Attempting to Use GNU Guix - <AUTHOR> https://zge.us.to/guix.html <comment><USER2> Sad to see GNU Guix struggling, they are young though and I have hopes for the future. About a year ago I made a choice between trying out GNU Guix and NixOS, since this week I now run NixOS on all my servers and desktops after gradually phasing out my old Ubuntu stack.

It has generally been smooth sailing, with the occasional hick up that required me to draw upon my general Unix skills. What caught me off guard is how having a solid configuration to revert to has made me start tinkering with my operating system again akin to how I did when I started using Linux/BSD in the early 00s. But, enough about NixOS, I hope GNU Guix continues to make progress as there needs to be more competition in this space. If you have an evening to spare, I highly recommend trying a distribution like this out in a VM to get a taste of what it feels like to use it – it is, different… but in a good way.

<comment><USER3> Something I couldn't get about nix by skimming the documentation is how it manages application configuration. Using traditional systems when you upgrade the package responsible for the network configuration my current configuration is carried thru or merged into the new format if the package changes it's configuration syntax. How does nixos manage /etc ?

<comment> evil-olive For the majority of changes, it "just works". For example, here's the part of nixpkgs that configures wireless networking via wpa_supplicant, as well as the actual package build of wpa_supplicant:

[https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/nixos-19.09/nixos/modu...](https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/nixos-19.09/nixos/modules/services/networking/wpa_supplicant.nix)

[https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/nixos-19.09/pkgs/os- sp...](https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/nixos-19.09/pkgs/os- specific/linux/wpa_supplicant/default.nix)

Because they're contained within the same git repo, if a new version of wpa_supplicant changed the syntax of wpa_supplicant.conf, the upgrade could be handled easily (assuming the user-facing options in NixOS didn't need to change).

For more complicated changes, there's `system.stateVersion`:

[https://nixos.wiki/wiki/FAQ/When_do_I_update_stateVersion](https://nixos.wiki/wiki/FAQ/When_do_I_update_stateVersion)

An example of this would be if NixOS version A ships with Postgres version X by default, while NixOS version B upgrades to Postgres version Y. stateVersion allows a sane upgrade path where you can update to NixOS version B without breaking your database immediately (because stateVersion is still A).

<comment><USER4> Files in /etc shouldn't be modified directly. You edit configuration.nix and it generates these files.

How it is done, depends on a module.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't know that much about Guix, other than "super-free Nix with scheme" (and the article wasn't particularly illuminating other than boiling down to "Guix isn't really ready for most users right now"), but it's neat that there's momentum in the declarative OS-space. I hope that both Guix and NixOS keep growing and that more people start switching.

After switching to NixOS, I'd find it very frustrating to go back to an OS with imperative-style package/service management. It's clearly the better way.

A frustrating thing about NixOS--coming from Arch Linux and being used to the AUR--is that adding packages/updating packages can be a _bit_ slow due to the sheer volume of PRs/Issues on the nixpkgs repo. There's always the NUR[1] but it hasn't picked up that much momentum yet (probably because it's kind of hard to search the darn thing). Eitherway, the packages are just Nix expressions and repos are just collections of these expressions, so nothing's preventing a real AUR alternative other than momentum.

It's interesting that Guix uses scheme instead of a home-baked configuration language like NixOS. While I don't find Nix particularly offensive, I don't find it particularly great either. And maybe this is naivity/Nix-inexperience on my part speaking, but I really wish that Nix had a proper type system and was strictly typed.

I guess my pipe dream is "HaskellOS" that's basically NixOS configured with Haskell (just think of xmonad-style configuration for your whole OS). That'd be really nice. And my secondary-pipe dream is a baked in, extremely- comprehensive home-manager[2] so we can bid dotfiles goodbye once and for all and have your entire system-state defined in a single file.

Maybe one day :)

[1] [https://github.com/nix-community/NUR](https://github.com/nix- community/NUR)

[2] [https://github.com/rycee/home-manager](https://github.com/rycee/home- manager)

<comment> T-R I'm hoping that maybe Flakes[1] will help ease the issue/pull request situation by letting some of the namespaces move out of the main repository.

[1] [https://github.com/NixOS/rfcs/pull/49](https://github.com/NixOS/rfcs/pull/49)

<comment><USER6> There are significant advantages to having the entire Nixpkgs package set in a mono repository. While I think Flakes are quite interesting for a number of reasons, I hope it doesn't result in the primary package set getting split up too much. They conceptually act a lot like Git submodules, and going overboard with that is a very easy way to make your life miserable, and significantly increase development turnaround for changes that "cross" package sets. A group of packages just being "conceptually related" isn't a high enough bar to move things out.

As a long time contributor, I'd much, much rather see our bug reporting, triage, and discovery/resolution strategies improve first -- long before going as far as splitting up the mono-repository. That's the part that's frustrating for users (their reports get lost, forgotten, duplicated) -- not the fact the default set merely has a lot of packages.

<comment><USER4> I think at very least (and easy to implement) nix needs a bot that closes old tickets. The number of open issues is ridiculous and basically it makes easier for an issue to be overlooked and further increase the count. The number of open issues also causes some people think nix is very buggy and not suitable in production or even exploring.

<comment><USER6> There are probably some people who see a 3k bug report number and think that, but realistically tons of projects have thousands of open tickets for any number of things from legitimate bugs to duplicates to actual user questions. Linux, projects like LLVM, etc. It's natural when you have a project that is in active every-day use by literally thousands and thousands of people. Nixpkgs is simply a big project! But the actual numbers might tell another story.

For reference, the LLVM bug tracker has exactly _ten thousand_ open bugs as of this writing, and I assume that number is only so perfectly rounded because Bugzilla search refuses to return any more results in a single page that already brings scrolling in Chrome to its knees. You won't find any lack of praise for LLVM's high quality and extensible nature, though -- they can all be true at once!

The nixpkgs label tracker isn't highly accurate since auto-labeling only started earlier as of this year, but as of this writing, of the 3k open issues, about 500 of them are directly marked as bugs, while 41 are marked as regressions. There are 200 enhancement requests, and 50 open packaging requests. So of 3,300 bugs, about 800 can be quickly classified, and about half of those are actual bugs. This is a very ballpark number (GitHub search doesn't allow XOR). Considering nixpkgs is literally shipping thousands of other software projects, I think this is pretty good -- even though I wouldn't argue it could be cleanly extrapolated to the whole set of bugs, because of a long tail of old bugs.

In terms of cadence, over the last month there were ~466 new PRs, and ~1,600 merged PRs. ~220 closed issues vs 215 new ones. This is done by nearly 350 contributors. I would think this is also very good and the sign of a healthy project with hundreds of active developers. IMO, if just a raw number of "3,000 open github issues" _has_ to mean anything ("this software is unstable"), then these numbers have to mean something too. It's just that GitHub doesn't "helpfully" post them on every single page concerning your project...

But I do agree we should have better mechanisms for discovery and keeping things clean. Duplicates certainly happen and are annoying, and nobody likes drudging through 1,000 of the oldest open reports to close old stuff, etc. Some of this is also limited by GitHub and other things, unfortunately.

Personally as a developer (not a user!), I think bots that close old tickets are often very annoying (to everyone) and rarely do much other than feed a human desire to hit "inbox zero", but this desire is not (to my knowledge) based on any actual scientific criteria that leads to better software development or happier, better cared for users. It is more a way of externalizing a deep human desire for "cleanliness" and using it as a yardstick for "quality" rather than evaluating the numbers for yourself. You can also find tons of 0-issue repositories on GitHub, but this doesn't mean they're actually good, or they do what you want -- and I doubt most of them have as much momentum as we do.

<comment><USER4> There are, that was response from one of my colleague after mentioning Nix to him. Having 3k open bugs, don't help with anything there's no way all of them will ever be addressed and important ones could get lost between them.

I don't think closing such bugs is "feed a human desire to hit "inbox zero"" even with that you'll never get there. From my perspective it is all about not losing track of important issues. Having bots close tickets makes sure that only tickets are opened are ones that someone cares about. There are tickets that are from 2013, a lot changed since then, they might no longer be relevant anymore.

<comment><USER7> I personally hate it when a bot closes an issue I wrote. What's the point of closing unresolved issues? Just assign them a label (it could be a "stale" label like some projects do). Otherwise it just feels like hiding your mess under the bed. Other sorting tools can provide the same list as automatically closing bugs would achieve. The opposite isn't true, unless assigning a specific label when manually closing an issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Guix in general just needs a lot more contributors and lot more work to come anywhere close to being a competitor to the mainstream (or even near- mainstream) distros and package managers.

I'm coming from Gentoo myself, and I've tried to get Guix working on Gentoo a couple of times over the years, and have always been frustrated by how much work and hacking was involved in doing so. I'm no Linux novice, either. I've been a professional Linux/UNIX admin for decades, I know and love Scheme, and am no stranger to putting in a lot of work to get something to run on Linux, but I failed in two major attempts with Guix, despite having lots of thorough assistance from Guix developers on #guix on IRC.

So back to Gentoo's package manager I went.

A typical user would not have put in nearly that much work to trying it out, nor would they have had the skills or knowledge to get nearly as far as I did. Though, to be honest, I did have some requirements (like doing my own compilation of everything on my own old, slow laptop, just as I'd been doing with Gentoo, and not trusting their binary distribution) that a typical user would not.

The other lesson I got from my last attempt was that trying to compile everything in Guix from scratch on an old laptop is just way too slow. Doing this on Gentoo is slow and painful enough, but it's way worse on Guix, and simply unworkable. You really have to have a fast, modern system (or offload your compilation to another machine which will crank away for weeks on end and that you can then download the binaries from) to constantly compile everything you need for Guix.

That said, Guix has really come a long way over the years, and it's impressive to see how far they've come, and I'd absolutely love to see them succeed, but they've got a long, long, long way to go.

<comment><USER9> > trying to compile everything in Guix from scratch on an old laptop is just > way too slow. Doing this on Gentoo is slow and painful enough, but it's way > worse on Guix, and simply unworkable

Would you elaborate on why you think compilation on Guix is slower than Gentoo? Thanks.

<comment><USER8> It's not that compilation itself was slow with Guix, but (to my memory) it was because all Guix packages are completely separate by design and have dependencies which are not shared, so you might have to compile, say, five different versions of guile to satisfy those five different dependencies in five different packages.

Compiling guile from scratch was, by the way, insanely slow, and because I struggled to get Guix working right on my first try, I had to compile it over and over again, which took about a day each time. A "guix pull" took four hours on my system, and I had to do it twice each time, once for root and once for my own user. My first "guix pull" took two weeks due to all the errors, toubleshooting and restarts the process took as I tried to get Guix working as it should.

In addition, it seems that Guix packages don't have optimizations enabled, which is a deal breaker for me, as optimizing the packages I install is a significant reason I compile them from scratch in the first place, as I'm running on an old, slow machine which could use all the performance boosts it can get.

Finally, I might have a broken environment on my system which makes compilation even slower still than it otherwise would be, but until I get it fixed I have to live with it, and so for all of these reasons compiling everything from scratch on Guix is just not practical for me right now.

Maybe with a newer, much faster machine I'd be ok with it.

<comment><USER10> Just out of curiosity, why not use distcc?

I have a recent i7 and still compile essentially all packages on my homelab, I feel that the benefit would be even more marked for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I understand and perhaps admire the GNU project's insistence on being blob- free, but that also means Guix won't run out of the box on 99% of all people's computers. The options are buy (old) hardware that doesn't need blobs (which sometimes isn't even possible), or compile the default kernel to include the binary firmware yourself (which the Guix documentation won't explain for ideological reasons). Both of these will sadly limit the appeal of this distribution to enthusiasts-only, which is unfortunate since Guix probably has the most advanced package manager of any Linux system.

<comment><USER12> True for workstations, but most services are running on VMs these days. OS shouldn't need blobs to run on VMs.

<comment><USER13> Right, but now you have two separate operating systems to manage which are different at the kernel level (as your host is probably linux, bsd, esxi, etc.) This means you often have to manage twice the amount of tooling, documentation, scripts, etc. and makes it impractical for many cases.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I would recommend the author to try NixOS instead. It is not like that you wouldn't have issues however mostly things works (never had the kind of issue the author reported in this post, for example).

I think the difference between NixOS and Guix, excluding the language of choice of course, is that NixOS has the community to make it work. For example, I had a issue last night that I opened a issue in GitHub, and in a few hours the maintainer of the problematic package answered me and the problem was fixed.

</comment><comment><USER15> > For a new package to be accepted into the [Debian] stable branch, it has to > pass a number of days without any bug reports.

Um, that's not even remotely close to what the actual stable inclusion rules look like.

<comment><USER16> It is close to the rules for a package to get included into 'testing' from unstable, they must have gotten the branches mixed up.

<comment><USER17> (I wrote the text)

I mixed the two up, will fix.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> i feel very alienated by the guix developers due to the way they are betraying the gnu leadership.

This is sad because it is such a nice and important project. But I cannot easily separate the work from the people who did it.

<comment><USER15> > they are betraying the gnu leadership

What do you mean?

<comment><USER19> My guess is that they're referring to the open letter from people working on many GNU projects calling for Stallman to resign.

<comment><USER15> I think this is the letter in question:

[https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/joint-statement-on-the-gnu- pr...](https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/joint-statement-on-the-gnu-project/)

<comment><USER4> I still don't know what Stallman did.

<comment><USER20> Got caught up in an organized witch-hunt to remove him from power. Too much freedom of speech for the current FSF.

<comment><USER4> I'm hoping you're joking, because petition for him to step down, because he took part in with hunt to have himself removed sounds ridiculous. I'm still interested in a real answer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Thank you for shedding light on a distro I didn't know existed!

One tip: The contrast on your code blocks is terrible with white text against a light white background. Consider changing the `background` of line 3 of style.css to `purple`, `darkorange`, or some other dark color.

<comment><USER22> Seems like normal Solarized to me?

<comment><USER23> Must be rendering differences among us -- I don't think solarized uses white on yellow...

EDIT: Ahh it's probably that the site uses `prefers-color-scheme` media queries, but missed a couple cases.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> _"Just run guix package --roll-pack to "undo" an installation."_

I don't know guix, but that looks like a typo to me. Shouldn't that be _back_ , not _pack_?

<comment><USER25> 'guix package --rollback' is what's in my shell history, so it should probably say that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I love the style of packets organization that they describe. I think it has a name, I have seen it promoted as an alaternative to the typical mess that is "install everything in various parts of /usr/ and /opt/, put things in /etc/ or ~, silently overwrite old versions"

</comment><comment><USER27> Go Nix.</comment>


Ask HN: Incorporating company in California, through lawyer or DIY? - <AUTHOR> Did you register your company in California yourself or went through lawyer? Also any comments on Delaware vs California?<p>Any suggestions will be very helpful. Thanks <comment><USER2> I formed an LLC myself through the California Secretary of State. If your company is a one man band, do it yourself. If it is going to have employees, maybe hiring a lawyer is the most prudent approach.</comment>


Matematicas Visuales - <AUTHOR> http://www.matematicasvisuales.com/english/index.html <comment><USER2> If I knew how to replace Flash and instantly make this canvas based I would. This is amazing.

<comment><USER3> They aren't all Flash. Some are Java:

[http://www.matematicasvisuales.com/english/html/probability/...](http://www.matematicasvisuales.com/english/html/probability/varaleat/normalprob.html)

<comment><USER4> Oh how I love running into Java applications on the internet. It seems every time I do anymore I am told I need to update Java.

Nevertheless, this was worth it.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are some good resources for learning Algorithms and Data Structures? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Coursera's Algo part 1 starts in 2 days. [https://www.coursera.org/course/algs4partI](https://www.coursera.org/course/algs4partI)

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_algorithms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_algorithms)

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

[http://www.algorithmist.com/index.php/Main_Page](http://www.algorithmist.com/index.php/Main_Page)

[http://www3.cs.stonybrook.edu/~algorith/](http://www3.cs.stonybrook.edu/~algorith/)

[http://www.nist.gov/dads/index.html](http://www.nist.gov/dads/index.html)

[http://xlinux.nist.gov/dads/](http://xlinux.nist.gov/dads/)

[http://akira.ruc.dk/~keld/teaching/algoritmedesign_f05/Artik...](http://akira.ruc.dk/~keld/teaching/algoritmedesign_f05/Artikler/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Never hurts to go through basics one again

[http://introcs.cs.princeton.edu/java/40algorithms/](http://introcs.cs.princeton.edu/java/40algorithms/)

[https://github.com/careermonk/DataStructureAndAlgorithmsMade...](https://github.com/careermonk/DataStructureAndAlgorithmsMadeEasyInJava)

</comment><comment><USER5> I learned a lot in Roughgarden's course on Coursera:

[https://www.coursera.org/course/algo](https://www.coursera.org/course/algo)

but I'll be first to suggest going to font of computer science that is _TAoCP_ , not because you're likely to understand most of Knuth, but because it's unlikely that anyone will understand half on the first pass, so there will be something else to learn for a really long time.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think it depends on what you want to achieve.

If you want to design algorithms, and not just reuse an algorithm from a catalog:

"Introduction to Algorithms: A Creative Approach: Udi Manber" Is very good.

If on the other you;re interested in a an extensive srvey of algo's and data- sturcutres, see"Algorithms and theory of computation handbook", by atallah. It has 2 volumes.

</comment><comment><USER7> I learned it back in the 1980s from "Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs" by Niklaus Wirth.

There's a more recent edition available: "Algorithms and Data Structures".

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1921125](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1921125)

</comment><comment><USER8> Skiena's Algorithm Design Manual is really great, it's pretty comprehensive.

[http://www.amazon.com/Algorithm-Design-Manual-Steven- Skiena/...](http://www.amazon.com/Algorithm-Design-Manual-Steven- Skiena/dp/1849967202)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I am mainly interested in learning about dynamic programming and graph algorithms.

<comment><USER9> MIT OCW's Intro to Algorithms by Erik Demaine and Srinivas Devadas is an excellent resource to learn about DP and graph algorithms.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for all these links.

</comment><comment><USER10> clrs=bible</comment>


Today's XKCD is now a real Facebook group - <AUTHOR> http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=336707071150&ref=nf

<comment><USER2> It's funny if you're the one who thinks it up, but it's not particularly witty to click the "join this club" button.</comment>


Stanford Fall 2011 - Machine Learning - <AUTHOR> http://www.ml-class.org/

<comment><USER3> Note for anyone signing up for this who has been in industry for a while: the prerequisites for this class really are prerequisites and it can be quite difficult to follow along if you're too busy trying to get your head around the basic math. You can check out the existing lectures on iTunes U to see what I mean.

Completing the Khan Academy playlists for Linear Algebra and Probability would be pretty useful if you want to be prepared in time for October.

<comment><USER4> I took a look at the ones already online and downloaded them a while back. Also went through Khans stuff on the areas you mentioned after i realised i needed just a refresher on a few of the areas. After the refresher following the lectures was much easier.

I did a bachelors and a masters in comp-sci at usyd and unsw in aus, it was good but i remember not getting into the depth that the stanford lectures did so im quite excited to get back into it. Also decided to take some time of work to work on a few of my own things so got alot of time to have fun with the materials.

BTW thanks to standford for this material, its totally awesome :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Like a few other people here, I took this class recently. I did well, but I don't feel like I truly understand material until I teach it.

That being said, if anybody here has questions on the material, I'd love to help you out in some way. Unfortunately, there is no personal messaging feature on HN, so we might have to resort to emails (or maybe a subreddit?).

I realize there is an official class forum, so please tell me if you have any interest in some sort of 3rd party support system :-)

<comment><USER6> Wow ... our own TA! That would be neat.

I just started watching this course on iTunesU and was wishing I had someone to ask basic clarification questions to.

Would using Convore be appropriate for this purpose?

EDIT: I created one ... ml-class (HN support group) <http://t.co/0Ahtgw5>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I took this class as CS 229 at Stanford, and will attest that it's pretty damn awesome (easily one of the best classes I've been able to take). The course really provides a thorough exploration of a lot of the main techniques in machine learning, and Prof. Ng also presents it in a very engaging and understandable way. This was one of the few classes where I enjoyed my 3-hour long midterm!

You can see the materials from this course's previous incarnation at <http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs229/>

<comment><USER8> Thanks - was wondering what class this matched too. Will probably do this instead of the Norvig AI class.

<comment><USER7> I ended up taking the Norvig AI class after this one and felt that a large majority of the material was also covered in the ML class, but usually more rigorously in the latter and as a means to more interesting stuff. If you feel like covering the material with a definite mathematical bent, I would recommend checking out this class.

<comment><USER9> so you are saying this class is more practical and that one is more bent on mathematical theory?

<comment><USER7> I would say that the AI class is a good overview for the field of AI - <USER2> Machine Learning is a good in-depth discussion of the machine learning approaches, which will generally also expose you to a lot of other related AI concepts.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for that info. Now I think I will not formally enroll in the intro to AI and focus more on ML class. Since I can only truly focus on one such class at a time it would be best to enroll in something I can apply directly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Signed up for this and AI.

Anyone know how many hours per week will be required? I am finishing up my 3 year distance learning MSc this month, so will have around 20 hours per week for these two courses. Hope that will be enough.

<comment><USER11> The video on the page mentions an average of ~10 hours per week.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've been meaning to follow along with the online collection of lectures from this course at some point, so I guess now's the time to actually dive in. I'm interested to see how a very rigorous course will be adapted to something that looks very similar to the Khan Academy model.

</comment><comment><USER13> I took CS 229 years ago as an undergrad and still think about things from it all the time.

<comment><USER7> i've been using my cs 229 notes for class and work, easily the best overview of a lot of concepts that i've been able to find!</comment></comment>


Getting Users For Your New Startup - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pud.com/post/5239917032/users <comment><AUTHOR> I wasn't sure whether to put the Hacker News reference in there, for fear that people might come out of the wordwork trying to game HN after reading this.

That's why I also put in the line about not spamming. I can get rid of the HN link if people think I should.

<comment><USER2> More useful than most things posted here by virtue of being specific with details and blunt about what worked for you. Thanks.

<comment><USER3> Agree w/ trevelyan. Useful article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _Good story idea: "I'm not sure if my thing is legal."_

This is definitely going to the top of my how-to-bait-reporters list.

<comment><USER5> haha +1

As long as it does not report to some API you are using and terms it comes with ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "If the writer doesn't respond, try a different one. But only one at a time — they won't like you if you give the same story to their competitor. "

What is a good amount of time to wait between contacting writers? Or how much time has to pass without a response for you to to decide to move on to the next one?

<comment><USER7> (TC writer here) I'd say send an email, and if you don't get a response in 1-2 days send one more saying that if you don't hear back in the next 24 hours you'll probably try your luck elsewhere. Don't be threatening about it (the reporter doesn't owe you anything), just be transparent.

Setting a 'time limit' like this helps makes sure you don't end up on the reporter's mental backburner indefinitely. Of course, if the reporter is super swamped this may lead them to simply pass on the story. But usually if it's good, they'll try to find another writer who can take it.

<comment><USER8> I would rather expect to hear a no than waiting indefinitely.

Why can't journalists simply say no for a story? I understand they are flooded with emails, but a one word no would suffice.

<comment><USER9> I agree with the sentiment, but I don't think I'd react kindly to a one word "no". Imagine putting in time and effort into an email and just getting "no" in response.

<comment><AUTHOR> One of the best ways to cut down on inbound email, is to send less outbound email.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> pud taught me a whole lot when I worked for him. good to see him blogging.

</comment><comment><USER11> > Good story idea: "My competitor raised $20 million, yet my thing is better."

That is a good way to get into a writers spam bin. Every writer gets 5-6 stories about related companies when they post something, and it is annoying

<comment><USER12> What are some good ideas?

<comment><USER13> A warning is probably the most potent type of meme. A brief, well-worded warning can travel far, grabbing a lot of attention along the way.

An overly alarmist marketing campaign is considered FUD. (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt>)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The issue with articles like this, for me, is that it doesn't quite specify who this will work for.

As in, it works for sites that just need a ton of users - but not so much for niche-specific webapps that charge.

If you are trying to build a community and need a lot of numbers in a very short period of time, then sure....but if you want to find your users for your specific niche...this advice doesn't quite work.

<comment><USER15> I think there's good advice here for almost anyone, you just have to adapt it to your situation. Not all of these work for everyone, but many will work for most. Let's take your site CompVersions.com (which looks very nice, BTW) for example:

Controversy - Okay, tough one there. Get back to me on that.

Viral tricks - Allow new users to extend their free trials by another 14 days if they send an email about the service to 5 people. Or, give new paying users some amount of credit for doing something similar. Give away a free {thing designers want} - To enter the contest you must tweet about the service. Tons of options here.

Affiliate Program - People pay for the service, so this is doable. The affiliates you want are people/companies who operate popular design sites/blogs/forums/newsletters/services. If they have ads then they could be an affiliate (actually, even if they don't). Cut special deals for really good partners. Consider offering small payouts for trial sign ups and bigger payouts for paid customers.

SEO - Goes without saying. You need to be thinking about this.

Press - You probably aren't going for CNN here, but there are lots of design oriented publications both online and off. Think of some story ideas and start pitching. Are more people going freelance because of the economy? You could play off that angle. Clients who can't make up their minds about anything is a classic designer story. If you can put together a success story of someone who used your product to get an indecisive client to make a choice- that's a story people want to hear.

Celebrity Endorsement - Offer your product to a highly visible designer for free. If they like it, ask for an endorsement. Maybe a tweet or two? Maybe a mention on their blog?

Biz Dev - There are lots of design agencies out there. Maybe this is something that some of them would be interested in using. Maybe you could do a co- branded promotion with a company that offers another kind of design tool, like wire framing or something. Perhaps you could work with Appsumo to put together a "Designers" package, of which CompVersions would be a part.

Offline Events - Probably not super useful for this. But live design demos in front of an audience could be fun.

So yeah, I think there's some good material to go on here.

<comment><USER14> Err....wow! Dude...thanks for this advice. Many of the things you highlighted here make total sense, and I have thought about many of them - I guess I always dismissed it as 'not for me'.

The normal stuff, Biz Dev, SEO, Affiliate Program, for sure.

Here is a simple suggestion, perhaps you should write a version of this post that is geared to webapps like mine that have a monthly fee.

I bet that would be something the community is interested in. As would I...of course :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> what about offline events? Are they effective? I recall Yelp did a lot of that in the early days.

<comment><USER17> _Offline events work best when your product has strong ties to the real world._

According to pud, it depends. He gave Evite as an example, but mentioned that Yelp did something similar.

<comment><AUTHOR> An earlier version of the blog post (that danzheng likely saw) didn't include the section about offline events, though it did include something about Evite in the "Get creative" section.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What's up with the highlighting?

<comment><USER19> People love to get clever with links. But it just confuses people. Links should be underlined and a different color. If you really want people to know it's a link, make sure that color is blue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Startup Idea(?) - Marketing/PR company to get you beta/real users for your tech/other startup, so that you can foucs on what you are good at, focusing on the product. Charges per user acquired.

</comment><comment><USER21> One of the best articles i ever read on startup Marketing.

</comment><comment><USER22> Why is his web site (Blippy) on a steep decline: <http://siteanalytics.compete.com/blippy.com/> ?

<comment><USER23> Every so often I see people on HN use compete as if it were a reliable measurement... In my experience it's not.

Compete shows a few of my websites as declining when they are in fact growing... In one particular case it showed that a website that was tripling in traffic was declining... It's so unprecise that I often wonder if it's not just a random number generator weighted by pageranks and mentions in google trend powering compete, it seems it'd give about the same results...

Here's a link from reddit talking about that: [http://blog.reddit.com/2010/07/experts-misunderestimate- our-...](http://blog.reddit.com/2010/07/experts-misunderestimate-our- traffic.html)

<comment><USER22> Reddit is a good example of pointing out to inaccuracies of Compete.com Still, when reporting on Reddit Compete.com is off by factor of 4 (not 10). And the trend is shown correctly (Reddit growths).

For Blippy.com both Compete.com and comcast.com show very small numbers and Compete.com shows steep downward trend.

Unless somebody could share more reliable source of data I would assume that Blippy is on decline.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> A bit on the evil side, but thanks for sharing. What about cross-promotion? I believe already-proven entrepreneurs have multiple channels (online and offline) to promote subsequent ventures. Also, controversy is popular, but is it viable in the long run? There is a line between disruption and controversy, and many startups prefer not to cross it (i m hopeful they choose so for ethical reasons). There's more to make out of a startup than money.

</comment><comment><USER25> Startup Bus.</comment>


Ask HN: Does your startup change directions on a daily basis? - <AUTHOR>

Hi, posting anonymously. This is my first time at a startup (I previously worked for one of the big internet companies).
Decision-making control at our startup is firmly in the hands of a few b-school types (sales, marketing). In the last six weeks or so, they've been changing our strategy on a daily basis. It's affecting the way we engineer our site and more importantly, we've lost faith that our product / sales / marketing teams can execute towards a common goal.
My questions for HN:
1) Is this common for non-engineering-focused startups?
2) How do you guys deal?
Thanks. Please share thoughts / stories. <comment><USER2> 18 Mistakes #5

 _"But openness to new ideas has to be tuned just right. Switching to a new idea every week will be equally fatal. Is there some kind of external test you can use? One is to ask whether the ideas represent some kind of progression. If in each new idea you're able to re-use most of what you built for the previous ones, then you're probably in a process that converges. Whereas if you keep restarting from scratch, that's a bad sign."_

<http://www.paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> I think generally the goal is by the time you have b-school types working in your start-up, you have built a strong core for your business, which shouldn't be changing that rapidly. However, it is good to be continually iterating looking for ways to expand or capitalize further on your core.

If there is no core, established model behind what you are doing and you have a bunch of employees at the company (especially b-school types), I think it is reasonable to be concerned and perhaps consider other options available to you.

</comment><comment><USER4> Why are there so many sales and marketing folk in an early startup? Just 2 sales and 2 marketing guys and you burn half of million a year. Sales come in when there's a product to sell. If the product is still in early development (with the daily changes), the company has ramped up in the wrong order. It will run out of fund soon.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've been in a situation like this before. Sales was driving and couldn't make up their minds. Either take a stand and fight for ONE strong direction (for at least a week!) or leave.

The company won't be successful. "Pivot" means to plant one foot and move the other. Not to hop around like an idiot all day.

</comment><comment><USER6> this seems to happen even in engineering-focused start-ups. in the past i have actually sat down with the business folks and talked about how the lack of focus is affecting product quality which directly affects revenue. not to mention what it does to moral when you feel like what you are working on today will most likely just be thrown out tomorrow for some new agenda. there was a lot resistance at first but i was very clear that i just wanted to open this up for discussion since my main concern was for the overall success of the company. it did not happen over night but it did happen, the goal was to find a middle ground where we all committed to a long-term strategy to rech our goals and engineering would try and stay open-minded to changes that would get us closer to those long-term goals.

</comment><comment><USER7> There is a big difference between keeping your options open and being agile versus "changing directions". I think it's very common to spend biz dev time on exploring other options, even in a way that can have a huge impact on your overall focus/product. Look at Groupon, they had a big focus, but spun off Groupon as a side project and it turned out to be huge. So exploring is a good/normal thing. However - that is not the same thing as rallying the troops with a "full steam ahead on this brand new idea" every day.

</comment><comment><USER8> Do you _literally_ mean "daily" (as in, say, every 1-3 working days)?

How are the b-school types measuring success? (Are they measuring at all???)

</comment><comment><USER9> That's normal, unless you really mean _daily_. The trick is to find a balance between agility and the focus required to build something useful. Too much agility and nothing gets done. Too much focus and the wrong things get done. Cut the marketing guys some slack - they're working with precious little information.

</comment><comment><USER10> You've talked to your colleagues I assume?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah they know we are frustrated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> 1) no.

2) quit.</comment>


DriveAssist - The Software that may safe your life while your driving - <AUTHOR> http://yaplc.blogspot.com/2008/10/driveassist-software-that-may-safe-your.html <comment><USER2> My phone comes with an "off" button - you just have to press that before periods of time when you don't need any interruptions - works in and out of the car - and no idiot at the office can decide that their call is an "emergency" and thus bypass the process.

Seriously - when does this "nanny" idiocy stop?</comment>


Even for Cashiers, College Pays Off - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/sunday-review/26leonhardt.html

<comment><USER2> This article is a very annoying piece of propaganda.

The worst fallacy is the poisoned well ad hominem at the end where he claims that those who advise against college have degrees and therefore are selfish meanie "elitists" who are trying to stomp down the poor collegeless masses and keep them from advancing. It goes without saying that those who haven't been to college likewise are not allowed to advise against it, since they haven't been, how would they know? Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Whether you have been to college or not, you are not allowed to have an opinion or advice others that one should consider carefully whether they want to go into significant debt in return for college. Regarding the fallacy it can easily be turned around to argue that the author is not qualified to argue _for_ college because he has been and therefore has been brainwashed into the cult. Just as absurd an argument and the same reasoning.

He also claims that the average current cost of attending 4 year public colleges in the US is $2000. This is complete nonsense.

As others have pointed out here, the reason degreed people are better plumbers is because they were smarter to begin with, not because they learned plumbing in college.

There was a study a couple years ago (sorry, no citation, can't find it) that compared people who were accepted into college but didn't go to those who were accepted and did go. He found that there was no difference in their earnings. The study showed that earnings differences are not due to "learning advanced skills" or such in college, but due to the fact that people who were already more capable to begin with were the ones that got accepted in the first place. Duh.

<comment><USER3> _He also claims that the average current cost of attending 4 year public colleges in the US is $2000. This is complete nonsense._

I think the author is correct, but you're largely misquoting him.

The author actually said this: "First, many colleges are not very expensive, once financial aid is taken into account. Average net tuition and fees at public four-year colleges this past year were only about $2,000 (though Congress may soon cut federal financial aid). "

And if you read the cited article it points out that over the five years from 2004 to 2009 (when the cited article was written), while the "sticker price" of college has gone up dramatically, the actual amount paid by students has actually declined (for tuition and fees):

"Yes. At public four-year colleges, the sticker price rose by 20 percent over the past five years (these are inflation-adjusted dollars, as are all historical comparisons I'm making), but the average net price fell $400 — from about $2,000 to $1,600. At private four-year colleges the sticker price rose by 15 percent, but the average net price fell 9 percent, or about $1,100.

It is important to note that these figures are just for tuition and fees. Students also have to live, eat, buy books, and cover other expenses while they are in school. "

<comment><USER4> I wonder if the author went to college? By his logic, my $200k house only costs me $16,000, because of financial aid. (ie. mortgage)

<comment><USER3> I'm really not sure what you're talking about, but this might be relevant:

"The net prices I mentioned don't take loans into account. We consider loans to be part of the students' contribution. The students have to pay them back eventually."

<comment><USER2> Thanks very much for digging that up, that's a good find and very relevant. That is the source he uses to claim it's $2000, and the interview it's from claims the actual cost has gone down from $2000 to $1600, but then near the end admits that loan debt is not considered part of college cost using the reasoning that "it's the students contribution". So it's not a cost, it's a contribution.

[http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/19/q-a-the-real- co...](http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/19/q-a-the-real-cost-of- college/)

<comment><USER3> _but then near the end admits that loan debt is not considered part of college cost using the reasoning that "it's the students contribution"._

Actually she said the opposite. :-)

She says, "The net prices I mentioned don't take loans into account. We consider loans to be part of the students' contribution. The students have to pay them back eventually."

Net price is the price the student pays. It is reduced by financial aid, but she says that they do NOT take loans into account (whereas they do take Pell Grants into account). That is because students have to pay the loan eventually.

So if you have a college tution that is $10,000/year. The sticker price is $10,000. If you have $2,000 in grants and $4,000 in loans then your net price is $8,000. They don't take loans into account when computing the net price.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The problem here is the author is mischaracterizing the debate. Right now we have a job environment where most good jobs require a college degree. The debate as to whether college is necessary asks if that environment is appropriate since college costs a lot of money and often falls short when it comes to imparting lifelong knowledge.

When all those TV Shows, Newspapers and Blogs are having this debate the question they are asking is whether the environment that requires a degree should exist. So arguing that people with a degree make more money in the current environment is irrelevant to the debate itself.

(He does set up a straw man of parents on the edge deciding not to send their kids to college but I see that as unrealistic. No parent who is going to send their kid to college changes their mind based on what Katie Couric says or what they read on a blog)

</comment><comment><USER4> The college vs. no college debate is bunk. The real question is: Why doesn't high school prepare folks with the skills needed to succeed in one of the professions mentioned in the article. The key to succeeding in all of those jobs is command of reading and arithmetic. If you can read a manual and do enough math to handle money at some scale, you're 80% of the way to succeeding somewhere.

Public schools utterly fail at helping students achieve this. 99% of 18 year olds should be able to interpret a train schedule or read and understand a big-city newspaper. 99% of 18 year olds should be capable of doing long division and computing percentages without tools. The reality is far less.

Getting through college is essentially a filter that eliminates the folks who are not appropriately literate or capable of doing math.

As an extreme anecdotal example, I worked with an illiterate retail computer salesman in his 30's while I was in college. He was a good salesman who relied on memorization and mastery of the legacy, AS/400 terminal based system. He was an intelligent, driven man -- but he couldn't advance, and struggled when the company introduced a browser based configure to order system.

<comment><USER6> Both you and TFA make the assumption that college increases your skill in fields such as plumbing. Correlation (college & higher pay) =/= Causation (college => more skill => more pay), and that is why people debate the current college situation. Why is it that a future plumber needs to go to college to maximize his earnings, when it will have little to no benefit to his plumbing prowess, and would in fact hinder it due to the opportunity cost of those 4 years?

> Getting through college is essentially a filter that eliminates the folks > who are not appropriately literate or capable of doing math. What a > ridiculously wasteful filter.

> Public schools utterly fail at helping students achieve this. 99% of 18 year > olds should be able to interpret a train schedule or read and understand a > big-city newspaper. 99% of 18 year olds should be capable of doing long > division and computing percentages without tools. The reality is far less. > Are you sure about that? Long division is admittedly rapidly becoming a lost > art (calculators, cell phones, anything electronic has a way to divide!) > However, I'd be surprised if nearly everyone wasn't capable of the rest.

<comment><USER4> The article implies that college magically gives you skills that make you a successful plumber. I argue that getting into (and out of) college means that you have the basic academic skills to be a successful plumber. Those aren't the same arguments.

Plumbing isn't just unclogging toilets. You need to be capable of measuring, computing distances, reading manuals for boilers and pumps, etc. Not rocket science, but beyond the capabilities of 40-60% of the _graduates_ of many high schools.

In my mind, the _problem_ is that 30 years ago, a high school degree was sufficient to assume that you can perform basic skills (skills that most successful programmers probably can demonstrate around age 12).

Is long division archaic in the age of the smartphone? Perhaps -- I've found it to be a fantastic screening device for high school interns. Print out a few Amtrak Northeast Corridor train schedules and ask questions about getting between various points between various points as a second level screen.

<comment><USER6> I see what you mean, I agree. It does seem a bit excessive that college is needed to prove those skills, though.

I think the problem with high school education being insufficient now is a cultural mindset that academic success before college is not important. I could be wrong on that, but I don't think what is being taught is insufficient, just what is learned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The article conflates two different questions: a) whether universal higher education is sensible, and b) whether it makes financial sense for an individual to get a college education.

Do individuals benefit financially from a college degree, given certain assumptions about degree and institution? Yes. But a more interesting question is to what extent those degrees provide increased human capital, and to what extent it is a signal of existing quality.

For instance, if the value of certain college degrees is only as a method to differentiate between good and bad employees, universal higher education accomplishes nothing but to destroy that signal, without adding value. This provides an example scenario under which it is sensible for individuals to obtain higher education, but universal higher education is nevertheless inferior as a policy to limited higher education.

Thus the author errs in providing the individual benefit as a justification for universal higher education.

</comment><comment><USER8> My faith in some of the research underlying this article took a fatal hit when I read that the researchers discovered that whereas a dishwasher with no degree earned $19K, a college graduate earned $34K for the same menial task. It may just be me but that rings so untrue that it bears investigation. To me it is unfathomable why an employer would pay a dishwasher 15K a year more because he/she has a degree. I don't buy it.

</comment><comment><USER9> College provides the greatest benefit for specialized fields like engineering, for example, in which the college education is effectively the job training.

</comment><comment><USER10> _Construction workers, police officers, plumbers, retail salespeople and secretaries, among others, make significantly more with a degree than without one. Why? Education helps people do higher-skilled work, get jobs with better- paying companies or open their own businesses._

I would argue they earn more simply because of the signalling dynamics of possessing the degree, not that a college grad can do higher skilled work than a similarly situated non-grad. The question is is it fair/efficient to saddle young people with exorbitant debt and four extra years of classroom lecturing just to be able to competitively signal.

<comment><USER11> One possible way to test this: compare the outcomes of people with All But Degree to people with degrees.

If human capital is the important factor then being 6 credits short of a 140 credit degree shouldn't affect outcomes. If signalling matters, it should have a rather large effect.

<comment><USER12> > If human capital is the important factor then being 6 credits short of a 140 > credit degree shouldn't affect outcomes. If signalling matters, it should > have a rather large effect.

It it matters, I'm a CS dropout from an an Eastern European country which is also part of the European Union. Let's say I've got 125 out of 140 credits (so I got pretty close to actually finishing it).

Anyway, I have a pretty good job and all, but once in a while I receive a job offer that actually sounds interesting. It did happen to me to actually get rejected from such a job "because as you don't have a degree, and as we work with an European Union agency, and as said EU Agency requires that all our employees should have a CS degree, we're sorry to announce to you etc", as they elegantly put it. Some other guys said no to my salary requirement "because you don't have a CS degree, we won't receive the tax breaks given by the Government to us for hiring people with CS degrees, so we're going to pay you less". Fuck them, I said :)

I don't know what the moral of the story should be. What I got out of it all is that I should always work in an environment very close to a meritocracy (and small startups seem to be the closest thing to this), and maybe later down the road open my own shop.

<comment><USER13> As someone who worked in the EU before, I was never asked to prove I had a degree or an honours degree. Have you been asked to prove it, or are you just being honest?

<comment><USER12> > or are you just being honest?

I hope I'm being honest, why would I lie? Anyway, said company had a contract with a European Union Agency, and, as mentioned, said Agency was putting a major emphasis (as in more points awarded as part of the tender process) on sub-contractors that had only CS-graduates as programmers.

And the "tax-deductions for companies hiring CS-graduates part" I'll admit, it's not an EU-wide, EU-mandated policy (hence my mention that the tax was collected by my country's Government), but my suspicion is that my country is not the only one adopting this particular tax treatment. I think the people that came up with this policy thought that this would somehow create an IT bonanza. It might achieve that, who knows? But you'll have to admit it has some perverse effects, such as non-graduates like myself being at a disadvantage compared to degree-holding programmers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Charles Murray points out

[http://www.openeducation.net/2008/08/20/charles- murray-%E2%8...](http://www.openeducation.net/2008/08/20/charles- murray-%E2%80%93-for-most-people-college-is-a-waste-of-time/)

that what employers need is a signal of competence, but a four-year college degree is a very costly signal for a job-seeker to obtain. Many poor, hard- working people are locked out of the job market by the price of a college degree.

Isn't it possible that college degree holders are at an advantage in seeking employment by comparison to persons without college degrees simply because of the signaling effect of possessing a degree? The current job market seems to say that possessing a college degree is an advantage even if students are learning very little during their four years of college.

[http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/01/18/106949/study-many- coll...](http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/01/18/106949/study-many-college- students-not.html)

<comment><USER3> _The current job market seems to say that possessing a college degree is an advantage even if students are learning very little during their four years of college._

The problem with these studies is that what they actually say and the spin are two very different things. For example, from your link:

"After four years, 36 percent showed no significant gains in these so-called "higher order" thinking skills."

So 64% of students showed significant gains in higher order thinkings skills? That's non-trivial. This says to me that a good majority of college students are much stronger than when they left high school. And I suspect, much to the chagrin of many on HN, that many of those in the 64% are also top students. And for those that aren't top students, they're obvious in other ways.

The other thing the article seems to point out is that you can get through college with minimal effort if you choose to, but if you do put in the effort you reap the rewards.

While college is too expensive, I'm not sure its failing as an institution of learning. Its biggest problem appears to be making it too easy on those who want to take the easy way out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> > The educated American masses helped create the American century, as the > economists Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz have written

More evidence needed. IMHO, the Nazis and their craziness did a lot more for creating "the American century" than US schools. First, by forcing to emigrate all the smart Jewish University professors in the 1930s, and then by getting defeated in WW2 and allowing both the Americans and the Soviets to take advantage of their research in rocket-related fields.

</comment><comment><USER15> Just a quick comment about averages .. the writer makes the argument that the average income of a college graduate is much higher than someone who did not go to college but this is a very misleading statistic .. because the incomes of college graduates who got engineering, finance, medicine and law degrees have much higher incomes, but someone who got a history degree for example, does not.

</comment><comment><USER16> I didn't see any mention of cost of living adjustment.

Could it be that plumbers living in Boston are more likely to have college degrees than plumbers living in Salem?

</comment><comment><USER17> The article failed to make the case that college graduates are better adapted to the current economic environment.

</comment><comment><USER18> Correlation doesn't imply causation. How is that still so hard for some people to grasp? His entire argument is invalid because it's based on that simple fallacy.

The selection process will obviously skew any results in favor of colleges. It's the same as trying to argue that playing for the San Francisco Giants automatically makes you better at baseball. Is that really the case, or did they just do a good job of picking players who were already the best?

</comment><comment><USER19> published in NYT .. who within NYT has vested interests in the college market?</comment>


Jeff Bezos extended an olive branch to Donald Trump but Amazon stock is tanking - <AUTHOR> http://www.recode.net/2016/11/10/13585942/jeff-bezos-donald-trump-congratulations-tweet-simpsons?utm_campaign=www.recode.net&utm_content=entry&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter <comment><USER2> Traders who ditch a strong company like Amazon because of some sort term Bezos vs Trump issues deserve to lose money.

<comment><USER3> Traders see a company at odds with its government as a liability. Traders 'deserve' stability at a price if they so choose.</comment></comment>


How Bolivia became a drug war success story–after ousting Uncle Sam - <AUTHOR> http://fusion.net/story/185398/how-bolivia-became-a-drug-war-success-story-after-ousting-uncle-sam/ <comment><USER2> A major question that isn't covered in the article:

The leaves may be produced in Bolivia legally but used elsewhere illegally. For instance:

How many leaves are smuggled through the Bolivia / Peru border?

If the plants are produced in Bolivia legally, but then smuggled out illegally, who is at fault? How do they know? And does that just move the violence away from Bolivia and into Peru, where the paste is made?

<comment><USER3> "And does that just move the violence away from Bolivia and into Peru, where the paste is made?"

A more accurate way to put this is that the violence is being moved into the industry by the USA wherever the industry happens to be. Bolivia won't play so the USA focuses their violence on the producers and sellers in other countries that will play along with the USA.</comment></comment>


Research suggests wind energy may have serious consequences for the environment - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-10-04/wind-power-isn-t-as-clean-as-we-thought-it-was?srnd=premium <comment><USER2> Early proponents of any new technology usually overestimate the benefits, while established players tend to downplay or even intentionally distort the conversation to reduce the threat to their existing business or political models.

There's no question that everything we do has some impact. It's more important to try to understand that impact relative to alternatives.

For example, concerning ourselves with the temperature increase near wind farms without comparing to the (just local) temperature impact of traditional power plants leaves one with the impression that wind farms must be bad because they raise temps. What is the temperature impact near a coal powerplant?

And while not a direct competitor, we know the regional temperature impact of pavement in cities (like Dallas for example) is extreme. So build more public transport, reducing need for cars which reduces fossil fuel use (which increases temps) and reduces need for roads (which absorb heat all day and radiate it at night, raising average temps).

I'm trying to avoid claiming that these studies may be funded by traditional energy players, but I have strong suspicions.

<comment><USER3> The main problem with wind is material cost. The steel and aluminium do not make themselves and turbines don't maintain themselves either.

The density has known limitations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > This figure implies that meeting current U.S. electricity needs [entirely > from wind alone] would require wind farms to cover fully 12 percent of the > U.S. land area

This seems like an almighty straw man, without even beginning to point out that a wind turbine doesn't preclude other land usage.

<comment><USER5> You can't live close to a wind turbine as large as they are being built today. At least not with sound and shadow distance. Have a look into stories going back 10-15 years into living with the flicker and sounds.

<comment><USER2> We have huge turbines in farmlands in the south of the Netherlands. I assume the farmers get some subsidy, but it seems like a good overlap of land use.

<comment><USER6> Up to 36.000 euro per mill per year actually. Not a bad time to be owning farmland in the Netherlands.

<comment><USER2> Plus it appears that you get to put a logo of your farm up on the pole. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sea based wind farms seem to have 3W/m^2 limit.

Also low _average_ density is not that bad - it means less bigger turbines can be used to extract same energy:

"In the onshore region, with characteristics similar to that of the USA Great Plains, the farm power density is bounded to around 1 W m−2. This is in line with previous studies (Adams and Keith 2013, Miller et al 2015). Despite the relatively low farm power density, the wind farm efficiency remains relatively high under the condition that the turbine spacing remains wide (10.5 D0). Therefore, in these areas it would be more efficient to build one very large wind farm with a wide turbine spacing, instead of several separated smaller wind farms with a more narrow turbine spacing."

[http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa5d86](http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa5d86)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I don't know nearly enough about this but I never really gave it any thought. Does anyone who has expertise in this field know if the increase in continental and local temperatures would cause a meaningful increase in global warming as well?

Everything has to be done in moderation in my opinion. We don't fully understand the costs of a lot of things when done in scale. I've been zealously following wind benchmarks and had a bit of a contrarian view that wind was better than solar but I'm now not so sure.

<comment><USER5> Have a look into microgeneration and verticle wind turbines. That's where wind is strongest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > meeting current U.S. electricity needs alone would require wind farms to > cover fully 12 percent of the U.S. land area.

> low-density wind turbines operating over the windiest one-third of the > continental U.S. to generate enough power to meet current U.S. electricity > demand — a plausible scenario for wind-power use in the late 21st century.

Covering that big a chunk of the continental US with wind turbines is considered plausible?!?!?!

The Eisenhower Interstate System is roughly 48,000 miles long. If we assume that all interstates are about 1/10 of a mile wide (176 yards--a little less that 2 football fields or roughly 25 lanes wide), then the Interstate System is about 4,800 square miles in area.

The US is 3,796,742 square miles in area.

So, the Eisenhower Interstate System is approximately .15% of the total US land area.

And the paper is proposing to cover almost _100 TIMES!_ the land area of the interstate system with wind farms.

My bullshit sensors are going off in a big way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually the places where wind is the strongest, (New Mexico, parts of West Texas, and everything directly above that in middle America) there is significant land space and not much else. Population density is all less than 10 people per sq mile and large chunks 0 people per sq mile. The people who own the ranches there absolutely love wind because it's an additional revenue stream and the local towns are being reinvigorated due to additional revenue from the energy companies and more jobs. We need around 25% from Wind and 3% of America where there's really not much else not even farms works out well.

For solar, the best place in North America is the Mojave Desert which also has wide open space and no population.

<comment><USER9> No human population does not imply no wildlife. Wind and solar farms represent significant intrusions into wildland, that should be studied. Off the top of my head, I can think of a few positives and negatives of desert energy development. But it shouldnt be the same way we treat fossil fuels, that out of sight is out of mind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It doesn't say in the article but do they factor in that it is a redistribution? Wind is waste solar energy as airflow. So once you extract the energy and use it you re-inject the heat elsewhere.

At the moment that is offset by reducing a carbon power plant, but if wind is used to cover power expansion then dont you just end up moving the wind to the heat islands over cities (say)?

<comment><USER11> It says so in the article, but carefully hidden in plain view so that the reader is not likely to be distracted from the sensationalistic first glance message: whenever it talks about warming caused by wind installations it is explicitly qualified as _local_ warming. People with an existing anti wind power bias will conveniently miss that detail.

By the way, the numbers stated seem to be much lower than the differences in local temperature you would get by building a city, planting or harvesting a forest and so on.

<comment><USER12> I was wondering the same: we do terra forming since 10k years, deforest, farm, build cities etc. The effect of those should be an order of magnitude higher than wind installations... Am I wrong here?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Can anyone elaborate on the possibly clean alternative not mentioned in the: Tidal Power

I know the work has still to be done by something so it will affect something else somehow, but what is it?

The speed of the moon?

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

<comment><USER5> Not efficient enough to compete at scale with wind or solar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Link to the original research:

[https://keith.seas.harvard.edu/publications/climatic- impacts...](https://keith.seas.harvard.edu/publications/climatic-impacts-wind- power)

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't think they've connected cause and effect here. Presumably they could look for the same effect in off shore wind farms and that would eliminate nearly all local factors playing a role.

</comment><comment><USER13> There's not enough detail in the article to really judge what's going on but I suppose the local rise of temperature is due to

\- wind flows getting redirected, so no chilling effect from wind. However, this would also mean no warming effect from warm winds, so why is this not net neutral?

\- heat generated through friction (wind on the blades, generator heat), however that would als imply that somewhere else there is less heat generated through friction, so why is this not net neutral either?

<comment><USER16> And the land clearing, concerting, roads and large structures converting sunlight into local heat. Removing vegetation is probably the greatest single increase in local temperatures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm not sure that the research cited supports the editorial position of the article, which I understand to be that wind power is less useful than expected by a consensus of scientists because it causes local warming that will not be quickly offset by carbon savings, and has inadequate energy density (per unit area) to practically provide the entire power supply.

However, as far as I can see the article does not cite any claim by scientists or anyone else that the success conditions for wind power are to replace all other power, or to completely, immediately, or locally, negate climate change. It is not claimed that local warming around wind farms will ever increase considerably beyond 0.5C, while global climate change has been predicted to greatly exceed that amount if not remediated.

Miller and Keith find that policy makers have over estimated the energy density of wind power.[1] The study finding that wind farms cause local warming wasn't linked, but I found it myself, unfortunately pay-walled by the journal.[2] At least we can read the summary, which reflects some statements found in the Bloomberg article:

"Wind's warming can exceed avoided warming from reduced emissions for a century. […] We find that generating today's US electricity demand (0.5 TWe) with wind power would warm Continental US surface temperatures by 0.24°C. […] The warming effect is: small compared with projections of 21st century warming, approximately equivalent to the reduced warming achieved by decarbonizing global electricity generation, and large compared with the reduced warming achieved by decarbonizing US electricity with wind."

Physics Today published an article discussing this study (hopefully after being allowed to read the whole thing, unlike us). It sounds like the local warming effect is more complicated then just a change in mean temperature. The paper finds that the effect is much stronger at night, depends on location, and might be managed by placement, and might be beneficial in certain cases such as reducing the chance of night time frost damaging crops. A 2010 National Academy of Sciences by Roy and Traiteur seems to have similar findings.[4]

I think it's important to evaluate the claims in popular press articles about science findings against the actual cited sources. Research findings tend to be complicated and subtle – the easy stuff is done already! It's easy for journalists mis-characterize, exaggerate, or even contradict the source when things are already hard enough to understand. In the worst cases, people read something like Prevention magazine claiming "Scientists' find coffee cures cancer!" one week, and "Scientists' find coffee causes cancer!" the next week, and then blame scientists for stuff other people said.

[1] [http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aae102/m...](http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aae102/meta)

[2] [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243511...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243511830446X?via%3Dihub)

[3] [https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.1.2018100...](https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.1.20181004a/full/)

[4] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2964241/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2964241/)

</comment><comment><USER5> It's not surprising research is catching up with environmental groups from 10-15 years ago. I started a wind turbine business during FiT rush in UK ten years ago. At that time, John Deere in the US was removing a large wind turbine farm because it impacted on ecology hundreds of miles downwind. We already had studies to show it drastically affected bat and bird colonies who would have fatal lung collapses (explosions) from the air pressure differences created by the huge blades. There was a growing understanding from those in microgeneration (under 50KW) that mass scale adoption would only be possible with small units which are less efficient but also easier to access and fix. This is the successful model in germany. If 8% of UK land is urbanised then we have huge expanse of existing high rises to tap before we should planting these sites on areas of significance (coastal, large open areas)

<comment><USER11> > There was a growing understanding from those in microgeneration (under 50KW) > that mass scale adoption would only be possible with small units which are > less efficient but also easier to access and fix. This is the successful > model in germany.

The successful model in Germany is building 4 MW turbines wherever we can fit them (or wherever "landscape protectors" will allow us to put them).

<comment><USER5> Germany had 1 million microgenerators in 2008. Just because you don't see them...

<comment><USER11> Citation needed, [https://www.wwindea.org/wp- content/uploads/filebase/small_wi...](https://www.wwindea.org/wp- content/uploads/filebase/small_wind_/SWWR2017-SUMMARY.pdf) (an apparently pro- small publication) states the total worldwide number at less than a million in 2015, with just 17000 of those in Germany. The installed total capacity of small wind in Germany is stated at 26 MW, which is equivalent to a modest wind farm of six 4.4 MW turbines.

Oh, and I do see plenty of small wind generators installed, they just never move because they are merely bought as futuristic architectural ornaments, not to make a difference. They probably run until the first time they require maintenance, then the novelty has worn off.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Proliferation of Apple notebooks on college campuses - <AUTHOR> http://www.pizdaus.com/pics/MC3KUw7uCDtL.jpg <comment><USER2> "Think different" my ass.

<comment><USER3> To be honest, that room looks like the town hall on the Apple campus. This could be a picture from there in which case it wouldn't be that ridiculous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's from a journalism school in Arizona, I think. (The original post on a site that was taken down after being dugg, mentioned the school by name.)

<comment><USER5> Seems odd that there are only black Macbooks and no white Macbooks.

<comment><USER6> Yeah and the rest are gigantor Pros.

<comment><USER7> It's called the "educational discount." Or else "Mom and Dad are paying for it."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Today we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the information purification directives...

</comment><comment><USER8> Which college is that?</comment>


My Summer Vacation in North Korea - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@ryannee/my-summer-vacation-in-north-korea-910571c48f76

<comment><USER2> There's something about HN that correlates with having visited the DPRK. I've been, and I've read more comments from people saying the same here than anywhere else.

I might even start a poll, see if we can get some numbers.

</comment><comment><USER3> ...Congratulations on helping fund one of the most evil regimes on the planet?

(I look forward to your post on next summer's vacation, when you will presumably travel to Canada or somewhere to club baby seals.)</comment>


Typesafe Error Handling in Kotlin - <AUTHOR> https://kotlin.christmas/2019/17 <comment><USER2> One of the most use-full things of Rust is to have a clear "conversion" trait:

[https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/convert/trait.From.html](https://doc.rust- lang.org/std/convert/trait.From.html)

This is my #1 thing with rust.

Is a stroke of genius to have a clear API for make conversions.

<comment><USER3> Is there any writeup of the theory behind this? I'm particularly interested in type inference.

<comment><USER4> The RFC for adding `?` to the language might be a good start: [https://rust- lang.github.io/rfcs/0243-trait-based-exception-...](https://rust- lang.github.io/rfcs/0243-trait-based-exception-handling.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The monadic approach to exceptions like it's done here has the downside of having to encode all your business logic in maps and flatmaps. All the intermediary functions will have to return Try. And all the Try values have to combined into one. That type fidding code feels like cruft that doesn't add much value.

And I say that having developed in Scala for years and years.

Of course there's still sometimes when you want processing of other items to proceed, even though this one has failed. And that's where Try is really essential. So that's where we use it only: at the topmost level.

It's only at that top level that we wrap the call in a Try. And that works rather well.

One reason to do it like this is that we want to leverage the design philosophy of Kotlin. And not be writing Scala or Haskell in Kotlin _). And Kotlins philosophy when it comes to exceptions turns out to be: exceptions. Which is apparent in Kotlin coroutines, channels and flows.

_ ) that's also why we try to stay away from Arrow

<comment><USER6> Definitely fair points. I do feel like I'm swimming upstream even when I'm using the built in Result class in Kotlin.

Truth is, I rather be writing Rust, but I need the JVM sometimes. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's worth pointing out that Kotlin's standard library contains a type called `Result` with a slightly different API. Also a function called `runCatching`[1] that uses it.

[1] [https://kotlinlang.org/api/latest/jvm/stdlib/kotlin/run- catc...](https://kotlinlang.org/api/latest/jvm/stdlib/kotlin/run- catching.html#runcatching)

</comment><comment><USER8> What are these .Christmas TLDs? Seeing those crop up and only makes sense at this time of the year right?

<comment><USER9> [https://blogg.bekk.no/introducing-bekk-christmas- ad01660ccad...](https://blogg.bekk.no/introducing-bekk-christmas-ad01660ccadf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Honestly, I prefer to have the option of using checked exceptions, it's often leads to better readability than using Result. This is my main issue with Kotlin.

<comment><USER6> I feel like I'm the only crazy person who thinks checked exceptions are better than unchecked exceptions. I've read all the arguments against them and they just don't resonate with me. "Oh. So you think it's okay that a dependency's method changed to throw a new exception, but you don't want to have to change your code? Sounds super lazy and risky to me..." When your dependency's logic changes, yours probably needs to, as well.

What really drives me nuts is when the same person shits on checked exceptions and then advocates for using a monadic return value. They're completely isomorphic. The only difference is in how it reads.

<comment><USER11> Java is the only language that has checked exceptions AFAIK.

Checked exceptions just lead to interface pollution. You _really_ don't know what type of exception can be thrown by an implementation of a facade when you are defining the facade. And so then you are forced to define a _InterfaceOperationException_ and then force all callers to wrap their exceptions in this type. Even if you use an implementation that is exception- free, you are forced to catch.

Painful and elaborate ceremony for very little gain. Usually exception handling is centralised at a few places in the code. Catching exceptions at these areas and boundaries is the _best_ place instead of littering handler code all over the code base.

Oracle has realised that checked exceptions are a mistake. None of the java functional interfaces declare checked exceptions. If your operation throws a checked exception, it _cannot_ be used as a convenient method reference lambda. It does not _decay_ into a standard functional interface. This alone is an ultra critical-strike against checked exceptions.

If a condition is _so_ important that you need to declare it as a checked exception, it generally indicates it should have been be a return type or your functional granularity is large. And normal types, unlike exception types, are well-suited to generics.

<comment><USER10> Swift does have checked exceptions too (at least by my understanding of the term "checked exception"). In general I think Swift is more thoughtfully and elegantly designed than Kotlin, people usually say that they're very similar but I find Swift more pleasant read and write.

<comment><USER6> Yes and no. In Swift you have to mark if a function throws, but not WHAT the function throws.

The Java-style checked exception haters might see that as the best of all worlds.

I generally agree that Swift is a little nicer than Kotlin. I like the enums better than sealed classes, I like that Swift has value types.

The only think from Kotlin that I miss in Swift is the scoping methods: apply, with, let, also.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm a little confused by something. I wouldn't have expected his/her example code to compile:

      fun divide(dividend: Int, divisor: Int): Try<Int, String> =
          when (divisor) {
              0 -> Try.Err("Cannot divide by zero!")
              else -> Try.Ok(dividend / divisor)
          }

The first branch of `when` is of type `Try<Nothing, String>`, the second branch is `Try<Int, Nothing>`, and the return value is supposed to be `Try<Int, String>`. None of those line up...

How is that possible? Does the compiler do some magic for the `Nothing` type? The definition looks pretty damn simple:

      public class Nothing private constructor()

<comment><USER12> It's not possible in Kotlin to have an instance of Nothing, and the compiler does some magic for the Nothing type, in that it can be converted to any other type in the system (so it's like the opposite of the Any type). This allow code patterns like:

''' val personName = person.name ?: throw IllegalArgumentException("Name required") '''

Where the type of personName is now String, cause if name was null it would throw an exception (and the type of a throw expression is Nothing).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why not just use sealed classes for your given use-case rather than a generic result? If you want to do generic why not go full Either?

<comment><USER14> Maybe the people that realise that are the people who self-select into a language where Result and Either are just implementation details and should be hidden behind F[_] or similar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Ah right another thing copied from swift.

<comment> UK-Al05 It's actually a fairly old method, that's recently gained popularity as functional programming interest increases.

<comment><USER3> I think monadic do comes from Haskell and its ancestors.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: startupfindr - Search Engine over Startups - <AUTHOR> http://startupfindr.com/

<comment><USER2> Just have to clear the US locations from the filters and you can find other startups - the international geocoding isn't so great, though.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks like its only US centered. No trace of European/Australian/Asian startups.</comment>


Sizzle Then Fizzle: Buzzy Titles and Borrowing Digitized Books - <AUTHOR> https://blog.archive.org/2020/05/21/sizzle-then-fizzle-buzzy-titles-and-borrowing-digitized-books/ <comment><USER2> I think a fair question to ask is: "How many of the people borrowing these "buzzy" titles" would actually go out and buy a copy if they couldn't borrow it?"

Given the article's claim that very few are actually reading it when they can borrow it for free, the answer is likely very few.

People who wish to cast the issue as one of lost revenue would like to think that every one of those "borrowers" in the queue represents a lost sale. The NEL is in a position to provide some data that doesn't directly refute that claim, but certainly suggests that it's wildly overblown.

</comment><comment><USER3> Just a reminder ... the Internet Archive is pretending it's a library, but unlike real libraries, it's lending out copies it doesn't actually own or have a license to lend.

Previously, if it owned 5 copies of a book, it would lend out only 5 digital copies at a time, under a system called Controlled Digital Lending: [https://controlleddigitallending.org](https://controlleddigitallending.org)

Now, its National Emergency program does away with that. It might only own 5 copies of a book, but it will lend out an unlimited number of digital copies at a time.

It justifies this by saying that our nation's public libraries are closed right now, so it is filling the void.

But the Internet Archive doesn't have the authority to treat those copies sitting in public libraries as its own, for the purpose of digitally lending them out.

I know there are a lot of ways in which copyright laws and digital lending licenses have their own problems, and so there are many who think the Internet Archive is just giving copyright holders and publishers their comeuppance. But I think it's fair to say that they're doing it in a way that runs afoul of the law.

<comment><USER4> This is your opinion. The Archive's opinion is that they're operating within the guidelines of fair use. It has not been tested in court yet.

Based on your profile it appears you're an author; you benefit from the vast overreach that is today's copyright statute.

<comment><USER3> Correct, I'm an author. I have four nonfiction books published between 2013 and 2020.

For what it's worth, I agree with you about the absurd length of copyright protections. I am in favor of reducing the duration of copyright to a more reasonable length -- perhaps going back to the 1909 Act, which established a 28-year term that can be renewed for another 28-year term.

But I hardly think any reasonable person would say that copyright duration should be 6 years or less. Yet the Internet Archive is lending out digital copies of my 2014 book with no wait lists. It likely purchased or acquired one physical copy of that book but is distributing an unlimited number of digital copies. In every practical way, that is indistinguishable from piracy.

This isn't necessarily putting a dent in my wallet. My guess is that relatively few people who would access my book via the Internet Archive would otherwise go out and buy it with their own money.

But copyright gives me the ability to determine who gets to publish and distribute my creative works. And I have not given the Internet Archive permission to do so, nor does the "fair use" exception give them the ability to lend out copies they don't own during national emergencies.

<comment><USER4> You are free to opt out here [1].

> Authors who do not want their books in the National Emergency Library should > send an email to firstname.lastname@example.com with "National Emergency Library Removal > Request" as the subject line. Please include each URL of the book or books > you would like to have removed. Please allow up to 72 hours for processing > as we are a small team.

I am a reasonable person, and believe that even 28 years is too long. Perhaps 10 years, tops, for both patents and copyright. I am not a domain expert though, and therefore would defer to someone who is, such as Lawrence Lessig [2].

[1] [https://help.archive.org/hc/en- us/articles/360042654251-Nati...](https://help.archive.org/hc/en- us/articles/360042654251-National-Emergency-Library- FAQs#h_eb32bd5e-40c1-450d-8035-77e1d54a6a2b)

[2] [https://hls.harvard.edu/faculty/directory/10519/Lessig](https://hls.harvard.edu/faculty/directory/10519/Lessig)

<comment><USER3> I'm aware of the opt-out option, but I don't think that makes the National Emergency Library program any more palatable.

There are plenty of other piracy sites out there that are distributing digital copies of my books illegally, and if any of them were to offer an opt-out option, I would feel the same way. It's still piracy.

<comment><USER4> I believe we fundamentally disagree about the extent to which copyright should provide for rights and controls for those who generate content. I appreciate the conversation regardless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For those of you interested in donating to archive.org, you should be aware that they recently bought out Bop Street record store in Seattle: [https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/music/a-happy- end...](https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/music/a-happy-ending-for- seattles-bop-street-records-a-nonprofit-buys-up-the-entire-collection/)

While they might have gotten a good six figure price, that store is known by fellow record dealers to be largely garbage LPs. It is more accumulation than collection. I wouldn't trust them with donation money for whatever flight of fancy they have next.

<comment><USER6> Does the judgement of record dealers of what a good collection is match what an archive wants? I.e. what does define a "garbage LP"?

<comment><USER2> For example: any album by Chicago which you can find several copies of in any used record store in the country?</comment></comment></comment>


The North American Video Game Crash of 1983 - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_video_game_crash_of_1983 <comment><AUTHOR> What's interesting to note is that it was the video game industry that had lobbied in the US and Canada (and Japan) for a smaller $1 coin closer to the size of a quarter. Which we still don't have in widespread circulation:

"The American game industry lobbied in Washington, D.C. for a smaller $1 coin, closer to the size of a quarter, arguing that inflation (which had reduced the quarter's spending power by a third in the early 1980s) was making it difficult to prosper.[19] During the 1970s, the dollar coin in use was the Eisenhower Dollar, a large coin impractical for vending machines. The Susan B. Anthony Dollar was introduced in 1979, and its size fit the video game manufacturers' demands, but it was a failure with the general public. Ironically, the new coin's similarity to the quarter was one of the most common complaints. In Canada, existing dollar bills were removed from circulation and replaced with coins in 1987."</comment>