Biotech in the Garage - <AUTHOR> http://sethbannon.com/biotech-in-the-garage <comment><USER2> Yes there are "bio-hacker spaces" and yes, you can outsource a lot of the more delicate methods, but we won't see software-level start-ups for biotech for several decades for three reasons.

1\. Biology usually doesn't work. Even the simplest wet-lab reactions take very exacting conditions to work. This requires precise, expensive, equipment and endless optimization of protocols. The result is a tremendous drain on resources to get what usually amounts to a negative result

2\. Bio is inherently perishable. You can't let a start-up project linger as you chip away at it for 3 years. Reagents expire, lab-cultures will mutate, equipment rusts/breakdowns/gets contaminated for stupid unforeseeable reasons.

3\. There is a stupidly large legal burden if you ever want to commercialize. At every step of the process the USDA, EPA, FDA, and patent office have rules and regulations to slow you down. It might take decades to take a product from the lab to the store self, if it gets there at all.

Bio isn't computing. As a geneticist, I've seen it a hundred times where some start-up know-it-all walks into the biotech field and thinks its "just like software". It isn't, and never will be.

<comment><USER3> Wait what?

> Biology usually doesn't work.

No. This is not true. Biology usually works, it's that the most interesting academic things tend to be on the bleeding edge, and that's where things are not robust.

Of course, I'm not saying that there isn't debugging to be done, but it's not THAT hard. I'm doing something relatively difficult _literally in my garage_ right now (growing a strain with a doubling time of about 6 hours). I can reproducibly make the anticancer compound in one of my strains and am working on debugging and getting a second strain running. ([https://benchling.com/ityonemo/f/cHjBceoz-project- marilyn/et...](https://benchling.com/ityonemo/f/cHjBceoz-project-marilyn/etr- etHejg9x-culture-test-2/edit))

> Even the simplest wet-lab reactions take very exacting conditions to work.

Not true. For example I have done over 300 gibson assembly reactions and have taught an intern to do this, he made 50 constructs in _2 months_ , with time left over for him to biochemically test 25 of them. My procedure was literally, take 1 microlitre of each DNA (don't even bother measuring), and throw on top an equal volume of gibson mix, and then go. Worked nearly every time.

It is quite true that equipment requires a high capital expenditure and it's hard to start up, but those problems are able to be overcome. (e.g. [http://blog.indysci.org/starting-a-lab-under- budget/](http://blog.indysci.org/starting-a-lab-under-budget/)) For example, I have bacterial growth incubator that was being thrown out by herbalife when they upgraded their microbiological QC lab.

<comment><USER4> > it's not THAT hard. I'm doing something relatively difficult literally in my > garage right now

That's great for your cell-based experiments; and many of the greatest biology discoveries were made with this toolset in the first half of the 20th century.

But what about in vivo experiments with mice and rats? What about X-ray crystallography? What about high throughput screening and counterscreening in the range of millions done _before_ a compound is even considered to be a drug candidate?

This is hard stuff, and it's necessary stuff. Exacting conditions are absolutely essential to achieve the highest chance of reproducibility. Even so, it has been famously reported that somewhere around 11% of published findings can be reproduced independently[0].

[0] [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v483/n7391/full/483531a...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v483/n7391/full/483531a.html)

<comment><USER3> A five armed mouse study for an anticancer drug runs in the 10-60k range (I can't give my exact quote at the moment). This is inexpensive.

The expensive stuff is when you go into humans.

<comment><USER4> I guess if you're outsourcing it? In my time in academia I knew labs that burned through $25,000 per _month_ in mouse cage costs.

I can only guess what "five arms" you are referring to, but toxicity studies and efficacy studies often require different animals. Not just mice but transgenic mice, or nude mice with xenografts, etc. This has to be pricey to get the statistical power you need for a drug candidate.

I've also heard that the FDA likes to see more than one animal, so either rats or monkeys may be dosed as well. It all adds up.

<comment><USER3> Well no one is going to get a drug approved for the FDA exclusively from the garage, but there is a reasonable amount of initial stage research that you could conceivably do from your garage. My project is to push that out to the 'xenograft' stage, which in my opinion is close to the limit, if not the limit. Full disclosure, I'm doing the chemistry in a rented chemistry lab space because I don't want to suffocate myself with chloroform.

Five arms, refers to an experiment with three dosages, a null control and a positive control.

Yes, you can outsource things, which is exactly what I'm doing (it's cheaper _and_ more ethical), but also the model has become really good where you don't have to sack an animal for each time point. That cuts down on costs by a lot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > the cost of founding a biotech startup is dropping precipitously. If current > trends continue, biotech companies will soon be founded in garages, funded > off their founders' credit cards.

> A smart software developer can build and launch a web or mobile app and get > paying customers for under $2,000.

Trivial marginal cost to start a company is a disruptive triumph for sure, financially supporting the founders basic human needs is now the primary obstacle. And of course he that hath wife and children have given hostages to great fortune.

Having no full time employment responsibilities on your horizon is the greatest boost in cognitive and creative power I have ever experienced. I made a mad dash to get a hardware product built and funded before my small savings stash was depleted, but missed the mark.

I had to go back and get a job so that the mission could continue. Going back to solving other peoples problems feels like a lobotomy.

The distraction of full time employment is immense and soul crushing. I was living in a house of science and beautiful innovation, and I hit a brick wall. But of course to paraphrase Russel Brand, god and a lack of liquidity is my enemy, just obstacles to clamber over and damage to route around.

Luckily my product is something people want and get excited about and now that I've proven it works seed funding is now on the way, but goddamn what a bummer running out of runway is.

When the world wakes up and humans get over their miserly aversion to sharing, and realize a guaranteed basic minimum income is in their own enlightened self-interest we will really cross the threshold and reach the innovation singularity.

<comment><USER6> Stuff like this is what makes one ponder citizen wage as something other than a flight of fancy.

<comment><USER7> I think culturally, and perhaps it's generational as a Millennial but I doubt that[1], I think culturally we have to ask ourselves why people work? I don't have enough information to state this factually, hopefully if someone does they'll chime in but maybe the reasons we wake up and go to work are changing.

If we are moving towards a society where we look more for meaning than for money we can very easily come to the conclusion that basic income wouldn't break the economy, but bolster it. Instead of doing menial labor to pay bills we'd try harder to find our way as artists, engineers and other specialized trades that offer fulfillment. Certainly some people will use their basic income to avoid work, but what is the percentage of that? I don't know many people who embrace boredom. Most people want to do something of value, and many people need to do something of value.

We are either approaching a reality we as humans have always wanted or shifting our societies desires depending on historical information(that I don't have).

Inching closer and closer to post-scarcity will be very interesting indeed.

[1]I don't think Millennial's are all that special even if we think we are.

<comment><USER3> Because working ensures that you're doing something that is useful to someone else.

"Most people want to do something of value."

A universal basic income is kind of this wierd bourgeois selfish projection wrapped in this veneer of being altruistic: To be 'freed to do whatever one prefers' is really saying "I want to do what I want, regardless of whether or not it's socially beneficial".

The wierd thing about free markets is that although one can be selfish and money-grubbing, even the most mendacious and stingy person must do _something_ in the service of another to accrue capital.

<comment><USER8> > _The wierd thing about free markets is that although one can be selfish and > money-grubbing, even the most mendacious and stingy person must do something > in the service of another to accrue capital._

And the failure mode of that is people ending up doing things in service on someone else that do a net damage to society, while other people do something in service of someone else to undo the work of the first group. Not to mention people stuck in positive feedback loops that waste increasing amount of resources on cancelling each other out. See marketing for a good example.

Just because something is useful to someone, doesn't mean it should be done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The incentives here have been changing in favor of progress and the breaking down of the life science academic priesthood for years, but this piece omits a very important part of the landscape, which is regulation and the present state of law.

People in the diybio community are justifiably very cautious about what they say and do, as there is there very real threat of getting thrown in jail for no real reason other than they have a lab. The war on drugs on one hand and hysteria about terrorism on the other have done a great deal to make it risky to do home life science work. Beyond that regulation makes it hard to impossible to do near anything useful with animal tissues on a garage hacking basis, and if you're not improving the state of medicine, what's the point, really? Might as well build a cat webapp if your horizon is limited to glowing plants.

So there is a lot of tension here between what is possible and what is permitted. That has been an issue in early stage research for decades now, and has cost uncounted lives and years of progress. This is just the stage in which that becomes more apparent as more people could, in theory, participate.

<comment><USER8> > _and if you 're not improving the state of medicine, what's the point, > really?_

There are tons of applications not related to medicine in any way. Replace "bio" with "nano" (the former being a particular implementation of the latter) to see them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> From someone who works in the biotech industry, this is utter rubbish. Most good ideas in biopharma are wrong and don't work. You don't get to really test them out in a meaningful way until you get into human clinical trials. It costs 10's to 100's of millions of dollars to get there. No matter what you do in your garage, it's going to take lots of capitol and hard work before there's a glimmer of hope of a sale-able product... and even then it's just a glimmer. Comparing biotech to IT is just stupid, despite a few superficial similarities.

<comment><USER11> With a formal education in biology, I've always thought the industry was much like the computer industry a few decades ago. Jobs & Gates arguably took something that was limited to corporations and Universities, and brought it to the masses. It's a matter of time before there's a startup that revolutionizes something from their garage. Just think where we were before PCR was around, imagine what's next? With open source tools, OpenWetWare, etc, it's lowering the barriers to entry. Who says it's restricted to pharma and human clinical trials? There's plenty of room for innovation in many other areas (GMOs, synthetic bio, methods, tools).

Plus, Bill Gates (loosely) agrees. [0]

[0]: [http://ideas.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/30/heres-to-you- biolo...](http://ideas.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/30/heres-to-you-biology- hackers/)

<comment><USER4> I don't think you're the first person to have this vision, and most all bio- entrepreneurs I've spoken too felt this way at some point. Right now there's quite a gulf between the technology we have and the masses' utility for it.

While I have never gotten use out of OpenWetWare's wiki of loosely edited protocols, I could see companies with the nonprofit mindset of Addgene paving the way for that visionary future.

<comment><USER4> But actually, the more I think about it, I enjoy your analogy. The missing tools for sure in "DIYbio" are consumer-oriented lab technologies. Something like a 3D printer for budding biologists to gather themselves around...but nothing really comes to mind. Even a homebrew qPCR machine or sequencing platform leaves out many cruicial components like incubators, ultracentrifuges, etc. Can't even get started on mass spectrometers, flow cytometers or other "Core" technologies that not even every lab can own.

To stretch the analogy more, though, I don't think there is a "Homebrew Biotech Club" in the same groovy, sharing sense than that which Jobs and Gates had way back when.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think equating biotech with medicine is an error, made here both by the article and by commenters. Yes, it's true that most ideas in biopharma don't work, they require superexpensive trials to figure out which are worth anything, that you have tons of expensive tests to pass and licenses to acquire before anyone lets you give your product to people.

But biology is not just medicine. Life itself is an advanced nanotechnology that was not build by us, and that we don't control _yet_. Replace "biotech" with "nanotech" and suddenly, whole other fields of potential applications appear, many of which may not (yet) require the amount of testing and care you need when dealing with patients.

Obvious areas include manufacturing and chemistry. We already genetically modify organisms to produce chemicals we need. There are people working on reprogramming bacteria and viruses to fabricate nanostructures for better batteries and solar panels. Recently on iGEM a team of students designed bacteria that can extract rare earth metals from the soil. There are many other potential fields - grown textiles, biofilters, materials that regenerate (potentially cutting down infrastructure maintenance costs), computational matter...

I wouldn't discard the DIYBio movement just like that. There are many areas in which it could shine.

</comment><comment><USER12> What the author is describing is two separate trends.

One trend relates to the rapidly dropping cost of genetic studies -- this leads to easier and cheaper identification of human mutations, novel microbial species, comparative genomics, etc.

The other trend is for outsourcing of specific biological experiments to what used to be called "contract research organizations" (CROs) and now are "startups". The "silicon valley company" "Mousera" referred to seems to be one of these re-branded CROs. This particular trend has been encouraged by the flight of experienced scientists from the rapidly contracting amount of basic research performed in Big Pharma (check the resumes of those involved).

While this combination makes it easier for a "virtual company" to get off the ground, it does not really equate to the sort of startup that the software industry is familiar with -- it might be more similar to hardware startups (though that's not my field, so feel free to correct.)

As to costs, the cost of genetics will continue to drop, but the outsourcing of experiments will not render them any cheaper than before (most likely), as the neo-CROs also want to profit.

<comment><USER13> there's a reason these companies are startups not CRO's, because they are applying technology to solve problems and that means they can grow fast. Outsourcing costs are falling fast for the same reasons that hardware startups costs are falling: software eating the world. In this case a convergence of automation/internet of things technologies with lab technologies means lower cost experiments, more leverage from researchers (code once and anyone can reuse your code) etc.

<comment><USER12> You're correct that specific technologies can drive a small company (Heptares in the UK [0] -- springs to mind). Mostly, though they are business-to- business, rather than the typical view of startups.

[0][http://www.heptares.com/](http://www.heptares.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Biohackers were among the first hackers. In thatched stables and open fields. Thousands of years ago. (Although it's true the potential scope has grown considerably...)

</comment><comment><USER15> It's great that the tools and services the article mentions are out there but I think the author misses the wide gulf there is between limits of what can be done in a garage or shared lab and the resources, time and capital to do things like synthetic biology and drug discovery.

It would be interesting to see where the DIY biotech movement could apply the biotech research tools and methods to where people are already doing home "biohacking". Could home brewers and fermenters gain insight into what's going on inside their jars? Maybe small scale farmers would be interested in quantifying the bacteria in their soil. Larger brewers are already using PCR to check for spoilers in their beer, could this be turned in to BaaS (Biology as a Service) and expanded, or trickled down to the home brewer?

<comment><USER4> BaaS, hah! The rest of the world calls 'em CROs :)

In theory, one could develop a CRO for DIY biologists, but I just wonder how many of them there actually are. We've made comments downpage about releasing biology to the masses like Jobs and Gates did with their PCs and operating systems...but it really feels like something is missing. The passion of the Homebrew Computing Club? The public's aversion to science, or maybe its short attention span for failed experiments?

<comment><USER15> Yeah, BaaS :-), but what CRO would take on those type of jobs when they can't charge what they do for clinical trials or drug discovery.

I'm not sure how much interest there is either and I agree that something is missing. Maybe affordable kits similar to how PCs became more accessible to the masses as IC prices came down. Maybe bringing modern scientific equipment in to school biology classes to expand public knowledge beyond test tubes and bunsen burners.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A negative area to avoid in the discussion would be the computing analogy that having computing as a hobby is a complete waste of time because a brand new CPU fab line costs in the billions and uses all kinds of non-garage compatible toxic chemicals, or the standard automotive analogy that no one can or should be a gearhead because so few living rooms have space for a supercomputer cluster to do finite element analysis and fluid dynamics simulations.

I predict long term that bio will be much like electronics or ham radio where the population drops by maybe half at each tier or level, but there sure are a lot of people at lower levels of the hobby...</comment>


Show HN: Shortkits – Keyboard Shortcuts for your favorite websites - <AUTHOR> http://shortkits.com <comment><USER2> I think site-specific keyboard shortcuts are great. Do you have plans to release the source code? My chrome extension Saka Key [1] provides generic keyboard shortcuts, but my vision is to eventually integrate with other extensions like yours and Streamkeys [2].

1\. [https://github.com/lusakasa/saka-key](https://github.com/lusakasa/saka- key)

2\. [https://www.streamkeys.com](https://www.streamkeys.com)</comment>


The future won't bring new Radioheads. Let's get used to it. - <AUTHOR> http://immutableinscrutable.tumblr.com/post/26352263455/radiohead-wouldnt-exist-without-early-major-label

<comment><USER2> What is the point of this article? That we're not living in the 90s anymore?

Yes, times have changed since Radiohead first made it big and perhaps the author is right that they couldn't have made it today without label funding. But why? Internet downloads? Spotify type services? Increased cost of touring? Or TV talent shows diluting the talent pool? Or perhaps record labels just thinking they can make loads more money from kids with generic disposable pop stars instead of original music?

Who or what is to blame for this? I don't know and to save everyone some time, it doesn't look like the Author does either.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think his point is that the labels needed to risk a significant sum of money, hundreds of thousands of dollars, on a band that is not obviously commercial.

This investment had to happen for a period of years, and surely many bands that received that kind of investment ultimately failed. Labels acted like angel investors, not just in the 90s, but in the 60s, 70s, and 80s as well.

Without that investment structure, it is very hard to get anything interesting off the ground. Pop music can be profitable fairly rapidly, but more interesting music, whether it is The Doors or Pink Floyd or Radiohead, take a longer ramp up and more risk.

<comment><USER2> Yes I agree with you, and the Author but I'm still no clearer as to why the Author thinks the Labels have changed their behavior. I get a feeling he's suggesting Piracy and free-music services are to blame, as these tone of posts often do. But there are many other factors that have probably influenced labels that he doesn't cover. Changing tastes for one.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think he believes it is very simple: They no longer make the profits from selling musical recordings that they used to. -why- that happened may be a topic for debate, but fundamentally, without potential revenue, they can't invest.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How 'Minority Report' Trapped Us in a World of Bad Interfaces - <AUTHOR> https://theawl.com/how-minority-report-trapped-us-in-a-world-of-bad-interfaces-d8d2d2af41da#.rwihipewn <comment><USER2> The linked article by Bret Victor on the future of computer interfaces is worth reading: [http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesi...](http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign/)

Of course, Pictures Under Glass interfaces have advantages too. Touching a screen has become a familiar way to interact with technology: a more tactile interface might be harder to learn. To make a screen-based interface, you only need to draw a 2D picture and respond to 2D touches, not design a 3D object which can be manipulated in space. You can buy touch panels off the shelf instead of having to manufacture expensive custom 3D parts.

But these are advantages of easiness and cheapness, not quality. If designers and engineers can put in the time to make a physical interface and users can put in the time to learn it, you can improve quite a bit on Pictures Under Glass. Think about how terrible it would be to replace a car's steering wheel with a touch screen, for example.

So that's really what the article is saying: we should think of touch screens as the cheap, easy option, not the exciting, futuristic one. Our futuristic starship control panel should be a custom-manufactured physical interface instead of a cheap glass panel.

<comment><USER3> Well, so the thing that I think people don't realize about gestural interfaces is that gestures are hard to do and tiring to do all day. They are also very low bandwidth. Typing is hard to beat in terms of bandwidth / strain. But there _are_ things that gesturing is better at, and I like that that article focuses on that. I think the mistake is to try to get a catchall. That's why we have both a keyboard and a touchpad / mouse. Each does a different kind of task. Touchscreen typing, on the other hand, is a step back. Game console typing is like 20 steps back.

<comment><USER4> >Typing is hard to beat in terms of bandwidth / strain

We type only because we can't talk to computers (although it starts changing). Voice control would easily beat typing.

<comment><USER5> Phonetic chording keyboards are faster than typical speech, they just take a lot of training to learn. A regular keyboard with extensive custom shortcuts for common words is also potentially faster than speech, but not nearly as ergonomically friendly as a chording keyboard.

Keyboards are also _much_ better than speech for making very precise inputs. You'll be hard-pressed to invent a speech interface which outdoes vim (for instance) for efficiency at general text editing tasks, even if you have a general AI interpreting the speech commands. Even just for straight typing computer code, mathematical formulae, musical notes, poetry with precise constraints on punctuation & spelling & layout, or e.g. controlling a video game or CAD program, a keyboard is much more effective than speech. A keyboard input can also have real-time response to partial input, like autocomplete, etc.

Perhaps most importantly, typing on a keyboard doesn't distract/leak the content of your typing to everyone in earshot.

<comment><USER4> With proper AI editing by voice will look different -- probably more like talking to a smart assistant rather than "cut here paste here". Keyboards and mouses will probably remain for some particular tasks (e.g. math formulas or CAD design) although it won't be the mainstream input method -- more like a helper device.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Crazy that this guy criticizes the Minority Report interfaces and then makes the terrible claim that interfaces ought to make use of humans' ability to grip. Not all humans have strong grips, particularly the elderly. There's a reason newer buildings use lever handles over doorknobs.

My hope would be that the interfaces of the future would be more accessible to the disabled, not less.

<comment><USER7> It seems pretty obvious that accessibility is always going to require extra thought. Some people are paralyzed from the neck down, but we still have keyboards.

In any case, why do you think that using gripping as a UI action implies that you'd need a strong grip to use it?

<comment><USER6> Sure, it's always going to require extra thought, but why create problems when you don't need to? There's this entire train of reasoning that seems to be that a rich interface is one that places as many demands as possible on the human body. That thinking will inevitably lead to problems of this type. If grip isn't necessary, why make it necessary? I could have made a number of objections of this type to the article, but this seems the most obvious and understandable one.

<comment><USER8> _why create problems when you don 't need to?_

I don't think it's fair to make non-disabled individuals use a less productive interface, just as it's not fair to prevent disabled individuals from using the interface of their choice.

<comment><USER9> How is gripping more productive? I'm not disabled, but much prefer grippless handles because they are easier/simpler to use.

<comment><USER8> I was speaking in more general terms, but I'll provide some examples.

I grip my mouse to use its side buttons to navigate forward/backward in a web browser. Human hands are generally good at holding things, and flat touchscreens/trackpads aren't very holdable. Power tools, steering wheels, gear shifts, volume knobs -- all examples of things that are gripped.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't know if Minority Report started the trend, but there is one thing that I have really grown tired of in movies with futuristic tech: transparent screens.

I realize that they let the director film the actor without something blocking the camera but they just seem like a lazy way to be "futuristic."

<comment><USER11> As a side note what on earth are these?

[https://s-media-cache- ak0.pinimg.com/736x/bd/17/68/bd1768e3a...](https://s-media-cache- ak0.pinimg.com/736x/bd/17/68/bd1768e3a8b5620d72841075d93d5909.jpg)

And why are they in so many sci-fi graphical UIs?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> More productive is to try and understand why Minority Report has successfully captured the imagination of so many, persisted over a decade, spawned an entire genre of syfy interface trope that we see in virtually every film having anything to do with future, beyond film, well into games and now commercial interface development.

The assertion that the gesture interface is some kind of virulent ear-worm, dismisses what may be the most interesting thing, the fact that it has captured the imagination of so many. Why?

<comment><USER13> I don't think it's hard to imagine why the gestural interface survives _in the movies_. It's very visual. The main actor is moving and full of action and may even be literally jumping around. It's as cinematic as the Hollywood OS representation of hacking is.

Meanwhile, out here in the real world, I'm a real computer programmer and my real interface is even _more_ boring looking than a standard Windows install. Nobody's going to be mining my UI for Hollywood ideas anytime soon, despite the fact that I, on occasion, actually hack.

It's the same reason cars explode when they go over cliffs, bullets spark when they hit things, and all those other tropes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> A few days ago I tried out an HTC Vive VR device with Google's Tilt Brush app. It's basically MS Paint in 3D. You hold both Vive controllers and have a brush in one hand and your palette in the other.

I was amazed how intuitive the controller UI was. Some of the controls are on the back of your hand, but it was incredible how natural it was to pick up and use comfortably. I've never been all that fond of the Minority Report floating screen UIs, but other 3D UIs can feel very natural in the right context.

</comment><comment><USER15> > If Jeff Han had designed a keyless entry system for a car, it would've > involved dragging a secret gesture on the car's window instead of the car > automatically unlocking when you open the handle if you have the key in your > pocket.

So basically: "Good design is invisible"

<comment><USER16> Both examples are invisible. But one works with the flow of getting in your car and the other requires arcane gestures.

<comment><USER17> That's not what "invisible" means in this context. A better name might be "unnoticed". It's interface sufficiently natural as not to add to the things you have to think about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It was a good interface for predicting future crimes of bad interface design.

</comment><comment><USER19> Now I want to be in position to order a GUI, preferably for some sort of notarization or document-drafting app.

I'll explain that I'm actually thinking of a movie for the UI, and I want it to be as exactly like that as possible; I'm sure they get this request really often, and it won't be anything new to them; and I'll explain that I even brought some scenes from the movie to show them _exactly_ what I wanted. And then I'll be grudgingly persuaded to pop in the relevant DVD...

And the scenes will be from a pirate movie, with an old-timey European pirate/bandit/mercenary chief writing with a quill on parchment while wearing a coat with ruffles and lace.

Only quills will work as pointing devices. To save your work, you sprinkle some sand on the tablet and blow it off. The tablet comes with a breathalyzer attachment, which checks for enough rum in the air to prove that you're a legit pirate but not so much rum that you're signing contracts while drunk. Voice input must be in Ebonics, which is pretty much what the Cavaliers spoke in the English Civil War. Voice output is in a thick Devonshire burr (the classic pirate accent) that makes you think that the app's probably half drunk.

Now, if only someone's eccentric enough to do it...

<comment><USER20> Ha, if you're ever in the area, you seem like you'd appreciate 826 Valencia's pirate supply store in the Mission district of SF.

[http://826valencia.org/store/](http://826valencia.org/store/)

<comment><USER19> I'll keep it in mind; it looks well worth a visit!

I'm also toying with the idea of getting some reenactor-grade pirate clothing: long-wearing like nobody's business, and relatively easy to care for. I've even found places that sell those leather cavalry boots with turned-down tops! For an extravagant price, of course...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is also what comes to mind when comparing the giant touchscreen in a Tesla Model S to the haptic buttons and knobs in most other premium brands. Especially when driving, touchscreens just seem an inferior way to interact with the systems.

<comment><USER22> Driving, yes absolutely, because you're constantly about 6 feet away from hitting something.

For flying, touch screens are a great idea, since you have a lot of controls, and attention to where exactly you're going is less critical, since you're usually >1000 ft from the nearest solid object. Also, aircraft usually have autopilot (and often a copilot).

I guess with Tesla's autopilot, it might make the touch screen a bit more usable? (at least while driving on a highway I guess).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Cost is another driver here; touchscreens are significantly cheaper than buttons, and can be used to do more things -- at the cost of being awful for typing on.

</comment><comment><USER23> I want a 2-knob "mouse" like the one I had on my etch-a-sketch 30 years ago! One for X, one for Y...

[ 3 minutes of googling later... ]

Of course it's been done: [https://mitxela.com/projects/etch_mouse](https://mitxela.com/projects/etch_mouse)

<comment><USER24> I'm curious; why does this appeal to you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I haven't been a big fan of many of the UI changes in the past few years, but I realized the other day that these changes have actually resulted in _DEATHS_.

[http://www.detroitnews.com/story/obituaries/2016/06/20/obit-...](http://www.detroitnews.com/story/obituaries/2016/06/20/obit- anton-yelchin/86130184/)

Cause you know, having the shift level position indicate what gear its in, just isn't "cool"...

</comment><comment><USER26> what happened to "Oblong" technologies (the guys who actually did the minority report UI/UX and turned it into a conference room app/system)

<comment><USER27> They morphed their high end concept stuff into smart meeting room and team collaboration tool platform called Mezzanine (- see [http://www.oblong.com/](http://www.oblong.com/)) which is sold into large enterprise class customers e.g IBM, SAP, Accenture, NASA, GE etc.

<comment><USER28> I kept imagining the kind of BS the actors are talking about the fake graphics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Here's a nicely realistic breakdown of the physical affordances involved in useful interfaces in VR.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id86HeV- Vb8&t=5m34s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id86HeV-Vb8&t=5m34s)

</comment><comment><USER30> Some people blame Xerox Parc for locking the world into the office metaphor. Some widely icons like floppy disks and phonsets represent obselete objects.

The ancient Greeks used rooms of a house to organize information. Just think we could of ended up with that instead.

<comment><USER31> Microsoft tried that in 1995. It was an interface called Microsoft Bob.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> T9 Texting RIP.

<comment><USER33> I am getting rid of my smartphone after it breaks and downgrading to a flip phone.

I am actually looking forward to being able to type with one hand again.

<comment><USER23> With the thumb of the same hand that's holding the phone? Welcome to RSI hell!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Until we are able to dynamically reconfigure our devices to offer context- aware controls that we can grab, touchscreens seem to be a preferable alternative to buttons. You don't want your desk to become the Apollo CM dashboard.

<comment><USER34> >context aware controls

you mean key-bindings?A full keyboard already has ~100 keys.

<comment><USER28> A keyboard cannot morph into a joystick.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> If you're interested in this kind of thing, you might like the book "Make It So" by Nathan Shedroff and Christopher Noessel, which discusses the interfaces used in movies.

</comment><comment><USER36> Don't pretend you don't want a 3d printer with a Tony Stark design UI :)

</comment><comment><USER37> And despite his acute taste for good interfaces, he offers no solution to the "trap".

<comment><USER38> It's perfectly legitimate to criticize something without offering an alternative solution.

<comment><USER39> Is it? What value does criticism bring if there's nothing actionable in the criticism?

<comment><USER40> To inspire someone to work on it?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A year without caffeine - <AUTHOR> http://bryanalexander.org/2013/01/04/a-year-without-caffeine/ <comment><USER2> Interesting start, but not much to talk about when this is just a setup for a "To be continued" blog post.

"To be continued" is, IMO, a pretty terrible thing to do on blog posts... Why not just hold off on publishing until it is, you know, continued?

<comment><USER3> I think it would be fine if the HN post also said Part 1. I don't have a huge problem with "to be continued", but in a post just called "A year without caffeine" you expect something about a year without caffeine.

<comment><USER4> I was hoping to get it all done in one post, but the thing just kept growing. The mad extent of my habit wasn't something I recalled all at once. Part 2 is cooking up now. Maybe when it's done I'll paste 'em together.

<comment><USER5> And how do I keep up with your blog? Should I subscribe to RSS, reload the page a few times in the next days or look if it made to HN?

You see, the problem isn't about getting the information quickly. It's not stock information. It's about getting it complete. If I'm reading, I'm allocating time for a precise matter; and when I don't get the result, my time was probably lost.

<comment><USER4> RSS, if you're interested in what I normally think about: education, technology, the future. Otherwise, you can use the contact form to send me your address. I'll ping you when part 2 goes live.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I recently cut way back on caffeine.

I realized I was waking up tired and drinking coffee through the day, but then I wouldn't go to bed till late because I had drank too much coffee. And that would ensure I wouldn't get enough sleep and would wake up tired the next morning to start chugging coffee all over again.

I wasn't sure the caffeine was even helping any more because I had such a tolerance for it. And I just don't think I should need an energy boost every day.

So I switched over to black tea, and I've been gradually switching over to caffeine free herb teas.

I've found two benefits. First, I don't get caffeine headaches when I can't get coffee. And when I really do need some extra energy, I can drink a coffee and actually get an energy boost.

</comment><comment><USER4> I started off writing the whole story as a single post, georgemcbay, but it ended up being far longer than I expected. Part 2 is coming up soon.

</comment><comment><USER7> I had to go a few years without caffeine as well.

I had always drank a great deal of coffee. I joke that my grandfather would put it in my spill-proof cups as a toddler. At this point, I don't know if that's true or not, but even when I was 6 or so, I'd order coffee at breakfast. My household was definitely one that went through multiple pots on a daily basis.

When I started playing guitar in 5th grade, I really looked up to my teacher and we bonded over drinking espresso drinks from a small bookstore/coffee shop down the street which is sadly no longer there. I got my first espresso machine for Christmas in 6th or 7th grade. Fast forward to me working in startups, and I was at betahouse in Cambridge making dozens of shots a day with our Silva espresso machine trying to learn to get them perfect- drinking all the failures to force myself to learn.

I was probably drinking at least 12 caffeinated drinks per day. I had terrible headaches without caffeine. Having it didn't help anything much, but it was a life-long habit.

Then, when I was working at gamerDNA in Cambridge, I had just left a meeting at Andala (where I had an espresso naturally) headed back to the office to provide moral support for a code-deploy night (I wasn't coding at this point much myself).

And while crossing Mass Ave my heart suddenly started beating fast- really fast. I went to the office and kept sitting down to check my pulse. It seemed wrong. 180bpm? I must be counting in triple. I had a few others in the office try the same. It was weird. I didn't feel right. I went homeward, stopping at the neighbor's place next door. After an hour of this I had them take me to the hospital. My heart had been beating at 180-200bpm for over an hour it seemed. My counts weren't wrong.

It appeared that I had triggered some heart arrhythmia. It stopped on its own a few hours later, but the long term diagnosis was to avoid all caffeine and stimulants. The doctors were utterly shocked when they found out how many drinks I had that day (around 14 so far).

The next week was terrible, between beta-blockers they put me on and no caffeine.

I missed caffeine. But having even a small amount would send me into panic attacks and arrhythmias (neither was fun). Finally, about a year or so ago I had a heart abalation which fixed my issue there completely. No medicine needed. And no ban on caffeine.

Now I'm back to drinking coffee- albiet not as much as before (now 2-3 drinks/day is totally enough). I've also been able to get on adderall which is a magic wonder-drug for me. If I had this in college and high school, I would have been 10x more productive and a straight A student.

<comment><USER8> I quit coffee 6 weeks ago. The first two working days were hilarious, as I actually had trouble maintaining the focus to procrastinate.

The headaches lasted for a bit more than a week. I tried all household remedies and only peppermint tea seemed to help although it might also be the excess fluids. I tried to avoid taking painkillers (Ibuprofen worked like a charm) but in retrospect I would probably accept a week or so of Ibuprofen/Aspirin usage.

All in all it took about two week for my body to feel balanced again. After that a few really interesting things happened though, namely:

* I could no longer get away with no breakfast or morning routine, whereas before I would just drink a coffee and be ready to walk out the door.

* It seemed that I used caffeine as an external motivator which kept me 'just doing stuff' and actually had to relearn how to choose goals and focus on them.

* I had to accept that my mental acuity was just a bit lower; even though it's now constant throughout the day.

* It now feels like my mental acuity is now linked to how physically healthy I am (as I've heard said many times), whereas that didn't seem to be the case all that much before.

All in all I realized that caffeine is very much like a self-inflicted Ballmer Peak [1] and if you really try to keep your blood-caffeine percentage optimal like me and the OP did, you'll destroy yourself in the long term.

[1] <http://xkcd.com/323/>

<comment><USER9> As a tip, I was doing some international travel and knew I had to reduce my caffeine intake or else be forced into caffeine withdrawal.

I was drinking 10-12 cups of tea per day. If I stopped, the headaches would be incredible.

So three months before the trip, I just reduced my caffeine intake by 1 cup per week. The day I left for the trip, I could easily manage on 1 cup per day and the days I never had a cup of tea were fine.

Quitting anything cold turkey is tough, it's easy to reduce the dose at a rate that it's practically unnoticeable. Easier to stay abstinent if you don't have withdrawal symptoms pushing you back to your old habits.

<comment><USER10> This is the only way I was able to quit smoking. At its height it was about a pack a day (18-20). Every few days I'd reduce that daily number by one. Eventually it got to the point where a pack would last long enough that the last few cigarettes were stale and I'd have to throw the pack out. It doesn't take too long at that pace to just quit altogether.

<comment><USER9> Glad to hear it worked for you as well.

I think the reason why this works is: (1) you still get to partake in your favorite habit (2) the habit changes so slowly you don't really perceive it changing (3) you aren't reducing the dosage so quickly that you lose any effect [i.e. when I went from 10 cups to 9 cups, I still got a boost from the caffeine] (4) by the time you get down to a reasonable dose [i.e. 1 or 2 cups] it feels like something you could carry on forever (5) you can further reduce doses by inserting holidays in between [i.e. one cup/cig every other day].

The nice part about this is that you can go as slow as you want. If you're smoking 1 pack a day (25 cigs), you can drop 1 cig each week [hardly noticeable] and it will take you almost a full year, but you'll get there eventually.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It sounds like you have adult ADD and self-medicate.

<comment><USER8> What exactly are you basing that on? Not snarky, I'm truly interested since I fit the OP's description fairly well; luckily including having quit in December 2012.

<comment><USER11> I'm basing it solely on the amounts of caffeine he was taking. If he feels he needs that much caffeine to be productive it is a very large hint.

If you are concerned I suggest the book "Delivered from distraction." [http://www.amazon.com/Delivered-Distraction-Getting- Attentio...](http://www.amazon.com/Delivered-Distraction-Getting-Attention- Disorder/dp/0345442318/)

<comment><USER12> I thought you might be basing it on the fact that he couldn't even finish his blog post.

<comment><USER4> Actually, I've never had a sign of ADD. I don't lose things, have decent impulse control, can pay attention for long periods of time, don't job-hop. Heck, I homestead and adore the films of Andrei Tarkovsky. :)

<comment> X-Istence I don't lose things, have good impulse control, can pay attention for long periods of time when something is interesting, and I don't job-hop ... but I sure as hell have ADD and take Aderall for it.

It has solved so many problems for me. I can focus on menial tasks that I used to dislike with a passion, I can work for hours on end without getting distracted in the open plan office, I no longer have issues with not finishing projects (although one problem I do have is working on too many at once ...) and because of the aderall I no longer feel the obsessive need to speed while driving (which is actually a sign of ADD).

Just because you don't have the ones that most people consider to be associated with ADD doesn't mean you don't have ADD. I used to use caffeine as well to be able to work and focus, when I stopped that my work suffered but I was sick and tired of the side effects from caffeine. Aderall gave me my sanity back, and work ethic. I am having a much easier time getting stuff done and not procrastinating.

<comment><USER4> OK, I can check with family doc. But I'm not seeing any of the ADD or ADHD symptoms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Patient to the eye doctor: "Whenever I drink coffee, I have this sharp, excruciating pain." "Try to remember to remove the spoon from the cup before drinking."

</comment><comment><USER14> I kind of want to flippantly ask "Can someone shoot me an email when part 2 comes out?" but I suspect that would be viewed as snark and not accomplish my real goal. So I will ask if anyone has any suggestions for how I can follow up with this? (or on this? Not sure what the right phrasing is.)

Thanks.

<comment><USER15> Check his blog again in a week, or tomorrow. His last post was five days ago, so this post probably took at most five days to write. However, he obviously is interested in telling the story, and likely knows what he wants to say in part 2, so I'd be surprised if it took more than a day or two for him to write that part out. I'm very interested in part two as well.

<comment><USER14> Crap. I thought of that already. I was hoping for something my brain damaged memory didn't have to work for.

But thank you and have an upvote.

<comment><USER4> I'm shooting for a weekend followup, Mz. If you like, use the contact form to send me an email address, and I'll ping you when it's done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm actually doing the opposite. Up until a year ago I didn't drink coffee or any other caffeinated beverages. In fact, I really didn't understand why people liked coffee as the taste never appealed to me. Nonetheless I started off trying mochas from Starbucks in the afternoon at work and noticed a huge boost in productivity. I felt energized and started to cruise through projects. Before I started drinking coffee I would get so tired that I would have to take naps during the day (and this is on 8-9 hours of sleep). Now it's a reason to get up in the morning.

I've switched over to normal coffee and I'm still a pretty moderate drinker (5-6 cups a week). I don't drink soda either, so it's my only source of caffeine generally. I think it's fine in moderation and there are definitely some health benefits as well.

<comment> X-Istence Have you been to a doctor and checked to see if you have ADD? I have ADD and I used to use caffeine and it had the same sort of effects as the aderall that I got prescribed. I stopped taking caffeine because of all the side effects I noticed.

<comment><USER16> I haven't, but I wouldn't be surprised if I did.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The second I opened the web page, I said "nice new design Mr.Stallman!" then I suddenly noticed it's not him.

<comment><USER4> I get comparisons to rabbis more often. And to the Taliban. Makes TSA interested in me.

<comment><USER17> No man, you are like stallman for sure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I stopped drinking coffee about 3 months ago, until then I had undergone different phases with sometimes 2-3 cups/day (recent years) to 20-25 cups/day (last few months at university). I stopped because I simply couldn't stand the "routine" element anymore, I felt there was probably no real purpose, just a habit behind my coffee drinking.

I did expect to sleep more, be more tired during the day or even become less choleric and more approachable, but none of these actually happened. Needless to say, I do not miss coffee at all. ;-)

</comment><comment><USER19> Used to drink 2 redbulls and a ton of coffee everyday. Soy Lattes were my fav. Towards the end of my caffine run I was getting a shot of espresso put into my coffee.

Anyway, about 5 months ago I got a huge pain in my abdomen, fast forward a few weeks I had a mild stroke says my doctor. I can't eat anything acidic now or else my body goes into weird fits. Seeing doctors etc. It sucks :P

I miss coffee so much, but being off it so long I realized it's not as good of a pick me up as I used to think. Naps are superior to coffee.

</comment><comment><USER20> I've cut caffeine out when I stopped drinking soft drinks. Its great. After being used to the caffeine kick of soft drinks, you develop a tolerance for it and it becomes necessary to perform tasks [without feeling like crap]. Now the most caffeine I get is from very few and far between softdrinks, or through unsweetened tea [which is a small amount, and interacts with your body differently]. It feels a hell of a lot better to be off the stuff. [Also, I never liked coffee]

</comment><comment><USER4> Here's part 2: [http://bryanalexander.org/2013/01/06/a-year-without- caffeine...](http://bryanalexander.org/2013/01/06/a-year-without-caffeine- part-2/)

</comment><comment><USER21> Cmon man, why the hell would you split something like this up???

</comment><comment> X-Istence I've been without caffeine for almost two years now. I too was a complete addict, I would drink a two liter bottle of Mountain Dew upon waking up.

Since I have been without caffeine I have actually found it easier to stay awake, stay up longer working on problems and I don't have the same downs where I am craving caffeine or the shakes. I'm calmer, more collected and my colleagues have to deal with less "abuse" from me.

So far being with caffeine has been a huge win for me personally.

<comment><USER22> If the Mountain Dew was not diet, I'd expect the sugar to make a huge impact on whether you could stay awake.

<comment> X-Istence The Mountain Dew was mostly diet, with some of the throwback stuff thrown in at random.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm impressed people can drink that much coffee in a day; period. If I had that much coffee, I'd be a nervous wreck! Probably would have a flat out panic attack.

Too much caffeine started giving me anxiety. So I cut back to only 1 large cup of in the morning, and that's it.

Seems like a good balance. I never have coffee after 10am, and if I do, I can't sleep. On Sundays, I take a break and don't have any coffee at all. I sleep much better when I give my body a break.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm so glad I never got into coffee. I stopped drinking soda as well in high school. I'd hate to be dependent on a caffeine just to get through my daily life.

</comment><comment><USER25> I stopped taking caffeine about four years ago, and it was a very good decision. After a few days of withdrawal symptoms, I became more focused, more alert, would sleep better, would wake better, would be more awake even when getting 'too little' sleep, and be way more productive.

I guess I should write a blog post.

<comment><USER10> No, write half of one.

<comment><USER26> The _second_ half of one, right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I expect the followup description of the 'cold-turkey' period to be harrowing. Quitting from even a much smaller daily intake can prompt a several-day withdrawal period of strong headaches (and other symptoms).

In my experience, it's best to taper off for a week (or several) before eliminating caffeine entirely.

</comment><comment><USER28> Strange he thinks Mountain Dew was highly caffeinated. Most "normal" soft drinks have half or less caffeine than a cup of coffee.

<http://www.straylight.org/dave/caffeine/beverage.html>

<comment><USER29> You have to factor in the serving sizes.

Cup of coffee = 8oz

Can of Soft Drink = 12oz

Bottle = 16oz

<comment><USER3> I don't get what you're saying. The link does figure in serving sizes. Sure, a bottle is _slightly_ more, but that's negligible.

It would take nearly 36 oz (a liter) of mountain dew to equal a single cup of regular coffee. If you're drinking that much Dew, you have bigger problems than caffeine. Let's start with: your diet is now about 25% sugar by calories.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> > "Either I hospitalize you tomorrow, or you go cold turkey on caffeine. > Immediately."

You do realize how _wrong_ was what your doc did, right? You never just cut- off and addict from his substance like this! Yeah, for caffeine you can do it without risk killing the poor addict, and probably with most other weak stimulants too, with depression and occasionally getting dizzy because of low blood pressure, but... I imagine your work productivity dropped to a record low and this will last for at least a week! And gradually reducing the dose would have prevented this and other inconveniences...

<comment><USER8> His doctor got the patient to quit. One week of lost productivity is a low price to pay for successfully turning someone's life around.

<comment><USER30> Why on earth should quitting be the desired outcome here?! If he's more productive on coffee than off it, he should just reduce the quantity to something that doesn't kill him... Just take care of the medical problem that gave him the "gut pain", check your cardiovascular health, and considering these two, adjust the caffeine intake to highest maintainable dose... _Wish you happy sipping!_

EDIT: Ok, I read about the ulcers now. Yep, listen to the doc then, at least until they heal, and then keep antiacid pills handy :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> As with many other supplements, the devil's in the dosage.

</comment><comment><USER32> What? That post says nothing about going without caffiene, that's a pretty bad headline.

Anyway, sounds like he was self-medicating.

</comment><comment><USER29> Anyone know what the pains in the gut were about?

<comment><USER4> Three ulcers, for one. That's in part 2.

<comment><USER15> That's what I suspected when I read your symptoms. Thank you for sharing your story, by the way -- I don't consume a lot of caffeinne, but I'd always wondered whether it would have bad effects. Your description of your doctor's facial expressions were very entertaining, as well. :)

<comment><USER4> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The most amusing thing about coffee for me are the articles which pop now and then in the media alternating between "Scientists discover that coffee is bad, because X" and "Scientist discover that coffee is good, because Y". Althought lately I only saw a positive news. For me coffee is just a hot drink, it does not affect energy levels at all. Neither do energy drinks, for some reason. This can be unfortunate, because I have no means to fight sleepnes if there is a need for that :(

</comment><comment><USER34> Caffeine made him the Übermensch. I should try it sometime.</comment>


Is Groupon the new Jesus Startup? - <AUTHOR> http://davetroy.com/posts/is-groupon-the-new-jesus-startup

<comment><USER2> I believe Groupon doesn't have a solid foundation. They have a brand of course, but they don't have a product. They're playing the role of the middle man, in my opinion. A long time ago, more like 30 years ago, there were these companies called Blue Chip Stamp, & S&H Green Stamps , it's very similar to Groupon. These stamp companies allowed customers to get stamps instead of change, and with stamps they could collect and _get deals_ on products. Of course the concept is not the same, but everyone at the time thought those trading stamp companies were invincible, and they've got a monopoly going on and hypergrowth. It seemed everyone was using it. When's the last time you heard about S&H Green Stamps on the news?

<comment><USER3> _They're playing the role of the middle man, in my opinion_

Much of the world is middlemen, and it is often a fairly profitable place to be for companies. (A large multinational advertising firm with 35% margins that employs quite a few PhDs comes to mind.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Groupon is one of those stories, when in a year or two or five, one side or the other is going to be going "I told you so!"

I agree with a lot of the author's points... especially about customer fatigue.

<comment><USER5> _I believe there's a really nice, long term, but ultimately very boring business in there that should pay a nice dividend._

This sounds about right. In the end, I suspect Groupon will be just one of a zillion different companies offering the same business model with varying levels of success in local markets all over the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is Groupon the new Kristen Stewart startup?

creative license for a catchy title doesn't mean the title ought to be a bit of a muddle. does Jesus mean Groupon died but will come back? does it mean Groupon has divine authority? does it mean it'll be betrayed? "Jesus startup" is not a coherent term and aids little in the pretty sensible analysis that followed.

[although now that I think about it, I'd read an article that went way too far with it. "Is Groupon the new 'Lindsey Lohan after the alcohol but before the cocaine' startup?" -- that could only go well.]

<comment><USER7> I thought he was talking about Groupon's imminent focus on the burgeoning Hispanic market...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Gap, eBay, Home Depot: all companies that still deliver rather consistent value to customers (if not to investors looking for a quick flip). A startup doesn't have to be new and shiny to turn a profit.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm living in a different universe when it comes to determining what success is.

<comment><USER9> Yeah I found that jarring too. I thought for sure that his counter examples supporting his would be, you know, actual failures.

It doesn't sound like he's really arguing that Groupon isn't here to stay or is not going to be successful, he just is saying its going to lose its sex appeal and have to temper its aggressive discounting. Did anyone think otherwise?</comment></comment>


Twitter purges accounts, and conservatives cry foul - <AUTHOR> https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/21/twitter-purges-accounts-conservatives-357028 <comment><USER2> Why Twitter (or any social media, Reddt, FB, HN, Snap, etc) needs to be considered a source of truth or honestly is beyond me. It's no different than listening to a stranger in real life.

<comment><USER3> They should probably reduce the amount of spam. It makes for a better experience and uses less server space... However, I don't believe they do it near well enough to be considered "fair" especially because they do it mostly manually and the people doing it are partial in some direction.

<comment><USER4> It's definitely not about the "server space". The cost of server space is infinitesimal.

At least on Facebook, if you have a business, you pay for increased intention. The more of your followers who are fake, you're paying for useless views.

Why would anyone want fake followers except to boost their own ego? Unless you're an "influencer" and getting paid based on your follower count?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why do conservatives keep complaining about sites like Twitter, Facebook, etc? Every other group that feels like they are underrepresented in the media and on the internet seem to be able to start their own community. Looking at the popularity of Fox News, I could see there would be a lot of money catering to conservatives.

Heck, _I_ would be willing to start a "conservative Twitter" if I thought I could get the funding and the uptake and I'm not conservative.

It's like the atheist who became rich selling Bible apps.

<comment><USER5> As someone who was shadow banned, I left twitter, youtube, and facebook. The few times I expressed my opinion in a peaceful way, got called probably every name you can think of, and then saw my twitter account suspended.

I was told by twitter support I was engaging in "targeted harassment", asked for proof, did not hear back from support. The twee they referred to is a reply to someone wishing me to die from terminal disease, to which I responded "Bless your heart", and apparently that person reported me for that.

After one month of being shadow banned, which for some reason spilled to youtube and facebook, I closed all accounts.

I can understand why conservatives feel that way. They are the only group getting things like this thrown at them, and I am an independent, who happened to disagree on calls to censor one side over the other, seen first hand what that gets you into.

I have seen reports of gab.ai being popular and truly for free speech, but did not use them, lost interest in social media altogether, and to be honest, my productivity went up after that. Maybe others have different experiences, but that was my experience.

<comment><USER4> While this post was fine. I've looked at your few other posts here on HN. HN specifically discourages snarky uninformitive posts.

HN has every right to have community standards. A post such as "Another socialist utopia collapsing? Shocked, shocked I tell you." doesn't add anything to the conversation.

If you look at some of my recent posts where I argue against the government interfering in tech, I'm definitely not pro big government by any means. So I'm not commenting on your opinion just your tone.

I've seen some of my pro-capitalist posts go back and forth between downvotes and upvotes, but I would like to think that I had reasonable arguments that added to the discussion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hey, I paid $5 greenbacks for those followers. #libtards

<comment><USER7> Could you please read [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and not comment like this here?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Woah woah woah I've been warned by dang for politics on hackernews. Now it's ok for this article?

Ha ha I'm "calling foul" ;)</comment>


Docker in Your Data: Data Services as Microservices - <AUTHOR> http://www.cohodata.com/blog/2015/04/09/docker-data-data-services-microservices/

<comment><USER2> It's the future of 'converged' systems. Nice work!

</comment><comment><USER3> awesome</comment>


Engine Yard Co-Founder leaves / big news end of month - <AUTHOR> http://twitter.com/ezmobius <comment><USER2> After reading lots of useful nginx/ruby/rails stuff for years on Ezra's blog, I met him at merb camp a few years ago - a cool and interesting guy -- I wish him well!

<comment><USER3> thanks Mark

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This could easily be read that EY was acquired. Not many people quit their job and announce they're buying a house unless there is a liquidity event in their personal timeline.

<comment><USER5> It being almost exactly 4 years in makes it seem a lot more likely that he's fully vested and is now looking at doing something new.

I personally think some mix of time-based and milestone-based vesting would make sense for founders. Basically, you get some of your equity for reaching product market fit on various metrics, some for profitability, and some for scaling. A lot of startup founders would move on after reaching one of those milestones. If the company is doing very well, but you just don't want to be in the "scaling" role, you could accept longer vesting of the remaining stock in a different capacity, maybe one where you can work on another project full- time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The news would likely be about Ezra, and not Engine Yard.

He no doubt has a confidentiality provision as a part of his employment agreement, not to mention in the separation agreement I'm sure they had him sign. Even without the legal risk, it'd just be poor form to talk about EY's future activities.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> so everyone wants to know: Is it VMWare?

<comment><USER7> He's moving to Portland [1]; VMWare does not have any offices in the state of Oregon, so that does not seem likely.

[1]: <http://twitter.com/ezmobius/status/20515487977>

<comment><USER8> Seems like a lot of hackers moving to Portland lately!

<comment><USER9> It's a great city, and very affordable.

<comment><USER10> Quite livable too - you can get around with a bike or public transport (or a car too, it's easier to find parking than in SF).

And: Portland has Powell's Books.

The problem is the weather: from October to as late as July, there is an awful lot of gray and rain. Not exciting, thunder storm rain, but steady, drizzly rain.

If you can handle that, it is indeed a great place.

<comment><USER11> "And: Portland has Powell's Books."

Good point, that's all I would need to tell my wife to move (she's studying to be a librarian ;p)

Nic

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you ever need a job in Portland Ezra, let me know :)

</comment><comment><USER13> my bet on next step is opscode.

<comment><USER14> his "PHAT gig" may be an anagram for path(.com)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is anyone familiar with the Asimov estate? - <AUTHOR> I run a small press focused on science fiction, and I'd like to start publishing some popular science texts as well. I really loved reading "The World of Carbon" by Isaac Asimov when I was younger -- it's a fantastic book on organic chemistry. It's been out of print for many decades, but it will be a while until it's in the public domain (published around 1960). I'd like to reprint the book with annotations, but the firm managing the literary portion of the Asimov estate (William Morris Endeavor) won't even acknowledge my queries about publishing rights. Does anyone here have any advice for me? If you don't have advice but are interested in this project I'd appreciate it if you could increase visibility of this post. Thanks! <comment><USER2> Looks like the original publisher (a company called Abelard Schuman Inc) is owned by Harper Collins. Maybe you could consider reaching out out to them?

[https://norman.hrc.utexas.edu/Watch/fob_search_results_next....](https://norman.hrc.utexas.edu/Watch/fob_search_results_next.cfm?FOBFirmName=A&FOBNote=&locSTARTROW=11)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I've been trying to find an appropriate person to contact over at Harper Collins, but don't have any contacts over there. I'll definitely try and go through their front office reception if I can't find a more direct contact, but they're a pretty massive organization.

<comment><USER3> For all the criticism LinkedIn receives here, this is the kind of situation where it shines. If you have a well-developed LI network, there's a good chance you can search up somebody at Harper-Collins there, find that they're a 2nd or 3rd degree connection, and get at least a weak sort of "warm intro". Best case, you might get a very powerful warm intro from somebody they know well.

Here's another thing you can do... search LinkedIn for people who _previously_ worked at Harper Collins, and cold email a few of them and say "Hey, I see you used to work at HC, I'm trying to work on a deal with them, could I pick your brain for a few minutes". Quite a few people will likely happily agree to a brief phone call / video chat, to help you out. Talk to a couple of such people and there's a good chance one of them will be able to point you in the right direction, and maybe even give you a warm introduction to the person you need to talk to.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I hadn't considered chatting with a former HarperCollins employee, that's a good idea. I'm looking through my 2nd connections on LinkedIn now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> FWIW, I've been an avid reader of the short stories Joe has curated with his press. I think he's got a high quality product and offers all of them for free (or pay). I look forward to other ages he may branch out to.

He also ran a successful kickstarter this year to deliver a hard bound anthology of the presidiums digital only works. I bought one because I've been freeloading by reading the free versions on his website. I suspect many of the other Kickstarter backers were in a similar situation. Thanks Joe!

<comment><AUTHOR> I really appreciate your kind words, and thank you for backing the hardcover anthology! Getting the stories out there is a lot of work, and comments like yours provide significant motivation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You can enquire with the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. They keep a list of estate contacts for deceased members. Email: firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I got a contact from them a while back. I know who administers the rights over at William Morris Endeavor, they just won't respond to me, so I'm trying other avenues to get their attention.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> He had a beloved daughter, Robyn Asimov. Here's an article written by her back in 2004 regarding "I, Robot": [https://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/ASIMOV- LEGACY-I...](https://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/ASIMOV-LEGACY-IS- SAFE-2739073.php)

</comment><comment><USER7> Good luck. I would love to buy it if you get the rights. I really enjoyed Asimov on Numbers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I haven't yet read "Asimov on Numbers", but I just bought a used copy, I appreciate the recommendation. And I don't have an email list yet specifically for this project, but if I get this book off the ground I'll definitely be sending an email to the list that you can join on the bottom of this page: [http://compellingsciencefiction.com/](http://compellingsciencefiction.com/). In any case, I'll post again on HN if anything comes of this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Have you tried seeing if you're connected to anyone there through LinkedIn?

<comment><AUTHOR> I did a brief LinkedIn search, but I think that's the most promising avenue at this point, and I'm digging deeper.

<comment><USER9> Related: I can tell you that the publishing industry is very active on Twitter. Search for the usual hashtags and you'll find editors who may be able to help field questions!</comment></comment></comment>


Valve greenlights sale of fan-made Half-Life game - <AUTHOR> http://gamasutra.com/view/news/263645/Valve_greenlights_sale_of_fanmade_HalfLife_game.php <comment><USER2> It's really nice to see a game company do this. I don't think any other game company besides Valve would do this. This is part of the reason that Valve has the trust of the gamer community in Steam that no other game studio has managed to build.

I'm the most casual of gamer, but do appreciate these types of efforts... I've even kicked in for the humble indie bundles before they jumped the shark.</comment>


Ninety Five Percent of Carbanak Malware Exhibits Stealthy or Evasive Behaviors - <AUTHOR> http://labs.lastline.com/ninety-five-percent-of-carbanak-malware-exhibits-stealthy-or-evasive-behaviors

<comment><USER2> Nice to read some actual technical details on one of the biggest hacks to date.

</comment><comment><USER3> cool insights into the bank robbing malware that took $1B in a year

</comment><comment><USER4> This is awesome!</comment>


How we used Twitter ads to generate word-of-mouth hype - <AUTHOR> http://blog.keen.io/post/37141043100/how-we-used-twitter-ads-to-generate-word-of-mouth-hype <comment><USER2> Did this actually translate to people using your product or service?

You can pay people in india and china to click your link 1,000,000 times, but that means nothing if you have 0 conversions at the end of the day.

While I DO think the ad was clever, and people would have looked into you due to curiosity, I doubt the general populace is interested in an analytics as a backend platform.

While you've made a compelling argument that twitter ads can generate hype, you have not really shown whether that hype amounts to anything of value.

<comment><USER3> I was wondering if someone was going to ask that :)

We got a bunch of new accounts created, several times more than we would get in a normal day (though not a huge amount).

The percentage of these twitter visitors to our site that created accounts was really low. Like you said, the average curious twitter person is not in the market for analytics infrastructure.

Something like a technical blog post has a much higher conversion rate, since it attracts more technical folks interested in that specific thing. But it is also much more costly (in terms of time) to produce.

We're learning as we go with this marketing stuff, but seems like more hits on the site is always a good thing. There's always some unquantifiable amount of "value" you get from building brand awareness.

<comment><USER2> also, how would you say it compares to CPC ads via google?

adwords kw tool says that there's low competition for 'analytics backend'

it'd be interesting to know how twitter ads compare to more 'known' networks like adsense as far as ultimately increasing your user base.

<comment><USER3> We've just started trying out adwords and have a bunch of different phrases. Analytics backend wasn't one of them, so I just added it. Thanks for the tip!

Looks like avg CPC for adwords is $0.58, but we've only gotten a few clicks so far and we have a low max price set. Not much of a sample size.

The 6.4 cents per click for the twitter stuff is a CRAZY CHEAP price. Though it does have lower conversion, it might come out competitively when we calculate price per signup.

<comment><USER2> interesting, i didn't realize twitter was so cheap. once you have more data, it might make for an interesting blog post (hint, hint).

<comment><USER3> :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> saul colt is amazing! he told us about how he used a cardboard banana stand (a la arrested development) as a conference booth and gave out free bananas to market one for one of his companies.

</comment><comment><USER4> I guess this blog post was one of those 100 ideas? (not trying to be cheeky; you seem to be doing great, and keen.io looks great)

<comment><USER3> hehe. this particular post wasn't planned, since we didn't know that the twitter thing was going to be successful.

however, we have an overall mindset that sharing our learnings on our blog is a good idea since we are interested in working with other startups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> And now, with a front page HN post, that effective hype has probably more than doubled!

<comment><USER3> True! I also tweeted @saulcolt about the post and he really liked it! Then he retweeted it. He has over 9k followers; not bad :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Did you get much / any negative sentiment?

<comment><USER3> The only negative tweet (which was't even negative) was:

"@keen_io Don't worry, I don't click on link bait. Tell me what you do if you want your product and not just name get my attention."

He was friendly. We tweeted back an forth and turns out even though he didn't like the ad style, he still went to our site!! :)

"@keen_io I typed it. Curiosity got the best of me. Good luck converting, you're on my shortlist. I was just thinking of analytics today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Good work, sir!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Just a small hack, but it took like 30 minutes :)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Anybody outsource their startup? - <AUTHOR> So here's the deal:
I'm a consultant. One of my large customers is having a problem with X. So I wrote out the database specs and a few screens around how to fix X. The customer is interested in trying out my program on a few users.
Now I don't have bandwidth to both finish the program and hand-hold the users AND continue consulting with this customer. Needless to say, in the customer's eyes the consulting part is what they want. In my eyes I'd rather be working on this small start-up opportunity. If I leave the consulting part, I'll lose my first customer as my start-up.
It just occurred to me that since my data model, my DAL, and my screen framework is complete, I could hire out the rest of the coding. After all, I could pay somebody to work full-time on the project. Even if they weren't as effective a coder as I was, there would always be sombody on the other end of the phone for the customers (in addition to having me personally on-site from time to time)
Anybody else do something like this? I know as hackers it's best to be close to the solution, but isn't there a point where you can hand off things like bug fixes and trivial data entry screens to somebody with more bandwidth?
Interested in your opinion.
And BTW -- anybody with C#, ASP.NET, SQL Server, and Telerik experience who wants in on the action is welcome to respond. <comment><USER2> I'm doing it now. It's a little like arbitrage. I hired someone on Rent a Coder to keep my project moving while I finish a consulting contract.

The key is finding someone who's good. I have some tricks for that on Rent a Coder:

1 - Spend some time building a private invite list of coders who have something similar in their work history. Pick only people with a 9-10 rating, and 10+ projects. Make sure at least couple of those projects are decent-size. Give preference to similar time zones unless you work either early morning or night hours (like I do).

2 - Invite your coder-list to a private auction, and don't worry about the price of the bids much. Instead give it to the guy who asks the most questions.

3 - Have well defined specs (as you have), and create unit tests or test stub names that are required to pass for the project to be considered "complete" and put this in the requirements.

4 - Outsource discrete chunks.

If you've got a great coder, #3 is less important, but some people have low attention to detail and try to turn the project over ASAP. So they'll lob something over the wall that doesn't work fully, and you lose time investigating and complaining about each item--they make you drag it out of them. I make automating the required tests part of the project, and then I spend less time verifying their work. Call it test-driven outsourcing.

I've found that outsourcing a project takes anywhere from 10-30% of the time doing it myself would have, but it's still a win.

<comment><USER3> I too am doing this now, though it is still too early to evaluate.

I deeply agree with 2 - prefer people who ask a lot of questions. In my case for some reason this is always Russians, while the bids I've gotten from Indian companies without exception:

1\. Assure me that they can do my project with excellent quality and proceed to list a bunch of portfolio projects that have nothing to do with what I am doing.

2\. Name a price without a single question asked about the requirements.

3\. Are represented by someone with zero technical knowledge who hands off any request for details to tech people. It then turns out they have no idea what I want and need lots of further details (nothing wrong with that, but how the hell did you name a price in the first place then?).

Indian outsourcing companies seem really top-heavy in the layers department. As a technical person I want to deal with developers directly.

<comment><USER2> I agree with you strongly. When I build my coder lists, I actually only add individuals, to help avoid those pointless bids.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've done just that and it's worked spectacularly for me. If you have a good job, don't drop it for your startup -- outsource the components instead.

<comment><AUTHOR> How did you find the people?

<comment><USER4> Rent A Coder (www.rentacoder.com) and I also went through university student web pages and cold emailed people. That didn't work quite as well, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> oDesk works well for this and they have great PM tools baked in. Stay away from firms, only hire freelancers, be quick to fire and quick to giving raises to good developers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Never heard of it.

Anybody else try oDesk?

I wonder how it compares to rent-a-coder?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have alway's done that- the 'not prone to misdirection' type's of tasks I always outsource.

It worked so well I have started recommending my partner-in-outsourcing to other startups with incredible results...

not only is it more convenient- it just makes good business sense.

let me know if I can help anyone..(firstname.lastname@example.com)

</comment><comment><USER7> Of course, outsource if it makes sense. Don't drop the ball though, manage it. 80/20 rule still applies, take full advantage of it.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think the #1 rule for outsourcing is making sure that you can sue the pants off the person if they screw you. This means you need to stick to programmers in U.S.

And yes you will pay more, but you'll be surprised how much less it is compared to what you expected. And yes rentacoder is a good site, because you can set where to get bids from.

Other sites you can list in the description that you will only work with U.S. based people, and you'll still get 50 people from India offering you their services.

<comment><USER2> Do you find it profitable to sue people over projects?

If a lawsuit over a project would be substantial enough to be a credible threat and justify the legal expense, I would argue you shouldn't be outsourcing whatever it is at all--it's too critical if you're in the smaller end of the business world. If you use rentacoder, I think the risk is on your head, and the agreement is clear--they don't get paid if they fail--I don't think you can sue the coder successfully, but maybe I'm wrong.

If you're saying you will get better results with a US coder, that may be true for other reasons (greater loyalty, common culture and language, fear you'll drive across country and find them).

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the advice guys. I've put the job up on both oDesk and RentACoder. Perhaps it will be useful to report back and tell everybody how it went? I'm really wary about trusting anybody else with "my" baby, but at some point I think it makes sense to offload non-value-added things. I really appreciate the feedback.</comment>