My weekend project: accounting.js, tiny JS library for money/currency formatting - <AUTHOR> http://josscrowcroft.github.com/accounting.js/

<comment><USER2> Nice project. Check also some of the i18n classes in Google's Closure package (<http://code.google.com/closure/library/>), for more comprehensive routines and support for almost any currency.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sweet, thanks for the link - I'll read through it and see if I can improve or expand the library.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think it'd also be useful if you included an enumeration of the common currency symbols. For example, accounting.DOLLAR, accounting.EURO, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, that could work actually - I've purposefully left everything to do with symbols (apart from the standard dollar sign) up to the developer, to avoid bloat, but I can see a use case for the most common ones (along with default formatting for said symbols)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thanks, for me it makes sense to use the smallest unit available as the main unit, i.e. cents not dollars / pence not pounds.

</comment><comment><USER5> What are you using for minifying the javascript?

<comment><AUTHOR> YUI - via <http://refresh-sf.com/yui/> when I'm in a hurry.

Why, did you find errors, or room for improvement?

<comment><USER5> Just curious. I'm not really a JS person

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Well thank you very much, sir.</comment>


Amazon Elastic Transcoder - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/elastictranscoder/ <comment><AUTHOR> It's quite an interesting business decision to jump into this market.

Take Zencoder for example (which is one of my favourite players in this field)... if you are to compare the prices with say Zencoder [1] AWS is _much more cost effective_ (by several factors). Even if you were operating at scale and spending $2000 per month with Zencoder, you would only get 50,000minutes worth of HD Video. (You pay 2 minutes worth of credits for HD video on Zencoder).

If you spend $2000 with AWS, you would be getting 33% more value. (Remember, this is operating at scale. The savings can be even larger)... and this is really the best case scenario for Zencoder.

If you are "just getting started", the savings are immediate. On Zencoder it's $0.10 for HD video, compared to $0.03 on AWS.

I'd be really worried and slightly confused by Amazon took this step? There are several video encoding companies that operate on AWS already, and they all just got sandbagged.

        [1] : http://zencoder.com/en/pricing

<comment><USER2> Zencoder here. Amazon has done a good job of making their pricing look simpler/cheaper than ours, and for some customers, it is. Two quick comments.

1\. Our larger customers don't pay more than this already.

2\. Paying 33% less doesn't necessarily mean getting 33% more value.

We'll be writing up an analysis today. Off the record (ahem), we've known about this for a long time, and we aren't worried.

<comment><USER3> > _and we aren't worried._

So are you working on designing them out? Or are you counting on them never giving your AWS account short shrift?

<comment><USER4> I think Amazon is smart enough to know that they can't give anybody short shrift.

The only reason they're the leading computing platform is trust. Trust is the biggest factor in a platform decision, and they'd be foolish to put all their other business at risk for a temporary advantage in one small slice. Especially since they are still making money on every Zencoder job.

<comment><USER5> > The only reason they're the leading computing platform is trust.

Is there a lot of that left since they knocked Netflix offline on Christmas eve?

<comment><USER6> Plenty left.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The thing that annoys me about both this and Zencoder is that for people who are actually experienced with video encoding, there is absolutely no way to tweak eg. the underlying x264 settings. There's quite a few settings that have no effect on decoding in any way but are pretty important in getting the most out of the video at a given bitrate (most notably the strength/mode of AQ and psychovisual optimizations). In case of AWS, there doesn't even seem to be any kind of "general" tuning (like whether the content is film, animation, extremely grainy or so - x264 has --tune settings for these among others - Zencoder at least allows you to access this option[1]) options available, making it pretty much "one size fits all". I _could_ always rent a generic server and use that for my encoding needs, but it'd be much more convenient if these cloud transcoding services simply offered advanced configuration for people who know what they are doing.

Also, even for a "simple" cloud transcoding service, Amazon's offering is pretty limited in what it can do right now[2] - you can basically only encode H.264 & AAC in MP4, define the profile, level and bitrate, and that's about it. Zencoder has much more options in comparison and has generally more transparency in regards to what their encoding software actually does (sadly when I asked them about getting access to x264 settings directly, they replied along the lines of "they could change and things might break for users!" - which I don't think would be an actual issue since the direct settings ought to be for advanced users only, and they should be aware of things changing - plus Zencoder could just notify users of direct settings before they upgrade so they have time to adjust their settings if necessary).

[1] <https://app.zencoder.com/docs/api/encoding/h264/tuning>

[2] [http://docs.aws.amazon.com/elastictranscoder/latest/develope...](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/elastictranscoder/latest/developerguide/preset- settings.html)

<comment><USER8> As is the case with every part of AWS, we add additional features and options over time based on customer feedback and requests. Please feel free to let us (or me -- email@example.com) know what you need and I'll bring it to the team's attention within 30 minutes.

<comment><USER9> A really simple way to obtain very high quality per bit per second, given prior knowledge of the nature of the material (film or not, grainy or not, cartoon or not, etc) and the type of output desired (AVCHD, Blu-Ray, etc) is to install MeGUI, then pick one of the community-built encoding profiles for x264.

Choosing the right profile for the job is absolutely crucial. The combinations of x264 parameters can be pretty arcane, and they sometimes change from one x264 version to another. There's a pretty active community on forum.doom9.org maintaining collections of profiles for MeGUI, some of those are excellent.

E.g., it is totally within the realm of possibility to put two hours of 1080p content on a single-layer DVD (4.4GB), in a format compatible with any Blu-Ray player out there (AVCHD, a subset of the Blu-Ray standard that accepts DVD as the storage layer), while keeping video quality at a very high level - basically indistinguishable from commercial Blu-Ray discs. But using a good encoding profile, feeding the appropriate parameters to x264, is the single most important factor in achieving that goal.

<comment><USER7> >MeGUI profiles

MeGUI is hardly necessary - x264 has a good set of presets and tunes built in to begin with. --preset veryslow --tune film/animation/grain will already get you very far, beyond that pretty much the two most important things to possibly tweak are the strengths of AQ and psychovisual optimizations (--aq- strength and --psy-rd).

>it is totally within the realm of possibility to put two hours of 1080p content on a single-layer DVD (4.4GB), in a format compatible with any Blu-Ray player out there (AVCHD, a subset of the Blu-Ray standard that accepts DVD as the storage layer), while keeping video quality at a very high level - basically indistinguishable from commercial Blu-Ray discs.

You might get away with an hour of almost-transparent content if it's not particularly bitrate-demanding, but two hours of live action will not look "indistinguishable from commercial Blu-ray discs". 5 Mbps High Profile L4.0 H.264 just won't look as good as ~30-40 Mbps H.264 High Profile L4.1 H.264 commonly found on BDs (unless the BD is really screwed up). At 720p you'd get pretty good results, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Zencoder has one of the nicest APIs I've ever used, it would take more than price for me to switch.

<comment><USER11> While this makes me (as a developer) happy, my customers don't care. They want encoding, they want it cheaper, and they want it better.

I am still tinkering, but for our purposes, it looks like Amazon's Transcoding service is going to be cheaper and of good enough quality to get the nod over Zencoder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> While Amazon's service has a price advantage, there are some differences that could justify Zencoder's premium for some customers.

Amazon gives you a maximum of 4 encoding pipelines. These operate like queues. If you are processing many jobs simultaneously, and encoding multiple versions of each video, then those queues could start to build up. With Zencoder, all your jobs are processed in parallel, no matter how much you throw at it. In my experience, queue times with Zencoder have averaged <10 seconds.

For batch jobs, that aren't sensitive to encoding times Amazon's queues shouldn't be a problem (ex - a media company encoding a huge library into a bunch of different formats). Business video services or online video platforms may want to optimize around keeping queue times low to get client videos out quickly.

Zencoder also seems to be working on premium services like closed captioning (an FCC rule says that programming that is shown on TV must have closed captioning when it is shown on the web), live streaming, and packaging HLS streams. Finally, Zencoder supports formats like ProRes 422, that Amazon may not (I haven't seen a list of input formats yet). Zencoder also has great support and a great API.

I'm a Zencoder customer and don't have any vested interest in the company. In fact, I'll be taking a look at the service to see if it meets our needs. I just wanted to highlight that if you are making a decision around transcoding, you need to define your requirements, understand the trade offs, and test the different options.

</comment><comment><USER13> Does anyone with experience using Zencoder (<http://zencoder.com/en/>) see advantages/disadvantages of this new Amazon service compared to Zencoder, which has been around for a while? Zencoder is owned by Brightcove and I'm sure they will be fully capable of putting up a good fight, but I can't imagine this won't take a significant amount of business away from them...

<comment><USER14> I am also curious about the how fast the AWS service will be. Zencoder is pretty fast. [http://blog.zencoder.com/2011/10/18/zencoder- benchmarked-2x-...](http://blog.zencoder.com/2011/10/18/zencoder- benchmarked-2x-10x-faster-than-the-competition/)

<comment><USER15> I was under the impression Zencoder already runs on the AWS infrastructure:

* <https://aws.amazon.com/solution-providers/isv/zencoder>

* [http://gigaom.com/2011/04/12/zencoder-raises-2m-for-cloud-ba...](http://gigaom.com/2011/04/12/zencoder-raises-2m-for-cloud-based-video-encoding/)

<comment><USER14> Yes, they do,they use the cluster compute instances:[http://blog.zencoder.com/2012/07/23/first-look-at-google- com...](http://blog.zencoder.com/2012/07/23/first-look-at-google-compute- engine-for-video-transcoding/) I doubt if amazon is going to use them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> As someone who worked until a couple of years ago in this field, I should point out that the larger area of value in the industry is the capacity to customize content for the consumer scenario (available bandwidth, CPU, resolution, available buffer size, CODEC support, etc.) and to do so automatically.

The notion of precomputing various versions of a piece of media is not a new one, nor a particularly valuable one, since consumers rarely know which option to select.

What users really need is something that perfectly matches their viewing scenario and their device (largely mobile). The knowledge of what works well on each device (with default settings) is the real gem here, and the capacity to deliver it ASAP (eg. transcoding in real time) is the service to supply.

There are far more codec options than you can shake a stick at, and they do affect playback quality - especially during higher and lower bitrate portions of the media, and especially on lower end mobile devices (essentially today's global internet access norm).

While the standard tool in this area is ffmpeg, one should note that not all of its algorithms can be parallelized, so real time delivery is a thornier problem than you might expect. Also, while there are device databases that can tell you resolution from an _HTTP User Agent_ string, none of these will tell you CODEC support and functional bitrate limitations. The manufacturers, hastily throwing together devices from third party chip SDKs, often don't know these specs themselves.

Throw in subtitle stream rendering support and the corresponding font problems, and things get really fun really quickly.

Good luck to anyone in this area, I for one am glad to have left!

<comment><USER17> Only hard problems are worth solving. I for one find it a very interesting field to be working in.

<comment><USER16> I am glad to hear that you are interested in your work, as pleasure in work can be hard to find. Apologies for being in a philosophical mood: I contemplated not responding, and responding otherwise, but finally thought that offering this anecdote might be interesting. Please, take from it what you will.

A Buddhist I know said that the thing that troubled them about the digital media field was how it conflicted with their great respect for some of the ideas that are central to that philosophy. They said that they identified much modern media consumption as intoxication of the mind with what may amount to trivial experiences tangential to achieving happiness and peace, which they viewed as quite apart from the endless sensory experiences of the world. (For a simple example, they pointed to Youtube)

After some searching, this seems to be the reference: [http://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/sacca/sacca4/samma...](http://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/sacca/sacca4/samma- ajivo/index.html)

 _A [lay person] should not engage in five types of business. Which five? Business in weapons, business in human beings, business in meat, business in intoxicants, and business in poison._

Personally my friend's perspective did make me feel a little guilty about my work, since I am also (if sporadically) very interested in Buddhist philosophy and because encouraging people to spend their time "in earnest" (from a Buddhist perspective) is no doubt a personal failure as seen by the Buddhist teachings, in so far as I can grasp them myself. Yet, Buddhism also teaches that we should respect the _treasure of conscience_ as a means to change our ways, and it is certainly true that communications of any kind can certainly be a bringer of good ... as well as thoughtless trivia.

<comment><USER17> A good, thoughtful post. Cheers for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's my blog post with some additional info:

[http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2013/01/amazon-elastic- transcoder...](http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2013/01/amazon-elastic- transcoder.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> Only h264/AAC/mp4 output though. I wonder how well they handle embedded subtitle streams, too (I don't even know if they're supported at all for mp4). Seems OK for the most basic of web video streaming, but then again, I guess that's the majority of the use cases they're targeting. (more concretely, this doesn't look to be suitable for digitizing dvd collections).

</comment><comment><USER19> Well well well, 2 weeks after Azure announces their transcoder, look what happens :)

<comment><USER20> There's no way that Amazon heard Azure's announcement and shipped this within two weeks from scratch.

<comment><USER21> Everyone look at this guy! He's got logic!

<comment><USER21> I'm sorry for the above comment everyone. Reddit has infected my humor. I shouldn't have brought it here. :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> How about audio transcoding? At my music startup we're building a transcoding backend that will take in FLAC, AIFF, or WAV and spit out MP3, FLAC, AAC, ALAC, and OGG files for people to download, and I'd kill for a transcoding service with a robust API that can deliver those formts.

<comment><USER23> build it

<comment><USER24> No need to build it - Zencoder already does it.

\--

Edit: looks like they only support these audio codecs: aac, ac3, amr, eac3, mp3, vorbis, and wma

[https://app.zencoder.com/docs/api/encoding/format-and- codecs...](https://app.zencoder.com/docs/api/encoding/format-and-codecs/audio- codec)

<comment><USER2> We've thought hard about Opus, FLAC, and ALAC. Don't be surprised if you see those soon...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Damn pretty smart move.

They place themselves in the 'lowest common denominator' of the industry.

Whilst the smaller companies and startups compete and struggle to find the right combination of factors for their awesome video/web/cloud/storage/etc product at the end of the day they all need the same kind of thing to operate on and Amazon is often the cheapest option to start with and it serves the whole industry making little cents tick tick tick one after another...

</comment><comment><USER26> Interesting. Are there any consumer facing apps using these services (aws transcode competitors/zencoder)?

Could this be used to stream live video?

<comment><USER14> Zencoder recently came out with live transcoding. Its only a transcoding service, but I guess using brightcove you can stream live videos. AWS has only announced file base transcoding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Amazon should complement this new transcoding service and their existing media streaming (via Cloudfront) with a full media server, along the lines of Red5 or Wowza or Adobe Media Server, that would allow you to do more advanced stuff, such as capturing video from users, hosting video chatrooms etc.

You can already run Wowza instances on EC2 but the premium on top of standard AWS prices is too high, if this functionality can be commoditized there will be an explosion of innovative new uses.

<comment><USER28> I agree. We have been trying to scale our Wowza on EC2 setup for live video streaming, but after looking at our options it was about the same price to just go with a VDN like Edgecast that managed the server complexity for us.

If Amazon could support live streaming through Cloudfront I think they could undercut the existing VDNs on pricing and have a big opportunity in that market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Ah yes. Remember if you run services that compete with what Amazon might do you may have a problem. There are many businesses in this space running on AWS.

</comment><comment><USER30> Idea: build a pretty web based UI or software downloadable UI for this and mark up the costs to be just under zencoder's pricing. Would that be viable? for people who need 1 off transcoding they load up $20 of credits minimum or something.

If someone wants to do it, I have a domain I've been sitting on which would be good for this.

<comment><USER31> Precisely what I was thinking... I'm probably going to jump on to this... do a 2-4 week hack at it and launch it. If anyone wants to partner, let me know (I can design and play full stack- either one).

Let me know what the domain is, I may be interested.

<comment><USER32> Be careful. You are playing the price game. Long term winning strategies don't start with undercutting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The Porn industry just took a huge step forward. :)

<comment><USER34> Amazon doesn't allow porn content on its servers ..

<comment><USER35> I just checked their AUP, and it doesn't seem to say that [1]. This makes sense since AWS is pretty much a content agnostic system that you pay for by the hour and otherwise have no interaction with amazon staff.

[1] <http://aws.amazon.com/aup/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> It will not be surprising that in fact Amazon Elastic Transcoder is in fact what Netflix with Amazon's help may have work on in the past few years. Netflix is well known to use Amazon web services not only for the streaming part but even for doing all the movies encoding for all different devices they need to support. So I will not be surprise that it has now become a mature project that Amazon is now opening up, similar to the other service for S3 where you can ship your hard drive to upload directly on S3 without wasting bandwidth: from what I recall that service was in fact created initially for Netflix but later on open to third party.

</comment><comment><USER37> We're using Encoding.com right now which works off the AWS infrastructure. We pre-paid and got our pricing down to $0.018 per megabyte. The drawback to this method is that encoding charges you for MB in AND MB out, whereas Amazon and Zencoder are charging just by the minute of output.

I'm pretty happy with Encoding.com but after running some test files through AWS, I have to seriously consider switching - AWS seems much faster (not a controlled test, more is needed) and in our case it's much easier to predict costs by going with a per minute model than a per MB in/out. An added bonus - boto already has support for it.

<comment><USER37> EDIT: I made one of my typical decimal blunders - we are paying $0.0018 per megabyte. Big difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Hm, I havn't used Amazons Web Services earlier - since most of their services looks to be priced in a good range, when suddenly you read the fine print about the bandwidth charges.

I've been trying to read through about Amazon Elastic Transcoder (AET?)'s pricing - but I can't figure out the total. I assume you need to pay to get the video out of S3? Do you have to pay on the way in, as well?

What would it cost to encode a 20 minute HD video that's like, 500MB?

<comment><USER14> Data transfer in to S3 is free. First 1GB/month transfer out is free,after that it is 0.12GB for the next 10TB. These rates would apply if you store your video on S3 and use another service like zencoder too. The transfer between EC2 and S3 in same region is free though.

<comment><USER38> Ah, alrighty. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Why is the pricing tier so static?

      $0,030:
      1920 x 1080 @ 62500 kbps
      ...
      1280 x  720 @ 17500 kbps

</comment><comment><USER40> I'm sorry to say this but doesn't this mean the end for Zencoder, TransLoadIT and other video encoding services?

<comment><USER41> Using that logic, all the other cloud storage services would be out of business right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Am I reading this right, in that there is no support for WebM/VP8? If so, I'm a bit confused as to who this product is supposed to be for, it seems not suitable for generic web video. Is this intended to be for mobile only?

</comment><comment><USER43> Wow, that product page is just massive. It tires me so much just looking at it that I'd rather just browse along. I'd like to see what designers looking to build up their portfolio could do with the Amazon AWS products.

<comment><USER4> I think the problem may be your lack of interest. As somebody who has used AWS a fair bit, I love those massive pages. It's easy for me to jump around, and being able to use in-browser search to rummage through the whole thing is great.

</comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 Pricing this per-video-minute seems pretty smart (not familiar with the space so I'm not sure if this is how it is generally done).

As their CPUs get faster, they can transcode the same video for the same price for less cost to Amazon.

<comment><USER44> Pretty standard way to price....Zencoder pioneered it a few years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Why haven't they started pushing these jobs down to distributed clients? I'd love to run an Amazon Transcoding app on my PC and earn credit that I can spend toward other Amazon services.

<comment><USER46> 1, privacy - they would have to send you a copy of someone's video for that. 2, I expect the end user bandwidth is worth more than the CPU time you'd provide, so the credits they could give wouldn't be worth it to you.

<comment><USER45> Well, there are ways around #1. It seems they could split a video up into enough chunks to make the bandwidth minimal for each party involved (it may not be worth it for /them/, however).

<comment><USER47> Or they could use homomorphic encryption. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption>

<comment><USER48> Do you seriously think you can get _any_ kind of reasonable compression using only operations that are data-independent?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> The most interesting part of this move is what it says about their relations with EC2 customers. Most cloud encoders that ET will compte with, run on EC2.

</comment><comment><USER49> I wouldn't be surprised if Netflix assisted in this.

</comment><comment><USER50> Could this be a trend for Amazon that they'll expand vertically? If that is the case they'll be competing with their customers eventually.

</comment><comment><USER51> Who's the market? Surely crappy upload speeds and download caps stop this being used by 'consumers'.

</comment><comment><USER52> Wow, they really are tailoring their service for Netflix specifically these days.

<comment><USER44> no way Netflix would use this service...they'll stick with EC2 and do their own encoding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> great news for customers....

</comment><comment><USER53> I love aws</comment>


How Modern Marketplaces Like Uber and Airbnb Build Trust to Achieve Liquidity - <AUTHOR> http://firstround.com/review/How-Modern-Marketplaces-Like-Uber-Airbnb-Build-Trust-to-Hit-Liquidity/

<comment><USER2> I'm glad this digs deeper into why marketplace startups have been successful recently. Instead of just how everyone is the next Uber of X. It talks about building trust and safety on both the buyer and seller sides of the market</comment>


Distributed Performance Testing in the Cloud with JMeter and AWS - <AUTHOR> https://www.artofsoftwaredevelopment.com/performance/performance-testing-in-the-cloud-with-jmeter-aws <comment><USER2> For those familiar with BOSH, Pivotal engineers built "Tornado" for load testing. It's a BOSH release of JMeter with some convenient dials.

Since it's BOSH, you can deploy to AWS, GCP and Azure without fuss. The difference between running one worker, ten workers or a thousand workers is a line of YAML and how much you're prepared to pay.

There are some blog posts:

"Half a Million Concurrent/Distributed JMeter Users with BOSH ... in 10 Minutes" ([http://engineering.pivotal.io/post/jmeter-bosh- usecase/](http://engineering.pivotal.io/post/jmeter-bosh-usecase/))

"BOSH + Apache JMeter(TM) = Tornado for Apache JMeter(TM)" ([http://engineering.pivotal.io/post/jmeter-bosh- release/](http://engineering.pivotal.io/post/jmeter-bosh-release/))

The release itself: [https://github.com/jamlo/jmeter-bosh- release](https://github.com/jamlo/jmeter-bosh-release)

Disclosure: I work for Pivotal, BOSH is definitely one of our favouritest things.

</comment><comment><USER3> Better to try serverless-artillery: [https://github.com/Nordstrom/serverless- artillery](https://github.com/Nordstrom/serverless-artillery)

Eventually: [https://github.com/Nordstrom/serverless- jmeter](https://github.com/Nordstrom/serverless-jmeter)

</comment><comment><USER4> Haven't had occasion to use it yet, but I've chatted some with the founders of [http://nouvola.com/](http://nouvola.com/) \- bright women and it looks like they've done a good job with their product. Once you're at that kind of scale, maybe a prepackaged solution is worth the savings in time.

</comment><comment><USER5> I recently looked at Locust, and even though I knew practically zero python and have many years (tears?) of Java background, I found Locust, especially with a little docker-compose 17-liner, amazingly productive. YMMV

</comment><comment><USER6> "Super-human agent on Dota2 1v1"

Good to say they accurately define the situation, not something like "Super- human agent defeating world's best Dota2 player"

</comment><comment><USER7> We use Redline13 to help spin up load generators for stress and performance testing.

</comment><comment><USER8> > Here is the problem, JMeter uses Java RMI (Remote Method Invocation) to > communicate to its slaves, but these connections require all machines to be > on the same subnet and this is not feasible with EC2 instances.

Incorrect with VPC..

Also, could we stop using the term 'slave' to refer to distributed compute or storage nodes?

<comment><USER9> "Also, could we stop using the term 'slave' to refer to distributed compute or storage nodes?"

Sorry... I don't get what is wrong with it? We use that word to refer to distributed compute a lot in my org.

<comment><USER10> There's a political correctness movement away from the use of master/slave: [https://twitter.com/bryanl/status/822093922549764096](https://twitter.com/bryanl/status/822093922549764096)</comment></comment></comment>


How to find a marketing person? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.shellycloud.com/2012/09/how-to-find-marketing-person.html <comment><USER2> Irony: I'm a new Ruby developer spending a lot of time in the Rubysphere and have never heard of your company before.

But I can tell you how I've heard of most products, services and companies that have turned me into a user or potential user.

1\. Blog posts celebrating the way your product makes 'x' way easier and/or faster and/or better than the way I'm used to. See [http://trigger.io/cross- platform-application-development-blo...](http://trigger.io/cross-platform- application-development-blog/)

2\. Blog posts/guest blog posts/screencasts by your users showing how your product makes them awesome at doing 'x'. You could aim high (Railscasts) or target a growing niche (Spree users, etc.) - though you want to be careful not to push this too hard. The best recommendations will be totally organic, but you can nudge things by mentioning developers/apps on your own blog, etc.

3\. Blog posts by partners (e.g. Sendgrid talking about their Heroku integration).

I didn't mean for all my points to be calls for blog posts, but I guess there's a lesson in there. Use your blog to SHOW what you and your users are doing and you're on the right track. I'm not even sure this is marketing - more like developer outreach. But I'm assuming the goal of your marketing is more developers using your platform.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's been a lot of layoffs in technical company's marketing departments over past few years, so there's PLENTY of candidates out there that understand tech and can market well (and should be affordable). Some tips:

\- What KIND of marketing do you need? Sales? Leads? Branding? PR? Know what you want and what kind of marketing skills in general would provide that (e-mail campaigns, buying ads, working with press, A/B web testing, etc.) so you can ask for specific experience in those marketing approaches.

\- Make sure the person can WRITE well. There's a lot of good marketing people out there (great at developing campaigns, analytics, etc.) who can't write -- and you don't need that at a small shop; you won't be able to afford outsourcing every project to a freelance writer. Ask for samples and give a writing test.

\- Marketing is all about results -- if they can't go into detail about how this project they did compared to that project they did compared to industry average, walk away.

Just like any other job, references are big. Talk to people you trust; they probably know someone who knows someone who is perfect and is just out of work right now because of the downsizing.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm sorry but they're relatively useless. Focus on delivering a great product. Interact w/ your customers through gaining feedback and providing support. Deliver messages to your customers through a single channel. Spread the word about your product by participating in communities that could take advantage of your product.

So for example if you're an auto parts maker. Heavily participate in local racing leagues and drag clubs. Setup shop on the weekends at local auto parts retailers offering free install lessons. Create a an opt-in mailing list, only email customers when you truly have something new and valuable to offer them. Actively seek out customer feedback through the events mentioned above. Likewise support channels should serve to notify customers of additional products in your lineup that could benefit them.

None of these methods require a separate marketing person. The only requirement is someone who is knowledgeable about your product lineup and community and is a good people person w/ decent writing skills.

My 2 cents, thanks :)

<comment><USER5> The point of marketing is that you don't necessarily know what a great product is. You might think you do, but that's not based on evidence (except if you have loads of experience in a market and industry, as in 5 years +). And even if you do manage through experience or sheer luck to put out a great product, selling / monetizing it through luck as well is unlikely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If anyone has feedback on this topic, there are probably many of us hackers that would sure appreciate some insight.

<comment><USER7> My feedback: 1) You could narrow down needs. Imagine how hiring a "tech person" to build a cloud service is too broad.

2) Read about marketing people with technical skills to understand what they do. Decent but dated example: <http://okdork.com/2010/10/14/how-mint-beat- wesabe/> Many other examples blur lines too (patio11, SEOMoz, etc)

3) Couldn't tell if they had investors but that might be a source too. As hackers can find hackers, I bet investors can find marketers.

4) Find a successful competitor who filled the position. Write a job description based on that person's bio.

5) Consider trying out a contractor or consultant first. If having that person in the office would destroy culture, maybe you don't need them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> <http://xkcd.com/125/> (Marketing Interview)

<comment><USER9> Haha yes but marketing themselves is, unfortunately, the only thing some marketers are good at.

<comment><USER8> Good point - didn't think of that :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This post is pretty light on information. Definitely need more to make a good recommendation. Just like there are different types of developers (different languages, different areas of the stack, etc.), there are different types of marketers. It really depends on your specific needs. I'm happy to answer any questions about finding a good marketer (I have 9 years of marketing experience). My email is in my profile.

</comment><comment><USER11> It seems to me you're confusing technical sales and marketing, as your post describes more of a tech sales role. If this is tech sales / business dev guy you're looking for, it's pretty straightforward: trial and error. Hire a few people, see how they perform, keep the one(s) that bring in the best sales (doesn't always means most btw, quality of relationship affects lifetime customer value a lot).

Now, if you're talking marketing, and if this is your first marketing person to join, I'd recommend you look at people who can do good market analysis, sales strategy and support, and also product strategy. These people don't necessarily need to give a damn about Ruby btw, because the more they can look at the product from the customer and market point of view, the better they'll help you. As in, they'll educate you on the market, and you'll educate them on what the technical constraints are, and this process will allow creating a great product that the market wants - and is ready to pay for.

In your search, you'll need to accept that the person you'll hire should have the duty and power to challenge your every product/market assumption. If you think this would be ridiculous, let me ask you this.

\- Before starting to offer your product, how did you do the market study? If you just looked at the competition, you haven't done a tenth of what you should. \- Did you engage with potential customers? If it was just a handful of customers with similar profiles, this isn't significant enough. \- Did you decide on such an insufficient basis what was interesting to them and what wasn't? How did you determine how to price your offers... You get the drift.

At the very start of a business, the responsibility for marketing should be with the product manager. If you have one and if he could not / did not do this marketing work, then you need to have a marketer that can work very closely with your product manager, but does not report to him. If your product manager is actually a technical lead, you need to first hire a product lead.

So to sum up, your hiring priority should be:

1) hire a product manager with some marketing abilities. this is a generalist with good design, marketing, and management skills, and some technical skill to understand what is being done by the dev team. Worst mistake you can do is have your product lead focus on building and forget about all the rest he needs to do.

2) hire a marketing person who is a marketing specialist, either from their subject matter studying, or from their experience. Either way this should be someone very analytical, and with some applied knowledge of sales so that their role can span from product development to sales strategy and support.

3) hire a tech sales person who can speak the language of your customers. If they are all devs, then someone with dev and sales skills. If they are managers, someone more sales oriented should be preferred, with only an understanding of the tech being a requirement.</comment>


How Google Controls Android: Digging into the Skyhook Filings - <AUTHOR> http://thisismynext.com/2011/05/12/google-android-skyhook-lawsuit-motorola-samsung/

<comment><AUTHOR> Lots of interesting stuff in the story.

For example the part where Google blocks Motorola from using Skyhook, but then Samsung ships with Skyhook. Moto goes back to Google to request a waiver so it can ship Skyhook:

"•Google denied the waiver on June 22, saying that Andy Rubin had already denied Sanjay Jha's request for a waiver. Oh, and "compatibility is a learning process," and "Motorola should not be concerned with other OEMs and their devices." Look not at the world, Motorola. Look only inside yourself."

How can a phone company not be concerned with other OEMs and their devices? That's like telling Google to not be concerned with other search engines.

</comment><comment><USER2> The announcement that they were going to strengthen the requirements on vendors to get the Google apps received enthusiastic applause at Google IO. Manufacturers and carriers have shown a desire to "differentiate" their offers even if it means installing crapware that slows down their ability to keep up with platform updates.

I think Google is taking the right steps to keep Android a high quality platform to the benefit of developers and end users.

<comment><USER3> I agree. At some point, openness for vendors/carriers is in tension with openness for users. As a user, I'm happy to see Google clamp down on the vendors/carriers, if it means they're finally taking my side. Hopefully that's what it means. (I'm encouraged to see that ChromeOS hardware will be mandated to be jailbreakable.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> On the face of it, it just seems like clever agreement drafting by Google. Google's agreement with Motorola requires Motorola to allow location data collection by Google, whereas it's agreement with Skyhook explicitly forbids it. At that point, it's simply a question of Motorola choosing its most valuable partner. Whether this is anticompetitive or not is clearly up for question. Regardless, it's become really clear that Google has far more power over shipping devices than it has ever admitted in public.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is extremely interesting. One thing I didn't understand was how this location database is being built. Is Google collecting GPS signals and WIFI hotspots so that the two can be associated to pinpoint your location? If so, does that mean Android phones are periodically sending your location back to Google? Do Apple, Nokia, RIM, and Microsoft do the same thing?

<comment><USER6> Yes, exactly. And that's what the fight is over. Google doesn't want to get cut out from having android phones send them the wifi points they see as Google needs that data to build their database.

Apple used to use Skyhook and more recently has created their own by having iPhones send them data. The recent privacy blow up over the iPhone's keeping a location log wasn't actually the user's location, but a cache of their version of the skyhook database.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> A piece I may have just missed in the article is what the advantage of using Skyhook is/was over the Google offering.

From the Skyhook website:

Skyhook's Devices can easily provide location-awareness to any Wi-Fi enabled device. Its portable architecture delivers location while minimizing device- specific implementation time. Skyhook's Core Engine is an entirely software- only location system and does not require specialized hardware chipsets. The lightweight client can be configured to run across a broad range of mobile operating systems, devices and platforms.

So was the advantage just speed of implementation and the cost of the hardware?

<comment><USER8> The advantage seemed to be the perception (based in reality or not) that Skyhook's services resulted in better (faster/more reliable) results than Google's offering. It's possible that Skyhook's sales team just did a better job of selling an identical product, but the e-mails seem to indicate that Google definitely had historically offered an inferior product (thought they felt their current offering was equal to or better than Skyhook's).

<comment><USER6> It is interesting how quick the Googlers were to dismiss Motorola's test. Rather than understand what their potential customer looked for in their product, they simply said "we tested it in San Francisco and our results were better".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Apart from me being a bit shocked at how this seems like evil (and Google "Does no evil") this raised an interesting issue: Look at how rabid Google is about Data.

</comment><comment><USER10> Is Google stupid enough to be damned by forgetting history? This all sounds too much like Microsoft in the Antitrust era.

It's a freaking location database. You don't risk bad PR and anti competitive label for WiFi location data. All phones pretty much can do cell tower based or proper AGPS based location.

</comment><comment><USER11> Nilay Patel always writes interesting stuff, glad he's in technology.

Looks anticompetitive to me folks. They're using their dominant position in mobile to support their dominant position in location. Someone's head needs to roll over this.

<comment><USER12> I'm not going to defend the behavior ethically, but this isn't clear to me legally. It's not at all clear that their "dominant" in either of these sectors. Currently Android is just barely ahead of iOS in smart phones, and at the time of the detailed events lagged substantially.

There's nothing legally wrong with "bundling" one product with another. It happens all the time, in all sorts of markets. It only becomes a problem under antitrust law, and I don't see Android as a monopoly yet.

But yeah, it's a little shady. Clearly there is harm to the user base if there isn't robust competition for location services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's funny to see Mac advocates criticize Google for letting Android go wild and suffer fragmentation from it and then criticize them as well if they decide to enforce a few rules to improve consistency.

Damned if you do...

<comment><USER14> I see it as two separate concerns. The first time around, folks criticized the result of the "open" nature of the platform (i.e. fragmentation). Now, these folks are criticizing the so-called hypocrisy in the "open" mantra itself.</comment></comment>


Schumer calls on FDA to regulate 'snortable chocolate' - <AUTHOR> https://apnews.com/8d47da9091de4baeb72bbbe91734b879/Schumer-calls-on-FDA-to-regulate-%27snortable-chocolate <comment><USER2> He should be as successful as he was in his campaign against children's cereals... meaning, not at all.

But, it keeps him in the media during the recess.

</comment><comment><USER3> Seriously? People are snorting chocolate? That's just weird.</comment>


How to Pay No Taxes - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_16/b4224045265660.htm?chan=magazine+channel_11_16+-+how+to+pay+no+taxes_top+stories

<comment><USER2> This is what happens when your approach to system design revolves around whacking out the latest bugs with quick fixes rather than creating something logical and consistent. How many of these loopholes were created in order to stimulate a particular activity, or to close another specific loophole? At no point have lawmakers ever sat down to completely plan out the tax code, carefully considering the consequences of various interactions between laws, and this is the result.

</comment><comment><USER3> The elephant in the corner of this argument is the fact that the greediest, most rapacious investment banker still pays for more roads, schools and hospitals in a year than the most earnest hippie will in their whole working lives.

<comment><USER4> (S)he also benefits vastly more (in an "absolute" sense) from the roads, police protection, defense expenditures, government's role in financial stability, and many other significant government expenditures. Look at it this way: the "bottom 10%" don't particularly care if Canada invades and forcibly takes all of Donald Trump's real estate (nor, not to put too fine a point on it, do the "bottom 10%" care when there's a revolution elsewhere in the world and American-corporation-owned property gets appropriated).

<comment><USER3> I don't think that's necessarily true - if it were not for government services, Jo(e) Billionaire could hire a private security force - but most people rely on the police. JB could travel by helicopter - most people rely on roads. Etc etc.

<comment><USER5> If there wasn't mandated education there would be far less efficient workers for the rich for their businesses. Which would mean their output would suffer.

Not having good public transportation infrastructure would mean there would be a higher cost of freight within a country thus cutting into profits or driving prices up.

In my eyes, the rich benefit far more from a society's systems than the poor do and thus should be paying more into making it better.

<comment><USER6> Since you don't specify whether you mean 'more' in an absolute or relative since, I'm assuming you mean that people who earn more should be taxed more aggressively.

As has already been pointed out, a flat percentage tax does a good job of 'taxing the rich more', but many seem to prefer a progressive taxation, which is to say, almost the opposite of what we have now.

As it stands, income taxes inflate as your income rises, which seems to be progressive taxation. For the life of me, I don't understand how this seems fair to its advocates, but so be it.

That the top 1% benefit from greater tax loopholes makes sense (doesn't necessarily mean fair) in a lot of ways, but aside from the fact that they've bought a lot of legislation, the nation depends on the top 1% as much as they depend on it.

<comment><USER5> Sorry about not responding earlier to your comment back. I meant 'more' in the relative sense. And practically that does mean progressive taxation.

Taxation is a complex subject. I just wonder where on the laffer curve economists think the USA is on regards to the wealthiest.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Quora Security Update - <AUTHOR> https://blog.quora.com/Quora-Security-Update?read=true&share=1 <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18594564](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18594564).</comment>


Ask HN: Startup founders how do you prevent burnout? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> One of the most effective strategies I've found is to externalise as much of your process as possible. My personal take on burnout is that it's the result of prolonged mental stress (I spent the first half of last year doing at most a couple of hours per work day after getting burnt out). After my experience I started to look at how I work to see if I could reduce my stress levels. What I noticed was that my stress levels increase with the amount of information I need to retain in my head at any one time. In particular retaining information for multiple tasks is a real killer, the longer the worse.

Bearing this in mind I redesigned my process to externalise as much information as possible. For me this means using trello(I try to keep tasks/features sized at under 2 days), a written TODO list for today (in IA writer), git branches to manage multiple features and then an outside-in[1] process for the actual code. From this point of view writing cucumber scenarios and unit tests is done to externalise your current state of knowledge about a particular feature. My goal is to be able to drop what I'm doing and return without having to remember anything at all i.e. in theory someone else should be able to pick up where I left off without any input from me. If you're really doing TDD and not thinking about implementation too much before you've spec'd it out then this is possible (this isn't going to be 100% but it's the goal).

That's the dev workflow, for anything else that hasn't been pieced together enough to be in trello I have a separate section at the bottom of my TODO doc where I just keep random thoughts that I want to come back to later.

This setup is working well for me but something completely different might work for you, the important thing is to keep everything you're thinking about somewhere else.

Finally, if you're feeling overwhelmed a great exercise(which I read on HN somewhere) is to sit down and write everything that you're thinking about. If you sit there long enough you'll find that all your recurring thoughts end up written down. I find this incredibly relaxing, it allows you to take a step back and organise your thoughts.

[1] [http://rubylearning.com/blog/2010/10/05/outside-in- developme...](http://rubylearning.com/blog/2010/10/05/outside-in-development/) (written for ruby but you shouldn't have any trouble generalising to other languages)

<comment><USER3> Great advice!

I use Tasks and Calendar on gmail as well.

Once I write stuff down I even make an effort not to think about it. Only remember the link/path to where the information is stored.

This will free up your mind to allow for relaxation and less stressful thoughts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Task management, GTD, etc. helps but honestly, that level of productivity is somewhat of a prerequisite - it confers no advantage when playing ball with the big boys.

to me, "burnout" is about staying too productive for too long. i personally work to prevent that through disciplined unproductivity: i force myself to have down-time, get enough sleep, exercise as much as possible, i've even picked up reading books again and watch the occasional TV show. a good significant other also should help keep things in balance - and perspective.

this is a marathon not a sprint - and it's never as easy as it looks on techcrunch. ever. not only that, but a large part of the value you derive at a startup should be from the journey and not just the destination - don't forget it's the meandering off the beaten path that often yields unexpectedly huge rewards. keeping these axioms in mind every step of the way helps big time.

it helps to be doing this "startup thing" for the right reasons (there's nothing else you'd rather be doing - or could be doing), rather than to make money. it also helps to have an amazing team you love spending time with, complex problems you love solving, and good customers you love talking to.

</comment><comment><USER5> Being extremely disciplined about getting enough sleep and exercise will hugely increase your stress-handling capacity. Perhaps even enough to stave off burn-out.</comment>


Ask HW: I crossed 1000 karma points, now what? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Since they're KARMA points:

Before enlightenment; chop wood and carry water.

After enlightenment: chop wood and carry water.

<comment><USER3> "Nothing happens next. This is it." \-- Gahan Wilson [https://www.oxherding.com/.a/6a00e5537c83be88340105365a373d9...](https://www.oxherding.com/.a/6a00e5537c83be88340105365a373d970b-popup)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Now learn that you're on HN, not HW.

;-)

Actually, learn to not be a slave to increasing your karma number. I know, you (and many of us) get a dopamine hit from watching it increase, but... you can make yourself a slave to your karma number. Maintain your freedom instead of succumbing to slavery. If you start feeling what I'm talking about, then maybe you need to walk away for a while.

... says the guy who teeters on the edge of being enslaved to that dopamine hit...

</comment><comment><USER5> You can convert them into internet dollars

</comment><comment><USER6> karma is just a meaningless number.

When I left Reddit I had something like 50,000 karma points. What did those 50,000 karma points give me? Nuttin, nothing, nada, zilch, zero!

You can chase the numbers if you want. It's not much different from collecting pretty sea-shells on the beach.

</comment><comment><USER7> What do you mean "now what"?

</comment><comment><USER8> Badges. A simple dot. Log scale. Is there a reason not to?

ETA: Guess there must be. No, please don't explain or discuss. A puzzle for the "noob". Thank you!

</comment><comment><USER9> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ so what?

<comment><USER9> You can downvote it if you want… but really, why make a big deal out of it? Just keep contributing to the discussion and conversation.

I mean ask some big influencers… like patio11 and tptacek. They don't get all hand-wavey "ooooohhhh, I got 1000 points!!" they just keep engaging in the conversation, bringing value to the table.

You should keep doing it too.</comment></comment>


Apple responded to the release of Windows 95 - <AUTHOR> https://www.cultofmac.com/386189/how-apple-responded-to-the-release-of-windows-95-twenty-years-ago-today/ <comment><USER2>
        > "I thought it was essentially game over for Apple,"
        > Silverberg told me, recalling his thoughts about
        > Windows 95 at the time. "I didn't see how they
        > could compete."
        >
        > Fortunately for us, he couldn't have been more wrong.

I guess the author assumes the reader understands that Apple _did_ , in fact, nearly go out of business before...

        > Two years later, Steve Jobs was back at the helm
        > and the rest, as they say, is history!

Without Steve Jobs and an entirely new OS, it's hard to see how Apple would have carried on building computers past 2000 or so.

<comment><USER3> Let's not forget the $150M that Microsoft pumped into Apple as well.

[https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/29/steve-jobs-and-bill-gates- wh...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/29/steve-jobs-and-bill-gates-what- happened-when-microsoft-saved-apple.html)

[https://www.engadget.com/2014/05/20/what-ever-became-of- micr...](https://www.engadget.com/2014/05/20/what-ever-became-of- microsofts-150-million-investment-in-apple/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A lot of people view the era from when Steve Jobs up to when he came back as this kind of "malaise era" for Apple, which, granted, was not unearned; nevertheless, there is something very charming about a lot of Apple's products from that era - and this is coming from someone with more personal nostalgia for the Win9x era than anything.

Something about pre-10 Mac OS is "cute." I can't put my finger on one single thing, so I suppose its more of an aggregate property.

</comment><comment><USER5> "Windows 95 = System 7"

lets forget about that whole protected memory and preemptive multitasking thing altogether</comment>


Drinking behind 1 in 10 deaths of working-age adults - <AUTHOR> http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/06/26/drinking-alcohol-alcoholism-binge-deaths-fatal-cdc/11384335/ <comment><USER4> While we are at it, can we list some other addictions that we use to cope with life. Me personally, it's gambling, pornography, sulking alone, facebooking acquaintances to see how they're doing better than me or worse, checking sports score and living vicariously through the lives of professional athletes on and off the field, checking TechCrunch/Hack News and doing the same with tech billionaires, making up lists and goals alone or with other people that will never come to fruition due to excessive wishful thinking and ambition to overcompensate but fun to preoccupy my mind for the time being. Window- shopping online and offline for the perfect couch, jewelry, fragrance or other consumer goods that is marketed to me. Reading self-help books, attending wellness workshops, "social intelligence" workshops to help me with my awkwardness, tech-meetup's to mingle. Wasting money at pubs, lounges and clubs hanging out with friends by shallow association of work, school, social network where nothing of importance is said and egos are stroked and reciprocated.

Going home alone. Or accompanying a date back home but feeling alone. Or sleeping int the same bed, wondering how I got here and still feeling alone. But I'm just doing what I'm told to find someone, don't be picky, "you're not getting younger." Forging intimate moments like taking a trip to Montreal in July, go visit a botanical garden or go skydiving like what I'm told by Hallmark and merchants of the USA, I feel nothing but my CC swiped to the max. Keeping an overpriced apartment in downtown like a dumb bird nest-building for the sole purpose of mating and trying to fit in.

So I have to keep working and running round and round in the hamster-wheel to pay for my student loans, car loan, credit card debt, insurances, save up for a mortgage so I can take on even a bigger loan to convince someone that I may or may not like to start a family with me, so that we can both be indebted for the kids' college education loans.

But still everyday I wake up, and I keep braving it through. Because I'm hoping maybe just maybe, I can be like Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. Hit it out of the ball park, that is the American Dream, work hard and if things don't work out, keep working even harder and harder, and one day freedom will come for me. I have to believe and try, after all this is the American way.

<comment><USER5> Thank you for sharing the honest evaluation of your life. The only advice I can give you after having lived in the, from my point of view, shallow American tech world: move to Europe.

The people in most European countries will be less welcoming at first, but I can tell you, if you stick through you will find them to be more profound.

It helps that we don't have an American Dream which focusses on financial prosperity through hard work, but rather a joy of life (joie de vivre) which encourages us to enjoy the beauty of life and nature.

Travel to Tuscany or Portugal and see for yourself.

<comment><USER6> I was born in Portugal and lived there for most of my life. Virtually everything the OP said could describe some portuguese person just as well. Hell, I could have written it at some point and it would be a surprisingly accurate summary of my life back then. These are symptoms of problems that live in you, that consume you from the inside, they will follow you wherever you go, you can't just run away and escape them all. I don't have any recommendations, but you have my empathy and understanding. I believe you will find your way out, maybe by finding some deeper meaning to your life, maybe by finding your place in the world or maybe by just stop giving a fuck.

On the other hand I have a feeling that something is pretty fucked with western society in general. And as the western model of society is pretty much expanding everywhere it is becoming a global problem. I can't quite put by finger on it but maybe it has to do with ever growing expectations, the idea that we can be or do everything, that is all in our hands and only depends on us puts an immense pressure on our shoulders and leads to immense pain. The truth, I think, is that luck plays an huge part in our life, on our successes and on our failures.

I am not sure if I made any sense, if I did not, please accept my apologies ;)

<comment><USER4> You makes perfect sense, taway. I appreciate your sentiment regarding traveling somewhere will not solve one's problem. I want to travel to Macau or Goa and eat the fusion of traditional Indian or Cantonese-Portuguese cuisine and maybe plays Gaopai at the casino's there but pretty sure that'll only obliterate my anxieties for a few days.

I also appreciate your empathy and stating that you also felt the same once. At least for me, there's more to a person who is willing to make fun of themselves or admit freely to their shortcomings than someone who offers eager advice.

Re: Western society criticism; as someone who grew up partially in Eastern society (China), I believe that traditional Buddhist practice is in practice and effect more similar to the Catholic Church than different. And people in China and South Korea see the same alternative appeal in Christianity as people in the West seek Yoga or Zen Buddhism. So perhaps it's not the religion/philosophy content but the person doing the seeking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I drink way too much. I've accepted this. What stops me from drinking way too much? Not much, because I'm able to rationalize my drinking with the many beneficial effects touted. There's a lot of information about how drinking a bit is helpful for heart disease and how it basically reduces mortality across the board. More information is needed about how drinking is HARMFUL beyond cirrhosis and the short term effects (violence, drunk driving). I don't drive while drunk and I'm not a violent drunk, but I drink too much. I know I'm at risk for cirrhosis but I also think there are more dangers than simply that. These other negative effects need to be more prominent for those of us who are these "contributing to society" drinkers.

<comment><USER8> You are not the same person while drunk. If you think that the person you are while sober is a better person, you have a perfectly valid reason for not drinking.

I'll just leave you with this:

[http://www.cracked.com/blog/9-youtube-videos-that-prove- anyo...](http://www.cracked.com/blog/9-youtube-videos-that-prove-anyone-can- get-sober/)

Not so much to prove that you _can_ do it, but more for the _change_ that anyone can see. You could hardly tell that it's the same person in the first videos as the last ones.

P.S.

I found the more relevant article I was looking for:

[http://www.cracked.com/blog/7-things-you-dont-realize- about-...](http://www.cracked.com/blog/7-things-you-dont-realize-about- addiction-until-you-quit/)

It goes into more detail about what I mentioned above – how you are a different person while drunk, but you might not realize this until you quit.

<comment><USER9> > You are not the same person while drunk. If you think that the person you > are while sober is a better person, you have a perfectly valid reason for > not drinking.

What if I think the tipsy me is a better person? He's much more outgoing, interesting, and far less socially awkward.

<comment><USER10> It's an illusion. I, too share this thinking through.

Beside doing things you regret when drunk - like making an ass out of yourself when talking to more sober people in bars or feeling shitty the next day... it does not make you experience yourself as a better person when sober. You have to be drunk to be that better person. So you drink. It does not help - <USER2> least that's my experience. Getting drunk can be fun but...where to stop?

Being outgoing for me is strongly connected to my self-esteem and feeling of self-worth. If it's down the drain I hardly leave the house and run away from social interactions without alcohol. If I accumulated some self-worth and feeling fine with myself I enjoy going out and being social in a sober state even more.

I doubt that you are more socially awkward for other people when sober but your anxiety makes you so uncomfortable that you have this urge to grab a drink and have a feeling of relaxation. After a few beers you feel better...

Be careful it's a vicious circle and it's worth to spend some energy into forcing yourself into social situation in a sober state. It can be fun to sit sober in a bar and watch all the people getting more and more drunk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> You have to wonder what the economic impact would be if government policy were driven by a top ten list of quality-of-life issues. Would there be PSAs on TV suggesting a bong hit instead of a drink? Would soda pop be locked up behind the counter? "Got more milk than you can digest?" How many points of GDP would it be worth to do the necessary social engineering?

The other side of the coin is: What is the total cost of successful industry lobbying that makes harmful products seem normal to the public?

I suspect that fascination with experiments in optimizations is what drives interest in things like Soylent.

<comment><USER12> The tricky part in my mind is determining what exactly a quality of life issue is in the first place. I know plenty of moderate, sensible drinkers who would consider their quality of life lowered if there were any more restrictions placed on alcohol.

It's not just a price issue, but all sorts of things like not being able to buy alcohol on a Sunday, despite not being religious. Or one that I personally _still_ experience from time to time - being asked for ID despite being 12 years over the age limit.

These are all quality of life issues in my mind. If we were to solely go on doctors guidelines, life would be pretty boring. No sport - too dangerous. No drinking - too much liver damage. No sailing, no cheerleading, no mountain climbing, etc...

There comes a point at which you just have to tell the doctors that it's all well and good pointing out the risks, but ultimately, life is about risks. I can barely see the point in living if we deny ourselves all the slightly risky things just because of the potential downsides. It's cowardice wrapped up in a fresh new label for the modern age.

<comment><USER11> The threshold for binge drinking described in the article is well into the "I'd be smashed" territory, so there's no alcohol scaremongering in this case.

Also things like free-soloing (corrected as per comment below), and for that matter things society frowns on like needle-drug use, are self-limiting and have orders of magnitude less impact than binge drinking. That's where prioritization washes out pursuing ineffective optimizations.

<comment><USER13> I suspect that what you understand the word free-climbing to mean is not what it actually refers to: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_climbing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_climbing)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The actual study is: [http://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2014/13_0293.htm](http://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2014/13_0293.htm). It's also available as a PDF: [http://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2014/pdf/13_0293.pdf](http://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2014/pdf/13_0293.pdf)

<comment><USER15> Someone will have to parse the study to find out what's really happening. My guess is that most of the deaths that are being called alcohol-related are not chronic alcoholics; most are probably accidents and violence in which alcohol had been consumed at some point. So, I would be cautious about reading causation into those statistics.

<comment><USER16> There was a document published not too long ago about Auckland City Hospital, New Zealand which would possibly support what you're saying. A huge percentage of the emergency department admissions had been drinking. The below link is similar, but related only to accidents. The gist being that people admitted to hospital following an unintentional injury are often under the influence of alcohol. Small study, 2000ish participant, 20% ish screened for alcohol, 50% were under influence. [http://journal.nzma.org.nz/journal/120-1249/2417/content.pdf](http://journal.nzma.org.nz/journal/120-1249/2417/content.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm not sure this is all that surprising.

Turn it around: what do we expect to be the causes for those adults between age 20 and 64 who die? I really should read up on the relevant actuarial facts, but isn't it the case that by and large those from 20 to, say, 50 plus or minus are fairly healthy?

<comment><USER18> I think what's surprising is that 1/10 is pretty high for something that technically could be prevented entirely. It has nothing to do with other causes of death.

<comment><USER19> "Technically could be prevented" .. how? Prohibition didn't work out well, and people can make booze with some fruit juice, air and a radiator even in the most extremely regulated environments[1].

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

<comment><USER20> Prohibition is not the only alternative out there. For example, tobacco was never outlawed but now many countries place heavy taxes and advertisement restrictions on it. Overall its become a much less acceptable habit than it used to be and cigarrete related illness has gone down.

<comment><USER21> That's also do to teaching the kids at a young age. Social acceptance was the main factor, and will be the main factor in limiting alcohol usage (if it does happen).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Having in mind how many deaths are caused by health issues related to obesity what number should be in headline "Eating behind _ in 10 deaths of working-age adults"?

<comment><USER23> _Obesity_ alone is not the _cause_ of those deaths; it is just another symptom. In fact, when fat is stored subcutaneously, there appears to be little to no increase in mortality, and, for some (middle aged women at least), it is actually protective. The real disease is _metabolic syndrome_ , which affects both thin people and fat people. It is a constellation of disorders including abdominal weight gain, fatty liver disease, high blood pressure, dyslipidemia, and high blood sugar or diabetes.

Metabolic syndrome is the killer (often leading to cardiovascular disease, liver or kidney failure, blindness, amputations, and, perhaps, dimentia/Alzheimer's [the studies on this are early and not yet cinclusive]), but our society is so focused on weight that thin people automatically assume they are immune to it and everybody carrying any extra weight is assumed to have one foot in the grave. If you eat like crap (a sugar-laden, high trans fat diet of processed food-like substances), you are at risk unless you won the genetic lottery (and those genetics may just buy you time, not immunity).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I suspect, the salient fact that the CDC is leaving out is that many, if not most, of these are from car accidents.

Also, by qualifying it as "working-age" it skews the results heavily. What about all the people that did all that drinking and managed to make it past working age?

Lucky for us, automated cars are going to solve most of this problem in a decade or two. So a more honest assessment would answer how many _adults_ are dying from non-vehicular drinking causes.

<comment><USER25> So, try to regulate drinking until automatic cars save us?

<comment><USER26> Yes, prohibition showed us that regulation is an effective way to prevent people from doing things

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Many of my most gifted employees, partners and colleagues are/were heavy drinkers (not alcoholics; I know those, but in other professions); I see a lot of programmers drink heavily simply to 'forget'. For many there simply are not a lot of ways to leave the problem solving of the day for the next day or, god forbid, over the weekend. The only way to lift it over a period is dope (or burnout) for them. I see it as a big issue but I don't know how normal it is; I would say very normal as I witnessed it in 100s of programmers, but that might be restricted to the regions (EU/RU) I mostly worked in. I can understand it though; I have been working for 13 hours today on a hard coding issue and in the end I found a bug in the solution. But that was 'enough' I thought and closed the laptop 4 hours ago. I cannot stop thinking about it and I just opened my computer to type this and solve the bug (It is 00:30 am sunday morning here). Booze would've let me forget. What ways are you all using to do that? I tried meditating which works but after that it just pops back.

<comment><USER28> Exercise. You are focused on reps or breathing and you zone out. Really effective way to shift your focus and improves mental condition too.

<comment><USER27> Agreed. That's also a good way and I do that too, actually today for an hour, but after the cooldown I want to still solve the issue today... Mind you ; I really _love_ what I do and it's my work and hobby and passion, but sometimes I want to shut it _off_.

<comment><USER28> Going out with people who aren't in IT helps too. I too have had that problem of just wanting to stay until 05:00 to do something, but I tell myself that's not the effective way and go to bed regardless.

I don't know you, so I don't know what else to say. Just experiment - <USER3> mixing exercise with active social life and new experiences. Go skydive or something like that :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I've often wondered why we can't replace alcohol with a less damaging recreational drug. We could take a tranqilizer like valium, make a dilute solution of it, add flavoring or whatever it takes to give it alcohol's 'kick' and end up with an acceptable substitute. This isn't to say that valium is 'safe' but it's far less toxic to the body than alcohol.

<comment><USER30> I suspect a lot of the anti-drug[1] lobby is heavy supported by the legal drug lobby[2]. There's just so much to lose by so many people if safer alternatives emerge (ignoring the fact that new industries will emerge).

Dr. David Nutt is working on this: [http://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2014/feb/27/david- nu...](http://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2014/feb/27/david-nutt-drink- alcohol-substitute-safer-intoxicant) but there are already a large pile of options, just a lack of political will.

[1] Anti-drug referring to anti-illegal-drug. [2] of which consist of drugs that would never pass the medication approval process, but solely exist due to a history of use and grandfathering

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I remember asking my father why he never drank alcohol. He said, "My dad (your grandfather) and three brothers couldn't leave it alone, so I figure I wouldn't be able to either. If you are wise you will do the same." I'm 46 and never had an alcoholic drink.

<comment><USER32> I admire your resolve. Keep it that way.

I drank my first beer when I was 18 years old. That was the only beer that year. When 19 I drank two. When 20 I drank four. When 21 I drank eight (yes, really!). Around 23 I started drinking like everyone else. It's funny because I initially didn't drink by choice - thanks to religious upbringing + the general distaste for beer I refused to drink (and, sadly, partying[0]) alcohol, opting for coke instead. What I learned then is that alcoholic beverages just start to taste more the more you drink them.

[0] - It's not the booze I didn't drink that I regret; it's the connections with interesting people of various trades I could make, but didn't, because I haven't attended the university grills, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Good reminder I think that we should never pressure anyone to drink. Whether for health, family, religious, personal, or any other reasons, there's absolutely nothing wrong with choosing not to drink alcohol. I enjoy a drink now and then, but I get quite upset when people pressure others to drink.

<comment><USER34> I go through that quite a bit lol because I've made the conscious decision not to drink ever (I don't care to spend the money on it nor do I care for the taste). But my vice is drinking soda heh... darn sugar!

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I've pretty much resolved myself to slowly drinking myself to death, I'm pretty sure I'd have killed myself due to boredom or stress otherwise.

Hopefully maybe getting out of my current field (devops) and going back into school (have a CS degree to finish) will help a bit.

<comment><USER36> lol @ going to college so you can _stop_ drinking. Only the engineering department... :-)

<comment><USER37> After what happened when Facebook came to our campus, I would assume CS degrees don't fall into this category. Perhaps the folks in Electrical Engineering still got it.

<comment><USER32> Nope, EEs also party hard. Try maybe some theological university.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> A woman who drinks a glass of wine a night and two on Friday is a "heavy drinker?" Having two mixed drinks within a three hour period is a binge? I don't know if the science supports these numbers, but they certainly do not agree with common definitions.

<comment><USER39> If you can tie a definition of "heavy drinker" to "causative factor in 1 in 10 deaths of working-age adults", I don't care whether it agrees with the common definition, it's still useful. If anything, it's the reverse - if some quantity is enough to cause that much loss of life, then it's probably "heavy".

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> You need to pay careful attention to statistics for stuff like this.

A drunk guy sleeping in a bus shelter who gets struck by a driver who wasn't drinking is still labeled as an alcohol-related car accident, for example.

</comment><comment><USER41> I would suspect suicide is a significant part of this figure. The fact this isn't mentioned is a worry.

Even the concept of singular occupant motor vehicular accidents(Drunk or not) are not quite what they necessarily seem.

</comment><comment><USER42> One in 6 - sounds like too much - what is the definition/threshold for 'excessive drinking'?

</comment><comment><USER43> It's about 16% in Finland.

</comment><comment><USER44> Headline should be modified to indicate that the study was carried out in the USA. It's not generally applicable to the world population, or necessarily to all high-income countries.

</comment><comment><USER45> Does anyone else find it strange that the definitions of binge and heavy drinking vary so much between the men and women groups? I would think that only body weight would be the heavy influence on this.

Is USA Today just being sexist?

<comment><USER33> I can't tell if you're being sarcastic, but assuming you're not...

But first, 5 drinks in 2-3 hrs for men vs. 4 drinks in 2-3 hrs for women isn't that different. Second, women on average weigh less, so that contributes to the difference as you mentioned. And third, there are other ways alcohol affects men and women differently.

Edit: Just saw the 15 drinks/week for men vs. 8 drinks/week for women which is a larger difference. However, to call USA Today 'sexist' because of that is kind of out there. These numbers aren't just made up out of thin air: for example, [http://www.icap.org/PolicyIssues/ExtremeDrinking/tabid/91/De...](http://www.icap.org/PolicyIssues/ExtremeDrinking/tabid/91/Default.aspx)

<comment><USER45> >if you're being sarcastic

what's "sarcastic"?

>there are other ways alcohol affects men and women differently.

sources please?

:)

<comment><USER16> I would have thought that 30 seconds thought would give a few of the answers. Basic anatomical differences like a uterus and breasts are part of the equation.

[http://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fact-sheets/alcohol- use.htm](http://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fact-sheets/alcohol-use.htm) [http://www.helpguide.org/harvard/women_alcohol.htm](http://www.helpguide.org/harvard/women_alcohol.htm)

<comment><USER45> >I would have thought that 30 seconds thought would give a few of the answers.

How does thinking produce answers?

>Basic anatomical differences like a uterus and breasts are part of the equation.

But what about hermaphrodites?

I would have thought that 30 seconds thought would give you the impression that I'm being super serious.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


ZeroMQ for AMQP users - <AUTHOR> http://www.zeromq.org/docs:welcome-from-amqp

<comment><USER2> This is an excellent review of the two technologies from the company that created them both. A few times here on HN, I've seen people attempt to argue that ZeroMQ is a better AMQP or vice-versa. Instead, this document explains their differing philosophies and relative strengths and weaknesses.

<comment><USER3> Agreed, there are few scenarios where any product is just plain "better" than another product. I wish more "versus" articles were as balanced as this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > AMQP will become popular with banks because it looks like enterprise > messaging but is much cheaper in terms of license costs. ØMQ will become > popular with everyone else because it looks like TCP sockets but is much > cheaper in terms of lines of code.

Beautiful.</comment>