Analyst on Amazon EC2: "We don't advise anybody to use this for anything mission-critical" - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/04/07/amazon-web-services-has-another-outage

<comment><USER2> I've been saying this about EC2 for some time (and we have a product that manages EC2 instances, so I have a vested interest in seeing EC2 become successful). It's just not very reliable, when compared to the best hosts in the business--while EC2 downtime per year can be measured in hours, the best hosts are down minutes or seconds each year (of course, your apps and your system administration abilities can easily make up the difference--we've been offline a couple of times due to Joomla problems, and there's nothing a more reliable network or server could do about it). But, every bit of downtime adds up...and maybe your next big customer or investor was looking at your site at that very moment.

<comment><USER3> Our hosting spend is around $1m AUD a year (although a lot of that is bandwidth which is expensive in AU) and the datacentre we use took all its customers offline for 2 hours last week. It happens. Even the to the big guys.

<comment><USER2> You should check with Netcraft's reliability rankings next time. 2 hours is an awfully long time for a "big guy".

Sure, downtime happens. Routers are upgraded and power bounced (30 seconds of downtime if the admins are good), UPS infrastructure is kept up-to-date and in working order (minutes of downtime), and server components break. The last one is possibly a lot of downtime...but hopefully MTBF works for you and the server that you keep for the average lifecycle of hosting servers (about 30 months) never fails catastrophically.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> From our experience last night, 1 or more Amazon datacenters went off the net. Our instance kept chugging along while it was unavailable (but we didn't know this at the time). We were firing up another instance in a different data center (using the new trusted zones feature) when the outage ceased and our site on the original instance resurfaced.

</comment><comment><USER5> Nice - there's a vote of confidence.

<comment><USER6> EC2 is still in beta. The fact that a beta was down for an hour at 2am shouldn't be newsworthy.

<comment><USER7> Even as a beta that beats the uptime for a lot of other services I've used.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Open Notebook – Software for creating digital math worksheets - <AUTHOR> http://jaltekruse.github.io/OpenNotebook/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hello all, as it's a show HN post it's kind of implied, but I am the author of the project. Please feel free to leave feedback or ask questions here. Thanks so much for checking out the project, be sure to share it on your social networks with your friends with an interest in education!

<comment><USER2> Definitely a needed product. I've seen too many people creating geometry tests in M$Word. Would be great to see this actively developed. For now, I noticed that x^2 leaves a space between x and the superscript 2. Would be a (hopefully easy) improvement to have the space removed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I just pushed a commit to fix it. I actually destabilized it a little when I refactored to start writing unit tests. I won't be publishing a new binary right away, but it should be soon. Also working on a cert to avoid the unknown developer warning.

<comment><USER2> Great! I already found the variable that defines the space to add before an exponent and recompiled and it works great now. It would also be nice if variables were displays in a maths font (or at least in italics). Looks like you've done quite a bit of the rendering work from scratch though so maybe this is more difficult.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This looks pretty interesting. It looks like the main use case is to make worksheets that students have to solve. I feel like this project shares a lot in common with ipython notebook[1], though I don't know of a way to publish interactive notebooks. There would also be a bit of a learning curve to understand python. Still, I wonder if it could be done, something similar to nbviewer[2].

Imagine if this notebook ([http://nbviewer.jupyter.org/github/jckantor/CBE20255/blob/ma...](http://nbviewer.jupyter.org/github/jckantor/CBE20255/blob/master/notebooks/West%20Virginia%20Chemical%20Spill.ipynb)) could be interactive, leaving a blank cell for the solution and students could fill it in and save it. If you distribute the file, students could run it, once they installed python/ipython. Or, one of the cloud IDEs (c9.org)

1: ipython notebook - [https://github.com/ipython/ipython/wiki/A-gallery-of- interes...](https://github.com/ipython/ipython/wiki/A-gallery-of-interesting- IPython-Notebooks#entire-books-or-other-large-collections-of-notebooks-on-a- topic)

2: nbviewer - [http://nbviewer.jupyter.org/](http://nbviewer.jupyter.org/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Very interesting project, since it combines an authoring tool for teachers, printable worksheet generator functionality, and "quiz tool" for students to use.

The random problem generation functionality in particular is very powerful. It reminds me to the random problem generation API in the khan-exercises framework, but with a different interface. Instead of requiring teachers to learn JavaScript to generate problems, they just have to learn how to use the problem generators for different type of problems. Generating generators for _all_ kinds of math problems will be a lot of work, still, it's nice to see a new take on the problem.

Another promising project in the same space is [https://ximera.osu.edu/](https://ximera.osu.edu/) [latex --> (js,pdf) exercise generator]

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the kinds words, I did try to put a lot of thought into the feature set to make it useful.

I have seen a number of tools that are similar, one way I wanted to set this project apart was with a simple interface that even non-technical teachers could use. I decided early on I wanted the application to be latex-free. Creating the equation renderer from scratch was a bit of overkill (the engineer mindset "oh it'll be easier to write myself"). This is something I hope fix and instead plug in a more complete and better tested alternative like JLatexMath, with actual editing capabilities. Pulling the editor out of this application looks promising [http://mirai.sourceforge.net/](http://mirai.sourceforge.net/).

If you look at Khan-Exercises they have actually moved away from automatic generation (see their Perseus project), because it was too hard to write the kinds of problems they wanted. Also internationalization when the content of the questions was dynamic caused them more hassle than it was worth. I am considering de-emphasizing content creation and focusing on the student solution interface, as I believe it is the more novel feature of the system. But for now I wanted to get some teachers using it and find out what they found useful.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Video Demo: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnBE76kY2cw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnBE76kY2cw)

</comment><comment><USER5> This is nice, a bit similar to DIA or Visio, relatively intuitive.

Would love to have a web-based system that can generate worksheets and grade them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for trying it out! We are working on integrating the software with Moodle and other course management systems so that I don't have to force schools to adopt a new service grade the assignments.</comment></comment>


Algorithm appointed board director - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27426942?HN2 <comment><USER2> This is awesome.

If factory workers and truck drivers are going to be replaced by machines why not board directors? Surely a well written algorithm can do much of what they do a lot better. For that matter, Mr. Congressman and mayor of my town.... I think there may be a more efficient and less corruptible solution to your poor leadership.

Government by algorithm. The source of which is open for public inspection and comment. It just seems this might be fairer and more efficient. And efficient is often selected for over the long run. Which is why I believe this will happen.

<comment><USER3> For the record, it sounds like this particular algorithm is pretty rudimentary, and it is mostly a PR stunt; as the article states, many corporate decisions are already the direct result of quantified information.

In practice I bet this would be less awesome than you might expect. To the extent that human boards of directors already single-mindedly optimize profit (largely indifferent to how such decisions affect humanity), it seems like an entirely inhuman optimization of profit would be even more pathological.

Algorithmic government perhaps has more promise -- if what it is optimizing is something that positively impacts the average citizen. Interestingly, I would imagine such an algorithmic government optimizing something related to the contentment or happiness of the average citizen would directly conflict with corporate profit optimization.

In the end, what you end up with might not be so different than what currently exists implemented by imperfect humans -- a battle between corporate and human interests where those two interests come into conflict.

<comment><USER2> One way an algorithmic government might be more effective is at long term planning. I think there is deficit of that in our current system... at least in the US. Not to delve into political squabbles but it seems the current system doesn't encourage planning beyond more than a term or two. So we wind band-aiding crisis after crises and creating more long term problems rather than implementing real long term solutions.

As far as it goes... laws and constitutions are a type of algorithm, however imperfect. But.... implementation is a often a bit spotty when you have broken components with a self interest and human emotions.

<comment><USER3> Insofar as the algorithmic government was democratic and optimized public opinion, there is no reason to expect it will be better at long-term planning, which is largely a human logical deficiency; we know the likely dangers of global warming at yet we do not much care -- seemingly because it is a long- term concern.

<comment><USER2> If these known concerns could be enforced by policy makers it might be good for us all.

Nobody ever said mob rule was the ideal form of government.

And that's why I say..... constitutions are algorithms. Or at least crude attempts at them. The idea is that the system confines and survives the administrators.

And yes, the general wishes of the populace are represented. As they should be. But when wishes serve to oppress others or create long term damage to selves or future others this is a problem. Particularly when wishes can apparently be bought and sold by those who control what we see.

This situation is where algorithm vs. individual leader is useful to society in general. And this was, I believe, the initial idea behind the US constitution, at least, and probably most others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It is my hypothesis that this type of work is exactly what Artificial General Intelligences will be built to do first. to expand a bit, I believe AGIs will be used to improve/augment decision making at strategic decision making levels. After a certain point they will stop augmenting and simply take over that role.

<comment><USER5> Engineering and optimization would be more practical applications. Putting an AGI in a decision making position is also extremely dangerous (not that that will stop anyone.)

<comment><USER4> Oh I agree that there are TONS of better applications. My hypothesis is based on how I think people will actually use it, not how I think they should use it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder how this is actually implemented in a legal sense. A board of directors has a legal meaning, but a computer program has no legal standing; do they have an individual who is legally the board member and who has entered into an agreement to vote as the software directs?

<comment><USER7> How would a program pass the fit and proper "person" test :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> More realistically, this title should say "intern / data scientist who enters the data into the model appointed board director"

<comment><USER9> Right, like a chess master is arguably beaten by a massive team of people that put together a supercomputer... not the supercomputer.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, but we don't say the computer was beaten by the collective action of the neurons of the chess master. Or at least, that doesn't seem like the most useful way to think about the problem. This is just a recasting of the Chinese Room argument[0].

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room)

<comment><USER9> Not seen that before. Thanks - very thought provoking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is interesting and cool, but also scary in a way. In this particular case, the algorithm can at worst fund the wrong company -- think of funding some shady, amoral but profitable corporation.

It's much worse when algorithms will make decisions on boards of, say, weapons companies, or health insurances, etc.

It would be like appointing a cold, amoral board member only concerned with pure profit -- probably not great for society at large, but I could be wrong of course.

<comment><USER4> >It would be like appointing a cold, amoral board member only concerned with pure profit -- probably not great for society at large, but I could be wrong of course.

Theoretically, as defined by the fiduciary responsibility of a corporation to it's shareholders, this is exactly what they would want.

The subtext of your statement is a contention that there is an inherent conflict inherent in those two goals (profitability and social benefit), which I don't think can be rigorously supported.

<comment><USER12> The belief that companies have a fiduciary responsibility to ignore all ethical issues in search of maximum profit is completely absurd. You don't have to look far to find companies that make ethical decisions that would be difficult to justify from a pure profitability standpoint who aren't getting suited by their shareholders.

<comment><USER4> That is exactly my point though - the way to maximize profits is to provide a social good in addition to your excellent product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Reads like an origin story for Iain Banks' 'Culture' novels.

<comment><USER14> Or the Vanguard corporation in _Use of Weapons_.

<comment><USER8> Except the Vanguard Corporation was probably a culture Mind checking in once a couple of months on the progress!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Google ventures use algorithms to help with investment decisions in they don't call it a board director, but its essentially the same thing.

</comment><comment><USER16> Sounds wacky, but could be pretty sensible.</comment>


The Xerox Alto: A Personal Retrospective - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H2BPrgxedY

<comment><USER2> Thank you! so much talk about this group, by older hackers, with the announcement of the iPad and its left me curious about the Xerox group.</comment>


YouTube Stars Feel an Advertising Pinch - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/07/business/media/youtube-stars-feel-advertising-pinch.html?emc=edit_ca_20170508&nl=california-today&nlid=4617603&te=1&_r=0 <comment><USER2> YouTube creators are highly undervalued.

Many of them are highly influential amongst their viewers and have more views than your average mid-tier TV show. Youtube also offers much better insight in the audience than TV channels ever can achieve.

And yet, the content creators need to rely on Patreon and selling merchandise to pay for their expenses.

I'm not saying all of them are struggling, in some niches (for example cosmetics) YouTube creators are known to make a pretty hefty buck in sponsorship deals, but the majority is highly undervalued.

Alejandro Salomon recently talked about this in his podcast [1], since this phenomenon is especially true in the automotive sector.

[1] [https://youtu.be/fcIgvYzSFm4?t=1936](https://youtu.be/fcIgvYzSFm4?t=1936)

edit: typo

<comment><USER3> If you want to see a really crisp example of this it's with food shows.

Look at this disparity:

"In 2015, more than 400,000 people on average are watching Food Network at some point during the day." [1]

Then check out Nerdy Nummies (a YT channel I found out b/c my 6yo loves it). [2] which is regularly breaking 1M views per episode, has 8+Million subscribers and lifetime has generated 1,949,110,170 views for YouTube [3]

And all of those numbers in a demographic that doesn't even realize the Food Network exists, with a pittance of the resources, no outside marketing and compensated a fraction as well.

1 - [http://brandongaille.com/40-captivating-food-network- demogra...](http://brandongaille.com/40-captivating-food-network- demographics/)

2 - [https://www.youtube.com/user/RosannaPansino](https://www.youtube.com/user/RosannaPansino)

3 - [https://www.youtube.com/user/RosannaPansino/about](https://www.youtube.com/user/RosannaPansino/about)

<comment><USER4> How "valuable" is a viewer of YouTube channel like that versus a viewer of the food network. For example, I've heard that many viewers of various toy unboxing videos are young children. I can't imagine most advertisers want to pay money only to have their ad viewed by somebody with basically no disposable income.

Edit: My comment was not about advertising to children directly. I was using that as an example. I'm not sure if a view on YouTube has the same value as a view in more traditional media (e.g. Television).

<comment><USER5> You don't think advertisers want to market to children? I hope this was sarcasm and I'm just missing the joke.

Have you walked down the cereal aisle in a grocery store?

<comment><USER4> Have you seen YouTube advertisements? Half the time the ad has nothing to do with the video. I've seen ads for cement mix in front of video game videos.

If I want to advertise my stand mixer, I don't want to have to pay when my ad is seen by a 5 year old just because a video about gummy bears was tagged "culinary."

I understand advertisers want to "get 'em while they're young" and want children to pester their parents to buy things, but 2 million views from children is not the same thing as 2 million views from the 18-35 bracket.

<comment><USER6> I think Youtube advertisements are very targeted toward you, and not necessarily relevant to the video. Google uses the information it has on you and plays the products that have paid the most for your demographic from what I understand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> These creators are very smart and very good at what they do. But they lack the most basic understanding of why it is such a bad idea to create an entire business around something you cannot control.

Yes, there is that risk with _anything_ you do (including your own website and your own email list), but surely by now they have heard enough people complain online that it is very unwise to build a tall building on a shaky foundation.

Aside: why don't they use competitors such as Vimeo and post the videos on Vimeo [1] first, and then post those same videos on YouTube after two weeks? If their audience is really that engaged, shouldn't they be following them to Vimeo also? It would be a two in one deal - the creators create competition between two online video services (which is usually good for them), and if more creators move away from YouTube the consumer also benefits from greater choice and is more likely to go check out Vimeo, leading to a possible virtuous cycle. A third and unexpected side benefit - less data collection about your online practices by an internet behemoth.

[1] From what I can see, Vimeo also has options to monetize your videos. [https://vimeo.com/blog/post/learn-how-vimeo-on-demand- helps-...](https://vimeo.com/blog/post/learn-how-vimeo-on-demand-helps- creators-earn-more)

<comment><USER8> Easy to say you shouldn't put all your eggs in one basket, and who would disagree with you? But I think it is not saying very much. E.g. someone loses their job: "see, I told you it would have been better to work 2-3 jobs. You relied too much on your only job."

At some point you spread yourself too thin and it's better to concentrate on an ecosystem with a critical mass that actually cares about your content.

Do I feel bad about someone who built up a ghost hunting video empire on YouTube see their castle crumble as advertisering industry pivots on standards? Abstractly, no. But just compare the trending content on YouTube to Vimeo and try to imagine the likelyhood of the majority of your users inconveniencing themselves by introducing a rift in their YouTube subscription consumption flow. It's a stretch.

<comment><USER9> There are certainly other baskets, but none have been as nice and profitable, with as large a user base, as YouTube. So to say they should be using other platforms is great in theory, in reality they would just lose their followers. There are other platforms just as technically competent as YouTube. But I don't believe there is a replacement for the community and the brand YouTube has just yet.

It also stands to reason that if there were competition, and say half the users used one platform and half the other, that you would get half the viewers on each, the possibility for massive growth on either is smaller as more channels compete over fewer users. Even if you were on both, it would be harder. This is one of those situations where as a creator and a user, it would be nice if one monolithic platform just worked out well for everyone.

<comment><USER7> Remember when the major studios pulled out of their Netflix streaming contracts at the first possible opportunity? After all, they could have just stayed on Netflix, and it _might_ have been this nice monolithic platform which could have worked well for everyone. At that time, their decision seemed not just stupid, but Netflix certainly tried to milk it by portraying the studios as being very evil. A few years down the line, you now have more choice, Netflix has improved without raising prices, and in general online video streaming has become a significant threat to another entrenched beast - cable TV.

People may not diversify their streams of income for a lot of reasons, but if you are a YouTube star, you already have some advantages which are extremely valuable:

1\. You have already shown that you can wait for the months/years it takes to get to the point of becoming a star. That is time you could have instead invested (at least a portion of) in other platforms. 2\. You are obviously tech savvy - or atleast savvy enough to get someone who is tech savvy to do the work for you 3\. You are already in possession of a very valuable commodity - the attention of people who actually like you. Why don't you get people into your email list from your channel? Why don't you give them special incentives to take them out of YouTube (over which you have no control) into your website (where you have so much more control)?

>> Even if you were on both, it would be harder.

Derisking any business is hard. If anything, YouTube stars, who usually do not have additional constraints such as employee payroll, unsold inventory, a board to answer to, stock prices to take care of etc. should be able to add this derisking if they actually want a business.

Otherwise it is just a hobby. Then why complain?

<comment><USER10> > A few years down the line, you now have more choice, Netflix has improved > without raising prices,

Netflix _has_ raised prices[1]. They raised it from $8.99 to $9.99 (+11%) - they even scrapped the previously grandfathered $7.99 subscription from early adopters.

1\. [http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/19/technology/netflix- prices/](http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/19/technology/netflix-prices/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Last week, the company announced a slate of new ad-supported shows on > YouTube, including projects with Ellen DeGeneres and Kevin Hart.

Gotta support "well behaved" brands and cut the small man out of the picture. Insipid low brow content that'll please advertiser is all these will be.

Sadly it seems certain parts of the internet are turning into cable...

Let's not even get started on the appalling support YouTube offers content creators when things go wrong. If you are not Coca Cola I guess you basically don't exists.

Shame bandwidth is such an expensive part of the video market, because Youtube deserves to have some stiff competition thrown at it.

Things like Patreon help offer alternatives but it could help with being better integrated into the platform.

<comment><USER12> You aren't entitled to money just because you post stuff on YouTube. Brands want to advertise on "insipid low brow content" specifically because it has mass appeal and caters to advertising. Nothing stops you, as a content creator, from finding your own advertisers.

There is a very strange mentality among YouTube creators that they are somehow "entitled" to have advertisers run ads on their channel and pay them.

Like you said, bandwidth is expensive. YouTube is already giving you something for free.

I really don't get it.

<comment><USER13> When a creator's videos go from making $700 per video to $150 per video, without being caused by any action on the creator's part, and without any kind of transparency from YouTube's part... I think they are absolutely justified to be concerned.

And that's what this article shows - concern. Concern about laying people off. Concern about having to find another job. Nobody's is acting like they're entitled to money, just concerned about the sudden changes they have no control or visibility into.

<comment><USER14> The content likely was not attractive for an advertisers to put an ad on in the first place and so revenues dropped the minute ad controls for advertisers were added. Google didn't really have a choice but to do this given the billions that were pulled. Will be interesting to see impact on AMJ quarter results.

<comment><USER15> There are specific issues, mostly regarding clarity with regard to demonetization. It's all automated, and there are lots of errors.

H3H3, for example, made the video "Christian moms against dabbing" as a test for ad-friendly content, but was demonetized because of the word "Christian" in the title. It was not a controversial video, actually quite light-hearted, but the algo still triggered.

The frustration you hear/read is that many creators do understand the advertiser issues, but find nevertheless find it difficult to work with YouTube's automated systems.

<comment><USER14> You need to understand the economic incentives in operation.

Advertisers and Google have a risk avoidance incentive. It doesn't matter if they pass up good ad friendly content. They definitely don't want to take a chance to put their brand in front of ad unfriendly content.

Now unlike television where ad inventory is limited, on the internet, it's a buyers market. Even if the advertiser passes on something potentially good, he can always find some other content to place on. Indeed what he is buying is actually access to the people watching content, not the content and since the same people on YouTube will probably watch other videos as well, why not de- risk by automatically screening out everything potentially controversial?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> YouTube is really weird, the whole reason I go there is to watch people who don't have TV shows. If YouTube turns into Jimmy Fallon clips, then why even have the website?

YouTube is being tempted by corporate money to turn it into another TV channel. But as soon as the only good content you can get is made by NBC or CBS, then why would people go to YouTube?

It's amazing that they seem to promote these TV shows when their own creators get pushed to the side. I mean, talk about bad business.

They should have the Jimmy Fallons on youtube, but why wouldn't you push your own creators? That's what makes youtube unique.

The small Youtube creators are the ones that should be protector and promoted by Youtube and it seems like it is the opposite. They are ones hurt the most by these changes to youtube's systems. It's like youtube just wants them to leave.

Look at how they treated their #1 overall channel. He freaking left for Twitch. Are you kidding me?

<comment><USER17> "Look at how they treated their #1 overall channel. He freaking left for Twitch. Are you kidding me?"

I'm a bit ignorant of both the YouTube and Twitch scenes. Who are you referring to?

<comment><USER15> Presumably Pewdiepie (the largest channel by subscribers), but he's very much still posting to YouTube. Not sure what that's about.

Twitch, incidentally, banned IcePoseidon because he was doing IRL streams and attracting too much attention (getting threatened with guns) who moved to YouTube's streaming format.

Twitch and YouTube are looking more and more like a little proxy war for Google and Amazon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The article underplays the success of Patreon in solving this problem; almost every video creator I follow has set up one. It's a win-win for both content creators and consumers.

I'm actually surprised more programmers/engineers have not set up a Patreon. (in disclosure, I have one set up, but have zero expectation of it replacing a full-time salary.)

<comment><USER13> It's unfortunate that viewers have to pay twice for content - once via Patreon, the second while watching ads.

<comment><USER19> My cousin is a YouTuber, and for him (and a few others) they follow a "Premium Content" model.

Their YouTube channel has free, ad supported content to develop an audience, and Patreon subscribers get that content ad-free, as well as extra content.

It's a decent model, but as I find myself watching more YouTube than Netflix/Hulu these days, I really wish this concept was supported by YouTube itself. They have YouTube Red, but that doesn't directly support my favorite YouTubers.

<comment><USER20> YouTube Red does directly support the YouTubers you watch.

<comment><USER21> Only somewhat. As far as anyone can tell, because afaik Google hasn't come out and said precisely, all the money goes into a large pot and then the whole pot is split by the portion of minutes watched with Red that for each channel. ie in a simple case with two channels and 2 Red viewers if person A watches 20 minutes of channel A and person B watches 10 minutes of channel B in a month: A gets 2/3 of the pot and B gets 1/3.

At least that's what seems to be happening as far as I can see from the various articles written about it.

<comment><USER13> Given how a video has to be monitized by the creator (i.e. set up with ads) to get Red dollars as well, I'm curious if the changes to ad placement will have a knock-on effect for Red dollars as well...

I'd hope not, but stranger things have happened.

<comment><USER21> I'm not clear on what you're saying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Big advertisers don't want to give money to indipendent content creators, because they are a lot of people and much more difficult to control since they own themselves and are not owned by corporations.

Think about the reaction pewdiepie had after being dropped by disney. If he was a tv star it would have meant the end of his career. Instead it was just a big "meh" and moving on.

Tv networks are easy to control. Networks are often owned indirectly/in part by the very same people who ask for the ad space.

It is not about the value of the ad, it's about not giving too much power to normal people and risk too much decentralization. Having so much voices it's bad, globalist billionaires and corporations risk losing an amount of control over population they don't want to lose, also because they often crave total domination, both in politics and in the markets.

I know this could be difficult to understand, because many of us are sane people and don't crave that kind of power. It's difficult to put ourselves in the shoes of the people with the very big money, but they really do think in term of having absolute power and control (in fact they did get there).

They think "okay, those people have an audience, they make people I can easily control lose the audience, I need a solution", and they do it immediately. Instead it's difficult to us to imagine being so big and rich, and yet feeling treatened by some kids on youtube. It looks crazy to us, but that's really how they think. Yet that's how corps and billionaires often thinks, because they have a complete different mindset from normal people.

Of course I could be completely wrong, it's just an opinion, no math involved so can't really prove it. Use your gut.

</comment><comment><USER23> There is going to be a huge push for invite-only creator-centric platforms like LinusTechTips' Float Plane. YouTube should have developed something like this instead of YouTube Red ages ago.

<comment><USER24> Everyone hopes they do well but that project its going to crash and burn big time or stay as another patreon, because what makes YouTube great is the huge device compatibility it already has with several platforms, i can't be the only one watching YouTube on my TV rather than my smartphone, tablet or PC.

<comment><USER25> I exclusively watch it on my TV. I find it funny when they will talk about information at the bottom, or click the links on the video which assumes a less passive device than the TV. I've been subscribed to You Tube Red for quite some time now as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > His firm recently conducted a survey of 100 YouTube creators and said that > channels focused on comedy and gaming experienced the sharpest drops in > revenue last month compared with February. At the same time, creators in > food, beauty and fashion, and family and parenting had increases. YouTube > shares ad revenue with creators, who keep more than half.

I'm wondering it this is just a coincidence, or whether Youtube are trying to shift advertisers to these "family friendly" channels, and away from anything that might cause controversy.

</comment><comment><USER27> Ad rates on the internet go in only one direction: down. They're OK to bootstrap your "brand" but you'd better start looking for alternate revenue sources immediately, whether that's merch, Patreon, whatever.

<comment><USER28> The classic "Musicians make money touring, not selling records."

This is why the automotive Youtube "celebs" are launching GTCon a convention for car enthusiasts to get fans to meet them IRL and buy merch!

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> A channel I watch recently mentioned the reason it has been posting more often (at expense of quality) is that YT algorithm heavily punishes infrequent uploads.

You have to post frequently and build a community to be successful now.

<comment><USER30> As a consumer this is what irks me the most. YouTube is forcing indie creators to make content at a scale and rate they just can't live up to leaving larger productions (from tv) to migrate into this "new market" and the end-game is that if youtube is just TV, then this discussion is a resounding "no thanks"

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> No matter what kind of business you're in, it's wise to diversify your sources of revenue. YT's ad-focused monetization model disservices a variety of creators for a variety of reasons, many of which are mentioned in this NYTimes article.

Fan patronage in the likes of what Vidme (disclaimer: I'm a co-founder) and Patreon are offering help creators diversify their revenue streams and make content for their fans, rather than to please advertisers.

Google and Facebook aren't well incentivized to offer this kind of model on platform because they can make considerably more money allocating resources towards optimizing ad revenue. Hunter Walk, an ex YT employee turned investor, writes about this in this blog post: [https://hunterwalk.com/2017/03/26/why- were-paying-for-conten...](https://hunterwalk.com/2017/03/26/why-were-paying- for-content-these-days/)

</comment><comment><USER32> A lot of the videos being demonetized don't seem any worse than what's on daytime TV. It will be interesting to see if Twitch can capitalize on this and start offering more options for non-live content. There already seems to be some youtubers moving to streaming on there to try and diversify.

Youtube in general seems very poorly run lately. The app on my phone right now won't play videos unless I update or wait 30 seconds. Who okayed that? You might as well just tell me to fuck off. I'd happily use something worse out of spite at this point. "Don't be evil, but really annoying is ok"

</comment><comment><USER33> Where are people getting that youtubers are undevalued? There are some really dumb channels out there where people are making $10k a month, easy from a few million views, with maybe one person helping them. There are many, many salty people out there that they are losing money because they don't know how to adjust to YouTube's algorithm changes. Sure, there may be some changes to advertising & some people may claim to 'leave' the platform, but the reality is, they make money. People just don't realize how much, even if many people out there have adblockers enabled.

<comment><USER34> To be clear this isn't an algorithm change, it's giving advertisers a choice on where their ads show up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Why hasn't "Twitch but for {food, cars, cosmetics, etc.}" cannibalized youtube yet? Twitch was basically a row boat that cut off Google's battleship by firing a nerf gun across its bow. And they won. And they got acquired for billions. Their product is great, I've learned a fair bit of design and function just by looking at it.

I suppose gaming has a large user base that is quick to download and try new tech. It also has a way of slow "dopamine dripping" its audience into spending countless hours of viewership. Does this not exist in other genres?

<comment><USER36> YouTube specifically didn't like dealing with copyright complaints from video game makers. People posting game streams got sick of their videos being taken down from YouTube, and moved to Twitch. I don't see food or cosmetics having similar pain points on the platform that would make room for a competitor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I wonder if the opacity and significantly less money coming from YouTube (YT) here is a bit of _" Headline bad - Bottom line pad"_

i.e. When a business encounters a major problem like this, fix the problem ASAP but also use these opportunities to _try_ to add new profits (another example of how this works: when Uber faced criticism about driver background checks they used the negative publicity to add a $1.50 "safe ride fee" to _every ride_ )

Q: _Could enough YT stars with 7 and 8 figure subscriber counts band together and move to a different platform or get staked by a well-funded new startup to create a YT competitor site?_...In theory sure anyone can try to compete with a google product...but how realistic is this here? And if it's not realistic then YT can cut the % it has been paying content creators and get away with it.

I have no clue if ad revenue $ will return to previous levels for YT content creators. I hope so. But I wouldn't be surprised if YT used this opportunity to change how it has been doing things _and_ grab a bigger piece of the ad money profit pie at stake. Either way this is a fascinating story: on one hand YT has _almost_ a monopoly when it comes to this kind of monetized online video content. On the other hand, YT is dependent on a pyramid of quite powerful content creators to maintain the very monopoly they are subject to.

</comment><comment><USER38> It's crazy to me how nobody, even the (usually remarkably candid) Youtube stars themselves, acknowledge that this story is mostly about ad fraud. I would expect people to be hush-hush about this in a normal industry, but Youtube creators are usually really good about incisive analysis and being open with their audience. Do they themselves not know?

<comment><USER39> What fraud are you referring to? The type where ads are reported as clicked, but advertisers don't see the user come to their site, or the type where influencers don't tag when they've been paid to promote a product?

<comment><USER38> The first kind. Is the second kind also a big problem? I'm unaware of it.

<comment><USER40> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8fU2QG- lV0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8fU2QG-lV0)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> A paranormal-focused channel with 470,000 subscribers used to earn $6000 per month!? Wow! I had no idea there was that much money to be made.

<comment><USER42> It's easier to get a job in software engineering than to build something like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Time for Brave and BAT

</comment><comment><USER43> Time for SingularDTV

</comment><comment> angry-hacker Let's not forget YouTube relies on these people too. Yes, YouTube has near monopoly in the area right now, but there can always be changes. These influencers can bring a new site overnight 500k new users if they want to.

And the whole advertisers don't like that content is stupid and complicated. I can't remember the name but some popular guy made series about serial killers, no NSFW pictures but probably something you wouldn't your kids watch. Most of his videos were banned completely. Yet we have a shitload of rap music that sings literally about killing people making money with big brands. Go figure. This song gives me nice Amazon.com ads: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJwKKKd2ZYE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJwKKKd2ZYE)

<comment><USER15> I'm really hoping for YouTube (Google) vs. Twitch (Amazon) competition. YouTube is clearly moving into Twitch's market, and there are signs that Twitch is looking to expand into non-streaming content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Classic HN comment. Only education-focused content is of value. There is no value in entertainment, especially when it is for children and plebs. When they get off work, why don't they view the science videos instead of lowly clickbait?

There are reasons those videos exist, get off your god damn high horse komali2.

<comment><USER45> There's also a reason why we've got a president who blatantly lies and yet half the country can't be bothered to do a simple fact check.

So no, don't get off your high horse. Encourage everyone you know to spend more time educating themselves for entertainment and less time wasting away watching pointless drivel - whether it's on YouTube or broadcast tv.

<comment><USER46> You are encouraging proselytization, which is just as intrusive and annoying in non-religious contexts.

<comment><USER45> If you find people encouraging you to better yourself through scientific education "intrusive and annoying", you need to take a long hard look in the mirror. Quite frankly I'm not even sure why you'd participate on this site other than to troll.

<comment><USER46> yep, definitely intrusive and annoying - I don't need other people telling me how, in their opinion, I need to better myself. What an incredibly dumb comment.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


ManyShip Wants to be the AirBnB for Posts and Parcels - <AUTHOR> http://www.nextbigwhat.com/manyship-peer-to-peer-for-posts-and-parcels-297/

<comment><AUTHOR> Adds to the sharing economy. But a whole lot of questions on safety.</comment>


Facebook Derivatives: Wall Street Goes Rogue-er - <AUTHOR> http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2010/11/facebook_deriva.html <comment><USER2> Well, derivatives all have to somehow tie back to the underlying. Should be interesting to see the financial engineering on this.

Depends on the way they'll do this, one way is that they could approach some major stakeholders of Facebook (e.g., a pool of employees with vested or unvested employee stock options) and draw up some agreement with that entity to buy the rights to buy these stock options at a whole-sale strike price (let's say $0.05/share to buy the share at $75).Then the brokerage firms will chop these options to different strike price bins and re-distribute to investors (e.g., $0.15/share for the right to buy the share at $75, $10.15/share for the right to buy the share at $65; with the broker collecting a $0.10/share underwriting fees.).

So you are buying an option at a certain strike price to buy a potentially unvested option to buy a illiquid, pre-IPO stock at a certain strike price. If this was Google in 1999, someone is going to be rich. But since it is my opinion that Facebook is going to the way of AOL, I wouldn't buy into it; but then again, it depends on when Facebook is going to IPO and if it is before the Web 2.0 exuberance dies down.

<comment><USER3> If you read the Businessweek article he quotes from, the investors are buying shares in an entity that does nothing but own shares of facebook. Shares that they presumably bought on a private secondary market like the one detailed in <http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2008/08/a-secondary-mar.html> It sounds rather like a bucket shop to me, and those were made illegal for some fairly good reasons.

<comment><USER4> No Bucket Shops are where an entity says trades are going to take place and then doesn't execute them.

This is just a pretty standard private investment setup, that just happens to own a single stock.

Even if owning the single stock was a problem - and I don't think it is - working around it would be trivial. They could invest small amounts in a number of very low value stocks or in very stable stocks. Both those strategies would meet any hypothetical "diversification requirement" (which I don't think exists) without materially changing their exposure to Facebook.

<comment><USER5> Embarrassingly, I always though bucket shops meant something else. (I thought that this is what you call brokers with heavy flow that could cross much of their traffic internally without going to the exchange.)

<comment><USER6> > (I thought that this is what you call brokers with heavy flow that could > cross much of their traffic internally without going to the exchange.)

What you describe here sounds like dark pools[1].

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

<comment><USER5> I think they generally don't go to the exchange, but yeah, pretty similar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This seems a pretty unconventional use of the word derivatives.

Unless I'm missing something, the story here is that people are pooling money to setup a company to invest in Facebook. That's just normal investing - exactly like investing in a VC fund that invested in Facebook.

I suppose technically they are investing in a Facebook derivative, because they get returns from the investment company rather than Facebook stock directly. But people don't say a Vangaurd find is a Walmart derivative just because it invests in Walmart, nor do they say investing in the Accel Funx X (which funded Facebook) is investing in a Facebook derivative.

<comment><USER7> Note that this guy's blog seems to be mostly about ragging on the financial industry and how it's going to kill us all. Using scary words like 'derivatives' is much more effective for that sort of fear-mongering than using 'investment fund' which was much less tainted by the economic woes of the last few years.

<comment><USER8> Umm, for one thing, the description of the instruments as "derivatives" is not due to Kedrosky, but to Avi Levy, the author of the Bloomberg article he was quoting. You did see that he was quoting another article, didn't you?

Also, it's not a "scare word" in this context at all. It's a fairly neutral term, and an accurate enough description of what these investment firms are doing (even if they chose to use other words to market these instruments).

<comment><USER7> He still was all too happy to adopt the term, and not make any reservations on its use, wasn't he?

Of course it's _technically_ a neutral term. But in this context, it _is_ a scare word. When you write a blog that seems to be a pop topic blog for a wide audience, in today's world 'derivative' _is_ a scare word. The average news paper reader hadn't heard about 'derivatives' before 2008, and since then he heard about it every week, usually in the context of how much money they have cost some firm, how much money they have cost the tax payer, how much money they have cost pension funds, or how much money they have made for those greedy bankers in Wall Street, London, Frankfurt or wherever - or a combination thereof.

So yes, 'derivative' _is_ a term with negative connotations to the wider public. It is one of the words that are now associated with irresponsible risk and money out of thin air. It's irrational to blame the use on the instrument, but hey, it's an irrational world out there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am an investor in the Felix fund mentioned in the business week article. All they did is buy up several million dollars of Facebook stock from original shareholders, put it into a simple LLC, and then sell shares of that LLC. Investors pay an upfront transaction fee on the investment, a minimal operational cost, and then a fee on the backend if there is a liquidation event but only after the investor gets 100% of their investment back.

This is very similar to how traditional VC funds are structured and the only reason this is getting press is because it is another story about Facebook.

These funds actually do a service for the original Facebook shareholders because it allows them to take some cash off the table, rather than waiting for the IPO.

<comment><USER10> Given that it is considerably more difficult to change the shareholder structure of an LLC than an Inc. -- which is the reason institutional investors don't like startups that are LLCs -- an LLC is a rather strange choice of structure for this investment vehicle entity.

<comment><USER9> No idea. But I will ask because now I'm curious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Investors should steer clear of this, leave this for the speculators who have money to throw away. You're investing in an instrument that is leveraged against a company who's financial details are not public knowledge. This is a very dangerous situation as you're unable to make an objective assessment of the underlying value.

<comment><USER12> Investing is often dangerous. If you invest in a mining exploration company, you're investing in minerals which may or may not be in the ground, and a management which may or may not have the acumen to extract them.

People who think they have edge will invest, and so will some people who don't have a clue what they're doing. Some people will fit into both categories. I think that's true of investing generally.

        you're unable to make an objective assessment of
        the underlying value

I'm not contradicting you here, but developing this idea. I'm always interested to hear the justification that people give for investing in blue- chip technology stocks like Apple and Google. They rarely deliver a dividend and some companies have a stated policy of not doing so. What's an objective assessment for the value of a company that's too big to be acquired, and which has committed to not delivering a dividend?

<comment><USER13> After decades of growth, they will grow old and fat and give up and pay dividends, like Microsoft. And when that day comes, the decades of not paying dividends will finally pay off in terms of the stratospheric heights the company has grown to.

Which would be a far more convincing argument if it wasn't the fashionable thing in the tech industry to try as hard as possible to never grow old and fat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Unbelievable, dangerous, greed-headed and yet another example of the craven idiocy of what passes for regulatory oversight in this country."

He provides no justification for this statement. Why is it these things? Given the title of his blog, I'm assuming he has a pre-disposed bias on such matters.

</comment><comment><USER15> One jump ahead of the lawmen. Impressive.

I would think this is heading for trouble, though. The SEC and public policy in this area are oriented toward protecting non-accredited investors (let's call them "noobs") from the potential hazards of stock ownership (getting "pwned").

Now that being public (and even widely-held) is onerous, setting up a noob- free server (a private market) seems like a win. The company gets liquidity, the noobs have no chance of getting pwned, everyone should be happy.

But this particular innovation is a little concerning, because it's primarily going to appeal to noobs and the total amount of noobs at risk of pwnage can get much larger than intended. That's when the regulators are going to step in. So as clever as this seems, this is just begging for trouble.

<comment><USER4> This isn't about avoiding non-accredited investor laws, it's about the 499 shareholder limit for non-financial disclosure.

Google ran into the same problem in the run-up to their IPO

<comment><USER15> It is primarily about that (q.v. my post on RSUs). But if this reaches an extreme where hundreds of non-accredited investors (very) indirectly hold ownership in a private company, it's far more likely to raise regulatory and legislative eyebrows.

Today, I presume they don't need to hassle with non-accredited investors because the demand is so huge. But the door would seem to be open to this in the future since there's not much to stop it, possibly apart from Facebook's control over transactions.

I admit it's a far-ahead concern. But it's a real danger.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Sounds like an ETF that invests in private companies. I don't see a big deal.

It's not much different than NYSE:GLD.

If people feel that it's a poor investment strategy they don't need to invest in it. This whole model is probably a phenomenal way to get public money into a private company and avoid all that regulatory BS that public companies need to go through. (Note: If you think the regulations are great then just avoid investing in this kind of company)

</comment><comment><USER17> > By creating derivatives of the stock, the investment firms are helping > Facebook keep its shareholder count at 499 or less, the maximum number a > company can have before it has to disclose results to the public.

Out of curiosity, what does this imply for stock options? Are people who exercise them included in this count?

<comment><USER15> Yes, they would be. So as a result, there are not a lot of stock options floating around anymore.

They have been replaced by, you guessed it, derivatives.

<comment><USER17> Facebook apparently has 1700+ employees, though: does that mean those who joined at the 500+ mark were either not granted options, or are not exercising them? That seems strange to me. Assuming I was given options in a fast-growing company, I'd want to buy them as and when they vested, to have some protection against dilution :)

<comment><USER18> Facebook got an SEC waiver to go over 500 shareholders -

[http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2008/tc200...](http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2008/tc20081120_566312.htm)

The second market in Facebook is definitely pushing the envelope, a role of the SEC is to make sure people don't get ripped off and are treated fairly.

Clearly promoters shouldn't be able to sell private unvetted securities to the public without registering and going IPO on a public exchange. But it's also not clear it's in the public interest to have second markets only the well- heeled have access to, and that are not subject to public securities regulation, public price discovery and disclosure through K and Q filings. Maybe it's also not right to force Facebook to choose between going public prematurely and issuing shares/options to employees, but at some point for those shares to be properly valued the stock has to be publicly traded.

When they got the exemption they said it was just to give shares to employees, not to create a second market. The rules are getting rewritten (or Wall Street is running rings around them as Kedrosky says).

<comment><USER15> Wow! I missed that; I thought there was still a need to do a lot of wrangling. If they have a blanket exception then that's something else.

I fundamentally like the second market idea a lot because I like private companies staying private for as long as they want while still giving employees options for ownership that are at least somewhat liquid. It's really fascinating to see the mechanisms involve creaking at the joints a little, but I think the idea is solid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Investors in private companies need to be accredited per SEC regulations (correct?) [1]. Do investors in these derivatives also need to be accredited?

Clearly, "because private-company financials are opaque" investing in the derivatives is speculative. The securitization of Facebook shares is not inherently "evil", but the issues arise if/when these derivatives are misunderstood and overly available for public consumption.

[1] <http://www.sec.gov/answers/accred.htm>

<comment><USER15> Since they're actually investing in an LLC, the rules (search "506 offering") would be the same. It can only be "sophisticated" investors and no more than 35 can be non-accredited.

Note that there can be no solicitation or advertising of the offering to the general public. In practice, as you can see, this means you can leak all the details to Bloomberg but then cannot comment for the story. Because, you see, that would be solicitation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Most interesting is that for each of these long positions, there's a short.

The key is that these derivatives are synthetic shares of facebook, not true equity. When available/required, the fund will acquire these shares.

The difference btw this and mortgage CDS, is that this is "equity", not debt.

That's my reading of it anyway. Here's another attempt at an over-simplified explanation: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1936037>

<comment><USER7> As I understand it, there's no long here; there's no other party promising to pay a certain amount for each share. They just bought options from the people who had them and in case of an IPO, there will be (hopefully) a cash fountain that the investors in this company get to tap into. And if the IPO turns out to be less than whatever they paid for the options, tough luck.

In other words, it seems like all assets are paid for already with the inlay of the shareholders of the investment vehicle. So I think that disqualifies it as a long, where no cash changes hands at the time the deal is done, no?

<comment><USER21> Depends on how you look at it. The current shareholders of Facebook did not actually sell the stock. They just sold rights to the stock options. So if you net out their position, there's no short. If you do not net out their position, there's a long and an equal short for them, and another long in the new investment company.

<comment><USER7> Maybe it comes down to the definition of 'long', I don't know if there is a well-established one. But since these people who the options were bought from presumably have contractual valuations of these options, it seems to me that there is no risk in the deal, except for the valuation at IPO of Facebook stock. Thinking of it, maybe it's the same as a 'regular' long, i.e. a non- naked one (I guess there's a real term for it ;) ) I originally had a mental comparison with naked longs in mind, in which case the risk profiles would deviate much more from the construction in the article; but yes if you compare it to a long on an asset someone already has, it may not be that different.

Then again it seems to be that the scary stories and the bad image of shorts and longs are about the naked variants, and that this is implicit in the article. That may just come from my lack of grasp on the subject.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Interesting times. You can see the new IT bubble grow larger every day. And, just like back then, all kinds of strange 'new' investment schemes form.

</comment><comment><USER23> Is there any good resources to learn about derivatives, options, etc? The nomenclature of finance is extremely difficult to understand.

<comment><USER12> They're reasonably straightforward concepts in themselves (I originally learnt shorting from the wiki page), but I struggled to make the jump to get a feel for them, to be able to build thoughts using them, rather than look on as an outsider. What Heinlein calls "to grok".

Here's a puzzle in the spirit of building the series of logical gates by combining NAND gates. You could learn enough about the concepts using wikipedia. Consider a scenario: the government bans short-selling. Your task: find a way you could synthesise a short using just forwards.

What are some practical considerations that might make it less practical to do this than pre-ban shorting?

I find that when I understand how something emerged, I have a good feel for it. A lot of these concepts go back a long way - stock practices that developed through trading stock of the dutch east india company. For this reason, I'd recommend Niall Ferguson, _The Ascent of Money_. Das _Traders, Guns and Money_ is a good read. I couldn't follow all of it when I read it, but found it to be good for feel.

There's a late 20th century writer John Kenneth Galbraith who wrote some good histories. I like _the end of uncertainty_ but it's hard to get. He wrote others that will be fine.

It would probably be useful to read a book about Drexel Burnham Lambert, and how Milken developed their junk bond trades. I don't know of one, perhaps someone else can recommend.

For broader economic picture stuff, I recommend Hazlitt _Economics in One Lesson_; Schiff _How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes_; Soros, _The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means_.

<comment><USER24> The Predator's Ball and Den of Thieves for Milken & Drexel. Avoid Payback (about Milken) as it goes off on a stupid tangent.</comment></comment></comment>


What is Spam? – Visualized | Search Engine Journal - <AUTHOR> http://www.searchenginejournal.com/what-is-spam-visualized/25796/ <comment><USER2> So 35million emails led to 28 purchases. Got to wonder how much their overheads are, presuming sending those emails is minuscule.</comment>


What constitutes a startup mistake?  - <AUTHOR> http://blog.simeonov.com/2010/01/05/startup-mistakes/ <comment><USER2> I don't think the point of this article is quite warranted. What looks to you like something you could only have figured out in hindsight may well look obvious to someone more experienced. Let's take a couple of examples:

 _Yes, getting the founding teams right is hard. I agree there are issues with single founders and there are plenty of issues in quickly-assembled founding teams. No, co-founders who've known each other for a decade are not a recipe for success either. I'm not sure one can label the general challenges people have with founding team formation a mistake. How much of that is really in the control of the lead founder at the time of making a founding team formation decision?_

Fights between founders can definitely be avoided. In my case, if I'd read the article which I later wrote on the topic ([http://danieltenner.com/posts/0005-starting-up-with-a- friend...](http://danieltenner.com/posts/0005-starting-up-with-a-friend.html)) it would have saved me a very costly mistake. There are many ways for people to fall out, but with enough experience, I would think that a savvy entrepreneur should be able to render them much less likely and much less harmful.

 _Another example of determination that's typically made ex-post. Just think about all the startups that got caught by the crash in 2008 with too little cash on hand. Had there been no crash, they may have done just fine. Should they be blamed for not seeing the crash? In good times, some of the companies whose CEOs always want plenty of money in the bank are blamed for raising too much money. In 2008 they were geniuses._

That's also not a fair comment. As far as I understand it, raising large amounts of money isn't a "here's a bunch of money, do what you want with it" kind of deal. If you raise $10m, you're damn well expected to put that $10m to work in the near future. I'd be surprised if any VC let you keep that money hanging around for more than 1-2 years tops (except, of course, if a recession suddenly hits). Certainly, during the good times, they'll want you to spend it - on growth, mainly, I believe.

So raising too much money is fairly predictable ahead of time: if you don't have solid, worthwhile plans for how you'll spend that money, raising too much money will force you to make up plans for how to spend it, and hire people to implement those plans. Hiring more people than you need will slow you down, and potentially cripple you, so that you wouldn't be able to implement the thing that you _did_ need to focus on (and which perhaps only required 1/10th of the people that you hired).

So, on the whole, it seems to me that this article makes an interesting but flawed point. Experience turns hindsight into foresight.

</comment><comment><USER3> They are all issues that distract you from your appointed goal, to build a company from scratch. You start spending your time getting back on track and not going forward and your are done for.</comment>


New AWS Auto Scaling - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws-auto-scaling-unified-scaling-for-your-cloud-applications/ <comment><USER2> This service appears to have launched a new (to me) UX based on React instead of AngularJS, like the rest of the console. I'm certainly enjoying the new design elements.</comment>


A Coming Revolution in Metaprogramming - <AUTHOR> http://notes.willcrichton.net/the-coming-age-of-the-polyglot-programmer/ <comment><USER2> Whoever does not understand Lisp, is doomed to reinvent it.</comment>


Ask HN: How do I correct my poor academic hygiene ex post facto? - <AUTHOR> Ever since I can remember, I have had poor academic hygiene. In middle and high school I did the bare minimum to pass, but I was strongly reluctant to study or do homework. I purposefully missed 10 days because that was the maximum I could miss before getting an attendance failure. I went to a four-year university for a year and got a 3.94 GPA for both semesters, but I feel like I didn't learn much at all (and it is more likely that the grade was handed to me). The only classes I can recall that were intellectually challenging was a history course that had required reading. I had a hard time staying focused and it would usually end with me skimming the textbook and not really learning much at all.
I ended up quitting college because I had no academic focus. I didn't want to be in debt without a strong sense of focus on something I liked.
In the past few months, I've had the desire to learn something interesting. Unfortunately whenever I want to learn something new, I end up getting stuck in a "fractal" where I go so deep into a topic that I realize I know nothing at all. It really dampens my motivation.
For example, "I want to learn about farming" -> "I am going to read about basic gardening" -> "Soil is really important to gardens, I should learn about soil structure and healthy soil" -> "I have to learn about organisms in the soil" -> "To understand how these organisms interact with the soil, I'll need to learn the physics and chemistry behind it" -> "Wow, this physics and chemistry stuff is WAY over my head, I'm just going to give up learning about farming"
I guess I'm missing the foundation necessary to understand and study more advanced topics. I continue to be a poor mathematician, a lackluster writer, and an intellectually devoid person.
Is there anyone out there who has faced this same issue? How can I go about fixing my academic hygiene? <comment><USER2> _Why_ do you want to learn more about farming? To grow things? To become an expert in the topic? To sound interesting in parties? Because you've got time to fill and learning brings you pleasure?

Your answer will depend a lot on what the question was.

If you want to grow things, start by growing things, and only bother learning stuff if it doesn't grow. If it does, mission fucking accomplished, and you can move on to the next challenge.

If you want to become an expert in the topic, that's where specialization comes in. But first, _decide_ that that's what you're going to become an expert in, and commit to it. This is the stuff of which Ph.Ds are made; you could spend a lifetime studying the chemistry of soils in one particular region of the globe. Be sure that's what you want before you go do it (or, well, try for a year or two and graduate with a masters if you change your mind).

If you want to sound smart at parties, you only need to know more than the other party-goers. Adjust your social circles appropriately. Be aware, though, that you sound smarter at parties if you're not trying to sound smart at parties.

If you're just learning for fun, then keep learning while it's fun and quit once it ceases to be. That's the whole point, after all.

I wouldn't characterize this as an academic hygiene problem, I'd characterize it as a "not knowing what you want, or not being honest with yourself about it" problem. Once you figure out your motivation, it's usually pretty obvious what you need to do to achieve it. You get into trouble when you either don't know what that is or when some part of you doesn't want to accept it.

<comment><AUTHOR> >"not knowing what you want, or not being honest with yourself about it" problem

That's an accurate characterization. I want to find something really interesting and I haven't gotten there yet.

Thanks for your response. It gives me something to think about to help get closer to a resolution.</comment></comment>