's implementation?

I like what CF is doing but it feels more limited. Your example shows using modules. Do you support a number of modules like webtask does?

</comment><comment><USER18> Great team! Just checked y'all out and looks like I know half of you from Mongo / Rethink world!

</comment><comment><USER19> Would this be similar to CloudFlare's ServerWorker concept at the edge?

<comment><USER3> Yes, definitely similar in some ways. Very different in others! We're both running v8 "at the edge", and I expect you'll see Fastly et all do the same soon. And we've both implemented standard JavaScript libraries where it makes sense (fetch, streams, stuff you'd use in Service Workers). And, as far as I can tell, we started working on it at about the same time they did.

The big differences are: ours is a full blown open source runtime runtime; you can run it locally to build + test apps, deploy it somewhere else if you want, and we have more useful APIs (imo) for doing interesting stuff (specifically caching and image/dom manipulation and a few more things cookin') way out at the edges.

<comment><USER20> Thanks for all the good work -- I look forward to trying this soon. I wonder if you might be willing to expand on the differences further between Fly Edge Apps and Cloudflare Workers, (and whatever Fastly is working on) in a blog post in the near future?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is this something like AWS Lambda@Edge?

</comment><comment><USER22> is there support for websockets? (something which is missing from Cloudflare workers)

<comment><USER23> FWIW, CF Workers do support proxying of WebSockets (e.g. with URL and header rewrites), and termination of WebSockets is on the road map.

(Disclosure: I'm the tech lead for Workers.)

<comment><USER22> Great! Looking forward. Is there any rough estimate when the termination could be supported?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This seems really interesting as someone who is currently going through the pain that is Java android development.

Unfortunately at my stage, the difference between "free" (excluding Google developer fee) and paid usage is a significant enough difference. I'm probably not the target market though.

This looks really cool, good job!</comment>