The Bitcoin Bubble - <AUTHOR> http://timothyblee.com/2011/04/18/the-bitcoin-bubble/

<comment><USER2> People in the bitcoin community periodically worries about bubbles. The only thing that we can do is figure out cool stuff that you can only do with bitcoin. Other than that, people are encouraged to sell and buy things for bitcoin.

A lot of cool stuff is in the pipeline though:

1\. A decentralized DNS registration system utilizing bitcoin technology. <http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=6017.0> There's even a 3500 BTC bounty for it: <http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=2072.0>

2\. GBSE - Global Bitcoin Stock Exchange: Utilize public key cryptography and other tech to create a bitcoin stock market. <http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=5947.0>

3\. witcoin - a micropayment social media site. <http://witcoin.com>

The bitcoin community has thought more about the weakness and strength of the currency, failure modes and solutions to problems more than any critics about bitcoin in the world. It's just that very few bothers writing and publish these knowledge for distribution to the wider public.

<comment><USER3> Does community have expert economists? I mean the traditional currency markets have been around for quite a while and a lot of really smart people participated in their development. Bitcoin has a small and immature community and there are a lot of things which require certain expertise and experience to judge about correctly.

<comment><USER2> _Does community have expert economists? I mean the traditional currency markets have been around for quite a while and a lot of really smart people participated in their development. Bitcoin has a small and immature community and there are a lot of things which require certain expertise and experience to judge about correctly._

It really depends on what school of economics you followed. If you follow keynesian economic rather than the Austrian, you will have quite different conclusion about the possible failure mode of bitcoin.

Is deflation bad for the bitcoin economy? Most bitcoiners will say no because they don't buy the idea of deflationary spiral and Keynesian economics plus their experience within the bitcoin economy informs their opinion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Bitcoin doesn't have to replace the dollar, it just has to replace Paypal and some credit card business.

<comment><USER5> But Paypal and credit cards are based on the USD, or whatever the local currency is. So, in effect, it does have to beat the dollar. Bitcoin must be advantageous enough so that people will want to use that _over_ the standard local currency (e.g. USD). Because, you're assuming that you'd have to convert USD to Bitcoin and then spend the Bitcoins. If you received Bitcoins, you'd need to then convert them back out as dollars. When you do a credit card transaction, you don't convert the money to a different currency. With Paypal, you have the option to receive money and then spend it without adding funds or incurring transaction fees, but how many people really do that?

But, if the system is big enough, you'd be able to limit the USD <-> Bitcoin conversions and transact more of your business in Bitcoins. However, in order for that to happen, it has a lot of currency inertia to overcome.

<comment><USER4> If Amazon took bitcoin, and I could use it to pay people on Craigslist, and maybe some other little things like that, I would probably just keep a bitcoin account around with a useable balance. If it got low I'd fill it with USD, and if I needed some funds out of it I'd take some USD out. But I don't think I'd need to do a USD conversion for every single little transaction.

Think about if the NYT decided to charge a half a penny to read an article? There's no way for them to collect that right now (it's too small), but bitcoin would work for that, and I sure wouldn't be converting half a cent USD every time I read an article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Two out of the three words of the title contain buzz words (CHECK!)

Ok but seriously I don't see the "bubble" here. If this is a "bubble" what are the implications of it popping? The value is set by the people who exchange it and not by a governing authority or even, groups of people. As I understand it, that means the value can never be manipulated. Also, don't bubbles imply that there is some sort of governing body that either decreases or increases risk of such an asset? For example in the housing and tech bubble, this would largely be the SEC (among many others). People were wildly spending and loaning money because risk was largely reduced -- a combination of guaranteed government bailouts and "everyone else is doing it!". How is any risk reduced using Bitcoin? If anything isn't Bitcoin a way to prevent bubbles? I see it as real value assessment set democratically by people using the currency.

I don't see Bitcoin itself as "irrational exuberance" at all, in fact quite the opposite. It's attempting to solve a real world problem. Indeed the referring article might suggest that the analysts covering Bitcoin are acting irrationally by making claims like "government take heed, there's a new currency in town". But just as the words "Bitcoin" and "Bubble" were used to grab attention to this article, the analysts covering Bitcoin also (here- Jerry Brito) will make irrational and largely speculative claims to bring viewership.

<comment><USER7> There were bubbles long before government got involved in the market, in fact such bubbles are why the government is involved in the market now.

The primary problem with bitcoins as it stands now is that there is no oversight so any sort of price manipulation possible is legal.

<comment><USER6> Re: Bubbles - Such as? Let me be more specific. If I shall quote wikipedia - "It could also be described as a trade in products or assets with inflated values" Doesn't Bitcoin set to eliminate inflated values? With no central authority controlling the amount of currency available or loaned at certain rates then valuation becomes absolute, no?

Re: Manipulation - I'm not sure I understand how the value of the currency can be manipulated. If the value is directly set by the end user then it's impossible to manipulate.

<comment><USER7> _If the value is directly set by the end user then it's impossible to manipulate._ Only if it is impossible to manipulate the end user. Aka there is nothing in the system to prevent fraud or any other pump and dump scheme you can come up with. So no, with no fraud controls in place Bitcoin does nothing to eliminate inflated values, and really can't unless they have come up with a technological solution to lying.

An example of a bubble before the SEC was created, and in fact lead to its creation. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_Crash_of_1929> _The rising share prices encouraged more people to invest; people hoped the share prices would rise further. Speculation thus fueled further rises and created an economic bubble._

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The article neglects that people have to pay income taxes on however many dollars of income you make. If you hypothetically made 100% of your income in bitcoins, and conducted all your financial transactions in bitcoins, then you would have 0 tax liability and wouldn't need dollars to pay taxes.

<comment><USER9> The thing about law that often confuses geeks is that they think the law works like a rigid algorithm with precisely defined inputs, or that it must limit itself to objective inputs.

They conclude that if they using something other than money as money, the law won't have a say because they are operating outside the precisely defined input.

Not so. The law can handle fuzzy situations, and since it can deal with subjective things such as what was in the minds of the people doing things, it will have no trouble incorporating Bitcoin transactions into the tax structure.

As a first pass, it could treat them as barter transactions, which are well covered by the tax system. In fact, there is a large body of law dealing with people trading non-currency items. It is quite interesting. Suppose I buy an X and you buy a Y. Later, we swap them. If they are the same kind of thing (we are trading my Picasso for your Rembrandt) there are no tax consequences. If I later sell the Rembrandt, it is taxed as if I had bought the Rembrandt for the price I paid for the Picasso, and so my tax is based on the profit based on that. Same for you.

If, on the other hand, X an Y are not the same kind of thing, then it is treated as if we did a pair of sales. For example, if I trade my Picasso for your race horse, the law would treat it as if I had sold my Picasso to you and used the proceeds to buy your horse, and you sold your horse to me, using the proceeds to buy the Picasso. I have to report income equal to the difference in value between the horse and what I paid for the Picasso, and similarly for you.

Subsequently when I sell the race horse, it is treated as if I had bought it for in the imaginary double sale, rather than whatever I paid for my Picasso. This price that you track in order to determine what the base price is to use when determining profit or loss on a real sale is called your "basis" in the item. In a like kind exchange, your basis in the received item is the same as your basis in the item you gave away. In an exchange that is not like kind, you get a new basis that is what you paid for the item in the imaginary double sale transaction.

There's case law and regulations dealing with all kinds of variations on this theme. For instance, if I trade my male horse for your female horse, is that a like kind exchange or not?

I don't think the law will have any trouble at all dealing with taxation and Bitcoin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The article assumes we want to pay taxes and that a significant portion of our tax dollars are spent wisely thus making taxation an advantage of the dollar.

 _Convincing Americans to switch to a currency other than the dollar is roughly as futile as convincing the Internet to switch to a protocol other than TCP/IP, and for the same reasons._

Meh, you don't have to convince Americans, just convince other people. Other countries are already working around the US dollar. Wasn't there a recent deal announced between Russia, China, Brazil and India for them to accept their own currencies as an alternative to US dollars for debts, loans, etc.?

<comment><USER11> They will take up BitCoin after losing patience with barrels of oil, cubic metres of gas, diamonds, each others' currencies, and rifle ammunition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The author has given some good reasons why Bitcoin won't become the new global currency, but there's a lot of space between global domination and fizzling out of existence.

Consider probably the most well-known alternative currency, the Ithaca Hour (<http://www.ithacahours.org/>), which has been going strong for decades now, but has no pretenses of expanding beyond its narrow geographic niche.

</comment><comment><USER13> All of the author's arguments are null when you consider that cash registers, phones, your bank, etc. IS a computer so issues of convenience don't really hold up. I don't think it will be that long until my local cooperative bank enables withdrawals from my BitCoin account on my Visa. When you can store your money in an safe and transparent system like BitCoin or a currency controlled by a shadowy Federal Reserve, which would you pick?

</comment><comment><USER14> The US Dollar can be used to buy anything. Bitcoin can be used on like, a few dozen websites that support it.

Why the heck would you not use the dollar?

<comment><USER15> There are far more restrictions on dollars if you want to transfer them electronically, because ultimately you need to route them through large financial institutions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's a very cute classroom project – but to really be accepted means the government will have it's hands on the flow, revenue and taxes from said bitcoin just as with the dollar bill. So besides this being anything more than a social experiment – its about as smart as buying POGS if people remember those things...

<comment><USER14> Hey man, the value of my Beanie Baby collection can only go up.

<comment><USER17> FWIW, unlike Pogs or Beanie Babies or Cabbage Patch Kids, does have built-in scarcity. If they do become some crazy fad, the manufacturer can't ramp up production which ultimately only servers to devalue all BitCoins.

But yeah, for now I'd basically think of them as something like baseball cards or comic books.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Would it be possible to have the concept of a Bitcoin with backing done by commodities?

<comment><USER19> no, that wouldn't make any sense

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> isn't this whole make-your-own-currency, digital or not, like that Ithaca HOURs thing?

</comment><comment><USER21> Anyone know the current ratio...

(USD price of cloud computing power to generate 1 BTC) / (USD offering bid for 1 BTC)

...?

<comment><USER22> Allegedly, using a GPGPU to mine bitcoins is still modestly profitable, though a CPU is probably too slow for its earnings to cover the power to run it.</comment></comment>


Iron Man 2's Secret Sauce: 3-D Printing - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/1640497/ironman-2s-secret-sauce-3-d-printing <comment><USER2> I'm a little skeptical about the magnitude of the increase in time from concept to realization.

Four hours is the printing stage, but laying out something like that in cad is fairly time consuming, on top of that every piece surely went through numerous iterations. Additionally, the medium seems hard to fiddle with, so if the part didn't turn out, you have to scrap it completely.

Plus given that it is some sort of plastic, your only finishing options are probably powder coat, some sort of vapor deposition (which that photo looks like), or possibly some sort of plating if people have figured out how to do it.

While I'm sure that the tech will make some people's lives easier, this is one of those things that seems like it could easily be over hyped.

<comment><USER3> > laying out something like that in cad is fairly time consuming, on top of > that every piece surely went through numerous iterations.

"Regular" design would still go through iterations.

> Plus given that it is some sort of plastic, your only finishing options are > probably powder coat, some sort of vapor deposition (which that photo looks > like), or possibly some sort of plating if people have figured out how to do > it.

In this case, they're using plastic, but you can also print in metal, wax, rubber, nylon, paper, and resin. (And yes, you can plate the plastic. This is how Aston Martin makes headlamps for their vehicles.)

> While I'm sure that the tech will make some people's lives easier, this is > one of those things that seems like it could easily be over hyped.

It's true. People get really, really excited about all of this, and start talking about "When everyone owns a 3D printer..." It's such a sexy technology that people get irrationally excited. It certainly has downsides as well as upsides.

<comment><USER4> Yes. Normal printers haven't made everyone an artist, either.

<comment><USER3> It's sort of an imperfect analogy, though. The people who say things like that are thinking of it in the "You wouldn't download a car?" sense. You can already download 3D models from a place like Thingiverse, so if everyone had a printer, we could just print new household items rather than purchase them. It's a functional thing, not an aesthetic one.

The issue with this is that just because they make things doesn't mean they make them _from nothing_. Are you going to keep not just a printer, but large vats of materials hanging around your house? I don't really think so.

<comment><USER5> I tend to imagine the large vat of materials becoming part of the corner convenience store/gas station. "Hi, I'd like $50 of gas, $38 of aluminum composite solid #3D2, and this bag of chips."

Alternatively, it could coincide with the one-hour photo lab: "plug in your USB drive to begin uploading model." _prints out receipt_

<comment><USER3> You still need a volume of stuff that's larger than the thing you want to build. A convenience store sized package would only provide enough material to fab something smaller than the package itself.

<comment><USER6> Mass is more appropriate than volume here, but point taken.

<comment><USER3> Sort of. You still need support materials if you were making something hollow.

But anyway, this is pedantic details. We both get where each other is coming from.

<comment><USER4> How about getting the raw materials like tap water?

<comment><USER3> It'd be kind of possible. Not all of them use liquid materials, but even then, the ones that do look like this:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwQ5HA8sE-k>

Right now, you load the material into the machine with a small crane-like thing. So theoretically, I guess you could hook up piping instead. But that's still a honking big machine, and you'd need a machine that'd be larger than the things you're building with it, really.

I think eventually, it could happen. It's just not going to happen any time soon.

My favorite theoretical material supply scheme is grabbing carbon out of the air and re-configuring it into whatever you're printing with ;)

<comment><USER4> How about grabbing stuff out of the ground?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This made me curious about the economics for a 3D printing on demand service. Looks like there are already some players in the space making it work:

<http://www.shapeways.com/>

<http://www.buildparts.com/>

<http://www.zoomrp.com/>

<comment><USER3> This is actually what my startup does.

<http://cloudfab.com/>

We actually offer more processes and materials than anyone else on the web.

<comment><USER8> I don't see prices on the web site. Would you mind giving me a rough idea of what it costs to print/create various items? (Not a serious prospect, just curious.)

<comment><USER3> The reason that there aren't prices is that just like the objects, they're all custom!

The cost to make something depends entirely on the exact geometry of the object, the material it's made out of, and various other bits of overhead of the shop that makes it. Sometimes, the orientation of the part in the printer can matter!

Generally, on average, something that an industrial designer would be making would end up costing between $200 and $500.

But again, this is incredibly price sensitive. There's also a trend lately of people making knock-off materials that cost a tenth of the 'real' ones, and some people use those...

I've literally seen orders of magnitude between sellers on the same part. Some people specialize in getting stuff done really quickly, and charge a premium!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Open source 3d printing machine: <http://reprap.org/wiki/Main_Page> It can make many of its own components so is at least partially capable of self replicating.

</comment><comment><USER10> I own a uPrint and run it all the time. In the same day we can print a new version, test it out on the bike, make some changes with a Dremel, measure the changes, redesign in Solidworks and repeat. Once you add time into the cost savings equation it's really a no brainer. We are looking at a much larger one that has almost a cubic meter envelope. BTW the reliability of the Stratasys printers is unbelievable.

</comment><comment><USER11> I wonder if the same thing will happen to 3d printing as what has happened to normal printing: using high ink prices to subsidize the actual units. I sure hope not: if industries actually build goods using this process the demand will bring the "ink" cost down.

<comment><USER3> That's exactly how the industry works. If you look at the manufacturers' 10Ks, it's very much the 'razor and blade' model.

And you're also right, it's a real problem when other people make knock-off materials. Lots of people are doing it, and the manufacturers are trying to stop it by making the cartridges super proprietary and making unauthorized materials void your warranty, but that's not stopping everyone...

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> New (awesome) line of merchandising: put the 3D models up for sale on <http://www.Shapeways.com/> and let people order them in various materials & colors.

</comment><comment><USER13> Home fabrication is very inspirational to read about. The fabrication process maybe extremely time consuming at the moment, but it's a glimpse of what to come. Video on the internet was ridiculously slow once, now it's becoming our main source of video. You saw this video on YouTube, not on your telly. The advantages of 3d printers are so many, that it will only be a question of time before the'll get cheaper, faster and better enough to go mainstream. Amen.

</comment><comment><USER14> > Maybe the best example are the gloves that Downey wore--which were no > thicker than a dime, and could be worn for hours without getting so hot that > the dude needed some Colombian Marching Powder to take the edge off

Really?

<comment><USER15> Indeed. That was quite a non-sequitur in the middle of what was a pretty cool tech article.

<comment><USER16> Its a reference to his old dug habits that he was pretty famous for. I agree it didn't need to be mentioned.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> obligatory mention: MakerBot makes $750 3D printer kits that cost pennies to operate. While the results are not comparable to what is shown in the article, the age of the 3D printer in every home is almost here.

It's already priced low enough that every designer of 3D objects can own one.

Not affiliated with MakerBot. (And they are good guys -- all the plans and source code are available for you to download and build yourself).

</comment><comment><USER18> We use this things at my job all the time. Amazingly useful when you need a fast engineering prototype, or something to get your head around.

<comment><USER3> As the costs come down, you'll see a continued move towards 'rapid manufacturing': actually using these technologies to build the final goods.</comment></comment>


Reddit fuzzes upvotes/downvotes - <AUTHOR>

Thought this was pretty interesting, according to:
http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/eaqnf/pardon_me_but_5000_downvotes_wtf_is_worldnews_for/
Jedberg (a reddit admin) says: "The numbers you see are fuzzed for anti-spam reasons. The more active a post is, the more out of whack that fuzzing becomes."
I wonder with sites like reddit/HN if theres a positive-feedback loop,  where if a comment has a reasonable number of upvotes it also gets upvoted,  or downvoted, if it has negative votes.
It would be interesting to see how fuzzing effects peoples voting behaviour. <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable - [http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/eaqnf/pardon_me_but_500...](http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/eaqnf/pardon_me_but_5000_downvotes_wtf_is_worldnews_for/)</comment>


Leftronic (YC S10) Dashboards Optimize Your Data Displays - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/24/leftronic/

<comment><USER2> Welcome to the space guys, it looks like a great product, I've signed up for the beta and I'm really looking forward to checking it out. What follows is by no means meant as a slight on the creators of the product, it looks like they've done a sterling job and I wish them every success.

I launched an almost identical product (in terms of functionality) <http://geckoboard.com> into private beta a little over a month ago and have been steadily improving it since then (adding a bunch of new APIs including Freshbooks, GitHub and an API with the ability to load custom data to your status board). Despite being first to market, accumulating a couple of thousand beta testers and reaching out to TC we only get a one line mention in the article. Getting on Techcrunch et al. is not the be-all and end-all but as a single founder outside of Silicon Valley situations like this reinforce the notion that you're swimming against the tide.

It's inevitable that sort of thing happens but it really does go to show one of the prime benefits of joining YC; the exposure and access you get is second to none and the best leg up a startup could hope for.

<comment><USER3> This kind of surprises me. I had naively assumed that it wasn't all that difficult to get an article on Techcrunch.

How did you "reach out"?

<comment><USER3> I'll also add that I've been looking for something like this for a client so I'll make sure I check both products out FWIW.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I spent some time working on a dashboard project (with the view to it becoming a start-up). I wanted to blend Panic style eye candy with something you could throw in a load of api keys (pivotal tracker, git hub, Google analytics, etc)

I abandoned the project mainly because the size of the addressable market is too small. I don't think Startups will spend $hundreds a month on this and there are only so many companies even interested in dashboards.

<comment><USER5> The addressable market is small? Doesn't every Fortune 500 company use dashboards in their operation and control centers? The market is ripe.

<comment><USER4> Fortune 500 companies tend not to use Pivotal Tracker, Git Hub, etc.

The money they spend is because they want custom integrations but that's not the company I wanted to launch. I wanted to build an 'off the shelf' dashboard you plugged in yourself.

And it is true that many startups don't care about dashboards - I'm surprised at the number I know who don't really have any visualization or tracking of their velocity, Constant Integration failures (if they even do CI), unit test fails, code commits, server health, etc.

<comment><USER6> I can't speak for companies that are using those tools internally (you can ask @danpodsedly who's using Pivotal Tracker in-house for example).

I know that for our development projects (www.xtremelabs.com) with F500 companies, we do use Pivotal Tracker and Github, and they are typically ok with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Before we joined Y Combinator, my co-founder and I had plans to build a Panic- style status board. Then we realized that status boards were not our core competency and we dropped the board completely to focus on our primary task at hand. I love that I can pay Leftronic for a fully customizable, fantastic- looking board – this way we can make our product and track it, too!

BTW, I've seen one of these boards in person and they're really slick. I can think of a hundred ways these could be hugely motivating (have a dial tick down based on bug-counts, have a meter showing avg user engagement, etc).

<comment><USER8> Thank you very much for your vote of confidence!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm not quite sure what they're offering besides "software that makes it easy for companies to aggregate data" and "People pay hundreds per screen for our visualizations." I could imagine that it's a subscription-model for the web service that gathers and displays the data? But hundreds per screen sounds high

Is the professional services part a significant one? The mention of YCombinator, Cloudkick and WePay make it sound like they setup the whole thing.

Anybody has more details on that?

<comment><USER5> _hundreds per screen sounds high_

Given the value of seeing your key metrics in a continuous display, hundreds seems low to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> We have a number of big screens hanging in our office. We loop an ugly powerpoint with stale messages. Regularly, I walk by the screens and wish we had a Panic-style dashboard for key metrics. Of course, we could build our own, but we always seem to have more important priorities (like our own products). Even thought about a startup opportunity in this space- if we would like it, we're probably not alone.

I've signed up for the beta and I'm very interested in the product details. Wish them the best of luck.

<comment><USER11> Thanks. We received an overwhelming response and we are actively sifting through all the signups. Please be patient and stay tuned for a response from us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> We demoed a similar product we are using internally at gameplanapp.com called fergie and demoed it at the Singapore ruby brigade meeting a couple of months ago. Definitely not pretty but it has a plug and play architecture for different stats to track.

[http://www.slideshare.net/mobile/gameplanapp/gameplans- panic...](http://www.slideshare.net/mobile/gameplanapp/gameplans- panicinspired-stats-dashboard-called-fergie)

</comment><comment><USER13> The article is short on details. Does Leftronic provide hardware + software or just software?

Does it run on the company's network or via the internet?

<comment><USER11> We make software that drives the displays. The dashboards are fully customizable through our website. We have a simple API for collecting the data that needs to be monitored.

<comment><USER14> What kind of hardware displays do you support? Is there a min or max resolution and display size?

<comment><USER8> We are hardware-agnostic. Our visualizations are inherently vector-based, so screen size/resolution will not be an issue.

<comment><USER14> Cool! Is the "hundreds" quoted in the article, per month or per year?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What does one of these cost on average? Are they affordable to the average startup guy?

<comment><USER16> I have a nearly identical startup on the east coast but it's more of a side business at the moment. Almost any good programmer has the chops to make one of these, it's just really hard to turn it into a business. Pricing is the hardest part. So... I'm guessing they aren't going to let you know. As far as the average startup guy, it's probably not affordable. I only sell to places I know have money to burn.

<comment><USER5> _Almost any good programmer has the chops to make one of these_

Except the making it beautiful part, right?

<comment><USER16> I hope so. My background in art and design is my only competitive advantage.

<comment><USER17> Whats your URL :) ?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


CryptoCelebrities – Collectible one of a kind celebrity smart contracts - <AUTHOR> https://cryptocelebrities.co/ <comment><USER2> oh no, this is not a bad joke! After crypto kitties, now crypto celebs, what's next?! When i thought we hit a new low, i can still be surprised. Am i not seeing it for what it is?</comment>


What Is Dark Matter? Even the Best Theories Are Crumbling - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2018/09/21/the-dark-matter-crisis/ <comment><USER2> Major advances in science often are the result of the existing theories being unable to explain important data. Perhaps that's what is going to happen in this case.</comment>


SARS-CoV-2 Cell Entry Is Blocked by a Clinically Proven Protease Inhibitor - <AUTHOR> https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(20)30229-4?rss=yes <comment><USER2> Cribbed from the Reddit thread but the tldr is that two drugs are needed to stop infection, but only one is necessary to prevent spread, and it's a drug we already have.

The other interesting take is that ACE2, the pathway the virus is using is both inhibited by nicotine and expressed up to five times more in Asians which could explain why smokers are under represented in the Chinese cases and why there are so many infected in Asia.</comment>


4 inches - <AUTHOR> http://dcurt.is/4-inches

<comment><USER2> So a while back the benefits didn't outweigh the "huge downside" that he found the screen size of the Galaxy SII, but now that Apple increases their screen size "the software benefits that come from that extra half an inch hugely improve the experience of using the phone."

The continually disappointing thing about the iPhone coverage has been people who dismiss things as not needed until Apple gets around to implementing them.

Personally, I guess my hands are bigger than Curtis's, since I've been using 4.3" phones since 2010, and it's really not a big downside at all -- but rather, the iPhone's screen size is, honestly, _still_ too small for me to consider. Thinner/lighter/smaller isn't always better for everyone. One size fits all _doesn't_.

EDIT: the other oft-overlooked part of this discussion is te frequency of one- handed use. For me, at least, I'm usually already using both hands if I'm doing something more than passively reading/watching something. I'd be interested to know if this is different for others, so that any inconvenience to one-handed use is actually a major inconvenience to your primary use of the phone.

Additionally, Apple recognizes the need for different form factors with pretty much every other portable device they make, from the iPod to the MacBook lines and, reportedly, soon even the iPad. So why not the iPhone?

<comment><USER3> Did you read the post? He says it's only "barely acceptable" at 4 inches - hardly glowing praise, and the S3 has a 4.8 inch screen.

<comment><USER4> Did you? He also said "the software benefits that come from that extra half an inch hugely improve the experience of using the phone." That's certainly praise, possibly even glowing.

The criticism here seems reasonable. He went from discussing a "huge downside of larger screens" to saying that a bigger screen "hugely" improves the experience. Oh, and previously the smaller screen was "one of the things that makes Apple products Apple products." Manufacturers with larger screens were "doing it wrong."

The entire post is just Dustin Curtis trying to rationalize his jump from claiming that bigger screens are too big to claiming that they are a huge improvement (now that Apple does them).

<comment><USER3> That he thinks slightly larger is potentially a good thing doesn't make it an inconsistent belief that hugely larger is not a good thing.

<comment><USER4> It's pretty inconsistent when 4 inches is "slightly larger" for Apple but 4 inches is "hugely larger" for anyone else.

<comment><USER5> Except the the difference is 0.5 inches between 4S and 5, vs 1.3" difference between 4S and S3.

<comment><USER4> Curtis didn't say that manufacturers with 4.8+ inch screens were wrong. He said manufacturers with 4+ inch screens were wrong. i.e. Apple today

Also the phone screen he was comparing against (S II) was only 0.8 inches larger, at 4.3 inches.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The elephant in the room is that unlike on android phones, there is no hardware 'back' button on iPhone. Where is it instead (by convention)? The top left corner of the screen, ie, the most unreachable place on the new iPhone. I'm still amazed this thing was produced by Apple given that oversight.

<comment><USER7> There is no more hardware back button on any recent android phone either and every time you rotate the screen it's in a different locations (and a different location if it's on landscape vs portrait on tablets vs phones.) It's widely inconstant on Android too. And what happens when you press also is not very consistant when what you are working isn't inherently stack based.

Also having different UI contentions doesn't mean someone else is doing something wrong. We port games from iOS to Android at Apportable (YC2011) so we deal with converting concepts every day. Neither is better or worse.

<comment><USER8> > There is no more hardware back button on any recent android phone either...

Any?

While the Galaxy Nexus has onscreen navigation controls now (and the Nexus7 followed suit), both the One X and the Samsung Galaxy SIII have dedicated capacitive back buttons "off screen". On the OneX the button is in the normal place (on the left) and is oddly (but in keeping with the SII) on the right on the SIII.

<comment><USER7> You can still support it sure, but the recommendation from google is to move away from them on phones. IIRC (don't quote me) on tablets, it's a requirement.

<comment><USER9> There was never any such recommendation. The back button is an essential android feature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I would just like to point out that this is a highly subjective argument. The iPhone 5 might be too large for Dustin's hand, but I'm quite comfortable using a 4.3 or even 4.5 inch phone. I naturally hold phones with the bottom right corner in pushing the bottom of my hand like the second image on the page, and my hand quite naturally wraps a phone up to ~4.5". For me, emphasis me, any phone over 4.5 becomes a problem because my index finger will have a hard time hitting a power switch on the top right of the phone, but overall I'm able to reach any point of the screen with my thumb and small muscle movements in my hand. But again, this is all subjective to the size of my hand.

<comment><USER11> Exactly: an iPhone 4 is to my girlfriend's hand nearly exactly as a _Galaxy Note_ is to mine. The idea that people make these reachability arguments as if hand size is universal down to silly half-inch increments is downright insane.

<comment><USER12> Have you ever heard the phrase 'optimise for the common case'?

<comment><USER11> "Have you ever heard of 'variance'?" The "common case" makes sense when you are dealing with a discrete variable that has a mode (a single highly common value): it does not make as much sense for a continuous one like hand span.

Put simply, the issue is that no one actually has the "common case": the probability that someone's hand span exactly matches the "average" or "mean" of the distribution is approximately 0.

Instead, we have to first discretize the variable into a histogram and then assign a common case afterwards. The way you normally might do that is with standard deviations. However, now you have to ask "what is the variance".

With hand size, it is quite obviously very large: again, my girlfriend's hand is to an iPhone 4 as my hand is to a Galaxy Note, and people generally do not go around calling either of us freaks of nature with regards to our hands (I actually have fairly effeminate hands ;P).

I will therefore repeat with emphasis: the idea that people make these reachability arguments as if hand size is universal _down to silly half-inch increments_ is downright insane. However, I will now show some data.

[http://www.steinbuhler.com/assets/images/HandSizeChartNewWeb...](http://www.steinbuhler.com/assets/images/HandSizeChartNewWeb.jpg)

This chart comes from a piano company measuring hand span for purposes of optimal piano sizing (concentrating on people whose hands have already finished growing). (Their conclusion, btw, was that they needed to sell a few more piano sizes.)

Now, this is full hand span; however, as your hand is fixed in the middle by the thing you are holding, you won't get this full spread, but I would easily argue that you will get at least half of this spread in that case.

The result, as you can see, is that there is a very very large range of reasonable values: hands are really not that common; you might think you have a common hand, but you really don't: hand span varies by numerous inches.

(There are multiple factors for this, of course: it isn't just hand size; you also have to take into account flexibility of joints, muscle strength, etc.; even if everyone's hands were the same size, the ability to reach the upper- corner of a device would vary a lot.)

I will then argue that even if you want to just attack a lot of people, and still fail for numerous others, you need to at least be making a device for women and a device for men: the difference between genders is really striking in that chart.

However, most people don't argue things like this: they accept that there are massive variations in the size of peoples' feet, hands, torsos, and pretty much every other body part, and this is why we don't just sell one-size-fits- all clothing.

Apple, FWIW, would not only be selling a single size of jeans, they would claim that they had optimized the size of the jeans to fit some optimal size, and their user community would then defend them with diagrams that show variances of less than half an inch for how perfect the fit is.

<comment><USER12> A large hand can still comfortably use a small phone. A small hand cannot use a large phone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Even so, the benefits vastly outweigh the downsides." I found this a bit hypocritical. Why wasn't this the case for the Android phones in his "3.5 Inches" blog post? And as gfodor noted, this can only be worse for the iPhone, considering the location of the back button.

<comment><USER14> Apple made it though, man.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is it me, or are people just dancing to Apple's fiddle? I've seen this same type of post several times, but it doesn't apply to me...or most people I know most likely.

I hold a phone across my fingers, tucked nicely under the top of my palm. I can reach across a 4" screen without a problem.

Also, when I'm holding a phone vertically, I don't typically only use my thumb - I use my other, more dexterous, and more "free", hand.

Wait...maybe the people this applies to are busy with their other hand?

<comment><USER16> One-handed use is important for circumstances where you are carrying a bag with the other hand (like when you have to deal with luggage at the airport).

After seeing some of my friends struggle with the 5, I'm not going to upgrade (my 4S works just fine :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I had surgery on my right wrist a number of years ago and I still don't have great flexibility in it. About 3 days after getting the iPhone 5 I started getting some pain in my wrist and was actually able to equate it to the odd reach down by my thumb to hit the home button. After being conscious of this, I started holding the phone a bit lower in my hand and the pain went away within a day and I haven't had it come back. It's definitely a little more difficult to reach spots on the phone, but I'm still torn on it cause I do like the bigger screen. I actually wish there was a button on the side of the phone that I could use as an alternate home button.

</comment><comment><USER18> I don't think he would be so quick to say it's worth the extra screen space if he weren't left-handed. Reaching the back button with only your right hand, even on the 3.5" screen is difficult. After switching to an iPhone 4s earlier this year I found that to be the major failing of the device: [http://dmaurolizer.com/post/18478902007/ioss-major-flaw- reac...](http://dmaurolizer.com/post/18478902007/ioss-major-flaw-reaching-for- the-back-button)

<comment><USER2> Huh, that's interesting, I'm right handed and generally hold my phone in my left hand, so that my more dextrous hand is free to either touch the screen or do other things (like open doors).

I wonder what's more common: holding the phone in your off hand or your dominant hand?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> > iOS's tab bars are anchored to the bottom of the screen, where your thumb > more naturally rests, so it remains easy to change app sections (contrast > this with Android's tab bars, which are usually located at the top of the > screen, and sometimes out of reach).

I disagree with this, I think navigation should be at the top because you use them infrequently. What you do do frequently is scroll, and navigation being on the bottom gets in the way of trying to scroll.

However, this is just my own personal observation. I'm not going to write a blog post on how it is a scientific fact that navigation is better when on the top.

</comment><comment><USER20> Point of correction, Dustin. Navigation Bars are top anchored in iOS. You might be thinking Tab Bars. As such, Tab Bars are being replaced increasingly with Dive Bars, the ones that live _under_ the app, a la Facebook and Path. This makes the reaching problem _worse_ because the common elements are in the top left. I suspect that we might see swipe-based gestures increasingly handle back button behavior and maybe a bottom oriented "under-menu" for placing compose and add elements.

Edit: Appears to have been corrected, but point still stands.

</comment><comment><USER21> Does no one remember what Johnnie Cochran taught us? "If the glove does not fit, you must acquit".

People have different sized hands - there's no such thing as a perfect sized phone.

</comment><comment><USER22> I greatly respect Dustin Curtis as a designer but the precision with which he treats this subject is entirely derived from the flawed assumption that the perfect phone size can be narrowed down to half-inch increments.

I have a Galaxy Nexus with a 4.65" in screen and I use it one-handed all the time in both my left and right hands, sometimes even while cycling in central London. It comes out of the pocket easily, I've never dropped it, ergonomics are great. I don't know what kind of pixie hands some of these pundits have, but I am 6' tall with a slender frame and pretty average hands.

I can't help but feel that a lot of people making this point about optimal size are drinking a bit too much of the Apple koolaid. Hey, I love Apple stuff in general, but that doesn't mean I subscribe to the view that their way is the one true path to perfection and everything else automatically falls short. People put this stuff up on a pedestal and then start justifying every aspect retroactively. Did anyone ever stop to think that maybe the iPhone originally had a 3.5" screen because _that's what was economical at the time_ rather than that god handed specs down to Johnny Ive on Mount Sinai?

</comment><comment><USER23> I've never really had an issue with any sort of ability to reach all of the screen on my galaxy nexus, which he seems to imply I should have horrible problems with. I think this is down to the way I actually use both my hands for almost all tasks. Holding it in my left hand and operating the screen with my right.

I'm fairly sure, but uncertain, that I did this with my iPhone 3g prior to getting the nexus. With everyone discussing single handed use of a phone I wonder if I'm in a minority of people who use their phone this way. It just strikes me that using my phone one handed would only really happen when my other hand is occupied carrying something, and in that case the reduced ability to reach corners of the screen seems to be a side-effect of using the phone sub-optimally.

<comment><USER24> Of course this is all anecdotal, but I recently switched from T-Mobile to VZ; and I went "down" from my 4.65" SGN to a 4.3" Razr M. I wouldn't say the extra size of the SGN gave me "horrible problems", but the size aggravated me enough to where I was willing to give up the extra DPI to have a smaller phone again. Likewise, I always found the 3.5" iPhones too cramped to use comfortably. Screens are not one-size-fits-all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The notion that Apple or anybody else can design the perfect sized screen based upon holding the phone in one hand and thumb reach is silly, because in this scenario many apps are rendered useless without multi-touch!

It's obvious that people hold phones differently, use phones differently, and have different sized hands. It's also obvious that some people like buying phones with bigger screens. Why does everything Apple do have to be justified or rationalized as some kind of great and insightful design choice?

</comment><comment><USER26> Also want to point out that Android typically focuses most of the content towards the bottom of the screen (e.g. most people put icons on the bottom half of their home screen on Android, vs. iPhones that default to Top-Left). Dustin talks about how iPhones have their tab bars at the bottom vs. Android at the top, making the tabs easier to reach, but really the bigger problem is what he points out that ALL of the iPhones real action buttons are at the top, and out of reach.

<comment><USER27> Besides, on most apps, you change tabs by swiping left and right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> "Every area of the screen is reachable, after all (unlike many Android phones with 4-inch+ screens)"

Because 4-inch is the upper limit and Apple got it right again.

</comment><comment><USER28> My wife is miffed about the iPhone 5's larger screen, because the 3.5" screen model was at the edge of what was comfortable for her to deal with one-handed.

The "size hasn't been a problem for me!" posts in this thread are hilarious. I'm quite certain the iPhone's target demographic includes a lot more women and girls than are represented on Hacker News.

</comment><comment><USER29> Dustin neglects in either post to mention what size his hands are. Subjectively some people will like the new size for this reason, and as he points out others will not. I personally like the format but I have abnormally large hands (I can palm a basketball). His thoughts on hand placement are spot on though.

</comment><comment><USER30> Take at look at the last picture in the post, where the base of the iPhone is cupped in the hand and the thumb is using the keyboard. From that picture it really appears to me that Apple would have been better off making the iPhone wider rather than taller...

</comment><comment><USER31> I do apologize for the low-content comment, but somehow, all I can think of in reading this is this:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C89uOeDL9Gw>

</comment><comment><USER32> The 3.7" 858x480 (240 ppi) 16:9 screen of my Motorola Defy pretty much hits the sweet spot for me.

</comment><comment><USER33> _Even so, the benefits vastly outweigh the downsides._

</comment><comment><USER34> 502, or is that just me?

<comment><USER35> This is usually what I check if I think a site is down -- <http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/http://dcurt.is/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> _"To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself – that was the ultimate subtlety; consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed."_

4 inch telescreen bellyfeel doubleplusgood</comment>


Ubuntu's Community team offers 2 full-time 6-month unpaid internships - <AUTHOR> http://www.jonobacon.org/2010/03/19/two-ubuntu-community-team-intern-opportunities-available/

<comment><USER2> _"Like most internships, these roles are unpaid."_

Apparently he hasn't read Joel on Software: _"I need to clarify something about internships in computer science and software development. In this day and age, in this country, it is totally expected that these are paid internships, and the salaries are usually pretty competitive."_

</comment><comment><USER3> If you have excellent Django, PHP, HTML, CSS, etc skills don't just give them away. It's great if you want to help out with the Ubuntu project, but make sure it's on your terms. Someone riding you 9 to 5 for no pay is called being taken advantage of.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. Six months of full time work is ridiculous. That's not even an internship, it's just unpaid labor.

Shameless plug: If anyone with excellent Django, HTML, and CSS skills is interested in actually being paid for an internship in New York, Track.com is hiring. Contact rich@

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is way, way over the line. "I want to be clear that my team is a fast- paced, hard-working, hectic environment. I am going to work you hard...". There are places where you can lose your job for publicly describing an internship that way.

<comment><USER6> Working from home, you're not even as likely to gain the valuable contacts that are a genuine benefit of office-based internships. You're basically just bashing away in a room on your own all day.

I frequent a UK-based media website that offers job postings. Some time ago, they banned unpaid "work experience" and "internship" postings (except for genuine non-profits like community radio stations) because of UK minimum wage laws. Good summary here: [http://www.mediauk.com/article/32681/media-uks- policy-on-adv...](http://www.mediauk.com/article/32681/media-uks-policy-on- advertising-un-paid-jobs)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's really strange to see this little respect for people's livelihoods from the guy who wrote _The Art of Community_. His post looks more like a joke made by people who say that open-source is communism with people doing slave work for free.

</comment><comment><USER8> Is it just me or are unpaid internships a way to prey on the not-so-savvy young person, especially those indoctrinated at universities to find any internship come hell or high water?

I dunno, it just seems like a scam to me.

<comment><USER9> I currently cannot complete my degree. Practicuum - Internship - n/a.

I put in 22~ hours/semester for a year in 8 week courses at Navarro College in Corsicana, Texas. While I was finishing the program, the partnership doing internships (Northrop Grumman) had a breakup with the college and left my 6 man class without a place to call home for the final part of the course. Now, we have a wasted year of work, no certificate, and no law suit (they relisted the course load this year in their catalog and really tempted me (it clearly states they still have a partnership)). 0 of the credits transfer to my university.

So, an e-internship sounds like it would be the final piece for me to complete that certificate. I have given up on it for the most part though and just regard that year of work as my first taste of the business world. Some of us are desperate! Especially with some of the horrid Dallas internship offers... (ruby internship offer @ 70+ hours a week unpaid)

<comment><USER10> Sorry to hear about your bad luck. :(

"ruby internship offer @ 70+ hours a week unpaid"

Wow. Just wow. Why would anyone choose to program Ruby for 70+ hours a week unpaid when they could launch their own Ruby web app instead? Either way you get business experience but if you launch your own web app at least you have a chance at revenue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Asking for half a year of full time unpaid work is asking for an awful lot. I think it's fine to ask, but I wonder who Jono is imagining when he's thinking of potential applicants.

</comment><comment><USER12> Doing an internship that was required for completion of my course I got $10 an hour, it was good experience and over a full time week was enough to get me by while I did it.

There is a big difference though for most people in receiving about $400 to reviving $0 in terms of getting by. You could justify it if you were going to come away with a lot of new skills but to be honest here it looks like their looking for someone who already has the skills required to do a lot of hard work.

</comment><comment><USER13> Unpaid internships are illegal if all of the following conditions are not met:

1\. If the training, even though it includes actual operation of the facilities of the employer, is similar to training which would be given in a vocational school;

2\. If the training is for the benefit of the trainee;

3\. If the trainees do not displace regular employees, but work under close observation;

4\. If the employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the trainees and, on occasion, the employer's operations are actually impeded;

5\. If the trainees are not necessarily entitled to employment at the completion of the training period;

6\. If the employer and the trainees understand that the trainees are not entitled to wages for the time spent in training.

From [http://www.cohenandwolf.com/CM/EmploymentLaborPublications/E...](http://www.cohenandwolf.com/CM/EmploymentLaborPublications/EmploymentLaborPublications68.asp) . The specific provisions listed are derived from the 1947 SCOTUS case Walling v. Portland Terminal Co., <http://supreme.justia.com/us/330/148/case.html> .

Since the "interns" are to be "working on awesome solutions to help make Ubuntu an ever more compelling community to be a part of" it's pretty clear that the fourth provision above is not met: Ubuntu _is_ deriving immediate advantage from the activities of the trainees.

</comment><comment><USER14> Or, or, or, and this is the tough part, I could get an internship at a national lab, working on more interesting OS stuff, for $24/hour. Damn, what to choose.

Honestly, who does unpaid engineering internships anymore?

</comment><comment><USER15> 6 months of intense, hectic, and hard unpaid work? You'd learn more by spending 6 months on your first software or web startup for probably roughly the same cost. If you make no money, you'll still learn a ridiculous amount of stuff in those 6 months.

</comment><comment><USER16> I think the whole "internship" house of cards is already falling, but those inside haven't noticed yet. For example, there has been concern expressed recently in the UK (where there are minimum wage laws) that describing something as an internship is being used as an attempt to circumvent those laws. If the BBC News story was even close to accurate, then the view from just about everyone who matters (government, trade unions, etc.) was that this is just a con and won't stand up if challenged, and that organisations found to be abusing the idea of internships would be removed from government programmes.

</comment><comment><USER17> It's just simply rude.</comment>


Planetary Society Announces Test Flight for Privately Funded Spacecraft - <AUTHOR> http://www.planetary.org/press-room/releases/2015/planetary-society-announces.html <comment><USER2> Let's hope this goes better than the last time the Planetary Society tried to deploy a solar sail: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_sail#Solar_sail_propulsi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_sail#Solar_sail_propulsion_attempts)</comment>


"A Bitcoin Supporter" says go to Tradehill after the Mt. Gox hack? - <AUTHOR>

I just received this email from firstname.lastname@example.com:
Dear Sir or Madam,
A few hours ago the Bitcoin trading website Mt Gox has been hacked. Malicious individuals have been able to obtain a database containing usernames, email address and encrypted passwords. This information has been posted publicly on the internet.
As a Bitcoin supporter I'm now sending a message to every email address contained in the hacked database. This is to warn you that your username, email address and password have been leaked. I therefore strongly advice you to change your passwords. If you have used the same password on different websites it's highly recommended to change your password on all of your accounts!
For a more secure alternative to Mt Gox, the community appears to be moving to TradeHill. So this is no reason to lose faith in Bitcoin itself. It must be seen as a warning that not every website can be trusted with your data however! Their link is http://www.tradehill.com/?r=TH-R15683 (Note: You can remove the Referral Code when registering if you want!) This is certainly not the only website where you can exchange Bitcoins, also check out http://www.thebitcoinlist.com/dp_bitcoin/bitcoin-exchange/
Sincerely,
A Bitcoin supporter
---
Headers show it originated at bonecrusher.gulfsouthmedia.com
Smells phishy, as in someone trying to get some referrals from the hacked DB. Any thoughts? <comment><USER2> every one of those accounts already got a notice from mt gox. itself so yes, this individual sent an unsolicited commercial message (spam) by sending this "alert".

though getting the same message multiple times might make it harder to ignore, and realizing that this is a serious issue -- probably not the worst thing to happen, imo.

</comment><comment><USER3> good spam is still spam.</comment>


New Data Center for 37signals - <AUTHOR> http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2010/07/25/new-data-center-for-37signals/

<comment><USER2> FYI, as far as I know, they are hosted with the good folks at ServerCentral, at the DuPont Fabros CH1 site out in Elk Grove Village.</comment>


Need Help. Going through late 20 career crisis. - <AUTHOR> Let me first tell you about the current situation and the events leading to it. I did my B.Sc. in computer science in 2004. My dream since second year of my graduation was to have my own startup, my own company where we can develop quality software products. After my graduation I worked as intern(SAP ABAP Developer) at a large indian IT company. As I excelled in my work there and was better than most of the experienced programmer there, they offered me a permanent position in the company. I worked there for 2 more years and got tired of the boring corporate culture. There was no more real work left and I just got my salary doing nothing. It was frustrating as I always wanted to do quality work. I felt like my life was leading to nowhere. Besides that my ambition was to startup my own business. So, I played a gamble and it backfired.
I quit my job and started a company with one of my college time buddies. We developed Hospital Information System that took more than a year and half as we were only two guys. We sold our product to few hospitals but ultimately it was a big failure. We kept trying to improve it and re market it but it didn't worked and then we got frustrated. Out of frustration we tried our hands on other projects but we were not able to work with same enthusiasm anymore. Two months back we decided to shut the shop.
So here is my current situation. I'm 28 year old bachelor with a BSc in Computer science degree, 2 years of experience as SAP ABAP Developer, and 4 wasted years as director of a business venture that failed. I am good at both programming and designing and can do a lot of other things but currently in such a depressing mindset that I am unable to focus on it for more than 2-3 hours a day. I have many startup ideas that are really worth trying but now I doubt if I'm gonna complete it if I start working on those. I feel like I have the talent but not the mental toughness to do any meaningful work. Lack of success for 4-5 years have dented my self belief.
I don't know what to do in such situation. Having my own successful company was always my dream. I have the skills and ideas but no partner and finance. What should I do? Is there any way out of it? <comment><USER4> Let us see:

      - You gained domain knowledge in an industry
      - Found a problem and proposed a solution
      - Developed a software to solve the problem
      - Sold the software to a few clients

I don't see how this is a failure at all. There are many reasons any venture will fail. Don't blame yourself for it. Your experience will definitely come handy in the future. Try hard and best of luck!

BTW,

      >> "I am good at both programming and designing"

If you are based on Bangalore and are interested in joining a startup, please send me your resume. I work at <http://zovi.com> and we are looking for good developers.

We will help you get ready for your next plunge into entrepreneurship.

<comment><USER5> If you don't mind telling, what is the payment gateway you are using on zovi.com?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You need to stop focusing on the goal and start focusing on the journey.

If there ever was a cliché that's it but at the same time it really is true.

"Having your own successful company" is not what is important. Setting yourself small goals and then reaching them are.

If you didn't die your gamble didn't backfire. It just gave you one thing that most people lack. Experience with what it means to be responsible for your own faith.. That's never going to be a bad thing.

Next time take one of your smaller projects instead of things that take 1 1/2 year.

</comment><comment><USER7> First off, if you have daily expenses like rent, food, etc. then you'll need a dayjob. You can choose to return to the SAP ABAP programmer jobs so you can pay your bills, and then work in your free time on your projects. Or, get a day job that complements your projects. Either way you're back into a day job for now. This is how a lot of entrepreneurs seem to do it.

Bottom line is that everything comes down to hustle and execution. Everything you "choose" to do in your free time should move your projects forward somehow.

If you need motivation, you could read a few books that inspire entrepreneurs, like Gary Vaynerchuk's 'Crush It' or Hugh Mcleod's 'Ignore Everybody'.

The thing to remind yourself of is that you are actually at a huge advantage compared to many. You've started and failed. Most people never even try. Use the knowledge you gained from failing to try again.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm in a similar position, although I'm still in year 2 of my startup and just exiting stealth.

It's a tricky one. I know I could be out contracting like my friends (the few there are, since I've been holed away for so long), earning £100k a year. Instead, I'm looking at minimum wage until this thing succeeds, or crashes and burns.

It's a rough life, this entrepreneur gig. On reflection, my advice would be to go save some money for a couple years, find a good woman, and have another go when you've got some more stability.

<comment><USER9> As a (hopefully "good") woman, I'm slightly offended by that - we might have career goals of our own, too. Heck, we might even want to be entrepreneurs.

But let's assume I misread you and got my hackles up over nothing - let's focus on the "some more stability" instead. I'd advise against that. The time to make mistakes that end in crash&burn is when you're young. As you wait, you accumulate obligations. There's a mortgage, there's (in the U.S.) the fact you might like to have health insurance, you specialize in a certain area, or you might even have kids.

Making that leap and saying "ah, I'll just risk my savings and a few years of my life" becomes harder as life goes on. The risk/benefit ratio seems to be getting worse over time.

<comment><USER8> I think it was just a misreading. My suggestion was that being a part of a couple would provide stability, financial and emotional. I've been in both, and know i'm far more courageous with someone in my corner.

Plus, while I agree that this may affect his hunger for the business, I personally understand that my entrepreneurship is for the benefit of my loved ones, and not in-and-of itself valuable.

Conversely, I'm offended by your suggestion that for a woman to be in a relationship is somehow detrimental.

<comment><USER9> Glad I misread you, awesome you could return the favor ;) - we're going for the misinterpretation championships here.

I'm not suggesting it's detrimental for a woman to be in a relationship. I'm suggesting it's easier to go ahead, follow your dreams, and take crazy risks when you're not in a relationship, independent of gender. Simply because less obligations mean failure is less of an issue.

Note: This is about _starting_ as an entrepreneur, not being one. Obviously, there are many who make both their business and their relationship work just fine. (And I have no doubt many manage to start a business while in a relationship, too. It's just a little bit scarier/harder)

Ultimately, as long as both you and your partner are good with it, do whatever works for you :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hey reymook, great story.

A similar thing happened to me. The startup that I was building was going all right business-wise, but constant, relentless pressure from the financier was ruining my life (I programmed, he paid and did sales).

I had a nervous breakdown and left the business. To pay the bills, I told everyone that I know that I was freelancing back in the world that I came from - building digital advertising sites. I was embarrassed, broken and burned out.

It was the best move that I ever made. I ended up only working for small startup web production companies. One of those companies loved my work and we got along famously. They ended up offering me an equity position in their company. I brought sales contacts into the business that were too big to work on my own. The result is a booming business. We're doing just awesome work that I never thought I would be doing.

While it sucked (and still sometimes sucks) to do project work, we're paying down some debt and planning to pivot our services company and potentially add a product to the mix.

I don't know if you can do exactly what I did but my point is that you need to chill, do awesome stuff for small companies and have faith that you're doing the right thing. Like another reader said, something good will happen.

Life doesn't work out as you plan but if you let it take you where it needs to, it can work out better.

</comment><comment><USER11> Hey man,

I was in your shoes about 2 years ago. After college I joined a biotech start up, then launched my own startup (dailysite.com) which failed. After those experiences I joined a lab and wrote code for them for two years and realized I needed an mba to understand what is going. So today im at mit's mba program.

I would be more than happy to chat with you on the phone with suggestions. Just email me your number (somid3 at gmail dot com). Here are my suggestions.

If you want to stay in the entrepreneurship world, you need to hook up with someone who understands an industry. I like the suggestion of consulting or getting into web design. Why? Because you will get to know 20-30 clients very well. And you will understand their needs. That is how 37signals got started for example.

If you dont have the setup to begin a consulting gig, I'd suggest go to technology conferences and get inspired. Tell people of your experience, and be honest about your previous experiences -- share the good and the bad -- and the folks at the tech conference will understand your shoes and give you better suggestions.

I hope this helps, but again, if you would like to chat shoot me an email.

Cheers! O.

<comment><USER12> Real name Omid?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The solution is rather simple, actually: take a break. Real break. Seriously. If you keep pushing it, you will only end up being in a much worse situation.

Do something light for a while. Spend more time with your family, close friends etc. Try something new and interesting. Then, after a time, ask yourself again what you _really_ want to do and simply start over. By that time you should be level-headed and open-minded about your previous venture and use that experience to your advantage. Either bootstrap one of your ideas, join a start-up/company that you like or, well, do what you always wanted to do.

Naturally, take this advice, like any other, with a grain of salt. I'm not you; it's your life.

</comment><comment><USER14> Cheer up - at worst you've got more experience than most late 20 year-olds I know, and there's not too many developers with both business and programming experience.

I suggest you do some freelancing or consulting while you get your head together (plus finances in order!) and plan your next move.

</comment><comment><USER15> You always have (at least) two options in life when it comes to hard experiences.

1) Allow yourself to wallow in your failure and keep yourself there by constantly focusing on the negatives of what happened.

2) Focus on the experience that you had. Think about what you learned, good and bad. And use that to help you form your path towards the future.

I know it sounds really cliche to say that "failing often" can lead to success, but I have known many people who have gotten laid off or failed miserably at something and instead of dwelling on the fact that they were a failure, they bounced up and took the lessons they learned to do something different or change directions in their life or career.

Personally, I've also had a few experiences with failure that devastated me at the time, but after a few days of mind numbing woe is me, I picked myself up and did something about it and I am much more successful now than I was back then because I reflected on what happened in those instances and it helped me redirect my efforts.

So cliche or not, your attitude matters and if you start focusing on what you've learned instead of what you've lost I'm sure you'll bounce back.

</comment><comment><USER16> First off, you should hold your head high for the things that you have already accomplished. As for it not working out, welcome to the real world. You can either let that eat away at you, or you can get back on the horse. My first venture failed and I took about 1-2 weeks as a mini-mind vacation but then I immediately started brainstorming for what my next project was going to be. Failing is inevitable. It's what you can accomplish through the failure that is the true question. Identify the mistakes you have made so that you don't make them again, and then do it all over. Genius is merely persistence in disguise. (Oh, and BTW, as I am in a very similar situation to you in terms of 1 failed venture/age/experience, shoot me an email sometime - <USER2> [at] gmail.com.)

</comment><comment><USER17> Here is what I read to keep me going each day

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

<comment><USER18> credit to Teddy Roosevelt for the quote

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> If you really need the money, then a good compromise may be to go work for another startup for 12-18 months. You will get a meaningful salary (depends on the startup, but it should at least cover your basic expenses and allow you to save a little), but more importantly, it will hopefully allow you to work alongside other talented, motivated people and learn from the founders. After you have "recharged your batteries" from a financial and emotional perspective, you may want to give it another try to launching your own startup.

An alternate plan would be to consult on SAP for 'x' amount of months, make a pile of money and use it to fund your next startup. However, the consulting life can be very stressful.

good luck!

<comment><USER20> Good advice. Don't bet all your chips on one hand. Keep on trying your startup, but don't make it the only thing in your life. As with investments, diversifying is less risk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Here you are, commiserating over a failed business venture in your late 20's. Clearly your life is over. I mean the next 50 years of your life is utterly worthless, right?

Did you ever wonder why so many internet startups in the US are built by people in their 20's? It comes down to a few reasons, but the primary reason is that very few people want to take a risk once they get into a lifestyle with kids, house payments, or private school. People with health issues couldn't get health care coverage once it they left a company (the pre- existing condition clause), and others don't want to leave a career or reputation that took 20 years to build at the company they work for.

You're young, and presumably healthy. You took one risk and failed. Consider it an education more valuable than your schooling. It's time to take another. Figure out why the first failed and don't repeat the same mistakes. Easier said then done, I know. It's also true. Why didn't hospitals buy your system? Do you know? Was the market locked up by a big data company?

Build something, start off small. Show it to a few people. Get some feedback. A lot can be done in a weekend with python and django. Listen to the comments. Incorporate the best ones into your project, show it to a few more people. Wash, rinse, repeat. If you're project is a failure, you won't have wasted a year and a half working on it, but rather a few weekends.

</comment><comment><USER22> The cliche here is that the real test as to whether you can start your own successful company hinges upon what you do now that you've had your first "failure."

If what you truly want to do is to change the world through software that people love, then it's never a waste, eventually you will strike on something that people need and want, As long as what you're doing pays the bills in the meantime, then great.

Now, I don't know your full background, but here's a few more thoughts:

1) I personally would never attempt to do a startup in a highly regulated industry without some serious investors. Software for regulated industries carries substantially more overhead for development than "less regulated" industries.

2) Find someone that is as excited about an idea as you are. Work on the idea together (it's all the better if that person is technical, and can appreciate the work you're contributing). You may spend a great deal of time finding this person.

3) Talk about your ideas with your friends and family, anybody that will listen, simpler ideas are better than complicated ideas, your pitch will get better each time you explain the ideas, you will get honest feedback.

4) I don't know how much you're varying the platform you're working on, but take some time to learn a new platform/language that is different from what you currently know. Watch as your brain warps and sees your old code in a totally different light.

No risk, no reward. Don't give up.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm surprised nobody has asked this, but do you know _why_ your company failed?

1.5 years in development is too long to be in a silo without getting feedback from prospective customers; read about Customer Development (Steve Blank's "4 steps to the Epiphany" book) and Lean Startup methods (Eric Ries - The Lean Startup). And yes, you do _not_ need to write a single line of code to get feedback from prospective customers. "Hey Mr. Customer, I was thinking of building X to solve your problem Y. What do you think?" is the cheapest thing you can do before you write a single LOC, the simplest question you can ask to gauge their immediate reaction.

Steve Blank says the difference between successful and failed startups is that the successful ones truly _understand_ why customers buy. If people are buying from you but you don't understand why, you just got lucky and you won't know what hit you when your luck runs out, could be a market shift, or induced by a competitor. I'd humbly assert, if you failed, try to understand why you failed, so that you don't repeat your mistakes. If you don't know why you failed, then you just might repeat them - and thus that 1.5 years may very well just be useless (although I'm positive it's not). Write it down in words and internalize your lessons.

Also, reasons for failure could be further divided into things under your control and things not under your control. If it wasn't under your control, don't beat yourself over it. If it was, now you're that much wiser. Without a great wave, the best surfer in the world is still just some guy on a surf board.

Good luck and all the best!

</comment><comment><USER24> I'll echo a few of the other responses, but with a slight twist.

I think you should look at Product Management in software. It is a field that requires a broad range of skills, including a very good understanding of how software is really made. But you also have to understand business, and then balance trade-offs between business needs and the amount of software that your team has time to crank out.

You will have to be both bold and humble. Bold in that you will have to be brave enough to try something new: You haven't been a Product Manager officially before, but your startup experience counts for a lot. Humble in that you can't say that you know exactly how to do Product Management, but it is such a multi-disciplinary role that is different for each team that you might work with that it is a place where you can go, and learn more and more for the next 10 years in your career.

Of course, that said, I'm talking about Silicon Valley. There are tons of jobs both for Product Managers and Programmers. So go interview. Go check out Monster, or Craigslist, and go find a few interviews for Product Manager positions. I know just about every startup in the valley is looking for both, and they also prefer people with previous startup experience.

I wish you the best of luck.

<comment><USER25> Don't you have to worry about Visa?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> My advice is no matter how good are your programming skills or your product, if you're not selling, it's useless to be that good.

Get some good selling skills and human skills. The only reason why that other crappy software that you're competing with sells for millions is because the guy is better than you at selling it.

Maybe you should study and invest in learning how to sell and then give another chance to your software (that should be a good one after 4 years).

Stop developing, start selling.

<comment><USER27> Or find a business partner who can do the selling for you.

Nothing says you have to give up your dream or stop doing what you love, just make sure you have the right people around you.

Most startups fail. The fact your company failed doesn't mean you are a failure. Make sure you know why the company failed, though, so you don't make the same mistakes again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I doubt if your experience as an entrepreneur would be counted when you go back in the job market and here in India I won't be surprised if you have to start again at fresher level (this is sad but true sometimes). You can get a stable job perhaps with less salary for your experience if it's about paying the bills. You can consider freelancing for some local companies which is a less promising option. If you get a job meeting new people at a new workplace can help you come out of this state of mind. Take a break from technology for a month. Travel without Internet that should give you some perspective on things. I don't think there is any recipe someone can tell you here, you have to try things on your own and see what works for you. Key is to move on then keep on analyzing your past mistakes or experiences. I believe whenever you work hard you create energy of some form and once this energy is created it always give good results may be not immediately but perhaps later. Where are you based in India? Add some contact info.

</comment><comment><USER29> I feel down sometimes, letting things that are outside my control, control my happiness. But then I take comfort reading HN. Because I find here a community of like minded individuals, all trying to take their little sparks of creativity, nuture them with passion and hard work, and someday hope to create Lightening. So many of us fail. But I think it is a bigger injustice to our souls, to shut out the sparks, every time they buzz a little in our brains. Instead of thinking of the end result, relish the times you spent genuinely Loving what you were doing, long nights spent in the service of the Gods of code, meals forgotten because of ingenious ideas being hashed out on whiteboards. Because you were truly Alive then, and no one can take that feeling away from you. Close your eyes, think about the good times, take strength from the rest of us, some who have struggled just like you. If you have financial or societal pressures, get a day job and 'fit in' for a bit. But NEVER shut the sparks out!

</comment><comment><USER30> Failure is the road to success, grasshopper;)

If you don't have any family, you should take some time off (months) doing something else. Preferably nothing at all (ie. travel).

You need to put your experiences into perspective. When you do that, you'll probably value those 4 years highly.

You now have 4 years experience you can draw on when you start your next venture!

</comment><comment><USER31> Look at it this way, I'm in the same situation you are (26 though), but don't even have the experience of starting my own venture and failing. I've been saying I'm going to launch something, anything, but it's too convenient to just keep going to work, earning my salary and not really pushing myself out of that comfort zone a lot of us fall into.

Best advice I can give is to tell you that you're certainly not alone, and from an experience and skillset perspective you're ahead of A LOT of people out there. This can be tough to keep in the right perspective when you read about 25 year olds closing huge rounds and killing it on HN, but those guys are the exception and not the rule. The fact of the matter is that you're 28, with solid skills and experience, so there's literally nothing stopping you.

</comment><comment><USER32> I think if you're really sure, that you wanna be an entrepreneur, then there's no way around it. you might consider your current work as a means to acquire enough funds to get your next venture start. and that might at least help you focus a little more on your current work.

</comment><comment><USER33> Take a break! (If you can)

I've often found that doing some kind of 'reset' helps. Sometimes this means completely stopping any kind of computer or business related effort. In the past, I've done things like traveling, etc.

As for failure, don't be too hard on yourself. If you do a little bit of searching about Silicon Valley stories, you'll see a repeated theme: people fail a few/many times before their big success. I'm on my fourth 'failure' already. ;) Bottom line is pick yourself up, dust off, and try again. You have plenty of time still - trust me.

Another suggestion might be to go to some kind of code/programming meet ups. You'll met all kinds of people there and that chance meeting that could spark it all to happen, you gotta be out there among other creative people.

Good Luck!

</comment><comment><USER34> SAP and ABAP will suck the life out of anybody! I started in the same boat, first as an employee and later as a consultant. None of it was rewarding - <USER3> I started businesses on the side and it eventually panned out into a full time successful company.

Just do _something_ on the side that you are passionate about. Doesn't have to be a huge undertaking - just _something_. Keep the job to pay your bills, but the rest of your time work on your project, get customers, build stuff, etc, etc. You'll find it rewarding and if you put the right effort into it things will work out for you eventually.

</comment><comment><USER35> It sounds to me like you're stuck because you don't think you have the drive to try another startup but believe that there isn't any interesting corporate work. Both of those beliefs may be wrong:

\- you should be able to find work in the healthcare sector and use your experience to really improve things or join a startup that is past the grueling early stage

\- you might be able to find a different environment or a different partner for another try at a startup. Taking on a day job for a while might expose you to other people with energy to start up a new venture

</comment><comment><USER36> Facebook likes to hire entrepreneurs (successful or not -- you've learned a lot (and that rhymes (and now we're triple nested))). Anyway ...

Hit me up with your resume at firstname.lastname@example.com and see if there are any positions that are interesting to you on our careers website.

You are demoralized right now -- all entrepreneurs have been there when our pride and joy fails. It's okay and it will be better.

</comment><comment><USER37> Take it as a learning experience and keep plugging.

Also, I think it is important to find a good co-founder or team to keep you going. Doing a startup is emotionally tough especially if things don't work out initially. You need a strong partner to share the experiences.

Also launching early is important and can prevent you from wasting years developing a product nobody wants.

</comment><comment><USER38> The business venture is not a failure. It takes balls to do that, and it all counts for good experience and something you can talk about ...

You're obviously a talented developer, try learning something new like node.js and get some employment with it ... the answers will come ... I can definitely relate to this

</comment><comment><USER39> You really need to look at this as what it really is: an early attempt at success. That is it. The only thing left for you to do is to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and try again. You are actually quite young to try several more times.

</comment><comment><USER40> Brother, you need to be surrounded by people that believe in you and get a good, could even be a quick, win under your belt. Then you'll look back on this post and wonder why you ever made it.

</comment><comment><USER41> Go to business school. Seriously.

<comment><USER41> What is it with the anti-MBA attitudes around here? The OP is at a point in his life that is extremely common to people who go to b school. Right age. Right motivation. Right skills. It would be a great option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I've been through the same stuff including a failed company and burn out. You need to do something else for a bit and determine your realistic priorities rather than ambitions. Get a stable job, get paid, go on holiday and get some hobbies - it'll all come back to you when you are ready.</comment>