How to Make the Front Page of HN Without Even Trying - <AUTHOR> http://page99test.wordpress.com/2010/11/07/making-the-front-page-of-hn-without-even-trying/

<comment><USER2> I once heard somebody -- maybe Guy Kawasaki-- say "Create more value than you capture.". This has become my guiding principle for marketing on the Internet. I strongly believe that if you consistently help people out directly, and/or write/contribute/share in a scalable fashion via OSS/blogging/etc, then they will be around for you when you need it. This isn't hippydippy fluff : specific mechanisms like link building for SEO tend to promote it, too.

That is also why I got in touch with these guys: they did something extraordinarily nice for an HNer, and I wanted to know if there was some way I could help them out.

FWIW I spend a lot of time helping people out for free and it has lead to more opportunities than I can even begin to describe. I have never regretted it. Try defaulting to Yes when asked for help -- it's easy (particularly when you are obscure), and you might like what happens.

<comment><USER3> > I once heard somebody -- maybe Guy Kawasaki-- say "Create more value than > you capture."

Google and my memory suggest it was Tim O'Reilly (of O'Reilly Media) who coined (or at least, popularised) the phrase but Guy Kawasaki rephrased it as "eat like a bird, poop like an elephant".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 'without even trying?' Seems more like 'if at first you don't succeed...'

 _During our 2-week beta test period, I had tried [unsuccessfully] to get some initial traction on Hacker News by writing a few posts on this blog about launching a start up, building an audience, etc. My attempts were likely unsuccessful because just as we were preparing to launch, there was a glut of "Ask HN" submissions [...]_

TBH, I think it's more because posts about launching a startup or building an audience are not interesting unless you're already famous. I do look at 'rate my...' posts, but I'm a lot more likely to look up someone's company via their profile because they make interesting posts or comments on a variety of subjects. If their submissions are always about their own site, I start avoiding them - like a person at a party who's there solely for networking purposes, or a personal injury lawyer at a funeral.

Edit: I don't mean that you're doing this Lance. I mean some people who have posted 100 times but only ever about themselves.

</comment><comment><USER5> So it seems people should try and get one of these magical Joanna devices that generates plenty of page views :)

I think the article is a good example of how you make your own luck and how no experience is a wasted. I have always liked Steve Jobs speech at Stanford ([http://onemansblog.com/2010/02/01/steve-jobs-outstanding- sta...](http://onemansblog.com/2010/02/01/steve-jobs-outstanding-stanford- commencement-speech-from-2005/)) which is along similar lines.

<comment><USER6> More general advice: if you have some special talent—anything at all—then you can be someone's Joanna. Basically, you just have to "overachieve for marketing purposes." Don't give crap away for free, while only your paying customers get the 'real thing'; instead, make sure even the least of what you do—replying to comments on a forum, for example—is extremely polished. By-and- large, people's first impression of you will be through something you did for free, so make those first impressions great, and you'll make them want to see what _paying_ you gets them.

This advice also applies to companies. If you're an engineering-focused software company—i.e., a company that has building, not selling, in its genes—and you have a $1MM budget for advertising, don't spend it on a spread in the New York Times; instead, invest that money in building a product—like any other your company would build, for a client, for money—but then _give that product away_. If you built something that's really useful, it'll do a much better job of organically spreading your brand than any ad campaign ever could.

<comment><USER2> You don't have to share the product. _Share the genes_. A lot more people are interested in software development done right than in whatever your first product was. You can find any number of examples of this: FogCreek, for example, is mostly a company built on the premise that developing software should not have to suck. Their core product (which supports that premise) is not necessarily interesting to all people, but everything they do rightly gets the halo effect because they spent a decade improving the lives of engineers by sharing what they have discovered to work about running a software company.

You could say similar things about 37Signals, Balsamiq, or a host of smaller companies that I look up to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think that's one thing a depressing amount of people don't realize about social networks and online communities. Nobody gives a crap about your company unless a) it's mind-blowingly cool, or b) they give a crap about YOU.

Unless you're in category A, you're not gonna get anywhere by just shotgunning a link on every site that has a submit button. You need to give a little (i.e. participate or provide value in some other way) to get a little.

<comment><USER8> I disagree. Those who talk loudly and frequently about themselves are the ones who we see and hear from most on social sites.

Quick example: Dave Winer. Everything he posts anything, even something inane like "I bricked my iPod", it's on the front page of every social site? Why? Because he submits it everywhere and constantly talks about himself.

<comment><USER7> Ok yeah that is a good point. So let's add category c) Be persistently annoying (no half-assing it).

<comment><USER8> But on the other hand, we have people like patio11, who are not annoying, just talkative.

In the big scheme of things, a bingo card generator is not really exciting. But his writing is interesting nonetheless, and it ends up being widely distributed. If he didn't talk about himself, nobody would know Bingo Card Creator.

<comment><USER9> Combine it with c) and make it something like 'Contribute and be visible'. No distinction (at that level) between it being sharing and useful (Patrick) or just overdone noise (many others), but they're both taking a similar tack.

The bloggers who blog about making money from blogging would be in that category.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Step one: Write a post titled "How to Make the Front Page of HN Without Even Trying". How could such a post _not_ make it to the front page?

</comment><comment><USER11> Man, I love the idea of launching... and then going out to buy your co- founding other-half their birthday dinner.

Coolness.

</comment><comment><USER12> title = "<something boring> in Node.JS"

</comment><comment><USER13> "Luck surface area" -- ingenious.

<comment><USER14> I also love this term. It reminded me of a wonderful post by Marc Andreessen from 2007, where he discusses "Luck and the entrepreneur.. The four kinds of luck"

<http://pmarchive.com/luck_and_the_entrepreneur>

In the post, he skillfully dissects the book Chase, Chance, and Creativity (1978) by Dr. James Austin - a neurologist and philosopher.</comment></comment>


Facebook eats Googles lunch by 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://nerdr.com/facebook-eats-googles-lunch-by-2012/

<comment><USER2> Oh good--post a link to your own poorly-reasoned blog post on Hacker News. Terrific--there's 5 minutes of my life I won't be able to get back.

1.) I'd be a lot more inclined to take your opinions seriously if you would take a moment to spell check your work before posting it. It's not that difficult really--use Chrome or Firefox--spell checking is built in.

2.) <sarcasm> You heard of this phone OS called Android? I hear it's really starting to catch on. I think it's somehow related to Google. But they'll never catch up to Facebook's smart phone OS--what's it called again?

Yep Facebook is bound to eat Google's lunch any day now. Because Google is staffed by a load of incompetents who'll twiddle their thumbs while Facebook nimbly beats them to death. </sarcasm>

There's nothing insightful or worthwhile about your blog posting. Don't waste your time. More importantly don't waste my time by linking to this poorly- reasoned, misspelled tripe on Hacker News.

<comment><AUTHOR> How much of Google's revenue do you expect to be generated from Android OS? Further, Facebook apps are on apple and android products, giving them a larger market share than android alone could ever have. The OS alone will not be generating revenue.

<comment><USER2> I'm thinking about $1.3 Billion or so in 2012.

[http://www.talkandroid.com/29769-googles-android-os-could- br...](http://www.talkandroid.com/29769-googles-android-os-could-bring- in-1-3-billion-in-mobile-ads-in-2012/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Also, I will add, nearly every article you read on Hacker news is a blog post on the submittors own blog. Is their something wrong with doing this?

If you found it so terrible, why did you continue reading for a whole 5 minutes and not stop after 1, clearly it must have had some value.

Google makes the vast majority of its current revenue from search and email, not from Android. $1.3 billion is projected and is about 3% of $32 billion a year revenue, the vast majority of which comes from search. <http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=GOOG>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Facebook message cannot replace email until I can contact people who are not on Facebook through it.

I do not want to have a social connection to everyone I exchange messages with. I swap occasional emails with workmates, but that doesn't mean that I want to see their every move in my status updates.

<comment><AUTHOR> It would be a trivial addition to the Facebook network to allow outside email exchanges. What I was trying to get across in the article was how Facebook is just 1 step away from directly challenging Google in email and search. Two of the biggest areas of revenue for Google. They have the purpose (money) and they have the ability. I think they're going to do it sooner than anyone expects.

<comment><USER4> yes but your trivial "1 step" is actually - build a world class, global scale search engine that is at least as good as googles. There is no sign whatsoever that they are even trying - search in facebook is pretty basic IMO and frequently fails to find stuff I have found before using the same keywords

If they build a space ship, something that they are also "1 step" away from doing they can eat Virgins lunch too!

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, I meant the email functionality is 1 step and trivial, since they already have an inbox system in place. The search would be much more difficult to do well of course, but i'd suggest a recommendation based search (like Google +1) could be up and running within a year quite easily given their resources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> He forgot to mention that Facebook also has an Oscar-nominated movie about it. Match that, Google!

</comment><comment><USER6> This has been predicted a few times before. Just saying.

</comment><comment><USER7> Facebooks ads ARE NOT higher quality than google. First off, adwords gets an order of magnitude more clicks (CTR). These people are buyers, looking for something, not trying to post comments on their friend's photos. Second, the people who do click on facebook ads are much lower quality. From our data, google users convert ~2.7X more than facebook users and the price difference in CPA does not make up for that difference.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've found the opposite case when advertising my app on both networks. Conversions were about the same, but cost per click was about 4x on google. Its a $4.99 one off payment app, so its possible different revenue models find one or the other better for their use.

<comment><USER7> To be fair we are not an app and are targeting a demo 35+, so that could be an issue... We are also doing some decent volume (few K+/day on both), if we were doing a coule hundred $/day I'm sure we could get FB working as well, but finding it VERY hard on large volume. Not to mention banner blindness sets in after a few days on FB so we are constantly changing ads.</comment></comment></comment>


I work at a giant corporation, not a startup - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@ckdarby/why-not-found-a-startup-work-at-one-wait-you-work-at-a-giant-corporation-d740e91d9651#.4sec6owyr <comment><USER2> _" Asking for enormous compensations isn't challenging when you're documenting your impact and back it with results."_

First of all, not all companies work that way. The world is full of engineers who invented billion-dollar technologies for their employers and never got a significant amount of money in return.

And just because I had one great idea that saved the company 100 times my salary doesn't guarantee that I'll be able to churn out ideas like that on a regular basis. Even if the company wanted to reward me, a one-time bonus might be more reasonable than giving me an enormous salary.

<comment><AUTHOR> Inventing what becomes a billion dollar technology doesn't mean generating a billion dollars in revenue. Nothing comes to mind where an individual wasn't generously compensated when they start to finish took an invention and built a billion dollar industry.

There are also employees who have gotten significant amounts of money in return.

Maybe it is the way I'm wired but every day I see tasks to reduce operating costs. A lot of those tasks are not giant savings, couple thousand a month here, there, and all sudden we've hit $1 mln/year. I have a growing list of things that I'll never be able to finish even if I spend my entire life at this company.

What stops you from identifying problems and solving them?</comment></comment>


The Great Recycling Con [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/09/opinion/recycling-myths.html <comment><USER2> This 100x over. I had a very eye-opening experience as an american living in Mexico for 2 years, while trying to recycle as much as possible. I learned a lot and continue to think about recycling in this context, since it applies globally. Once you're out from under the umbrella of "The Great Recycling Con":

\- Recycling companies in Mexico will not accept any material that they can't make a profit on. Only a few numbers of plastic are recyclable/profitable.

\- Recycling companies in Mexico enforce sorting and cleanliness before receiving any material. I clean everything, even run it in the dishwasher if there's space. Pizza cardboard is straight out.

\- Glass is the hardest the recycle. There's a global glut of used glass. This goes against the normal idea that it's the easiest to recycle because it can be simply melted down. On the other hand, some beverage companies wash and reuse returned bottles. Those are the only bottled beverages I buy now. Buy a case, pay a small deposit, then continuously swap it for full bottles.

\- Aluminum is the easiest to recycle and the most profitable. I've switched to buying as much as possible in cans. Especially switching from drinking beer out of bottles because it "tastes better" to buying it in cans and pouring it in a glass.

\- Clean cardboard (and paper to a lesser extent) is fairly easy to recycle.

\- Companies pay you a small amount for material. It's not a lot but it covers the cost of dropping it off.

These basic economic rules apply in the United States too but it's masked by the con described in this op-ed, temporary recycling subsidies and "wish- cycling" [0]

[0] [https://recyclecoach.com/residents/blog/help-put-a-stop- to-w...](https://recyclecoach.com/residents/blog/help-put-a-stop-to-wish- cycling/)

<comment><USER3> Fresh water is a rather precious commodity and running a dishwasher just to dispose of stuff uses even more power (even the soaps used are generally not particularly friendly for the environment). A better idea is a 5-gallon bucket of rainwater and an old bottle brush. Recyclables need only have the large dirt removed rather than being germ-free like a dishwasher is designed for.

<comment><USER4> >running a dishwasher just to dispose of stuff uses even more power

A dishwasher is more efficient than hand washing under normal circumstances (not an ancient dishwasher, not pre-washing dishes, more than one plate to wash, etc).[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]

Edit: added citations and removed "IIRC"

[1] [https://www.pcrichard.com/library/blogArticle/why- dishwasher...](https://www.pcrichard.com/library/blogArticle/why-dishwashers- are-better-than-hand-washing/1101150.pcra)

[2] [https://www.reviewed.com/dishwashers/features/please-stop- ha...](https://www.reviewed.com/dishwashers/features/please-stop-hand-washing- your-dishes)

[3] [https://www.treehugger.com/kitchen-design/built-in- dishwashe...](https://www.treehugger.com/kitchen-design/built-in-dishwashers- vs-hand-washing-which-is-greener.html)

[4][https://www.realsimple.com/home-organizing/cleaning/more- tec...](https://www.realsimple.com/home-organizing/cleaning/more- techniques/dishwasher-vs-hand-washing)

[5] [https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-much-water-do-dishwashers- us...](https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-much-water-do-dishwashers-use/)

[6] [https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/11/24/564055953/to...](https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/11/24/564055953/to- save-water-should-you-wash-your-hands-of-hand-washing-dishes)

[7] [https://www.huffpost.com/entry/wash- dishes_n_7232216?guccoun...](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/wash- dishes_n_7232216?guccounter=1)

[8] [https://www.energystar.gov/products/appliances/dishwashers/d...](https://www.energystar.gov/products/appliances/dishwashers/dishwasher_hand_washing)

<comment><USER5> Yeah it is..if you're hand washing with the tap on full blast.

<comment><USER6> A dishwasher in the normal cycle uses about as much water as an efficient person uses in washing a single large pot without the tap running (reusing this water for washing all dishes is the most efficient way to hand wash)

In addition, a dishwasher has high pressure pumps, a centrifugal grinder, and its own water heater (to heat hotter and more localized than a central water heater, above sanitizing levels)

<comment><USER3> The assumptions here are wrong because they are based on creating sanitary dishes suitable for human foodstuffs. Recyclables don't need to be sanitary -- just free of large amounts of dirt.

* You don't need rinse water, so the total water needed is at least halved. Since the water is just sitting in a bucket, you can do many, many washings with the same water which increases that efficiency even more.

* You don't need heated water as sanitation and complete cleanliness is unimportant. Heating the water alone uses more energy than everything else put together.

* You don't need particularly clean water, just clean enough to prevent large dirt from adhering. As such you could use floor-cleaning chemicals that clump the dirt and precipitate it to the bottom increasing use time. Reusing water and the chemicals in that water for longer has a very large impact on the environment.

* a couple strokes with a bottle brush take way less energy than a high-pressure pump and once again, get the item clean enough.

* Fewer things going through your dishwasher increases its lifespan and decreases the total cost of operation. This is also better for the environment

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > The recycling of everything else is mostly a combination of virtue signaling > and a jobs program.

The truthiness of this statement depends a lot on the region of the world you are looking at.

In Europe there is a consolidated and expanding recycling market for many different types of materials. For example more that 30% in eight of the plastics sent to recycle in EU actually ends up being recycled [1]. (It would be closer to ~40% if it weren't for France.) These are big numbers that are having a meaningful impact on the amount of CO2 produced, not just "jobs programs".

BTW, a decade ago I met the owner of a factory that used only post-consumer plastic and he stated that his business was limited by the lack of good post- consumer plastics: the biggest share of the best kinds of plastics are being bought, at an higher price, by incinerators operators, leaving his factory and others to deal with second-rate plastic.

[1] [https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/201...](https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/20181212STO21610/plastic- waste-and-recycling-in-the-eu-facts-and-figures)

<comment><USER8> I love the pfand system we have in the Netherlands and Germany. I read that about 90% of the bottles and containers are returned because there is an immediate financial incentive to do so.

In Asia, plastic bags are given for free, and I'm sure charging a few cents would have made a massive difference. Uber Eats, GoFood, and Grab Food all have made some changes so you can mark if you do not want the plastic cutlery. There is a company in India, Zomato, that even sends recyclable bags along the food. All of these changes should be appreciated by both media and consumers.

Recycling would never solve the problem alone. It's an illusion of a solution. Using less and less plastic and more alternative material would.

<comment><USER9> What important is that the materials get recycled not that they get returned. Returning only addresses the eyesore of discarded packaging not environmental concerns.

<comment><USER10> It's even better than recycled, most bottle are simply cleaned and reused as is. You can tell because the side of beer bottles in germany are scratched on the top/bottom where they contact the other bottles during transport: [https://images.squarespace- cdn.com/content/55df3cede4b0daf4d...](https://images.squarespace- cdn.com/content/55df3cede4b0daf4de890e11/1459991601417-AM05QF8H45VCRCFOUWO7/Reused+glass+bottle?format=750w&content- type=image%2Fjpeg)

<comment><USER11> Glass bottles get reused, plastic gets recycled. The first PET bottles were made to be reused as well, they were quite a bit more substantial than the current versions. This scheme was scrapped quite soon, probably because it ended up being more expensive to clean these plastic bottles and discard the ones which for some reason were not usable any more. This led to the development of the current one-time-use thin-walled PET bottle.

As to whether those wear marks on glass beer bottles are from them touching together during transport I'd suggest that this actually is not the case. They shouldn't come into contact with another, seeing as they are transported in crates with pockets for individual bottles. It is far more likely that those marks come from handling in the bottle washing-, filling- and labelling machines where the bottles gang and rub against each other. If you're from Germany you might have watched 'die Sendung mit der Maus' ('the program with the mouse', a long-running television program aimed at children which amongst others details all sorts of industrial processes) where this process is followed from start to finish. Here's an example from the '70s:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7Bd6YWrfWw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7Bd6YWrfWw)

<comment><USER10> > This led to the development of the current one-time-use thin-walled PET > bottle.

I'm drinking from thick reusable/reused plastic bottle everyday here in Berlin, even coke is sold in them, they still exists

> it ended up being more expensive to clean these plastic bottles

Which is a shame because what we save in $s now will cost us much more than $s in the future.

> It is far more likely that those marks come from handling in the bottle > washing-, filling- and labelling machines where the bottles gang and rub > against each other.

Could be, either way it's a sign they are indeed reused. Thanks for the link.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> PENN & TELLER: BULLSHIT S02 E05 Recycling It's from 2004 and basically nothing has changed

Enjoy [https://www.bitchute.com/video/j0Hd6UfA4MKo/](https://www.bitchute.com/video/j0Hd6UfA4MKo/)

<comment><USER13> I was about to say "p & t covered this 10 years ago" but it turns out that was already 15 years ago!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> On the other hand aluminum recycles very well, and it is economically viable to recycle, unlike almost every other material. It's estimated 75% of the aluminum ever produced is still in circulation, thanks to recycling.

The solution is clear: use aluminum instead of plastic for packaging. Possibly cardboard.

</comment><comment><USER15> Wish there were better ways to recycle. I find myself using re-usable glass/plastic containers for storing food instead of single-use ziplock bags. I like to see companies ditching plastic straws, lids, and cups. The other day I was in a tea shop in Columbus OH and the store gave me a plastic cup with a paper straw. It's like they gave effort but didn't really think the whole thing through since they still gave me plastic in the form of a cup..... I suppose its progress... meh.

<comment><USER16> The straw stuff is supposed to be about the size of the straw and their propensity to get into the environment and hurt animals. Cups don't have the same effect.

(That said, my understanding is the straw research is based on a 5th grade science project and most of the straws that reach the environment are from third world countries that don't have good landfills or waste disposal systems...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> There is one form of "recycling" which goes undermentioned - trash to steam.

It "solves" sorting logistical issues nicely and any actually worthwhile recyclables can be removed still. Granted care must still be taken for handling emissions and it is more a "supplemental generation for disposing" than any significant generation. I wonder if I am missing anything about it aside from "landfills may be cheaper".

<comment><USER18> I assume you're referring only to garbage, since all other substances produce a lot more crap than steam when they degrade.

Why not just let garbage rot (i.e. compost)? Why worry about actively recycling that which will fade away on its own?

<comment><USER19> Composting, unless carefully controlled, causes environmental pollution by microplastics and chemicals like pharmaceuticals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I try to recycle metal (especially aluminum) and glass. The recycling of everything else is mostly a combination of virtue signaling and a jobs program.

<comment><USER21> Also, the waste caused by commuting in a 5 passenger vehicle by oneself every day, and living in a spacious home in a suburb and all the extra consumption simply living in a low density environment probably offsets all the recycling in a lifetime. Even funnier to think about all the separate recycling trucks driving around all the extra distances due to everyone having quarter acre lots.

<comment><USER22> You forgot to subtract the human suffering inflicted onto introverted personalities being forced to live in high-density urban housing as well as the cost of a much higher infectious disease transmission rate, increased crime (more humans in close proximity = more conflict), and/or higher cost of building materials suitable for high-density human living and spaces or the cost of human lives when the low-bid contract builds said housing and it collapses.

Seriously, every time I read a comment like this it's like Dr. Strangelove has walked off of Kubrick's set and into real life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I remember when I was a kid and we used paper bags and almost everything came in glass bottles. I think we as a society need to start making plastic a less attractive option.

<comment><USER13> I was really disappointed when Austin, TX, in response to banning thin plastic grocery bags, instead switched to using thicker "reusable" plastic bags, when we could have just made paper bags the standard

<comment><USER24> Up in MA (about boston) they now have to charge for bags. 10cents in cambridge, 5 cents in Boston and a bunch of surrounding towns do the same. Its been a couple years and you seem to see a lot fewer of them as trash. (We had one that got blown up into a tree near where I live..)

After some initial griping I've gotten used to it. Its not a lot of money, but it makes you more conscious of it (Because "do you need a bag" = $).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Fascinating that the article most cited by the "recycling is a con by silly hippies, just use disposable plastic and landfill it" crowd as well as this "recycling is a con by evil big business, just stop buying stuff" article are both from the New York Times.

I personally am part of the "we should charge corporations who generate the refuse for disposal, clean up and recycling as well as carbon in production, and let the market and human ingenuity then sort it out via a whole range of specific interventions that match the needs of each sector" team.

That solution will almost certainly involve a whole bunch of recycling, plus other things like making things easier to recycle, using more recycled material, but apparently both the hippies and the libertarians think recycling is a scam for entirely opposite reasons and so it's hard to have a nuanced cost-based discussion about this, at least in the US.

In Europe they generally track the stats on how much is being recycled and continuously aim to improve that, tweaking things as they go.

</comment><comment><USER26> A direct link to the video: [https://nyti.ms/2sSbpKj](https://nyti.ms/2sSbpKj)

</comment><comment><USER27> I am starting to think I need an app or something that can tell me if a product's packaging can be recycled or not

<comment><USER28> Or maybe a way to quickly tell a product's total environmental impact over its life cycle including post usage? Maybe even have that information available as an comparable index so you can easily compare similar products? Here in Sweden, many grocery stores display the product price per measurement unit, making it easier to understand, for example, how much your pasta is costing per kg across different brands.

<comment><USER27> Can you give an example to make it clear for me please

EDIT: example of measurement unit shown

<comment><USER28> If you take a look at this online Swedish grocery store where I searched for pasta [0], you can see the price for each product but also the cost per kg ("jmf pris"):

* Jmf pris 21:27 /kg

* Jmf pris 38:55 /kg

* Jmf pris 16:95 /kg

[0] [https://www.mathem.se/sok?q=snabbmakaroner&page=1&pageSize=4...](https://www.mathem.se/sok?q=snabbmakaroner&page=1&pageSize=40&type=p)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Tangentially related:

I wish composting was more widespread. We could solve so many issues with waste management with it.

</comment><comment> purple-again I can't read it, outline it, or use a private browser. Would someone be so kind as to provide a method for reading the article?

<comment><USER30> [http://archive.is/6dfLd](http://archive.is/6dfLd)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> For paywalls, and without any JS: [https://beta.trimread.com/articles/606](https://beta.trimread.com/articles/606)</comment>


Why Y Combinator is a waste of time - <AUTHOR> http://www.scribd.com/doc/25132/Why-YCombinator-is-a-waste-of-time <comment><USER2> I think I understand from personal experience what he might be trying to describe in terms of not letting YC be your alpha / omega.

We applied to the Fall 06 YC round. I was in school and my co-founder had a job at a small software company. Really we just had a cool idea and wanted to do it. When we found out about YC we thought it was "perfect for us". We spent a week or two struggling over answering question just right. We had no product, and had not yet considered some of the questions the application was asking. As you may guess we got an email from YC in late October saying:

\--- " We're sorry to say that we can't accept your proposal for funding. Please don't take it personally, because most of the proposals we rejected, we rejected for reasons having nothing to do with the quality of the applicants. For example, we were very reluctant to accept proposals with only one founder, because we think starting a startup is too much work for one person. We also rejected a lot of proposals simply because we couldn't understand them, or didn't understand the problem domain well enough to judge them, or because the project seemed too big to start on only three months of funding.

We realize this process is fraught with error. It's practically certain that groups we rejected will go on to create successful startups. If you do, we'd appreciate it if you'd send us an email making fun of us; we want to learn from our mistakes.

Thanks Y Combinator Staff" \---

We told ourselves that wasn't going to stop us.... but it sorta did for a while. I wasn't done with school, but was getting dream job offers, and my co- founder was enjoying his software development job. So we didn't do much for a few months. We just kept talking about our idea for Revvu.

In doing some soul searching though, I decided I had to turn down these job offers and stop wasting time in school. This is not the life I wanted. After talking to my co-founder we came to grips with the fact that... working regular jobs was the default. That was the easy way to go about life, but we wanted more than that. We are too creative and determined to be held back or stifled by the nuances of a "job".

In January I moved across the country to live with my co-founder and work full time on our project. Shortly after that we had a full business plan, and were testing our site in closed beta. As of this week we've launched publicly and are getting encouraging user feedback.

We are beginning to tap our network to find potential investors, so that we can grow the business significantly in the next 12 moths.

About a week ago my co-founder brought up YCombinator for the first time in months, and we decided to apply at the last minute. Not because we NEED the living expenses, we both have savings. Also, not because we need it to feel like we're doing something. We're already confident that we're doing something, and we'll peruse other sourced of funding if we don't get YC. We applied because we know we could benefit from the mentoring, the guidance, the connections, and i guess partially because not draining our bank accounts just to eat would be kinda nice.

If the author had good intentions, IMHO, we might be a model for what he was trying to communicate. We weren't ready before. We were sitting around waiting to hear back from YC in October, and nearly let our passion fade after not being accepted.

This time filling out the application didn't take long at all, because we actually knew our answers. This time we have a real plan for our business and legitimately strive towards success.

If we get YC... awesome, if not... thats fine too.

I hope many of you are in the same boat. I hope you're building something you believe is great, and nothing will stop you. Don't get discouraged. Don't let anything slow you down. The world is big enough for all of us to succeed.

-if you build it, they will come

<comment><USER3> \---"If the author had good intentions"---

Yeah that rant was a bit hard to follow. In particular his definition of "backup plan" seems rather fuzzy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Premise is right, headline is wrong. If you look at the businesses that made people billionaires, the other point they have in common is that the owners aggressively pursued opportunities. So yes, Bill Gates slaved away for 6 years, with a variety of other products, before IBM came knocking. However, if he had turned them away, or been out of the office flying his plane like Gary Kildall, we'd be talking about the "Digital Research Monopoly" instead.

My startup initially wasn't going to apply to yCombinator. We have a solid team, a product that I really want to see exist, and we're making steady progress implementing it. But I figured that if we have a decent chance of success without yCombinator, we'll have an even better chance of success _with_ yCombinator. So why not spend 4 days or so putting together an application and see if they accept us?

If they turn us down, fine, we go back to our original plan and keep working on the product. But if they don't, _great_! It's advice, connections, a set timetable for when I leave my day job and work full-time on the startup (for me, this is a question of when, not if: yCombinator would just make the decision for me), and a cool hacker environment where you get to bounce ideas off other equally-smart people.

<comment><USER5> I posted over at scribd, but I see the intelligent conversation is here, so I'm going to repost. I hope no one minds:

You're making the right points but drawing the wrong conclusions from them. Yes, users need to be your highest priority, yes you need to have the drive to succeed that is reflected here by not relying on Y Combinator to be your ticket to wealth, Yes you need to get out there and actually DO; actually BUILD. But these are precisely the kinds of people and ideas that y combinator IS GOING TO PICK.

The fact is that Paul Graham says these same points time and time again in his own essays, and so anyone that is applying to y combinator without these things in mind is obviously not very bright. But your conclusion is not very bright either. Someone who really had all the qualities you describe would recognize that while y combinator doesn't mean success or failure, it provides a number of extremely valuable resources (of which money is only one of, and not #1 of, the list). I certainly wouldn't want my competitors to be in a y combinator group that I was rejected from -- that is a bad sign.

To reiterate, good points; bad conclusion.

My first time at news.ycombinator, but i've been reading paul graham's essays for a while now and am increasingly impressed. I'll be back

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If YC is for losers, then Robert and Trevor and I are losers ourselves, because we modelled it on how we started Viaweb. We took $10k in seed funding from our friend Julian, who (since he was a lawyer) also set us up as a company.

For us, Julian's help was both a necessary and sufficient condition of getting launched. Nothing has changed since then about life in the seed stage. Sure, maybe you can get to the next stage on $200k instead of a $2m series A round like in the Bubble, but initially you still need at least a few months' living expenses.

I only skimmed that [what should I call it? article?], but I did notice one other thing that's mistaken. We don't judge people by their karma on news.yc, but by the quality of their comments and submissions. Surely that is a reasonable test.

<comment><USER7> You missed his point. Yes, what you are doing is replicating the situation that worked for you. And this program is probably a good one for students who are still in college and want to build a company over the summer.

But anyone who has left college and is working for a living should be able to save up one months living expenses every month. (EG: make 25 an hour, gross $4k, $3.6k after taxes, live on $1,500 a month or so.) Thus if you work for 6 months as a contract programmer (or better yet as an employee for a startup) you will then have 6 months of expenses to build your business. Thus there's no reason that not getting YC funding should be an impediment to strting a business.

The strong impression I get from people who post here, and the people who attented startupschool is that they are focused on getting funding. They want to go to YC, or move to the bay area for connections to funding. Landing a VC deal is seen as the end goal.

This is not an entreprenurial focus. Were you focused on VC funding for viaweb, or were you trying to build a business?

The original poster is right-- build a business-- that should be the focus. Not getting funding. Not worrying about what you're going to do if you don't get into YC. YC should be seen as a possible opportunity, but not critical to success.

And since YC only happens twice a year and is limited in the number accepted... waiting for the next round of YC indicates that building the business or product is not the number one priority.

As an investor, I'd rate highly someone who was living off of their own savings to build their product-- they have shown the gumption and have even more skin in the game.

<comment><USER6> I was 30 when we started Viaweb, and I needed the money.

Viaweb raised a total of $2.5 million during its life. Some of the time I was focused on funding. Investors like you to be, when you're asking for that much.

It's ridiculous to suggest that one has a choice of focusing on funding or building a business. Pretty nearly 100% of successful startups take outside funding, from Google on down.

<comment><USER8> I believe Microsoft never took funding. There might be a few others. Anybody know? Apple? That wouldn't make sense. I can't recall the numbers off the top of my head.

<comment><USER6> Microsoft took funding before their IPO. I've never understood why; it has the smell of a bribe; but they did. Apple took a lot of funding.

<comment><USER4> From what I read, Microsoft took a mezzanine round before IPO because VCs have connections to investment bankers, and Microsoft needed investment bankers to make the IPO process run smoothly. So yeah, it basically was a bribe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The very point of this article is an argument in favor of applying to YC and not against it.

Like it or not, all successful web companies have at some point taken on funding. It is an inevitable part of building a company.

Raising funding is a resource and time drain. The author argues that we should all be spending time building our products. I completely agree and that's why I applied to YC. It's the equivalent of outsourcing your "distractions". Being a YC company dramatically reduces the amount of time you have to spend finding PR and investment (things you will have to do at some point). These things will find you.

The real power of YC is not the money. It's their ability to take away most of the distractions that cause startups to fail and let you concentrate on what really matters - building your product.

The author shouldn't be so short sighted and should take a longer term view of building a business.

</comment><comment><USER10> I was rejected by YC for the 2006 WFP. I created an app with no funding that didn't make any money, but gave me credibility. As a result, my current (new) project is funded. If it had kept looking for funding instead of just building something, I probably would have given up long ago.

The true ethos of a hacker lies in building stuff. If you get rejected, just keep building stuff!

<comment><USER11> Rich, that's a great point, and one that I hope doesn't get lost in this discussion.

YC, like other angels/VC firms, has a profile they prefer, even if they may not state it explicitly: i.e. teams of at least two people, under 35, writing web-based software, etc.

So just because you don't fit that profile (or you do, but YC rejected you), doesn't mean you will fail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think the author is missing part of the point. YCombinator is simply a way to make something that's very very hard to do just that much easier. Nobody should bank everything on getting accepted (I know I'm not). Just because you shouldn't bank on something doesn't mean it's not a valuable thing.

The author is right in that you should plan on doing it without YC help. My point is that you should still try to get YC's help. It'll be worth it.

<comment><USER13> I think the author is missing a lot of things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> There are so many failed assumptions made that this doesn't even stand as a valid opinion piece.

A valid point to make would have been: Accepted into the program or not, a good startup will learn from the experience and continue on.

Then stop there; everything else was either superfluous or unfounded.

</comment><comment><USER15> Though it could be said in a much less offensive way, I agreed with this in the article

"I read YCombinator Startup News. I read that thing that Paul wrote saying that anybody who contributes regularly is going to fare better. That's shit from a bull! Anybody who is spending time posting on a site that is a collection of links to dream money instead of working on his project is never going to make money. Anybody who cares about "karma" on that site instead of spending time reaching users for his product is an idiot."

I've been checking out these threads for a few days and have started leaving comments because that apparently gives you a better chance. Paul has a lot of tough choices to make and I understand his reasons for using comments as one of the many tools in filtering prospective startups, but I really hope its a small small factor. Sure it proves I read blogged advice and other mumbo jumbo on the subject of startups and am interested in the funding, but it also might indicate that a person has way too much free time or has a serious net addiction (a major development killer). I've been getting ready to kick start my startup this summer for over a month now. During that time I've read a lot of these startup articles, all of Paul's entries, Founders at Work, bought a few other books and searched the net for VC firms and how to get in touch with them. One article at the beginning of the process affected me greatly. When I was making the tough decision to do the startup or take a very appealing job offer I read Paul's article (not to brown nose) "A student's guide to startups" which said the best time to start one is when you're 24, fresh out of grad school, and hopefully have a solid internship behind you. That was something I didn't know and hit me hard because this summer that will be my exact situation. If I hadn't have read it I might have missed my perfect window! I made my decision right then. Every article, book, or resource since however has been repetitive and more draining on my energy to get started than helpful.

My point, and the article's author's point in the quoted paragraph is, use these articles to get yourself inspired and confident about doing this thing and then stop reading and commenting! You're inspired now don't kill it and waste your time with reading more and more of the same crap, go make your own stories. This is most likely my last post here. I hope that doesn't effect my rating :).

</comment><comment><USER16> There's a grain of truth here, in that YC won't guarantee a successful startup, and that rejection from YC doesn't mean your idea will fail, but did anyone really think otherwise?

To call YC "a waste of time", however, seems to me nothing but attention grabbing... if anything, YC is the opposite of a waste of time - for a student like me, YC funding means _not_ wasting my time at a summer job for food/rent while working on an idea, and _not_ wasting my time on searching for business advice/legalese if the idea makes it off the ground.

How the heck did this make it to the #1 story? Is it because people anxious about being rejected by YC, or is it just the rebellious headline?

<comment><USER17> I voted it up because I thought there were some truths in the article that the people whose only plan is to get YC funding could benefit from reading. I agree that the headline is poor, but I still think that there is plenty of truth there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't think anyone is applying for the money. After all most people are in their 20's with little to no responsibility. Just living in the Cambridge area for the summer will eat up a chunk of money. If you have a great idea and must have 3 months to concentrate on it or you'll never get it done, just move in with the folks for 3 months.

I think most people are applying for the mentoring and collaborative environment.I found a great partner in the process. That has to be worth taking the time to apply.

</comment><comment><USER19> Well, if he can point to his success then I might be inclined to take his advise, otherwise ...

</comment><comment><USER20> Actually, there is a subtle point in the way YC is approaching this whole thing and the person missed the point. Assume there exists a world without YC, how many people will spend time doing something they believe on and make effort to take it to a point so that you can show it to someone? Probably a vast majority would anyway do it. say 90%, what YC is trying to do is - try to squeeze a percent or two of the remaining 10% by making them work by promising them that they'd fund if you come up with something interesting and that adds a certain value to the society as a whole.

So it is certainly a waste of time if - you think of an idea, write an application and decide to work on only if YC is funding it..

But not - when you are working on something or planning to work on something, YC offers you that last bit of motivation to actually go and do it because you want to play the YC gamble.

And it might happen that otherwise, you end up building something, YC rejects you, but you say to yourself, what the heck, I have already done something so lets take it to a logical conclusion (may be 90% will chicken out. but who knows one of those who persisted might be next big thing!!) YC has certainly helped them, who would have been left in "I am planning to do" state otherwise and I think thats what PG is essentially trying to do. Make more people try a stint at 'startuping' and all of this comes at a reasonable cost to everyone!!

To conclude - would the authors' brother have not been happy if there was an "Irish Pub" or something that promised, hey if you send us your recordings, may be we can give you a saturday night and if you get a deal from a recording company, we get cut out of it... (Ouch! I just spit out an idea for some "irish pub" owner, if he's on the list!)

</comment><comment><USER21> It seems like this guy is a big fan of the [Ben and Jerry's] (<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000056.html)> organic company model, and is deriding YC for being more of the "amazon" big burst type model (or at least accusing YC of creating small startup companies that follow the Amazon model). This analogy is slightly flawed, because, like ViaWeb, most of the startups that YC funds don't really seem like Amazon model companies. I would say that the author of this article is drawing the line between "organic startup" and "explosive funded company" much closer to the side of startups that start small, and including YC funded companies on the "explosive funded" side. That may account for some of his anger.

FWIW, his piece does have a good point: that a viable startup should be able to continue along a successful path even if they get rejected by YC. But as other people have noted there are benefits to being funded by YC: firstly they can [remove some of your distractions](<http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=9439)> and give you good advice; and secondly, applying to and being rejected by YC might just [force you to step up and improve your company](<http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=9486).> While there certainly are (and should be) companies that don't need YC to become successful, I think if you can get ahead by getting funded, then you should do it, and that's why YC really matters.

</comment><comment><USER22> Some of the stuff he says isn't so bad. It's good to just go out and create something. Too many people do seem to rely on YC.

However, the money YC gives is really insignificant. I doubt many people even applied for the money at all. Its really more about the network and mesh of people you get with it. Anybody can work and save up 6k, its not that hard.

I didn't apply because I want to be in the San Fran. network isntead of the cambridge area. If this round was in the bay area, then I would have applied, and been accepted :).

<comment><USER23> YC's money isn't the most important thing they offer, but in my case (I'm finishing undergrad this month) it probably does make the difference between being able to go full-time right away versus needing to either spend a year saving or moonlight it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Anyone else find it ironic that this document is hosted by a YC startup?

<comment><USER8> Not necessarily -- it makes sense.

He realizes that a startup won't magically succeed by being a part of the right group or having the right connections. It still takes extremely hard work, undying dedication to users, timing, etc... YC is only one cog in the wheel, and plenty of startups actually succeed without them -- which might seem disillusioning to some, especially those that hang around these boards too often.

I believe that's what he's getting at, anyhow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> While the original post may have been a bit off target it certainly set off a very interesting comment conversation. The post has been thoroughly critiqued here, but I did want to add on thing that came to mind as I was reading through the discussion.

YC is a model that was created based on expereince and success. The value of YC funding is not the money, $5-20 k is not hard to save or raise.

It has been encouraging and interesting to hear from so many people, who obviously find a lot of value in VC's approach, offering slight variances based on their personal situation.

It is important to take what is valuable from a model and apply it to your own startup situation. If you can implement the use the best concepts and models from other and apply them to your unique startup, you will reduce the chance of failure and save a ton of time and money.

If you fallow blindly and base your success on one groups acceptance your not an entrepreneur.

</comment><comment><USER11> Not the greatest essay in the world, but the author may be right in that too many people are applying to YC for the wrong reasons.

</comment><comment><USER26> Sour grapes? I dont know why people think it as though YC will spoon feed and get u stand up on your feet and will teach you walking and running. I see YC as a way of catalyst which nurtures, get you connections and give valuable advice. Again this is my perspective, i may be wrong but i really dont agree with the write up on scribd.com.

</comment><comment><USER27> Did anyone find this article helpful? I thought it was... a waste of time.

</comment><comment><USER28> The only reason I can imagine applying to YC and then not going through with the startup if I didn't get in is if when I applied I wasn't totally sure that I and my cofounder were totally on crack when we thought we could start a startup. Acceptance by YC would, in that situation, give a big confidence boost, and validate the idea. I don't think that's a terribly unreasonable premise. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if there were some currently successful startups who thought they might not do it if they didn't get into YC.

</comment><comment><USER29> As usual, people see only the money. Y Combinator is also about the networking, and based on some things I've heard, that's the more important part. "Never Eat Alone."

</comment><comment><USER30> <http://juwo-works.blogspot.com/2007/04/our-plan-b.html>

</comment><comment><USER31> (took out the first paragraph I had here. I should have read the full article!)

People that are applying for YC definitely are just seeing this as another possibility and not an end all to their idea. I'm sure that a very small amount of people are going to give up their business if rejected.

<comment><USER32> I think the music parallel was right on, actually. You need users to tell you what they think of your product at least as much as VCs or execs. If users don't like your product, trying to pitch it to VCs is a waste of time.

<comment><USER31> I took it that he meant that the artist wasn't willing to work at his music enough to gain traction and wanted a quick track to success by signing to a big record label. With that being said, I think that the majority of YC submissions aren't looking towards this as an only alternative but one of many routes that could be taken.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Don't feed the troll.

</comment><comment><USER34> There is some meaning within this rambling.

Here's a startup idea Mr PG: I will pay $50 for basic feedback on a very early startup idea and give you 1% equity.

What are the alternatives? Is there any way to get feedback on startup plans from half competent people without broadcasting your ideas all over forums?

<comment><USER4> I actually proposed that (1% of startup equity in exchange for being able to ask questions and come to the YC dinners) when I got rejected from SFP2005. They ignored me.

I suspect the problem is that time is their scarcest resource, not money. They want to spend their time mentoring the startups with the greatest chance of success. Until you reach the point where you have a reasonable chance of success, you're stuck with YC News.

<comment><USER35> Very Darwinian...but if anything else getting rejected should be seen in a positive light. As a time to get to know your users and build something that they will find useful. Just like in PG's essays.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> (Back to where it was) The author unfairly compared Paul to a young musician's experience, said Paul speaks Bull, and that the YC is a waste of time. He also insults the reader. The author should apologize.

<comment><USER36> He does make one valid point - if you're spending all day contributing to this news section you're probably not working hard enough on your project.

Also, I don't believe he was comparing Paul to a 15-year-old musician, but rather screwed up and switched the name of his cousin from Steve to Paul. A freudian comparison perhaps, but not intentional. He failed to communicate his point effectively.

<comment><USER4> Some of us contribute to yCombinator because we have day jobs and can't work on our startup while on company time. And yet we have bosses that tell us to hold up because they aren't done with the requirements yet. Time is fungible; might as well use our bored-time at work on something semi-productive and free up the time at home for working on the startup.

Of course, you could argue that if one really wants their startup to succeed, they shouldn't have a day job. I'd probably even agree with you. But "when to quit" is a complicated question, particularly if you're gaining (or hopefully soon will be getting - damn boss!) valuable experience in addition to cash.

<comment><USER37> As to 'When to quit?', I was initially aiming for a savings of $15k, but my savings rate is too slow. I'll be taking the plunge at $10k.

<comment><USER4> Man, I feel silly now. I have several times more than $15K saved up. At grad- school living expenses, perhaps 3 years of runway.

I'm not really sticking with the day job for financial reasons though. I want to see the product I've been working on ship. Get it into the hands of actual paying customers. Because I figure then I'll get to see a whole bunch of other problems that will likely impact the startup too. Much better to make the initial mistakes on someone else's dime.

Problem is, my day job seems to move at a glacial pace. So despite having a 6 month handicap and about 1/5 the number of man-hours available, my startup may launch first. If that happens, I'll probably quit the day job whether it's done or not, because it's just a drag on the startup.

<comment><USER37> That's still plenty respectable. Woz designed most of the Apple II in his apartment while working at Hewlett Packard. However, (if my memory serves me correctly) he left HP to put the finishing touches on the design before it launched.

So perhaps it might be best to leave when your product is about 80% to the point of launching, because then you can focus full time on actually getting it out the door, and on the aftermath. If you have a day job, it might never seem like it's ready to launch.

But that's just my hypothesis; I don't have any actual experience with that. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Funny. And stupid.</comment>


Re:publica 2014 live streams - hendrik-xdest http://re-publica.de/en/news/rp14-go-our-live-streaming-service

<comment> hendrik-xdest If you havn't heard about it - re:publica is Europe's largest social media conference, mostly featuring on digital life in culture, media, politics, and business.

Here is an overview of the sessions presented this year [http://re- publica.de/en/event/1/sessions](http://re-publica.de/en/event/1/sessions) \- a large number of those are in English. For example "DIY Microscope" or "Redesigning News, Deeply" or "The Amish Futurist and the power of buttermilk". Brilliant stuff, hopefully.</comment>


This dubstep violinist made $6M thanks to YouTube - <AUTHOR> http://www.factmag.com/2015/10/20/lindsey-stirling-top-earning-youtube-star-2015/ <comment><USER2> While the "article" here is fairly light on content, I will say this: Lindsey Sterling (the subject here) is a wonderful artist and absolutely deserves the success she's won. Her music is amazing listen to!</comment>


Announcing ggraph: A grammar of graphics for relational data - <AUTHOR> http://www.data-imaginist.com/2017/Announcing-ggraph/ <comment><AUTHOR> More people should be aware of the work that goes into plotting data in R. All UI design is a subset of data visualization, and boy are the R people really ahead of the pack in data visualization.

Some other projects that might be of your interest:

[https://vega.github.io/vega/](https://vega.github.io/vega/)

[http://ggvis.rstudio.com/](http://ggvis.rstudio.com/)

[http://bokeh.pydata.org/en/latest/](http://bokeh.pydata.org/en/latest/)

<comment><USER2> "All UI design is a subset of data visualization"

Since UI design potentially encompasses almost all interactions with designed objects, you must be working with a very narrow definition of what a UI is.

What about the question of "parametric" vs "strategic" choices in UI design? Surely strategic design decisions require a level of investigation into the user's motivations (etc.) that is well outside the remit of data visualization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've done a _lot_ of work with graph network libraries in R/ggplot2 for data visualization, even figuring out how to make them _interactive_ , in WebGL for scaling to hundreds of nodes, with minor code changes.

Tutorial/Intro: [http://minimaxir.com/2016/12/interactive- network/](http://minimaxir.com/2016/12/interactive-network/)

Practical example using HaveIBeenPwned data: [http://minimaxir.com/2016/12/pwned- network/](http://minimaxir.com/2016/12/pwned-network/)

The catch is that this trick uses the ggnetwork library, which is less- actively developed than ggraph. I remember trying to port the interactive code to ggraph but with not much success (since ggnetwork serves a more of a translator for native ggplot2 functions, while ggraph offers more flexibility). Now that the official release of graph is out, I'll give these types of visualizations another try.

<comment><USER4> I'm in talk with the plotly devs regarding ggraph support — once that materialises it should cover most interaction

<comment><USER3> Great to hear! I'll keep an eye out :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For network visualization in R I've found this package to be extremely easy to use [http://datastorm-open.github.io/visNetwork/](http://datastorm- open.github.io/visNetwork/)

It performs well with large networks (> 1000 nodes) and makes nice javascript plots that can be zoomed, highlighted and dragged about.

<comment><USER6> This looks perfect for something I'm working on, thanks! Have been using d3 so far but have been hitting up against performance issues.

<comment><USER7> Try switching out svg for canvas...

<comment><USER8> For larger graphs -- 10K nodes, 100K nodes, ... --- we built [http://github.com/graphistry/pygraphistry](http://github.com/graphistry/pygraphistry), which leverages GPU client+cloud acceleration. We're happy to share API keys with folks doing fun things.

There's a REST endpoint and a Pandas (Python/Jupyter) convenience library, so should be quick to use even if the data is in a database. Our customers are primarily doing stuff like security incident investigations over Splunk event logs, for example.

For anyone interested in bigger datasets, just send a note to email@example.com .

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice job Thomas! I've gotten a hell of a lot of mileage out of ggraph already, your work has been tremendous. Eventually it will be nice to dump plots to JavaScript for poking purposes, but for publication there is nothing that comes close to ggraph. And I've tried everything.

<comment><USER4> Really happy you like it. Would love to see something published using it

<comment><USER9> Oh -- you will :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> From the perspective of a Dot/Graphviz user, this appears to allow you to define a graph, then program how it's laid out. Do I have that correct?

<comment><USER4> Yes, you use already available network packages like igraph and network (where you can import dot files) and then use the declarative API of ggraph to specify your plot

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can anyone recommend software for showing how network graphs change over time? I have a time-series relation dataset of <subject, verb, object, timestamp> and I'm looking for ways to visualise it.

<comment><USER4> Depending on the number of time points you can use the facetting functions in ggraph to create small multiples

<comment><USER11> About 10,000 relations, each with a unique point in time. Looks like the facet isn't quite what I want.

<comment><USER4> You can of course animate it like this [https://twitter.com/thomasp85/status/694905779539812352](https://twitter.com/thomasp85/status/694905779539812352) but a static representation is often easier to interogate. I would try to bin the time points and facet on them...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Tangentially related: there's a port of ggplot to python: [http://ggplot.yhathq.com/](http://ggplot.yhathq.com/)

The problem with ggplot and friends is R. It's frankly painful and archaic to work with.

<comment><USER4> Without needing to get into an R vs Python discussion I think it is fair to say that this is a perfectly valid subjective opinion and that a lot of people will disagree completely... none of the ggplot2 Python ports holds a candle to the original, feature-wise. So the question is whether you will reach out for the lesser tool or learn a new programming style...

<comment><USER12> I'm not a big Python fan, frankly. But R is painful enough for me to keep looking around. Right now my workflow is to do all my data processing in another language and just use R for plotting.

<comment><USER9> With dplyr & purrr, if you can't find a DSL in R that works for you, the odds are you'll need lisp or Haskell to satisfy you.

<comment><USER13> With the Apache Arrow project, my understanding is that there will be an opportunity for languages like R, Python w/Pandas to share in-memory dataframe structures. I could imagine a future world where much tighter interaction with languages like lisps or Haskell.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


There's No Protection In High Ports - <AUTHOR> http://bsdly.blogspot.ca/2013/02/theres-no-protection-in-high-ports.html

<comment><USER2> >obscuring your login service via non-standard ports or even a requirement to try several ports in sequence really only buys you security equivalent to lengthening your password by two characters per port.

Not even that. It's like a _separate_ two-byte password because you get to guess and confirm the port separately from the password.

Lengthening your password by N bits _multiplies_ the number of necessary guesses by 2^N. Having a _separate_ N bit password _adds_ 2^N to the number of of necessary guesses. So if your real password's effective key length is more than 16 bits, using a random port effectively adds less than 1 bit of entropy.

Also, rate-limiting port scans is way harder to do than rate-limiting authentication.

<comment><USER3> It occurred to me that if you want to multiply the number of necessary guesses by running sshd on an alternate port, you'd need to run multiple sshds. (Of course all but one of these sshds should be decoys.) Doubling the number of sshds is then like adding one bit to the password.

<comment><USER4> The likely result of that would be that a smart hacker would cross you off his IP list upon discovering you are running a bunch of sshds. After all, if you are devious enough to do that, it's unlikely your real sshd will fall to his script in any case. You are a waste of bandwidth better spent chasing low- hanging fruit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> While I'm not sure if you can argue 'no protection' while at the same time admitting that the number of attacks was greatly reduced for a while: I always hated that advice with a passion.

No, do not run SSH on a non-default port. It's nothing but an obscurity hack, does little good and breaks a lot of workflows (routers that prioritize port 22 as interactive traffic, firewalls that explicitly allow ssh - on port 22 of course, tools that are awkward to use as soon as you need to use a different port than the _standard_ one).

I admit that I mocked people recommending that practice in the past. That's childish of course, but if the data of this submission is correct I can now add a more serious 'Please do not do that' argument to my list.

<comment><USER6> There's a strong reason for advocates (like myself) for running ssh on non- standard ports: it reduces 99% of automated attacks and bots.

Yes, you could use fail2ban and ban half the internet, but that just clogs your filtering rules and makes your system waste memory and cycles. Case in point: one of my servers with ssh on port 22 had +9,000 denied IPs over less than one year. On a non-std port, ~100.

There's almost no drawback to using a non-standard port. Everything that uses ssh allow port customization (and I wouldn't trust something that doesn't).

 _> routers that prioritize port 22 as interactive traffic_

Internet routers don't typically do any QoS (except to _reduce_ the priority - bittorrent/etc), let alone prioritize 22. And within your own network, you have control over QoS anyway.

Also, I disagree with the OP:

 _>...those who have moved their main login service to a non-standard port pay less attention to their logs than the rest of us_

I believe it's exactly the opposite. When you're used to carefully inspect your logs on an ongoing basis, you don't want to see it polluted by automated attacks.

Now when you use a non-std port and discover people doing port scans, you'd better pay attention...

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the elaborate answer.

My take: If the fail2ban solution bans 9000 IPs - why would you care? If password authentication is disabled (is it?), who cares? What's _gained_ here, except for a potentially smaller log file?

      Everything that uses ssh allow port customization
      (and I wouldn't trust something that doesn't).

Sure. I agree. The problem starts, if you mix a lot of clients. Say, I'm using two different OS' (Windows, Linux). For Windows that means putty for me (one interface) or WinSCP (two interfaces to manage). On Linux I'm using ssh (ssh foo@host:port) or scp (scp -P port ..).

I certainly CAN manage .ssh/config files and reduce that mental overhead a bit. But my argument is that this makes no sense. It - in my world - doesn't buy you security, but might cause mental laps and cache misses that annoy you.

So, I still fail to see a reason to do that..

<comment><USER6> _> What's _gained_ here, except for a potentially smaller log file?_

\- Smaller and easier to parse log files

\- Less time wasted parsing log files (or creating scripts to filter out automated attacks)

\- Less RAM & CPU cycles (particularly important when running low memory VMs)

 _I still fail to see a reason to NOT do that._

It won't increase your overall security, but it doesn't _reduce_ it either, so why not do it? Just to save you from adding 'alias ssh=ssh -P xx' to your .profile?

<comment><USER7> You can redirect ssh failure messages to a specific log file, separate from all others, so that shouldn't be an issue.

Also you don't need to alias - .ssh/config should work more transparently here.

<comment><USER6>
      > You can redirect ssh failure messages to a specific log
      > file, separate from all others

That's exactly the point. Now you redirect ssh failure messages to a specific log file (with all the garbage and automated attacks), and you'll very soon start to ignore it. And then your overall security is reduced, simply because you aren't paying attention.

Or, you can spend time combing through hundreds of invalid messages, trying to separate the wheat from the chaff. Either in one or multiple separate files, it doesn't really matter.

Anyway, not trying to convince anybody here. I respect the opinion that some may prefer to leave everything as the default.

For me, I just vehemently disagree with OP's point that using a non-std port doesn't have concrete benefits and/or reduce the security. To me it's exactly the opposite. At least if you know what (and why) you're doing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Port 22 should only be used if the SSHd needs to be accessible to strangers; I think a lot of people use alternate ports. Go a step farther by running Kippo[1] (or other SSH honeypot) on port 22 to accept SSH traffic and waste attackers' time. Not only do attackers forgo scanning for the true SSH port, but they believe they've successfully intruded into the system and leave keystroke-by-keystroke logs of their actions in the decoy shell.

[1]: <https://code.google.com/p/kippo/>

<comment><USER9> Very interesting. A cool variant would be to, by default, offer the decoy shell on port 22 but _also_ run the real SSH on port 22... But only activating it temporarily for the IP that just did succesfully port-knock. This should be trivial using some local redirection rules (so you'd run, say, SSH on port 19381 but use a transparent redirect to port 22 when an IP succesfully port- knocks in).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> >As I've argued elsewhere, obscuring your login service via non-standard ports or even a requirement to try several ports in sequence really only buys you security equivalent to lengthening your password by two characters per port. After all, TCP and UDP port numbers are limited to 65536 distinct values, within the scope of a 16-bit value. Moving your service to a non-standard port means that the would-be intruder has to guess a two-byte value. Introducing a sequence of ports buys you the added obscurity of two bytes per port.

It needs to be pointed out that it is actually worse than that. Guessing a password is O(2^n) on the length of the password. Making the attacker guess a random m bit value before starting to guess passwords is O(2^m + 2^n). To put numbers behind this, a password with 32 bits of entropy has ~4 billion possible combinations, 16 bits of random port + 32 bits of password has 65536 + ~4 billion possible combinations (also known as ~4 billion), while a 34 bit password would have ~16 billion possible combinations.

<comment><USER11> It's true that just changing the port doesn't add much to protect against brute-force attacks, but it's not the full story. Many automatic scanners try port 22 and then give up for that host. I've found that changing the port means that I'm hit but far fewer scans.

One could also use port knocking. Using just a single port it would add the 16 bits of randomness making it 32 bits of extra randomness which is significant.

Another advantage of using a different port is that it's often quite easy to detect port scans against a host so an automated tool can easily just block the scanning IP. Slow scans exist but if someone is willing to take that amount of time then there's not much you can do to stop them from eventually finding your service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The whole hi/low ports as security was always bogus. From day one. Ask those who implemented it from that era, and they will now agree. If someone had a shell account on a machine, they could have 'root'. If they had root, they can bind low ports (and anything else). The fact that Linux still requires a root user to bind a listener to a <1024 port was just the Linux guys being conservative. They wanted adoption, not someone saying 'Linux is insecure because they let non root bind to low ports'. They now have adoption, and quite a bit of legacy decisions still in there.

I used to fume about 15 years ago. These days, I'm much more zen about this. (or trying to be zen).

Also, I welcome posts like this. I've come to understand that what was once understood by many, may not be when you add 10 or 5 years. For example, the recent HN post from dadgum.com about C's most powerful operator being 'switch'. This is well known. However, maybe there are 17 or 15 year olds who lurk HN. In order for them to learn, they should be exposed to that knowledge.

So, while we are trying to help one another, here is some advice. One _really good_ way to run sshd securely is to use a different operating system other than Linux. This isn't because Linux is bad, it is just that certain decisions were made that will not change. People might extrapolate what I just said too far. Let me illustrate this as a conversation for entertainment.

world says: 'drudru just said don't run linux anywhere'

drudru says: 'Nope. What I'm saying is if you need high security, yet open to the world, sshd install, don't run it on Linux. Run it on an OS and config designed for security. You can still use Linux and other OSs for other things.'

world says: 'Ok, if I do that, how do I ssh to my Linux hosts?'

drudru says: 'Since your sshd host is running not on Linux and it is secure, you can use it to login to your other hosts. You should run it on a static IP address. Then you will only allow ssh in to all your other hosts from that known secure IP and host key. You can have multiple jump machine/static IPs, say 2 on different networks for redundancy.'

world says: 'I've heard OpenBSD was secure. I don't want to learn OpenBSD, FreeBSD, etc.'

drudru says: 'You should just run on Heroku or something equivalent. It will allow you to outsource the entire problem.'

world says: 'I cannot run my Hadoop,Cassandra, etc. on XYZ cloud platform.'

drudru says: 'I am pretty sure you can. There are a lot of new solutions out there if you get a moment to search.'

ALTERNATE ENDING

world asks: 'Can I run sshd on Windows securely?'

drudru says: 'You should just run on Heroku or something equivalent. It will allow you to outsource the entire problem.'

RING RING

drudru says: 'hey, good luck with that. gotta go.'

</comment><comment><USER13> As we all know security through obscurity only buys you time like the article points out. Please correct me if I'm wrong but a pretty simple solution exists here. I run SSH over port 22 and do the following which I think is a pretty reasonable and safe solution (again, please correct me if I'm wrong):

1\. Configure a decent firewall, edit iptables and disable anything you aren't or don't plan to use.

2\. Disable root login completely.

3\. Install fail2ban just in case and set it to block IPs of failed attempts for 2 to 24 hours

4\. Use key based authentication and disable SSH logins using passwords altogether.

I'd recommend going a step further on number 4 and put a strong password on your key. A lot of people believe that key based authentication in and of itself is enough but if you somehow leak your keys and there's no password on them then an attacker has just easily gained access to your machine. Now I'm guilty of not using a password with my keys because like a lot of people it feels like it defeats the purpose but you can actually set things up so that you only need to enter your password once and it won't ask you for it again for a while just like the sudo "grace period" which lets you sudo without a password after you've entered it once. I do plan to give my keys a password and stop being so lazy in the very near future.

I know the Linode library as well as a few posts that have made it to the front page here explain how to do this. Here are the links:

<http://feross.org/how-to-setup-your-linode/>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4618808> (Discussion of the above which has some more helpful hints)

<http://library.linode.com/securing-your-server>

<comment><USER9> _"As we all know security through obscurity only buys you time..."_

No. Your definition of "security through obscurity" is totally wrong, so your sentence makes zero sense.

If I say: _"This server uses port-knocking, you must on three ports between 1..65535 in the correct order before you can attempt to login using SSH on an unknown port"_

There is absolutely _zero_ security through obscurity here.

Just as there's zero security through obscurity when someone says: _"I've got a server with SSH on port 22 open, you need a login/password to get in"_. Attackers do not know the login/password but that is still certainly not "security through obscurity".

Just as attackers do not know which three-ports knocking sequence they should use to log in. All they know is that they'll first need to try to find the correct port-knocking sequence amongst the 65536 exp 3 possibilities before being able to try to find the SSH port and then try to force the login/password.

Just as using a random SSH port is certainly not "security through obscurity".

Security through obscurity is when there's a design or an implementation detail that is obscured. Like when a snake-oil vendors creates a "one-password to store them all" website and doesn't say how it's doing the storing / encryption / authentication / etc.

 _That_ is security through obscurity.

Saying: _"You need to know the secret root password to login"_ or _"You need to know the secret port-knocking sequence before the SSH port shall allow"_ is not, has never been and shall never be _"security through obscurity"_.

<comment><USER14> Bruteforcing 65536^3 sequences is trivial compared to bruteforcing an actual ssh login; what protection you get comes from the fact that the attacker doesn't know there's port-knocking at all. So it really is just obscurity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Related: Protecting sshd using spiped [http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2012-08-30-protecting- sshd-u...](http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2012-08-30-protecting-sshd-using- spiped.html)

<comment><USER16> The only downside to this is that you send more data with spiped.

      """
      Can significantly increase bandwidth usage for interactive
      sessions: It sends data in packets of 1024 bytes, and pads
      smaller messages up to this length, so a 1 byte write could
      be expanded to 1024 bytes if it cannot be coalesced with
      adjacent bytes.
      """
      -- https://code.google.com/p/spiped/source/browse/trunk/README

More secure, but more overhead. That said, I love spiped. I use it to secure a few mysql replication streams and a couple other things. Works great.

I wonder if there is anything like spiped that provides something similar to openvpn's tls-auth (HMAC auth) functionality, for protocols that already provide encryption.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It would also be nice if SSHd had an option to block an IP address after a certain number of failed attempts. Sure, you can hack something together with iptables but that's just horrible.

<comment><USER18> That's why I use fail2ban, pretty much everywhere.

<comment><USER19> Fail2ban is massively heavyweight on a cheap virtual server however, easily consuming half your memory if you aren't careful, and still obscene amounts of RAM for the functionality, with tight ulimits.

<comment><USER20> Turn on a swap file and force it out.

On one server it's (supposedly) using 192m - but only 5m is resident, the rest is swapped out or unused.

On other 52m virt, but only 4m resident.

<comment><USER19> Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I find even 4MB complete overkill for the required functionality.

All the damn thing needs to do is keep a couple of running counters on a short buffer of IPs and run iptables when limits are met, and a periodic parse of a log file. This feels like something where 64k ought to be enough for anyone, much less 640k!

Sure, we can get by with a fifth of a gigabyte of swap space for this task. Ugh. I've spent too much of my life in debugger CPU views. Jack's quivering tower of abstractions writhes in repulsion.

<comment><USER20> It's written in python, which takes about about 2m-5m just to get out of bed with nothing loaded or running. (I don't consider that a lot BTW, not a ding on python.)

There's about 200K of source code, but basically all the overhead is the python runtime.

(The memory usage of python doing nothing varied on different machines, but was always virtually identical to the usage of fail2ban.)

Also, the virt usage is mostly large memory mapped logfiles, not actual swap usage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Another thing that occasionally cheeses me off is the restriction on canonical ports < 1000 to user 0. Yes, I know it's standardized. Yes, I know that when it was codified the world looked very, very different. It's still annoying and requires cargo-cultish hoop-jumping (albeit well understood hoop jumping) to run a decently secure service.

</comment><comment><USER22> I like some mix of the following:

\- disable passworded logins (only keys)

\- ssh bastion host

\- decoy ssh honeypot on port 22 (<http://www.plainlystated.com/2013/02/ssh- honeypots-dataviz/>)

</comment><comment><USER23> This is useful to protect sshd from random scans, but to still allow you access from anywhere when you need that access:

<http://www.pkts.ca/ssh-faker.shtml>

<comment><USER24> Do yourself a favor and use public key authentication rather than passwords. It's both more secure and (together with ssh-agent) more convenient.

Unless you're logging in from other people's machines a lot that is (where you would need to access your private key from a USB stick) but that's obviously not a good idea anyway.

<comment><USER23> Already do. But further protecting sshd is beneficial even when using public key auth to login.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Ok, fine.

Now give me _one_ reason why I should actually run sshd on port 22.

</comment><comment><USER26> SSH is rarely a public service. What's the motivation for making it so public?

<comment><USER14> The whole point of ssh is to be able to log into one's machine from elsewhere on the wide internet. I find it's precisely when I'm somewhere public (i.e. coffee shop or public transport wifi) that I want access to my home machine - on my work machine (i.e. in the office) anything I need is already there. If you don't need it to be publicly accessible, why would you be running sshd at all?

<comment><USER26> Before I can respond to that, I think there's a misunderstanding about what "public service" means. HTTP is a public service: you open it up to the world, and want anyone to be able to connect to it. It is intended and hoped that as many people use it as possible. If your website is slashdotted, then that's GREAT! In contrast, I don't want 100000 people to try logging in over SSH to my private server. To put it another way, SSH is only a public service in the cases of:

      * CVS over SSH
      * rsync over SSH
      * Commercial SSH tunnels

Logging into my authoritative nameserver over SSH, however, is not a public service. And since it's not a public service -- that is, intended for the public -- I don't treat it like one.

<comment><USER14> If you're trying to tell the rest of us something you're going to have to be more concrete. So you "don't treat it like a public service". Great. What does that actually mean? ("I don't make it accessible on a public port from the public internet" was the most obvious technical interpretation, but it sounds like you didn't mean that)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What happened at Canonical - <AUTHOR> http://www.techradar.com/news/what-happened-at-canonical <comment><USER2> Pushing yearly bonuses back to May so that they can do layoffs in April is a hugely dick move.

If it isn't salary, don't budget for it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nothing happened at Canonical, just what the top executives normally do. Realizing that it may be more profitable to destroy their companies and sellout to the main competition rather than compete with them.

With Canonical and Redhat virtually in bed with Microsoft does any one seriously think that Canonical was going to proceed on a path that would mean getting into headon competition with a major company they had decided to collaborate with?

When Ubuntu collaborates with Microsoft on Bash/WSL what do you think is going to happen? When hardware vendors don't want to open up their drivers for Linux to compete effectively with Windows and Mac how much progress can Ubuntu make with their phones?

The Linux desktop is supposed to be a power users desktop but their poor vision of its developers failed it. It is supposed to be the equivalent of an advanced Smalltalk or Lisp workstation where its administration is concerned, to managed by message passing in Smalltalk or Lisp scripts or similar. The fact that it is still managed by tedious error prone scripts only shows how poor the whole design has been. Coming to think of Linux is just the kernel, and none of the desktop developers had the smarts to develop a sound administration language and build the desktop proper on top of it. All that has happened is that it has given Microsoft and the other big guys the breathing space to retrench and now it has carved up the market by basically co-opting Redhat and Ubuntu into its camp.

</comment><comment><USER4> One should post about what happened in Mozilla for the past chaotic 4 years as well, especially for those offices not in the USA. The story is sorrowfully similar.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm surprised Microsoft hasn't released a semi-offical Linux distribution for power users showcasing .Net Core and Azure assisted apps. At least a Linux container on par with AWS Lambda.

</comment><comment><USER6> Who knows what's really going on behind the scenes and whether this piece might be unduly negative or not. It's possible that things are shaky to a level that the changes and the way they were conducted might be in fact much better than they could have been. I feel this piece works to characterize Shuttleworth in a negative light (by including his "um" and so on in quoting him, for example).

Shuttleworth produced the first easy to install Linux distro and brought many to Linux as a result. Doesn't he get credit for that?</comment>


Apple iPen patent - <AUTHOR> http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2012/05/apple-sheds-more-light-on-their-ipen-graphics-program.html

<comment><USER2> Interesting concept, though I'm not sure it's novel (no sources for that at this time).

It seems to be very similar to the Android way of doing things: small vibration when menu button presses register, etc. That's something I've liked about Android that I miss on my iOS devices, so I imagine the pen would buzz a little when clicking an app, navigating a page, etc.

I'm hoping that this device would see primary usage with iPads, not going the way of the Samsung Note in terms of phone-slash-tablet marketing.

Interesting find.

<comment><AUTHOR> If it's the audio usage you refer to, it's definitely not novel: <http://www.livescribe.com/en-us/smartpen/echo/>

(there is also audio feedback there as far as I saw on youtube, not only recording)</comment></comment>


Opening Black Boxes and Creating a Personal Knowledge Base - <AUTHOR> https://zaataylor.wordpress.com/2019/12/23/opening-black-boxes-creating-a-personal-knowledge-base/ <comment><USER2> I just started using a combination of Pocket (on iOS) and Worldbrain Memex (on desktop). I also have my Pocket merging with Memex on a regular basis so I can ultimately have it all in one place.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, I'd never heard of Memex before now, but it looks interesting! I'm definitely going to check it out.</comment></comment>


Show HN: UserTalk - Let Your Website Visitors Call You - <AUTHOR>

http://www.getusertalk.com
Hello Guys,
I'm working on an MVP for a voice support solution. UserTalk allows you to easily embed a button on your website so that visitors can call you. Your customer support can login to UserTalk to receive calls from people on the website or listen to messages that were recorded when you were away.
I would appreciate it if you gave me feedback about the idea:
- Does this address a pain you have? - If Yes, would you be willing to pay for a solution? - Are the features presented on the website the most important/highest priority features you want?
Please leave your email on the landing page's subscription form so you can be part of our beta.
Thank you all for the great help! <comment><USER2> That will help me a lot in el5odary.com, I am willing to pay but I have to see ur pricing first :) do u give it for free for early adapters ;)

Looking forward to see how this nice idea goes.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very nice and simple interface. But you need a way to hangup after starting the call without having to close the browser tab.

</comment><comment><USER4> our community evangelists can use this service to communicate with our users. A mobile version would be better though to allow us to answer any inquiry on the spot .. we r happy to try ur MVP and we'll decide based on the pricing

</comment><comment><USER5> How is it different from zingaya.com. Even the tag line looks same.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's actually very similar. I hadn't known zingaya.com existed, thanks for the pointer. Do you use zingaya? What do you like/dislike about them?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I really like the Idea</comment>


Think Like a Green Beret: It's Not Over - <AUTHOR> http://loadoutroom.com/16417/think-like-green-beret-not/

<comment><USER2> "Sometimes the winner is decided by nothing more than who stays on the field." indeed</comment>


1 in 10 Americans think HTML is a sexually transmitted disease - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-1-10-americans-html-std-study-finds-20140304,0,1188415.story#ixzz2v1RQr6Ni

<comment><USER2> To clarify, 10% of Americans who fill out surveys on coupon sites ticked a box indicating they think HTML is an STD. Since each question had only 3 options, I would imagine you'll get at least 10% for any option, no matter how ridiculous, as a result of people clicking without reading just to get their coupon.

</comment><comment><USER3> How is this on the front page? I could get 10% of Americans to click pretty much any box if I designed the survey appropriately. Good riddance, this makes me which HN had a down-vote button.

</comment><comment><USER4> These kinds of articles _willful_ _schadenfreude_. From the bottom of the article:

 _The study involved 2,392 men and women 18 years of age or older. The participants were not told that the study was specifically looking into their knowledge of tech terms. They were presented with both tech and non-tech terms and were asked to choose from three possible definitions._

So in reality, 10% thought that "sexually transmitted disease" was a better option than the other two presented (presumably one was actually correct).

Many conclusions made were based on answers that were deceptively close to being right. I.e.

 _23% thought an "MP3" was a "Star Wars" robot. It is actually an audio file._ (i.e. c-3po)

 _18% identified "Blu-ray" as a marine animal. It is a disc format typically used to store high-definition videos._ (manta rays _are_ marine animals, and are blue)

In addition, one might easily say this is evidence of the average American's _intelligence_ in outsourcing things they don't need to know to Google and the web.</comment>


Show HN: Client Side Encrypted Backups – easy to use and no chance of corruption - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Scott-Kaplan/Client-Side-Encrypted-Backups <comment><USER2> This was the same argument made about RAID backups. You won't lose a backup as long as you replace the right hard drive.

It can still corrupt if the local storage is/goes bad.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comment. Actually, Client-Side-Encrypted-Backups is different in that a backup cannot be created unless tar, ccrypt and sftp on the user's machine execute smoothly. In your example, in the case of a user's local drive going bad during a backup, one of these (tar, ccrypt, sftp) would fail causing the backup to not be created. All files that show up in the completed_backups log file are golden backups and can be restored at anytime. For me, I have been exclusively using Client-Side-Encrypted-Backups to do all of my backups (since 2011). I don't ever recall seeing an issue in all of those years. It's been very reliable.

<comment><USER3> Why did you choose not to use rsync ? ( Also, you regarding the criticism you received: perhaps you are interested in using TAHOE-LAFS. )

<comment><AUTHOR> So corrupt backups weren't possible - just my personal preference.

<comment><USER3> rsync can be applied as such. Either I don't understand you and am missing something or you could use the following link: [https://linux.die.net/man/1/rsync](https://linux.die.net/man/1/rsync) Anyhow: Good stuf you're making && godspeed at your venture. ^_^

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you kind sir.

When I was investigating backup solutions in 2010, I did read about rsync and had read a few negative reviews saying that user's had their backups corrupted (by rsync) and that they were unable to restore their backups. However, looking now I am unable to find those reviews. So, likely either those issues were fixed in a newer version of rsync or I am not remembering the posts correctly.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>