The outsize influence of middle-school friends - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/01/friendship-crucial-adolescent-brain/605638/ <comment><USER3> My memories of childhood friends are utterly bittersweet. When I was ~9, I fell in with a group that played with WWII munitions that we found in the woods. A few years later, two of my younger friends were seriously injured. I was never overtly blamed, but I felt guilty.

And then, about a decade later, now in the US, I fell in with hippies, and got into dealing LSD. But then a couple friends got busted. So I dealt drugs to pay for their defense.

My point, I guess, is that I never really learned how to actually maintain friendships. I am capable of making friends, and doing what friends do for friends. But it always feels like I'm playing a role. Maybe that's why I've become an anonymous coward.

<comment><USER4> > My memories of childhood friends are utterly bittersweet. When I was ~9, I > fell in with a group that played with WWII munitions that we found in the > woods. A few years later, two of my younger friends were seriously injured. > I was never overtly blamed, but I felt guilty.

Care to share more (as much as you feel comfortable)? That's a very unconventional childhood experience! Thanks!

<comment><USER3> Basically, quality control was iffy, so an appreciable percentage of munitions didn't work. Or were just lost and forgotten, in the heat of battle. Weapons too.

So it was quite the wonderland for kids who liked to blow stuff up, and play at war. But you had to know what stuff was relatively safe, and what was likely to go off, if you looked at it wrong. For example, you avoided anything that contained picric acid.

But hey, I lived through it. And it was great fun. Overall, it was arguably safer than making acetone peroxide, which I gather does go off, if you look at it wrong.

<comment><USER5> > But hey, I lived through it.

But would you tell us this story if you didn't?

<comment><USER6> Let's get serious here, who would finish writing the story once he's 6 feet underground and can't get a cell signal?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Tangentially related to this article, but moving/uprooting children can have fairly large negative consequences that affect them the rest of their lives.

Here's one article [1] that found:

"Elevated risks were observed for all examined outcomes, with excess risk seen among those exposed to multiple versus single relocations in a year. Risks grew incrementally with increasing age of exposure to mobility"

Examined outcomes consisted of "attempted suicide, violent criminality, psychiatric illness, substance misuse, and natural and unnatural deaths."

There are many more studies if you search for them that show a range of affects including worse academic performance and one I found that included a higher rate of hospitalization in kids who moved (although the cause was unclear).

It's a traumatic event.

[1] - [https://www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0749-3797(16)30118-0/pdf](https://www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0749-3797\(16\)30118-0/pdf)

[2] - [http://theconversation.com/moving-home-can-affect-your- child...](http://theconversation.com/moving-home-can-affect-your-childrens- health-and-education-62738)

<comment><USER8> I would fall into the category of kids who did not do well with this. I was moved a double-digit number of times when I was in single digits of age. Eventually, my parents thought to take me to a psychologist to solve the puzzling issue of why I wasn't making friends. The notes I requested from the psychologist decades later included a line from me that went something to the effect of that I didn't get to enjoy having friends, I just got to miss them.

I absolutely missed some social developmental windows, somewhat like the kittens who, never exposed to horizontal lines during a critical point in the Blakemore and Cooper experiment, were unable to perceive them later on. Nothing I have been able to do in terms of reading, groups, exercises, and the like has been able to grant me the easy camaraderie that comes readily to others. Instead I am typically watchful and quiet, on the periphery of any group. Carnegie, Toastmasters, and all of the glad-handing can provide at best a kind of thin simulation that never takes root for me. I have faked it and been unable to make it, leaving me with a somewhat guilty fear that any charm I may have would be greasily like that of any garden variety psychopath.

Perhaps the most "positive" thing to come out of it would be near-schizoid levels of self-reliance and an ability to acquire local accents to better fit in.

Some kids get over it, some ... do not.

<comment><USER7> >something to the effect of that I didn't get to enjoy having friends, I just got to miss them.

>I am typically watchful and quiet, on the periphery of any group.

>I have faked it and been unable to make it

I know other people who moved several times as kids, and these are very common sentiments among them (and many other people as well, who didn't move).

I don't have much else to say, other than you're not alone and I hope you find peace with this.

<comment><USER9> Why would you find peace with being stunted and missing out on major parts of life? To be blunt, it doesn't sound like something to be enthusiastic about.

<comment><USER10> Because the alternative is living your life in misery due to your past, constantly dwelling on something you can't change. People can overcome things to the best of their abilities, and it's normally good advice to at least try.

<comment><USER11> I think it would be interesting to note how many of you find this an objectionable mindset because of its self-destructiveness, compared to how many of you find it objectionable because you simply cannot stand to be reminded of the wretchedness this world is capable of.

It's the difference between volunteering at a soup kitchen, and recommending the installation of those anti-homeless spikes at your building entrance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So by Middle School, your social persona has ripened and you spend more effort on socializing than non-social play. And because of the bias we give first impressions, we form the strongest opinion of how we fit in socially during Middle School.

Makes sense from personal experience. I went into Middle School with some asocial traits, which ultimately lead to very painful 'friend' betrayals... and the next 40 years I spent minimizing the importance of friends.

<comment><USER13> > and the next 40 years I spent minimizing the importance of friends.

Do you regret that now?

<comment><USER12> Well I don't do regret, but now that this article has helped me realize I probably have a bias against investing in friendships, I can take action to compensate going forward. Put reminders in my phone to call people I know on a recurring basis etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "But there is also a dark side to the social world of middle school, as anyone who has been through it will remember. Sixth graders who do not have friends are at risk of anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem. About 12 percent of the 6,000 sixth graders in Juvonen's study were not named as a friend by anyone else. They had no one to sit with at lunch and no one to stick up for them when bullied."

Very relate-able, unfortunately. In many ways, it set the tone for my life.

<comment><USER15> This is going to be perhaps the least popular comment I've ever made on HN, but I will relate to you the advice my parents gave me when I was a socially awkward, introverted, bullied middle-schooler:

Dad: Suck it up. Mom: Get over it.

Being bullied in school doesn't mean you have to be bullied for life. As a kid, things can be stacked against you. You're surrounded by people who are older, stronger, more powerful, and more capable than you. But you don't have to be bullied as an adult if you don't allow it to happen. Adulthood is a much more even playing field than childhood. You have resources (HR department, change jobs, change neighborhoods, police, social services, lawyers, etc...)

I know there are people who as adults are bullied. I know some of them. But in every case I've seen they've allowed a history of bullying to make them believe that they are powerless to change their circumstances. They're not. They choose to remain in that position because it's familiar, and change and confrontation are scary. But sometimes you've got to suck it up, act like an adult, and do adult things. And that sometimes means standing up for yourself.

<comment><USER16> Your experiences don't translate well to anyone I've know who was bullied. I was bullied in junior high. I was told to stand up to the bullies, to defend myself. I was 5'6", 125lbs. The bullies (three of them) were all 50lbs heavier than me, and were on the football team. I stood up to them once. Kicked one in the balls. The other two, beat my ass and held me down til the third recovered; he beat on me for a good ten minutes. This went on for several years until they got bored with me and discovered girls.

Sucking it up and getting over it? Yeah, I sucked it up. But you don't get over something like that. At my current job, my boss is a type A manager who encourages "competition." I have a family to finish raising, so yes, I'm powerless to change my circumstances. I suck it up everyday for the paycheck, knowing that my kids are fed, my mortgage paid, and my retirement is being funded.

But to blithely state that people should suck it up and get over it minimizes the cost of that type of treatment. I have few friends, I'm incredibly cynical, and I'm probably a bad coworker since I have a sense of snark that I frequently voice.

<comment><USER17> > I have a family to finish raising, so yes, I'm powerless to change my > circumstances.

Where do you live that changing teams or changing employers can't be done until you raise a family? No offense, but in every case I've heard someone use that explanation, it's just been an excuse to avoid the effort of change.

<comment><USER18> Agreed. Unpopular opinion: few things are as detrimental to one's success as seeking comfort. Success is built on sweat, blood and tears.

<comment><USER19> As someone who is satisfied with the success I've found in life -- you forgot a whole truckload of luck being involved.

One of the few things I think Scott Adams has right when is he says we can influence our luck. But at the end we play odds, sometimes despite our sweat, blood, tears, and sometimes in spite of their lack.

<comment><USER18> I don't disagree. I thought about including luck, but thought that would take away from the things that we can actually control, and I wanted to contrast "seeking comfort" with "seeking sweat, blood and tears".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> My middle school years were pretty miserable due to family drama stuff. I'm only in touch with two friends from that era (via FB). I contrast this to my kids, who went to a really great charter school from grades 7-12. Their core social groups are still made of their junior high and high school friends - <USER2> daughter (age 25) was just an attendant for one of those friends' weddings, and another one of their jr high friends was also an attendant. For someone in their mid-20s to have a whole social network of friends they've known half their life amazes me.

<comment><USER21> Same boat for me. Solidarity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> My son who is on the autism spectrum always had difficulties making friends at school. Because, of sustained bullying in 6th grade we have kept him home and started home schooling. He loves the flexibility to learn anything he wants, and the lack of social anxiety. BUT, off late he has started interacting more with our neighborhood kids more and he is really starting to enjoy their company.They do a lot of outdoors things and they actually make things. SO, it does seem like kids(esp boys) tend to make more meaningful relationships right around middle school some of which tend to last a long time at least until they go separate ways after high-school. Just my own experience with my son.

</comment><comment> compiler-guy "I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was 12 - Jesus, did you?" \--Stephen King in his short-story "The Body" (which became _Stand by Me_ the movie.)

Totally relate to that.

<comment><USER23> Relating to the article, that quote always makes me sad. I moved at 12, I didn't have friends. I feel like I missed something I can never get back.

<comment><USER16> Growing up I had problems fitting in and also experienced this sense of loss; not having the same shared experiences as people around me. I wonder now how other kids who "didn't fit in" for whatever reason (orientation, intelligence, economic status) feel? Or is everyone alienated to some extent, and just hides it?

<comment><USER24> I feel like I fit that grouping too. I didn't fit in most places as a kid (I never really figured out why, which still scares me), but I had a pretty good group of friends in elementary school who bonded over that fact. Unfortunately our middle school split each grade into two "teams", and I ended up on the wrong one. That meant I had none of the same classes, my locker was in a different hallway, and I had a different lunch period. Essentially, it was like I had moved. Thanks to that, middle school is the most forgettable time of my life. I sort of made a few more connections throughout those years, but nothing that lasted at all, and any time i've talked with those people since has been pretty awkward because we never really knew each other.

Luckily that changed with high school, where more freedom was offered and so I found new friendships easier to make. I was eventually able to make at few friends, one of whom has been lifelong, by random happenstance of lunch tables. Interestingly, my wife had roughly the same experience of losing all her friends at the start of middle school and not really rebuilding until high school.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > "Middle school is about lunch."

I never really thought about it, but 30 years out, pretty much the only memories I have from middle school are lunch time. I remember a few other things, but at least 90% of what I remember from middle school happened at lunch.

</comment><comment><USER26> Telling your child "you'll make new friends" seems to be about the least helpful and least sensitive thing you could say. As though friendships were some fungible substance of social interaction, none of any more value or special quality than another.

Though I do wonder if the trauma of severed relationships is helped these days by social media, cell phones, video chat, etc. When I was growing up, even long distance phone calls were too much money for regular use to stay in touch. Moving away, or having a friend move away, was for all practical purposes similar to losing a friend to death. There was a very good chance you'd never see them again.

</comment><comment><USER27> Happened to me. My best friend went to the private school and I had to go to public school. It definitely impacted my grades. I had asked my parents to send me to the private school too but it wasn't in the cards. And by best friend I mean someone who was a peer with similar work ethic and intelligence so we learnt from each other. That was traumatic. I had made that friend after moving to a different state in the 5th grade. I remember leaving my friends as being somewhat traumatic but not as traumatic as the different high school thing. I sort of owe my career to him and his family since they were software entrepreneurs in the 90s.

</comment><comment><USER28> Lunch in middle school was absolutely the worst part of my life ... reading this article, I'm amazed that I didn't grow up to be a serial-killer. My family also relocated for my eighth-grade year and, returning in ninth grade was especially horrible. I like like the tag-line of the Mortified podcast - "We are freaks, we are fragile ... and we all survived". Now I'm wondering how many of my misfit acquaintances didn't actually survive.

</comment><comment><USER29> "Friendships take place in this larger context where there's a status hierarchy," she told me. "Kids know very well which kinds of kids are friends with one another and where they stand in that overall status hierarchy."

Huh. I never knew such a thing existed.

<comment><USER14> That's a very insighful comment. One of my ex's (who was otherwise a rather terrible person) absolutely poured herself into making sure that her daughters were well-liked and did well in this game. I think it's one of the best things she's done.

<comment><USER30> How do you practically put this into effect? What steps can you take to help the kids without being a helicopter or intrusive patient.

<comment><USER31> At least in Australia, being great at sport is a pretty reliable way to being popular as a teenager. You have to get kids into sport much earlier than middle school though to get them great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> So I only moved twice during the school years. This is a lot less than some but I really think it did me no favors at all.

The first was at the end of the third grade. Company town shutting down. There wasn't much choice here.

I moved to a bigger but still small town and even though I moved between school years I still found pre-existing and entrenched friendships. Like many commenting here in never has the greatest social skills to begin with and I don't think I ever really fit in.

Moved again after grade 7 (At the time years 8 was the first year of high school). It was a horrible place and I deeply regret efforts by my parents to send me to boarding school.

But I fell in with people who themselves were outcasts and I learned the lesson that even outcasts can climb a rung or two by throwing other outcasts under the bus.

After a year of that I actually visited my old town and friends but there just wasn't much attachment there and I realized just hope much had changed in a year of separation such that I never visited them again. I don't hear them Ill will, to be clear. We had just diverged.

I don't miss anything snotty high school. I don't miss anyone from high school. There were some nice people but none I was close friends with. My own limitations played a part in that but it is what it is.

There was one more move in high school but it didn't result in a change in high school. It did however lead to a loss of independence and power. Previously I rode my bike to school. After the move I had no choice but to take the school bus (more opportunities to be bullied) and the way this worked was I arrived at school 40 minutes before it started and had to stay 40 minutes after it finished.

Compounding to that the friends I did have just didn't live near the new house and I lost the ability to visit them without being driven.

I think I hated that more than any of the moves.

A lot of people who go to college (as I did) get their lifelong circles of friends from college instead. I don't think I ever learned how to do this so kind of missed out on this too.

I don't know how much of this I can blame on moves. Luck on who else is in your peer group must play a huge factor. All I know is it didn't help, I didn't enjoy it and there are literally zero people I have any contact with from the school years.

</comment><comment><USER33> I wonder if theres a link to the result of studies on children that are forced to move around:

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-kids- moving/moving...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-kids- moving/moving-during-childhood-linked-to-poor-mental-health- idUSKCN0SV2JT20151106)

On the radio I heard the result of a Danish study mirroring this result.

</comment><comment><USER34> My middle school years consisted of being bullied: verbally and physically abused.

I've been grinding my teeth since the first physical violence incident at age 11 that involved numerous full blast blows to my head. My response meanwhile was regretful bullying of a few other kids in response. The cap to this was additional physical violence against me before entering high school, in the presence of law enforcement who stood aside and allowed the punishment to be inflicted, likely due to the perception of me having been a scumbag to a popular kid in sixth grade, and/or an old school non-interventionist attitude.

By the end of middle school, the lifetime of suicidal ideation was cemented. The end result was extreme social immaturity entering high school and a downward spiral of an unwanted life drifting towards destitution and homelessness at middle age. My neighborhood peers were religious tribalists who looked down upon me and essentially formed my perceptions of the world as a religious outsider threatened by promises of eternal torture for non compliance. I dream of suicide around the clock and remain afraid of death and have zero desire for anything but preparing for death.

Needless to say, I don't find this species to be very pleasant or deserving of my time or participation and certainly not of any offspring. This, of course, is sugar coating the reality: I think this species is total rubbish, and regardless of how many nice people exist, there's been a never ending string of low quality people that I've encountered over the past 30 years, myself included. I remain fearful of facing the unknown of death despite decades dreaming of dying. Zero desire for help of any kind; I inherited a fortune and gave it away. I pray for forgiveness and mercy in the afterlife and remain eternally fearful, having been indoctrinated by peers with promises of eternal torture as a consequence for failure to engage in a particular belief system (coupled with the tribal violence by participants of said religion).

Fuck this species. Sorry: the solution is for me to die and wash away my broken brain. Some people simply don't want to be helped. The natural laws of evolution are met with my lack of procreation and my suicide washes away my broken experience so others can have a better chance. Accordingly I've given away my inheritance and gone homeless in preparation. So thankful it's almost over and infinitely scared nonetheless. At some point soon I'll simply ask God or the universe to forgive me for failing to be "strong enough" to "overcome" my little not particularly uncommon tragedy. Sorry.

<comment><USER35> You're a survivor of repeated trauma. I wish society could have rescued you and shown you a different life. I'm sorry that didn't happen.

<comment><USER34> The wish breaks the natural order. Some people bounce back and prosper, rise above it. Their genetics are superior. Mine were not. It's natural that I die now. It's correct that I didn't procreate.

And, of course help was offered yet I reject it. I gave up in middle school when it was happening.</comment></comment></comment>


Coke Designs a Friendly Bottle That Can Only Be Opened by Another Bottle - <AUTHOR> http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/ad-day-coke-designs-friendly-bottle-can-only-be-opened-another-bottle-157988

<comment><USER2> Why is everyone taking this commercial the wrong way? "dumb idea", "take two bottles", etc. Doubt this is meant to be an actual product to sell. In case you haven't been seen any Coca Cola commercials for the past years, they've always been focused around psychologically attaching Coca Cola and happiness/success/"good times" together.

      Why sponsor sports so much?
      When your home team won, you had a Coke in your hand.

      Why so much Coca Cola marketing around Christmas?
      Happy holidays, have a gift from a Coke-loving Santa.

      Why make this bottle?
      You met your best friend because you guys me through opening a bottle together.

Coca Cola commercials are cute and are designed to play on human emotion. Vending machines that need a hug before spitting out a free drink. Another vending machine on Valentine's Day that only give out drinks to couples that can prove they're a couple.

<comment><USER3> It would be cool if it was a product they sold though to big conference like settings. I am sure it would be easy to "game" but I bet people would still be thankful for the opportunity to engage strangers. Even if it would be only to show them how to "cheat"!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Clearly the solution is to take two bottles yourself and open them up.

<comment><USER5> The easier solution is to buy a pepsi instead

<comment><USER6> Ugh, I'll take the crab juice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This would be the exact opposite of "buy one get one free" as in "buy two to get one to work". Them geniuses at Coke.

</comment><comment><USER8> Beer has been doing this for years

</comment><comment><USER9> It seems like an excellent marketing idea. It might be playing on the fears and insecurities of freshmen, but all in all I think it's a great idea that; if it works like shown in the ad, has great potential.

To me, it seems like a good hack to the normal marketing culture. A hack if you will...

</comment><comment><USER10> Nice ad, dumb idea. One or both bottles will squirt coke out, and unless you were very lucky one would open but the other wouldn't - depending on which seal breaks first.

I'd also be surprised if you couldn't open a smooth coke bottle top, but that needs some research...

<comment><USER11> It looks like the top part is a seal that opens to expose the normal cap. You need a second bottle to remove the barrier, and then it opens like a normal coke bottle. I assume it just takes too much torque to twist by hand, but it works fine with the added girth of the second bottle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Haters need to look closely at the add again.

The bottles are not "opened" by the action of placing two caps together and twisting.

What appears to happen is that a spinning cap placed over the normal cap can be forced to jam against the bottle drip ring by being pushed against a similar cap. Twisting that, breaks the spinner and allows it to be removed. So the drinker can now access the real cap underneath.

Still a dumb idea though!

</comment><comment><USER13> Now that's what I call terrible user interface design.

<comment><USER14> It's not a user interface. It's a story. There's a reason that coke has been around for over a century and nobody has heard of you yet...

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> That looked like a college full of 30+ year olds.

<comment><USER16> Hello fellow youths! Care to enjoy a refreshing beverage? Let's social!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Somehow I get flashbacks to Back to the Future II, where Marty buys a Coke and can't figure out how to open it. Coke is just a year early on the concept is all.

</comment><comment><USER18> I didn't really watch the whole video because it's a coke commercial, but what keeps me from saving the cap and using it to open future bottles?

</comment><comment><USER19> And in the average male dominated technology company it takes on a whole new meaning: "Hey guys, anyone want to touch tips with me?" [Long silence]

</comment><comment><USER20> ...can only be opened by another bottle"

Or the cheap plastic gadgets coming to eBay in 10..9..

</comment><comment><USER21> Step 2: Babymakin'

Step 3: Profit*

* This is Coca-Cola so, lets be honest; this step has happened many times already</comment>


iTunes 11: the convergence of iOS and OS X design - <AUTHOR> http://theindustry.cc/2012/11/30/itunes-11-the-convergence-of-ios-and-os-x-design/ <comment><USER2> Funny, the one thing that is making we more and more wary of using Mac OSX in the future is the convergence of iOS.

Different strokes, I guess. It just seems odd to celebrate it.

<comment><USER3> Absolutely agreed. Snow Leopard was the last "true" desktop OS. I really don't see the need for Launchpad and co. when everything is and always has been a cmd+space away.

EDIT

In response to the heated discussion below, it's not just the launchpad that has me a little peeved about Lion and ML (I'm on ML now). Some of things that are being taken from iOS that I don't necessarily feel belong on the desktop: natural scrolling, skeuomorphication of interfaces, suggested words, "all my files", social media integration (yes, this is just me), etc.

But my biggest pet peeve is just the sheer dumbing down of things. iTunes 11 is pretty, but why put everything a click away? What was so bad about a sidebar that makes everything instantly accessible and only takes 80px? Why does the app now prefer to be run in full screen?

<comment><USER4> Many regular users beg to differ. At least, in my experience, the people who are less familiar with computers are the ones that love the new features the most. Especially launchpad and such. Also, just curious, but what about Lion / Mountain lion disqualifies it from being a "true" desktop OS?

<comment><USER5> The 90s seem like they would have been a good time to worry about users who don't really know what computers are. Why are we _now_ driving for that market when everyone under the age of 30 _grew up_ using modern computers? Are we still gunning from the mostly imaginary _"grandmother who doesn't know how to use computers"_ market? The market that 1) is only shrinking, if indeed it ever existed and 2) presumably doesn't buy computers...

Makes about as much sense as designing all cars in the 50s for people who grew up with horses. While those people are certainly still alive, it is a business strategy decades out of place.

<comment><USER6> I have family members who have used Apple products since at least System 7 (probably earlier, that's the first one I can remember). But they're still more comfortable with an iPad than a Mac.

There are a ton of things that we assume are second nature, but are really learned skills. I think the notion that applications that aren't in the dock still exist (in the Applications folder) is starting to sink in, but installing software from disk images? You have to mount it, copy the program to the Applications folder, understand where it went so you can launch it, and then eject the disk image.

I knew people when I was in high school (granted that was a while ago, but it wasn't their first time using a computer) who would download software and just run it off of the disk image every time they wanted it. Unless the developer has put in an alias and a background image to explain things, there's no indication that there's a better solution.

<comment><USER5> > I knew people when I was in high school...

Yeah, these people exist, but I think they are a dying breed. Children who grew up using computers are not going to have these problems. I think our obsession with this dying breed of computer users is very convenient, since it paints a narrative of _"regular users (read: most users) are so much dumber than we are."_

It strokes our ego to believe that dumbing down interfaces is necessary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm loving it! iTunes just disappeared, and all that's left is content, just perfect. Now using iTunes is not a burden anymore. It's snappy, and fun. I'm even rediscovering music in my library. Kudos to the guys who designed and coded the new iTunes!

I have only one wish, that these same guys take over Xcode, and pimp it out!

</comment><comment><USER8> _[...] however iTunes' new display of Apps is horrid; every app icon has an ugly faux-perspective bevel that just doesn't seem to work._

I don't understand what the author is referring to here. The screenshot looks just like I remember iOS app icons looking -- they've always had that canned bevel+gloss look applied to them.

Overall, the new iTunes makes me think that Apple keeps inching towards the Metro look. Gradients, colors and embossing are gradually fading out, and one day there will be nothing left except various weights of Helvetica and monochrome icons on a pure white canvas.

<comment><USER9> I can't see Apple following Microsoft into a UI language that dispatches with affordance to the point that users are confused as to what's an actionable UI element and what isn't.

I agree they're going that _way_ ; to a definitely more-modern, understated look. But I think the big difference is going to be that they hold onto visual contrast precisely where Microsoft has let it go and/or confused it.

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure. In the new iTunes, almost all on-screen elements are now actionable, but only some of them have traditional visual indicators like button outlines or pop-up menu arrows. (For example, a playlist can be renamed by clicking on the large title which looks just like a static header.)

The new iTunes UI doesn't have any mouse-hover effects either, apart from those that are part of the OS X standard window decorations. This suggests that the new UI is designed primarily for touch rather than mouse use.

<comment><USER10> Good point. Hover is dead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> To me the usability has suffered quite a bit with the update. Everything is a little further away in terms of how many clicks it takes to get to it. Until you show the sidebar that is. I'm glad to see the side bar now has color. But why is it off by default? Just for the sake of change? And why is the keyboard shortcut/menu item the only way to show it (i.e. UI is not discoverable)?

And why is the iTunes icon a musical note? iTunes is more about everything else but music. It's apps/books/video/podcasts/radio/TV/device syncing/music. Something like this would be much more appropriate:

[http://wakaba556.deviantart.com/art/iTunes-replacement- icon-...](http://wakaba556.deviantart.com/art/iTunes-replacement- icon-311490010)

<comment><USER12> It would be nice if Apple made a music player which only plays music. It is quite confusing to tell people that to download apps for the iPhone, they need to open iTunes, instead of the more appropriately-named App Store.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> My take is that iTunes 11 pivots away from making playlists and focuses on the 99% of users that simply buy and listen to albums.

I'm a heavy playlist user and the changes are shockingly bad. For "normal" users there's a dozen different ways to navigate and sort by album. But for playlist users there's now only one view - a text list - and a demoted tool menu on the bottom. Even command keys (i.e. Cmd-N) have been changed. Instead of just making a new playlist it changes the entire app view and the only available action is adding full albums to a playlist.

The only part worse is that I can't restore iTunes 10 via Time Machine without restoring my entire system.

<comment><USER14> There are 2 opinions that i can see. If you have the sidebar enabled, you get what seems (at least superficially) to be close to the old iTunes interface, with CMD + N for new lists, etc. If you have it disabled, then you can use the column browser, which rather curiously wont work with the sidebar.

Anyway, its more than likely that I completely missed the entire point of the post. Also, downgrading doesn't need a full timemachine restore, the only bit that may be easier with time machine is restoring the old library file, but its apparently not entirely essential.

<comment><USER13> I missed the difference. The two sidebars were similar enough I just used the new default playlist sidebar.

It looks like Cmd-N works differently depending on which sidebar you're using. Old sidebar it works in classic mode (thanks for pointing that out!). New sidebar it opens the newer New Playlist view.

You can't restore the iTunes app directly: you'll get an OS warning. Using "Restore to..." the Desktop will result in a corrupted app file on the desktop. Also, iTunes 11 changes the library file system a bit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Lots of thoughts. It looks nice and simple. Too simple. I think it actually looks much sharper and more modern than iOS does these days. Hopefully the design influence runs both ways.

Also, I know everyone has their own opinion, but yikes, this looks just _bad_ to me (from the article): <http://theindustry.cc/assets/2012/11/mini.png> (edit, maybe it's my high res monitor but that font is painful to look at)

<comment><USER16> Here's one with more pixels: <http://imgur.com/vn0J0></comment></comment>


Show HN: JavaScript for Designers – follow along for free - <AUTHOR> http://betaflows.com/ <comment><USER2> Curious if the plan is to keep the series free.</comment>


The Hard Evidence: Business Is Slowing Down - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2016/01/28/business-decision-making-project-management/ <comment><USER2> Interesting stat: "Meanwhile the average time to deliver an office IT project increased by more than a month from 2010 to 2015, and now stands at over 10 months from start to delivery—this particular nugget coming from a study we conducted with 2,000 project managers at more than 60 global organizations."</comment>


Using A Slime-Mold To Calculate Minimum Spanning Trees - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/opinion/sunday/the-wisdom-of-slime.html?_r=1

<comment><USER2> Related:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1071093>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1071533>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1071568>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1072876>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3406446>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3477746>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3728933>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3757527>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3853748>

Very few have comments, but the stories are varied.

<comment><USER3> I'm calling out this one because it has video, which I think people who read the NY Times article would like to see: [http://phys.org/news/2012-03-slime- mold-mimics-canadian-high...](http://phys.org/news/2012-03-slime-mold-mimics- canadian-highway.html)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Soap films approximate minimum spanning trees. See: [http://csunplugged.org/sites/default/files/activity_pdfs_ful...](http://csunplugged.org/sites/default/files/activity_pdfs_full/unplugged-15-steiner_trees_0.pdf) (see page 7 [aka, page 157]).

Actually, these films approximate Steiner Trees; which is harder (NP- complete): <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steiner_tree_problem>

EDIT: replaced 'find' and 'solve' with 'approximate.' EDIT: added '(NP- complete)'.

<comment><USER4> Only for sufficiently small definitions of "solve": <http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0502072v2>

Definitions which turn out to be very small indeed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Another one of those articles where they really should include a picture of the network the mold came up with. A picture really would say 1000's of words in this case; they spend the whole article describing what the mold did :-(

<comment><USER6> Arxiv has a paper by Andrew Adamatzky (one of the authors of the nytimes article) called "Are motorways rational from slime mould's point of view?", from 13 Mar 2012, which has pictures:

<http://arxiv.org/pdf/1203.2851.pdf>

Take a look at page 4.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If we view slime molds as a sort of computing machine, which responds differently to different inputs, an intriguing angle is to use it for generative art, the way people use other computing formalisms like context- free grammars (<http://www.contextfreeart.org>), cellular automata, and other things.

The tricky thing is that slime mold tends to either die or gunk everything up if you aren't careful, but there are some artists "collaborating" with it in producing paintings, which makes for interesting outcomes sometimes because the mold seems to carry pigments around, and responds differently to different pigments and preparations of surfaces: <http://slimoco.ning.com/>

</comment><comment><USER8> So what kind of algorithm does the slime mold use?

<comment><USER9> My naive guess is hill climbing based on chemical gradients. I have a strong hunch that large networks settle at local optimums.

<comment><USER10> I'd say more likely its equivalent to particle filters. Mold probably shoots spores all around the petri dish, and the spores that have better access to nutrients grow more, thus putting out larger proportion of spores in the next generation. A few generations later, all organisms that are either directly next to the nutrients, or next to another organism which has good access to nutrients survive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My Tutor at university (Computer Science) is one of the leading experts on using Slime-Molds in computation. He makes robots controlled by them. Very interesting stuff I think, although biological computing isn't normally my area of interest.

</comment><comment><USER12> Very interesting. I don't think slime-molds are fast enough to build a useful NP-oracle, though.

<comment><USER13> MST is polynomial, so you can't use it as an NP oracle, anyway.

<comment><USER14> And the fact that the slime molds didn't create the same layout every time implies they don't provide an optimum answer.

<comment><USER15> Not necessarily true. There could be multiple, equal-valued optima.

<comment><USER13> Exactly. Consider the case of all equal weights. In that case, every spanning tree is a MST. For the extreme cases (labeled complete graph, and a tree) of order n, those numbers are $n^{n-2}$ and 1, respectively, so the answer can be far from unique.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Next step : connect slime-mold to virtual reality , and expose API for it.</comment>


Tell HN: Our experience with Groupon - <AUTHOR> For three years I managed a skydiving facility. In March of 2010 we chose to run a Groupon promotion. At the time I hadn't heard of Groupon, and frankly, not many others had. They were new and at the beginning of the discussion with our Groupon rep, we had no idea what to expect. Another skydiving facility in the area ran a promotion and sold something like 250 Groupons. IIRC it was a 15k jump for $129. We had three products to choose from:
10k: Weekdays only, $159. Low margin, low volume. We were planning to phase this product out.
15k: 7 days a week, $199. Good margin, high volume. Discounts available, custs usually end up paying $179.
18k: 7 days a week, $259. Ridiculous margin, low volume. Discounts available, custs usually end up paying $239.
All of these skydives cost pretty much the same thing to produce, about $80. The cost goes up about $5-10 for every level. So a 18k might cost around $90 to $100.
We chose to run a 10k for $99. The standard Groupon cut is 50-60% of revenue, so based on this standard we would get around $50-60 for each Groupon (the TOS precludes us from talking details, so I am not going to say what our margin was). In advance of the Groupon we raised our 10k price to $169 so that the discount percentage was higher - the price was raised for all customers, not just Groupons.
Our first promotion sold 700 in March 2010. It was insane, the phone rang off the hook and we were slammed with customers. They weren't the best customers, but there were a lot of them. Skydiving is seasonal, in winter we do anywhere from 15-50 tandem jumps per month, 100% on the weekends. In the heat of summer we did about 200 jumps per month, Friday through Monday.
We saw an immediate uptick in business. While our volume was increasing, our net was slowly decreasing. We ran another promotion in August that sold 950 Groupons. That August we did 400 jumps, by far a record for us. Then in March of 2011 we ran our third promotion, selling 1350 Groupons.
We felt the Groupon crunch. Right after the promotion our books were full, 2-3 phone lines constantly ringing, 80-90% of customers on weekends were Groupons. We did what we could to keep things in check and have weathered the storm. This last March we did more jumps than in any month, ever. March is historically a slow month, usually about 20% as many jumps as a busy summer month.
How we made it work for us:
-Apparel: We sell at lot of cool shirts and hoodies at a great margin. We didn't really have enough volume before for this to really make sense.
-Cross sales: We sell Video packages a pretty good margin to about 60% of customers. We also offer a 'Same Day Special', allowing customers to buy another jump at 50% the same day they have skydived. Sometimes upwards of 40% of customers purchase this product.
-Up sales: If people want to jump on a weekend they need to upgrade to a higher altitude. $30 to 15k gets them twice as much freefall time, and $90 to go to 18k is a fairly popular option.
-Post experience contact: We post their videos to Youtube, encourage them to check-in and like us on Facebook, and add them to an email list where we run our own promotions on tandem skydives and solo training.
-Breakage: It hovers around 30%. This directly boosts the effective payout of each Groupon. Also, many people take close to a year to use their jump, turning their Groupon into a business loan which we use to invest in maintenance, marketing and equipment purchases.
-Scheduling: Unlike a coffee shop, we can control how many customers come in our doors. If we're booked up we can tell them so, rather than have a line out the door.
Why it is kind of painful:
-The people: Lets face it, they are kind of stingy and leave a higher ratio of bad reviews. The bad reviews have been a great incentive for us to make the business more efficient.
-The cost: Groupon is expensive. If someone buys a Groupon and jumps without buying anything else, (with a standard Groupon margin) we'd lose about $20. About 30% of Grouponers fit into this category.
For our company, Groupon was an amazing experience. It is costly advertising, but we don't plan on keeping our ratio of Groupons/non-Groupons at 80% where it is now. It is expected to precipitously drop off as the year goes on, and when it does we will enjoy the collateral benefits of a huge word of mouth campaign and an email marketing list 10x what it would be otherwise.
We have learned to survive on the razor thin margins that Groupon throws at you, so as this ratio shrinks in size, even if our volume goes down our net will recover and we will continue to grow. Skydiving, as a business, has a lot of features that differentiate it from other retail businesses and make Groupon a lot easier to stomach. That said, I feel that all of the Groupon horror stories floating around are from businesses that would be in trouble regardless. Remember, the attrition rate for B&M businesses is scary. <comment><USER2> Thank you for writing this.

Edit to add value: "Same-day" special + email list of people with confirmed willingness to pay money and get pushed out of a perfectly good airplane = a win. Presumably your costs are pretty much fixed after making the decision to do a jump, so you could hit that mailing list with a special promotion multiple times per year. It's a Tuesday, congratulations, have 20% off if we push you out of an airplane, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thats exactly what we do! Basically run our own Groupons. Send out an email with a link to a hidden page on our site that will be up for a week. We generally do it in the winter just before Christmas. Lots of sales as gifts, and since it's winter they will wait a few months to jump which will raise breakage, and hence the margin.

<comment><USER3> Joe just wanted to echo patio on thanking you. With all the breathless negative press Groupon is receiving post the S-1 IPO filing, it's tough to gauge what the reality is. Thanks for the informative post!

<comment><AUTHOR> I can't speak for Groupon's financials (that S-1 is horrifying), but the other end of it can work quite nicely :)

It looks like Grouponomics applies to Groupon itself!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _That said, I feel that all of the Groupon horror stories floating around are from businesses that would be in trouble regardless._

I would love to find out that your experience is more typical for Groupon customers, but it strikes me that there is a bit of selection bias at play here. The fact that you are posting this on HN, with 3 years/700+ karma here, suggests you might take a more analytical approach to assessing the Groupon opportunity and building a business model to make it work for you. I doubt this is typical of the small B&M business owner that Groupon sells to.

Congratulations, though, on your success and thanks for the write-up.

<comment><AUTHOR> My karma was around 550 before this post :)

I went into this management position with zero management experience. If I am at the top end of small business management then we're all doomed. I honestly feel that every single one of these Groupon horror stories are from careless, dare I say stupid, business owners. You see them all the time. How many buildings have you seen cycle through restaurants every 8 months?

One of these businesses happens to run a Groupon and then it's Groupon's fault they went out of business.

<comment><USER5> _I went into this management position with zero management experience. If I am at the top end of small business management then we're all doomed._

I think you might be conflating experience with ability. There are people with a lifetime of management experience whose ability remains modest at best.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It seems like you worked out a lot of the positives and negatives that Groupon brings and strategized around them. How much of this planning was done from inside your business and how much was done/consulting on by Groupon reps?

Was the 30% breakage specific to your business, or was that quoted by Groupon reps as an average? I'd have to think that a Groupon for something that requires specific scheduling and booking would have higher breakage than something like food coupon.

I haven't spent too much time thinking about how Groupon effects small business, but it seems like businesses like yours are in the best position to really benefit. Jumping out of a plane is an experience, and one you're probably not used to doing. Seeing that show up in your email may spark the idea of jumping out of a plane. Since it's somewhat novel, your customers are more likely to take advantage of upsales. It's also a thrilling experience, so the customers will be pumped up on adrenalin, and more likely to be sold apparel afterwards. Did Groupon customers fall in line with normal % of customers buying apparel or did they differ?

I can really see the value to both the customers and your business in running a Groupon. However, as a consumer, I'm not going to go skydiving once a day. I'm not going to go once a week. I'm probably not going to get into trying out these adventure activities with any substantial frequency. Groupon can't just load up on these things and still provide intriguing daily deals. It seems like they have to have a mix of businesses, and some of these businesses are either not capable of strategizing around a Groupon, doing the proper measuring and acting intelligently on it, or their business model simply doesn't mix with Groupon. It's these people that are going to be most vocal with their Groupon experience and drive the bad press. Without real data (which we'll never have) we can only speculate on anecdotal reports. Even so, I see much more value in your account than another person complaining about how Groupon screwed them, or someone just running with the assumption that Groupon is railroading every small business who will talk with them.

<comment><AUTHOR> This strategizing was done almost 100% on our end. We consulted with them and asked questions, asked for other skydiving facilities that ran Groupons, looked at them, called them and talked to them, etc.

We modified pretty much everything about our business around running the Groupons.

Still, I feel that our rep did a good job helping us out, much more so than another form of marketing would. Would you expect a billboard company to come to my business and tell me how to run my business more efficiently, make sure I can handle it?

We ran a radio promotion around the same time and they did ZERO insofar as making sure we'd be ok. It also cost us a lot of money.

Restaurants and coffee shops have more to overcome when running a Groupon, but that's their job, right? Pick a good marketing strategy, be successful, make good decisions, etc.

<comment><USER7> This is unrelated, but how many accidents have you had since you opened? Or, generally, is it a risky sport?

<comment><USER8> <http://adventure.howstuffworks.com/skydiving8.htm>

>The big question is always, "How dangerous is skydiving?" Each year, about 30 people die in parachuting accidents in the United States, or roughly one person per 100,000 jumps. Look at the US Skydiving Incident Reports to get an idea of the types of problems that lead to fatalities. If you make one jump in a year, your chance of dying is 1 in 100,000.

<http://www.uspa.org/safety/incident.htm>

<comment><USER9> There are significant differences based on type of jump too. Most first timers do tandem jumps with an instructor on your back. Those jumps have a fatality rate around 1 in 140,000 where static line jumps are closer 1 in 50,000. And the injury (not fatality) rate for static line jumps is around 1 in 200.

<comment><USER10> At the rates they do jumps, there appears to be about a 1-2% annual chance of a fatality. Would such an event end the business? If so, this would change the expected value and the true cost of a jump.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am glad it worked out for you, but I find the practice of raising prices so you can claim a discount to be abhorrent - I hope businesses don't do it to me more than I think. This is the same scam that happens in every mall jewelry store.

I guess the big question is did you make the price increase "to all customers" permanent, or is that part of the Groupon song and dance? If you just do it during Groupons, then while it may work, it's deceptive. You're not helping any customer in any way by perpetrating your "discount." It might be good for the bottom line, but the tactic is all about fleecing the sheep.

This is another business tale that I'll chalk up as an argument against Groupon. At least it tells me I need to get dirty to use Groupon effectively. I think Rocky over at TechCrunch is spot on - Groupon isn't run by evil people, but it's set up to be gray and shady by nature. It's Conway's Law brought to life.

<comment><AUTHOR> The 10k is still $169, is in effect for all customers, and is advertised as such on our site.

We wanted to boost T-Shirt sales so we raised shirt prices $5 and then gave everyone a $5 off coupon. It worked like a charm, and nothing is nefarious about that, is it?

<comment><USER11> I think if the overall price increase is permanent then it is indeed not deceptive on your part... totally fine by me at least.

On the other hand, if that's what it takes for a business to use Groupon effectively, then that makes me question Groupon's long-term value to consumers.

EDIT: Here, I made a picture. Is this good for me as a buyer of things? <http://i.imgur.com/zJrxw.jpg>

<comment><USER12> Its nothing new to Groupon. Its a classic retail strategy - have sales or discounts on a continuous basis. In effect, many people do not pay the high- margin MSRP price.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is very interesting. I think you had a small benefit because in skydiving there is a lot of things to upsell. Skydiving is such a huge, scary and adrenaline filled event in most people's lives that even the cheapest coupon hunter will have a desire to buy something to commemorate it and show it to his friends.

BTW what is breakage? Is that when people get scared and refuse to jump?

<comment><USER14> Breakage is when someone buys a groupon but doesn't use it. The facility gets the money anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm curious in the approximate breakdown of your expenses between other expenses and your own labor. Also, what portion of the former are fixed versus variable -- incurred "by the planeload", as it were.

I've wondered whether the businesses that can fare better with Groupon tend to be those where labor is a greater part of their expense, and where the business owners -- especially for a small business -- can effectively trade their own labor at lower compensation -- as a hourly rate or absolutely -- in return for the increased business that Groupon generates (which then provides, they must hope, a longer term marketing payoff).

Also, where expenses are variable and there is not a large fixed overhead that must be met, regardless.

Once you introduce staff labor and physical products with hard margins as larger components in the equation, it seems to me that there's less buffer with which to adapt for a mis-calculation of the effects that a Groupon or similar experience will create.

And fixed expenses have to be covered, regardless, leaving thin margins perhaps insufficient.

As you mention, you also have significant additional revenue from add-ons. And your experience, inherently, probably generates a tremendous emotional boost that in turn helps to move those.

I appreciate your detailed description and explanation of how it has worked for you. It provides some good food for thought.

<comment><AUTHOR> I can assure you, a tandem has an enormous variable cost. It costs the business ~$80 in cash to put the tandem in the air. This does not include fixed costs such as office staff labor, marketing, the lights, building rent, _equipment maintenance and purchase costs_ , etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It seems the direct result of groupon can cripple you, much like a the slashdot/digg/reddit/HN effect for a website, but if you know how to harness the instant surge and spread it around to cross sell other products and peripheral promotions, you can ride the wave successfully.

<comment><USER17> As mentioned in the write-up, Skydiving is much different than, say, fast food, in that the groupon customer must schedule the jump (scheduled fast food ... isn't).

All of which probably means that Groupon (at least the daily version) isn't that good for business that can't scale appropriately (ie, restaurants) or schedule the delivery of service/goods.

Once the timed-deal market really matures, we'll likely see weekly, daily, and even multi-daily (Amazon goldbox?) coupons by various Groupon-like entities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Thanks for writing this up. Not much positive coming from the Groupon front of late. That said:

> In advance of the Groupon we raised our 10k price to $169 so that the > discount percentage was higher.

I think most people assumed this was happening, but to have it said in plain English is a bit disturbing. It's deliberately deceiving the customer, and is accepted as a strategy. Is that sustainable?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not deliberately deceiving anyone. We raised our price and then offered a discount. The price was raised for all customers. It is entirely different than forcing Groupon customers to order from a separate menu with similar products and higher prices, or funneling them through a website with an online store with the same products and higher prices. We just modified our pricing in advance of changing our business plan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Very interesting. Most of the Groupon customer stories I have read thus far are from lower-margin merchants such as restaurants. Since Groupon customers likely skip the upsells (wine, appetizers and desserts), restaurants seem to be less positive about their experience in general. They need to focus more on converting Groupons into returning (full price) customers to generate positive returns.

<comment><USER20> Restaurants have very high gross margins (food is only about 30% of a restaurant's costs) which is why Groupons can actually be really good for them. It is absolutely critical for restaurants to fill seats.

<comment><USER21> For every $100 of food you sell in a Groupon deal for $50, Groupon gives you $25. At 30% margin, the food costs $30. Every Groupon deal a restaurant does puts them deeper in the hole at those margins.

<comment><USER20> But then you only have to get to $110 to break-even.

Regarding margins, it's the gross margins that are high. That's correct that overall profit margins are thin but gross margins are more important when discussing incremental business.

<comment><USER21> Perhaps you're misunderstanding. Let's say there's a Groupon "$100 of food at ABC Restaurant for $50". You pay $50 for the deal to Groupon. Groupon takes half of that as their commission, leaving the restaurant with $25. Now the restaurant has to provide you with $100 of food for the $25 that Groupon gave them.

If the cost of goods are 30%, that $100 in food costs them $30. They're only getting $25 for it. My slide rule tells me that's a $5 loss per customer. The restaurant hopes to make it up on drinks and such, but that $5 loss is only cost of goods and doesn't include staff, rent, and other overhead. It also doesn't factor in the fact that people who came to your restaurant only because they could get cheap food don't tend to be big spenders.

I'm sure you've seen this: <http://posiescafe.com/wp/?p=316>

<comment><USER20> I'm not misunderstanding. You said there'd be a $5 loss on a $100 order. I said a $110 order would thus break even. It's irrelevant to look at all the fixed costs when considering incremental revenue. Those would have been spent regardless. The Posie's owner has only been in business less than 2 years and did not seem particularly business savvy. In agree that you probably gt adverse selection but also not relevant in this thread.

<comment><USER21> Thanks for the clarification... I wasn't seeing where you came up with the $110 figure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Groupon (and their clones) have created a brand new style of sales. This new sales niche hasn't been properly researched, tested or evaluated. Groupon simply went full out, launched and is learning as they go.

I would be very interested in a category-by-category analysis of the effect that Groupons have.

With this data, we could figure out what types of businesses and specifically what types of deals work best for those businesses. Then, we could expand on this knowledge by creating new products, services and perhaps even entire businesses around this model.

Until we have this data and these conclusions, stories like this are anecdotal and even entertaining, but they don't represent an understanding of this new niche.

</comment><comment><USER20> Amen to hear a voice of reason among all the complainers. Groupon is just another tool available to business owners and when properly used can contribute to the bottom line. No one ever said running a business was easy. No one ever said your vendors should do all your work for you. And it's completely insane that people are now complaining about too _many_ customers? Holy cow what is this world coming to!

That said, I think the jury is still out on how much longevity the daily deals have. I suspect they will eventually take their place next to Sunday coupons as an important but not overwhelming tool for certain types of businesses.

<comment><USER23> A restaurant etc has a different model from most - they have an absolutely limited possible customer capacity. If popular, they want to work on customer quality, not quantity.

A quality restaurant customer is: part of the right-sized party (comes as a party of 4); orders specials or expensive dishes; raves about the food to friends; has a regular habit; other things I don't know.

Coupons can easily backfire for restaurants, because they pack in low-margin customers, possibly displacing quality customers!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This fall exactly into my thinking about Groupon Economics.

#1 this is not a commodity business like say food #2 customers that purchase because it's a discount wouldn't be likely to purchase otherwise, and it's hard for them to find another supplier #3 treating groupon as a way to bag 1st time customers and then treating them specifically as customers that _need_ upsell is the way to create repeat business

Since people are paying for entertainment, specifically something non-typical and hobby-like it works. Especially because this business took the effort to create conversion and up-sell opportunities.

</comment><comment><USER25> How high was cannibalization, i.e. existing customers using the Groupon deal instead of paying full price?

<comment><USER20> Since when is it a bad idea to give discounts to existing customers?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a bad idea to give a discount to someone who was already going to buy your product at full price. It's an even worse idea to sell them a product and get 25% the revenue you would otherwise.

<comment><USER20> I agree that it's better to be more thoughtful in how you handle existing customers and it's even worse spending 75% to give a 50% discount, however I don't think it's necessary to hide Groupons from existing customers. We encouraged all our customers to participate in our daily deals and spread the word. The customers appreciate it and we get more business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I like this post. A lot of businesses complain about groupon saying they take a lot of money. But groupon isn't so much about making money in that sense. It's about advertising. I've seen businesses say they lost $1500 on a groupon deal or whatever, well that is the cost of advertising. It just varies from business to business. You do hope customers return though, and if you have a good business i don't see a problem with that. I rarely buy groupons, i only buy when i want to try a business out. I am a customer that is willing to return my business if your business is good to me.

I do understand there are a lot of bad customers too, but you just have to deal with it. Too bad groupon doesn't have a way to flag customers or at least have the right to refuse their groupon and just give them a refund.

Sounds like you used groupon the way it was supposed to be used. So good for you. Can you say what your business is? I'd like to try to skydive, so i'd be willing to support you. I live in arizona, so i know there are a lot of skydiving places here.

</comment><comment><USER27> Thanks for sharing your story! Great to hears different business owners experiences with Groupon.

One of our clients who operates a semi-private golf course ran a Groupon earlier this season and had great experience with it. It definitely generated a different type of a customer, or at least not the type of clientele they generally experience.

Basically, as a result Groupon allowed them to draw and market their golf course to a completely different target market. The only catch is, trying to convert the one time Groupon customer into a long term returning player or even try to up-sell them with Club Membership.

Groupon can be very costly, especially if your business model isn't a good fit for it. But just like any other marketing, running a proper business and cost analysis can determine if Groupon is the right fit. Otherwise you might become another example of Groupon disaster story.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm clearly in the minority, but I'm not sure I would really be that attracted discounted sky-diving. If I ever try it, I want it to be with some delta force or SAS guy who is VERY well paid.

<comment><AUTHOR> They're all pretty similar. In fact, the lower price ones are probably safer because they've been doing it longer and have built an economy of scale. The small time guys doing beach jumps out of Cessna for $250 from 11k certainly aren't supertrained SAS guys :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Awesome detailed write-up. Any chance I could ask you a question about this offline? My email is browser411 at yahoo. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER30> >>...so based on this standard we would get around $50-60 for each Groupon (the TOS precludes us from talking details, so I am not going to say what our margin was)....The cost: Groupon is expensive. If someone buys a Groupon and jumps without buying anything else, we lose about $20...

Well that settles what your margin is...

</comment><comment><USER31> From the way you have described your business it seems like you are one of the high-markup enterprises that will (always) benefit from getting large numbers of customers through the door, even at a much lower price than you normally charge.

(I'm not making a judgement on your pricing, just pointing out the obvious.)

</comment><comment><USER32> Thanks for sharing your experience :)

In my view, ability to connect with your customers post-experience was a home run!

From what I have read most small businesses do not have the necessary infrastructure to do that. Curious to know what technologies did you use to capture that?

Also, did you have cases where customers tried to reuse their groupons?

<comment><AUTHOR> Everyone signs a waiver, so we collect their email address from that and add them to an email promotion list. So I guess the technology would be the mighty pen :)

We did have a few cases where we caught people... We just called them out and they paid. We are lucky because we have everyone's contact info and keep good records.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> It really sounds like Groupon is no magic bullet. You still have to run your business. Everything you did in response to the Groupon experience (higher traffic looking for a loss leading offer) is what any solid business would (should) do in response to a loss leading promotion.

</comment><comment><USER34> So Groupon has been good for you, and so far you've been good for Groupon. I'm wondering what you think your long-term relationship with Groupon is going to look like.

A lot of the negative press over Groupon lately has been that they aren't building a moat and that all this money that they're spending to build a customer base is being wasted. Now that you've had a few positive experiences with them, do you expect to continue doing business with them? Is it safe to assume you'll be running another promotion at the end of this summer?

I'm also curious about how much loyalty they've gained. If another group buying site came along with a better offer (taking customer-base and margins into account), would you hesitate to switch?

<comment><AUTHOR> Over time we ran a few promotions through other daily deal sites. In our latest promotion we sold 1350 Groupons. Some of the other guys we tried, their promotions struggled to sell 150.

Also, Groupon tried really hard to get exclusivity from it's merchants. They have more of a moat than people give them credit for...

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Out of curiosity, what percentage of people never redeemed their groupon purchase?

<comment><AUTHOR> around 25-30%

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Interesting to hear that you aren't the only DZ to experience this. hehe thanks for Groupon my final AFF jumps are harder to schedule at my local DZ (MB, Canada) due to all the Tandems generated from Groupon ;p

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea we actually lost a few funjumpers because we've been so busy. Used to send 1 flight an hour with 3 tandems with 5-8 solo jumpers. Now we send 2 flights an hour with 5-6 tandems on each flight and around 2-3 funjumpers... :/ It's not always that bad but it is more often than not.

How much did you pay for AFF? You're going to be pretty sad when you hear that we do AFF for $999 :)

<comment><USER36> Well that isn't a cool, almost double that haha -- I'm just happy they resist the urge to over work their instructors, however temping in this in-demand situation. Blue Sky's and safety first :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Camera first, safety third ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Does nobody here realize that while Groupon may work for a skydiving facility, the market size for something like this is tiny overall. It's literally a once in a lifetime activity, maybe a few times but certainly not regularly. Groupon's valuation is based on revenues from billions of dollars of restauarant and other unsustainable industries.

</comment><comment><USER38> > That said, I feel that all of the Groupon horror stories floating around are > from businesses that would be in trouble regardless.

First, you had it right in the sentence prior to this one. Your experience is enough of an outlier that it doesn't apply to most Groupon experiences. Second, isn't Groupon supposed to help businesses that are in trouble?

<comment><USER20> Probably the opposite on both counts. Groupon is best for savvy business owners who know how to profit from an influx of customers. And there's no reason to suggest that successful Groupon usage is rare. We only hear about the complaints, not the thousands upon thousands of successes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Your business is perfect for the Groupon firehose attention.

I maintain that it doesn't work for restaurants though.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it's a lot harder for restaurants to be successful with it and a lot easier for them to be buried by it. That said - it's no excuse for them to run Groupons, get pounded, and then point the finger at Groupon - any more so than they can blame their landlords for charging high rent, or their employees for being expensive, or for Comcast charging so much for TV ads.

No one is making them run Groupons and no one is lying about what to expect when you run a Groupon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> great write-up! are you tracking how many groupons repeat after that first jump? i'd be curious what the repeat business looks like from this group

</comment><comment><USER14> Thanks for this... really interesting.

I just went skydiving for the first time last week and used a Groupon. It was fun but I wasn't immediately hooked and wanting to go again.

I paid $109 for a 15k jump that is normally $209. I bought it about a year ago (Used it because Groupon was about to expire). The facility was so packed that I had to reserve my time far in advance. (They sold 4,500 groupons the day I bought)

They tried some upselling, in the form of a video and a 2nd jump at a discounted price. The video was an additional $90, which I declined, and the 2nd jump was a "discounted" $125. This seemed kind of silly to me, as I'd only paid $109 the first time around. In the end, I wasn't upsold, so I'm presuming they lost some money on me. They also didn't collect my email address or anything. I think in the end the value you derive from a daily deal is very dependent on your ability to be smart about it (via upsells, social media, etc.).

Can you share a bit about the economics of a skydiving facility? I got the impression that the skydivers were paid per jump.

One other thought is that if I were to do it again - I've seen several Groupons for other skydiving facilities... I'd probably just buy another Groupon for another place... new view, etc. Maybe I'm in the minority but I think getting people to come back is tough when there is so much pressure from other deals.

<comment><AUTHOR> All instructors (and everyone else, except front end staff) are paid per unit - industry wide.

Depending on aircraft it generally costs around $12-20 per seat in the plane. The equipment costs around $15k to buy new is fairly expensive to maintain. Instructors earn anywhere from $25-85 per jump, depending on facility, the weight of the student and whether or not the student bought a handcam video. Also, it generally costs about $10 to pack the parachute after the jump. So you're looking at around $60-120 in cost for each tandem jump.

Outside video (a videographer) costs 1 seat and pays around $40-70 to the videographer. It pays more because they have to buy their own parachute and camera helmet ($2k-3k and $1k-2 respectively). They also have to pack for themselves. They also do less work, so it's harder to keep them around.

The aircraft generally cost around $1 million to purchase, give or take a couple hundred grand (Otters, Porters and PACs). Smaller, less efficient aircraft are available for $35-50k (Cessna 182 and 206s). To lease an aircraft costs about $600-1000 per hour for a large one (like an Otter), $150-200 for a smaller one (like a Cessna), both prices including gas. You can get a flight up in about .2-.3 hours for the larger planes, .4-.5 for the smaller ones.

The larger planes will get 12-24 people in them, the smaller ones 4-6.

Q: How to do make a small fortune skydiving? A: Start with a large one.

<comment><USER41> Curious - why does the weight of the student have a bearing on the amount paid to the instructor? Is it harder to work with super light (or super heavy?) people?

<comment><AUTHOR> For people over 200lbs its a big PITA, to the point that a lot of places won't take you if you're over 225. At that point it's hard on the instructor and hard on the gear. At around 250lbs, depending on the weight of the instructor, you come up on the max recommended exit weight. Most everything will still work fine, you just expose yourself to situations where the reserve might, say, explode if you do too many wrong things in a row. We just charge $1 per lbs to the student for everything over 200lbs and give it to the instructor. That way when a 250lbs 5' tall bowling ball of a woman walks in, everyone fights over her :)

<comment><USER42> I just wanted to thank you for posting all of this, and more importantly all your comments in the thread. It was incredibly generous of you to share so much details about your business. Packaged up it really makes me feel like I get a better idea on how Groupon works for businesses like yours (and hey, I also learned a thing or three about skydiving!).

I wanted to send an email to thank you instead of cluttering this thread but it was not in your profile.

Thanks again. :)

(why I reply to this comment is entirely random)

<comment><USER43> "I wanted to send an email to thank you instead of cluttering this thread but it was not in your profile."

Sorry for another OT, but I think it would be great and would reduce clutter on HN if there was a check box on each post that would make that post only show up for the person that is being replied to. Would be a perfect 'thank you' post system, and I wouldn't feel bad about voting down 'thank you' posts (which by themselves are meant well but impose a tax on others).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Triple Handshake, Freak and Logjam Discoveries Helped Safeguard the Internet - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.microsoft.com/next/2015/11/18/how-triple-handshake-freak-and-logjam-discoveries-contributed-to-a-broader-effort-to-safeguard-the-internet/ <comment><AUTHOR> The F# and F7 miTLS implementations mentioned in the post have been open sourced and are available here: [https://github.com/mitls](https://github.com/mitls)</comment>


Ask HN: What do you run on your VPS? - <AUTHOR> I just got a lifelong VPS for free. It's pretty minimal (1GB RAM, 60GB SSD, 1vCPUs), but it's also decent for most lightweight things.<p>What do you run on your VPS? <comment><USER2> seems like ok box to run git / vpn server on depending on bandwidth availible.

i run vps with debian (lazy, insecure...) with git and some other services behind it which i use for personal code backups etc.. if it's life long free, consider using it to mine some crypto currencies? if u dont have anything to do with it. it's slow going on cpu cycles but if it's free it's all profit so better than idle cpu cycles ;D</comment>


The Next 10 Years Will Be Great For Both Founders And VCs - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/08/the-next-10-years-will-be-great-for-both-founders-and-vcs/ <comment><USER3> Caused by less capital being needed.

Competition has a way of adjusting to shared advantages - how will that play out here? I think it will mean that the key ingredients will become more valuable. And here, that's founders (technical ability to make things happen; business vision to know what is worth doing and how to adjust to it; and of course intelligence, flexibility and stamina) and connections (for promotion; integration with other services etc).

I guess the "Yuri bonus" is just the beginning of this. Accurate gatekeepers, like YC, that can recognize the above qualities in founders (and have connections), will also become more valuable. A key advantage YC has at this point is experience in recognizing these qualities, having gone through the cycle severals, which enables trial-and-error learning. Even if another group had more raw talent at the task, YC would be very hard to beat, because so much of success is practical know-how that only comes with exposure to the details of reality.

<comment><USER3> Capital used to be a source of competitive advantage: capital was needed for success, so having access to it was an advantage. I think Google's server farms distributed around the world fall into this category (they enable lower latency, faster responses).

But there are many other sources of competitive advantage, such as a network effects (but this didn't save MySpace) Perhaps the two most important ones are marketing (both how well known it is when growing and its PR image once established) and continuous improvement (facebook keeps adding features). If you are ahead, and you keep improving, then it's difficult for competitors to catch up.

It's seems odd, but this means that a perfect product is one of the worst things that can happen to you. Since it's perfect, you can't improve it, and competitors will catch up. It's far better to have a product that is valuable to customers, but _if it was a bit better, they'd value it even more._

Another terrible thing that can happen is that, although you can improve the product, customers don't care about that improvement. Like a man dying of thirst in the desert, he'd like some water; but at a some point he'll say, "that's enough", and shift his concern to something else (e.g. faster google responses are valued, but at some point, the latency will be small enough that people won't be annoyed by it, then they won't notice it, then they won't even be able to perceive it.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The thing is that this article and the Sequoia "RIP Good Times" slideshow are actually both kind of right.

This "recovery" is completely fragile and we will see what a real Great Depression 2.0 looks like after the dollar collapses. The final trigger could be Greece's pending sovereign bankruptcy, the popping of the tuition bubble, or the S&P downgrade of treasuries. Each of these is absolutely going to happen, Tim Geithner's assurances notwithstanding, though the timeframe is not certain.

So in this sense Sequoia's talk was right, even though they didn't properly articulate the actual upstream driver of the collapse in their slideshow (namely the push for massively expanded minority homeownership in the 2000s).

However, Quigley is also right about his particular point: that we are going to see a return to private companies and a retreat from "going public". Facebook is only the beginning.

While "going public" is thought of as the apotheosis of capitalism, it's really an injection of democracy into an otherwise capitalistic system. All the things people think of as deficiencies of capitalism -- including shortsighted management on a quarterly basis, financial manipulation of stocks, and the like -- are actually problems of democracy, not capitalism.

Think about how dumb VCs can be. Now think about how dumb a braying mob can be. You should be __extremely reluctant __to sell control of your enterprise to that braying mob. A well run business is about elitism, not democracy, as not all votes can or should count equally -- exhibit A being Steve Jobs.

Currently, US government regulations force disclosure requirements on companies of a certain size, which is why many (but not all) of that size decide to go public.

However, as more and more companies stay private, and as we have a complete collapse in faith in government bonds, we find that a very interesting thing may happen: stocks and bonds, the tools of Wall Street, may be radically reduced in importance.

This will have a tremendous salutary effect as the primary way to create wealth will be to actually start a business and sell a product. This is really the key point that Quigley is making.

This has to happen at some point because the risk-adjusted returns you can get on Wall Street are still higher than entrepreneurship. Once that changes, things will change for the better.

<comment><USER5> _we will see what a real Great Depression 2.0 looks like after the dollar collapses_

Unfounded and inflammatory.

<comment><USER6> Any currency collapse is never an IF, only a WHEN... however, indeed this would indicate the end of a depression, not its start. Meaning after any kind of collapse, economic activity is bound to pick up... hit the bottom and the only way is up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This article seems to overlook the fact that even if Amazon, Ebay, Microsoft had a very small valuation at the time of their IPO, the founders, early employees, and probably some VCs held on to the stock for a long time after the IPO; thus all the founders became billionaires.

I think what he wants to say is that the next 10 years will be better for VCs (because they will wait much longer to exit than before, being able to get 500X returns). For founders, it will actually be the same.

</comment><comment><USER8> As far as the tech world is concerned, I think the next 10+ years will be great for hackers. Costs will keep going down and there will be more opportunities in the internet, more leverage for people who actually know how to build and execute.

<comment><USER9> Which could be bad for VC's, who are already throwing money at companies like color with the landscape fairly void of companies that need big VC scale investments.

I think that is a great thing, more companies creating more value for founders without having to give away to much equity to outside investment.

<comment><USER8> I agree. This economy also isn't getting any prettier anytime soon either... it's going to be tough for investors, and it's going to be esp tough for non- technical founders with just an idea, I think.

This is why I suspect Yuri Milner shrewdly linked up with Y Combinator early on, he saw this coming. Small, nimble teams of hackers will survive and win.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> When you need to present a powerpoint to prove that we are not in a bubble, we are in a bubble.

</comment><comment><USER11> This article is proof that there is something wrong in the system. The article mirrors those "an era of never ending growth" posted by Jon Katz et al during the first boom.

The first boom was a game of financial geeks. The boom was a way for smart people who are into financials to move money from one set of hands into their own hands. The computer nerds got played by financial nerds - value was not really destroyed, it just relocated into the pockets of a few saavy guys.

There are signs that the same thing is happening again, but this time on a different scale. Certain big time investors make their money from playing mathematical games on the financial market. They are betting low and selling high. Those same investors have seen another opportunity to do such trades, but betting on these so called 'startups'. There is a certain category of financial wizard - once you see them jumping into an industry, it means that the mathematics has gotten complicated enough that they can use their knowledge advantage to move money from one set of hands into the other.

The rumours of a boom are not unfounded. There is a financial game being played, but it's not a penny game like the first one, this time it's a premium game. They are avoiding the mass of last time and moving bigger chunks of money around.

People are going to lose money, but I don't think those people willl be Joe Ordinary this time. I think it's going to be a bunch of medium-wealthy people, who will buy into the claims of extra-ordinary returns.

In the end, the same thing will happen - the cycle of money being pushed around and part of it going to the people in charge of the system is going to stop, and once more people will lose money.

However, I doubt the outcry will be particularly large this time, because there will be less people affected, even if the sums could be similar.

Where there is a lot of money moving around, there are people trying to get that money to come to them. Those people are the same people 'controlling' the eco-system.

Watch the edges of any movement. When you see the 'uncool' people dropping out of the game, then there is something wrong in the middle. Watch the cycle of money - when investors are giving money to a company, which then takes that money and buys another company who also received money from the same company, then it means that people are using cyclical methods to 'invest' other peoples money, and then get themselves paid out.

There is no innovation problem - new and good products are being created everyday. That's fine. The boom lies in this financial layer that the financial geeks are building on top of the natural process of innovation - <USER2> the methods that are being used are there to benefit the companies participating in the financing.

<comment><USER12> wealth is not zero sum. wealth is created and destroyed by the actions of individual and group economic activity all the time. so the popular refrain that "value was not really destroyed, it just relocated into the pockets of a few saavy guys." is not true. the market rewards correctly predicting trends in future valuation. that valuation fluctuates due to psychology as well as fundamentals means that the game will contain elements of deception, but that doesn't alter the underlying economics.

<comment><USER13> I believe that OP is implying that some markets sometime do not create value. e.g. Ponzi Scheme.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Actually I think there is a far greater bubble in many other investments than VC.

US government bonds and paper currency for example.

The US government pays 3.6% interest only for 10 year bonds and the government has huge debt, increasing each year.

However I don't plan to invest the majority my money in start ups or VC funds for a few reasons: 1\. It's extremely low cost to start up an Internet company and the barrier to entry is not money it's expertise 2\. There are safer opportunities in real estate with 25% returns 3\. I don't have access to the right networks to find the next twitter/ Facebook/ drop box etc. 4\. The valuations are way too high (for my liking)

I would much prefer to invest in start ups as it's more fun, but for me it's too difficult to find a good business to invest in.

</comment><comment><USER15> "Yet, at the time of its IPO, Microsoft's Windows was already the world's dominant operating system."

Is it a small mistake? because the dominant OS was MS DOS not Microsoft Windows.

Also, can you compare Facebook, Zynga and Twitter to Cisco, Microsoft, Google and VMWare ?

</comment><comment><USER16> Hysteria about the financial sector "taking money" out of tech is unfounded paranoia.

The financial sector moves money from idle hands amongst the rich to working hands.

Investors lose access to their cash for an agreed amount of time, and risk losing it altogether. For that risk, they are compensated by some amount of return.

This is not an immoral thing. This is the mechanism that allows people with great ideas and skills to build businesses.

If you don't like capitalism, then go sample the delights of communist North Korea.

Capitalism affords us an excellent quality of life, full of opportunity. Don't take it for granted.

</comment><comment><USER17> >Here is the important, and game-changing, point: in order to participate in the great wealth creation taking place in this and future technology cycles, you will have to be a founder, an early employee or a private investor. The so-called easy money will be earned before a company goes public. This is a radical shift from earlier technology cycles.

Things change when a company goes public; especially so for technology companies.

Prices fluctuate.

I bet many people and institutions will make money (and lose money) from these new companies going public, post IPO.

<comment><USER18> I received spam from you on my email, scraped from HN. Please don't do that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> One never knows. It's like predicting the stock market for the next 10 years. If you really knew, you'd not be writing articles, but making yourself wicked rich.

Anytime is a good time to be a founder. There's always a need for something better. Technology and use of technology is always evolving.

</comment><comment><USER20> That's it. I'm calling the top of the bubble in the next six months.

</comment><comment><USER21> Selection bias much? I know some earlier dot coms that went public and allowed the VCs and early employees to capture 10x the terminal value of the company.

</comment><comment><USER22> And less than three years ago we heard that the next decade would be very tough, from Sequoia no less. The hunt for suckers is on.

</comment><comment><USER23> Author's points:

1.) proliferation of Internet access

2.) the rise of the hedge funds

3.) global marketplace

therefore, the glass is half full.

1.) Yes, the internet usage penetration rate is still not at 100%, even for the advanced countries. There are still alot of room to grow. However, to start new companies in the current environment and have it go big is very hard. The reason is that internet market itself has matured, and there are plenty of monopolies already. Did you see any new companies blowing up in the last year, even though VC/angel funding have increased dramatically? No, because Facebook, Google, Apple, Zynga, Amazon will either move into the market just as quick, or buy the company out for measly millions before they get big. Look at Zynga dominating the social games, copying competitor's concept, and crushing them. Look at Google snapping up talents and companies left and right, in areas beyond search. Look at Facebook moving into Foursquare, Groupon and Quora's territory. These modern age internet monopolies are scary, having the reach of giants but are as nimble as a ninja, able to focus thousands of programmers onto a market overnight.

2.) Hedge funds are actually decreasing in size, not increasing. [1] In 2011, the hedge funds held a total $1.29 trillion, down from 2008 with $1.93 trillion, down 30%. Even though the stock market is back to its near 2008 high.

3.) Yes, global marketplace. BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) will allow companies to grow even further. Look at China, overtaking US soon as the world's largest economy. Oh wait....Facebook/Twitter/Zynga are banned in China. Oops. And Russia has alot of Facebook/Groupon/Twitter clones too. Doubt the Russian government will let US companies get their hands on Russian people's private information if they get big. Brazil and India....too poor. No way they have money to spend frivilous money on farmville items and facebook ads. Yeah, this globalization thing isn't looking so hot.

Not to mention, we're in the start of a global economic depression. The next 10 years, we will see the following:

\- China's shadow banking blows up

\- Japan finally succumbs to its own democraphics, and along with losing northeast as its prime food producer and the nuclear crisis and the emergence of other asian exporters, suffers a -5% GDP every year.

\- Greece, Portugal, Ireland will leave euro or default, leading to a massive wave of other countries doing the same thing, leading to euro failing and European banks suffering 70-80% loss on loans.

\- US dollar resume its decline, and as more countries shift its uses/accumulation of dollar to other safe currencies, resulting in a dollar hyperinflation scenario. Which will be great for US government so they can get out of their $70 trillion obligations to social security/medicare, although US banks have $200 trillion shadow derivatives that will bankrupt them.

So, the next 10 years will be horrible for both founders and VCs

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedge_fund#Industry_size></comment>


Video: Android Application Development - Helloworld (anatomy of an Android app) - <AUTHOR> http://marakana.com/forums/android/general/235.html <comment><USER2> This is great, thanks!

This is part 2, folks may want to check out part one as well:

<http://marakana.com/forums/android/general/230.html></comment>


Let's just hope the Supreme Court shuts South Dakota v. Wayfair down - <AUTHOR> https://trackingtalk.com/index.php/2018/04/17/lets-just-hope-the-supreme-court-shuts-south-dakota-v-wayfair-down/ <comment><USER2> Wouldn't one of you clever yc types start up an online service to manage tax collections for small businesses? Since a lot of these folks are using third- party payment systems already, it seems like it would be a solvable problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> Software solutions are not the answer here. Filing in 50 states, even if automated, exposes small businesses to time & money-consuming audits in 50 states. That is extremely undesirable but it will become a fact of life if this case goes the wrong way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Are regular mail-order catalogues expected to start doing the same?</comment>