Mystery signal from a helicopter - <AUTHOR> http://www.windytan.com/2014/02/mystery-signal-from-helicopter.html <comment><USER2> We operate news helicopters at TV stations around the US and they all use a similar system.

Basically the right channel of audio is typically the microphone from the pilot or reporter and the left channel is the audio feed transmitting what is basically modem data back with the GPS coordinates of the helicopter and some other data.

This data is used at the antenna site to track the helicopter and point the antenna in the correct direction to keep a line-of-site since the transmission system from the helicopter to the receiver is line of site (microwave) based.

It's really cool to sit and watch the receive antenna track and move responding to the movements of the helicopter miles and miles away.

The antenna is on the belly of the chopper here - [http://www.imt- broadcast.com/super-pod?cat=Products](http://www.imt-broadcast.com/super- pod?cat=Products)

The receiver is generally centrally located on a tower - [http://www.imt- broadcast.com/silhouette?cat=Products](http://www.imt- broadcast.com/silhouette?cat=Products) \- it's a parabolic dish inside a radome like this.

<comment><USER3> I'm not a native speaker, but still have a pet peeve for that one. It's "line- of-sight" ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line-of- sight](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line-of-sight)).

Light travels in a straight line over (human-scale) long distances, so you need a straight line free from obstruction to see between two points. I'm sure you know this and just made a typo, of course.

Thanks for the additional information about this interesting solution.

<comment><USER2> Yup, just a typo!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love Oona Räisänen's blog. She's my hero. She combines a love of figuring stuff out with lots of fun hacks. And when I read her blog it makes me happy to see someone with that joy of uncovering mysteries.

<comment><USER5> You've probably already seen it, but in case you haven't: her talk at 30C3 was excellent and is worth a watch. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-2k6TMPMRo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-2k6TMPMRo)

<comment><USER6> Been there, was cool indeed! If you aren't planning to already, you should come to the 31c3 :)

<comment><USER7> It is a certain commitment to Germany over Christmas.

<comment><USER6> It started the day after Christmas, though I did travel on second Christmas day. Totally worth it in my opinion. This was my first year and I can say that an extra day of that experience is always worth it.

Also WiFi totally rocked on day -1, but if you want that I guess you could also go wired any other day (symmetric gigabit and the best abuse policy in the world yay!).

But of course you can also travel on the day it starts and miss a few talks, it's up to you and your family how much of an issue it is to miss 2nd Christmas day. I was home in plenty of time for new year though, you still have that ;)

<comment><USER7> That and Hamburg is a beautiful town.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow. People on HN do a lot of cool things but that really blew me away. It all sounded so casual too.

This is real Hacker News.

<comment><USER9> If I'd seen this recreated in an episode of CSI, I would have thought "Bullshit."

<comment><USER10> Yup, I guess there is little overlap between the CS community and electronics community.

<comment><USER11> Also, surprisingly, after being exposed to things like this over and over again, people in CS community _still_ underestimate the capabilities of technology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I love this:

 _Several people in the restaurant were waiting for orders with their similar devices, which suggested to me this could be a pager system of some sort. Turning the receiver over, we see stickers with interesting information, including a UHF carrier frequency. For this kind of situations I often carry my RTL2832U-based television receiver dongle with me (the so-called rtl-sdr)._

I knew I was forgetting something.

[http://www.windytan.com/2013/09/the-burger- pager.html](http://www.windytan.com/2013/09/the-burger-pager.html)

<comment><USER13> _For this kind of situations I often carry my RTL2832U-based television receiver dongle with me_

But of course.

<comment><USER14> As you would, really.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is the kind of article that makes HN worth coming back for.

</comment><comment><USER16> Nice bit of reverse-engineering, and an impressive hack from whoever built the system.

<comment><USER17> Not really a hack. Subcarriers are how they added color to TV, stereo to FM radio, and so on. WWV/WWVH also sends machine-readable time codes at 100Hz like this.

<comment><USER18> Indeed--it was more of a hack sixty years ago perhaps. Since then, similar tricks have been used for closed captions, Dolby surround (the original kind), Radio Data System (which puts song names on your car dashboard via FM radio), TV Second Audio Program (listen to shows dubbed in a second language, just press the SAP button on your ancient high-end TV!)....

<comment><USER19> Wow. I always thought SAP stood for Spanish Audio Program. TIL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Oona's work is always amazing. Loads of interesting hardware stuff in her blog. I wish I would be better at some mechanical engineering/electrical engineering stuff, my work is mostly web-related or big data stuff, never really get my hands dirty :(

<comment><USER21> You can basically reverse those terms for me. I'm a mech engineer who wished he knew more/was better at the web-dev / big data stuff.

<comment><USER22> Sounds like you guys should be friends.

<comment><USER23> Sounds like if they ever met, big explosion !

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'd had a copy of her dialup decoded poster on my wall for a while; forgot where I found it but it was immediately something I wanted to hang up... glad to see its being monetized via poster sales, its quite a lovely work of art.

Of course, I also find chip tape outs beautiful, much to my wife's dismay.

      http://vlsiweb.stanford.edu/~jaeha/chip_gallery.html

<comment><USER25> It's sold here: [http://www.redbubble.com/people/windytan/works/9934517-the-s...](http://www.redbubble.com/people/windytan/works/9934517-the- sound-of-the-dialup-explained)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> While I love the blog and the very clear explanations, none of this is new nor amazing to the experienced RF engineer, enthusiast, or practitioner. What's awesome is that the hardware and software are currently cheap enough that more people can discover and enjoy the larger spectrum around them. Welcome!

Now go build some antennas! :)

</comment><comment><USER27> It'd be interesting to scrape videos for this kind of information in order to map them en-masse. Great post!

</comment><comment><USER28> I wonder how much audio compression the signal can go through before getting lost, and if joint-stereo affected it. Might have to check out the data myself :) Props to Oona.

<comment><USER29> Given that most audio compression techniques are perceptual, and the signal here falls into the "most important" 300hz to 3.4khz range that gets special attention in human hearing, I'd guess it is pretty resilient to run of the mill compressed audio codecs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Another cool thing is that the author of Redis made a decoder for ADS-B to decode aircraft transponder signals: [https://github.com/antirez/dump1090](https://github.com/antirez/dump1090)

</comment><comment> vhost- The thing I love most about her work is it's witty, but to the point and I can always understand it.

I'm not a big fan of the tl;dr movement, but I also don't like dauntingly long blog posts. Nails it every time. Hats off!

<comment><USER31> What is the tl;dr movement?

<comment><USER32> He means people complaining that a post is too long and so they won't read it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Amazing!!! I would have just dismissed it as static interference, and not even think twice.

Hmmm, makes me think twice about the beeping sounds I hear when my phone is right next to my radio. I know it's data being transmitted/received, but I wonder if it can be deciphered in this manner.

<comment><USER34> It's the phone checking in with the base station. As someone who records sound for a living, this is one of the banes of my professional life - I tell people on film sets to turn their phones off, and they think I mean 'don't use your phone' whereas in fact I mean 'shut it down completely.'

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I didn't get how she can get so much sense out of what is basically line noise - until the comment that asked what tools she uses, and she says Perl. Ah, just a day in the life :)

</comment><comment><USER36> Can someone explain how she plotted the car's position? Did she manually reconstruct it based on the video and the information she derived from the helicopter's noise?

<comment><USER37> I think so. It isn't a big deal to find the tennis courts in the beginning of the video:

[https://maps.google.com/maps?ll=39.04082,-94.560871&t=h](https://maps.google.com/maps?ll=39.04082,-94.560871&t=h)

I did that using her plots, but working backwards from the city hall to the freeway would only be tedious, not impossible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> The Kansas City Police helicopters are also equipped with 3 of our Augmented Reality mapping Systems:

[http://www.churchillnavigation.com/media/videos/40-san- juan-...](http://www.churchillnavigation.com/media/videos/40-san-juan-county- sheriffs-ars-system)

</comment><comment><USER39> Suddenly, my telecom courses in CS now seem a lot more fun than they really were. It's like magic.

</comment><comment><USER40> Anyone else see the cop hit him @ [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCKRe4jJ0Qk#t=1140](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCKRe4jJ0Qk#t=1140) (19min)?

</comment><comment><USER41> Exception profile and work. I never seen anything similar and never really thought that this was possible. Really stunned :-)

</comment><comment><USER42> This is also commonly used on Model Planes flying "First Person View". See [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_AnqOFAs3Q](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_AnqOFAs3Q) for an example.

</comment><comment><USER43> Can anyone recommend some cheap hardware to hookup my TG-UV2 [1] to my PC?

[1][http://www.eham.net/reviews/detail/8931](http://www.eham.net/reviews/detail/8931)

</comment><comment><USER6> And here I always consider myself paranoid when wondering whether odd patterns in anything mean anything. Guess I'm just too noob and inpersistent to find anything.

</comment><comment><USER44> can this become/or is/ part of forensic science? if its possible to do the same on a mobile phone, and merely speaking into the phone, you give away your travel trajectory?

<comment><USER45> They're way ahead of you :- They can take any audio recording (from any source) in the UK and get an exact time-stamp of its recording and detect whether it has been edited in any way : [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science- environment-20629671](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20629671)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I would love to try a "signals hacking" capture-the-flag.

</comment><comment><USER47> I need to learn HW.

Could someone detail more information about the tools she used?

</comment><comment><USER48> cool thing is, we can start watching them back ;/

and critique whether they're joy riding or actually working etc

</comment><comment><USER49> Jaw-dropping

</comment><comment><USER50> wow.. this girl is superhuman...

</comment><comment><USER51> hackers rule!

</comment><comment><USER52> this is rad.

</comment><comment><USER53> amazing!

</comment><comment><USER54> github?</comment>


Show HN: Memir – Remember the topics that matter to you - <AUTHOR> http://www.memir.co

<comment><USER2> Is there a way to see a list of topics before subscribing?</comment>


Scoble and Eric Ries on how to ship software that rocks customer's lives - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1p3vcRhsYGo&feature=youtu.be

<comment><USER2> I watched this in its entirety earlier. If you're familiar with Ries' work on Lean Startup the last year or so, you won't get much new out of it, but it is probably the best single "This is what we do, this is why we do it, this is how you can get started RIGHT THE HECK NOW on it" I've seen yet. It would be a great thing to show someone if you're trying to get, e.g., buy-in from management.

My favorite quote: "60 to 80% of features do not change customer behavior." So painfully, painfully true.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. I wish Eric didnt repeat so much of what he's already said. Repetition in an age of infinite content availability is unnecessary.

But if scoble had heard his other interviews, i doubt he would have been as surprised or asked those questions. Scoble is great but sometimes like all journalists he can forget to 'know his audience'. And for each of his interviews, he shares the audience with the interviewee.

<comment><USER4> I appreciate the feedback. I find it hard to balance between introducing a new audience to the material and having something new for people who follow online.

I love this quote: "Repetition in an age of infinite content availability is unnecessary." I'm just wondering how to cope with it; infinite availability is not the same as infinite attention.

Always open to suggestions,

Eric

<comment><USER5> Whenever you have a thought that merits a good chunk of discussion, give that thought a name. In everything you say after that, don't rephrase your previous discussion, just reference the name—it's a verbal #include. In a textual medium, of course, every name-drop can just be hyperlinked to the previous discussion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like the angle that it's not just ignorance that keeps us away from early customer contact (and therefore facts about product fit) but the perhaps unconscious attraction of fun and lack of constraints. There is a comment directly about that (part 2, 4:30 in): when you are free of the burden of knowing how your product fit is wrong, it is _very entertaining_ to be creating in this blank world where you have only your own cleverness as a design opponent. This seems really dangerous, especially if one of your motivations to start a venture is to not feel so constrained.

<comment><USER2> He also totally nails the resistance to testing caused by fear of what testing will tell you.

I cost myself a pile of money on Facebook ads this week, trying to do an Easter promotion. That happens sometimes: new initiatives don't pan out, it is inevitable. What wasn't inevitable is after I had evidence of it not working -- and not just a little off, I mean nuke-it-from-orbit-its-the-only-way-to- be-sure _monstrously_ off -- I decided that in spite of the evidence the problem was probably not Facebook users or my ad campaign but my stats code. ("What do you _mean_ I'm paying $30 to sign someone up for the _free trial_? It costs me _twenty six cents_ sending AdWords traffic to _the same page_. Clearly this math is incorrect!")

So I spent two hours rewriting my stats code to fix the "bugs" that must have been happening, then let my ads run another day. I might as well have taken $70 out of my pocket and set fire to it.

<comment><USER7> Well given what you've told us before, didn't the hours you spent fixing 'bugs' cost you several hundred dollars in time, plus opportunity cost?

<comment><USER8> I think, what patrick meant to say is that, his stats code was correct. It really was costing $30. He just didn't want to believe it at first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A nice quote in the context of how Google made "big company" mistakes with Google Lively (part 2, ~9m in): _"Most startups don't realize that one the big advantages you have is that you have a pathetically small number of customers"_

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Part two of the interview: <http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=eubdKflIVoQ>

</comment><comment><USER9> Perhaps I'm overly sensitive to this, but [at least the start] seems to just be making new buzz-words.

</comment><comment><USER10> key takeaways:

1) judge split test (or new features?) strictly by top 5 metrics of customer behavior: "macro metrics"

2) have engineers only work on the top feature in the queue, and not put it down til it's done; managers may rearrange queue as often as they desire

3) 5 why's: invest improvement time proportional to size of problem, at each of 5 points of "failure"

4) product feedback is about your CUSTOMER, not about you.

Question: Why does the behavior of current customers necessarily predict the behavior of future customers? I understand why it would in the case of IMVU (people aren't paying monthly/one-time fees; they pay based on consumption).. and some other business.. but not, say, for the quintessential web2.0 web app. Can someone please clarify? Don't get me wrong, I think these are killer insights :)

</comment><comment><USER10> Is there any software already that will transcribe this to text, or should I batch it out as a Mechanical Turk process?

</comment><comment><USER11> Why exactly do we bother taking advice from loud-mouthed celebrity types like Scoble or Arrington who have NEVER shipped software. Period. No software that rocked any customer's lives. No software that even caused problems.

Following this trend, we will soon be taking software advice from Ashton Kutcher.</comment>


Additive GUIs - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/samsquire/additive-guis/blob/master/README.md <comment><USER2> This is super cool! Another step towards the dream of high-level purely declarative programming. Thanks for sharing!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your kind words! This is just a step towards GUIs that are easy to create and modify and hack on at the same time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> this looks terrible</comment>


ASK HN: Why some one down votes you? - <AUTHOR>

Maybe I need to know the protocol on HN.  I have mentioned our product teamgum.com in few answers and I have found negative points on some.  I don't understand why. <comment><USER2> yeah. There is a lot of wierd downvoting going on.

I know of two new accounts that went negative recently. I think some downvoters may seek out new accounts specifically.

I've been very disapointed with the downvoting for disagreeing with someone's point of view as well. To me its antithetical to the point of an online community if you stifle all opposing views, e.g. a recent marijuana poll. I mean, it was a poll. The point of a poll is to count all the points of view, not identify people you want to downvote.

I think some people obtain downvoting rights by posting random articles, basically just trolling for stray upvotes. For example, i see a lot of irrelevant wikipedia articles posted. People who got the downvote that way could easily explain the poor form to their downvoting.

Hacker News is also, in my experience, a fine place to promote OSS but a horrible place to promote any non-VCfunded company or endeavor. Basically, if you don't have funding then you are just spam and people don't want to see your ads here no matter where or when.

I hope this helps. Fortunately, there are lots of ways to promote your software so you don't need HN. Best of luck on your project.

</comment><comment><USER3> Unwarranted self-promotion is frowned upon on nearly every internet forum. Even on-topic self-promotion is generally rejected unless it's specifically requested.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have been asked to talk about the tool we are working on - and on replying to the same, i have got myself down voted once. Now that was a bit annoying.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Kareer Day – Learn About Jobs by People Who've Done Them - <AUTHOR> https://www.kareerday.com <comment><AUTHOR> A job search today is like having to arrange a lot of blind dates, with your focus at each being on trying to convince them you're the best thing for them on the spot — that they should pick you. And if they agree, you then commit to a "long-term relationship" with them right away. But if you leave before a year is up, people will often think less of you, and it may harm your ability to date after.

You're never really taught how to pick the right "date," nor provided adequate resources to help you figure out who might be a good fit for you.

And yet, if your best friend told you they were going to jump into a serious relationship with someone (this time in the real sense) — or heaven forbid marrying them — right after meeting them, you'd probably caution them otherwise.

We want to help people pick a job (and career) that fits them, one they may actually get to know better (and like) before having to go all-in on date three. Interviews are often a bad environment to fully learn about a job because the interviewee is primarily there to sell themselves, they may not want to ask too probing of questions about the job as that may turn off the interviewer, the interviewer may not have all the answers to your questions (perhaps they've never done the job you're interviewing for), and interviews are usually too short to really understand a role.

We want to improve that process. We're going to do that by providing people with an opportunity to learn directly from those who've done the jobs, who've worked in the careers, in a more neutral way, outside of interviews. These are detailed, first-hand accounts (reviews) that will better educate them on what a job truly entails. Our hope is that it allows people to ride shotgun as if they're on a job shadow, without actually having to get in the car.

<comment><USER2> How do you plan to monetize?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm honestly not sure yet. Right now my top priority is getting good content on the site.

<comment><USER3> Seems like it's not that far off the conventional monetization route of a recruiter. If you could increase the recruitment/candidate success rate after 12 months for new hires, even by a little bit, that'd probably be a pretty nice selling point.

<comment><AUTHOR> When you say:

>If you could increase the recruitment/candidate success rate after 12 months for new hires

Do you mean the probability of a new hire staying after 12 months?

<comment><USER3> I mean both the probability that they are happy in their position and stay, and the probability that they are an acceptable candidate. These are two very different things though probably quite correlated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's a great resource for high schoolers who are trying to find a career path. I have also seen something similar to this at Khanacademy - their "meet the professional" series and also some video interviews on different careers [1].

[1] [https://www.khanacademy.org/college-careers-more/career- cont...](https://www.khanacademy.org/college-careers-more/career-content)

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice, I haven't seen that. Thanks for sharing.

I personally would rather read than watch because I can take-in more information faster, and I'm less willing to sit through a video from a source I'm not already connected to or familiar with (as oppose to say my favorite comedian). But given how popular many YouTube channels and videos are for people teaching various skills, maybe I should include video.

Edit: after looking at this part of Khan Academy (which I'm a fan of), the frustration I have with many of these career sites or content is that they don't focus on what doing a job is actually like nor provide enough detail. You do a job for 8 hours a day, I want to know what I will be doing during that time. Bonus if you also tell me details about what a career path for that job looks like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Interesting fact: Diet Coke is many flight attendants least favorite drink > to pour because the fizz takes forever to go down. They can pour three > drinks for everyone one Diet Coke.

TIL ;)

</comment><comment><USER6> This is great! Thanks!

I've had a related idea a while back - I wish there were walkthroughs for university fields of study. Like a class that discusses the tables of contents (not so much the actual contents!) of courses of other fields at a level that would be understandable to prospective students of the field.

This would reduce unknown unknowns.

As someone who has studied CS, at times it would've actually been useful to know what areas electrical engineers and mechanical engineers are studying, and what the major topics in each course are. Be it to work closely with people who did study those fields, find the right people in the first place or possibly even as a seed to be able to learn just enough of their field to help myself.

Of course for such technical fields I can read the course descriptions myself and make educated (hah!) guesses, but if I turn to some unrelated fields (e.g. veterinary studies) out of sheer curiosity I'm lost.

</comment><comment><USER7> Interesting idea! The name is a little hard to take seriously with the misspelling.

Some of the reviews are very detailed with expected salary ranges and career progressions, and others are really sparse- the Sales Engineer for example, or the Flight Nurse which is basically an anecdote that tells you nothing about the field, how to get into it or what it's like. I'd have a template or guidelines for your reviewers, and reject anything that doesn't match the quality of, for example, the Investment Banking VP or the Crane Operator.

<comment><AUTHOR> Finding salary ranges is pretty easy these days. Knowing what a job is actually like before doing it is not, so that's going to be my focus.

You're right some posts are really sparse. And I hope to fix that going forward, perhaps via some guidelines as you suggest.

Though, I'd prefer not forcing too many restrictions on what people share. If you envision looking at say 10+ posts for a given job, some with just interesting anecdotes about specific experiences or situations would be useful I think.

I appreciate the feedback.

<comment><USER7> That makes sense, good luck with it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think the formats should be consistent. The Flight Attendant one was written like a post..then the Interior Designer one was a Q&A with a designer.

<comment><AUTHOR> You might be right.

I thought having a varied structure is better because it allows people to talk about whatever they want to talk about, however they want to talk about it. But when I watch or read good interviews (not job interviews), the interviewer asks good questions, listens a lot, and asks subtle (yet effective) follow-up questions that creates an engaging conversation because of the stories or details that you learn. Bad interviewers get in the way by not listening well, talking too much, or asking bad questions.

I'm just not yet sure if there are universal questions that can be applied across all job categories and functions, that will also get people to provide good anecdotes and details. For example, are there questions you ask a football coach that are equally applicable to asking a software engineer?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a cool idea and I dig that you're focusing on content. One thing I noticed after clicking through a few was some are far better than others. The flight attendant provides awesome details and pros/cons. Whereas the F1 performance engineer is a single paragraph with nothing more than what the title means.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ya, that's an example of one that has little content, but which leaves you wanting more. I hope to get more and better content with time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice idea. Good luck on seeing it grow out. Do you have a revenue model long term?

Right off the bat, I think you need a search box. Probably with autocomplete to the job titles. I was a bit frustrated trying to click through to the various titles, and I could not find the search box.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not exactly sure on a revenue model yet, but I think job ads is one idea that could work. However, when I was researching companies that are trying to match people with the right career, several ended up partnering with Fortune 500 companies to essentially be their marketing channel. I won't be doing that, as I think it creates a conflict of interest. Having good content is my top priority.

Adding search is the first feature on my list to build out, sorry for the frustration. And thanks for the feedback.

<comment><USER10> I think the workers should be your revenue model. But I also don't see that generating quite enough revenue without some creative means. Definitely have a tip jar. Maybe non targeted ads?

Crazy idea time. Build out a suite of features for someone to fully document employer abuse. Request a portion of legal windfalls as cost for downloading the data.

Or maybe partner with labor unions? You will have to refrain from the crazy idea though.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is actually a market where there are many real business models that work. Advertising is the most dominant one via job ads, and that could be a way to go.

Alternatively, I think people would pay for accurately telling them what they should do with their life that would provide them with the most fulfillment; and more if you're directly able to place them in that job/industry (similar to how a dating service could find you the person to marry).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a cool idea!

One thing that sticks out to me is once you get past the overview of what a job entails, you'll probably have a lot of specific questions where Q&A or mentorship with someone that's done the job might be a better fit than a pull- only model.

<comment><AUTHOR> So I thought about implementing some type of comment system or Q&A feature, but decided not to right now because I often find that posts on many websites don't have much activity on them, the original poster not responding (especially in a timely manner), as well as having to deal with spam.

Instead, I was thinking about encouraging people to include their emails in posts for people who are open to being contacted with questions. What do you think about that?

<comment><USER10> I agree. Comments all too often add nothing and take away a lot. Especially in the day of state backed trolling.

Maybe offer an intermediary communication method like an anonymous email address for emails for just that post to go through.

<comment><USER12> The email idea would be great. I've had trouble responding to comments on articles I've written until I learned I could just subscribe to Disqus comments. Ideally the author would publish the email response to the article if appropriate.

And for articles where the author doesn't provide an email address they can be reached at maybe those don't have comment sections as it does now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A unionized crane operator gets 200k annually? Wow!!

[https://www.kareerday.com/reviews/crane- operator](https://www.kareerday.com/reviews/crane-operator)

<comment><USER14> Years ago I got the chance to try and operate a friction crane during some down time. I was just a laborer on college break but we were waiting on another large machine to do its work so the crane operator told me to come up and he showed me the basics.

I learned a completely new respect for what he was doing when I gave him signals. Good operators are amazing, the not so good ones are terrifying.

<comment> o-__-o I'll just leave this here - [https://youtu.be/UuPajTVHItI](https://youtu.be/UuPajTVHItI)

You made me spend an hour on YouTube, thank you sir.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Similar site: [https://jobshadow.com/complete-list-of- interviews/](https://jobshadow.com/complete-list-of-interviews/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I've never seen this site. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> These responses are just copied off reddit verbatim without validation. I've seen the flight nurse and a couple of others before.

<comment><USER10> They've got to get their starter content somewhere?

<comment><USER16> I mean, I guess I can copy a bunch of unverified AskReddit thread responses, make a website, mix in some javascript, and get a bunch of news.ycombinator karma?

Like if OP had gone back and interviewed some of these people and got some validation they are who they say they are, sure.

<comment><AUTHOR> Validation is something that will likely happen in the future. But I also think anonymity is important as well. So figuring out that balance is key.

You're right I should have tried to corroborate the Reddit users' stories. Sorry about that. However, many stories on the site are corroborated and will be going forward.

<comment><USER17> Is citing your sources in the plans "going forward"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Great idea! If there was a way to tell apart categories with no content in them it would save many clicks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. I'm hoping that's only going to be a short-term problem. Perhaps you'd (or anyone else) be willing to write a review for one of the categories that doesn't have content? :)

Categories that currently don't have content:

Administrative, Arts & Design, Consulting, Customer Service & Support, Legal, Information Technology, Marketing, Media & Communications, Other, Product & Project Management, Research & Science

If you'd like to help out, you can do so here: [https://www.kareerday.com/write-review](https://www.kareerday.com/write- review)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Really nice idea! Congrats!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I appreciate the kind words.</comment></comment>


Learnings from Designing the Documentation for a Developer Product - <AUTHOR> http://blog.codeship.io/2014/09/11/designing-documentation-for-developer-products.html

<comment><USER2> What are other good examples for dev tool docs with great ux (apart from Sendgrid)?

<comment><AUTHOR> I really liked the Github documentation ([https://help.github.com/](https://help.github.com/)), as well as Swiftype ([https://swiftype.com/documentation/](https://swiftype.com/documentation/)) and BitBucket ([https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/BITBUCKET/Bitbucket...](https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/BITBUCKET/Bitbucket+Documentation+Home))

Mostly because all provide a very clean design, especially on the content pages themselves.</comment></comment>


Per realtor.com's rent or buy calculator, renting in the Bay Area is better - <AUTHOR> http://www.realtor.com/mortgage/tools/rent-or-buy-calculator/ <comment><AUTHOR> Even if inflation is modeled at 20%, renting is still better, at least for the cities on the peninsula I explored: [https://www.dropbox.com/s/d23fzt6ygj8lekc/Screen%20Shot%2020...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/d23fzt6ygj8lekc/Screen%20Shot%202017-01-05%20at%207.33.51%20PM.png?dl=0)

</comment><comment><USER2> Makes sense. Condos are overvalued.</comment>


Ask HN: I have 3 HN accounts, which all randomly get used - <AUTHOR>

I have three HN accounts:
http://news.ycombinator.org/user?id=jneal http://news.ycombinator.org/user?id=jtneal http://news.ycombinator.org/user?id=jasonneal
I use "Click Pass" to log-in...but depending on which computer I use, I log-in to a different account. For example, at home I believe it uses Gmail, and logs me in to "jneal". At work, it uses Facebook, and logs me in to "jasonneal".
It doesn't bother me too much, but I would like some consistency...Is there some way to merge my "jtneal" and "jasonneal" with my "jneal" account? If not, I'm okay to have "jtneal" and "jasonneal" either deleted or at least some how deactivated so they can't be logged in to. Click Pass doesn't give me any choice on how I want to log in, it just automatically logs me in.
Jason <comment><USER2> Why did you create 3 accounts?

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't got a clue to be honest. I believe, at one point, I was unable to log in to my account "jneal" and so I created "jasonneal". I'm not sure when "jtneal" was created. They are all over a few years old.

<comment><USER2> Just use one with lots of karma then forget the rest, formulate a way to remember your passwords though.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Crash course in Qt for C++ developers – a blog post series - <AUTHOR> Hi guys,
Two days ago I published the fourth post in the series and thought it would now be a good time to look for additional feedback here on Hacker News.
The aim of the series (as mentioned in the first post) is to inspire more people to start using Qt. My ambition is to answer the following questions "what is the gist of Qt?"; "what is the 20% that you need to know to develop 80% of the application?"; "what are the perhaps unknown unknowns?". In other words, I'm just covering basics: enough to understand the concepts and where to find additional information should you need it.
Do you agree with the direction of the series so far? Here is the link to the first post:
https://www.cleanqt.io/blog/crash-course-in-qt-for-c%2B%2B-d...
I appreciate your time and would be very happy if you had any feedback. <comment><USER2> I really like the idea. IMO, Qt makes C++ suitable for wide variety of applications.

I learned Qt by reading the source code of default QtCreator applications (like Rich Text Viewer). After you know about SIGNAL/SLOT architecture and pImpl idea you can pretty easily derive it from well-written code. It will also teach you good practices! It was the most efficient method for me and many of my friends.

This way your posts will really look like the "course" and not like "documentation + my comments".

Keep it up!

</comment><comment><USER3> When I walk people through Qt, I usually start with the QObject/QWidget class setup, show some basic UI elements, create a "Hello World" QApplication, then walk into signals and slots.

The event system is usually something a neophyte Qt programmer hardly ever touches. I don't know if I would lead off with that.

 _(psst..also: blog posts really shouldn 't go under Show HN. Check the rules)_

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey there! Thanks, great comment. I'm considering rearranging the topics when it's finished.

My thinking was that the event loop is one of the first thing that you'll encounter, i.e. app.exec() in main, when using Qt. The fact that the flow of the app is event-driven is important to understand when working with a GUI toolkit and thought it would be good to introduce early on (even though you rarely use the actual event system itself). Perhaps not as a first topic though.

Yeah, I realised that it shouldn't be Shown HN, but can't find a way to edit it, thanks.

Appreciate the feedback, cheers!

<comment><USER4> > My thinking was that the event loop is one of the first thing that you'll > encounter, i.e. app.exec() in main, when using Qt.

Technically that's true, but as the event loop runs under the hood then the event loop doesn't assume a prominent role in Qt's mental model.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, geezerjay has it right. For a new programmer trying to get a "crash course" in Qt, app.exec() is a black box you don't really need to mess with.

You can explain that it drives all the mouse, keyboard, and QTimer signals when you begin to implement the event slots on your widgets, but as far as getting an app to run it's a matter of calling app.exec() and leaving it alone.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks again! I agree with you!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How best to pay offshore resources? - <AUTHOR>

Hi, I have a consulting S-corp that I've been running for about 6 years with me as the sole employee.  I use Paychex for payroll, and all my contracts are corp-to-corp.  Now, I'm trying to bootstrap a startup, and I have a lingering consulting project that is about 70% done, and I want to hire someone to help me finish it, so I can devote all my time to the startup.  I ended up finding a great resource, and it just so happens that he is Romanian.  I didn't go looking for an offshore resource, it just happened that way.  Anyway, I'm unsure how best to pay him, and I was wondering if anyone on HN might be able to provide some guidance or resources? <comment><USER2> Your bank can probably set you up for doing international wire transfers using online banking. The fees are usually substantial on both sides of the transaction, however. For smaller jobs, I usually pay foreign freelancers using PayPal.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I guess I should have clarified -- I think PayPal will work fine to actually handle the transaction. I guess the thing I'm wondering about is how to handle the tax / reporting side of things.

<comment><USER3> Your accountant should tell you this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You can try out guys like payoneer.com they offer loadable debit cards worldwide or try to get SWIFT transfer facility with your bank.</comment>


Trust Is at the Core of Software Marketing - <AUTHOR> https://tomtunguz.com/trust-core-marketing/ <comment><USER2> I was once at an audio manufacturer that will be coming up on the 100th anniversary in a few years. I distinctly remember the presentation given to all of us where it was hammered home that the company was optimized for preserving and expanding the brand.

For example, they would avoid changing materials/tooling for their products that have been manufactured for decades without rigorous testing that showed it improved the product or unless supply chain issues out of their control forced them to (which my understanding was rare, because they engineered their supply chain to avoid it).

Some of this is pragmatic. It takes a century to build a brand and a day to kill it. And in that industry, brand loyalty is as important as specs. But much more of it is genuine care for their products and customers - they hired people who gave a shit, and the culture wasn't one where a penny pinching decision that harmed quality would have been made, let alone tolerated.

My point is this - a brand with "trust" as a core value isn't derived just from transparency, sharing code, auditing and communication. It's built by the people that work on those products, sell them, and make decisions about the product roadmap. Much the way that software architecture reflects organizational architecture, brand value reflects culture and values of the people that work on it.

<comment><USER3> > brand value reflects culture and values of the people that work on it.

It also reflects the priorities of their customers: those who can only ask for "cheaper" will not get anything else than "cheaper".

<comment><USER4> There could be such a thing as cheaper in a specific way. If I buy a screwdriver from Harbor freight, I know exactly what I am getting. My only surprise would be to the upside. And likewise if I buy something from snap on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Enterprise buyers use third parties to buy software. They consult Gartner, Forrester, and others to establish trust in vendors. These research agencies diligence software products directly and through surveys. This is the reason analyst relations are so important. Presence on the magic quadrant confers trustworthiness."

Does anyone involved with enterprise purchasing decisions know how valuable Gartner/Forrester endorsements are? And if being in the unmagical quadrant is terrible?

I see companies tout them but I can't tell if they're effective.

<comment><USER6> At GitLab we spend a substantial amount of effort on Analyst Relations (AR) which is working with groups like Gartner, Forrester, and 451 Research. On [https://about.gitlab.com/company/team/org- chart/](https://about.gitlab.com/company/team/org-chart/) you can see we have two people who are a dedicated Analyst Relations Manager. They manage the relationship but many of our product marketing managers and product managers are involved to answer questions and give presentations.

An important thing these firms do is aggregate customer feedback. For a consumer tool I can look on Quora and for a development tool I can look at Hacker News. But for enterprise tools the people that use the product are often not allowed to share feedback themselves. However they are allowed to talk with analysts.

That is why the opinions of these analysts are often really important to convince new customers your product is any good [https://about.gitlab.com/is- it-any-good/](https://about.gitlab.com/is-it-any-good/)

BTW We just won a 451 Firestarter award [https://about.gitlab.com/press/releases/2020-01-14-gitlab- re...](https://about.gitlab.com/press/releases/2020-01-14-gitlab-recognized- as-451-firestarter.html) which we're stoked about.

<comment><USER7> An important distinction (as I mentioned in another comment) is that you have no idea how much "aggregate customer feedback" Gartner really has, they don't disclose their research methodologies at all. That's a real problem. 451 research does... and sincere congrats on your award.

<comment><USER6> Thank you!

BTW Gartner now has an online review tool called Peer Insights [https://www.gartner.com/en/products/peer- insights](https://www.gartner.com/en/products/peer-insights) Here you can read the customer reviews [https://www.gartner.com/reviews/market/application- release-o...](https://www.gartner.com/reviews/market/application-release- orchestration-solutions/vendor/gitlab/product/gitlab) I might be a bit biased because in 2018 GitLab won Gartner their customer choice award and recently we won another awards based on peer insights [https://about.gitlab.com/press/releases/2019-07-26-gitLab- re...](https://about.gitlab.com/press/releases/2019-07-26-gitLab-recognized- in-gartner-peer-insights-customers-choice-for-EAPT.html)

<comment><USER7> Yes, very familiar with it... unfortunately there's a bit of vendor gamesmanship with these and they don't inform the MQ. Sorry, I've had too many years working with these tools, I'm cynical.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Enterprise buyers use third parties to buy software. They consult Gartner, Forrester, and others to establish trust in vendors. These research agencies diligence software products directly and through surveys. This is the reason analyst relations are so important. Presence on the magic quadrant confers trustworthiness."

Strongly disagree on this point. With the exception of 451 Research, the major analyst firms do not share any of their research methodologies. Did they interview/research 10 orgs or 1,000? You don't know. The biases of the research analysts is also suspect. At Gartner, many of their analysts haven't actually used the software they are covering. As a consequence, we have no idea about the depth of their research at all.

The role of these analysts is to give C-level executives a "cover your a$$" excuse if things go wrong with the software. From my experience, most technical level decision makers rely more on their peers to develop trust than on analysts.

<comment><USER8> Everything is ass-covering. The "trust" tech marketing builds is to say "I trust these guys won't lose me my job", not "I trust their software works exactly as advertised".

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If it was true that trust is enough to market software, there would be _much_ more investment in application security by the long tail of startups, consultancies, and webdev "shops".

What I've found over the years is that most people who sell software think of security as a _value-add_. At best, it's something to bill enterprise customers for. At worst, it's a cost center that will only be invested in if a big paying customer asks for it explicitly, and not a moment sooner. [1]

For background: I spent years pushing the PHP ecosystem forward in cryptography and security. I published a lot of open source libraries [2], cleaned up a lot of StackOverflow answers [3], and had a lot of discussions with small and medium businesses about security improvements that ultimately went nowhere because they couldn't find budget for security.

I don't believe it's fair to say that trust is "at _the core_ " of software marketing if so many successful software companies can get by without investing in making their products trustworthy. After all, deception can obviate trust in this context.

(I do believe that software _ought to_ be more trustworthy, and society should reward companies that act with integrity. But at the end of the day, that's not my call to make.)

[1]: [https://sso.tax](https://sso.tax)

[2]: [https://github.com/paragonie](https://github.com/paragonie)

[3]: [https://paragonie.com/blog/2018/01/our-ambitious-plan- make-i...](https://paragonie.com/blog/2018/01/our-ambitious-plan-make- insecure-php-software-thing-past)

<comment><USER10> _I don 't believe it's fair to say that trust is "at the core" of software marketing if so many successful software companies can get by without investing in making their products trustworthy. After all, deception can obviate trust in this context._

What you're seeing is companies that ignore security and trust at their own peril. There are plenty of them, and the vast majority of startups, that don't realize how important trust and security is to large customers. Then they wonder why they can't get their foot in the door at certain companies.

The place I work for runs _every_ software purchase through a security committee. For that reason, we tend to go with the big brands that take security seriously. But it's not exclusively big brands.

I worked on a particular project that needed a particular type of software. None of the big brands had anything similar. I put together a list of five options and sent it over to the people who actually get to make the decisions.

All five options were small developers (fewer than 50 employees). Only two of those five bothered to respond to the initial inquiries from our security people. Of the two that responded, only one provided answers to the follow-up questions. Guess which one got a ~$250K purchase order the next month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Slimy sales practices provokes distrust"

How many times have you been promised the world by a sales person and then you speak with an engineer and get a whole different story? I've learned to always speak with an engineer and find the manager of an existing customer.

Sometimes it's good, sometimes not so much.

<comment><USER12> Being on the other side, there are plenty of times that I have to tell the customer, "this world is only going to happen if you make the proper investment in setting this up specific to your needs..." and then they complain when an already overworked employee they threw it over the fence to can't make it sing.

Good enterprise software is almost never one size fits all, and there is responsibility on both sides to end up with something great.

<comment><USER13> Right, enterprise software is usually relying on the end user to program everything but instead of programming in C#/Javascript they're programming in Salesforce (or whatever)

<comment><USER12> I wouldn't say everything. The whole point is not to rebuild security, and infra, and the data store, etc. etc.

The first start up I worked for built a piece of software that was adopted by large enterprises in regulated industries with 3 engineers, because they got to piggyback off of the Salesforce foundation.

It's just a different flavor of abstraction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Open source companies build trust by sharing the entirety of their codebase > to the public

This mostly only builds trust with fellow developers. I can see why it would be seen as trust building, but I don't think it builds as much trust as developers would like to believe. Not an argument against open source at all, just interesting to think about how you sell open source as a feature to an end user.

<comment><USER15> Also trust cuts both ways. Ultimately if you produce bloated, frustrating bug- ridden software, sharing the source online probably isn't going to help your case.

There's a significant collection of software that I didn't trust out of the gate, and I now trust a lot less after reading the source (Apache projects, I'm looking at you).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Brand value can be trust, but it can also mean other things, like dynamism or creativity.

Building a brand is a long, disciplined process.

I'm in the very early stages of building a personal brand. I don't expect it to have much to show for itself for another year or two.

Part of that, is being careful and thoughtful about what I post in public forums, whether online, or in-person.

I have made it a point to hold myself accountable for what I post. If you look at my HN handle, you will see that I link to my corporate Web sites and Stack Overflow story.

I may come across as pedantic and "stuffy," but I'm done with damaging my personal brand.

Everything I do is meant as a part of brand-building.

I have had trust as part of my personal brand for a couple of decades. I was a senior engineering manager for a very conservative Japanese company. You don't get to stay long in those types of positions without a demonstrable degree of personal integrity.

</comment><comment><USER17> Given the data and evidence based posts the OP is known for, this post feels disappointingly light and anecdotal.

<comment><USER18> Thanks for the feedback. What data would help with the argument?

<comment><USER17> > We won't buy from people or companies we don't trust. The same is true in > software.

That reads like a sensible statement, but I'm not sure it's true or if it's true I'm not sure how the scale factors fit in.

Just raising the obvious counter-example, Facebook is pretty wildly distrusted, and yet is widely used by people who distrust it. Did they "purchase" FB? Not literally, but they certainly engage with it in ways similar to purchasing and pay for it with ad viewing.

As to the data question, I'd think the best approach would involve looking for explicit measures of trust (eg surveys) and seeing how those map to revenue growth or subscriber growth for software companies.

The brand strength you called out may be relevant as a proxy for trust, but I think that's assuming the thesis to be true and then proving it to be true by saying strong brands have strong sales numbers therefore trust is the key to sales (without ever proving trust is key to software brand strength).

Another approach might be to look at sales numbers following data leak incidents, but I think that's more complex because these days those announcements are so prevalent they may not stay in the news cycle long enough to matter (which arguably is itself a sign trust is not as key a differentiator as one would expect).

As one more thought, I'd expect b2b software purchase decisions to have a steeper dependence on trust than b2c, but that's just a guess.

Your thesis is certainly an important one to explore, and I think all of us hope it's true because an economic incentive like this is a powerful force encouraging companies to treat our data in a trustworthy manner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm not sure what the takeaways from this article were. I feel like the incredibly short article was more a tautological executive summary of code axioms.

</comment><comment><USER20> A Gartner analyst here. AMA.

<comment><USER21> What are the best 'early' or 'pre-steps' a smaller company can do before they're likely to be on your radar? And what is the best stage at which to start focusing on your type of orgs?

At what point do such firms start developing 'quadrants' for smaller, niche services or industries? There are surely a lot of SaaS type platforms out there that just don't make the cut into your reports, so where is that threshold?

<comment><USER20> You should identify a target list of analysts who cover your domain and brief them on your offering. You are never too early IMO.

We typically do not produce Magic Quadrants for small, niche oriented sectors. We will use another document type called a Market Guide for such markets. Market Guides do not rank vendors like a Magic Quadrant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Google seems to "survive" after becoming so untrustworthy ( in shutting down tools)

<comment><USER23> Yeah, trust is just a way to break into the market. Sorta like the old saying "it takes a poor genius to become rich and a rich idiot to become poor"

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> You cannot maximize near term profits and long term customer trust. And the financing systems of the modern economy are set up for near term profits. Thus you cannot do right by your customers unless you are financed outside of the finance industry (bootstrapping, family business, rich dude).

<comment><USER2> If profit is orthogonal to a core value of the brand, then that value is not important to the market. That's just knowing your customers.

As well, near term profit and long term brand goals are never decoupled. You don't one day decide "our brand is X" but "our brand will be X" and you need to do Y and Z _today_ and every day following to build up to X.

And I firmly reject the idea that near-term profit is disjoint from long-term consumer trust, at least for professional products and tooling. If they don't trust you not to screw them today or tomorrow, they won't pay you. I think this is why Google and Facebook can't make money from anything but advertising, they have to give away everything else for free or at a loss because no one trusts them at all.

<comment><USER25> It happens all the time. Tool Company A is known for making quality tools. Company B buys company A and immediately decides that they can make more money in the short term by using cheaper components. The cheaper components aren't immediately obvious--it takes a few hundred hours of wear to be apparent.

It takes even longer for word to spread that Tool Company A is no longer a quality brand.

Company B sacrificed the long term brand, but they managed to increase short term profits.

<comment><USER2> I mean there are a couple ways to look at that. For me it's recognizing that building trust as a brand is part of creating value. The pump and dump scheme that you're describing is about exfiltrating that value from the brand.

But that doesn't really work until either the company is in a situation where you need to pump and dump to exit or it's in late enough stage that the leaders/owners want to exit/retire. Either way the long term health of the company and brand don't matter, by that point it doesn't matter to build trust with customers.

<comment><USER25> That's not what pump and dump means.

>Either way the long term health of the company and brand don't matter

It's does matter because the long term option will often result in more value overall to the new owners and customers. There is definitely a tension between short term profit and long term profit. It's well recognized and has been studied extensively.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Trust and marketing never belong in the same sentence. Marketing is the art of inconsequential "pushing of the truth" and frivolous claims. It's the art of shoving a sub-par product in your face over a relevant product.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Marketing is the art of inconsequential "pushing of the truth"

What would you call it when someone, say, the product creator, speaks the truth about a product to get the word out? That would fall under "marketing."

"Marketing" is as general a term as "programming." There are all sorts of bad things accomplished with programming, but I think you'd agree that generalizing all of "programming" as something negative would be ridiculous.

<comment><USER27> No, it's not. Marketing as a concept is totally divorced from whether or not its message is truthful because marketing doesn't measure anything. It's propaganda, whether or not the audience understands that or whether the creator is being honest. The audience has to effectively use a side-channel to figure out if a piece of marketing accurately reflects the product. Often times it doesn't, or at least not completely, because if you don't lie or exaggerate to some extent, your product will lose out to the competitor who makes bolder claims, uses brighter colors, and is purposefully less specific in their message.

The best that marketing can do to convey trust is to use social proof. After all, _if everyone is using Brand X, it must be good, right?_ Of course, social proof can be faked, exaggerated, or bought with a lot of money, as is commonly done.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you're talking about "advertising," which is != "marketing."

To continue with my analogy, it's like saying "spam is bad, therefore all email is bad, and email is created by programming, therefore all programming is bad."</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Getting the most out of google analytics - <AUTHOR> http://blog.kissmetrics.com/50-resources-for-getting-the-most-out-of-google-analytics/

<comment><USER2> Nice collection of links there, I'll definitely be looking through these when I find the time.</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone used oDesk to build their MVP? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a non-technical "founder" considering using oDesk to hire a Rails dev to finish work on my MVP so I can get something out there and testing for relatively cheap. Has anybody gone this route before and if so, how was the experience? Do you have anybody you can recommend?
And for the technical people, can you offer advice on any pitfalls to be aware of when using this option?
Thanks for the help. <comment><USER2> I've worked as a developer through oDesk and I also hired developer to do a little bit of work for me through oDesk. When working as a developer on oDesk there was more than one occasion where I was hired to either finish something that another oDesk contractor didn't finish, or fix something that wasn't written quite right. The code that I had to work with from the previous developers was always pretty sloppy and never commented and it looked thrown together.

When I hired a developer I got good results. The developer came in way under the amount of time that he quoted, and the code was very clean & commented.

I believe that the difference was that I hired someone based on their skills and the interview where the people who I did work for had initially hired based on lowest price and they got what they paid for. You'll find that the lower priced devs are usually a group of people or a company who is pumping out code as quickly and are more worried about quantity than quality.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not about hiring at the lowest hourly rate; I'd rather pay more for quality, usable code that can be iterated on than pay less for garbage.

Do you have anybody you'd feel comfortable recommending? I'm looking for proficiency in Rails, Javascript, jQuery, AJAX, and at least the basics of HTML/CSS. I'm not completely clueless about the development process either as I've been working alongside my current freelance dev to write the front-end as he codes the backend (we use git for VCS). I can speak the language (at least at a basic level) and can provide a full spec and HTML mocks if needed.

If you have anybody in mind, feel free to email me at claydani [at] gmail [dot] com

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately I've only ever hired PHP devs and it looks like they focus mainly on PHP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'd start from here, HN, (or usethesource.com) first...

<comment><AUTHOR> Any advice on how to word it? I've tried the "seeking technical cofounder" thing which didn't go anywhere but I have cash and am looking to build out a core feature set. Some of the work is already done so they would be taking the reigns with the code.</comment></comment>


25 Years of Linux – so far - <AUTHOR> https://lwn.net/Articles/698042/ <comment><USER2> This article is only available to subscribers, and the paywall seemingly can't be circumvented via the "web" link.

Here's another discussion of Linux's 25th anniversary:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12355298](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12355298)

<comment><USER3> Use this subscriber link: [https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/698042/7333e685450f7676/](https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/698042/7333e685450f7676/)

If you find the article useful, consider subscribing to LWN - they do great work :)</comment></comment>


No anonymous search: Scroogle.org is down again - <AUTHOR> http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/scraper.htm

<comment><USER2> <http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/scroogle.org>

it's up (possibly again) at the moment

<comment><USER3> Try a search.

The site is up, but it's not functional. Apparently they relied on a simple, static interface to search and Google has removed it, so they aren't able to perform searches anymore. (Which they will tell you if you do try to do a search.)

<comment><USER2> oh...right. My fault, sorry.

More information here: <http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/nbbw.cgi> "We regret to announce that our Google scraper may have to be permanently retired, thanks to a change at Google. It depends on whether Google is willing to restore the simple interface that we've been scraping since Scroogle started five years ago. Actually, we've been using that interface for scraping since Google- Watch.org began in 2002."</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How would an individual investor buy Facebook shares? - <AUTHOR>

So I've just had a bit of an epiphany or flash of understanding with respect to why Facebook is worth the current $75M and IMO could be worth significantly more.
I see the posts that say that they are trading somehow, but everything I've seen requires a trade of 10,000 shares (at $30 each).
I can' afford that, but I'd happily bet my current available life savings of a few thousand dollars.
How does an individual investor make that purchase?  Or do I really have to be in a position to put $300k into Facebook if I want to be able to hop on for the ride? <comment><AUTHOR> FYI - I just got an email back from Shares Post.

| Unfortunately all investors must be accredited investors

| as defined by the SEC in order to participate.

| Thanks,

| Team SharesPost

| On Mon, Mar 7, 2011 at 11:09 AM, SharesPost <firstname.lastname@example.com> wrote:

And apparently the SEC definition is here: <http://www.sec.gov/answers/accred.htm>

</comment><comment><USER2> <http://www.secondmarket.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> Sadly, it seems to use their interface you've got to be Accredited. (I've logged in and tried)

So I can't actually buy stock in their system.

It's not quite as easy as popping on and plunking in a credit card number. Not that shares are like that in real markets either, but it's actually a little more manageable.

Apart from a link to the service, Shares Post being another one (<http://www.sharespost.com/companies/facebook>). I've also popped on to SharesPost but it's also 'pending approval'

How does a layman go about buying "what he can afford" in terms of Facebook shares?

<comment><USER3> you just have to lie and say you're accredited.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm... and when they check your credentials? I'm not sure it's as easy as getting around the age-verification on porn sites (are you 18? yes / no)

Maybe there are investment conglomerates out there - or group buy in / mutual clubs where I can put in a share of the money towards the actual facebook purchase.

<comment><USER3> well, try it and find out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> US citizens are not elidgable. Offering was not FTC sanctioned.</comment>


Infinite Loops - <AUTHOR> https://repl.it/site/blog/infinite-loops <comment><USER2> Nice! Something like this is super-important for user experience.

This is a problem we've thought a lot about with Pyret, and have different concrete solutions. Rather than use heuristics that turn long-running computations into errors, we capture continuations and yield to the browser periodically. This allows long-running computations to eventually complete, while allowing the user to fully interact with buttons and the page while it's happening. This generalizes to nice abstractions for functional event loops and ways to manage asynchronous APIs for novices.

The Doppio JVM and the Whalesong compiler for Racket have similar underlying approaches.

It's quite a bit of effort to work around this inherent limitation of the browser's evaluation model for web-based IDEs!

<comment><USER3> First of all big fan of Pyret. And I (the author) did something similar in the past and I totally agree it's the way to go. What I did is exploded every JavaScript program on statements, wrapped function calls with thunks, and then converted the program and every function to a generator and inserted a yield statement between every other statement.

See [https://amasad.me/js-debugger](https://amasad.me/js-debugger)

It worked well enough and was able to build a couple of demos on top of it (last time I checked chrome broke some of my demos so try them on other browsers). However, I think it's quite a hack and that the proper solution would be to build a JS VM. There are still issues to be worked out there like the problem that you can't instrument native code (say an event handler, or built-in functions) and that there are things that are inherently synchronous in the browser that you can't make async (e.g. event bubbling).

However, one of Repl.it's goal is to support every language ever existed so building and maintaining our own virtual machines would be quite an undertaking for our 3 person team.

What I'm hoping for is that we sometime soon leverage WASM to compile down an existing JS VM.

<comment><USER4> Cool stuff! I work with @jpolitz and @enum on the Stopify project as well.

Early on we also implemented a similar generator approach to what you described (as well as CPS). We found that it mostly worked, but had a few drawbacks. Specifically, generators change the type of instrumented functions, which makes it difficult to implement constructors and prototype inheritance, and they also break tail calls in environments that support them. More importantly for practical concerns, we found it to be much slower (at least 2x-3x) than the solution we came up with.

Again, happy to share more information with you!

<comment><USER3> Surprised never heard of this project. Peaked my interest -- how do you do it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Repl.it is a service to edit and run snippets of code in the browser. The code runs on their servers (except JavaScript) and they extended the support for infinite loops (no timeouts)

<comment><USER3> That's a good summary, thanks! So in addition to not timeboxing the user code what's interesting about this is the heuristics we came up with for trapping potential infinite loops in JS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The halting problem has been solved!

</comment><comment><USER7> Mentioning that this problem is generally undecidable would have been nice, together with an analysis of which heuristics are then used.

As I see it, they more or less just time the loops and if it was running too long it's an infinite loop.

The author suggests one edge case for this where the loop waits for user input.

So for some definition of infinity this might be okay.

<comment><USER3> Time the loops plus an iteration counter. Together they work well. If something is taking long AND is looping a lot then there's a good chance we're running up against an infinite loop.

Additionally we setTimeout and reset the counter so that we don't stop infinite generators.

Good point re undecidability, it's a knowledge curse mistake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> How do we go about requesting more languages? I would love to see D or REBOL on the list :)

</comment><comment><USER9> I may be mistaken, but I believe that behind the scenes, it's the token bucket algorithm that does rate control.

</comment><comment><USER10> Docker Cloud's container service could learn a thing or two from this</comment>


IBM VP of Blockchain Predicts Bitcoin at $1M - <AUTHOR> https://mybitcoinnews.co/bitcoin-news/ibm-vp-of-blockchain-i-see-bitcoin-at-million-dollars-someday/ <comment><USER2> "Someday" without "in the next X years" is quite vague. It might very well happen, just let inflation run its course and wait a while. A long while. Someday.</comment>


Satellite owners among bystanders in Falcon 9 accident - <AUTHOR> http://spaceflightnow.com/2015/06/29/satellite-owners-bystanders-in-falcon-9-accident/

<comment><USER2> I hope they figure out the root cause soon. Rooting for spacex to get to Mars</comment>


Rough Music and Charivari: Letters Between Natalie Zemon Davis and E.P. Thompson - <AUTHOR> https://academic.oup.com/past/article/235/1/243/3852582 <comment><USER2> interesting read for someone into academia history and socio cultural norms theory. but can't imagine why it is on the HN frontpage.</comment>


Ask PG: An incubator to teach programming to street kids in Turkey - <AUTHOR>

I have in mind an incubator similar to Y Combinator but instead of taking applications from entrepreneurs we will teach programming and internet technology to street kids and give them money and advice to start their own company.
These kids live in the street and survive by selling paper napkins, bottle water etc. There are many non-profits that help these kids, but they teach them music, sports, art or send them to school. No one is teaching them how to start a business by teaching them a skill.
I am planning to teach Google App Engine with Python and separately also Arduino.
I am inspired by Paul Graham's essays advocating less schooling and more doing.
I strongly believe that school is evil. I believe that professional classes and schools inhibit general human progress by hiding knowledge and glamorizing book learning. In Turkey there is a general belief that without a university education a child cannot be successful in life. But some of world's most successful companies are founded by people with no formal education. I want to prove that a system based on learning by doing starting from earliest possible age is the right way to prepare a child to a happy and productive life.
I am asking for your advice in any aspect of this project. Thank you. <comment><USER2> "I have in mind an incubator similar to Y Combinator "

What you are describing is a charity not an incubator.

"No one is teaching them how to start a business by teaching them a skill."

How do you plan doing this if the kids cannot read or write? Why is this even an important skill for a child?

"I am planning to teach Google App Engine with Python and separately also Arduino."

These kids probably don't even have access to decent food, clean water, reliable electricity, etc, so how are they supposed to have access to computers and Internet? Will you provide these things? Will there be a facility where the kids can come to?

"I strongly believe that school is evil."

This is your privilege talking and frankly it's a slap in the face of those kids who cannot afford to go to a decent school.

<comment><AUTHOR> arkitaip: In fact, I don't want to do it as a charity but as a business. That's why I called it incubator.

I assume that kids can read and write but do not have further education.

Yes I hope to provide access to computer and internet. There are many organizations who help these kids. I may ask their cooperation or I can start a place myself or even start initially in an internet cafe. The details are still vague, that's why I posted here.

"This is your privilege talking and frankly it's a slap in the face of those kids who cannot afford to go to a decent school."

This is what I want to prove. You can be a successful entrepreneur without going to brand name school.

<comment><USER3> Just curious, where does the business part come into play? How do you plan on making money?

<comment><AUTHOR> The way Y Combinator makes money. If I understand correctly, they invest in the companies they sponsor.

<comment><USER4> If you want to raise kids to make them into successful people so you can invest in them, why not also have some fun? Make babies! Get laid, get pregos, raise them _then_ you will be a major stock-holder in their success.

<comment><USER5> Can't agree more!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I do not have enough experience or merits to advice you professionally. But, from the bottom of my heart I wish you good luck for this project and wish you success. This is a GREAT initiative. A small tip - If you wish to ask this to PG directly, edit your title to 'Ask PG' instead of 'Ask HN'.

All the best.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. I edited the title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This has "confused" written all over it. There are too many axes to this: there is the education part, the charity part and the business part. Pick one and think it through.

Also, I think your take on education is misguided, at best. The successful people you describe are not entirely _unschooled_ , or uneducated, as the popular confounding goes. You are underestimating the amount of resources they have at their disposal, both knowledge and material.

But instead of getting bogged down by arm-chair philosophizing on education and child-rearing (how did that work out for Rousseau?) I suggest you grab _one_ kid off the street and teach him or her first. If your objective is to educate, put your pupils first, that's what teachers do. Start with one and "iterate like hell".

<comment><AUTHOR> No, there is no education part. Everyone will learn on their own. There is StackOverflow, online manuals, tutorials... And there is no charity part. I don't like charity. The idea is to tell the kids that they can start their own company. That's why I call it incubator. And I think it is important to have more than one kid. Again like in Y Combinator.

<comment><USER4> good luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think there //is// a need for training people in the computer skills. In particular (1) system administration and (2) web development. These two skills happen to to be precisely the kind of things you need to learn hands on, and not in a formal education setting (University).

I have put some thoughts into starting a similar program (think hacker space, but with daily lectures and access to a big bookcase of technical literature). Email me if you would like to discuss.

Do you think you can get funding from the city or government to run this? I have some ideas for how such a peer-to-peer educational system could fund itself in the long run, but to get things started you would need some cash.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Ivan, definitely I would like to discuss, I just sent you an email.

I agree about hands on education and those are the two things I would like to teach (and Arduino eventually).

Hacker space describes well what I have in mind.

I will have some cash of my own but not much. In Turkey, it may be possible to get funding from local government. I need to do more research.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's too bad you believe school is evil. Probably your best chance at helping is to attach yourself to one of the schools with an auxiliary program.

I personally do not think you can build a profitable business out of this unless you have a lot of contacts and investors to help your students, similarly to how many YC companies would not succeed without the alumni network acting as a network of customers and referrers.

<comment><AUTHOR> "how many YC companies would not succeed without the alumni network acting as a network of customers and referrers."

I agree but this happens in time. First I need to start and show that it is possible to build successful internet companies without going to school. All of the information is available online.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think it sounds like an excellent idea. I would suggest creating a "crowd funding" project to try and raise some backing. Kickstarter is probably not an option as their TOS won't allow this. But there are many other options out there - [http://www.quora.com/Where-is-the-kickstarter-to-help- launch...](http://www.quora.com/Where-is-the-kickstarter-to-help-launch-non- profits)

Good luck

</comment><comment><USER10> One way to monetize this can be letting companies recruit for those kids beforehand. Companies pay you monthly, yearly or whatever which you can invest back in those kids and once they are something, they may get a job.

<comment><AUTHOR> But the idea is to build their own business, not to get a job.</comment></comment>


Five Memorable Books About Programming - <AUTHOR> http://prog21.dadgum.com/19.html# <comment><USER2> "Scientific Forth" sounds like a fun read, but looks like the only copy on Amazon is over $700. Youch.

Edit: here's a review- this book sounds awesome: <http://www.rigwit.co.uk/papers/review.html></comment>


Red-Light Cameras Just Don't Work - <AUTHOR> http://www.ridelust.com/red-light-cameras-just-dont-work/ <comment><USER2> Article is a political diatribe. It hypes studies to which it doesn't link, or even explain. The researchers who did the studies are are identified only as (I'm not making this up) "North Carolina", "Virginia", and "Ontario." The results apparently are that traffic light cameras (hidden devices) are linked to an increase in crashes, but doesn't even attempt to offer a hypothesis as to why.

There's no content here, just opinion.

<comment><USER3> He could cite his sources, but assuming he is correct, he does refute what you say. He does quote: "Instead, they increase crashes and injuries as drivers attempt to abruptly stop at camera intersections."

He also notes that traffic lights with cameras have in cities had shortened yellow times, which lead to an increase in both tickets, but also in crashes.

As long as the studies' science was done rigorously, a reason why the cameras cause more crashes isn't necessarily vital - Its only important that they prove that the cameras do cause more crashes.

All the red light cameras I've seen, were setup to the side of the road and were impossibly obvious. Clearly I haven't seen the hidden ones because they're hidden, but I doubt they actually do a good job hiding them.</comment></comment>


China's Peer-To-Peer Lenders Are Falling Like Dominoes as Panic Spreads - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-20/china-s-p2p-platform-failures-surge-as-panic-spreads-in-market <comment><USER2> Peer-to-peer lending pretty much involves lending to people who can't get loans from banks, and the banks are actually pretty good at deciding who is too risky to lend money to, so why should this be a surprise?

The only way peer-to-peer lending will succeed is if the banks are overlooking or turning away a large group of creditworthy customers, and so far it doesn't seem like that is happening.

<comment><USER3> "banks are overlooking or turning away a large group of creditworthy customers, and so far it doesn't seem like that is happening."

Bank _do_ refuse to lend to large segments of the population which can be lent to profitably.

In China, part of the reason is caps on loan interest rates.

But banks in developed countries, like the US and the UK, also fail to serve a large segment of the population. Those underserved by banks have limited options to get loans for emergencies etc., and difficulty building their credit history to gain access to cheaper credit in future.

If you're based in London and are a software engineer or data scientist interested in solving this problem, please email me (personal address in profile) and I can tell you about what we've built so far and what's ahead.

<comment><USER4> > Bank do refuse to lend to large segments of the population which can be lent > to profitably.

Why do they refuse to lend if it is profitable?

<comment><USER3> > > Bank do refuse to lend to large segments of the population which can be > lent to profitably.

> Why do they refuse to lend if it is profitable?

Good question.

Note I didn't say it _is_ profitable for the banks to lend to those segments. I said those segments _can be lent to profitably_.

In order to profitably lend to customers who banks turn away (mostly those with a 'bad' credit history based on credit bureau data, or those with little/no data at the credit bureau), you need:

1) Effective credit underwriting (i.e. accurate models/processes to decide whether to accept a particular application, and how much to lend to that applicant at this time), and

2) Efficient processes of acquiring, onboarding and servicing customers.

When a bank lends 10k at 8% for 3 years to a low risk customer, they'll make over 1k in interest over the life of the loan. So they can afford to have inefficient operations/systems.

When you lend 500 to a customer who is likely to pay back, e.g. 600 over the next 6 months, there's only 100 in risk-adjusted margin there, to cover all your costs of underwriting the loan, following up on missed payments etc.

<comment><USER5> I feel like the Market Segment is so small, and your costs will be so high, and it requires so much expertise and oversight/monitoring that it won't be worth it.

<comment><USER6> "Worth it" is subjective; it doesn't necessarily have to be about turning a big profit. In fact if it's a nonprofit, then the goal could be to just help under-served communities, and it seems like it could have a positive enough impact to attract some angel investors

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Posted this because having heard of P2P lending before, I had no idea that it had grown to such a large ( scale and scope ) industry. The most recent exposure I've had to P2P lending or microloans is probably Kiva's more charitable based business model.

But these new companies are certainly not in that space, as some are charging up to 20% on interest!? Who's taking loans at that level, and who's funding it at that level on this type of trust system??

That had me intrigued, so doing more research, this article goes in depth on the various types of lenders, the borrowers as well as their motivations, and the collaterals involved: [https://www.accaglobal.com/content/dam/ACCA_Global/Technical...](https://www.accaglobal.com/content/dam/ACCA_Global/Technical/manage/ea- china-p2p-lending.pdf)

And some top US based companies at the moment: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/oliviergarret/2017/01/29/the-4-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/oliviergarret/2017/01/29/the-4-best-p2p-lending- platforms-for-investors-in-2017-detailed-analysis/#7ccacc1252ab)

Still haven't read enough to form a solid opinion, but it is an intriguing space. I definitely see the value in providing capital and easier access to capital to people who probably never had the opportunity, but the space seems ripe for fraud, manipulation, high defaults, etc.

<comment><USER7> > 20% on interest

Based on what I know, a large portion of the loans have very small amount and short duration. For instance, people want to borrow 1000 CNY for a month and pay back 1020 afterwards. That's already 2% per month.

EDIT: The reasons they need such loans are more complicated. Some needs money for emergency. Some uses the money to buy stock/cryptocurrencies...

EDIT2: P2P platforms typically take money from the deep pockets and subdivide into tiny loans. They earn the interest rate difference (e.g. 20% from users vs 15% to capital providers).

> high defaults

Empirically the default rate is very low. People pay back on time if you call or just text them. Honestly if they don't pay, it's totally fine, and the P2P platforms just don't care, because they earn so much money...

<comment><USER8> And some are just _really_ bad at managing their personal economy.

There is a popular edutainment show here in Sweden about people in difficult economic situations, and at least half of them have taken 15-20 % interest loans for luxury consumption, like vacations and hand bags.

It's a freak show.

<comment><USER9> Isn't Sweden also famous for having 100 year mortgages?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is not a surprise, lending on a P2P platform is a "cool" idea but doesn't end up making you much money since you have to keep rates competitive and you always have the risk of someone not paying back.

As a lender on Lending Club, I don't recommend it. The returns are worse than a bad year on the stock market holding ETFs.

I've stopped lending on there and now I'm just waiting to move my money elsewhere.

<comment><USER9> Just because the returns are lower doesn't _necessarily_ mean it's a bad strategy.

As MPT states, as long as the returns are un-correlated to the stock market they can improve the risk-adjusted returns to a portfolio. Even if the return is lower (but still positive).

<comment><USER11> The problem is that it isn't all that uncorrelated. Prosper tanked hard in the financial collapse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm confused. Why are these firms "shutting down" if they don't have any exposure to the loans they brokered?

I mean, the description of the business model sounds like it's a bunch of transactional companies like ebay or paypal or whatever. Those might be expected to "fail" if the overall market shrinks, if expected growth didn't arrive, or if they get beaten by a competitor. But they don't fail "like dominoes". If anything the exit of one player would be expected to strengthen its competitors.

But the headline and analysis is using terminology that make this sound like a credit crisis. Is it?

<comment><USER13> > _the description of the business model sounds like it 's a bunch of > transactional companies_

From the "people that are running these P2P companies don't actually understand what P2P really is," these sound more like badly-run Prospers than true P2P lenders.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "About 118 P2P lenders have failed in July, the most since _2016_ " \-- 200+ funds failed in Aug. 2016.

"Shakeout's impact on the financial system has been limited" \-- because bond holders are individual investors; it will depress future demand, but no systemic risk.

</comment><comment><USER15> I've been hearing this since 2011. The Chinese government seems to have an amazing ability to get control over the situation as it always seems to be teetering on the brink.

<comment><USER16> That's pretending nothing has changed since 2011. It's interesting you pick that year, because that's not long after China's former approach collapsed with the global consumer in the great recession, and they had to switch to gorging on debt to continue faking a high rate of growth.

It's also fascinating that China would install a dictatorship right as this switch-over - from organic growth to extreme debt - was occurring. I'd wager the Communist Party is terrified of what's coming socially, and given their overwhelming vote in favor of the dictatorship they think that power is going to be necessary to control the people (they very knowingly voted to clamp down on all human rights in the country by handing Xi that position).

Since 2011 they've taken on tens of trillions of dollars in new debt. As recently as 2008 China's debt to GDP ratio was reasonable. Their debt to GDP ratio has drastically worsened since and is very realistically the worst among major economies now (when their immense shadow debt is included it's a certainty). Household debt to income ratios have similarly gotten dramatically worse in the last decade. There are in fact limits to how far a nation can push such things.

Somewhere between 1/4 and 1/3 of their new GDP every year is going just to new debt interest payments. When you consider what else needs to come out of that new GDP, that's a very stark debt situation. In 2011 they also weren't seeing record bond defaults.

The types that cry wolf are often early or very early in their predictions. One has to ask if there is in fact any truth to what they're saying, instead of only focusing on their regularly saying it. In the end, they may be too early in their speculation, rather than entirely wrong.

China should have accepted slower organic growth and maintained their financial health. They chose the Japan approach of levering up massively on debt when the growth dropped off. They're so terrified of their own people about what happens if growth is 2% instead of 6% (being terrified of their own people is also why they installed the dictatorship to control them). It tells you all you really need to know about their system, it's fragile and can't survive a recession or stagnation.

<comment><USER17> China has been predicted to collapse any day now since 2001 when I started paying attention in highschool.

It hasn't but people always have an explanation on why this time it's different.

Dictatorships have a remarkable ability to completely ignore the market and coerce it to do their bidding. You only need so many public executions before people stop doing things you don't like at scale.

What they don't have is the ability to indefinitely force hungry soldiers to shoot hungry peasants. China is no where near that level.

<comment><USER18> They can ignore the market ... for some time.

Venezuela hasn't worked out.

Turkey seems like they're on the edge of the cliff right now. The lira was already having serious issues due to massive spending before sanctions were announced.

<comment><USER17> You first have to ask the question, can the Chinese government ignore the market longer than the market can ignore the Chinese government.

The answer so far is no and not only in China.

Once the global market is reconfigured in such a way that it funnels benefits back to China they no longer ignore it. Much the same way the Portuguese reconfigured the Asian spice market in the 16th century to their benefit for the next two centuries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "Analysts at China International Capital Corp. estimated on July 13 that no more than 200 firms, or about 10 percent of existing platforms, will still be around in three years."

Even for a large nation like China, 2,000 P2P platforms sounds like orders of magnitude more than what is actually needed.

</comment><comment><USER20> Ah, a shadow banking crisis, right on time!

</comment><comment><USER21> I was literally just looking into the pros and cons of P2P lending because I hadn't heard of it prior to today. I mentioned on another forum how annoying my student loans are being part mine, part my fathers, and all with high interest rates, and someone suggested P2P lending (such as SoFi).

Now I am not so sure.

<comment><USER22> I invested low five figures with Prosper, a US P2P lending platform, for several years about a decade ago. The returns are abysmal (and when the Global Financial Crisis hit, I had a bunch of notes go bad because of bankruptcies). Why? Because P2P lending is lending of last resort. It's one step above payday lending. I highly recommend _not_ lending on P2P platforms.

As a borrower, it might not be a bad deal if you can't get a loan secured by real estate, or a personal loan, to refinance high interest debt. Depending on your circumstances (debt to income ratio, outstanding debt, available credit, income), you might consider using balance transfer offers that get you credit at 3-5% to make headway on high interest debt.

For a wealth of anecdotal, self-reported experiences, checkout Reddit: [https://www.google.com/search?q=reddit+investing+p2p](https://www.google.com/search?q=reddit+investing+p2p)

<comment><USER23> US P2P platforms seem like a great way -- as a borrower -- to convert your non-dischargeable debt (credit cards, student loans) into unsecured debt.

So: great for borrowers, terrible for lenders.

<comment><USER24> Credit card debt is generally dischargeable if it wasn't incurred in the 60 days before filing, wasn't fraudulent, and doesn't fall under other exceptions (such as charging your tuition on your credit card). Unfortunately the nature of the original debt carries through to the benefit of the new lender and the debtor still has to file a motion to determine dischargability with notice to the P2P lender if she wanted to discharge student loans converted in the manner you suggest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Sounds like this is the perfect time to take out a bunch of loans on a bunch of Chinese P2P lending platforms!

</comment><comment><USER26> Don't make it sounds like they didn't see this coming. They just simply don't care.

</comment><comment><USER27> I know someone who works in this industry in China. He cites illegal activities, negligence of risk management procedures, and the resulting fear of illegal activities and anticipation of a crackdown, as leading to the current situation.

</comment><comment><USER28> Lots of them provide more than 15% ROR, too high that some normal company also put lots of money to p2p. This is crazy and it is certain most of them(p2p) will go broke.

</comment><comment><USER29> Without collateral peer-to-peer lending is nothing but altruism

</comment><comment><USER30> Pyramid schemes all eventually fail.

</comment><comment><USER31> This article is 2 weeks old.

</comment><comment><USER32> I u

</comment><comment><USER33> There was the peer-to-peer lending in China with porn, how is that going? :)</comment>


Ask HN: Please increase the amount of time "edit" is available on comments - <AUTHOR> there is no good reason to timeout both editing and deletion of comments. Please increase both settings at least tenfold, if not just remove them. <comment><USER2> There's no reason to have ten times as long to edit or delete a comment. Editing should be for catching misspellings and reformatting, and you shouldn't even be able to delete a comment after it's been replied to, since it destroys the entire context of the conversation.

<comment><USER3> Also, being able to edit comments after people have replied to them can make conversation trees nonsensical.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I prefer the current small time interval (it is 1 hour?). So someone can fix typos an add an additional line, but after some time the conversation is fixed.

Do you have an example were you needed more editing time?</comment>