Show HN: I made a site for hosting/selling indie games - <AUTHOR> http://itch.io

<comment><AUTHOR> The technology stack of the site is pretty interesting. I wrote a little about it here:

<http://leafo.net/posts/introducing_itchio.html#technology>

Essentially the web app runs directly inside of nginx (but a special build of nginx from the project OpenResty[0]). The entire site is coded in MoonScript[1], which is my language that compiles to Lua.

I developed a web framework called Lapis while making this site, it doesn't have documentation yet but you can find the source here: <https://github.com/leafo/lapis>

I you want to see another sample Lapis webapp you can check out my MoonRocks project. The source is here: <https://github.com/leafo/moonrocks-site>

[0]: <http://openresty.org/>

[1]: <http://moonscript.org>

<comment><USER2> Congratulations on launching leafo, this is a great endeavor. And thanks for moonscript, I have some plans for it myself. The striking similarity to CoffeeScript allows for easy translation, which enables some nifty things if you think about it (in the same way Clojure leverages the Java ecosystem, I would say.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why no directory? I uploaded a game to this when it was advertised on gamedev.net Only subsequently did I realised this site does no marketing, or even a directory on the front page. So you take 10% just to filehost and not even put up a link? 10% for 1 type of payment processing is not all that competitive without some game discovery. I could just put my game on my own random webpage for much the same effect. (<http://t_larkworthy.itch.io/runesketch>) OK my game is a free to play so I have no idea how you are supposed to charge me. You can gladly have 10% of subsequent revenue for any conversion originating at itch.io but there is not gonna be any unless you actually market the games on your site

<comment><USER4> How does the underscore in the hostname work? I thought that they weren't allowed[1]. Just a non-compliant DNS server + a protocol that is flexible enough to allow it? Is it not disallowed in CNAMEs?

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostname#Restrictions_on_valid_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostname#Restrictions_on_valid_host_names)

<comment><USER5> I had to deal with this a while ago and I found out (sorry, but I don't have a reference handy) that underscores are prohibited in the second level domain (example.com), but are ok in any further levels (šķaudiens.example.com). Basically subdomain names can be anything that your DNS server allows them to be, just as email addresses can be whatever your SMTP server will handle.

<comment><USER4> In my reading, it looks like 'hostnames' are required to be compliant. The best I can get for the definition of 'hostnames' is A records, and MX records. So CNAMEs are fair game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice looking site!

I'm a professional programmer just getting started with indie game development (it's so much fun!). The biggest thing I want out of a game hosting site apart from actual sales is insight into the potential players/customers. I want to know which categories are popular, whether free demos are increasing paid sales, which platforms are selling, where are viewers coming from. I want to see what people are saying about my game, what they are rating it and why. It's not hard for me to put up a quick page with a paypal link to a file download, but you can add lots of value with good analytics and things like comments and ratings.

</comment><comment><USER7> How did you do the recording for the <canvas> demo of the product? You got my upvote just for that.

<comment><AUTHOR> I used this cool project: <https://github.com/rprichard/x11-canvas-screencast>

It definitely deserves some stars. It's based off of <https://github.com/sublimehq/anim_encoder>

<comment><USER8> "Off of"? Are you retarded or just american?

<comment><USER9> Retarded or just American? Are you retarded or just retarded?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Just for fun, I tried to pay $0.00 for X-Moon. I got a fun message that said:

"Name your own price to get download access to X-Moon. There is no minimum price, pay what you want.

Due to processing fees the minimum amount is 50 cents."

I realize it can still be downloaded for free, but it's not really "no minimum, pay what you want".

<comment><USER11> As an alternative I would recommend showing a "+0.50$" bit when the amount entered is $0 or the difference if it is below $0.50. A tool tip could explain the "fee" - it'd be much friendlier than a pop up message.

<comment><USER12> If he could afford it, it would probably be best to either drop the fees altogether for prices of <= $1, so _free_ games can honor their price, or otherwise set the minimum price to $1, so that the store at least doesn't collect more money than the dev himself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What is your use case for why this has a reason to exist, in a market that all ready feels over-saturated (Steam/Desura/GOG, etc)

<comment><AUTHOR> All of those sites have a huge barrier to entry. If you were an indie game dev and you wanted to start selling your game immediately it is not possible with those sites. There is an entire market of tiny game developers who never would dream of selling their game on something like steam. This gives them the opportunity to host their game, and set a minimum price of say 0. Now they have the potential to make money off of their side projects. I'd say that's a pretty empowering.

<comment><USER13> Smaller sites have a huge barrier to entry for consumers though. For a large percentage of gamers, myself included, if it's not on Steam, it might as well not exist. I'm far more hesitant to download/purchase from other services.

The nice thing about steam is that:

1: They're established, I don't have to worry about my CC security

2: I can re-download forever* on any computer. It is impossible to overstate how big of a deal this is.

3: Nothing to remember. No serials/keys to keep track of. No installers to back-up. IT JUST WORKS.

4: Auto-updates

<comment><USER14> 1\. itch.io uses PayPal. Assuming you trust them, there is nothing to worry about.

2\. itch.io provides the same mechanism. You are paying for the game, not the single download.

3\. As long as you can re-download the game, then there is no reason to save the installer. Serials/keys are up to the discretion of the game developer and I don't see why giving the game developers control is a bad thing. I think most indie games are against DRM anyway.

4\. In order to support auto-updates, the game developer has to invest in the Steam APIs. There is nothing stopping games on itch.io to using out-of-band updates.

<comment><USER13> The developer doesn't need to do anything to enable steam updates. Steam just does a binary diff vs the master copy.

For 2 & 3, that's great, but to be honest there is a huge burden of proof - frankly, I don't really expect any random startup that doesn't even have a .com domain to be around in 5 years.

<comment><USER15> dotcom is so 90s yo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm an indie game dev who has used Indievania for a previous release -- it's same kind of PayPal-powered setup, only they ask customers to tip them at time of purchase instead of taking a cut of every sale. Could you explain why I should consider using you instead of Indievania?

</comment><comment><USER17> I'd change the default displayed price, even on a free game, to be something other than $0.00 (and for those people who type 0.00, it should directly take you to the link).

</comment><comment><USER18> The video is a real eye-catcher, nicely done!

</comment><comment><USER19> I and a small team at my university are a month or two away from shipping our game. I think that we will highly consider using this site! The minimum price payment scheme is exactly what we wanted to do. Thanks a lot for posting. Bookmarked.

</comment><comment><USER20> I like it, and went to create a page for one of my games (free, but I'd like a nice landing page), however you only support downloadable games. I guess it makes sense to begin with, however if you add support for browser games, let me know!

<comment><AUTHOR> Browser games is definitely close to the top of my to-do list

<comment><USER11> Pretty easy to support nearly everything if you just use an iframe and ask for a fixed width/height. Kongregate rebate does this for HTML5 and Unity games to great effect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I really like this. I do want to see a directory though.

Just a little detail I really like the way you show how much money will go to each party involved in the sale:

[http://itch.io/about/faq#someone-buys-my-game-for-10-how- muc...](http://itch.io/about/faq#someone-buys-my-game-for-10-how-much-do-i- get)

I know it's just a sum, but I like the way you formatted it :)

</comment><comment><USER22> This is pretty cool.

It might just reduce the friction enough for me to post my unfinished 2D Counter-Strike -like game that I worked on for 5+ years, that otherwise the world would likely never see (I have a lot more important things to complete before I can afford to get back to working on it).

</comment><comment><USER23> The video actually threw me off. My cursor was right there, very confused for a sec - imo it's not separated enough from the rest of the experience for it to be entirely helpful, felt like more of a distraction. Just my $.02, cool site outside of that one small thing!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I thought about that. I figured a small percentage of people would be using linux so not that many people would get confused.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> what are tags? Are there plans for in-itch discovery? As a buyer, the front page doesn't really help me at all.

as a seller, I can see the use case. Maybe integration with online arcades? kongregate, for example.

</comment><comment><USER25> Why confine this to games?

I think the layout and format of the site is great, but I dont see anything about it that necessitates that particular vertical. Why can't I use this to sell my OSX app?

<comment><USER26> There's nothing stopping you from uploading an app. From the readme:

> Can I upload/sell other stuff besides a game?

> Sure. Got a game soundtrack or art book you also want to sell/distribute? > Feel free to upload it as well.

<comment><USER27> Those examples they listed are strictly things that would accompany a game...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This looks good, but one of the things that could stop us from using it, is Paypal, we can't withdraw money from Paypal where we are located.

</comment><comment><USER29> Love the idea. But I would consider one thing. Changing your domain name. It doesn't ring and the .io will be confusing..

<comment><USER12> It's not that bad. It's short, a real word and memorable. I've never seen a product with an .io domain catch on and become mainstream though, but I guess that's not really relevant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Is there an ability to upload a demo of the game? Will there be some kind of discovery system for buyers?

</comment><comment><USER31> You should accept Bitcoins, this could solve the issue of Paypal and foreign countries.

</comment><comment><USER32> Are you using redactor.js for the WYSIWYG editor ?

<comment><USER33> That's definitely Redactor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> "I'm a 24 year old male living in San Francisco."

Really? You're "a male"? Not a man? You disgust me.

<comment><USER26> It's easy to troll behind a fake account. Use your real account next time.</comment></comment>


Could Vietnam Become the Next Silicon Valley? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/business-35227626 <comment><USER2> It all sounds well and good, but Vietnam is really corrupt. I lived there for a few months a few years ago and people pay off the police for pretty much anything.

It's also one of the only communist countries left in the world. There are soviet hammer/sickle posters up all over ho chi min city.

The government can pretty much take over your business whenever they want (and they do). The media (TV/radio/newspapers) are completely state-controlled.

All of these factors spells trouble for anyone with money. Why would I take such a risk?</comment>


SubHub – Email subscriptions for blogs - <AUTHOR> https://subhub.io/

<comment><USER2> How does this compare to Mailchimp's rss-to-email feature? What do the forms look like? What about deliverability? What about pricing?

There's a lot of unanswered questions in my mind that don't have answers on your website.</comment>


Discuss HN: How can we "unlock" more money to fund innovation? - <AUTHOR>

Silicon Valley is neat.  I want more of them.
There's a lot of money floating in the world today.  Tons and tons of money.  Silicon Valley only get's a small portion of it.  The rest of the world gets an even smaller portion of what Silicon Valley gets.
Read Point 14 & 15 on this article: http://www.paulgraham.com/really.html
14. Investors Are Clueless 15. You May Have to Play Games
Points 14 & 15 should not exist.  How can we eliminate that?  How can we make it so that the people who know how to invest are the ones who have the funds? <comment><USER2> Have you ever invested in anything? Ever spoken to an investor? Do you know the circumstances around the issue?</comment>


Is Paul Ceglia a sleazy grifter or Facebook angel investor? - <AUTHOR> http://www.betabeat.com/2011/09/20/the-man-who-would-have-facebook/

<comment><USER2> Probably a little from column A, little from column B.

No great empire is built without a burying a few bodies, but it seems like the skeletons Mr. Ceglia wants to shake loose don't hold together in the light of day.</comment>


Correlation, Causation, and Confusion - <AUTHOR> http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/correlation-causation-and-confusion <comment><USER2> I think the statistics used in a lot of actual science are too primitive. Not that the methods are simple or old by any means. Or that making them more complicated is desirable in itself. Just that there are better ways of inferring structure from data.

Just correlating two variables will often be misleading. E.g. the coffee drinkers that live longer. But if you collect a ton of other information, you will find many other relevant variables. And once you build a model from all that information, you find that coffee no longer predicts mortality.

Of course there is a limit to the amount of causal structure you can infer from data. But that limit is well above what we are currently doing. And the more relevant data you collect, the higher that limit is.

This is basically what the field of machine learning is. Where we want computers to automatically model our data and make the most accurate predictions for us. Tons of methods are invented and tested against each other on different datasets. There are websites like kaggle where users compete to find the best model for a dataset. But somehow none of this innovation goes back to mainstream statistics or used in scientific studies to get better models.

And machine learning sucks too. A lot of methods use maximum likelihood with some tricks to keep it from overfitting. Rather than ideal bayesian methods. And the models are kind of simple. Like simple decision trees or linear models.

I think in the future we will use something like bayesian neural networks. Which can model very complicated structures with little data. And we won't arbitrarily select some of the variables to be inputs and some to be outputs. All of the observed variables are outputs of some unobserved function with unobserved inputs. We need to model that.

Then you have a fully general statistics algorithm that you can plug any dataset into. You can then ask it questions like "if I observed that this person drank coffee, but everything else I know about them is the same, what is their mortality?" And then it will give you the most accurate possible answer.

Is that proof of causation? No. But it's far more likely that coffee causes cancer if it can accurately predict it, even when you control for all other variables. Than if you just see that it happens to correlate with cancer.

<comment><USER3> I don't think machine learning vs Bayes vs sampling theory has much to do with the content of the article, which is more about causality than interpretations of probability.

> it's far more likely that coffee causes cancer if it can accurately predict > it, even when you control for all other variables

I don't know about this: prediction is not equivalent to explanation in general. The "all the other variables" bit is also a bit of a kicker (what counts as "all"?) -- hence randomization, and, well, pretty much everything else the article discusses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As someone who studies causality via experiments for a living, this article is a remarkably accessible synthesis given that it covers so much from different disciplines.

Definitely bookmarked as a juicy morsel to send to anyone who asks, "why should we care about causality?"

</comment><comment><USER5> This is a masterpiece.

<comment><USER3> +1. A fantastic article. Definitely one of the best popular-level stats pieces I've read.</comment></comment>


AlphaColo Launch – VMs for Crypto - <AUTHOR> https://www.alphacolo.com <comment><AUTHOR> AlphaColo from StartupSchool here.We Sell Virtual Machines for Bitcoin, Ethereum or Litecoin

Do you have have cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin or Bitcoin Cash and need computing power?

Do you trade Forex using MetaTrader?

Do you need low latency connections to:FOREX.com, Gain Capital, FXCM, FXDD, OANDA?

We have Windows Server 2016 Virtual Private Servers with Metatrader preinstalled and low latency connections to most major forex exchanges. We accept Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, creditcard and Paypal.</comment>


Sweatpants Forever: How the Fashion Industry Collapsed - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/08/06/magazine/fashion-sweatpants.html <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24080715](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24080715), which was posted earlier.

</comment><comment><USER3> As a former fashion writer, the "fashion industry," reduces to a spectacle for selling perfume and cosmetics. Fashion itself is an expression of beliefs, power, and alignment that people buy clothes to participate in.

In this sense, fashion is to clothing what live music is to alcohol, or what journalism is to advertising. There is an underlying high-margin business that you use a spectacle to attract people into to sell them stuff. The talent for the spectacle exists in a local equilibrium that is largely oblivious to the economics that make it viable. Journalists are a great example of people who thought they were the money maker and remain in denial about the economics of their role of bringing readers to advertisers.

Fashion designers (like Jacobs in the article) appear to have the same conceit, where their role as the spectacle that draws in punters who buy super high margin smelly water, face paint, and snake oil lotions has been displaced. Covid has just been the coup de gras, where the fashion business has been steadily being polarized and dis-intermediated for at least a decade. A business that promised and re-sold proximity to fame was really taken out much earlier by Instagram and its influencer economy, where now everyone is famous for Warhol's 15 minutes, and the returns on investment in fame schemes are now much more diffuse.

The dynamic described in the article about luxury clothing in the end resembles the book and publishing business, where you are in effect consigning product to retailers, who make massive orders for their big box shops, then destroy you with returns. It's like how movies spent almost 100 years in in the popcorn and concessions business, and they've found totally new economics in the streaming game. Fixing fashion is the same class of problem as fixing journalism, publishing, music, movies, and arts in general, where the economics of getting people together to sell them complimentary high margin goods in the moment and place was decimated by social media, and now finished off by covid. These markets aren't dead, but they are now polarized, where the super high end is fine, and the absolute bottom will persist, but the lucrative middle is hollowed out. These fashion design brands made most of their money on middle market goods backed by over leveraged private equity investments and sunk costs in conglomerates, and that's why they're getting killed by this.

Fashion is the business of symbols and signifiers and there is infinite human demand for these (just as there is for stories, conflict/news, spectacle, etc), so future businesses using totally different modalities will pick up the slack to meet it, but reading fashion talent hand wringing about their market is like listening to journalists talk about the economics of publishing, hockey players discussing team ownership, or perhaps even us hackers talking about venture capital. What we think is meaningful and decisive, it's not meaningful and decisive.

</comment><comment><USER4> The mall industry is going down with the fashion industry.

Fashion will make a comeback, but not until the epidemic is so over that bars, nightclubs, restaurants, and entertainment venues can reopen fully. That's a long way off in the US.</comment>


Show HN: A sound toy crossing an ecosystem and musical instrument - <AUTHOR>

For the past year I've been working on my Android app Sonaur (aur relates to the ear, son as in sonic). Basically, it is a sound toy.
The idea was to have three unique organisms that interact together to produce different sounds and visuals. One, for example, is a hanging plant which pans the audio when the phone is tilted from side to side. Another is a flock of flying insects that pollinates the hanging plants to produce stalks that vibrate like marimba keys on contact.
All the visual forms (besides the icons) and sounds are generative. Made with Android Processing and Pure Data.
Sonaur is $1.99 on the Android market. Please feel free to ask me any questions via this thread, or by email (firstname.lastname@example.com)
Thanks guys!
www.sonaur.com <comment><USER2> Hard to discuss/review without any video of it in action... it's not the kind of app that is best presented via screenshots.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, I will get on this. Is it bad form to repost once I have a video?</comment></comment>


The hidden cost principle - <AUTHOR> http://david.weebly.com/1/post/2008/03/the-hidden-cost-principle.html

<comment><USER2> There's another flaw in the drive thru system... [http://www.videosift.com/video/Free-McDonalds-via- Questionab...](http://www.videosift.com/video/Free-McDonalds-via-Questionable- Means)

</comment><comment><USER3> Although you make a good point, you missed something: Nobody tries to intentionally break a taco bell drive through simply because they've got nothing better to do.

On the internet, this is common place. The key is not to miss that "hidden cost" while making your trade-offs. Remember reddit's plain text password fiasco? One of those can kill your company, and cost you millions.

<comment><AUTHOR> Obviously, it needs to be included in the risk vs. cost calculation. The point of the post: Don't assume the risk automatically outweighs any cost.

<comment><USER4> I want to add that software developers are not building a new type of franchise on a plot of land. Often times, intuition, experimentation, logic, and luck can help discover better alternatives that one wouldn't have found out had they not been "in the game"; e.g., the peculiar idea that pricing something too low can turn users off, and then finding out you have more orders when you increase the price.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You'd be surprised how frequently people forgot both passwords and E-mail. Or more likely, forget the password to an account registered with a fake E-mail.

<comment><AUTHOR> In our experience, we've rarely run into scenarios where users forget their passwords and have mistyped their email/faked an email after having spent time on their account. If they haven't spent time on an account -- create a new one!

Otherwise, how does someone who fakes their email expect to recover a password anyway? It's kind of an assumed risk that if you fake your email, you won't be able to recover your password. And requiring a confirmation won't help anything -- they'll be forced to re-create another account with a valid email... that is if they even want to use your service anymore. This user apparently hated giving out their email so badly that they put in a fake one... What makes you think they aren't just going to turn around and not use your service when you require a valid email?

<comment><USER6> > If they haven't spent time on an account -- create a new one!

What if they've put time into the account when they first logged in post- signup and are infuriated at having to re-do the work? Or they picked their favorite username and now it's taken by themselves, so they don't get their cool URL (like myspace.com/username)?

BTW: I think you should add a <label> tags to TOS checkbox on the front page of Weebly :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The whole e-mail/password account verification is a hidden cost in itself. Use openid/clickpass!

</comment><comment><USER8> Really cool post, thanks.</comment>


Ex-NSA wants you to install software to encrypt email - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/a-surprisingly-easy-tool-for-encrypting-email-courtesy-an-ex-nsa-employee

<comment><AUTHOR> Seriously, what could possibly go wrong?</comment>


Comparing the performance of Canvas, Flash, DOM & CSS3 Transitions - <AUTHOR> http://www.spielzeugz.de/html5/compare/ <comment><USER2> In Chrome the fps reported good numbers but many of the examples were jittery. In IE9 all the demos ran smoother than Flash though except for the blitting one.

</comment><comment><USER3> Flash is significantly faster than Canvas in all the examples. It's impressive how much better Canvas performs when one rounds to whole numbers.

<comment><USER4> On the contrary:

Flash fails in all examples.

Canvas is full 30fps in all examples, CPU consumption is too low to reliably measure in all but three of the examples.

jinushaun and I are both telling the truth.

Like they say on the page: results are meaningless without the hardware and software attached.

(Current MacBook Air, Mac OS X 10.7.2, Safari 5.1.1, No flash player installed.)

<comment><USER3> I'm running Chrome on a 15" MBP with OS 10.7 and the Canvas examples were all around 3-8 fps without rounding.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: andthewinner.is - Make realtime voting seamless - <AUTHOR> http://www.andthewinner.is <comment><USER2> The phone image makes me want to scroll the page, except there isn't anything to scroll to. Just a minor detail. I love the design of the voting pages, and I think the idea is executed well too. :)

<comment><USER3> I generally come read the comments on a post before visiting the linked page, I'd read your comment and still tried to scroll once I finally clicked through, it just says 'more down here' to my muscle memory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> <http://polleverywhere.com> have been at this for many years and do a great job of it.

Services like this are particularly good for interaction or feedback in university lectures. Some professors are good at using it to test students in the auditorium to see how many understand the subject.

<comment><USER5> The other day someone linked their service aimed specifically at this problem, <https://understoodit.com/>

Given that these other general poll services seem to also cover it, not sure if the specificity is good but I think there is a market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It would be nice to see a working demo on the front page.

<comment><USER7> This is an example of running contest that has been created during the node.js conference in Brescia (Italy) <http://www.andthewinner.is/nodejsconfit>

These are examples of closed contests <http://www.andthewinner.is/nodejsconfithack> <http://www.andthewinner.is/musicidol>

The last one was amazing, we ran it by monitoring only mentions (as there was no official hashtag), and in 2 hours of execution we managed to get almost 31k votes :P It was pretty insane to follow it eheh

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you are interested into the technology behind it, I wrote a quick post explaining also the motivations that moved us towards its creation: [http://www.matteoagosti.com/blog/2012/11/16/the-rationale- be...](http://www.matteoagosti.com/blog/2012/11/16/the-rationale-behind- andthewinner-is-a-platform-for-viral-contests-on-twitter/)

</comment><comment><USER8> The last few tech conferences I've attended tried to use txt voting from mobile devices. They forgot to include the destination number on the instruction slide and just listed the voting codes. Everyone just shrugged and started scanning twitter. Voting was light and it was frustrating to wait.

This looks much better. And great design.

<comment><USER7> We are looking forward to testing it out on other events, with higher voting rates. We tested monitoring mentions of popular twitter accounts and results were absolutely impressive. So if you have any good examples feel free to drop us an email email@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It'd also be nice to have the option to create "elections" that use STV/instant runoff: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote>

</comment><comment><USER10> So my 'voter ID' is a Twitter account? This is a conspiracy by those with easy access to Twitter to silence the voices of those who can't easily obtain Twitter!

</comment><comment><USER11> Cool stuff. We did something similar but for tvs with some other apps. Snapshow.tv

I like the design of your mobile contest lander, looks sharp</comment>


Tips for Startup Companies (2006) - <AUTHOR> http://philip.greenspun.com/business/startup-tips

<comment><USER2> I read a lot of articles on startups, and the take away is usually a few small nuggets of value. I think this is first article I have read in a while that has a lot of value. It was good. Read it.

<comment><USER3> Philip's writings were definitely ahead of their time. He changed my life.

"It is because these guys were the best programmers who understood the problems of their customers." sums it up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Your competitors can probably get a home equity loan at 6 percent on their McMansions. How much cheaper can your cost of capital possibly be?"

Oh sweet blast from the past.

</comment><comment><USER5> _A less obvious approach is to insist that the venture capitalists buy some of your common shares at the time of the investment. There are a lot of venture capitalists and not too many good companies. If your company is attractive, you can probably find a firm that will agree to put $10 million into the company and, say, $3 million into your pocket. Then if the enterprise stumbles and ends up being sold for, say, $9 million, you won't feel like a total idiot._

Is this still the case? Are VCs willing to do deals like this (especially early on, say in a Series A round)?

</comment><comment><USER6> The bit about preferring hypothetical questions over past achievements in interviews sounds dubious to me. The current practice seems to be "behavioral" questions like "tell me about a time you had to deal with <specific type of problem x>, and how you personally contributed to solving it", the idea apparently being that what someone _claims_ (or imagines) they would do in a given situation is a much weaker indicator of their realistic future behaviour than what they actually _did_ in that situation in the past. In other words, actions speak louder than words. However, this is different than simply letting someone brag in general terms about some project they were a part of - the more specific nature of the questioning allows you to get at what the person's real contribution was.

I haven't seen the actual research though (I think behavioral interviewing at least claims to be based on research evidence).

<comment><AUTHOR> That works when your aim is to find out the behaviour of character of a person, which is not the aim of a technical interview question. Basically the aim of the technical question is to find out how the person thinks and how creative a solution he works out, and how his thinking process works, not to find out his behavioral characteristics.

So it doesn't depend whether if it is an actual situation the candidate has gone through or if it is a hypothetical situation. In the case of a candidate applying for a first job for instance, this is a pretty good way of questioning I think !

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm curious about the participation rights -- is there any chance to avoid this altogether? Basically, this means that all that the company gets from the VC is a loan, in return for a part of the company. I'm still far from needing a VC, but at the moment I don't see myself allowing this clause.</comment>


Books that Aaron Swartz read, loved and hated - <AUTHOR> http://shelfjoy.com/shelfjoy/all-the-books-aaron-swartz-loved-hated-wrote-and-blogged-about <comment><AUTHOR> I don't think my intense fascination with Aaron's life will ever fade away.

Sometime back, I thought of reading through his entire blog and came across his year-end reading lists wherein he would list anywhere from 70-140 books read in that particular year.

Because all these books were linked to books.theinfo.org (which is not alive), I decided to put it into a shelf where I could add them to my reading list and access them directly.

This is my very small attempt at spreading the sheer magic of Aaron's curiosity.

Currently, I have been able to add books from 2006, 06, 08 and 10. Its a work- in-progress.

<comment><USER2> If you haven't already, read The Boy Who Could Change the World: The Writings of Aaron Swartz [1] and watch this documentary (The story of Aaron Swartz) [2].

> I don't think my intense fascination with Aaron's life will ever fade away.

Yes, it still hurts to think about his untimely death and what could have been.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Could-Change- World/dp/1620970...](https://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Could-Change- World/dp/162097066X)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpvcc9C8SbM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpvcc9C8SbM)

<comment><AUTHOR> I know. I still think that he's around. Not able to wrap my head around his absence and for such a reason!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is MIT's recent disobedience award a tacit apology to Aaron, unrelated, or a cynical attempt to change perception about MIT? One would expect Aaron to posthumously receive the first award if the intent were sincere.

[https://www.media.mit.edu/disobedience/](https://www.media.mit.edu/disobedience/)

<comment><USER4> I think it's worth noting that this is a Media Lab award, not one presented by the regular MIT administration. The Media Lab is given a lot of free reign and tends to do more out-there stuff. You should not construe them as speaking for the same people who betrayed Aaron (if that's how you see it happening).

<comment><USER5> Not to be pedantic, but I just learned a few minutes ago that "free rein" is the correct spelling, as in horseback riding. Thought I would share the knowledge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is this another cynical list of books that is reaping clicks for Amazon Affiliate bucks?

<comment><USER7> Most links posted on HN are "cynical" content that are "reaping clicks" for ad affiliate "bucks", welcome to the internet, Sir

<comment><USER6> While you're right most of the posts here are trying to get some pay off for the site in question (the incentive to post here is not as strong as reddit, for example), I think it's unfair to say most people are looking for ad affiliate bucks.

Plus, I can understand websites that use the affiliate system as long as they give me some long term value. I just don't think this website would do that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I read Chomsky's Understanding Power on Aaron's recommendation [1]. I found it equally transformative.

[1] [http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/epiphany](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/epiphany)

</comment><comment><USER9> Google Cache version: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://shelfjoy.com/shelfjoy/all- the-books-aaron-swartz-loved-hated-wrote-and-blogged-about)

</comment><comment><USER10> I recently read Infinite Jest, and while I loved all the micro-essays and commentary, prose, and most of the characters' stories, the ending was a big "WTF."

So I Googled 'Infinite Jest Ending" to try and figure it out. Lo and behold, Aaron Swartz had written one of the best theories I was able to find, and while he's making a few assumptions about DFW's intent, it does help close the loop a bit.

Lots of spoilers, so I don't recommend reading this if you plan on reading the book anytime soon:

[http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/ijend](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/ijend)

<comment><AUTHOR> I had this moment on his commentary on Dark Night.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It is interesting how someone who read so much can have so few, if any, books in common with me (who reads around 50-70% as much as Swartz does in a year). There's really a ton of books out there for everyone :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> And guess what, there's still 2 years of data still missing from this. I've been typing them all in manually so I thought of publishing a work-in- progress.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Really disappointed to see this flagged.

<comment><USER12> Since your effort seems heartfelt, we'll turn off the flags.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot dang.

I thought that this post was flagged because of something I did. Didn't realise that the flag was because of a nasty comment on Aaron. Feels bad to let that take away our HN #2 glory though :(

Another time!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I always wanted something like this. Just love the website.Awesome design and the site is well made. :)

</comment><comment><USER14> I have written a script to compile all his blog posts into a .mobi ebook if anyone is interested

[https://github.com/tienthanh8490/aaronsw](https://github.com/tienthanh8490/aaronsw)</comment>


Startup Goshi Blogs 50 Days To Pitch At Demo Day - <AUTHOR> http://blog.goshi.me

<comment><USER2> Great look at what it's like to be a startup. Getting locked out in the middle of a storm is hilarious.

<comment><USER3> That was probably the worst night to be locked out in Chicago. I know because I let him in...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is what the life of the entrepreneur is all about: extreme ups and downs and a ton of uncertainty.</comment>


Inside The Fine Art Factories of Yiwu, China - <AUTHOR> https://www.instapainting.com/blog/company/2015/10/28/how-to-paint-10000-paintings/ <comment><USER4> I love instapainting's approach to SEO: produce articles like this that are genuinely interesting, post it to HN, then wait for TC and the like to pick them up and reap the link juice. They've also got a few neat little hacks hosted on www.instapainting.com which serve the same purpose. Here's a good writeup on their strategy:

[https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/instapainting](https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/instapainting)

<comment><USER5> There is no fast way of doing linkbuilding these days. The effect of viral content, and the links they bring is short-lived.

Unless it's your actual product going viral, it doesn't do much for SEO. It's just a good way to get your name out there.

[https://moz.com/blog/the-seo-myth-of-going-viral](https://moz.com/blog/the- seo-myth-of-going-viral)

<comment><USER6> The immediate links to the linkbuilding content itself, sure, I'll buy that. But those links create clicks, and some of those visitors will end up linking other parts of the site, including the product.

So a slower process, but still one that should be worth it as long as your viral content is actually _about_ your product and facilitating discovery of the product.

I think that's one of the problems: People pump out content that is only marginally about the actual product, and few people go on to visit the parts of the site you want to _actually_ get people to link to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> >He built up his studio into a factory with 3 floors: a ground floor for packaging and shipping works of art, a second story of painting areas, and a third floor of dormitories for the painters.

As a painter [1][2] this sounds like paradise (minus the intermittent factory assembly line commercial-kitsch factor). Replace the shipping area with a framing/gallery floor and you have effectively created an amazing hub for creative output/rapid development of artistic talents. Place that building in a warehouse district and rent it out. The sheer amount of communication between a tight knit group of visual artists would lead to amazing amounts of growth. Throw in a middleman for national/regional outlets that need works of a specific subject/aesthetic at non-gallery pricing and it might be sustainable.

Startup dorm-factory when?

[1] [https://theblackbox.ca](https://theblackbox.ca)

[2] [https://theblackbox.ca/blog/primitive- triangles/](https://theblackbox.ca/blog/primitive-triangles/)

<comment><USER8> Artists love producing works dictated to them by consumers for twelve hours a day in Yiwu sweatshops. They love it so much.

<comment><USER7> I wasn't attempting to glorify the factory model, simply pointing out the space. Removing the function of mass producing art objects and looking at it as a collective studio space it's pretty awesome.

<comment><USER8> Fair -- I kind of glided over that caveat in your post; my apologies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> At the other end of the price spectrum, albeit at a much smaller scale, Andy Warhol used this business model quite successfully. He even called his studio the Factory.

And in Damien Hirst's studio, his "assistants" (i.e. artists) churn out countless spin and dot paintings which are sold as original artworks for thousands of pounds.

<comment><USER10> Plenty of prominent artists have that same studio model, also including Ai Weiwei and, in a sort of satirical way-- Thierry Guetta, as depicted in the film Exit Through the Gift Shop. This "production line" type operation is a bit different thought.

<comment><USER9> You're right, but I mention those two because I believe Warhol was the most famous early adopter, and Hirst is the most notorious, being the richest artist in the world.

<comment><USER11> Early adopter of something that dates back to at least the Middle Ages? Earlier, really, if you consider that a lot of Roman statuary was mass- produced. And I'm probably missing out on non-Western-culture examples.

<comment><USER9> I may be wrong but my understanding was that the Renaissance painters would use their assistants/apprentices to perform all the more tedious and time consuming tasks, which in those days including making the paint itself. And in terms of the actual painting, several stages of underpainting and the less "interesting" passages of the painting (e.g. backgrounds, clothing) would be done by assistants, leaving the artist to work on the focal points of the painting (e.g. faces).

This is very different to getting assistants to create "original" dot paintings, working to a formula, where the artist's hand only intervenes to sign the work.

And I'm not saying it wrong, or not art, just that it is fundamentally different to the old tradition of studio assistants.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I ordered a painting of a photograph my wife took from this site about a year ago. Overall I was pleased with it. It's a faithful reproduction but not a perfect facsimile. I think it worked well because the photograph (in low light) had a very painting-like quality to it which is what made me choose it for this in the first place. I think I paid about $60 for a 12"x12" painting. It took a few weeks but I was very happy with the result. I don't think my sister's painter boyfriend was very happy when I told him about it. This one time was out of curiosity but I think I'd probably contract a local artist in the future on principle.

<comment><USER13> Would you also buy a cell phone / laptop produced entirely by well paid western workers or software written entirely by well paid western developers in the future on principle? Would you be willing to pay the higher price?

<comment><USER12> I don't know, probably not. Art is more subjective to begin with and I have a bias towards supporting art anyway. I'm not going to try arguing the position is consistent.

<comment><USER13> I also support artist taking courses regularly they offer in my town. It is kind an expensive hobby of me. But I would not pay 3 times more for a painting only because it was produced in Europe, even if I know from my own experience how much work it is to paint one. It is definitely a subjective topic anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I noticed in the blog: "This is why all but our largest sizes of paintings cost less than $100"

But when I go to pricing, only the smallest is $100...Mixed media has items cheaper, but still, not exactly 'all but our largest size of paintings cost less than $100'

Am I looking at the right place, or has prices tripled in a year?

<comment><AUTHOR> At the time mainly Mixed Media paintings were offered, and the default sizes were smaller (21x28 was set as the default "large" size). The "under $100" text links to the Mixed Media product page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I bought a few 'copy cat' paintings on ebay from china about 8 years ago. Had them framed and people love them. Paid less than 20 each for them... That must have evolved into this.

</comment><comment><USER16> This article talks a lot about Dafen but not so much about Yiwu so I thought I would fill in.

Yiwu itself is something of an enigma. Most people in Silicon Valley haven't heard of it. It's not political like Beijing, it's not financial like Shanghai, and it's not electronics or fashion like Shenzhen/Guangdong. The land is barren so the area has focused on International Trade and Commodity Production. Most of it's goods don't even go to the US. Yiwu is the largest exporter of "petty goods" or "small commodities" in the world. What's a petty good? It's pretty much 100% of the things you would find in a dollar store and most of the things you would find in a Walmart. Cheap umbrellas, bags, metal pencil holders, hammers, hair dryers, pots, pans, artificial flowers, stock art, lawn ornaments, flashlights, hair clips, lucky cat figurines, toilet plungers, mailboxes and battery jumpers. I.e. most of the things you buy in stores that you don't eat (commodities). It's also usually the first thing that comes to mind when you hear "Made in China."

Yes, the Christmas mall is there. Yes it is an attraction. But it's not the _main_ attraction.

There is a mall in Yiwu nick-named 'the Snake.' It's 4 miles long, 1000 feet wide and has representatives from over 100,000 companies. There's something like 50,000+ 10x10 foot stores. You could spend 6 seconds in each store and given another 3 seconds to walk between stalls you still wouldn't see the whole thing after a year. Given spaces change their stock or go out of business at least every 3 months you can't tackle this like a Sunday shopping trip.

The thing is though, all these booths? They're all wholesale. Most of the goods on display are commercial samples. Most of the clerks are representing factories or consortiums. Yes, you can go there to buy some touristy trinkets but you'll get dirty looks if you're not representing a 'Buyer' with a capital 'B'. You don't go there with a shopping cart; you go there with a business card and a promise to fill a 40 foot container every 2 weeks.

Buyers are sometimes from brand name stores looking to sell store-brand goods - those Walgreen's brand picture frame hangers? Bought at Yiwu. Pretty much anything you find at Claire's boutique. Anything you find on the check-out counter or in those cheesy glass curios at any truck stop in this country.

Most of the buyers however aren't American. They're from Brazil, they're from Africa, and in particular they're from the Middle East. After 2001 it became difficult for representatives from small business in the Middle East to get Visas for some of the US product exhibitions so they shifted their sourcing to Yiwu. These are guys that have a state level franchise like Railey's of Lebanon or Dollar Tree of Bangalore that need to fill shelves - <USER2> they'll buy whatever they get a good deal on if they hear the factory has excess or needs to liquidate stock because another buyer went belly-up. You go to north Dubai and you see a mirror image of the goods in Yiwu, just marked for consumer prices and packaged for individual sale.

So yeah, Yiwu has an office goods supply mall, a cabinet hardware mall, and yes, even a Christmas mall.

Stability is a good thing and seasonal goods in particular are problematic. If your company is producing something that requires very specialized tooling and training that's only in demand 1 month a year you're going to have a hard time keeping those trained workers around for the other 11 months.

The Christmas mall is a bit like this - they're open from March to May when buyers for TJMax and Tesco inspect goods and place orders. The factories are in production from June to September and then the stuff is sea-freighted out (1 month) to warehouse centers and fulfillment to prepare for the end of October, beginning of November delivery. Because of the seasonal nature, most of the prime-time work gets sub-contracted out to everybody and their auntie. This video has a pretty good look into what most of this production looks like: [http://vimeo.com/92736460](http://vimeo.com/92736460)

For the most part, Christmas decor is low skill - just slather this plastic bit with chrome paint and sparkles. This makes it easy for factories to hire a bunch of workers on short notice and let them go again when demand drops off. Because the workers are seasonal there is little care that goes to protecting their well being. The conditions are bad, and after seeing it at the source, it's why I don't buy cheap seasonal decorations anymore.

<comment><USER17> Thank you for writing this and linking the video.

At first I thought, "ugh, I'll never buy a Christmas decoration again!" But on second thought, maybe this industry is helping bring people out of poverty. Then again, all that waste is bad for the environment...

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Good article. I'd be very interested to see these artists' original works. I imagine they have exceptional technical ability since they paint so much.

</comment><comment><USER19> "Fine art factory" is an oxymoron. It's a human-powered printing machine.

<comment><USER9> You're absolutely right. It must still be cheaper to use human skill, but I see no technical reason this cannot be done using image processing (e.g. a Photoshop filter), robotics and/or 3D printing.

Clearly, the whole question of art as product has been endlessly addressed by Duchamp, Warhol and others - indeed, the whole Conceptual Art movement is in one sense a response to this question. But the sheer scale - and chutzpah - <USER3> this operation is staggering, and the fact it is using human skill and not automation makes it - oddly - appear quite modern and "disruptive" to Western eyes.

But... and this begs even more questions: I was talking to a well-known British painter just two days ago, and he was telling me his biggest (and most lucrative) market is China. So China is exporting cheap mass-produced art, and importing expensive, original art!

<comment><USER20> I would much prefer to buy something hand-painted (even mass-produced hand- painted). Because I want to know a person painted it. I want to know they put their brush in a big tin paint bin slobbered and muddy with old paint and then pushed the brush against the canvass to make the lines.

An intelligent image processing filter would be cool to, but I would want it for different reasons.

<comment> crooked-v Even if talking about totally automated processes, "a robot arm painted this based on a photo" would be a higher-status product than "a printer printed out this image-processed photo".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm glad the artists can make a decent wage in this model, especially when contrasting that the alternative is pretty much regurgitating other famous paintings. I'd bet that most are probably public domain by now but reproductions can be a delicate notion sometimes when it comes to whether or not they're being clearly described as such. The business model is a clever way to draw out modern service and utility from an otherwise quite dated artistic medium.

</comment><comment><USER22> Related and quite interesting, Robotic Painter Color: [https://www.instapainting.com/blog/research/2015/09/10/robot...](https://www.instapainting.com/blog/research/2015/09/10/robotic- painter-color/)

</comment><comment><USER23> I wonder how you can actual get in touch directly with the factories rather than going through a third party

</comment><comment><USER24>
      China has economies of scale on a scale that the economists who coined the term economies of scale never imagined.

About twenty years ago this painting-from-a-photo-from_china was a thing, when you could get franchises to sell on in the UK.

<comment><USER25> It may be that painting-from-a-photo is a fad that will quickly become uncool, then it takes 20 years for a new generation to grow up not knowing about it.

</comment></comment><comment> koga-ninja I'm glad I read this story because I find it surreal, And I read a lot. Obviously Jeff Koons and perhaps Even Damien Hirst have assistants. This apprentice Model was also there in the Renaissance, and if Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel all by himself, Then that was probably his own choice.

David Hockney is painting on an iPad these days, and I suppose printing it out on a commercial inkjet. So what is an original then. Just limiting the number of copies printed.

</comment><comment><USER26> Yiwu? The location in the article is Dafen. The OP must have confused this city for another one mentioned in an earlier HN post.

nevertheless, fascinating article. I saw these guys on reddit a while back and the way they described the city I guessed they'd have little problem with the production capacity - only quality control and delivery.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, one of the factories pictured and visited is in Yiwu. Contrary to popular belief, not all art factories are in Dafen China, and the reality is it became more of a tourist destination than an actual factory town. This is mostly because of the rising cost of rent as Shenzhen (Dafen is really a district of Shenzhen, not a remote "village") is also a Chinese tech hub headquartered by many startups and companies including Tencent.

Here is a picture of a luxury condominium right at the entrance of Dafen "village". [https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1700930/unspecified.jpeg](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1700930/unspecified.jpeg)

Many other areas where replica paintings are manufactured include Yiwu, Xiamen, and Beijing.

<comment><USER9> It may well have been a village as recently as 20 years ago. Shenzhen is a huge conurbation that has swallowed countless towns and villages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> and this post is duplicate of this one posted over 1 year ago: [https://www.instapainting.com/blog/company/2015/10/28/how- to...](https://www.instapainting.com/blog/company/2015/10/28/how-to- paint-10000-paintings/)

<comment><USER28> It's the same post, not a duplicate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> How are we not yet capable of having a robot controlled arm do this? Come on people!

<comment><USER30> The Instapainting guys already do! [https://www.instapainting.com/blog/research/2015/08/23/ai- pa...](https://www.instapainting.com/blog/research/2015/08/23/ai-painter/)

I can't corroborate this with a link but I saw the founder talk at a meetup and he said they were using it in production.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> also to note.. they print on canvas..then paint over it.

</comment><comment><USER31> Just went through there website (instapainting) to order - why is this becoming the norm...

>Can we use this as a sample? If yes, we may display this on our website as an example.

NO (+$3.00) Yes (+$0)

<comment><USER32> It's free marketing for them, so it makes sense they'd charge you for its absence or give you a discount for permissions.

Better framing would be:

NO (-$0) YES (-$3.00)

<comment><USER31> you are right, as an end-user - I would not have noticed, if it was framed as above..but it would be $102 (instead of $99) for 12x12 - which would be an issue for the end-user to decide - I guess</comment></comment></comment>


Ukranian 'Killer' Dolphins Escape Naval Training Base In Search Of Love - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/12/ukraine-navy-killer-dolphins-escape-lovesick_n_2862644.html

<comment><AUTHOR> What the hell do they still train 'war' dolphins???</comment>


Ask HN: Grants for personal development/engineering projects? - <AUTHOR> I was looking for a way to keep my kids' minds engaged this summer (instead of letting them watch TV for 30 hours per day), and decided that a family summer project would be a great way of having fun as well as learning some new things (for all of us).  The project we decided on was to build a quadcopter drone.  In planning this out, I decided I wanted to document the entire process, use a Raspberry Pi as the core, and do as much of the engineering and software development as I could.  I realized that by using open source software, commodity hardware, open-sourcing all of the custom code that I write, and thoroughly documenting the entire process, I could provide a very educational guide for hobbyists to use at home, or even teachers to use in their classroms.
I mentioned this to a coworker, and he thought I should see if I could find a grant to help defray some of the costs associated with it.  Does anyone know of any organizations that provide grants for personal projects such as this?  The goal is to produce a completed product for under $250, but I fully recognize that there will be additional costs associated with building prototypes, buying the necessary tools, etc.  Ideally, I'd like the total cost of all the research, development, and engineering to be less than $1500 total (sub-$1000 is my real goal).  Since I want this to be useful in teaching children more about engineering and software development, it's important to me that the expenses are minimal for the finished product.
Can anyone give me any leads on individuals, foundations, companies, etc. that might provide grants to help defray some of these costs?  I'd really appreciate any recommendations you can provide.  And I'll be sure to post a link once we begin work so you can follow our progress! <comment><USER2> You can try kickstarter. Last time I checked KS, these kinds of projects (e.g. I'm writing fairy tales for kids who loves mathematics, etc.) were the most popular.

The problem is that you'll be forced[1] to deliver something on schedule and might stop feeling like a _hobby_ project and more like a _job_ , so make sure you don't take more than you can chew.

[1]: This is not 100% accurate, but you catch my drift.

</comment><comment><USER3> Get some of your kids' friends to participate and have their parents chip in as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> I considered that, actually. When my kids told their friends what our plan was, they ALL said they wanted to do it too. However, a secondary goal of this project is to be a family thing. Our summer last year was ruined (I spent all of 2016 getting cancer treatments) so I wanted to do something fun as a family to make up for it. I might do a neighborhood "Drone Mark II" project if Mark I is successful. That would be a good opportunity to involve the neighbors in helping with the costs.

<comment><USER3> I hope that all was successful with your treatments. I think you have a wonderful plan in mind and you and your kids are lucky to be able to have that experience. Enjoy!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Everything went well, and I'm healthy as can be!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Favorite SUS presenter? - <AUTHOR>

Who was your favorite presenter? Bezos was pretty sweet. <comment><USER2> I haven't seen them all yet, but I did see and like David Heinemeier Hansson's presentation. It was energetic, covered an important topic, and was entertaining/funny (though NSFW at some points).

</comment><comment><USER3> Haha, Bezos' fan thanking him for Gmail or something lost in translation was the defining moment; although Bezos' AWS pitching to the ground made me groan.

Definitely, Hansson's was better; who'd have thought charging your customers wasn't a bad idea after all?

</comment><comment><USER4> I thought that Sam Altman's presentation was very informative. He gave great advise about VCs. His talk fit in well with Jack Sheridan's talk.

For me, David Hansson's talk was pretty obvious but it seemed to be very relevant to most people. It was well received by others.

I had heard Greg McAdoo's talk last year but I really enjoy hearing him speak.

Paul's talk was also very interesting about being benevolent as a strategy for a start up.

</comment><comment><USER5> Bezos was good, though it was primarily an ad for AWS. I did find him quite entertaining, though. During the Q&A, when he passed the question on to an AWS developer (I presume), the answer was painfully weaselly--completely without an answer--and Jeff's response was along the lines of, "since that didn't answer your question, I believe that means if you call him up he'll take care of your problem". It was a very nice way of calling out his employee for giving such a weaselly response.

Buchheit is always enlightening and entertaining, though this one was a bit disjointed and far less polished than previous presentations I've seen him give. Still enjoyable, however, and his insights are always...insightful. His brand of dry nerd humor is very enjoyable, as well. He's also one of the most arrogantly humble people I've ever seen--he's smug about knowing the limits of his knowledge. (I mean this in a good way. It's a self-confidence born of awareness of the limits of human beings, which leads to him being really wise about a lot of things.)

pg was also a bit less organized than usual--it didn't quite hold together the way his "Why Not Start a Startup" talk from last year did, or the one he gave the prior year. But I think he's on to a really interesting idea, with his "do good, and you're more likely to be successful" theory...I think his excitement to share it led to it not getting the polish of his prior efforts (which is OK --I'd rather have heard it today in a rough form than have to wait another year to hear it in a fleshed out form--but I do hope there's an essay that gets it perfect).

DHH was a nice counter-balance to McAdoo--I enjoyed both, and think very highly of both. I think DHH thought he was saying something counter to what McAdoo believes, though...but I've talked to McAdoo in the past, as he's quite sympathetic to lifestyle businesses--his presentation was about VCs and what VCs look for. They aren't after lifestyle businesses, because they would make no money on them, not because they think you're an idiot for building a lifestyle business. Anyway, it's a good idea to have two possible paths presented.

I enjoyed Arrington. He was very forthcoming about the direction TechCrunch has been going as it has grown--while the site is generally quite generous to the startups it covers (and harder on bigger businesses), the comments are almost universally hostile. It's one of the things that makes TechCrunch far less enjoyable for me, and I was happy to note that it's a problem that he's aware of and is trying to do something about. I found him genuinely likable.

The lawyer, as always, was painfully boring. The Wilson Sonsini folks are awesome, and actually better than the non-WS lawyer talks I've seen, but still quite a snoozer that early in the morning (and there was no more hot water by the time I arrived, so I was running without tea...now that I think of it, the hot water is always gone by the time I get there...three startup schools in a row, now).</comment>


Denmark: Three Deaths from Drug-Resistant "Pig MRSA" - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/05/denmark-deaths-st398/

<comment><AUTHOR> Excerpt:

 _A troubling and also kind of odd story came out of Denmark this weekend. In a court proceeding, a microbiologist has disclosed that three residents of the country who had no known connection to farming died of MRSA infections caused by ST398, the livestock-associated strain of drug-resistant staph that first appeared among pig farmers in the Netherlands in 2004 and has since moved through Europe, Canada and the United States._

This is related to a recent FPP about the Dutch significantly reducing use of antibiotics in livestock: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7907442](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7907442)</comment>


Sources: next iPhone likely to be unveiled on Wednesday, September 12th - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/30/3204810/next-apple-iphone-5-event-date-rumor-september-12

<comment><AUTHOR> Makes sense to me... I'm still speculating if Apple will announce the smaller iPad along with the new iPhone. It makes sense in some aspects, but you would think they would announce it when they annually announce a new iPad (Q1).</comment>


AI Powered Engineering Management - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/katellaai/ai-powered-engineering-management-ef434cee893a <comment><USER2> Seems pretty neat, but how do you communicate with Katella? Is it it's own chat system? Or integrated into slack, etc?

<comment><AUTHOR> good question. It's its own NLP system that is currently integrated into Slack but we are working on Microsoft Teams and other integrations

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> hey LordBron, Vu from katella.ai here. We are integrating with Slack only at this stage, but we will be expanding to other Enterprise chat platforms (MS teams, Hangout Chats, Alexa for Business, ..). Strictly focusing on the workplace though.</comment>