Kansas City Was First to Embrace Google Fiber, Now Its Broadband Future Is 'TBD' - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/amp/en_us/article/xwwmp3/kansas-city-was-first-to-embrace-google-fiber-now-its-broadband-future-is-tbd <comment><USER2> I live in Kansas City and it's clear the author has never been here. The opener is ridiculously off, its laughable. People do anything for headlines these days...

>"The shared interests of Kansas City, Kansas, and Kansas City, Missouri, pretty much start and end with the Royals."

They are so connected, most people don't even know where one starts and one ends???

\</comment><comment>-

Google Fiber is pretty much everywhere here? I wish the author had actual knowledge of what areas are not covered?

<comment><USER3> Flyover States get Flyover Mentalities. Unfortunately.

It's laughable indeed, but at this point entirely expected. Especially for some young, budding news outlet trying desperately to appeal to hip 20-something's.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I wasn't aware that broadband meant Fiber. There's plenty of broadband providers in the KC metro area.

It's clear talking to Google Fiber installers and reps the reason why it failed was cost.

It turns it it was just more expensive than they thought to go and lay Fiber to all these sprawling neighborhoods.

In my opinion, they also miscalculated the "size" of Kansas City. Talking about it like they're including all the residents, even suburbs from the get- go. Not realizing they had to get those Fiber lines easily accessed in the city out in every direction 15-25 miles.</comment>


Can We 'Predict' the Future of Religion - <AUTHOR> https://www.analyticsindiamag.com/can-we-predict-the-future-of-religion/ <comment><USER2> Thanks God, it's dying :)</comment>


From Atoms To Bits, Physics Shows Entropy As The Root Of Intelligence - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2013/04/21/from-atoms-to-bits-physics-shows-entropy-as-the-root-of-intelligence/ <comment><USER2> Previously, <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5579047></comment>


Dictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures - <AUTHOR> http://xlinux.nist.gov/dads/

<comment><USER2> NIST is home to some amazing resources. I probably learned more about C++ from using Roldan Pozo's Template Numerical Toolkit[1] than from any other source.

[1] <http://math.nist.gov/tnt/></comment>


Turning The Tables On The Google Toolbar & Disclosure Claims - <AUTHOR> http://searchengineland.com/turning-the-tables-on-the-google-toolbar-disclosure-claims-63596 <comment><USER2> Wow. Google's Toolbar opt-in URL-tracking dialog has become more generic, indirect, and insistent over the years. It no longer includes the red 'yada yada' text Matt Cutts referred to last week.

On IE, it doesn't even offer a 'No' but rather an 'Ask Me Later', as if you'll have to agree eventually, so you might as well agree now. Kinda sneaky! (Do you think they A/B tested different wordings and went with the one yielding the most opt-ins?)

<comment><USER3>
        On IE, it doesn't even offer a 'No' but rather an 'Ask Me Later',

I freakin' _hate_ shit like that. It's from the same play book as, "Are you still cheating on your wife?"

It's not just _kinda_ sneaky, it's bullshit sneaky; it's not a yes/no option, it's yes/yes for two related, but different, things.

<comment><USER4> Facebook did the same with friend requests. Actually denying a friend request is a 15-minute-long affair that, I would bet, almost nobody actually does.

It works, though. "Not Now", most likely, has replaced "Deny Request" for good.

<comment><USER3> I pray for the day when technology has advanced to where we can be offered _three_ choices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Matt Cutts' point assumes a very naive point of view, I believe. From his/Google's point of view, it is fairly disingenuous for Microsoft to use Suggested Sites data for Bing ranking - however, there's quite a few examples (from gmail's current "ads based on not just the current email" to how DoubleClick logs Google AdSense pages a user visits to better target ads to them), where the actual benefit to a company does not line up well with the user's understanding at that point. Clarifying all these points in red bold text would probably change our Internet browsing behavior a lot.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is unfortunate. The google toolbar opt-in was one of the things that most impressed me about the company when I first joined.

<comment><USER7> It's still opt-in, is still fairly transparent about what enabling PageRank does, and still points to the full privacy policy.

Personally, I would have blown through the "Read this carefully" screen as another EULA. Even with the additional warning, and I'd bet other users do too. On the other hand, having it ask me, after being installed, about an incremental additional feature that could be enabled, but shares additional information in a quick easy to consume blurb of text... I'm much more likely to read it and ponder what clicking "yes" will do.</comment></comment>


[LIVE] the European Parliament is holding a workshop on Blockchain - <AUTHOR> http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/news-room/20170504IPR73448/science-and-technology-options-assessment-meeting-11052017-(am) <comment><AUTHOR> Second part is here: [http://www.europarl.europa.eu/ep-live/en/other- events/video?...](http://www.europarl.europa.eu/ep-live/en/other- events/video?event=20170511-1215-SPECIAL-UNKN)

Starts at 12h30 Brussels time</comment>


How To Stop Losing Money On Social Media – Proven System and Case Studies - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/clement1/stop-sucking-at-social-media-socialmetric-slidecomet/

<comment><USER2> Social marketing is over-rated... no real winners there...</comment>


100 megapixels images on any iPhone - offline - <AUTHOR> http://www.displayator.com/blog/2011/07/30/100-megapixels-images-on-any-iPhone-offline.html <comment><USER2> There's an Android app called "Image Viewer" that'll view any gigantic JPEG by only decoding the part you're looking at. No special processing required, it'll take any JPEG off your memory card/you downloaded in the phone browser. I used it to view a high-resolution PDF bike route map converted to a 20 MB JPEG for viewing on the road - works great. The icon is ugly as sin though.

<comment><USER3> Figured that'd t be hard to find an image viewer called "Image Viewer" but it seemed almost impossible - even when restricting the search to ugly icons :p Who's the developer/market-URL?

<comment><USER2> <https://market.android.com/details?id=image.viewer>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Who the hell needs it?</comment>


Making a commit with the Github API - <AUTHOR> http://swanson.github.com/blog/2011/07/23/digging-around-the-github-api-take-2.html

<comment><USER2> Very fascinating, a static file blog backed by git is powerful, back by github would allow for a lot of features. I can see the power I get with editing code easily applied to writing with the same usability I get from WordPress or something similar.

</comment><comment><USER3> Off topic, but I noticed in your post you said:

> but I liked the idea of keeping an "engineering notebook" as I work.

I've created a site Labradoc (<[http://www.labradoc.com/>](http://www.labradoc.com/>)) that is a low friction way to keep an engineering notebook (or as I call it--a project log). For me it makes a huge difference in being able to keep track of multiple side projects.

You might like to try it out.

Also, thanks for the pointer to the Javascript Markdown parser "Showdown"-- I've been wanting to get a Markdown live-preview working for Labradoc and that seems like it could do the job. :)</comment>


Who owns Wikipedia? - <AUTHOR> http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/12/who-owns-wikipedia.html <comment><USER2> Seth Godin says we own Wikipedia. But a comment on a recent post on my blog suggests this may not be true.

<http://r2.ly/5zam></comment>


What does the world search for? - <AUTHOR> https://gramener.com/search/#questions/how-to- <comment><USER2> For it's hopes, fears, loves and dreams.</comment>


Tips for Mathematical Handwriting (2007) - <AUTHOR> https://johnkerl.org/doc/ortho/ortho.html <comment><USER2> When I went back to school I had to take math again, which wasn't my best subject in school. I was determined to figure out why I could understand the material, yet consistently never quite did as well as I thought I should have on tests. So I kept a journal of every mistake I made so I could categorize them and understand them. Most of the mistakes were very specific handwriting mistakes, but they were very particular to how I personally tended to write things. By changing how I wrote a few numbers and letters, I eliminated all of those mistakes. I didn't have to come up with an overly elaborate system that puts way too much thought (and not enough evidence) like in the OP. It was quite surprised that I tended to mistake 7s, qs and 9s (if the loop is too small and there's another character written above it, you can misread some of my more atrocious attempts at writing 9), or that I would fail to properly coil the 6 and make it look like an overly spiraled 0. Meanwhile, I never once mistook a 1 for a 7 and my solution to the letter O is just to never, ever use them in math.

My advice is actually that mistake journal: it was the single best thing I ever did for a math class. Figure out what mistakes are actually happening and develop a system or habit to avoid that actual mistake.

<comment><USER3> >my solution to the letter O is just to never, ever use them in math

That seems reasonable. My solution was to slash my zeros, to the point that it takes conscious effort not to.

<comment><USER4> How do you visually differentiate nulls from zeroes? That's what stopped me from slashing my zeroes, I've considered dotting them, but it's not relevant for me anymore. I slash my 7s though, and form my 1 like that character, I don't miss off the up-tick.

Primarily nowadays I'm writing on a tablet and need to be very precise to make it readable.

<comment><USER3> >How do you visually differentiate nulls from zeroes?

My zero is a continuous line, starting top right and angling sharply left-down after a ~360° oval. That nicely makes it writable in one fluid motion.

My null/empty set is a somewhat smaller circle and a separate slash starting and ending visibly outside the circle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The response from a(nother) mathematician: don't worry too much about this specific advice; it's one guy's convention, not dogma. But _do_ have very definite conventions of your own to which you adhere carefully and faithfully, whether they're this author's or anyone else's, or your own custom blend. As the author mentions, too many undergraduates don't pay attention to distinctions among similar-but-different symbols, but I've seen even professional mathematicians who don't distinguish properly among, for example, w, ϖ, and ω. (I even refereed a paper once whose author didn't distinguish between o and 0 as subscripts!) Don't be one of them!

<comment><USER6> This, exactly.

One other consideration is to pay attention to your colleagues. Sometimes more specific fields have conventions, and it's probably a good idea to follow them. For example, physicists universally* write a cursive v, not the shape preferred by the article author. You should do that too, if you want to communicate with physicists.

(*At least in my experience as a US almost-PhD in physics. And yes, it does help if you have to, say, calculate the velocity of a neutrino beam....)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm of mixed feelings about all the Greek letters used in physics, math, etc. Eventually (after years of hard learning how to understand the underlying equations physically) I got over the hurdle of them always instantly making any equation more complicated and hard to understand -- and instead seeing them as just constants that could be basically ignored for most of the procedure (in many settings).

I do still feel though, that they are a legacy of when all these fancy old Greek-reading scientists could flex their knowledge of unfamiliar symbols and choose to make it hard for people who couldn't grasp it immediately. ("Now to simplify the equation let's introduce the zeta function into this expression!")

Lowercase Xi and Zeta were the worst. Never mind that they were the rarest and always most complex (visually) of letters to be used -- but also always horribly written by students/teachers, and made it even more incomprehensible.

I have similar feelings about the bra/ket notations in QM.

<comment><USER8> I don't get the issue. It's just notation. You could "feel" the same way about the integral sign or fractions or about underused letters in your own alphabet.

When the greek letters are used, they usually give you a clear indication that they are "something different" from the things written. It's much either to understand that alpha, beta, gamma, delta are some counterpart to a, b, c, d than if you had to use i, j, k, l (for example).

Lowercase Xi is indeed always written horribly (like a tornado), but at least in my studies, everyone wrote it equally horribly and all in the same way.

<comment><USER9> For my first encounter with lowercase xi, I was sure the professor was taking advantage of his tenure and trying to pass off a scribble as a variable, and that was _with_ my having made a point to familiarize myself with the Greek alphabet the previous semester. Somehow I don't remember him bothering to pronounce it!

Then there are the German algebraists who developed ring theory, for whom Greek letters were not sufficient -- they reached for their Fraktur. The correspondences for certain letters -- like A and S -- can be inscrutable to neophytes.

While I get why notation shouldn't matter, I do find it to be more tiring to read new notation where I don't already have an internal pronunciation.

<comment><USER10> Apparently set theorists weren't satisfied with Greek, Fraktur or blackboard bold, so they use (at least) aleph and beth from Hebrew.

<comment><USER11> I wish we used more Cyrillic characters in math, just to keep things varied.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wish we'd been taught this in high school.

One habit I _did_ learn in high school is writing x as two 'c' shapes in a mirror image. This is clearly an x rather than a multiplication symbol. I prefer it to the version listed in the article.

I find it hard to distinguish the author's X/χ

<comment><USER13> X written as )( is the absolute worst. It always looks like two parenthesis when I'm grading student writing and I have no idea how to parse what they write.

<comment><USER14> In high school my teacher preferred that to distinguish it from the multiplication symbol. These days I write it as a times with a hook at the top-left to distinguish (a la most cursive styles, but disjointed), with the added bonus that I write uvwxyz all with the same top-left hook that helps visually group them together, matching their typical role in mathematical writing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's not entirely true that context can't help disambiguate mathematical notation. The situations in which it's common to use a lowercase omega are quite distinct from those where it's common to use a lowercase w. Even if both appear in the same formula, they will tend to have very different roles. Good notational choices also try to avoid these ambiguities. You probably shouldn't use v and nu at the same time, even in typeset math.

</comment><comment><USER16> Reminds me of my first analysis professor. He managed to explain the proofs while writing them with chalk on the blackboard, all equations nice an clean like the Latex in our scripts - while we struggled to keep up with his pace, was impossible for us to copy it all. He came across a bit dry, overstructured, exact, but also kind and humble - maybe like you imagine a German mathematician.

<comment><USER17> Don't waste time in lecture taking notes. Pay attention and think.

Save your rote copying for homework time.

<comment><USER18> Often people take notes because it actually helps memorise and pay attention what's being said, without any intention to read the notes at all afterwards.

<comment><USER19> I'm like this, and many I know. I suspect the actual memorising comes when writing, creating the muscle memory. If not written, I can't ensure I'll remember.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "Put a loop on the q, to avoid confusion with 9"

yet the given example looks like a (badly drawn) 8 to me

<comment><USER21> Yes, a tick up and right at the bottom of the q's tail is clearer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Loop your l's, and cross your sevens and your z's to avoid confusing them with ones and twos. Exaggerate the differences between your i's and your j's by looping your j's. Curve the base of your t's to avoid confusing them with f's. Math is a lot harder to do when you cannot distinguish your variables from each other and numbers.

<comment> h-cobordism And also make sure to distinguish between your pi's and your n's! I can't count the number of times I've mixed the two up while finding Fourier coefficients.

<comment><USER22> This is why I exaggerate the pi's top cross (like a capital T with two legs). A lot of people write pi in a way such that the top cross has no dangling edges[0]. I always try to exaggerate the unique features of symbols. One can avoid a lot of these problems by first exhausting the least overlapping symbols.

[0] See left variant: [https://pm1.narvii.com/6331/cb50e106b141735ad714b934eb18ea55...](https://pm1.narvii.com/6331/cb50e106b141735ad714b934eb18ea55b8d6b66d_hq.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "Put a loop on the capital O so it doesn't look like a zero"

I do no put loops on O's, but to this day I have a habit of writing a stroke (in forward slash direction) inside zero.

<comment><USER24> But now it looks like a Theta!

<comment><USER23> My printed or cursive thetas have horizontal or tilde like bar in the middle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The most maddening for me was using letter pairs such as u and v, or zeta and xi, that are just handwriting death traps. No matter how good you are, you're going to screw up once, and kiss your derivation goodbye.

Plus, as good an idea as it sounds, telling my hands to make the same letter the same way twice is hopeless.

</comment><comment><USER26> In my teaching, I tend to write a lot of Greek letters on the board. Students from physics and mathematics are comfortable with this and can make out my squiggles easily. To make things easier for students coming from biology, I write out the names of the symbols, the first few times I use them. This helps a lot, because they are not just unfamiliar with the symbols, but also the words I use when I talk about them.

Another thing I do is to pronounce symbols in both the Greek and the American ways. That helps them in other classes, because where I teach, the professors are about evenly divided in their pronunciation.

PS. my squiggles are basically identical to those in the article under discussion here.

</comment><comment><USER27> _Don 't_ loop the 2 or you'll have the problem with alpha, as they show a few lines later.

Crossing the Z resolves the need to loop the 2.

</comment><comment><USER28> I can tell the design is ad-hoc. There is a science to manual writing, the author appears to be unaware of it (I guess by virtue of being born into an English speaking nation which afaict never saw fit to follow other ones who had already developed relevant standards in the 1960s). I see a couple improvements so that the proposal falls more in line with those standards:

1 should have an upstroke.

0 should have a loop, dot or stroke, not O.

q descender should have a stroke, not a loop.

9 should have a round bottom.

g descender should have a loop.

Latin letters should be written in script form, not block letter form, notably: ℰ, 𝒢, ℐ, 𝒥, ℒ, 𝒴, not E, G, I, J, L, Y.

</comment><comment><USER29> I guess the tip with the "hooked x" is not so perfect because the result can be confused with a chi (which is in fact rather a hooked x than a slashed wave like in the article).

</comment><comment><USER30> I was a math major and started doing all of this very quickly because I couldn't read my own work. I would put this in the realm of common sense.

</comment><comment><USER31> My cursive "x" looks quite similar to my cursive "n". In my Real and Abstract Analysis exam, IIRC, I remember writing a limit expression, as n goes to infinity, that involved no "x" variable. The professor read it as an "x", despite the context, and promptly marked it incorrect. It taught me to make my handwriting unambiguous, but I'm still bitter about this, some 15+ years later :P

</comment><comment><USER32> My biggest gripe in school and now isn't legibility, but wondering if the professor / author is using his Greek letters as some magic, universal constants or just throwing them in as variables because it's "convention". Spend more time hunting down context and the "With {} as {}" section than understanding the equation.

</comment><comment><USER33> > Put a loop on the q, to avoid confusion with 9

I already put a loop on g. I put a little "serif" bar on the stem of the q.

</comment><comment><USER34> Do we need everyone to memorize these guidelines or do we need an alphabet that is designed to be naturally distinguishable despite stylistic differences? I feel like with cursive and handwriting focus going out of style, it isn't practical to expect convention to be followed more strictly than it already is(n't).

<comment><USER35> Since my penmanship isn't all that great, I use quite a few of these guidelines when I'm writing out math problems. At any rate, you can ignore a lot of them if, like most people, all you need is A-Za-z0-9πθ+.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> The lowercase zeta isn't right, and the lowercase chi looks just like the xes.

</comment><comment> dan-robertson I have somewhat strong opinions on this. I uploaded a similar set of symbols here: [https://imgur.com/a/gKJ3KO2](https://imgur.com/a/gKJ3KO2)

I've added notes in red, some baselines in blue and some lines at x-height in yellow.

I want to point out a few things:

1\. OP misses out the need for script and blackboard bold letters and various symbols. You want them to not be confused with letters. In particular U and set union, epsilon and set membership, and oplus and capital theta.

I think OP's eta looks wrong. Too much like an m.

One trick to use is that letters can have ascenders and descenders. Numbers can too but I don't use that. I also incorrectly write a rho as a letter with an ascender and no descender to help to distinguish it from a p. I also try to impart a big curve at the top so you won't think there could be the top of a straight line hidden in there.

I draw the top of a tau just below x-height while the bar on a t is somewhat above it. This and the rest of the t being higher helps to disambiguate.

Never use an o ("oh") or omicron and probably not upsilon either (I missed out capital upsilon because OP did too and I didn't notice). An exception is big/little O notation but I don't really like it.

I don't like OP's q. It looks too much like a double bowled g. I prefer a tick to a loop.

I tend to not have issues with 2 vs z but I do with nu vs v. I kinda dislike using nu because of it. In print I have trouble with v vs u.

I often use variant letters for some Greek letters (in particular my epsilon is what TEX calls varepsilon because it is more like handwriting and less like a print font. Similarly for theta kappa, and phi. I don't use varpi which looks too much like an omega, cardigan which is only really to go on the end of a word in Greek, varrho because I don't like it, and I don't write capital omega the modern Greek way (a horizontal line with a circle above it).

Other tricky symbols are: Angle brackets vs lt/gr. Usually context suffices. Angle brackets vs parens: just don't rely on this distinction.

Or vs v can and union vs U can usually be solved by context and spacing (you have a bigger space between a term and an operator than between factors or arguments in a term)

A final note is that I tend to write mathematics more upright than my normal handwriting. This helps distinguish inline mathematics from the rest of a sentence.

I looked through some random old notes to see if I could still read my writing and I can. The only thing I struggled with was the script C for conjugate classes because I was missing the context and struggling to guess what ccl stood for. At first I thought it was a script G.

Having written this, I realise I omitted forall, exists, nabla/del, integral sign, partial sign, therefore dots, infinity, approxequal and hbar.

A final note is that spoken names matter to o. "Twiddle" is a much better name than "tilde" because it is more naturally made into a verb. You can say "define the relation twiddle on the naturals such that a twiddles b if ..." and then you can easily use that verb when talking through a proof of eg transitivity.</comment>


Ask HN: Learning Go? - <AUTHOR> Has anyone found a great online program / course / resource for learning Go? Coming from a complete beginner level.<p>I found various one-off beginner videos, but nothing that is all connected, and nothing of particularly great quality. Is there something more structured that some HNers can recommend? <comment><USER2> A Tour of Go [https://tour.golang.org](https://tour.golang.org)

Todd McLeod on YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCElzlyMtkoXaO3kFa5HL0Xw](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCElzlyMtkoXaO3kFa5HL0Xw)

Go by example [https://gobyexample.com/](https://gobyexample.com/)

Go Documentation [https://golang.org/doc/](https://golang.org/doc/)

50 Shades of Go: Common Mistakes for New Devs [http://devs.cloudimmunity.com/gotchas-and-common-mistakes- in...](http://devs.cloudimmunity.com/gotchas-and-common-mistakes-in-go- golang/)

Two Free Books [http://www.golang-book.com/](http://www.golang-book.com/)

Build Web Applications with Go [https://github.com/astaxie/build-web- application-with-golang](https://github.com/astaxie/build-web-application- with-golang)

Not really aimed at beginners, but Francesc Campoy's YouTube channel is really good. Just for Func. [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_BzFbxG2za3bp5NRRRXJSw](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_BzFbxG2za3bp5NRRRXJSw)

For more advanced topics, anything by Kelsey Hightower. There are several of his conference talks online.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> When I decided to learn Golang I picked up the "Introducing Go" book ([https://www.amazon.com/dp/1491941952](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1491941952)), which is a long tutorial with good exercises at the end of each chapter. It was what I was looking for, a long enough book to give me a taste of what the language is like so that I can decide whether to pick it up for a serious project or not.

Good luck!</comment>


Crypto mining giant Bitmain reveals heady growth as it files for IPO - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/26/bitmain-hong-kong-ipo/ <comment><USER2> Bitmain reports financials in halves instead of quarters, disguising downturn with incredible growth from the beginning of this year

might be a better title, though it is a little long.

<comment><USER3> As a matter of fact, semi-annual reporting is standard in Hong Kong Stock Exchange. It requires only semi-annual reporting, for long-term investing.

[1] [https://www.arx.cfa/up/post/569/Asia-s-Financial- Reporting-F...](https://www.arx.cfa/up/post/569/Asia-s-Financial-Reporting- Frequency.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Classic gold rush pattern: the people who outfit the miners do better overall than the vast majority of people who do the mining.

(Generalizing here, but seems similar to California in 1849, Yukon in 1898, and several others)

<comment><USER5> Interestingly, Bitmain sold most of its Bitcoin and accumulated tons of Bitcoin Cash, leading to hundreds of millions of dollars in losses, so they also seem to have burned themselves on the gold rush as well.

<comment><USER6> Did they then sell the Bitcoin Cash after its price declined? I wouldn't say they lost anything until they sell their asset at a loss.

<comment><USER7> Not even if it drops down to 0? I'd say it counts as a loss as it goes down, even if you haven't sold it yet. You can't say that you have 3 billion in assets because "in the future it's hopefully rise in value!"

<comment><USER6> [https://www.reviso.com/accountingsoftware/accounting- words/l...](https://www.reviso.com/accountingsoftware/accounting-words/loss)

> Losses can result from a number of activities such as; sale of an asset for > less than its carrying amount, the write-down of assets, or a loss from > lawsuits.

Seems like some action needs to be taken for it to be considered a loss.

<comment> village-idiot There's a split between the technical definition of a loss, which requires a sale or transfer, and the layman's definition of a loss, which does not.

Technically if you hold an asset that's traded down to 0, you haven't _realized_ the loss yet. But the average civilian would say that you've "lost everything".

<comment><USER8> Companies are valued based on cash flows + assets. That value can change even when they don't sell assets.

EX: If a hotel chain was destroyed by a hurricane it's stock price would drop for both cash flows and the value of properties, not when they tried to liquidate the properties.

<comment> village-idiot Not a good comparison.

First, there's a difference between an assets trading value dropping, and it being physically destroyed. With the former you can continue to hold and hope that price recovers, with the latter there is no hope that the hotel will reconstruct itself without serious cash expenditure.

Second, a hotel chain is both property and the ability to generate cash flow. If that is destroyed, the company's ability to generate more revenue is eliminated. Financial assets used for speculation typically do not generate a large amount of cash flow while sitting idle. Instead there's the expectation that they can be sold later for a profit (ideally).

Finally, there is an important disconnect between a company's assets and its stock price, since the stock price represents an expectation of future profits. If traders think that BCash will rise in the near future, they might vote up Bitmain stock before the underlying assets move in the slightest.

<comment><USER8> I said cash flow was part of the equation.

But, assuming a company had an insurance payout for their property: Then they go from cash flow A + property's worth X, to cash flow 0 + property's worth Y + insurance money in a bank account. Under your method because Y is undefined you assume it's X and then add the insurance money to the total valuation. That's really not what happens.

I don't disagree that cash flows could increase the value of the company. However, the value of assets really are part of the equation and get updated when the value of those assets change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This reads to me like Bitmain wants to cash out while it can. Not a great indicator for the blockchain space.

<comment><USER10> Maybe it's that more cryptocurrencies are moving to ASIC resistant hashes to curb Bitmain and the like also

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> IPOs of smart money companies (aka dumping your stock on dumb money public markets) generally signal the top of the market.

<comment> wc- The crypto market is down 75% to 95% or more depending on the asset. This is a last ditch effort to stay solvent after betting the farm on the bull market continuing around Jan 2018.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Matt Levine column today ([https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-09-27/sharehold...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-09-27/shareholder- value-could-be-worse))

Bitmain.

Maybe the most interesting thing about the initial public offering of Bitmain Technologies is its accounting. (Here is the preliminary offering document, here are articles about it from Bloomberg News and the Wall Street Journal, and here is an analysis from my Bloomberg Opinion colleague Tim Culpan.) Bitmain is a company that mostly sells cryptocurrency mining hardware; it also does some crypto mining itself. It seems to be quite profitable: In the first half of 2018, it had net income of $743 million, and profit from operations of $1.07 billion, on about $2.8 billion of revenue. (It seems to have had a loss in the second quarter though.) Its business seems fairly straightforward: Most of its revenue comes from selling mining hardware, most of its costs come from building the mining hardware, and the revenue greatly exceeds the costs.

But while Bitmain has over a billion dollars of operating profit, its cash flow from operations is very negative: It used $622 million of net cash in operating activities in the first half. That is unusual! But the explanation is simple:

"Our cash outflows from operations are principally payments for purchases of products and raw materials, selling and marketing expenses, administrative expenses, research and development expenses and other operating expenses. During the Track Record Period, we have accepted payment in the form of cryptocurrencies for sales of our cryptocurrencies mining hardware, and we also received cryptocurrencies from our proprietary mining and operation of mining pools, however, we do not recognize receipt of cryptocurrencies as operating cash inflows."

Oversimplifying slightly, Bitmain pays for parts and labor in fiat currency, uses those parts and labor to make stuff, and then sells the stuff for cryptocurrencies. The making-stuff part of this business is lucrative—it sells the stuff for much more than it costs to make it—but the currency mismatch is sort of muddling. Cash goes out to fund operations, but it does not come in as a result of operations.

Cash does come in, though: Sometimes Bitmain sells the cryptocurrencies. It sold $516.5 million worth in the first half of 2018. It just treats that as a cash flow from investing activities, not from operations. The normal operating cycle of paying cash to make stuff, making the stuff, selling the stuff for cash, and then using the cash to make more stuff, is completed here; there is just an extra step—and an extra timing decision, and an accounting move from operations to investing—in the middle, as Bitmain sells the stuff for crypto and then, later, optionally, converts the crypto into cash.

One could imagine a world in which Bitmain paid its workers and suppliers in crypto and the entire cycle stayed out of the fiat system, but—obviously—that is not the actual world. And one could imagine a world in which selling stuff and getting paid in crypto counted directly as operating cash flow, but that is also not the actual world (of accounting).

Anyway, between the time that Bitmain sells its stuff for crypto, and the time it converts that crypto into cash, something else a little weird happens to it:

"We account for cryptocurrencies at cost, instead of revaluing cryptocurrencies at their fair value on each accounting reference date, to avoid substantial volatility in the value of cryptocurrencies from time to time, which may distort our results of operation and financial condition. Gains or losses from the disposal of cryptocurrencies are determined as the difference between the net disposal proceeds and the carrying amount of the cryptocurrencies and are recognized in profit or loss on the date of disposal."

Is that right? I mean, it's probably right as a matter of technical accounting; I am not an expert in the international financial reporting standards for cryptocurrency but I assume that Bitmain's auditors are. But is it the right way to think about this business? It seems like the right way to think about a computer-hardware company; it isolates Bitmain's ability to build hardware and selling it for more than it costs to build. And that is, operationally, a pretty good description of what Bitmain does.

On the other hand you could also think about Bitmain as an investment fund that invests in crypto assets, and whose value as a company rises and falls with the price of its crypto assets. This would not be fair to its operating business, and you can see why it says that it would "distort our results of operations." But I am not sure it would distort Bitmain's "financial condition." It seems to me that shareholders might care about the value of Bitmain's assets, and if that value swings wildly then possibly the financial statements should too.

I realize that this is an annoying and trivializing position; it reduces any real operating business that takes payment in crypto (and holds onto it) to a crypto hedge fund with an operating business attached. But that's what using a wildly volatile currency will do for you!

One other accounting item I enjoyed is on page 197 of the offering document, under "Other Net Loss," where there is a line item for "loss of cryptocurrencies incurred as a result of cyber-security incidents." There are entries there for 2015 and 2017. They're not huge—the 2017 one was "a loss of cryptocurrencies worth approximately US$27 million, which we suspect was caused by a hacker attack"—but I like the idea of "getting your Bitcoins stolen by hackers" as a recurring expense, and I expect to see a lot more of it as more crypto-related companies go public.

</comment><comment><USER13> Is this evidence that they use their hardware to mine their own cryptocurrencies before they sell/ship it to you? I remember reading terrible reviews for bitmain and their customer service about how orders were delayed for months because cryptocurrencies were skyrocketing.

<comment><USER14> That idea never made much sense, but IIRC their disclosures show that they ship a lot more units than they have mining internally.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: I have three good ideas. Help me choose idea 1, 2, or 3. - <AUTHOR> Hi guys,
I have three good ideas, each of which I'd be capable of creating. But they're all significant investments of my time, and I really need help deciding which one is better.
My goals are: a business that will provide me with a reasonable income, in an interesting problem space, that will grow quickly allowing me to become self employed.
Having made a decision I can work much more quickly on the best idea.
________________________________________
Idea 1. Decent Performance Tools for Linux
Problem: Performance data on Linux is distributed in many places, obfuscated, and very poorly documented.
Idea: This started out as a better version of the unix top command that I mentioned on Hacker News at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=405361. I'd like to expand on this to offer a full suite of performance analysis tools - eg, an visual strace analyser, allowing you to:
* highlight errors
* focus on just what happened to a particular file
* fold 'the looking through every folder in ld.co.conf' into a neat summary of whether a library was found or not
* allow context for each recorded system call, eg, what each system call argument means, what package owns files being operated on, etc.
Pros:
* Its an area few people have explored, that I'm interested in.
Cons:
* I haven't figured out a decent way to monetize this. The community is used to free tools. Perhaps a Ghostscript style setup, where older releases are Open Sourced after a year, but the latest features require a subscription?
* Unix people often blindly prefer the way that Unix implements anything by default over alternatives - selling to them could be frustrating.
____________________________________
Idea 2. Overseas Buying Agent
Problem: When you travel, you can often find particular clothing brands are cheaper overseas. Converse is cheap in the US, but expensive everywhere else. Hugo Boss is cheap in Germany, but expensive in the UK. Australian Swimwear labels are cheap in Australia, but expensive in the US. Agent Provocateur is available in the UK, but sometimes not available at all overseas. Prada is cheap in Italy. But you can't travel all the time.
Idea: A web based overseas buying service. Full service, deliberately targeted at the fashion market, not a re-posting service. Users would log in, provide some instructions, and have a human agent purchase whatever they need in another country. The agent would open the package, insert a card, send the now 'as new' (but second hand) goods onto the user.
Pros: As an Australia -> UK expat, I have good contacts in Australia, the UK, Germany and the US. The business could be quite fun. My wife is in the fashion industry.
Cons: Potential for legal hassles, even though the goods are now second hand. Can I rely on my close friends to work, even if they're being paid?
_____________________________________
Idea 3. Security Analysis Tool
Problem: Large business need to check server's compliance to a known standard (eg, ISO security standards)  and produce a report stating the compliance results. Have noticed in my last two day jobs that the solutions to do this are incredibly poor - unpackaged software, which don't comply with modern operating systems (eg, the Linux definition files are for Solaris circa 1992), far too many false positives, and no proper guidelines to actually fixing the servers.
Pros: I know businesses want these tools. They're easy to program. The competition is both technically poor, and poor to look at (making it hard to sell).
Cons: I'd be competing with some very large software companies. <comment><USER4> I ran an operation much like #2 when I was in college (1991). Made a shitload of money doing it, had I been able to reach a wider audience it could have made for a nice enterprise.

Not only are certain brands cheaper in other countries, but products/styles within those brands are not always available in the US (double-exclusive).

FWIW, one thing I did different than what you propose was that I had people who went to the country to purchase and bring stuff back. This was more so based on how this operation came into business, than via intelligent design, but it minimized the remote "friend" problem, and with some deal hunting and advance planning, the airfare can be cheap enough.

<comment><USER5> A former VP at my previous employer quit and started shangby.com, a live shopping platform for pearls, silk and china around shanghai sitting in your living room. I think they failed. But you should check out their live shopping experience, pretty interesting.

To note: branded goods, standard stuff - remote shopping or exchanges would work. Essentially one is safe when you have a fair idea what is going to be in your package. Else it is a strict no for online buying and more for remote buying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Re: (3):

* There are at least 20 products in the regulatory compliance (GRC) category, and more in the system scanning category.

* What's more, IT security teams resist buying from tiny companies, because they need to integrate their purchases into their processes and need to know that they're going to get long-term support.

* Most GRC products are sold via direct sales teams (pinning their price to over 50k/sale), which makes it hard to compete without a direct salesperson. Security _is_ a category where low price connotes low quality.

* The sales cycle on new security products is very long --- 2-4 months, with high engagement through the process.

I wouldn't do (3) unless I had a _really_ good idea about how to do it in a new way; that idea should be better than "good looking UI", because as soon as customers express a preference for good UI, all your competitors will drop 20k on a designer to get the merit badge.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed re: everything.

I have a fairly good idea of the competitors, as I've used most of them, and my ideas are much better than a good looking UI, and working policies - <USER2> fact that the largest security company in the world can't even supply those basic things makes me think the areas a good target.

Understood re: 50K sales, and agreed re: steak and stripper sales guy - <USER3> already have a guy in mind. Agreed re: long engagement - as an architect in my day job I'm on the other end of the coin daily.

In the general entrerprise space, I'd basically be a ServiceNow equivalent to Remedy - multipronged attack on an established competitor at 80% of the price.

<comment><USER6> A little confused as to why you, as a sole founder with little hope of securing funding, would choose a direct sales product with a 4 month sales cycle. But, best of luck!

<comment><USER7> I wonder if there's a rule-of-thumb formula that can be applied. "Don't attempt a product with an N-month sales cycle unless you have a company of at least N*M employees."

I suspect M is closer to 10 than 0.25.

<comment><USER8> If you can leverage contacts to shorten the first few sales then a very small team (2-4 people) can endure the true sales cycle until you pick up momentum.

<comment><USER6> If your contacts own the budget _and_ purchasing, maybe. Otherwise, you're probably deluding yourself to think that personal relationships are going to cut the sales cycle on an enterprise product. The sales cycle on a securty product at a BigCo includes:

* Weeks of presentations and demos (this part you can cut with relationships)

* Weeks of pilot deployment, which in this guy's case will involve coordination between security, architecture, and server IT.

* Weeks of user education and training (something everybody forgets about).

* Weeks of back-and-forth about missing features and requirements.

* Weeks of negotiation for first PO, assuming all the previous stages went well.

* 3-5 months of delay waiting for receivables.

What friendships will do for you in this process is eliminate the hidden "in- between" steps where people get distracted by their real jobs for 1-3 weeks and don't return your phone calls. But most people don't have friends in BigCo's that can simply cut them checks.

Also, when you try to shop this to VC, most of them aren't going to be impressed by the demo and pilot deployments you've secured with your friends.

<comment><USER8> Most of the entrepreneurs we work with are over 35, and in many cases know and/or have worked with department managers and senior managers who own a budget and can influence purchasing. For the most part they are not selling applications that are mediated directly by IT in the way that a security app would be so some of the friction is taken out of the process. I do agree that for younger entrepreneurs in the security space you are offering a realistic scenario. My comment was more in response to team size vs. sales cycle than the overall thread, I should have been more specific.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As an Aussie I'd _love_ #2.

Not just for the prices, but for all the stuff that we can't buy anywhere here!

How about a service like this: I give you my credit card details and I get a name/address.

So anytime I need to order something online, it goes to: Mr 12345, Your Address here, 90210,

Whenever something for Mr 12345 comes into your warehouse - you slap my address sticker on it, and ship it off to me. (Charging my CC $10 plus postage).

<comment><USER10> You might have to answer to the custom (trading tariff?) once this business get big. (I'm guessing here.)

Great idea nevertheless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> 1.

The cons here are pretty big. Your target customer is somebody who will solve most problems with google and 3 lines of bash/perl/etc scripting. The generic .NET software shop pays for this kind of software - *nix people don't.

I've written a few more paragraphs about this, and subsequently deleted them. It all really boils down to one thing: it's a bad idea. A lot of fun to write, but there's no money to be made.

2.

It's very hard to get any kind of competitive advantage here. If your idea works somebody else will do the same thing and charge less for the service. Also you will spend most of your time managing your (invariably unreliable) overseas contacts, leaving you no time to do anything else. This seems to be the kind of company that is fun in the beginning, and then turns into a nightmarish chore.

3.

I kind of like this idea. You have domain knowledge here, and already a few potential customers (or at least companies that can give you some feedback.) It's a niche, and there's still money to be made. Best idea so far.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think number two is your best bet but instead of being a sort of shop overseas service, you should make storefronts focused on one of the brands at a time. Try to make your visitors feel like they have just stumbled upon something thats exclusive and secretive and they are sure to tell their friends.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you're right about focusing on brands - it makes the benefit quite apparent for potential customers - but I'd like to avoid targeting a brand directly as it invites legal hassles.

Your second suggestion is spot on - I'd pitch it as an ínternational buying service' much like very wealthy people have. You could even tie in beta testing with Éxclusive' invites, etc.

<comment><USER13> I just had my mother-in-law pick up some Blundstones for me in Melbourne for about 63 USD, whereas if I want to order them in the US they're at least 145 USD. So I vote for #2 as well :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The second idea is a cutthroat business. The competition will be fierce and they will be as agile as you are. Number 3 sounds reasonable, but have a way of reaching your customer before jumping in.

You absolutely cannot rely on friends. If your business depends on that, forget it.

</comment><comment><USER15> I ran idea 2 with my in-house shopping expert (gf) & her first reaction was 'This is so old-fashioned, plenty of people are already doing that on bbs/forums'. So people are already doing it, how are you going to make it better? <http://www.dolc.de>. (in the second-hand forum / Chinese)

What about taxes? Fraud? You'll need a solid reputation system. I like the idea though.

<comment><USER16> I think there's a difference between a real second-hand item and an item that legally is second hand, but has never been worn.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like #2, especially given the other testimony by 'brk' about having made money with a small-scale version of the idea.

There are potential problems in tariff/trade laws, consistency of customer experience, and fraud. But solving those problems gives you your defensible advantage.

Beyond your initial friends, you might wind up with an enthusiastic community of 'buyers'/traders who are working more for the fun/access of it than high salaries/commissions.

And the ads write themselves...

 _"Where did you get that top?"

"A little shop in Milan!"

"When were you in Milan?"

"I wasn't! Let me tell you about my little secret..."_

</comment><comment><USER17> I think number 2, whilst an interesting idea, has a lot of potential pitfalls. I wonder if this could be done in a social network sense where the community contacts the community looking for items, rather than via one centralised source. The two main barriers as I see are trust (once the money has been sent) and the legals of sending goods into other countries (ie import tax). This one would interest me the most. The Linux one could be useful, but I agree that it could be difficult to make money on it. The 3rd one is interesting on the basis that it should provide a much better service than is currently offered but your main barrier is that the larger companies prefer to deal with larger companies. You may look to sell to the likes of Capita as they could re-package what you do and they are already 'in' with these companies.

Are there any other ideas, or have you refined your ideas down to these three?

</comment><comment><USER16> I'd go with number 2. It's not high-tech as the other ideas, but it's a business with real cashflow, and is supposed to do better during a recession.

</comment><comment><USER18> #3 seems like the best option. fastest to develop.

#2 - sure, you save money on the products, but you still have to ship them and pay the buyer. and i'm sure there are legal issues. i bought a dell server recently and had to check a box confirming that i would not sell the machine to someone outside the US.

</comment><comment><USER19> Idea 3 also sounds like the only one to me that may realistically roll in some money. Idea 1 is technically intriguing but more of an OSS side-project. Idea 2 calls for legal hassles, taxes will eat into your profits and especially the "high-profile" brands that sell $10 products for $500 will probably not like you sidestepping their retail chain.

</comment><comment><USER20> I think that the other big con for idea 3 is that this is very likely to follow an enterprise sales model. Security in general is the kind of thing that is purchased relatively high up in an IT org. Not 100% clear if your idea would be in that basic mold, but if the model is that the tool runs against or sits on all servers, that would almost certainly be the case.

If you are in the "enterprise" space, that means salespeople, RFPs, support, etc and since all that costs money you are much more tied to a traditional vc model. That could be fine depending on what you want, but it feels different from the other ideas in terms of how much progress you can make on your own or with a small team.

<comment> jim-greer You could probably start by doing some consulting, with an agreement in place that you own the tools you create.

I agree with everyone who says you should do the one that interests you most.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I would do the idea that has the shortest time to producing money. I suspect that's number two, the overseas buyer system.

I would avoid the security analysis tool. The customers sound troublesome, and the competition is likely to be on grounds of the niceness of the reports or something rather and technical correctness. The field has a lot of snake oil, and to be competeing against snake oil with a real product is not necessarily a good position.

The performance analysis tools for linux are needed and might make a good product, BUT: don't do this unless you have a paying customer who wants you to write some high-performance code, and you will be abl to use free distribution of the tool to get more jobs like that.

The overseas buyer is the way to go. Try to get something that is mostly self- service, where you allow buyers to meet sellers and they handle most of the stuff between themselves. Since you will have a web site describing lots of desired goods and visitors who are looking for those goods, you might be able to get some income from adwords.

All the potential hassels described by other folks about that idea apply, but none of them have not been solved before by other import/export people. There are also many regional products in the US that might be distributed this way, such as local brands of BBQ sauces, beer (again the possible legal issues), etc. However none of this is things that Ebay, craigslist, and etsy haven't dealt with.

</comment><comment><USER22> Almost all of the objections to #2 also apply to on-line auctions. EBay is a relevant existence proof.

</comment><comment><USER23> Which one would you enjoy working on the most?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd enjoy all of them in different ways.

1 scratches a personal itch of mine.

2 I enjoy because it involves (traditional) creative industries.

3 I'd enjoy because I know that 'enterprise' software is so bad it's almost fraudulent, specifically in this area, and I'd enjoy eating these guys lunch.

<comment><USER24> As drawn as I am to #2, I think you just answered your own question. #1 is where the juice is for you. The value will come. Do it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Idea 4, which is much like Idea 3.

</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>=====

Make Open Source viable for the "medical industry." There are numerous problems with deploying an opensource application environment when it is involved in the care process. Lawyers have made this a legal quagmire to validate software installs, but it can be done, just not for small startups.

By validating linux installs on machines via a process you will lower the barrier to entry for using technology in the medical industry and it should help improve care and reduce cost over all.

Medical companies will pay large dollars at first for this service (probably on order with what they pay for other software of its type).

For example, Documenteum installs can run between $5,000,000 and $50,000,000, where IBM content manager is Cheap, it still will cost on average $500k+ and it needs to be installed on windows.

By managing the documentation correctly, one could design and configure a set of 'validated' applications based on opensource technology.

I know there is money in it, and I would have done it by now, except I am not a linux person.

PS. if you do this well, you could probably get some support from change.gov.

<comment><USER9> Zed Shaw talked a lot about building a ruby based rules engine / document management system here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=420650>

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think you need to do a little bit more research before picking one of the above. Rather than pick one now, it would be better to spend a little bit of time building up some sort of a business plan (not something to show VC's but just for internal clarity).

Of the three, the 3rd option seems to make most sense to me. The things one would look for are: 1\. Customer pain point. Of the three, the third is the most clear. For the other two, its not clear as to who the customer is, or even what pain point you are solving. 2\. Your capability to compete (niche markets would be better). 1 and 3 seem better than 2 in this regard.. 3\. Cash flow/bootstrap options: 2 and 3 seem to be better, although you may end up paying for agents sitting on the bench before business builds up. 1 is the least attractive since its unclear who will pay for this initially. 4\. Competition -- 1 has the least, 2 the most. However it might be better to have some competition, since (often) lack of any competition indicates lack of a market.

Just thoughts off the top of my head..

</comment><comment><USER27> I'd definitely go for #3. It's such a pain and companies will generally pay in a way that users hate paying. I know I get driven nuts!

#1 would be neat, but one problem would be that you'd have to price it cheaper than better hardware. For example, if your product costs $500/year and I can just double my RAM from 1GB to 2GB for $20/mo, well, I'm just going to double the RAM and save $250. Or likewise any other attribute of the system. It just seems like it would be a lot harder to sell this since most people could probably put the money into hardware and get a better result.

#2 seems interesting, but with postage, is it still a good deal? Personally, I don't see anything wrong with parallel importing - in fact, I'd argue it's a good thing since it stops manufacturers from exploiting market segregation. You're talking about doing it on things like clothing which means problems will be lower. Things like autos or electronics often have regulatory issues. If you're going this route, you might want to consult an attorney.

</comment><comment><USER28> If you're going to do #2, have a look at the references on <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_importation> .

A few years ago there was a lot of talk about parallel import on the news here in Sweden, and if memory serves they said that parallel importing into the EU was illegal (but ok within EU). Might have been due to copyright or trademark reasons, so it may not be the actual importing that was the problem. Worth looking into, anyway.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm a programmer, so I'll refrain from giving my opinion on idea 2.

Idea 3, however, seems like a good idea to me. I read the other comments, and yes it will be difficult, but i still think its a good idea.

Idea 1 might be a bit difficult to to turn into a business. In fact, it is something I've been thinking about too for a while now. I was thinking along the lines of support contracts to web hosts or similar businesses. If you choose to work on this(as a business or just on the side), I'd love to help(email in profile).

</comment><comment><USER30> idea 2

This is a Parallel Import idea, a kind of a grey market. These markets already exist in various niches & I suppose have some potential. (1) You can avoid competition from many big fellas - They can often be kept in line by various means. (2) It addresses an inefficiency in the market. (3) The shrinking world is an ongoing condition making this easier & easier for you. a few ideas:

a - I am not sure a 'buying agent' is necessarily the way to go. Seems like a high overhead.

b - Fashion is an area where retail margins are high anyway. Perhaps higher then your P(London) - P(Sydney) - Incentive to buy in this complicated manner. IE, you might make more per item simply buying @ wholesale & selling @ retail.

c - Parallel imports exist because of either price discrepancies or availability issues. The former is the bigger market while the latter might be more lucrative, given the right clients. If you can find enough people that will buy in $1-2K+ lots time (because they want things unavailable locally) you avoid the a & b issues altogether.

d - Maybe you could use the winter/summer discrepancy between England & Australia in conjunction with price discrepancy to create a double advantage. IE buy Aussie swim brands soon @ sale prices & sell in London in a month or two @ pre season prices.

</comment><comment><USER31> I like Idea 3 in terms of "you can makes money here". Your "con" on it is genuine but if you can make a product that saves time, you can compete.

The first idea seems like a nice project but its risky as to if it will ever pay the bills. It is about time for the linux world to grow into paid software utils. I certainly wouldn't mind paying for such a tool.

The second idea is too large a market to find and educate. Good service though, I'd like to have access to it if you chose this one.

</comment><comment><USER32> I've done #2 a bit while in Japan, but stopped because I didn't have enough scale. You have to first communicate about what they want, find where it is sold, take a trip there, box it, stand in line in post office, fill customs forms, do bookkeeping, answer to "where's my package omg wtf!?" e-mails and so on. For customers it was sometimes inconvenient because the packages would be stopped by customs in their home countries.

</comment><comment><USER33> A) Find the one you are most passionate about with a clear value proposition. B) Make sure there is a wave you are riding, i.e. potentially disruptive platform or something that will put the wind at your back as you ride the waves with this business. C) Make sure there is a customer that wants this- their hair is on fire, doesn't matter if you give them a hose or a fire extinguisher. (whatusername is one example).

</comment><comment><USER34> #4 keep thinking of ideas

I'd love to see #2 as a way to open up more choices, but I can't imagine ever using it. Just the shipping charges alone would keep me away.

#1, aren't there plenty of tools that do this already? Or at least they have been built already using Cacti and Ganglia in concert with other tools (Nagios comes to mind).

#3 Maybe. You can compete with very large companies if you find the right viable niche that they aren't interested in.

</comment><comment><USER35> #1: Take it and make it applicable to distributed systems/clusters and maybe you have something.

#2: Is this Fashion News? I kid. This might be a fun site to write, so long as you aren't saddled with the inventory.

#3: Consulting around security is a great way to make a buck, but building a security company of size is very difficult. Automated tools are tricky to write due to false positives due to weird user configurations.

<comment><USER35> Oh, but the worst thing to do is read this comment stream. Just pick one and do it for a while. If it flops, start another :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Number 2 is not really a new idea, but if you can make it work and become the default place for overseas shopping it would be a goldmine. I actually already use a service like this for video games (www.play-asia.com) since I live Japan but I want the English versions of games. Anyway, if you go with number 2 and you need a contact in Japan, send an email my way. :)

</comment><comment><USER37> I like #1.

Making money from that will be tough complex. Thing about how you can turn this into a product big-corp will want to shell out thousands of dollars on. (selling to individual programmers will be tougher since they are used to GNU being free)

Think about who might be interested in bundling your tool with an existing software/monitoring package.

</comment><comment><USER38> Go for #1.

Re. #2, there seem to be many human cogs that might not give end-users a consistent level of service

Re. #3, the cost of getting you software in these institutions might require a sales force, and that means to you might need to raise some amount of capital

All this said, a question: which one do you find most exciting to work on?

</comment><comment><USER39> Regarding 3): Selling to enterprises for a startup is a bitch. We recently a closed an order with ask.com for our product and the the second item in the very first slide in their go/no go meeting was 'What if Radaptive goes bankrupt'.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> So what do you think? Are they all OK? All terrible? One stand our more than the others? Thanks for any and all feedback.

</comment><comment><USER40> "I'd be competing with some very large software companies."

I would call that an advantage.

<comment><USER41> Agreed! To quote Richard Branson: pick on someone bigger than you.

<comment><USER42> That's only good advice if you can go directly to the consumer. Not the same when selling to the enterprise.

Once upon a time I founded a banking software company with my mates. To our surprise there were quite a lot of banks that appeared like shops founded by a guy and his mates as well. But still, they looked at us as if we were from a different star suggesting they buy green antennae and stick them to their heads :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Questions about #3:

Considering all the servers in the world that ought to be audited with software like yours,

1\. Who is deemed responsible for security auditing by management.ownership? In-house administrators or outside consultants?

2\. What percentage of these servers are owned by little enterprises (who don't feel the need to buy from IBM/CA/etc.) vs. Fortune 1000 companies?

3\. Of those servers whose security audits are done by consulting firms, are those firms big or small?

I'm semi-familiar with the bug tracking software space, so I'll use it as a possible parallel. Every IBM-ish tools vendor sells a bug tracking software package. They're always expensive and sometimes suck. They are sold because a salesman visits a large company and convinces them to buy a big, supposedly integrated suite of products.

Yet, FogBugz (FogCreek) and JIRA (Atlassian) seem to be pretty good businesses. My experiences suggest that smaller customers (1) won't pay 10x just because it's from IBM, (2) buy based on perception of quality/value rather than vendor image, and (3) allow their technical staff to influence purchases like security audit software.

So, back to the questions at the beginning of this post...What percentage of the audit-worthy servers are managed by the kind of people who would purchase FogBugz/JIRA? It seems that you could build you brand reputation among these folks with good blog posts, presentations at conferences, and some guest- authored security articles (the Joel model?).

Noting that I know little about security audit software, one downside may be that companies can CYA by saying, "But, we audited with [Insert big company here]'s award winning industry-standard software tool. How can you blame us for getting hacked? Management may be thinking along these lines when choosing to spend $70K on a POS product. However, your customers may be those who actually care if they're hacked or not!

I don't like #2 because I think you could easily be beaten up on margins, and I don't see why you would be better at running this business than other entrepreneurs out there.

#1 is tough because it doesn't get management attention. Management expects to buy security audit software, and risk aversion leads them to want to make a purchase. However, you'd be relying on a bunch of admins to convince management that they need your tool -- they're likely to use "good enough" Open Source alternatives.

WRT #3, You might consider a model where some basic features are free, but customers pay for enterprise-y features along with support. It's a lot easier to get your product in the door if the users can try it out without going through the hassle of convincing management to dole out $5K.

So, those were my somewhat random thoughts. I'm considering an enterprise software start-up (non-competing) that may have similar sales characteristics.

</comment><comment><USER44> I LOVE idea number 2. For example, River Island is an awesome fashion retailer in the UK (www.riverisland.com). Perfect for "going nightclubbing" kind of apparel. So a "wrapper portal" to these kinds of sites would be great, especially for people who don't know where the "hot stores" are in a given country. I happen to know about River Island, even though I live in Austin, Texas, because I happen to have spent some time in the UK, but for people who have never been to the UK and want the "hot stuff" this portal idea would fill a real need, provided you can keep your over-head low. Can you rely on your close friends to work? Good question. I agree with President Reagan, trust but verify. You might want to retain a good solicitor to help with legal issues too. I agree the competition for Idea 3 is pretty steep, and that being able to monetize Idea 1 is going to be tough. I might get downvoted for saying this, and I don't care, but I agree with SCO CEO Darl McBride that Linux is essentially a pirated copy of UNIX, and therefore you are correct that UNIX folks won't want to buy Linux tools. Just my opinion there, so downvote if you like, but I think I'm in good company, lol. Anyway, Idea 2 I am definitely exited about, and certainly if anyone here is planning to do any clubbing in the UK and needs some "hip" apparel, definitely check out www.riverisland.com. (Of course I speak from the point of view of the LGBT themed clubs, but imagine River Island would have some good stuff for more mainstream clubs too.)

</comment><comment><USER45> _My goals are: a business that will provide me with a reasonable income, in an interesting problem space, that will grow quickly allowing me to become self employed._

This is called a _lifestyle business._ <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifestyle_business> It is the opposite of a startup.</comment>