Stephen Hawking Says We Should Really Be Scared of Capitalism, Not Robots - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/stephen-hawking-capitalism-robots_5616c20ce4b0dbb8000d9f15 <comment><USER2> You should note, this is an extremely misleading article. He is in fact worried about AI.

Hawkings wrote this in the same thread:

You're right: media often misrepresent what is actually said. The real risk with AI isn't malice but competence. A superintelligent AI will be extremely good at accomplishing its goals, and if those goals aren't aligned with ours, we're in trouble. You're probably not an evil ant-hater who steps on ants out of malice, but if you're in charge of a hydroelectric green energy project and there's an anthill in the region to be flooded, too bad for the ants. Let's not place humanity in the position of those ants. Please encourage your students to think not only about how to create AI, but also about how to ensure its beneficial use.

This was what her wrote when asked about technological unemployment:

If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever- increasing inequality.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for bringing out his AI comment, it seems much more aligned with the main superintelligence research community now than when I read his thoughts last. Updated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It would be nice if the elephant in the room were addressed: We are Not in a capitalist society. We are in a corporatist society.

It took a joint collaboration between corporations and government to blow up the economy with the 2008 financial crisis. And then the government bailed out the financial elites. In a capitalist society, those who failed would go under. In fact, we probably wouldn't have reached that crisis point, because the Fed would not exist (and would not be manipulating interest rates), there would be no revolving door between corporations and government (Former Goldman Sachs CEO becomes Treasury Secretary, promptly gives trillions of dollars to Wall St; Former senior executive for Monsanto becomes head of FDA).

Granted, pure capitalism is not exactly possible given the flawed existence of humans and our fragile societies. But let's at least call our current system what it is: corporatism. Maybe even with a dash of nepotism, militarism and fascism.

<comment> minority-one You're the only voice of reason on this thread.

What we should be really scared of is a population whose majority clamors for democracy yet prefers to trust government over holding representatives accountable.

The problem is the people have been rendered powerless through mis-education to the point they've forgotten their non-interventionist history. Keeping guns is necessary but not sufficient for the government to fear its people.

People have also been convinced the only way to get educated is to go into debt, since independent thought is ridiculed on mainstream entertainment venues. That gives governments an opportunity to control what people learn.

It goes on and on but it all starts with what you rightfully noted, that this is no Capitalism, but Corporatism. I wouldn't expect a university professor (even an economist) to understand this finer point as I know first-hand those people either have approved opinions or they don't have a job in academia.

For those who only dabble in economics (and here I include up to Ph.Ds in Economics) here's a hint: if your economy only has one money, and its price is centrally controlled, as interest rates are by the Fed in the U.S., what you have is not Capitalism, because no saving of capital is taking place.

<comment><USER4> Great points.

On the topic of mainstream education, my brother is "unschooling" his children. They went to public school for one year, then he saw what was happening not only with the level of standardized education, but also the drills to "prepare" for school shootings. Schools prepare not by hiring security guards, but by having realistic simulations of a shooter, and having the children cower under their desks. Welcome to the new normal: Dept of Education's standards for dealing with ~~nuclear~~ handgun proliferation.

i visited my brother last year and it was interesting to see his kids interact socially. this is typically one of the big arguments that comes up for homeschooled children: How will your children grow socially? How will they learn to interact? After watching them at their golf practice, surrounded by tons of other kids, it was clear: my brother's kids were leaders, and the other kids were mostly followers.

his kids learn what they want, guided by their father's loose curriculum. They started learning algebra at 7, with the assistance of some very clever iPad apps. They read. They play games. And most of all, they enjoy life. They're not just waiting for recess. Or high school. Or college. Or their first job.

Those kids will be just fine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Right. The usual counter is the following: "This was predicted every time we had technological upheavals, and it never happened. Therefore it won't happen this time either."

Although there is some truth to this, the past tends to be only a limited predictor for the future ("It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." \-- Yogi Berra ), and of course logically this stance cannot be supported.

Also, there is some grounds to believe that this time actually is different: whereas production and consumption used to expand to soak up new found productivity, we're reaching both resource limits in terms of what can be produced, and at least in the west saturation in terms of consumption. We already consume way more than we really want/need, and more and more people are realizing that their stuff is not liberating them, but rather taking them hostage.

Furthermore, there also is evidence that this is already happening. Blue collar wages are stagnating or in decline, same though to a lesser extent for the middle class. Debt has soared as people try to maintain their standard of living.

Robots have the capacity to help us bring about the 15 hour work week Keynes predicted, or maybe even the 4 hour work week, but we probably will have to restructure our wealth distribution mechanisms somewhat to achieve it.

<comment><USER6> > Right. The usual counter is the following: "This was predicted every time we > had technological upheavals, and it never happened. Therefore it won't > happen this time either."

Which is, of course, false in its premise -- it happened with the technological developments which were happening alongside the development of the economic system which would become dominant in the developed world of the time, which would later be named "capitalism" by its critics, and was _mitigated_ to a certain degree (but not, by any stretch of the imagination, _solved_ ) when capitalism was largely replaced in the developed world with modern "mixed economies" which limit the capitalist property system through the adoption of redistributive and socialized regulatory mechanisms while retaining the capitalist arrangement in outline (in the developed world, this approach has prevailed, for now, over both retaining -- or reverting to -- capitalism without compromising its structure and abandoning its property structure outright.)

<comment><USER7> "It happened"? What is "it"? (credit to parent for being unhelpfully ambiguous as well)

<comment><USER8> I believe "it" refers to the sort of failure case described in the OP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> He's right of course. It's essentially the "billionaires in gated communities guarded by robot drones" argument.

[http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-robot- lords-a...](http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-robot-lords-and- end-of-people-power.html)

It's amazing how many things look like a tragedy of the commons (rather than a wonderful efficient market) when you hit boundary conditions.

</comment><comment><USER10> Well, his argument is very logical and grounded in evidence. Hypothetically, robots could cause a problem but capitalism is currently tearing the fabric of society apart due to wealth inequality.

When I first saw this article, I said this to myself, "But robots...but matrix...but terminator" a few hours later, I realized the grounded logic he is conveying.

Currently, robots/ai are like the gun issues of today. Guns don't kill people. People do and legislating gun control is sticky (so is regulating ai).

<comment><USER11> I've always found this logic quite flawed: we have capitalism, and we have wealth inequality, therefore capitalism causes wealth inequality.

As far as I am aware, every single economical system in history has produced wealth inequality, so replacing it with something else wouldn't really change much. It's been tried numerous times, and none of those experiments managed to solve the issue of wealth inequality in a sustainable way.

Capitalism is far from being an ideal system, but it works, and replacing it can cause only more pain for everyone. I can see the appeal of blaming it for everything; it's a handy scapegoat, "the devil we know" \-- but I haven't seen many realistic proposals what should replace it.

<comment><USER12> > As far as I am aware, every single economical system in history has produced > wealth inequality

Check out the Islamic perspective on economics and finance. It sets certain restrictions, while keeping many things open to the requirements of the society: no interest, shared risk, the population is responsible for the poor, etc. while still allowing the opportunities to acquire wealth.

It was during the days of Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz[0] that it was reported that there were no more poor people left to take Zakat[1], because everyone did their duties.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umar_II](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umar_II)

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

<comment><USER13> >" _shared risk, the population is responsible for the poor_ "

I pay taxes for those two already. Must I still blame capitalism?

Not trying to be obtuse, but some of the thing mentioned are already supposedly part of our society. Represented by proxy through our government, yet we don't hold it accountable. Capitalism is not our problem.

<comment><USER12> Look at what the big corporations around us are doing. Capitalism is about maximizing profit, with seemingly no regard for ethics or morals. Things like opening slave shops in China for cheap manufacturing, with horrible working conditions? That would be banned Islamically, because humans have the right to work in safe places, and in decent conditions.

HFT and whatever Wall street is up to? Same thing. It's all exploitative and benefits only a few, while harming most.

Edit: sharing risk on certain transactions, and paying taxes are two different things.

Edit: another example: what about mind numbing advertisements? What about ads for prescription only medication? Purely a product of capitalism. Sexist car advertisements with naked women in them? Yep.

Edit: isn't tax evasion by inversion ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_inversion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_inversion)) also a product of capitalism?

<comment><USER11> "with seemingly no regard for ethics or morals"

Are you saying that economic systems have morality? And that all capitalist lack ethics and morals? There are many different forms of the two -- who is to decide which form is acceptable?

Again, the reason for everything happening in the society is not any single political and economical system -- like soylent green, it's the people.

<comment><USER6> > Are you saying that economic systems have morality?

Economic systems are about how scarce resources are allocated. The choice of the mechanism for doing this is _always_ , inherently, based on a value system (possibly an extremely simple one consisting of a single value proposition).

In that sense, _any_ economic systems involves a moral choice -- to say that a particular economic systems has "no regard for ethics or morals" really usually means that that system is perceived to have no regard for the _the value propositions that the speaker believes to define correct morality_.

<comment><USER11> Well, no economic system exists in its own right; they're all just human interpretations of a large number of human decisions and actions. So it's not an economic system that involves a moral choice; it's moral choices that, on scale, get interpreted as economic systems.

That being said, I absolutely agree with your final statement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> enahs-sf I fundamentally don't understand how capitalism will work in a society where scarcity is essentially nil. It doesn't make sense. Maybe someone could explain it to me?

<comment><USER14> As the economists say, 'human wants are unlimited'. If one thing isn't scarce, something else will be.

<comment><USER15> I like the way Zach Weiner over at SMBC put this:

>A human is only happy if she has two, and everybody else has one. And even then, she starts imagining three.

([http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3531](http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3531))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm going to dumb it down a bit, and say that I like to think of two movies with different visions of a technologically advanced future: WALL-E and Elysium (aka that Matt Damon movie where all the rich people live on the space station). In WALL-E, nobody works and everybody (well, everybody that survived the initial apocalypse anyway) lives the literal fat life while robots serve them all equally. In Elysium, the abundance of health and life that comes from technological advances are hoarded away for exclusive use by the wealthy.

Of the 2 visions, I always found the Elysium model to be much more likely...actually I would argue inevitable. Given human nature, I just can't foresee a world where everyone lounges around in equally-served harmony. No...there will always be an elite, and the elite will find a way to procure and consume a vastly disproportionate amount of resources. Even in the movie Elysium, after the proletariat storm the space castle at the end, any "victory" will be short-lived and will just produce a new elite.

So I guess I'm suggesting that the proclaimed political/economic system is irrelevant. The reality ends up looking pretty much the same in either case. And that reality will probably not be pretty once human labor is fully commoditized through technology.

<comment><USER13> The problem with Elysium is that it just does not sound plausible once you get into the meat of it. Why would the rich "hoard" their technological advances for exclusive use?

For that matter, what _is_ wealth in such a context anyways? What are they wealthy of? Magical mythical currency that they exchange with other rich people? No, they have to give it to someone to do something. Even if it means giving it to the soldiers that have to police the ever-growing population below.

Really, the whole story just relies on an unproven notion that "wealthy people are evil", as that is the only motive that can hold up. Why couldn't the poor simply pool their resources together (government?) and buy one of these things from the rich people.

I'm really bothered that the narrative in the media and movies is constantly presented as "the poor rise up against the evil rich".

<comment><USER17> > The problem with Elysium is that it just does not sound plausible once you > get into the meat of it. Why would the rich "hoard" their technological > advances for exclusive use?

Right now today this minute there are poor children in India living near garbage dumps picking through other people's litter.

[http://wiego.org/informal-economy/occupational- groups/waste-...](http://wiego.org/informal-economy/occupational-groups/waste- pickers)

[http://www.ucl.ac.uk/dpu- projects/drivers_urb_change/urb_env...](http://www.ucl.ac.uk/dpu- projects/drivers_urb_change/urb_environment/pdf_hazards_pollution/IIED_hunt_indiachildren.pdf)

Have a look at the image tab here: [https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=child+waste+pickers](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=child+waste+pickers)

Your second paragraph is just saying "trickle down works" when we know it doesn't.

<comment><USER13> " _our second paragraph is just saying "trickle down works" when we know it doesn't._"

I was simply pointing out the fact that this story portrays the rich in some sort of bubble, where they don't interact economically with the rest.

Any who, "trickle down economics", most popular straw-man ever (I theorize). I don't subscribe to it, nor was I recommending it. Let's coin a new phrase: "free-trickle" and let everyone trickle to everyone else. In the economic sense.

>" _Right now today this minute there are poor children in India living near garbage dumps picking through other people 's litter._"

Are you saying this is due to the rich hoarding their technological advances for exclusive use? Poverty in the third world is a hugely complicated problem. Not to mention the amount of money people, rich people, and government have been throwing at it because it's universally recognized as a "Bad Thing".

I'm not going to stand by idly while a small group of people get blamed for something we have all collectively tasked, and funded the government to do. Let's assign blame where it's really due.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> He's right, but I am hungry for alternatives.

And what does a transition look like?

When I see this kind of thing, I think "of course!", but then I don't know what to advocate for, and what that might look like and how people will manage through the change.

<comment><USER19> > _And what does a transition look like?_

That's the crux of the matter, isn't it?

<comment><USER11> No, this is: "but then I don't know what to advocate for"

Everybody "knows" that things should be changed, but nobody knows how and to what.

<comment><USER18> Indeed. I see positive, fact based and data driven policy advocacy as most productive.

Fear, worry, shame based advocacy does more harm than good. Generally, of course. Sometimes we need those things, but not as norms in the political dialog.

When we are FOR things, it seems easier to work together on them to expected outcomes. Being AGAINST things is much easier, but so often leaves a hole we hope will be filled by market forces and that outcome will be better, or worthy.

Sometimes it is. I believe in markets, but they do come with inherent conflicts of interest that can be difficult to manage.

On this issue, it seems necessary to have a plan and a just and reasonable outcome goal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Are they different ? Is a construct that is built up and acquires a direction and momentum that grows beyond human reins and sense any different than a robot ?

They're both machines, which makes them distinct from humans and human decisions and human reasoning. We should neither be on guard against "robots" or capitalism[1] - rather, we should be on guard against machines in all their forms as they tend to affect humans without the safeguard of human reasoning.

I paraphrase Herbert:

Thou shalt not suffer a machine to rule over you.

[1] ... or democracy or catholicism ...

</comment><comment><USER21> I was the one who wrote that question to Stephen Hawking. Now that it's been brought up here, perhaps it would be nice to ask the question here.

How does HN feel about technological unemployment?

<comment><USER22> The fact that people fear technological unemployment — freedom — is a sign we live under an idiotic system.

<comment><USER23> Freedom, as in freedom from work? The supposed upside of that freedom is based on the assumption that one is still somehow entitled to some of that good stuff that AI/robots may bring. But that's exactly the issue. Right now we understand "capitalism" (stakeholders entitled to dividends) and "barter" (parties entitled to swap) as the sort of entitlements that underpin all others, and both of these leverage property rights. A sovereignty/government would then tap into these plus holdings of property itself by levying tributes/taxes, from which it may then redistribute portions as some other forms of entitlement.

Or not; it's still an open debate on whether and how sovereignty/government might counterbalance via entitlements (such as basic income schemes, etc.) the social changes that technological unemployment could bring.

In the meantime, the facts are that most people must strike bargains in order to obtain most (or possibly all) of the material needs of their lifestyles (and possibly also provide for dependents), and that the most usual bargaining to be struck involves their offer of labor; hence their reasons for all the dreading about technological unemployment. If most could clearly find their way to situations where employment wasn't a requirement towards getting their material needs met, then such fears would abate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> * crickets * (after 40 min on the front page, but it's there!)

How does HN, a hotbed of libertarian free-market worship that also reveres smarts and science, respond to this?

<comment><USER25> My response to Hawking would be a question: Who or what is smart enough to decide how much wealth each person should have and design a efficient system to distribute it and what evidence do you have that the outcome would be better than a free market?

<comment><USER26> You're arguing against a command economy, but there are multitudes of options when it comes to creating a more equitable society than micromanaging wealth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I like how it takes a well known figure to state the obvious and get people to actually talk about the basic flaws of a system...

</comment><comment><USER28> > _As it is, the chasm between the super rich and the rest is growing._

"The rest", as a complement to "super rich" in the above, clearly means "not super rich". This necessarily includes various categories such as "merely rich, but short of super", as well as "well-off", "struggling", and "flat broke".

The poverty line is an abstraction that demarcates zones in a political field. What it means to be "poor" is a moving target. Someone from the 1600's would laugh at what constitutes a "poor" person today. How can someone be poor and have all that stuff (automobile, iPad, high speed Internet, 50" TV, ...), and weigh 300 pounds, too? And still alive at 45 years old, and smiling---with no missing teeth when doing so. What's more, working only 5 days a week for some 7 hours a day.

</comment><comment><USER29> There must be a law, or observation, concerning a balance of effort expended between 'labor replaced by tech' & 'hassle created by the labor saving tech'.

</comment><comment><USER30> It would help if the writers who want to complain about inequality knew what _bourgeoisie_ means.</comment>


A different way to pay tuition - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/blogs/mba_admissions/archives/2012/01/paying_for_college_delaying_the_inevitable.html

<comment><USER2> It's interesting that the UC administrators think that the "paying for" is the part that needs to be addressed, not the base cost to begin with.</comment>


Confessio – Confess from your iPhone (you can even purchase an indulgence) - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/confessio/id929253617

<comment><USER2> That already exists for 3 years: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/confession- roman-catholic/id...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/confession-roman- catholic/id416019676?mt=8)

Is the indulgence thing enough? I don't think so.

</comment><comment><USER3> The cross to unlock is nice and the in-app is creative. Do you have any sales?

<comment><AUTHOR> None so far (it was released yesterday). Downloads are also pretty low.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Security assessment for small non-profit - <AUTHOR> Hey all,
I work with a small non-profit  (~10 people)  and we'd like an assessment done on our online presence (Wordpress, Roundcube email, Google Docs, Mailchimp, Twitter, Facebook) to ensure that it cannot be hijacked or destroyed.
While, I have a programming background, I'd like a professional's take on how vulnerable we are to, for instance, ransomware or hijacking.
Are there any companies that specialize in security assessments of small organizations?
Alternatively, know of any good pen-testing checklists that cover 80% of what a professional would test? <comment><USER2> I'm not going to entirely answer your question, rather, I'll tell you about how we dealt with this issue in a non-profit that I co-founded.

Our organization had a large and strong online presence. Because of this and my technical background, I really wanted to get a security audit done. We looked around quite a bit and found that auditors fell into two camps. There were those who simply cost too much for our organization to possibly afford, and there were those who simply couldn't demonstrate competence.

In the end, we decided on kind of a hybrid strategy. To start, we decided that all of our applications were 100% vulnerable to a motivated attacker. From there, we developed a strategy to mitigate the possible damage. For example, we took frequent backups and practiced to make sure we could fully restore from backups. And, we monitored the hell out of our stack in hopes of (hopefully) knowing quickly whether we had been compromised. The "hopefully" was actually an important part of our strategy - we assumed we were 100% vulnerable which meant that everything that was connected could also be compromised.

Then, we wrote some solid policy. In retrospect, writing the policy was about half cover our ass and half useful security. Our policy covered things like password reuse, frequency/responsibility for backups/automatic updates/etc, and the like.

To summarize, at the time (this was 2007 ~ 2010 so the market may have changed), we couldn't find a company to do a security audit within our budget. Rather than settle on an organization we had little confidence in, we developed a hybrid approach where we decided we were 100% vulnerable and enacted procedures to mitigate the possible damage.

Edit - Fixed a sentence that made no sense.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for this response. It seems like writing the policy might capture most of the value of an audit since it'll make all staff members aware of the risks we face.

<comment><USER3> Check out the "Defensive Security Handbook" from O'Reilly. It has some technical stuff, but it's a lot more about policy and documentation.

Side Bonus of Book: made me much more organized as a person in my life in general

[https://www.amazon.com/Defensive-Security-Handbook- Practices...](https://www.amazon.com/Defensive-Security-Handbook-Practices- Infrastructure/dp/1491960388)

NOTE: This book / the principles applies whether you manage your own infrastructure or just run off of web apps.

<comment><USER2> Great suggestion - that is a great read and I used it quite extensively the last time I wrote a security policy.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Support for writing GHC passes in Coq - <AUTHOR> http://www.megacz.com/berkeley/coq-in-ghc/ <comment><USER2> I've been diving into Haskell more lately from the Clojure/Script world, and it has a lot to admire. There's so much about it that's daunting though.

Is there an analogy for what this pulls off that the poor common-fp-programmer can understand? Sounds like heterogeneous metaprogramming would let subsets of Haskell (e.g. more restrictive languages) also join in metaprogramming, but I'm not clear on why or how.

Definitely looking forward to learning more from the Haskell community and their amazing projects!

<comment><USER3> I suppose the really interesting part isn't the final result (the metaprogramming part), but the Coq model of System FC1 and the linking to GHC's Core passes.

Coq is a functional programming language, similar to Haskell, but with a much more powerful ("dependent") type system. These powerful types let us specify all kinds of stuff about our code, eg. instead of "an integer" we might say "a prime between MIN and MAX whose binary representation is a palindrome". Roughly speaking, if you can compute something with a pure fold, you can use it in your types.

Having the compiler check our code in such detail gives us a lot of confidence that our pre/post conditions are satisfied, that tricky calculations have been implemented correctly and that edge-cases are eliminated. This doesn't really matter for CRUD Web apps, but it's exactly what we want for compiler optimisations.

<comment><USER4> > _Roughly speaking, if you can compute something with a pure fold, you can > use it in your types._

I don't really understand that statement but it makes me really curious. Can you expand it a bit? (Background: I can read Haskell but I have only a vague idea of dependent types.)

<comment><USER5> It's generally dangerous to allow non-terminating computation into your types since it means you can no longer trust the logic of your type system (Turing completeness implies logical inconsistency).

One way to limit the completeness of a language is to replace fixed-point recursion (as is embodied in the Y combinator and all recursive languages which are complete) by induction/coinduction. These two concepts "divide general recursion in half" such that you can get a lot of work done without actually having completeness/inconsistency.

Haskell for instance has induction via folds and coinduction via unfolds, but since we're allowed to "cross the streams" in folds and unfolds you end up with general recursion and inconsistency.

Coq disallows stream crossing.

<comment><USER6> _Coq disallows stream crossing_

Epic. Coq is the Dr. Egon Spengler of programming languages.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: "Ruby on Rails Vs. Django". Is Django winning? - <AUTHOR>

I was researching for a blog post and wanted your input, looking at the google trends (http://www.google.com/trends?q=ruby+on+rails%2C+django&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0) the momentum for Rails has drastically come down while interest for Django has been skyrocketing. Can you think of any key drivers for the change? <comment><USER2> The top 6 results shown on the right side when I did the trend search were:

      - Django Bustamante wins duel vs Deuel
      - Sukiyaki Western Django
      - Paris pays homage to gypsy jazz great Django
      - Bata, Django face tough competition in Japan Open
      - The Modern Jazz Quartet and John Lewis's Django
      - Bata, Django crash out of World Cup of Pool

There's a lot of noise in the result set. More often than not, I find it's really hard to do accurate search comparisons using Google trends. You'd probably get better results walking into an SV bar and doing a straw poll.

<comment><USER3> Some improvements: [http://www.google.com/trends?q=ruby+on+rails|RoR|rails+-trai...](http://www.google.com/trends?q=ruby+on+rails|RoR|rails+-train,+django+-bustamante+-sukiyaki+-paris+-jazz+-music+-japan+-pool&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0)

<comment><USER4> But the main Google Trends indicator is over search query logs, not web results. (That's another tab for web results, but it doesn't work for this query.)

So queries like "django" count for this one. However, we don't know whether those searchers want the web framework or the musician.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How about now? [http://www.google.com/trends?q=ruby+on+rails,+django+python&...](http://www.google.com/trends?q=ruby+on+rails,+django+python&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0)

</comment><comment><USER6> If you compare the front page results from searching either 'django' or 'ruby on rails' that are actually related to the framework, you'll see that only 60% of django results are compared to rails' 100%.

I believe this has a lot to do with it.

</comment><comment><USER7> people don't need to search for rails info as much, because they already know what they need and/or go directly to the source? google trends is showing what people are searching for, which isn't necessarily what's being used the most (though likely there's a correlation).

<comment><USER8> Your argument is completely symmetrical -- you can just substitute "django" in place of "rails" and it still makes sense. As such, it does not explain anything.

<comment><USER9> I think his logic is right, but the premise might not be true. I believe that many people still googling docs and answers even though they know the exact location they are. Google (or search) is just quicker.

<comment><USER8> That's what I meant. Reasoning that something is searched for less frequently, because people know where to find it and do not need to search for it, is valid -- I just do not see (and the poster I replied to did not explain) how this applies only to Rails and not to Django. Had he referred to specific attributes of Rails, that make people not need to search for it, it would be plausible. Alas, he did not.

<comment><USER9> I think it is the poster mean - it is not sufficient to show which framework has more user by looking at google trend, that applies to both rails and django. Though I think Google trend and number of user is causal relationship.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How many of you find managing social media accounts annoying? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> How do you define manage? I have FB which I use daily, but I can not remember the last post I made (years ago). I have Twitter but I open it some times per week at most, and I tweet only when I "need" to announce something. Random social media X, Y an Z I have long stopped using. Reddit and HN, are those social media? I don't think so.

</comment><comment><USER3> I do. Beside my reddit account and my online gaming community I contribute to, I have no time for Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.

But I guess reddit is the superior alternative (at least for me). I find that the Facebook posts and Instragram stuff is always full of people trying to show off their lives all the time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting. I guess when I asked this question, I was thinking about it from the startup's point of view. For me at least, a lot of the things that I post to twitter and facebook are posts from the site that I would be working on at the time. And it just has been such a hassle for me to copy paste the title of the post, link, and etc multiple times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> No because I don't have any. What an amazing easy solution to the problem.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's a solve problem.

You can manage social media, automate it, etc through multiple SaaS providers right now.

People love twitters API to build bots and shit, so you can even build your own dashboard using other folks examples.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's the thing, not one solution fixes all the problems that I have with social media management. For instance, I have to pay for one service that favorites tweets and another for automating tweet posts from rss feeds.

<comment><USER6> Check out SocialPilot.co - might solve your issue of managing multiple social media accounts.</comment></comment></comment>


Judge to DOJ: Not All Writs - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/10/judge-doj-not-all-writs/? <comment><USER2> "As the Ninth Circuit put it in a case interpreting technical assistance in a different context, private companies' obligations to assist the government have "not extended to circumstances in which there is a complete disruption of a service they offer to a customer as part of their business."

It wasn't the case with Lavabit; there is obviously some point at which businesses are expected to properly architect their encryption solutions in order to comply with lawful search warrants. Would have been nice for the article to raise that counter-point and maybe try to address where exactly the line is drawn?

The point is Lavabit wasn't an 'All Writs' issue, if you get a search warrant against the company for data held by the company (e.g. the unencrypted iCloud backup) then it's a completely different expectation of compliance.

Does this or the WaPo article address if Apple possessed an iCloud backup of the device?

<comment><USER3> At least one big difference is ownership. With lavabit, the company owned the code and infrastructure that was used in a "crime". With an iOS device, Apple has sold the device to an individual who is now responsible for that device. That's a huge difference.

The government has been using third-party doctrine as a weak link to exploit to get stuff it wants. Apple essentially removed themselves from the situation so that they are no longer a third-party responsible for the desired data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is some pretty wacky legal argument.

Background:

> Here, as in those other cases, the government had a search warrant for the > device, but it was thwarted by the device's lock screen in executing the > search.

> The government cannot impose an unreasonable burden on Apple

And the case EFF cites to for that proposition holds: "We conclude, however, that the order issued here [requiring a telephone company to assist the FBI in wiretapping its customers] against respondent was clearly authorized by the All Writs Act and was consistent with the intent of Congress."

> and it cannot violate the Constitution.

Sure. But the fact that there's a warrant takes away your biggest Constitutional argument--the 4th amendment.

> What's more, such an order would be unconstitutional. Code is speech, and > forcing Apple to push backdoored updates would constitute "compelled speech" > in violation of the First Amendment

So the government can't force Toyota to push a firmware update to fix faulty electronic throttles?

> government keeps pushing for "exceptional access" to encrypted devices and > communications.

But that's the thing. It's not "exceptional." Since the founding, the compromise is that the government can get at nearly any place that might contain evidence, so long as it has a warrant. Digital privacy proponents are trying to move the goal line, limiting government power in unprecedented ways.

Note bene: I support pervasive encryption and oppose back doors.

<comment><USER5> > It's not "exceptional."

The problem here is... well, I'll make an analogy.

I have a safe. The government gets a warrant to search that safe, and since I refuse to help, they get a professional locksmith to open the safe for them.

Now, let's say I have a safe that the government can't figure out how to open without destroying its contents. In response, the government tells the safe manufacturer to start making different safes that the government can open.

Hopefully you see the problem with the second case.

<comment><USER6> Isn't that already covered by spoilage of evidence, or something along those lines? If i have a magic safe that destroys its contents, I'd be on the hook for maybe Obstruction of Justice? That may or may not be better than losing the contents, but it's not like i could just walk away.

<comment><USER7> I think OP meant opening up a safe with some explosives. But let us say it is a magic safe that incinerates the contents if it detects excessive tampering - I am assuming the purpose of which is to protect sensitive documents in case if the entire safe is stolen. Then the safe maker is not liable for obstructing justice any more then a paper shredding manufacturer.

<comment><USER8> The safe maker wouldn't be liable, the owner of the safe would be. If there's a warrant for the contents of the safe, but the owner refuses to open it up, then the owner is guilty of _whatever law requires you to cooperate with the warrant_. Isn't that enough?

<comment><USER9> Punishing the owner for not giving the government access to the contents of the safe doesn't change the fact that the government doesn't have the contents of the safe, so I guess they might not consider it enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> enahs-sf I realize it's basically impossible to pass a constitutional amendment at this point, but guaranteeing the right to privacy would be pretty awesome.

<comment><USER10> Rights are not enumerated

<comment><USER11> That's not true. The ninth amendment reads:

> The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be > construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

As such, it would be more accurate to say "Not ALL rights are not enumerated". Some are, some aren't. Those that are have traditionally proven harder to infringe. As such, it's not wrong to explicitly codify a right to privacy in the constitution in order to remove all ambiguity.

<comment><USER12> > As such, it would be more accurate to say "Not ALL rights are not > enumerated".

It would be _even more_ accurate to say -- as regards the meaning of the Ninth Amendment -- that it means that not all rights applicable against the US federal government are enumerated in the Constitution, in that the omission of legal rights recognized _prior_ to the Constitution are not extinguished by mere omission from the Constitution (they might be extinguished by conflicting with enumerated powers in the Constitution.)

I'm not sure its really defensible to interpret the intended meaning of the Ninth Amendment to be that rights exist without being enumerated _anywhere_. (The closest the Constitution gets to that -- at least, as far as rights that the federal government can't encroach -- is in Amendment X, which does something _like_ that, though its framed in terms of _powers_ rather than _rights_ , by expressly reserving all powers not delegated to the federal government by the Constitution.)

Certainly, some of the same people who were involved in advocating for the Ninth Amendment had expressed the view in _other_ contexts that rights exist independent of enumeration (e.g., in the Declaration of Independence.)

<comment><USER11> So IANAL, but didn't Griswold v. Connecticut establish that some rights DO exist without being enumerated anywhere? Specifically, that the guarantees in the bill of rights have "penumbras" that imply other rights not explicitly stated in any text (and not necessarily in common practice before the establishment of the constitution), but rather implied by the spirit of the text as a whole.

<comment><USER12> > So IANAL, but didn't Griswold v. Connecticut establish that some rights DO > exist without being enumerated anywhere?

Not really,

> Specifically, that the guarantees in the bill of rights have "penumbras" > that imply other rights not explicitly stated in any text

No, the ideas of "penumbras" and "emanations" in Griswold are not nonenumerated rights; they are the full scope of the meaning of particular enumerated rights and products of the combination of those enumerated rights, not rights that exist independent of enumeration.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If I recall you can use a Map Legend to protect yourself, but I cannot recall the case. Some person made a legend to safe guard his password. He was force to hand over his legend but did not have to tell (FBI/CIA) how to decipher it. Anyone know what I'm talking about. Sorry if this is off subject, just thought it might be interesting to look up.</comment>


Make Any Webpage Look Like It Was Made By A 13 Year-Old In 1996 - <AUTHOR> http://wonder-tonic.com/geocitiesizer/ <comment><USER2> It's funny, these geocities sites were horrible but they provided a way for people to express themselves on the web.

MySpace tapped into this also , allowing people to change their page background, have autoplaying music etc.

The facebook/Twitter came along and spoiled it by prioritizing usability. Now basically everyone has an online presence that looks identical to the point of being sterile. Hell even 90% of wordpress sites look exactly the same.

<comment><USER3> You know, this is a really interesting point to make. I always _loved_ Facebook because it cut back on the bullshit and emphasized data over everything. I wanted to use these services keep in touch with people, not to see them try and express themselves. But when you see too much data fly by it all starts to blur and look the same. It's easy to get cynical about people when all you see is the surface data they express about themselves – by default the least interesting things they could possibly share.

The legendary architect Christopher Alexander has a theory on how life flourishes: at its core is this idea that the world consists of overlapping "centers" – basically places where living things gather. Centers can overlap, so on Facebook your feed and your profile are each centers. By connecting centers, you encourage movement between them and a newer, greater center exists.

I feel that Facebook and Twitter are excellent at encouraging this movement between centers of data. But they're not good at making that data matter. MySpace and Geocities were _awful_ at communication (remember MySpace bulletins?), but they were always about creating something unique for yourself, not about connecting you to anybody else.

Is there a way to do both at once? I'm not sure, but this is something I've been thinking about for a few years now. In high school I did some work for <http://zoints.com>, which was trying to create a network of connected forums to allow for both personal expression and information density, but their tool was way too cerebral for anybody else to catch on. The closest I think I've seen any site come to this is Tumblr, because it both allows for uniquely designed blogs and a central aggregator, but Tumblr is so bad at conversation that it makes holding lengthy conversations ugly and frustrating.

The theoretical solution to this would be to let users define their own centers: give them controls for looking at information in a unique way of their choosing. In a sense, this solution _is_ the Internet, and things like email and RSS are how we connect disparate online entities, but those are very crude tools. The subtler interactions you allow for, the more you'll let people express themselves without getting in each others' ways – but it's hard to define just what these interactions ought to be.

Looking back I'd say the pinnacle (for me) was Facebook's Graffiti Wall app, back when apps were just starting to be a thing. People interacting through pictures and illustrations lent to much more creative back-and-forth than text ever did. But that wasn't ideal either. I love capturing and organizing information, but I agree with you that something's been lost. Reclaiming it without sacrificing the new will be an enormous challenge.

<comment><USER4> See also Venkatesh Rao's piece on 'plazas vs. warrens':

[http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/10/27/warrens-plazas-and- the-...](http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/10/27/warrens-plazas-and-the-edge-of- legibility/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [http://wonder-tonic.com/geocitiesizer/content.php?theme=1...](http://wonder- tonic.com/geocitiesizer/content.php?theme=1&music=10&url=http://wonder- tonic.com/geocitiesizer/content.php?theme=2&music=12&url=http://wonder- tonic.com/geocitiesizer/content.php?theme=3&music=3&url=http://wonder- tonic.com/geocitiesizer/content.php?theme=1&music=1&url=http://wonder- tonic.com/geocitiesizer/)

Applied to itself 4 times. So meta, that we have to go deeper.

<comment><USER6> That is what Steve Jobs saw on acid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> As someone who was 13 in 1996, I wonder if in 2030 they'll have funny tools to "Make any webpage look like it was made by a 28 year-old in 2012"

<comment><USER8> Rounded corners, drop shadows, subtle palettes with contrasting call to action buttons, several dozen social network sharing icons... Did I miss anything?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think it actually made <http://yvettesbridalformal.com/> look better.

Hard to believe that not too long ago, frames and table-based layouts actually were improvements over the status quo.

<comment><USER10> I urge everyone to click around that site a bit. It has everything: UFO conspiracy theories, 3d modeling, recipes, MS Paint drawings, horror stories, ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hey, I was 13 years old in 1996! That made me nostalgic for a website I designed around 1998 and I was surprised to find it was still online...

<http://homepage.eircom.net/~nopatec/>

Dreamweaver special :)

still can't find the geocities site I had in 1997 though...damn

<comment><USER12> _3) SuckingDiesel WebJex - 20 MB Space, 5 POP accounts. FTP access, cgi-bin._

I like this quote... :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> As someone who was 13 years old in 1996, I take exception to this. It looks like it was made by an 11 year old in 1996.

<comment><USER14> +1.

Back then at 13, I already knew the dancing baby was not cool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Ah memories :) Does anyone remember the javascript meme where you'd get people to click a form button and then it would pretend to format your C:\ drive?? My 1996/7 site had that :D

And web rings! I miss the old internet :'(

<comment><USER16> Oh web rings!! And the format c:\ meme...what great memories!

Do you remember the "Through an incredible amount of programming, I wrote a script that will show you what time my VCR is set to"? meme? The user would click a link to a page that contained:

<blink>12:00</blink>

The good old days....

<comment><USER17> One of my favorites:

"I found this collection of files posted on a cybercrime website. Check and see if any of them are yours..."

Then there was a link that went to file://c:\ so the user would be browsing their own hard drive...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I am sad: not a single rainbow <HR> in sight.

<comment><USER19> Where I the 5 pixel 3d table borders? I had lot's of them and found them really high tech.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I saw this title and thought somebody must have found my posting on oDesk looking for UI work.

</comment><comment><USER21> Nope, I don't believe it. There aren't any Under Construction signs anywhere.

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://wonder-tonic.com/geocitiesizer/content.php?theme=8...](http://wonder- tonic.com/geocitiesizer/content.php?theme=8&music=11&url=news.ycombinator.com)

^^ gave me an under construction page :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I actually found myself quite liking the MIDI files....

<comment><USER23> Yeah, I got to hear a really sweet Alanis Morissette tune. :) :/ :(

<comment><USER24> I got some Sheryl Crow action <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1OfNKorIKA>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> HN: [http://wonder- tonic.com/geocitiesizer/content.php?theme=2...](http://wonder- tonic.com/geocitiesizer/content.php?theme=2&music=11&url=news.ycombinator.com)

<comment><USER19> Even better, take a look at this post.

[http://wonder-tonic.com/geocitiesizer/content.php?theme=2...](http://wonder- tonic.com/geocitiesizer/content.php?theme=2&music=2&url=http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3729243)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is pretty fantastic, I now need to find a way to sneak some of those animated gifs past our design team.

</comment><comment><USER26> I was not impressed with the conversion - until I scrolled down and saw Billzebub.

[http://wonder-tonic.com/geocitiesizer/content.php?theme=2...](http://wonder- tonic.com/geocitiesizer/content.php?theme=2&music=9&url=apple.com)

</comment><comment><USER27> Hey isn't that my website?! (Joke)

Well, mine had #0F0 for the background color and some copy/pasted javascripts (i.e. clock moving with the cursor). But yeah, pretty much the same style :) Must say that I did improve over the years.

</comment><comment><USER28> Oh man, this is like seeing dusty old family pictures. So nostalgic!

</comment><comment><USER29> The wonder tonic guy gives great Internet. I love his shady URL redirection service: <http://www.shadyurl.com/>

</comment><comment><USER30> Just seeing the footer, with the browser buttons and counter, gave me one of the craziest "chills up spine" nostalgia-flashbacks I've had in years.

That alone was worth the click.

</comment><comment><USER31> Hm, i was 13 in 1996, now i am a fulltime web developer ;)

<comment><USER32> I was also 13 in 1996 and am now a front-end web developer.

This brings back fond memories.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Well, mine had falling snowflakes even when it was summer.

</comment><comment><USER34> Title is redundant. If anyone other than 13 year olds were designing websites in 1996 there certainly wasn't any evidence of it back then.

</comment><comment><USER35> This thread made me want to look for the website I made in 1996 as a 14 year old in the Wayback machine. Sadly, it was not available.

I did find my website made as a 16 year old. Unfortunately all of the images were missing. From what I remember, it was actually a pretty nice design. I think I'd still be proud of it if I had built it today.

</comment><comment><USER36> I don't know that it takes anything special to make nytimes.com look like it's from yesteryear. The only thing it's missing really is some <blink> elements and that dancing baby.

Seriously though if they're going to stick with that column layout, they should look at how pinterest is presenting information.

</comment><comment><USER37> A better title would be: _Make Any Webpage Look Like It Was Made In 1996_

</comment><comment><USER38> google.com [http://wonder- tonic.com/geocitiesizer/content.php?theme=2...](http://wonder- tonic.com/geocitiesizer/content.php?theme=2&music=3&url=google.com)

<comment><USER39> I thought it would come out the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> A while ago I made this bookmarklet to easily geocitize a webpage:

<https://gist.github.com/2141034>

The code is quite dumb but it works rather well.

</comment><comment><USER41> I tried it on a website, but it did not change much...

</comment><comment><USER42> In related news: <http://www.alcowebizer.com/news.ycombinator.com>

<comment><USER43> doesn't work for me

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> The other way round would be a lot better: Make any Webpage from 1996 look like it was made in 2012! :)

</comment><comment><USER45> It doesn't notice and remove border-radius tags, which made the experience particularly weird.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you'll find it offers ultimate browsing experience in Netscape Navigator :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Why is it when I type in drudgereport.com it looks the same.

</comment><comment><USER47> is someone going to be making this in ten years to show what websites looked like in 2012???

also - comic sans is classic. i predict a comeback.

<comment><USER48> Comic Sans didn't disappear. It's just been hanging out at Microsoft Research.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> best badge: "made with notepad, the right way!"

</comment><comment><USER50> the Chip background acts as a 3d stereograms which was a good reminder of the 90s.

</comment><comment><USER51> No <blink> tag?

</comment><comment><USER52> Oh the nostalgia.

</comment><comment><USER53> Sad but true.

</comment><comment><USER54> that was an awesome time :D

</comment><comment><USER55> indecent :D

</comment><comment><USER56> While it might sound funny, people out there really do design their pages like this only:

<http://govindtiwari.blogspot.in/>

Yeah, even today! [edited]

<comment><USER57> That's one awesome site =)

I keep looking at it finding new WTFs...

<comment><USER56> haha, don't blink your eyes!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> i really love Reposts: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2805452></comment>


Ask HN: Should monetization be an afterthought ? - <AUTHOR>

Over the last couple of weeks, I've been toying with a startup idea.
My concern is this:
Should monetization be an afterthought ? With the current economic market, its evident that an ad-based biz model only might not be sustainable.
But the moment that I try to dissect my idea from a monetization perspective, I cant come up with anything. That makes me rethink, revisit and re-evaluate my idea.
In fact, when I start analyzing most of my ideas from the perspective of 'make something people will buy' (credit-Sachin Rekhi), it invalidates pretty much all of them.
Do you think I should worry about monetization later ? Build a community / user base and the money will follow ? Or am I just over-analyzing stuff ? <comment><USER2> If you can build the site without a significant investment of money or time then it's OK that it'll take time or tinkering to earn back your money. If it's expensive to build and doesn't have a clear path to earning back that investment, it's _at best_ a gamble.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess that's what I'll need to do - throw it against the wall and see it if sticks.

<comment><USER3> "Should monetization be an after-thought?" The answer depends on you - is your primary goal with this application to make money? If so, then no, monetization should NOT be an after-thought.

I would spend some serious time thinking about ways to monetize your app. While everyone seems to jump on the bandwagon of advertising for money, many are coming to realize that it's a huge gamble.

Rethinking, revisiting and re-evaluating your idea isn't such a bad thing. I would follow Sachin Rekhi's advice - is your product something that people will pay for? If not, I would put some time into thinking about whether you can mold your idea product into one that people WILL pay for.

Even if it's something as low as $5 per month, you can make up the difference in volume (if your product is good enough for MANY to like). Your main goal should be to break even as fast as possible and the subscription model can allow that.

Or better yet, split test the two - advertising vs subscriptions. Either way, I wouldn't just push this to the back of my mind because it seems like you can't find a clear answer. That's only more reason to think about it harder. Take some time to research and analyse apps that are successful in terms of charging subscriptions. Think about WHY people are willing to pay for them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Having a business plan is not "over-analyzing stuff."

If your goal with this project is to make money (i.e., it's not just a hobby), then figuring out how to monetize it is an important step.

The question you need to be asking yourself is: what value are you creating, and for whom? If your idea doesn't provide value to a group of people, it's not going anywhere as a business.

(Note that the users of the product aren't necessarily the same people it provides value for.)

<comment><AUTHOR> providing value is one thing. Getting users to pay for stuff seems to be a whole different beast.

<comment><USER5> Somewhat. Different animals, part of the same ecosystem.

If people are using your site, that implies you are providing value for them. Which implies you should, somehow, down the line, be able to find a way to make money - even if it isn't immediately apparent how.

This logic isn't entirely flawed, despite the fact that it's as unfashionable now as it was fashionable 3 years ago.

A few fundamental flaws to look out for.

I. Being one source of a cheap abundant resource. Very few people will pay for a chat client, no matter how much value it provides them. There are too many freely available competitors.

II. Transaction costs. This mostly refers to the time, hassle, and risk that come along with making online payments, that ultimately come out of the amount you can charge. If the value you are providing is very small, but among a billion people, these transaction costs can prevent you from monetizing.

Any other things to look out for before going for a monetize-later strategy?

<comment><USER4> I don't disagree. The question in both of the cases you mention comes down to value-- in both cases, the marginal value provided to the user is too small. The fact that people are using your site doesn't necessarily mean that there is much value there to be extracted.

I'm not suggesting a "monetize-later" strategy, mind you, but if that's the plan, I'd think it a good idea to make sure you have something that can actually be monetized.

<comment><USER6> Another thing that is somewhat interesting about the social networking aspect of some of these ventures is that it makes it easier for people to socialize against you. This could mean something like "fight facebook so they don't charge us" to "let's move to shmacebook they have cool feature xyz". So switching from non-pay to pay could be more troublesome than anticipated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How are you planning to pay for your hosting costs, advertising, marketing, branding, design, coding, food, rent, a car, and all the other luxuries in life?

That money has to come from somewhere.

How much money do you want and or need to survive? How many jobs do you want to create for others? How long do you want to retire? What are your plans over the next 1 year, 5 years, 10 years...?

What do people want to pay for? Well, people don't like waiting. Once they decide they want something, they want it now now now.

People pay for food. You have to eat. People pay for management of life's necessities. People pay for more life. They pay for less fear. They pay for convenience. They pay for more time.

They pay for more money.

They pay for less cost. They pay for more entertainment. They pay for more control over their environment. They pay for vision. They Pay for stability, accessibility, consistency...

What do you want them to pay you for?

</comment><comment><USER8> Paul Graham once told me something about this...

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=153547>

<comment><USER9> Not just "once", but "a year ago today Paul Graham told me...".

<comment><USER8> Interesting observation - I didn't even notice!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There was an podcast yesterday here about "pricing is hard" or something like that. It was about how to price an enterprise app. One suggestion was to ask the client, "How would you use this app if it were free?" The idea being to find out just how useful the software could be to the client if the client maximized use of the software. The more your product is worth to your client, the more revenue it should generate for you.

By initially pricing your product for free, you're carrying out the free- pricing thought experiment for enterprise software in real life: you get to actually see how your potential clients would use your software if it were free. You encourage them to make maximum use of the product. Then, you can figure out how to price your product to reflect it's value to the users.

<comment><USER11> Having a conversation with a prospect where the product is hypothetically free is different from giving your product away. One example: some prospects won't use a product in their business unless it's supported (and they assume if it's free that they won't get reliable support). Giving it away won't allow you to assess how they value it. Also, as a rule of thumb it's easier to drop prices over time than raise them.

See "The Penny Gap" for another perspective on the difficulty of starting free and charging later: <http://redeye.firstround.com/2007/03/the_first_penny.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Depends on the kind of startup you're starting. If it's Facebook or Twitter, yes. If it's PollEverywhere, no.

<comment><USER6> Can you give a bit of insight into this? It seems to me that facebook or twitter are simply a reinvention of the same kinds of companies that started and failed in the dotcom era.

I thought the lesson learned was that technology companies are not magic. And one should invest in companies with a sound business model. What about twitter or facebook invalidates this?

<comment><USER12> The lesson learned was to not to avoid companies that aren't currently profitable. It was to avoid companies that could never be profitable-- e.g. because they were buying users. Facebook and Twitter aren't doing that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Ask yourself this question: what fraction of businesses that want to be ad- supported actually turn enough of a profit to be worthwhile? If the percentage is high enough for you to consider it a reasonable risk then go for it.

[edit] I can't imagine starting a business unless I knew exactly who would buy the product, why they would do so, and I had a fairly good idea of how much they would pay for it. That means I start by figuring out what people need and then examining if I can provide it. But I'm not a millionaire yet.

If you just throw something against the wall to see what sticks, something will. The question is will it be enough to be a worthwhile use of your time?

</comment><comment><USER14> If it's a "startup", then no: monetization should not be an afterthought. If it's just a project (even if its a very involved project) that you'll benefit from in other ways, then maybe.

Right now, I'm (barely) working on a (project|potential startup) that I _know_ that me and a few friends will have a ton of use for. I have a few ideas re: how to monetize it, but it's less of a concern for me right now. Right now, I'm just building a killer project for less than 100 people to use. If other people find it useful, awesome. If they don't, my goals will be reached with the project anyways.

</comment><comment><USER15> It depends on your objectives.

If you take angel/institutional money, you should at least have a good idea of what billion-dollar-plus market you're going after.

How specifically you monetize within that market can't always be pre- determined because its a function of a really good product (which takes a lot of morphing/iteration).

It's not a good idea to bank on advertising (unless you're building an ad network) or unless you're product has a great context for capturing purchase intent (from which you can do some pretty killer lead-gen/affiliate).

</comment><comment><USER16> Totally depends on the market you are serving, the size of the opportunity, and the amount of cash you think you can drum up.

But it's certainly viable to first create something that people would rather chew off their own arm than give up (Google, Facebook, Twitter).

It's also great to have a revenue model out of the gates (salesforce.com).

What's the startup idea?

</comment><comment><USER17> If you have access to a research library, you could do some research and write a feasibility study in a day of work. A feasibility study would be the first draft of your business plan after working on it for a day.

Do some basic market research at the library, know how big your market (users) would be and some basic information about them (are they 13-25 WoW players or 30-45 baby booomers.)

Find similar services to your idea and do some research on them. Even if your idea is really novel, you can find replacement products and research them. e.g.: My company is a lot like Hacker News, but for serious hard core chefs. Hacker News make X amount of dollars with a userbase of Y users, we could probably do something similar.

So spend one day of research and produce a 1-2 page document with your research. That will really help you start to think of how to convert an idea or service into a business. Even if you have a strong idea of how to make money on a service, knowing this basic info will help you polish your ideas and help you sound really smart when talking to investors, potential partners, and even customers.

</comment><comment><USER18> I believe you should do it if you can build, promote and manage it without any cost structures...

I think Facebook/Digg would be vastly profitable if they didn't employ all those people. Do they need to?

</comment><comment><USER19> Don't rely only on your perceptions of whats valuable, ask others... you'd be amazed what people will pay for, things like data, pro accounts, products tangentially tied to the purpose of the site etc...

if you'd be willing to share some of the basic details of the idea I'm sure we'd be happy to act as armchair quaterbacks and toss out ideas for how it makes money

</comment><comment><USER20> It shouldn't be an afterthought if you have any expectation of making money.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm guessing I wont be alone in expecting that :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> There is no harm in having a hobby, just don't let it get too expensive.

</comment><comment><USER21> The question you should be asking yourself is will the users buy your product/service? Ads or subscriptions you are still trading your product/service with your customers. Is it something that will be useful enough for them to trade some money or click on your ads? Whether they will depends on how much value they are getting in return.</comment>


Apply HN: Don't wast your food, get it tracked - <AUTHOR> 1. Scan the food you buy before storing it.
2. Get notified when an item is going to expire.
3. (if the idea gets traction) add a feature to suggest a recipe related to what you got at home.
Food saved, money saved, better environment. <comment><USER2> Whenever I return from grocery shopping, my first instinct is to throw it all in the fridge as fast as possible so I can continue with whatever it was I was doing before I left.

However, I am very guilty of buying too many fruits and salad mixes and letting them expire before eating them.

If I were to get into the habit of actually scanning everything I buy before storing it, how would this work? Would I scan a UPC? Would some sort of image recognition tell what I scanned and assign it an arbitrary expiration date?

I like the idea, but I'm wary of spending time scanning everything.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree spending hour(s) scanning or tapping is not the solution. Be fair we will be lazy to do so.

First I wanted to know if the idea got traction before investing time on it.

I was thinking about image recognition but still we have to spend time to store all the data.

I was more thinking approaching providers/supermarket to add this information on the receipt so you have just to scan it to get all needed information but this doable is worth to ask.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I have been thinking about this one a bit more. I believe the idea is to remove various sources of friction in the system. You may be able to get away with not scanning. Again, pretend the store has a system to send you the grocery bill in a processable electronic form. The assumption is most stuff is purchased from a large supermarket. Typically stuff like lot numbers, expiry, best before are know so those could be included. This information could be included into something like Google Calendar and reminders set out. Imagine someone has Amazon Alexa (was "listening to Too Embarrassed to Ask" podcast about Alexa). It would ask questions about the food: "you bought Arugula two days ago? Have you used it yet?" Privacy aside, this may be much more usable.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do like the way you are looking at the problem, but as high overview it's all down to supermarket to provide this information (if they got it and easy to share).

I was hoping to find kinda open data date for grocery food but still looking for.

Hope get more people interested on the idea so it gives me a push to explore more paths to solve the problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I have thought about this problem and like your goals. Like @rkho stated, re- scanning is a pain. Perhaps if you could somehow get buy-in with the grocery store: the store sends an electronic copy of the bill that can be processed; have a program read the bill.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes having to scan you bill/receipt is the approach I am thinking of but how are providers/supermarkets willing to give this data? or I have to find away to get these information somehow.

As I wrote in another comment, I would like to know how many are interested on this idea to see if the journey is worth to take.

<comment><USER3> @trtobe: you could ask the supermarkets. Doesn't hurt. Perhaps you would have better luck promoting this idea with grocery stores that have loyalty cards? Loyalty cards I suppose are already used to track specific users and what they purchase. I think working with the supermarkets are better because it results in a more frictionless experience.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Run with Mark (Runkeeper only) - <AUTHOR> http://runwithmark.github.io/#/ <comment><AUTHOR> Author here - a minimal dashboard that displays day number and miles run in 2016, to keep up with "Mark Zuckerberg's challenge" to run 365 miles this year.

I've been using it for about a month now, and a bunch of friends helped improving the design.

It's only for Runkeeper, but you can get a preview here: [https://github.com/runwithmark/runwithmark.github.io](https://github.com/runwithmark/runwithmark.github.io)

<comment><AUTHOR> why downvotes to the comment!?

<comment><USER2> Maybe someone hit the wrong arrow. Or ate cornflakes for breakfast even though they don't like cornflakes.</comment></comment></comment>


"SQLite is not designed to replace Oracle. It is designed to replace fopen()." - <AUTHOR> http://www.sqlite.org/whentouse.html <comment><USER2> Even though SQLite isn't designed to replace Oracle, I'm certain there's plenty of companies that have purchased expensive Oracle licenses for projects where SQLite would have worked perfectly well. I've often used it for web- based custom CMS's of one kind or another where many people would have used MySQL and the client would never know the difference. I'm sure many people have used Oracle for web-based internal tools like this with less than a million rows of data.

<comment><USER3> Regardless of how much fun lamenting the assumed technical incompetence of enterprise software development can be, I strongly doubt that this has ever happened. Oracle is _very_ expensive, and SQLite is _very_ limited outside its clearly delineated use cases.

Oracle versus PostgreSQL or possibly MySQL -- maybe. But don't think Oracle sells snake juice; their reporting tools, for instance, are top-notch and way beyond what the open source world can provide.

<comment><USER2> Believe me, I wasn't trying to have fun at someone's expense. I think factors other than incompetence can account for this, like just simple ignorance.

I was more speaking to how easy it is to underestimate SQLite's flexibility and power and not realize how wide its use case actually is.

Of course for many use cases Oracle's tools are the best choice, but SQLite can handle quite a serious dataset in some use cases. A million records sounds like a lot. I can easily imagine crews used to working with Oracle using it for project far below its ideal capacity when they can buy licenses on a big corporate account.

<comment><USER4> I worked with a thirty-million-row dataset for my thesis (after MongoDB famously choked and ate half my data more than once) with SQLite and it didn't bat an eyelid. It was fast as hell, too.

<comment><USER5> Size isn't the problem with SQLite databases. It's that it's unbearably slow with even fairly trivial joins and most of the other operations where it'd make sense to actually have an SQL database. SQLite is fine for tabular data, but then, so are a bazillion other things. Basically it's the perfect SQL database for the times that you shouldn't be using an SQL database.

<comment><USER6> I don't quite agree with that. One advantage I see for using SQLite is that you CAN use it as an SQL database for administrative purposes: You can quickly import/export the data from or into another SQL database, you can quickly generate an ad hoc report, etc.

So to me, the SQLite use case is often where the PRIMARY purpose of a database could be served nearly as well with fopen(), but where it's likely that there will be SECONDARY uses for which having a convenient universal access method would be useful.

I've even considered writing an external table plugin for SQLite to facilitate diagnostics and reporting of a complex ad-hoc file format I designed so I could get those benefits with a custom data structure; unfortunately, doing that seems somewhat complex in SQLite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I first used SQLite because I thought (in C++) "Man, instead of writing crazy datastructures, I wish I could just use SQL on a spot in memory" SQLite came up in my Google search, and ta da!

Of course, this was back in 2003 or so, and that project never turned into anything more than a fancy wrapper over SQLite and Lua.

Still, SQLite == awesome, when it is appropriate.

<comment><USER8> SQlite is a gem; when we develop web sites for clients, we first try to use sqlite, and if not we use MySQL and PostGres; we only use mssql, oracle when the customer has already a legacy database. What about you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> We use SQLite exactly for that. At some point we were generating +50000 shader (.hlsl) files for 3 different platforms (so much due to various techsets and techniques).

Loading them back from the tools/game took a long time, for that reason they were put in small SQLite db - which is a little bit more complex than this "CREATE TABLE files (key, value)"

This sped up us significantly. We might be using this idea for more and more small files lying around.

</comment><comment><USER10> I use SQLite exclusively in my projects, I love it. Easy to use, easy to backup (1 file), doesn't rely on a SQL database running, no security concern with username/password for the database engine (altho make sure your database file isn't web accessible)..

For any small/medium site it's great.

<comment><USER11> Agreed. And the database can grow surprisingly large (multi GB with many millions of rows) and it still performs quite well.

<comment><USER12> This surprises me. Though I've used it with great success for several small projects, my only experience with SQLite on anything remotely large was a Rails app with maybe a million records in the DB. Over time, performance became very slow and switching to MySQL made a world of difference.

At the time, I attributed it to SQLite, but now I'm wondering if it was Rails or (more likely) my inexperience at optimizing performance of the app at that time.

It was about three years ago, though, so I am sure performance in SQLite (and Rails, too, for that matter) has also likely improved a lot during that time.

<comment><USER13> In SQLite, autocommit is on, so if you weren't explicitly setting your transactions, you might have been commit after each update. Also, the standard disk cache is 2MB, so if you think your DB should have more memory than that, up it with default_cache_size.

<comment><USER12> Ah, I wasn't, so that combined with pilif's comments regarding the file being locked for writes would make a lot of sense as to why things were slowing down.

Thanks for the info.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Wow, more projects should have a page similar to this one. Upvoted because it's good to keep in mind when thinking of sqlite _and_ when documenting your own project.

</comment><comment><USER15> By the use of "an", I learned that I have been pronouncing SQLite wrong. The maintainers clearly prefer the spelling out of SQL in the title.

I've always been on the "sequel" side of pronouncing SQL (hey, it's no worse than "scuzzy" for SCSI), which morphed SQLite into "Sequelite". I never realized how bizarre that sounded (almost more like a material than a database).

<comment><USER16> So does that become S-Q-L-ite or S-Q-Lite, you think?

<comment><USER15> Good point. I was going for SQL-Lite. But being wrong (and hearing enough people say "lie-nux" [and to be clear, I am not mocking ... we read things and form our own pronunciation because we often don't hear them said] ...) I decided to google it.

This isn't necessarily authoritative or well researched, but it appears that S-Q-L-Lite is correct: <http://blog.cleverly.com/permalinks/247.html>

<comment><USER17> As an aside, to follow Linus' pronunciation, it is Lee-nucks, from the Finnish way of pronouncing "Linus." Americans are used to a different pronunciation of the same name and thus generally adopted a different way of saying "Linux."

Language is fascinating!

<comment><USER18> Linus is a native speaker of Swedish, not Finnish.

<comment><USER19> The pronunciation of 'Linus' is pretty much the same in Swedish and Finnish, though.

<comment><USER18> Surely the U differs. To Sweden-Swedish ears at least, Linus in Finnish sounds like Linos.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I suppose it depends on your definition of "simplicity". My go-to simplified data storage container is Berkeley DB. (Little did I realize Oracle recently shipped a Berkeley DB with SQLite inside it... heh)

</comment><comment><USER21> Can anyone say when Oracle is justified? I have yet to encounter a problem the postgres or mysql didn't support but alas I have not worked on everything.

<comment><USER22> Support. You can properly find some solution to your issue with postgres online. Oracle can send an Oracle certified engineer who can solve your problem.

Consistency. Your enterprise depends on terabytes of hyper valuable information (Wallmart with their sales data), can you guarantee that you won't end up with corruption issues? Or that the next version will work with your system too?

That said as long as you make less than 20 mil/year, Oracle isn't likely to be the best solution.

Just a quick question: which engine do you use for your MySQL system?

<comment><USER21> InnoDB. I understand your support viewpoint but both of those dbs are opensource thereby leaving support open. From what I understand when the support comes into play is when you can sue the other party for not providing the service expected but there is company support for mysql and postgres so that still leaves me in the dark and I have never experienced corruption issues with either. Though my db experience is limited and I don't claim to be an expert.

<comment><USER4> I had experienced db corruption with MySQL years ago, when _the disk became full_. To be fair, I _think_ it was MyISAM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I love the example that this provides with respect to the conflation of "Storage" with "FileSystem", while data may indeed be stored on a filesystem somewhere, the habitual thinking that appends " to file" to the phrase "I need to save these data" seems unintentionally limiting to me.

Instead of trying to answer questions like "what should our file format look like?" It seems more interesting and valuable to ask first, "what storage is most appropriate", the answer may be REST, database, file, /dev/null, or any abstraction over one or more of these. You may then find that questions about file format, or structure simply disappear, it is the role of the storage mechanism chosen to efficently store and recover the data, use the hard work that the team that built that solution invested, and apply your own hard work to solving your own problems.

With cloud and mobile being added to the set of common target platforms (however ill-defined), I hear/read people asking "how do I read/write a file" increasingly often, when on those platforms (and many other) the concept of a file (at the application layer) may not be useful at all...

</comment><comment><USER24> Can anyone provide more info when the site says "...the file locking logic of many network filesystems implementation contains bugs (on both Unix and Windows)"?

<comment><USER25> They generally relate to NFS - e.g., Linux fcntl() used to lock NFS files only locally. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_locking#Problems>

Windows CIFS shares are fine and always have been AFAIK.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Laughed a lot! :D

</comment><comment><USER27> ... because the only use for file I/O in applications is structured tables of data? What about audio/video, documents, graphs, log-structured data, object caches, unstructured flat files, etc? Don't get me wrong, SQLite is awesome, but this is a classic example of the relational database world's pervasive attitude that they are the superior solution for any data storage problem.

<comment><USER28> Wow. Not only did you manage to completely miss the point of that statement, but you cast it up as a hasty strawman to boot. I'm quite impressed.

The choice of fopen() and Oracle was meant to convey simplicity: SQLite solves problems on the simple end of the difficulty spectrum -- problems you would normally solve with fopen(). It is _not_ for problems at the complex end, like Oracle. It's a simplified expression; reading it literally is foolish.

<comment><USER27> Damn, you are so right bro.</comment></comment></comment>


Improper operations at Tencent Cloud led to data loss worth millions of yuan - <AUTHOR> https://www.scmp.com/tech/article/2158785/tencent-cloud-says-improper-operations-led-data-loss-client-it-seeks-implement <comment><USER2> > The issue became public when the client, Beijing Qingbo Data Control > Technology, on Sunday posted a statement on Weibo, a Twitter-like social > platform in China, saying that it had suffered a data loss on Tencent Cloud > on July 20 after using the platform for eight months, and that all of the > company's data – including backup files – were lost and could not be > recovered.

The fact that both the production and backup files were affected is really concerning for others using their services.</comment>