What Happens to the Coke in Coca-Cola? - <AUTHOR> http://www.good.is/post/regulators-mount-up-what-happens-to-the-coke-in-coca-cola/ <comment><USER2> I was going to say that I found it hard to believe that Coca-Cola was only manufactured in the USA, and ask how the export of coca leaves to other countries worked. Then I looked up Coca-Cola on Wikipedia and saw that "The company produces concentrate, which is then sold to licensed Coca-Cola bottlers throughout the world". So I guess it is only manufactured in the USA.

<comment><USER3> Which brings to mind an interesting tangent.

There's a recent trend for importing glass bottles of Coca-Cola from Mexico. The reason is that unlike American Coke, Mexican Coke has sugar rather than high fructose corn syrup. The reason American Coke has high fructose corn syrup is because of the US sugar tariff. So Mexican bottlers import American Coca-Cola concentrate, mix in carbonated water and some cane sugar of either Mexican or presumably Caribbean origin, and export the finished bottles of Coca-Cola back to the United States, _simply to route around the damage of the US sugar tariff_.

<comment><USER4> HFCS 55% fructose 45% glucose

Sucrose (regular sugar) 50% fructose 50% glucose

Not much of a difference.

<comment><USER5> ? Sucrose is sucrose. It's its own molecule. The only way you could describe it as 50% fructose 50% glucose is if you also described water as 66% hydrogen and 33% oxygen.

<comment><USER4> I'm not a biologist or chemical engineer I'm just going by the information I can find and decipher.

If the sucrose molecule can be broken down/decomposed into two other molecules one fructose and the other glucose is that not accurate?

From what I understood sucrose is composed of fructose (an isomer of glucose) and glucose of which the molecule sucrose is comprised of. The human body breaks down sucrose and then fructose in the liver into just glucose for the body to use for fuel.

<comment><USER5> Yes, a sucrose molecule can be broken down. But the full sucrose molecule still behaves differently from the glucose/fructose mix that it was being compared to. Even if the glucose/fructose mix was exactly 50%/50%, that mixture of glucose and fructose molecules would still behave differently from a pure sucrose solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wrote this! Sweet! It's from my email newsletter, <http://dlewis.net/nik> \-- GOOD republished it w/my permission :) Love seeing it discussed here!

<comment><USER7> Is there an rss feed of that I could subscribe to instead?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The author doesn't seem to make the connection, but the Mallinckrodt Corporation's cocaine hydrochloride can also be found at your favorite neighborhood retailers as a white powder for ~$80 / gram. It's 'regular' cocaine.

<comment><USER9> I assume you mean it's available at those neighborhood retailer pharmacies (CVS, Walgreens?) and with a prescription? Could you explain more?

<comment><USER10> Cocaine hydrochloride IS cocaine, the fine white powder drug. It is distinct from free base cocaine, commonly known as 'crack', which is made by stripping the hydrochloride ion using a strong alkali. Crack is popular because the free base form is more pharmacologically active, meaning you get more bang for the same price, or alternatively, the same bang for a lower price.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've long known that CocaCola affects me differently than most people. For a long time, I thought it was the caffeine in it, but then I drank Mt Dew (with more caffeine) and didn't have the same problems.

Basically, it's really addictive to me. If I start drinking it, I'll feel the need to drink more and more until I'm drinking enough that it makes me physically ill each day... And I will just continue.

It took me a while to get off it, and other caffeinated drinks do not affect me in the same way.

I didn't realized, until now, that they still used an extract from the coca leaf. That seems like it's different from every other drink out there, and maybe that's why it affects me differently. Hopefully this knowledge can help strengthen my resolve to stay off of it.

It's really sad, too, because I love the flavor. I just can't handle it.

<comment><USER12> Me too. I highly suspect Coca Cola was specifically designed in a way that it can not quench one's thirst. Once you open a bottle, you can not stop drinking it until it is finished. That's why I completely stopped drinking Coca Cola few years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder if there's cola that is still made with active coca ingredients somewhere in the world. I believe chewing on coca leaves is legal in some parts of South America and cocaine is legal in some european countries... with the recent "boutique soda" craze, it must exist.

edit: [http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/14/coca-colla- real-...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/14/coca-colla-real-thing- bolivia)

<comment><USER14> It is decriminalized in Portugal but that is not the same as being legal. I'm fairly certain that it is not legal in any European country and I know for a fact that it is in the EU controlled substances list and is not legal in the EU except for a very few and very narrow uses in medicine and pharmacology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> So coca-cola has a legal monopoly on the use of an ingredient. Seems like pretty unfair business practices to me.

<comment><USER16> Coca-Cola's market dominance probably has epsilon to do with their formulation.

<comment><USER15> I can't tell if you're being sarcastic, but if not, why then would they regard their formula as such a secret that the only two people allowed to know it may not fly together in case the plane should go down? As a diversion form their business practices?

<comment><USER17> It's a marketing tactic.

<comment><USER18> This.

Especially when it also mentions the recipe is stored in a vault. BOTH recipe mixers could instantly cease to exist and the Coca Cola company would not miss a beat in terms of selling mass quantities of their product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Interesting read, thank you!

Tangentially, I want to note that Coke has a great marketing strategy! True or not, but "only two people who never travel together" makes the formula sound 1000x times better than "sugar water + stuff that's probably bad for you".

In fact, when I was about 13 yrs old, I remember going on a tour of Coke factory, where they showed us the movie about the process, including "historial" references to coke being made a 100+ years ago. For a kid, their marketing was better than Coke itself.

</comment><comment><USER20> It would be great if Coke kept the same 'secret ingredients' instead of tainting them with the disgusting taste of high fructose corn syrup, which was not in the ingredient list. Coke is not serving coke as we know it, but 'new coke'.

Many studies have been done on the negative effects of HFCS, not evening considering it's inferior taste to organic cane sugar.

Stopped drinking any beverage product with High Fructose Corn Syrup, which means virtually every Coke product.

see: <http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S26/91/22K07/>

<comment><USER21> For a true cola-rific experience check out:

A) Mexican Coca-Cola (sold in tall, skinny bottles: [http://www.amazon.com/Mexican-Coca-Cola- Drink-12-Ounce/dp/B0...](http://www.amazon.com/Mexican-Coca-Cola- Drink-12-Ounce/dp/B001SAWZOK)) B) Kosher Coca-Cola (only available around Passover in select markets like NYC & Miami - look for the yellow cap on 2-liter bottles)

Both are made with real, honest-to-goodness sugar, not HFCS. They taste better and are a fun treat.

As a related note: There's a whole subculture of soda geeks (I presume you are as not-surprised as I was to discover this ;) and it's a fun mini-adventure to explore some of the things one can buy (i.e. vanilla coke w/ real sugar)

See: <http://www.sodafinder.com/products/coca-cola-coke-vanilla>

<comment><USER22> If you don't want to pay nearly double the cost of the product just to ship Mexican coke via Amazon, try your local Mexican grocery store. The one down the street from me in Chicago (at Ashland & Beach) sells cases of 24 bottles for $24.81 including tax.

<comment><USER3> Or Costco, for that matter.

There are two varieties of Mexican Coke I've found in the wild (i.e. Seattle corner stores), the 12 ounce bottles linked above and 500mL "Medio Litro" bottles. The Medio Litros are closer to a 20oz bottle while the 12 ounce bottles are the same as a can in terms of capacity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> One can get pretty close to the coca-cola formula using chemical analysis. i think it would be a good documentary show to do this in CSI miami style, and i bet funding wouldn't be that hard to get :)

<comment><USER24> Pretty sure they already do:

<http://www.rense.com/general7/whyy.htm>

Also, I have no real way to confirm, but I've heard (via friend of a friend: suspicion +10) quite a big part of a high-value flavour science is not just now it tastes, but that it is hard to reproduce faithfully, by means of unnecessary extra additives, novel process control requirements, and unusual synergistic effects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> "n fact, the United States (and most other nations) expressly prohibits the sale and trade of coca leaves."

Wouldn't Jeff Bezos be in jail then, considering that they are sold on Amazon?

</comment><comment><USER26> This report[1], from 2003, shows some unpleasant behaviour from Coca-Cola. (This was stopped by local officials)

(<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/3096893.stm>)

> _Waste product from a Coca-Cola plant in India which the company provides as > fertiliser for local farmers contains toxic chemicals, a BBC study has > found. Dangerous levels of the known carcinogen cadmium have been found in > the sludge produced from the plant in the southern state of Kerala_

The photographer Sharad Haksar had some trouble from Coca-Cola after using their brandname in some of his art.

(<http://www.indiaresource.org/news/2005/1077.html>)

Be cautious when importing foodstuffs. Sometimes they're not produced to the high standards you'd like. I'm not sure how reliable this source is (seems a bit flame-baity) but it suggests that Indian versions of some soft drinks (not just Coca-Cola) are high in pesticides.

([http://www.indiaresource.org/campaigns/coke/2006/cokepoisoni...](http://www.indiaresource.org/campaigns/coke/2006/cokepoisoning.html))

> _In blatant disregard for lives in India, the Coca-Cola company continues to > sell products in India with high levels of pesticides even today. Coca-Cola > maintains that its products in India are completely safe, and that it has > one global standard for all its products._

> _The reality, however, is very different. On at least 10 occasions since > January 2005, the US Food and Drug Administration has rejected the shipment > of Coca-Cola products made in India coming into the US, on the grounds that > they do not conform to US laws and that they are unsafe for the US public._

\---

[1] It is frustrating when the BBC uses their news programmes and websites to promote their other programmes. "Face the Facts" is a reasonable investigative programme. Here's the website for it:

(<http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007tmlp>)

</comment><comment><USER27> > "only two people know how to mix the 7x flavoring ingredient"

To what extent are they allowed to keep this a secret? For example, I'm a vegetarian, so presumably they would have to declare if this secret ingredient contains animal products? (I'm sure it doesn't, it's just an example to portray the point).

And I'm guessing one of the people who knows the secret ingredient is Moe Syzlak?

<comment><USER28> <http://www.fsis.usda.gov/help/faqs_flavorings/index.asp>

<comment><USER29> From this page, to directly answer the question:

 _What substances or ingredients can be listed as "natural flavor," "flavor," or "flavorings" rather than by a specific common or usual name?_

 _Spices (e.g., black pepper, basil, and ginger), spice extracts, essential oils, oleoresins, onion powder, garlic powder, celery powder, onion juice, and garlic juice are all ingredients that may be declared on labeling as "natural flavor," "flavor," or "flavoring." Spices, oleoresins, essential oils, and spice extracts are listed in the Food and Drug Administration regulations._

 _Can the terms "dried meat or poultry stocks," "dried broth," "meat extracts," and "dried beef plasma" be listed on meat and poultry labels as "natural flavorings"?_

 _No. Substances derived from animal sources must be identified as to the species of origin on the label and be consistent with the definition established by Federal regulation. For example, the listing on the label would read "dried chicken stock," "lamb extract," or "dried beef plasma."_

So, to the original question: vegetarians can rest comfortably knowing that "natural flavors" don't contain meat.

<comment><USER30> This isn't exactly true. They needn't list the "species of origin". They just have to name the substance. They can list things like gelatin, glycerides, lecithin, guanine, and other lesser understood animal products by those obscure names.

<comment><USER31> It wasn't always vegan. It was reformulated when they got Kosher certification, and incidentally the Rabbi who certifies it also knows what the ingredients are.

See: [http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/Kasherin...](http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/Kashering_Coke.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Coca Cola played an intricate role in race relations in 20th century America. The removal of cocaine from this popular beverage was not one of choice, but one required to help squelch concerns that the product lead to the degradation of society. Specifically increased violence from Blacks and miscegenation. I saw a documentary on it awhile back but can't remember the name. Here's a link that explains a little more [http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/384/is- it-true-coca...](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/384/is-it-true-coca- cola-once-contained-cocaine).

</comment><comment><USER33> Honest question: Whats Coke and whats Coca-Cola. In some countries they sell it as "Coke". Here in Turkmenistan it's Coca-Cola. Is it a branding stuff? Or something different?

<comment><USER34> Reading the first paragraph of <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca_cola> will enlighten you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Maybe I've been watching too much Breaking Bad but there's a great opportunity here for someone to "acquire" the pre-processed shipments in Maywood NJ. Who wants to be my co-founder on this project? There's gotta be Pinkman out there to my Walter. C'mon!!!

</comment><comment><USER36> Can someone explain how Coca-Cola is still able to keep this a secret ?

The company sells enough concentrate to produce millions of litters world-wide yearly.

Surely there are hundreds of trucks entering and leaving the facility, and by now the ingredients and their dosages are quite know.

<comment><USER37> The whole "secret formula" thing is more of a marketing gimmick than anything.

<comment><USER38> cf Kung Fu Panda!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Makes me want to try and make something out of an ingredient that could be banned in the future :P

</comment><comment><USER40> If you haven't heard it before, This American Life did a cute piece on the Coke formula that includes what was probably (at one time) the full recipe. [http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/427/o...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/427/original-recipe)

<comment><USER41> Article too long? Didn't quite read it all?

 _"Bonus fact: Coca-Cola's recipe contains a heavily guarded mystery flavoring, known as the "7X flavor." In early 2011, This American Life broadcast an episode[1] discussing a potential early recipe for the drink, but almost certainly not the one in use today. Coke denied[2] that the program had discovered the true formula. In that episode, Mark Pendergrast, author of For God, Country, and Coca-Cola, an unauthorized history of the company (and beverage), told This American Life[3] that "only two people know how to mix the 7x flavoring ingredient" and that "[t]hose two people never travel on the same plane in case it crashes; it's this carefully passed-on secret ritual and the formula is kept in a bank vault.""_

1\. [http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/427/o...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/427/original-recipe)

2\. [http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/02/16/bubbly-buzz-coca-cola- sa...](http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/02/16/bubbly-buzz-coca-cola-says-its- secret-recipe-is-still-a-secret/)

3\. [http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/02/15/is-this-the-real- thing-c...](http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/02/15/is-this-the-real-thing-coca- colas-secret-formula-discovered/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> It almost impossible to get 100% of the cocaine out of the leaves and the coke you drink everyday probably has small traces of cocaine in it.</comment>


Ask HN: Show me how to perform raw data analysis more effectively - <AUTHOR>

I've been a ruby guy for a few years now. The elegance of the language is the biggest draw for me. Unfortunately, I feel like every time I pull a ton of data from sql, or a set of flat files in to memory that I'm plagued by GC collection pauses and that it takes _much_ longer than it should to process the data.
That said, I'm looking for a better language or at least a better framework for just doing exploratory data analysis. We've done some big data transformations with hadoop (pig) and post processing the output with a little bit of C. Those datasets were absolutely huge and the problem warranted using something a bit more heavyweight like that.
For the small / medium sized datasets I'm looking for something a bit more elegant. What good tradeoff between speed and elegance have you found? Got any supporting code samples to make your case? <comment><USER2> It all depends what you want to do. "Exploratory data analysis" means a lot of different things. If the data is already in a relational database then I just stick with SQL. You can do a lot with it and a rapid visualization tool to help make sense of it. Try something like Tableau <http://www.tableausoftware.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Your question doesn't make sense unless you give some examples of what you want to get out of the data.</comment>


Teespring Says It's Minting New Millionaires Selling Its T-Shirts, Raises $35M - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2014/11/18/teespring-says-it-making-millionaires-raises-millions/ <comment><USER4> If you want to build a huge business, building a platform where other people can make money using it is a great way to do that. eBay, AirBnB, Uber/Lyft/etc, Teespring. Even Google, with their adwords product (and reddit with it's self serve ads).

There's lots of great businesses where people pay you for a service, but if you can create one where people make money when you do, they are heavily invested in your success.

<comment><USER5> Yeh absolutely. It's another extension of the sharing economy. These kind of business models change societal habits and as generations shed, the sharing model will become more prominent (It's even been predicted by Gartner; not that this should be taken as gospel). Think about the amount of income you could make from renting your flat (AirBnB), Being a driver on Uber, Selling your skills on Udemy and now selling your fanbase personalised t-shirts on TeeSpring. Indeed it's similar to sites like Zazzle but adds a twist by combining the concept with Kickstarter.

We are making entrepreneurs out of ordinary people, it's f __king awesome.

<comment><USER6> > We are making entrepreneurs out of ordinary people, it's fking awesome.

Or, people are naturally entrepreneurs stifled by regulation and AirBnB, Uber, Udemy and TeeSpring are simply allowing the people's natural entrepreneur spirit to shine through by shifting the compliance burden away from them.

<comment><USER7> >> _We are making entrepreneurs out of ordinary people, it 's fking awesome._

> _people are naturally entrepreneurs stifled by regulation and AirBnB, Uber, > Udemy and TeeSpring..._

Not really. Renting out your house to someone is not entrepreneurial. Neither is driving people around in your car or teaching people. Further, I know of no regulation that prevents people from teaching for money. As far as Teespring "designers", those people are not entrepreneurs either. They are simply affiliates who market for Teespring and who also happen to give over whatever creative ability they have to Teespring with the hope of being paid for it.

In all of these cases, the people being touted as "entrepreneurs" are no different from employees working as independent contractors, and in some cases it's worse. The only entrepreneurs here are the companies that built the platforms and convinced people to give over their time and resources to generate revenue for their business.

One can make value judgments about whether it's good or bad for the people who participate, but to say that they are creating entrepreneurs is literally saddening.

<comment><USER6> I agree with your points. I was stretching my usage of 'entrepreneurs' to make a point as you noticed.

> Further, I know of no regulation that prevents people from teaching for > money.

I do, because unfortunately the government has been using them against bootcamp schools:

> To achieve compliance, institutions must pay a $5,000 application fee; > provide a course catalog, enrollment agreement, and performance fact sheet > publicly on their websites; and submit a few other minor documents included > on the application.

[http://readwrite.com/2014/02/18/why-coding-bootcamps- should-...](http://readwrite.com/2014/02/18/why-coding-bootcamps-should-be- regulated)

> Over the past month, California regulators sent cease and desist letters to > many of these hacker boot camps, saying they run afoul of the state's > educational laws, as first reported by Venturebeat. "They're not properly > licensed, and the law requires them to be licensed to offer an educational > service like they are," says Russ Heimerich, a spokesperson for the > California Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education, or BPPE.

[http://www.wired.com/2014/01/california-hacker- bootcamps/](http://www.wired.com/2014/01/california-hacker-bootcamps/)

<comment><USER7> Apples and oranges. There's a big difference between starting an "educational institution" and sharing knowledge or otherwise teaching for pay as an individual.

And, in the case of the boot camps you mentioned, it kind of argues against your original point. That is, they apparently ran afoul of the regulations _because_ of their attempts to make it a business that could be classified as an institution versus there being individuals who could have generated income from their labor, if not for some onerous regulation.

More relevantly, no one would have stopped any "teacher" from creating Udemy style online courses on their own domain.

That situation in CA is intresting though. I wasn't aware of that. Thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's surprising to me the degree to which Teespring has become part of the affiliate marketing community. The same group of people that normally spend all their time pushing "get rich quick" schemes, MLM programs, dating site ads on social networks and fake news articles about diet pills have really embraced t-shirts for some reason. There's a whole ecosystem of products around Teespring marketing businesses -- landing page builders, ebooks, video courses, mentorship and coaching, case studies, mastermind groups, etc. There's a hundred variations of "How I made $6,123 with Teespring and Facebook ads" posts out there, usually in connection with some other product. I wonder how they made inroads with that community, and whether those marketers ever create trouble for Teespring.

<comment><USER9> I'm an affiliate marketeer. Couple of points:

1) Not sure why all the hate towards us. We can take a company from zero to millions overnight. I get that there are some shady stuff floating around but that's not 100% of the industry.

2) Facebook + Teespring is almost a perfect combination.

3) Aff. Marketeers have created some issues in FB using Custom Audiences (T-shirts that said stuff like "This was made specifically for Joe"). Those sold like hot-cakes but FB went down hard on them.

4) Everyone wants a piece of the action, that's why you see so much tutorials and stuff around it. It's also a great way to learn Aff. Marketing if you are into that.

<comment><USER10> we work with <leading_affiliate_marketplace> and it is really hard for us to find quality affiliates. it feels like they do whatever they can to get us trapped into browser software and coupon websites, our profits are just completely cannibalized. can you please email me at dsugarman @ zentail, we would love to work with you!

<comment><USER9> Great, I'll shoot you guys an email :)

<comment><USER11> Fabian, I'd like to chat as well. We too have had troubles finding reliable affiliate traction and have worked with companies like CJ to no success. firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "At least ten, the company says, have become millionaires from the work."

Does this mean they sold a million dollars plus worth of shirts OR that, after all expenses, they netted a million? The phrase millionaire implies the latter but that is a far higher bar to cross.

<comment><USER13> The latter. We have paid out, after expenses, millions to at least ten sellers on Teespring.

<comment><USER14> That still excludes any of their external marketing costs.

<comment><USER15> It also may not include any taxes owed. That's just as orthogonal to how much Teespring has paid out, which is the entirety of their claim.

<comment><USER16> Right. That's why they should just say "paid out a million" (a statement of income) rather than "became millionaires" (a statement of net worth.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> T-shirt millionaires, eh? Reminds me a bit of the Team Fortress 2 item designers who are making a living out of it:

[http://www.kritzkast.com/mym-day-1-of-3](http://www.kritzkast.com/mym- day-1-of-3)

</comment><comment><USER18> How's this different than something like Big Cartel ([http://bigcartel.com/](http://bigcartel.com/))?

Not asking about business stuff specifically, but the usability or whatever- it-is that this newer stuff does that the older online t-shirt printing businesses don't? I don't really understand their story about starting because they couldn't find someone to make their t-shirts...

<comment><USER19> It's about who is taking the risk, with BigCartel you shell out money upfront to buy shirts + print (guessing how many to get in each size, how big an order you need, etc.) then try to sell them.

TeeSpring is kind of like a Kickstarter, you setup a picture of what the T-shirt would look like when printed and then no money changes hands until you hit your "funding level" of a certain number of shirts, and there's no excess inventory because they only print exactly the right number for the sizes that people ordered.

It's a really interesting model.

<comment><USER20> > _TeeSpring is kind of like a Kickstarter_ //

TeeSpring is almost exactly like CafePress or Spreadshirt or Zazzle or Threadless or ... isn't it? Aren't Reddit just moving in to this space (perhaps white-labelling one of these services?). Fair play to them if they broke in to this market (which seems pretty crammed) and took a relatively large slice of the pie.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I have to believe this is a bigger play than just T-shirts. If they're in the "create your own retail company" business, they're either in comp with Amazon, or an acquisition target of them. Either way, it's an interesting position.

When you look at their board, you see visionaries, not operators.

</comment><comment><USER22> Congrats to Teespring, this is huge :) Awesome to see a customer growing like this.

</comment><comment><USER23> Honest question. If your business is doing good, why would you want to raise money?

<comment><USER24> Economics. Suppose you have a factory and a growing order book but you're running at or near full capacity; if you get any substantial increase in the number of orders, it's going to take longer and longer to fulfill them, and customers might start to go your competitors if they feel the quality of your service has dropped. This is a _diseconomy of scale_ \- you've run out of room to grow and the more business you get the lower your margins.

The obvious solution would be to set up another factory. Suppose for simplicity that this costs $25 million and allows a doubling of capacity. suppose further that TeeSpring is making a profit of $100,000 a week (a completely imaginary figure - I know nothing about their finances). Because it's near full capacity that weekly net isn't going to increase much. But saving up the money to purchase the factory outright would take 4-5 years - <USER2> _organic growth_ strategy - is plenty of time for competitors to move against you and pull away customers.

So you have a couple of options. You could go into debt, either by getting a loan or issuing a bond that pays interest (effectively the same thing). Now some of your income goes on interest payments, but they're tax-deductible and after you've paid off the debt you'll still have the second factory. As long as the increased income resulting from the investment is greater than the cost of borrowing the capital then going into debt can be perfectly sensible - <USER3> same reason it makes good sense for governments to splurge on necessary infrastructure during periods of low interest rates, just like we're not doing now due to politics :-/

Another option is to issue equity, ie sell shares in the company to raise the money. For large firms this may not be any more attractive than debt, because shareholders will expect a dividend of some sort. For growing firms it makes a ton of sense because early investors are not so much interested in dividends as in the possibility for the shares to appreciate in value - who wouldn't have liked to invest $1 million in Google or any other large company back in the early days? This is ideal for a firm like Teespring that has a very simple and straightforward business model - manufacturing a basic consumer product like this is great from an investor's POV because it's so easy to analyze.

<comment><USER25> Excellent answer- I wonder though why more start ups don't take out loans/issue debt? Is it simply because they can't find anyone willing to lend to them at reasonable interest rates? I would think a company like the one you describe would be a pretty good bet for a lender to give a loan to build a factory.

<comment><USER24> Thanks for all the nice comments!

They do sometimes, but in recent years banks have been more reluctant to lend and issuing bonds typically involves an awful lot of legal overhead, so I think it's just easier to issue equity. Another reason is that if business doesn't go as well as you hope the debt might allow creditors to secure your secured assets/stock, whereas if you issue equity that's not an issue. Also, for early stage companies raising equity can be a good way to meet people you'd want on the board advising on the future direction of the firm.

But you know I just know about this second hand from being into economics. If you search for 'capital formation' you'll find lots of stuff and some people like grellas here at HN are specialists in that.

<comment><USER25> Thanks again for another great answer. I can see where the legal/regulatory overhead for issuing debt could be a big roadblock. It is my understanding that a lot of early stage financing is 'convertible debt', with the idea to convert it into equity at a later time. I wonder how often start-ups decide to pay off this debt from revenue rather than allowing it to convert? Would that be a big no-no?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Congrats Teespring!</comment>


My Paywall Start-up,Qasto - <AUTHOR> http://www.qasto.com/ Here is the invite link: (valid for 100 signups only) http://www.qasto.com/signup/7586/ <comment><USER2> What separates you from something like CPALead? (Other than a slick design.)

It's definitely a winning idea -- There are several other people in the sustaining themselves in this market, so while there is competition, I also know there is room for growth.

However you're monetizing it, I'd look to geo-target specific methods based on country.

Also, you can look at online marketing forums (warrior forum, wickedfire (maybe), digitalpoint, and blackhat world to advertise your services. Right now CPALead has a virtual lock on these industries in terms of locking premium content.

Also, facebook will typically either ban/warn you or delete your linking page if you link to protected material.

<comment><AUTHOR> Our idea is to build a trust-able eco-system for everyone to unlock and consume content in way which will benefit everyone. CPALead doesnt have a central login system for users and doesn't make sure if content is delivered and if ip changes th user cannot consume content he already paid for where as we are trying to change this by having a central system for end user to access to unlocked objects they paid for thought the web and giving ability to the developers to bill their users who consume their premium content on a one-time or monthly basis.

<comment><AUTHOR> Along with offers we are adding mobile,prepaid and other various types of payment options which we believe will make it flexible for users to pay for the premium content.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here is the invite link: (valid for 100 signups only) <http://www.qasto.com/signup/7586/>

<comment><USER3> Ah yea, following that link works, but clicking "Sign up" on the front page gives me "Sorry: Your invite code is not valid".

Also, your signup form gives me a headache. I'd recommend the standard flow down the page, or splitting it up on different pages.</comment></comment>


What I want to be when I grow up. - <AUTHOR> http://austingwalters.com/what-i-want-to-be-when-i-grow-up/

<comment><USER2> I don't want to come down on you because I too dream big, but having a goal without knowing at least vaguely how to accomplish it is stupid. It's this kind of "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" mentality that fails a lot of otherwise talented and bright people out there. I would really like to hear more from you, as I like your mentality when you're not shouting it at me from across the interwebz, I just want to read works of substance.</comment>


Ask HN: Video Screenshot Software for Documentation Purposes? - <AUTHOR>

Can anyone recommend a free software tool that will capture the actions on my screen and output it to a standard video format? Currently working in Windows. Thanks! <comment><USER2> I believe you want the following thread <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=436523>

FYI, I found this by using searchyc on "screen capture"

</comment><comment><USER3> Try <http://www.screentoaster.com> or <http://camstudio.org></comment>


Mainvest – Invest in brick and mortar businesses - <AUTHOR> https://mainvest.com/ <comment><USER2> It takes a lot of self-confidence for a small business person to issue revenue notes. They aren't profit notes; they come off the top line not the bottom line. So if the business goes through a cycle of loss-making this kind of debt can turn into a way to "fail fast." Then everybody loses.

Hopefully a small business considering this kind of loan can get some free advice from somebody like [https://score.org/](https://score.org/) before they get in too deep. I know I'd recommend that before I made that kind of investment.

<comment><USER3> Good point. The people who need this are the people least able to handle it.

Many sole proprietor businesses get in trouble with sales tax collections when they try to juggle accounts with cash flow problems. Adding a loan product like this... ouch.

<comment><USER2> Yes, and sales tax authorities have zero tolerance for not making those remittances. THAT's a way to fail REALLY fast involving government padlocks on the front door.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I used to work with your co-founder Felix. The idea isn't bad, but this feels like a direct copy of the company where we worked, StreetShares. They had the exact same "Main Street" theme an overused it a bit. The "About" page used to list the employees' favourite main street in their synopses. Even the homepage is surprising similar. The main difference seems to be the stock photos.

So are there any differences in your product and SS? I assume the tech stack is much better. SS made me want to vomit. I guess this is an SS clone without the military focus? SS wasn't an original idea either, but at least they tried to put a spin on it. This just feels like blatant rip off

<comment><USER5> There's nothing wrong with taking an idea and trying to do it better.

<comment><USER4> There's a fine line between trying to improve an idea and cheap knock-offs and stealing an ideas and identities.

Uber and Lyft are very similar, but at least they could be differentiated. Lyft had tips at the start. The apps, sites, UX, colour scheme, etc... were still noticeably different despite offering the same product.

Also it's a little different when you work at one company, leave, and then a year later you copy their same product with little change and 0 attempt to establish your own brand.

<comment><USER5> Are you asserting that he copied code or graphics, or took existing customers with him? If not, then there's still nothing wrong. It's competition, it's how it works.

<comment><USER4> It is still worth pointing out as it is a little shady, even if it isn't illegal.

In some ways it is similar to SlideBelt and how MissionBelt essentially stole their product. Except in that case I believe it was a family relation and not a professional relation.

In this case, we have businesses asking for money. What if the founders decide they like one of the bids? They could hide/remove the bid and then steal the business idea and use their connections, which the struggling business likely doesn't have, to steal the idea.

Would you really trust these people?

<comment><USER6> It's not shady at all to copy and compete with any business. That you would call them shady says more about you than them.

<comment><USER4> > That you would call them shady says more about you than them.

You may be right there. I was pretty miserable when I worked for SS and see most things from that period in a negative light. I don't mean to sound adversarial, but what would it be saying about me?

I think my issue here is that is feels more like a direct steal of a business idea and less like competition. I don't see any changes, differences, innovation, or rebranding.

It's a fine line, and everyone sees the line differently. For example, an outsider stealing a business idea is better in my mind. They could have very well been working on the same idea concurrently like Leibniz and Newton. They will also have a different perspective and take on the situation. When a previous employee steals an idea without improvement, it doesn't sit well with me.

I think I'd be fine with it even if they just shifted focus. As a direct improvement on SS they could say they are focusing on transparency and security, pushing users towards 2FA and secure practices while being open with some of the risks involved. They could focus on local small businesses within X km or maybe some new attempt to quantify risk and match investors to businesses based on risk profiles. They did none of that. They took the exact same "Main Street" motif and just changed the color. Competition is good, but cookie cutter companies like this with no innovation only hurt each other. And then when these companies fail, everyone that that pulled in to invest and the small businesses involved suffer.

<comment><USER6> If you hired me to implement a great idea but you were miserable to work for, I'd definitely consider quitting to do it on my own. I'd expect the exact same from you, it's an important reason to take extra care in how we lead employees.

And there isn't any such thing as cookie cutter companies, at least not successful ones. When you start second you need to do something important better, or you can never catch up.

Apple is famous for being second to market with the same idea, but with a lot more thought and polish put into how it works.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Was expecting more info on how repayment works thru the revenue sharing notes - not clear what percentage of revenue a business is agreeing to pay or how much teeth these notes actually have. I would expect most of these "investments" to end in a almost complete write downs. Could be a great funding alternative if the details / investor protections were fleshed out. I personally would not touch any of these until then.

</comment><comment><USER8> I know Nick, Bob, and Strader from early Uber Boston days - they are great people and very hard workers. I'm really happy to see ex-Uber folks going after an opportunity to strengthen local communities vs. so many others who tried to hop on the next scooter / marketplace / fintech 'rocketship'

I don't know enough about the investment model they support, but any company that is trying to help grow important community businesses like Great Scott in Allston deserves attention.

I also thought Nick's message on internal diversity was one of the better takes (blunt & honest) I'd seen from a CEO: [https://medium.com/@nick_97468/our-team-is-all-white-and- its...](https://medium.com/@nick_97468/our-team-is-all-white-and-its-not-ok- fbde6e3145df)

Wish them the best of luck!

</comment><comment><USER9> At first I misread the name as "Malinvest". Funny enough, the website is set up to encourage exactly that.

You have to pick a business based on a short description and some social media profiles. Some of the listings have a business plan or a slide deck, but none present an audited financial statement.

Then there is a mysterious metric called "investment multiple". It seems to be a 6.5-year ROI. When you break it down, it boils down to 3.5-8.5% return per year on the money you lend them. However, the payment schedule is unspecified, and it is not exactly clear what recourse do you have if things go under. A bank would never provide a business loan on such terms.

<comment><USER10> > A bank would never provide a business loan on such terms.

and that's why this is trying to find retail investors to invest. Good investment deals are almost never public, and will always be taken by those close to the deal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is it me or are most emotional appeals? I was expecting some charts or spreadsheets showing why it would be a good investment.

<comment><USER12> 'Good investment' also includes 'creates a desirable urban space which increases livability and encourages further economic development.'

This obsessive narrow focus on strict financial gains is part of the problem.

<comment><USER7> For those looking to make a good investment to "create a desirable urban space", there are many ways to donate to non-profit (museums, theaters, local schools, libraries, co-ops, etc) to achieve that. A coffee shop, or even funeral home, could set itself up as a non-profit, with the employees and managers making market salaries but relying on community donations, in addition to community business, to keep the place going if needed.

For businesses who set themselves up as for-profit, or those who wish to invest in for-profit businesses, a return on capital is required for those systems to work. Investors may accept a lower return on their money in a local business compared to one they will never see, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with making sure there is a investment return. Otherwise, how do you suppose the next business gets funded?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> We built MainVest to allow small businesses to raise capital from their community and let people vote with their wallet to drive economic growth, while getting potential returns priced on average in the 10%-20% IRR range. One of the largest drivers of success on the platform is the social underwriting that goes into successfully funded campaigns, resulting in the asset class to date performing well, even against what would be fair to call the largest existential threat to small business in most of our lifetimes.

We're happy to answer any questions people may have about the small business landscape and how these investments are structured and can perform. Reach out! email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER14> This is an excellent idea, though perhaps too much like crowdfunding. There's an early bird bonus that bumps your ROC—for instance, helping float a parrot store through COVID as one of the first X dollars can push me from 30% to 50% returns (both over 7 years).

Also, considering the uptick in cases over the past week, the timing of investing in small businesses seems suspect.

</comment><comment><USER15> with you know what on everyone's minds, I'm interested in investing in the funeral home on the front page. Seems like a pretty stable place to put one's money regardless.

<comment><USER16> Non accredited investments or equity crowdfunding is very risky. Do your your diligence before you part with your money.

I also thought this was weird, "Mizen will also showcase local art, host a weekly support group for veterans, and offer conference rooms to be used by local nonprofits."

I wasn't aware of conferences in funeral homes.

<comment><USER17> Equity crowdfunding is always something that's sounded interesting to me on the surface. Right now crowdfunding is just pre-ordering something with a 0.01% chance of actually getting the thing you've ordered. (I've crowdfunded 3 things in my life. All 3 things failed and I lost everything! But... this is maybe $100 total so I'm not out too much ;)

Getting some equity in the business always made more sense to me. Sure, I want the thing, but for the amount of risk I'm taking on, I want a percentage of your company and future profits!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Do people actually expect better returns from investing in local businesses like these (notorious for coming and going) over say the stock market?

<comment><USER19> I think there's a vast difference in what you expert from Wall Street compared to Main Street.

Investing in a portfolio and watching a candles comes with one very singular yet very clear expectation. Those candles moving in ways that's favourable to you and yielding an unrefined monetary return.

Investing in Main Street? You would do that for a multitude of very different reasons or personal reasons. For instance, that coffee place down town is where you meet up with your friends, or you have fond memories of that place because you met your spouse there a decade ago. The value of a funeral parlour would be that the entire local community, at one point or another, will get into touch with them. Hairdresser? Corona forces me to do my hair at home, but as soon as I can, I'll go back to my hairdresser where you'd have the banter and the relaxing atmosphere while you get treated.

So, the idea of investing in new main street businesses isn't because they fulfil a simple, crude financial return. It would be because you expect them to flourish and add a wide range of intangible values and a unique identity to a local community, which you'd be hard pressed to find in one-size-fit-all chains of stores and services.

Put more succinctly, sure, you could invest in Starbucks on the stock market. But if you've been to one of their venues, you've pretty much seen them all. Which is the opposite for an independent coffee place where the owner went out on a limb to add their own unique touches and has build up their own specific clientele.

<comment><USER18> So basically it can be summed up as charity. Would that be a reasonable analogy?

<comment><USER19> No. Not at all. It's anything but charity.

Charity would be giving money to a worthwhile cause without expecting any direct return. You don't buy a service or a good. You just give away money to a cause without expecting anything in return. Charity is an act of altruism.

As far as main street businesses are concerned, customers very much expect a concrete return: a decent cup of coffee, a proper haircut, a well sewn suit, leather shoes that don't wear out and so on. The difference between a large franchise and a small business is the added value of being treated like the individual, and part of the community, that you are. The altruistic part may then be that you understand that you're supporting others in your local community to make a living, even though you still expect a good or service in return.

The stock market is about investing in a venture with a clear singular goal: monetary return through speculation. It's basically a form of lending money in hopes of gaining even more money.

That doesn't necessarily mean that speculation in itself is bad. Your intentions are what makes all the difference. For instance, you could attach a clear intention to your investment: because you feel that the businesses you invest in are worthwhile i.e. your values align with the values of that venture. This is where the whole notion of "ethical investing" comes in: you choose to invest in ventures that "do no harm" to society and/or the ecosystem.

Whereas, if you simply invest money in the stock market, without caring in what types of ventures exactly, just so you can extract wealth for yourself, well, that's where all kinds of moral questions start to pop up.

The latter is nothing new. Throughout history, immoral money lending has been condemned an uncountable amount of times. This is what Cicero wrote about it:

> ...of whom, when inquiry was made, what was the best policy in the > management of one's property, he answered "Good grazing." "What was next?" > "Tolerable grazing." "What third?" "Bad grazing." "What fourth?" "Tilling." > And when he who had interrogated him inquired, "What do you think of lending > at usury?" Then Cato answered, "What do you think of murder?"

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

<comment><USER6> Investing is not lending. Usury is a nebulous concept, one mans usury is another's lifeline. Cicero was a murdering hypocritical prig who hated anything that would help the poor pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Ya'll can put your money in exotic parrot stores and funeral homes. I will stick with the Nasdaq 100.

<comment><USER21> What about a local deli or grocery?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> "Invest in Main Street, not Wall Street." doesn't really tell me anything. Why would I be interested to only invest in business located at one street in some city in the US? Wall Street I understand to be the "business/finance" neighborhood of the US, is Main Street something similar to that but for "normal" businesses?

Seems like a weird tagline, but could also be that I'm missing something as I don't live in the US.

<comment><USER4> I think "Main Street" is referring to small businesses, which are usually outside of ordinary people's reach when it comes to investing, since most business investing is limited to "accredited investors".

Small business lending is an interesting space. Small business often fail and thus small business loans tend to have garbage rates. I'm assuming the idea is to hit people on an emotional level, allowing 'investment' into someone that you can relate with as opposed to some large corporation.

<comment><USER23> >Small business often fail and thus small business loans tend to have garbage rates. I'm assuming the idea is to hit people on an emotional level, allowing 'investment' into someone that you can relate with as opposed to some large corporation.

So the article wants people to make a worse investment (lower ROI and/or higher risk), and hopes that they will be okay with it because small businesses are more relatable? Am I understanding this right?

<comment><USER4> It's not an article and I was making an assumption. I worked at a similar company (with one the the founders of this place) and the idea was that "affinity based" loans have a lower chance of defaulting. I have no idea if the numbers back that up though. It's like a rough mix of social media and small business lending. It's not necessarily the most financially prudent, but I don't think it is trying to be.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Top Dark Matter Candidate Loses Ground to Tiniest Competitor - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-dark-matter-might-be-axions-20191127/ <comment><USER2> So one of the main differences between Axions and WIMPs is that WIMPs:

> [Interacts] only through the weak nuclear force and gravity, or possibly > other interactions with cross-sections no higher than the weak scale [1]

But Axions interact via the electromagnetic force which is stronger than the weak nuclear force [2]

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

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axion)

<comment><USER3> There are two points above that require some care:

First: If the axion exists, its electromagnetic coupling is extremely small.

The axion-photon conversion would be a Primakoff process, which can proceed through a loop. Loops suppress cross-sections drastically. The axion is not electrically charged -- we would know all about them by now (and they could not be the dark matter).

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

If the axion is the mechanism by which the CP problem is resolved _and_ the dark matter is composed of axions, then there are predictions for the strength of the effective axion-photon coupling constant. What is special about the ADMX experiment, and why Quanta is writing about them, is that ADMX is beginning to explore that region in parameter-space in a definitive manner. If both of those conditions are met, there are now masses which the axion cannot have, or ADMX would have seen them.

Second: The weak force is not, in many senses, radically weaker than the electromagnetic force. We don't experience it in our daily lives because the force-mediators (the W and Z) are massive, while the photon is massless. Massive force-mediators severely restrict the _distance_ over which a force can act. The coupling constants of the known forces "run" with energy, and appear to roughly match at the "GUT" scale: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_unification_energy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_unification_energy)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the clarification and details - I was kind of unclear on why Axions are not considered to be weakly interacting and therefore not WIMPs and my comment is based on what I found in my brief search.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I recently read another article suggesting the universe expansion might be anisotropic. The most interesting part was mentioning that data from supernova standard candles had been normalized to fit with the assumption that expansion is isotropic.

Once they removed those adjustments to the data it turned out that expansion is a local phenomenon only for our galaxy and nearby galaxies.

<comment><USER2> Dark matter != dark energy - dark energy is what is proposed to be the cause of the expansion of the universe, dark matter is what binds galaxies together.

For others, the article mentioned is likely: [https://phys.org/news/2019-11-evidence-anisotropy- cosmic.htm...](https://phys.org/news/2019-11-evidence-anisotropy-cosmic.html)

<comment><USER4> Ah, yes, sorry. I didn't realize this article talks about dark matter, not dark energy.

<comment><USER5> It's in the first three words of the headline though

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > who proposed a way to restore balance to the strong force

Reads like Star Wars :-)

<comment><USER7> Yeah, this strikes a good balance between technical correctness and understandable analogy. I also liked:

> A neutron with lopsided charge would fail CP symmetry, because reflecting it > would flip its electric field relative to its intrinsic angular momentum, an > effect similar to looking in a mirror and seeing yourself wearing your > sweater on your legs and your jeans on your torso.</comment></comment>


Domain+email box (looking for cheap solution) - <AUTHOR> Hello,
I want to acquire a domain TLD (be it any,com net,etc) together with an email address, this address can be forwarded and / or accommodation with email box .. (i dont need http hosting) but I'm looking for a extremely cheap solution (priceless), can someone tell me the best service / site for this solution?
-domain(cheapest TLD)
-email address with option for forwarding and mailbox
thanks. <comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the suggestion..

but for email forwarding im looking for something similar to an old non- existent service that was called "easy.to" that allowed you to create email forward see ([https://web.archive.org/web/19990428165710/http://www.wired....](https://web.archive.org/web/19990428165710/http://www.wired.com:80/news/news/technology/story/14230.html) )

it was free and very simple to use it, do you know any existing service like this?

as for those "free" domains, do they last? do you have full control of them?

can you recommend some free "green hosting" providers?

thanks in advance!

</comment><comment><USER2> account 17 minutes ago. nice.

Hover: [https://www.hover.com/email](https://www.hover.com/email) \-- $5/year for email forwarding.

Freenom: [http://www.freenom.com/en/index.html?lang=en](http://www.freenom.com/en/index.html?lang=en) has free domains.

</comment><comment><USER3> Go for free tier at AWS or Google Cloud hosting.

<comment><AUTHOR> this is hassle.. there is any alternative?</comment></comment>


Timelapse of the ISS flying over Earth (High-Res) - <AUTHOR> http://sugar.io/?p=775

<comment><USER2> Original: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74mhQyuyELQ>

Made by James Drake: <http://infinity-imagined.tumblr.com/>

<comment><USER3> That's pretty cool when you switch to 1080p and watch fullscreen.

<comment><USER4> yes, absolutely

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The airglow layer is really cool.

I must say I can't identify the cities linked in the caption though.

<comment><USER6> I made some annotations for California. Thats a best guess and might be horribly wrong. <http://i.imgur.com/4J5P1.jpg> (0:12m)

<comment><USER5> I think "Lake Tahoe" is actually Reno.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If I saw this when I was a kid, I would probably work for NASA right now.</comment>


Huge Excel of All Online Activities, With User Demographics, Over Time. - <AUTHOR> http://pewinternet.org/Trend-Data/Usage-Over-Time.aspx

<comment><USER2> From a brief look at the spreadsheet, seniors (65+) much more often "used the internet today" than "use the internet."

Something is badly wrong with this data.

<comment><USER3> You're reading it wrong. Question 7 ("Used the internet yesterday") was only asked of people who answered that the use the internet at all.

Which is actually an interesting data point -- seems like although a small number of seniors use the internet, the ones that do use it quite often.</comment></comment>


How to avoid an AT&T iPhone unlock scam - <AUTHOR> https://www.stockunlocks.com/blog/how-to-avoid-an-att-iphone-unlock-scam

<comment><USER2> fyi - when you end contract, at&t will gladly unlock your iphone. i have done this many times (including family members' phones). also, if you have are a long time customer, they will unlock your iphone for you, prior to ending contract, if you need to travel internationally.</comment>


What are the most intellectually stimulating websites you know of? - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/tmtd4/what_are_the_most_intellectually_stimulating/ <comment><USER2> At the risk of being called obvious, I'm going to say, "Hacker News." I've never found a site that lets me tap into the brains of so many extremely smart people. This site has made me a much smarter person, dramatically improved my writing, and made me far better at what I do.

Thanks!

<comment><USER3> I don't think HN deserves this reputation. Most discussions are shallow, some people don't even bother reading the story. Meta discussions are frequently the most upvoted and stories that takes more than a couple of minutes to appreciate are often left to die.

Partly it's because of the format and the platform. Instead of seeking out the information yourself, you're feed bits of it before moving on to the next bit. It works great for news, commentary, as entertainment or a starting guide to startups. But less so for actually acquiring and/or exchanging information.

<comment><USER4> I think HN does host an abundance of really smart folks.

The main irritant is that so many of them are nitpicky and/or snarky.

Anyone else noticed this?

<comment><USER5> Compared to, let's say Slashdot? This place is pretty tame in comparison.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> MetaFilter! <http://metafilter.com/>. Community blog with high standards ($5 registration fee helps this, I suspect) and lots of challenging, intelligent posts and commenters.

And its related site for questions, Ask MetaFilter: <http://ask.metafilter.com/>. From browsing it regularly I know [good, well- supported] answers to a thousand interesting and useful questions I'd never have even thought to ask.

<comment><USER7> Absolutely. Both the quality of submission (it's an aggregator like HN or Reddit) and of discussion are unparalleled in my experience of web communities. Three things possibly related to its success:

\- Lack of an upvoting mechanism, which can lead to problems

\- Incredibly fair and considered moderation

\- MetaTalk, an area of the site where no rules apply, and where arguments/vendettas/in-jokes can carry on out of the way

<comment><USER8> Also, having a conversation is pretty much impossible if there are a lot of comments, mainly because the comments are linear. If you want to catch replies to your comments, you need to read everything or search for your username (hoping they included it).

I always hoped that Mefi would go threaded, but the current way is clearly the desired mode. It's also the reason I don't really look at the comments on Mefi anymore.

<comment><USER9> Metafilter comments sections are still very often worth reading, but the lack of threading means the conversation is always moving somewhere, and going back to reply to someone 15 comments up is less likely. The upside to this is that it favors newer comments, unlike reddit/hn, which favor upvoted comments (which are often the oldest).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My submission would be for:

<http://lesswrong.com/>

A lot of the main sequences of material (<http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences>) there were written by a Hacker News member, Eliezer Yudkowsky. But it's also a great living community (like here), with new stuff constantly being added.

<comment><USER11> So I've been there a couple of times, mostly via HN, and I had this odd experience of being unable to place the site somewhere in my internal onthology of web communities. Forum? Wiki? Blog? Scifi? Psychology? Religion? Agnostics? Atheists?

This provides some meta information, though I have no idea whether it's accurate: <http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/LessWrong>

<comment><USER12> I think a reasonable classification of LessWrong would be a forum-blog combination; it's mostly made up of agnostics & atheists, but this is not at all a focus.

The RationalWiki article is reasonably accurate, I think (speaking as someone who hangs around on LessWrong a bit), none of it is obviously untrue, although there is a bit of "undue weight" given to some things (i.e. the some of things mentioned only come up occasionally, especially the more negative things in the Ugly and Bad sections). It is even edited[1] by LessWrong regulars (e.g. David Gerard, Gwern and Ciphergoth), and not at all as vandalism, they all seem to have added both positive and negative material.

[1]: [http://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=LessWrong&acti...](http://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=LessWrong&action=history)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> How about the Economist (<http://www.economist.com>)? By far the most intellectual and globally-oriented news website I'm aware of.

<comment><USER14> It also has an agenda (basically, globalist, pro-EU etc) which is easy to miss if you are overly-impressed by the intellectual veneer. That said, my favourite Economist contribution to the world of letters is the Big Mac index, which is rather clever.

<comment><USER15> I've never thought their agenda was subtle, or that they make any attempt to conceal it - The Economist is full of statements like "this magazine has long argued for" or "this would be a mistake" when referring to a policy or idea.

You might not agree with their viewpoint but they don't hide it.

<comment><USER16> It's the british journalistic tradition: every magazine or newspaper openly establishes the fact that it has certain assumptions, and then argues from there. There is no "unbiased" source when it comes to politics/economics. You'll notice that the pure empiricists do not have opinions on macroeconomics.

It's only in America that certain news organizations pretend to be unbiased arbiters.

<comment><USER17> While it may be true that it's impossible for a newspaper to be completely unbiased, that doesn't mean this is not the ideal they should strive to. Just like it's not possible to have completely bug-free code, but you shouldn't give up fixing bugs because of that. If engineers assumed from the get go that their code will be buggy, that would simply mean lowering their standards, giving themselves an excuse to be lazy. I imagine it's similar with news organizations, if they set out to provide biased reporting, then they will be happy to gloss over or justify much more glaring abuses of reason than if objective information was their goal.

Anecdotally, I see this opinion (that unbiased reporting is impossible, so why not have journals be openly partisan) mostly coming from people who themselves hold pretty extreme political views. It's almost as if the level of liberal/conservative bias they feel most comfortable with was so high that they couldn't pretend, even to themselves, that their sources are objective, and they deal with the cognitive dissonance by saying that it's OK since no source is completely objective.

<comment><USER18> But American media takes it to the absurd. Every article becomes unchewable piece of "he said, she said" you have to fish out fact from with the microscope. They can't say "day was sunny", they would say, "Joe Farmer said that the day was sunny after observing it for few hours".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> None. I love some websites like Hacker News, Quora, etc. for the knowledge content they give me, but none of them are nearly as intellectually stimulating as a book. There's something about focusing on a topic for hours at a time that leads me to understand it much better than if I spend the same amount of time in smaller chunks.

<comment><USER20> Seconding this, except I learned the hard way that (1) there is a world of difference between books, such that reading the best ones may end up being one the greatest things to ever happen to you, and reading some of the less good ones can arguably make you less smart than you were before you started reading, that (2) someone else's opinion is not always the best way to determine which book is good, and that (3) the selection one reads while in school is often biased to fulfill pedagogic purposes, so one has to do some independent searching.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> <http://lambda-the-ultimate.org>

<comment><USER20> Also Dan Piponi's blog (<http://blog.sigfpe.com/>) is pretty good if you're Haskell hacker, but in that case you probably already heard about it.

<comment><USER22> I came across his post about psychological effects of learning category theory[1]. As someone who has just started learning category theory, I am a bit alarmed since I sort of experience these symptoms. Anyone has thoughts about this?

[1] [http://blog.sigfpe.com/2006/03/category-theory-screws-you- up...](http://blog.sigfpe.com/2006/03/category-theory-screws-you-up.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Arts and Letters Daily collects links to a variety of interesting articles, mostly from the humanities.

<http://www.aldaily.com>

<comment><USER24> Don't forget the nicer UI at litlet.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Quora! The question and answer site: Here's a great example:

Question: Engineering Management: Why are software development task estimations regularly off by a factor of 2-3?

Answer: [http://www.quora.com/Engineering-Management/Why-are- software...](http://www.quora.com/Engineering-Management/Why-are-software- development-task-estimations-regularly-off-by-a-factor-of-2-3/answer/Michael- Wolfe)

Exploring, reading, writing, upvoting, and commenting on great question and answers from all sorts of subjects, has helped me learn a lot. The people there are great too, with many lending expert knowledge you wouldn't see elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER26> How did <http://Edge.org> miss the list

Is it just me or is that list a bit too shallow?

<comment><USER27> I like the edge but there RSS feed is so terrible that I gave up reading it.

<comment><USER28> Do yourself an enormous favor and subscribe via email. I recognize the friction, and I understand why this may keep Edge from shooting to the top of lists like these. But in terms of actual content it's unparalleled.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> <http://marginalrevolution.com> and <http://kottke.org> are both longtime favorites of mine, featuring interesting content ranging from economics to food to philosophy to art...

<comment><USER30> I'll tag <http://www.overcomingbias.com> also on here

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> If you want a secret tip to exploring a new world, download Papers (<http://www.mekentosj.com/papers/>), put all the interesting publications you find in one Dropbox folder, and import them. The annotation and note features - as well as the back-up option - makes this a really enjoyable way to publications.

It really is something to read papers that define the way we think, and it's a nice alternative to short blog posts and (pop) articles versus (pop) books.

Here are some papers to get you started:

\\* _'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy_ : <http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=0998565>

\\* _Broken Promises of Privacy: Responding to the Surprising Failure of Anonymization_ : <http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Papers.cfm?abstract_id=1450006>

\\* _A technique for isolating differences between files_ : <http://ejohn.org/projects/javascript-diff-algorithm/>

\\* _A Future-Adaptable Password Scheme_ : <http://static.usenix.org/events/usenix99/provos.html>

Maybe this is cheating, maybe it isn't, but I definitely recommend it.

\---

If you want to get political, some left-of-centre-leaning writers you can't go wrong with:

1\. Matt Taibbi on Wall Street, Rolling Stone (<http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog>)

2\. Frank Rich in American politics, now at New York Magazine (<https://twitter.com/frankrichny>)

3\. Glenn Greenwald on civil liberties and foreign policy, in moderation (<http://www.salon.com/writer/glenn_greenwald/>)

4\. Juan Cole on the Middle East, in moderation (<http://www.juancole.com/>)

5\. Lawyers, Guns, and Money (<http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/>)

6\. The New Yorker's long-form articles. (I find their blog posts to be really poor, by any standards.) Also, ditch the Malcolm Gladwell articles.

<comment><USER32> What's wrong with Malcolm Gladwell?

<comment><USER33> Personally, I don't mind his style. It's entertaining, but he has a tendency to draw some ridiculous conclusions by drawing a few lines between here and there. I prefer his New Yorker articles over his books, though, which tend to merely repeat his thesis over and over.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> The posts are excruciatingly long, but fascinating and thought-provoking whether you agree or not:

[http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/12/gold- an...](http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/12/gold-and-central- banks-game-theory.html)

</comment><comment><USER35> TheBrowser (<http://thebrowser.com/>) collects the best long form articles from around the web every day.

It's definitely worth checking out, it's one of my favorite web sites.

<comment><USER36> for long articles I visit <http://longreads.com/> and <http://longform.org/>

<comment><USER37> Thanks for the link to longreads! I've been reading longform for a couple months now and absolutely love it. The articles may take 20-30 minutes to read, but it feels so much more fulfilling than skimming over all the image macro memes you get exposed to on things like reddit and facebook news feeds.

<comment><USER38> You may also want to try 'The Feature' (formerly known as 'Give Me Something To Read'):

<http://thefeature.net/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> This is slightly off-topic but I thought I'd ask HN's opinion on an intellectual website idea I have.

I want to call it "intellegacy", for "intellectual legacy"

I really enjoy reading insightful essays and comments on the internet, and thought it'd be cool to have a website with all kinds of intellectuals with their own pages on it where I could read their essays, see a list of their books, and have conversations with them.

I envision scientists, artists, politicians all interacting on the site. For example, Neil de Grasse Tyson could post his blogs or essays there, and fans of his could get a summary of all his work, books, and what he's currently working on or reading.

Besides the goal of intellectuals having their own space to publish their insights, I also want the public to be able to read and learn on a clearly organized website, by taking their time. Maybe this isn't good for pageviews, but on other websites the content refreshes so quickly that a lot of insights are lost in the shuffle.

The grand vision is to be a huge library of insights, clearly organized and that can be read by anyone who wishes to learn and follow the thought leaders in our world.

We could "best-of" the best debates and discussions and future generations could read everything.

<comment><USER40> I'd use something like this, but there's the chicken & egg problem. Thing is: the content already exists, but it's spread and fractured across the net. Try making a content aggregator first, with a layer of UI + comments on top, then slowly introduce your own "hosting".

Also: how is this different from a subreddit?

<comment><USER41> I like this idea. It'll be difficult to convince the best and brightest to start using your site when they have their pick of the entire internet. Tell them that you have a space already prepared for them, with a curated list of all their previous work... might make it more tempting for them to add to it.

And don't call it "intellegacy." When I read it the first time I pronounced it "intellajesse" because I was thinking of "intelligent", then I re-read it as "intel, legacy."

<comment><USER39> Thank you very much for your comment. The name is now 0/3. Heh.

Will let HN know when the site is launched.

on another note, I will probably need to change my HN username soon :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Arts and Letters Daily <http://www.aldaily.com/>

Edward Tufte Forum <http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a?topic_id=1>

<comment><USER6> What is it about usability guys and their shitty, shitty websites?

That Tufte page is a wall of red (and red underlined!) smashed together links. Just needs an Under Construction sign and a starfield background. [I'm certain the content is very good - I enjoy reading/listening to Tufte.]

I remember reading an article from usability guru Donald Norman a few years ago, another person whom I respect and enjoy reading. His (awesome) article was all about how aesthetics matter and are a key part not just of being beautiful, but about being _usable_. I wrote him an email asking (nicely) why his webpage containing that article was so ugly and had such poor typography, then; he promptly wrote back saying that it'd take too much time to format it nicely when there's too much to do already. _sigh_

<comment><USER43> Nielsen's site may not be a thing of beauty, but 1) it works, 2) it's usable, and 3) _it is unchanged in style from when it first appeared_.

How many sites can make the same claim: that they created a design and it has _worked_ for 17 years of Web evolution?

It's a tour de force of Neilsen's key message: usability is design, and it works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I'm shocked that no one has mentioned <http://youarenotsosmart.com/>

> The central theme of You Are Not So Smart is that you are unaware of how > unaware you are. There is branch of psychology and an old-but-growing body > of research with findings that suggest you have little idea why you act or > think the way you do. Despite this, you continue to create narratives to > explain your own feelings, thoughts, and behaviors, and these narratives – > no matter how inaccurate – become the story of your life.

<comment><USER45> You Are Not So Smart not only features great content, but it's also written in a very readable and understandable style. He also links to multiple high quality sources for every article. His pace has slowed down now that he's finished his book, but the backlog is well worth reading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> <http://projecteuler.net/> made me try so many different programming languages just for fun.

<comment><USER47> I seem to be in the minority here, but I've never really understood the love for Project Euler problems for programming. From the ones I did, it was far more focussed on math and abstract problem solving. I guess that will help you understand how to do basic things: looping/recursion, and conditionals, but to me problems that involve things like user interfaces, visualization, IO or the way you structure your code are far more interesting.

Project Euler reminds me of when I did computational fluid dynamics (CFD) for a while. From a programming standpoint, a lot of CFD is fairly simple--the place where CFD methods really differentiate themselves is in their modeling of the underlying physics. From that standpoint, I wouldn't really advocate doing CFD as a way of learning to program, because being a great programmer isn't really the thing that will make you great at doing CFD—being great at math and modeling is. (On the other hand, if someone wants to get into physics modeling or simulation, CFD is quite fun and satisfying.)

<comment><USER48> Its not for everyone. I think the reason that a lot of programmers like Project Euler is because a lot of programmers tend to be problem-solvers by nature, mathy and sciency folks, and enjoy doing these sorts of things (especially when they get to use their programming skills in the process). So its more of a correlation in my mind than a direct link.

I seem to be the exact opposite of you (Doing UI makes me want to jump off the nearest tall building. Scientific computation is where its at for me). And its great that our community has a wide range of personalities.

<comment><USER49> But most Project Euler problems, once you get past the trivial ones (wherein the relevance is straight-up brute forcing), have almost nothing to do with programming.

IMO you'd be better off doing past IOI problems.

<comment><USER48> I never said they did, and I never said that Project Euler improved your programming skills (I agree with you there)

I was just commenting that IMO the reason that Project Euler comes up often in discussions amongst programmers is because many programmers tend to be the type of people that enjoy Project Euler style problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I expected <http://www.3quarksdaily.com/> to be somewhere near the top of that list, but it's nowhere to be found, which really surprised me. It's one of the most consistently interesting sites on the Internet, if you ask me.

<comment><USER51> And it even has hooters today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> If you want a challenging economics blog, I'd vote for Marginal Revolution. Tyler Cowen writes on a wide range of interesting economic topics from a unique (libertarian oriented, but minimally ideological and empirically grounded) perspective.

</comment><comment><USER53> Who else had an attack of elitist "Eternal September" panic and checked if HN was on that list ? I admit I did.

</comment><comment><USER54> Nobody mentions wikipedia? I think this is one best sites for understanding historical things (amongst others of course).

<comment><USER51> Wikipedia is like accordions that way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> <http://blog.tanyakhovanova.com/>

<http://blog.kenperlin.com/>

<http://blog.vixra.org/>

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

[http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/groups/science/publicati...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/groups/science/publications.aspx)

<http://research.google.com/pubs/papers.html>

<http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/>

<http://lwn.net/>

[http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/transcriptions....](http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/transcriptions.html)

<http://c2.com/cgi/wiki> if you're into seeing how the Elders thought about computing

<http://idlewords.com/>

<https://ccrma.stanford.edu/papers>

<http://graphics.ucsd.edu/~henrik/papers/>

<comment><USER56> I would also add to your list:

* <http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/conf/dbpl/>

* <http://arxiv.org/corr/home>

* <http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/index>

* <http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/>

* <http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/>

* <http://scientopia.org/blogs/goodmath/>

and the like

<comment><USER57> Wow, Scott Aaronson's blog must be really good to add it to a list that already includes it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> <http://www.butdoesitfloat.com/> is my favorite site when im stuck for inspiration.

<comment><USER59> Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Quora (<http://quora.com>) helps me learn new things every day in all subjects.

</comment><comment><USER61> One that seems to be missing so far: www.lettersofnote.com. Sometimes, it can be profoundly stimulating.

</comment><comment><USER62> I mentioned MathOverflow [1] on that post and only one person upvoted it (I wouldn't be too surprised if it were someone I know or at least have heard of, now that I think about it).

[1] <http://mathoverflow.net>

</comment><comment><USER63> Here's a personal favorite: <http://calnewport.com/blog/>, which has been on HN before. The post interval (~2wks to a month) is perfect for to keep me thinking about deliberate practice, learning methods, and being 'too good to ignore'. It's fundamentally changed my outlook on what it means to be smart, and it has in fact encouraged me to pursue a PhD. So, yeah, it's pretty stimulating. Here's a favorite post:

[http://calnewport.com/blog/2008/11/14/how-to-ace-calculus- th...](http://calnewport.com/blog/2008/11/14/how-to-ace-calculus-the-art-of- doing-well-in-technical-courses/)

<comment><USER64> Cal just gave a keynote speech at the World Domination Summit this weekend on 'Why follow your passion is wrong.' His insights and depth are incredible. Highly recommended

<comment><USER63> "World Domination Summit "? sounds like an interesting conference!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> My suggestion isn't quite going to be a link, but here it goes. Get a hobby. Programming, sport, (specific) art, etc. There is a myriad of niche communities for all sorts of things, and I would argue that the more in-depth creative ones are more stimulating than any of the "general-purpose" ones listed here.

My "intellectual stimulation" consists of coming up with or doing things. Sure, self-reflection helps, but more often than not, they're inspired by something I see in a "specialized" community.

Slightly off-topic, but asking "why" helps with self-reflection and creativity.

</comment><comment><USER65> Not a website per se, but AskScience (<http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience>) is an amazing place for various science discussions.

<comment><USER66> Big up vote from me. Also put r/askhistorians on your list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> <http://ted.com> \- the number and quality of ideas there still amazes me. Pretty much every talk can be a start of an interesting, constructive and deep conversation. Almost every video leaves me with a feeling of wonder. Culture at it's highest.

I'm pretty sure everyone on HN knows what TED is, but just in case someone doesn't, here are some of my favourite talks - they show the breadth of the topics covered:

\- [http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_weird_or_just_differen...](http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_weird_or_just_different.html) \- 2 minutes about how things we thing work in some way may be completely different somewhere else

\- [http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_...](http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_machine.html) \- how technology really improves lives

\- [http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/eythor_bender_demos_human_e...](http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/eythor_bender_demos_human_exoskeletons.html) \- exoskeletons, with _wheelchair woman standing and walking live on the scene_

\- [http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/sam_richards_a_radical_expe...](http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/sam_richards_a_radical_experiment_in_empathy.html) \- a talk about empathy

And of course, the obligatory one,

\- [http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/ken_robinson_says_schools_k...](http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html) \- how school kills creativity

<comment><USER55> > Almost every video leaves me with a feeling of wonder. Culture at it's > highest.

Pop culture, yes. There is a whole world of knowledge behind TED's glossy sheen, and that world is found by looking up original sources. Don't read the Wikipedia article on Gödel's incompleteness theorem and stop there. Read _On Formally Undecidable Propositions in Principia Mathematica and Related Systems I._ It will be hard, but it will be _awesome_. Don't watch a cool TED talk and immediately show it to all your friends: look up the journal paper the presenter was referencing and actually _see_ what happened. You will find out something along the way.

TED has its place in getting people excited about things, but there is much, much more beyond it. Not all knowledge is packaged in neatly-produced 4 minute feel-good videos. Go explore :).

<comment><USER67> > Go explore :).

Thanks for the encouragement :).

Of course TED is not a knowledge compendium, it's a starting point - to get excited about some idea, technology or solution, or to start a deep discussion about a particular topic. I always treated it as a "high-level overview"; in cases of topics one knows a bit about it is easy to see how those talks show only surface layer of the topics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> someone collected most links mentioned in the comments [http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/tmtd4/what_are_th...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/tmtd4/what_are_the_most_intellectually_stimulating/c4o3csl)

</comment><comment><USER69> Both are full of interesting ideas:

<http://lesswrong.com/>

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

</comment><comment><USER70> Calculated Risk (<http://www.calculatedriskblog.com>) - I highly recommend this awesome blog for my fellow HNers - it plays host to great discussions/links/facts on the economy, housing, finance and the global/domestic (US) recovery.

They did a series on the upcoming SF rent/real estate bubble, as well as the return of housing back in early 2012.

The direct links for those who want more detail:

[http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2012/04/san-francisco- rent...](http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2012/04/san-francisco-rents-on- tear.html)

[http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2012/04/bottom-for- house-p...](http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2012/04/bottom-for-house- prices.html)

[http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2012/04/wsj-on-housing- bid...](http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2012/04/wsj-on-housing-bidding-wars- are-back.html)

[http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2012/04/private-money- comi...](http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2012/04/private-money-coming-back- into-housing.html)

</comment><comment><USER71> May not quite as high-brow as much of what i've seen listed, but:

Sporcle: <http://www.sporcle.com>

<comment><USER51> Just tried that today (thanks to the Reddit list) and it has over 280,000 quizzes ... some of them are surprisingly robust ... including user-submitted ones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> The fifth site on the list (<https://www.ifeveryoneknew.com/>) of the guy that started that thread is pretty interesting.

The five points listed there are well known and well documented. Those are not crazy unfounded theories.

Yet most people I meet do not believe any of them. Why is that? Cognitive dissonance?

</comment><comment><USER73> The Long Now Foundation podcast

<http://longnow.org/seminars/podcast/>

</comment><comment><USER74> <http://butdoesitfloat.com> for visual and conceptual thinking.

</comment><comment><USER75> The Last Psychiatrist: <http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/>

</comment><comment><USER38> The Middle East Media Research Institute translates Arab and Persian news into English. It's fascinating how much it differs from news in the Western world, in style as well as content.

<http://www.thememriblog.org/middleeastculture>

</comment><comment><USER76> This one: <http://cstheory.stackexchange.com>

</comment><comment><USER77> All these are great, but nothing beats <http://www.spacecollective.org>

Just to give you an example is this book recommendation post

[http://spacecollective.org/wilfriedhoujebek/4076/Summery- Boo...](http://spacecollective.org/wilfriedhoujebek/4076/Summery-Books-Too- Far-Out-For-Johnny-Depp)

Warning: There is some weird flash thing in the very beginning but just click to continue.

</comment><comment><USER78> <http://hubski.com/> You choose who curates content for you. Posts are shared rather than voted on.

</comment><comment><USER79> I really like BetterExplained (<http://betterexplained.com/>). It made me a bit more interested in math, which i never liked.

I also love the whole StackExchange network, especially skeptics (<http://skeptics.stackexchange.com>). A great way to learn new stuff from common myth.

</comment><comment><USER80> Here are some others that are interesting:

Vitamin Cr : <http://vitamincr.com>

Brain pickings: <http://www.brainpickings.org/>

Synaptic Stimuli: <http://synapticstimuli.com/>

Timoni's blog: <http://blog.timoni.org/>

<comment><USER81> I also recommend <http://lesswrong.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> I agree that hn fits the bill well. It is quite limited in the diversity of topics and type of people, by design.

I've found I also get good mental stimulation by picking free online courses at random. For example Yale University has a brilliant set of lectures on Milton, which I knew very little about prior.

</comment><comment><USER83> I recommend this as a starting point for finding intellectually stimulating websites: [http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/cktxy/reddit_let...](http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/cktxy/reddit_lets_compile_a_list_of_the_best_online/)

</comment><comment><USER84> <http://www.theoildrum.com/>

</comment><comment><USER85> Unqualified Reservations, by our very own Moldbug: <http://unqualified- reservations.blogspot.com/>

</comment><comment><USER86> <http://mises.org> (economics and politics) and <http://volokh.com> (law)

</comment><comment><USER87> <http://lumosity.com> for keeping your mind sharp (costs money, free to test for 3 days)

<comment><USER60> Alternatively, learn to play blindfold chess. Much more challenging than Lumosity.

<comment><USER88> Blindfold chess is certainly effective for improving your spacial memory, but why leave it at that? I highly recommend anyone and everyone learn the memory palace technique (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci>), which takes advantage of the fact that our spacial memory is vastly superior to our memory for facts, allowing anyone to develop the functional equivalent of a photographic memory. In _Moonwalking with Einstein_ (a really fun and fast autobiographical tutorial on memory), the author Joshua Foer explains how to encode facts into images and then arrange them along spacial layouts to maximize the brain's potential. In convincing my mother to read the book, I had her memorize a 10-item shopping list in about five minutes when she was incredibly tired (which is when her memory and general thinking ability are at their absolute worst), and she still remembers all ten items, in order, to this day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> my favorite news aggregator: scholar.google.com

</comment><comment><USER90> <http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/>

</comment><comment><USER91> Thank you, this has to be one of the best thread ever on HN. Good to find interesting stuff other than HN

</comment><comment><USER92> Casting my vote for <http://www.ribbonfarm.com>

</comment><comment><USER93> I'd advocate <http://www.economist.com/>

</comment><comment><USER94> Hacker News. Simply because it just gifted me this thread, full of intellectual goodness.

</comment><comment><USER95> <http://www.3quarksdaily.com/>

</comment><comment><USER96> <http://bookforum.com/>

</comment><comment><USER97> <http://www.koko.org/>

</comment><comment><USER98> How is Quora not on there?

</comment><comment><USER99> <http://www.rand.org>

</comment><comment><USER100> htt://www.lesswrong.com (it was better a few years ago)

</comment><comment><USER101> futility closet <http://futilitycloset.com>

</comment><comment><USER102> Slate.com n famous economists blogs

</comment><comment><USER103> Hacker News! (just kidding)

</comment><comment><USER104> Quora.com.

</comment><comment><USER105> www.Thersa.org I particularly like the animate items

</comment><comment><USER106> braintripping.com

</comment><comment><USER107> Intellectual stimulation is not always a pleasant experience, which tends to make people susceptible to restricting their reading to material with which they broadly agree.

For most HN readers, I'd suggest visiting a site like <http://www.vdare.com>

</comment><comment><USER108> reddit is still a great site once you remove the default subreddits and find some of the more active but smaller subreddits. /r/truereddit regularly has in depth articles that are still accessible to a general audience.

Science subreddits with a cognitive barrier to entry like /r/neuro are a great source of news specific their scientific communities. Geographic subreddits such as /r/[yourmetro] are also a great way to keep in touch with the general vibe and events of your city.

</comment><comment><USER109> www.cracked.com is one for me, seriously

<comment><USER45> Cracked itself isn't written to intellectually stimulate, but you're right that it can be. Their lists are frequently excellent starting points for Wikipedia/research binges, as they cover a lot of interesting topics. I'm often turned off by their style, but there's no denying that they've covered a lot of interesting things in their articles, albeit usually with a brief summary and a joke.</comment></comment>


Poll HN: Wikipedia certificate revoked? - <AUTHOR> http://imgur.com/a/xVAwT <comment><USER2> Apparently they accidentally nuked their own CA with a revocation list entry. More discussion at:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12702252](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12702252) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12699701](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12699701) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12702084](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12702084)

</comment><comment><USER3> It was, another certificate is up now with a valid intermediate, so wikipedia should now work.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is happening on Chrome 55 dev channel build FWIW. Anyone else experiencing this?

<comment><USER4> I just landed there and then came here to ask the same question. So I guess we answered one-another.

(Is there a better, standard place to ask this sort of thing? Something like the Internet Storm Center for the X.509 CA infrastructure?)</comment></comment>


Should tech workers quit firms that don't value privacy? - <AUTHOR> https://proprivacy.com/privacy-news/should-tech-workers-quit-over-privacy <comment><USER2> It is important to me that whoever I work for is not actively working in opposition to things that I consider important. For me, privacy is one of those things. If I were working for a company that I felt was abusive in terms of privacy, I would absolutely quit (although I probably wouldn't have taken the job in the first place).

There's a tradeoff here, though. Just as it's hard to find another person who agrees with you on every issue, it's going to be hard to find an employer that isn't doing _something_ that you object to. So, I'd say this is a "pick your battles" sort of situation. Know what your hard lines are and be inflexible about those.

For everything else, take a look at the bigger picture. If the good outweighs the bad, then don't quit.</comment>