The Fridge (YC S10) Takes The Privacy Headaches Out Of Sharing - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/23/the-fridge-facebook-sharing/

<comment><USER2> Another one of "these" sites? If I want to share photos with a small group of people, I'll upload them to a Facebook album and specify the exact names that should see them. If I want to send a message to them, I'll use email, Facebook messages, Twitter DMs, or SMS. I don't need yet another site that friends need to learn about, sign up for, etc before it's actually useful.

<comment><USER3> Yup. From 2003 to 2007, I spent an enormous amount of brainpower thinking about different ways to share photos. In the near term, I failed at it.

Here's what I learned:

1\. your everyday photo taker won't pay for using a photo sharing site

2\. little revenue means assets are measured in the number of users

3\. viral adoption is needed to get to a large number of users

4\. certain features limit viral adoption

5\. people hardly ever upload private photos

6\. private photos are only shared with a handful of people

7\. photos suck up bandwidth and hard drive space like none other

8\. there are lots of other photo sharing competitors

Based on all this and about a 100 other observation points (like nobody was going to acquire the current offering) I considered doing a simple offering called FotoFluff. The idea was to create a 'fluff', a collection of photos, and then assign three URLs to it. One to view, one to allow adding, and one to allow edit/delete. You'd only need the URL to do stuff to it, so you could IM it around, or post it in public if you dared. Propegation and commenting was left to the linking sites. Viewing privacy was only as good as the users kept the URL to themselves. Display of the photos was all on one page, with an API to do more if you wanted. Like Imgur, without logins. Delete stuff that never got viewed, or was older than X many days.

I just don't think I'd try this again. I'd say it's a damn tough nut to crack.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm confused. The article suggests the site is for private groups of people to share things among themselves, free from privacy concerns.

Then the cofounder is referenced (not quoted) saying their goal is to create a social graph across groups by interest.

To me that sounds like a contradiction. How is this not selling users on privacy at the outset while intending to "convince" them down the road that privacy was never what they wanted?

<comment><USER5> It isn't actually a contraction because people create groups or join groups based on a real relationship whether a common interest, common event, or common context. Each group is silo'd from the others and if you aren't in any other groups you won't know about them.

The connections between groups only happens when people you get to know in one group start to build a real relationship that expands outside of that current group's context and lead to the creation of another group whether for another shared interest, or temporary event.

As people create more and more of these groups and these "mini-Facebooks" start to overlap users a new social graph starts to take shape not based on a 1 to 1 friend request but on real relationships, topics, and events.

<comment><USER6> That's a good explanation of what your startup is, and I wish you the best of luck, but you did not answer his question.

<comment><USER5> We aren't changing any privacy settings with a bait and switch approach but in fact every group that someone is part of is something they either were invited to and joined explicitly or started themselves and invited others. every group is still private and you only know about the groups that you are in.

As more of these groups are formed we aren't exposing what groups you are in to other people joining. In fact other people joining don't know who else is on the platform unless they are in a group with them.

So this social graph that is being built isn't based on friend requests that have little inherent value but on the different groups you are part of that are based on specific relationships.

<comment><USER7> So what's your definition of "social graph"? In what way is "my list of my group subscriptions" a social graph? Is there a bigger graph? Who has access to that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm glad somebody went and did this. Fundamentally, humans structure their social relationships in terms of groups, though the groups may not have names or be disjoint, and membership may not be binary. I think you guys are on the right track.

The biggest question I have is, how do you get people into your site in the first place? I would love to use The Fridge, but if my friends don't, what's the point?

<comment><USER5> Exactly and thanks for the feedback!

We have tried to make it super easy to start and join a Fridge. Just enter your email to create a group. To invite folks send them the group invite URL. All they have to do to join that group is click on it and enter their email and create a password. Hopefully this is a first step in making it dead simple to bring folks in to join or crate any group that needs a bit more privacy or is just a temporary network around an event so you don't have to friend people on facebook.

<comment><USER9> Three things:

1) Where is the link to the tour of the the fridge? I can't seem to find it.

2) Is there an RSS feed? Otherwise I will just forget to go there

3) Why didn't you make this 4 years ago?

<comment><USER10> (3) is nonsense.

You could ask that same question about anything ever created.

<comment><USER11> > (3) is nonsense. You could ask that same question about anything ever > created.

He wasn't being literal - he was saying, "This seems awesome and I wish I had this four years ago." Is this an American thing? I see it all the time in the States, but after thinking about it I don't think I saw it in Europe or Asia.

<comment><USER10> /me bashes head against wall. Yes, of course, you're right, I should have seen that. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If someone besides me is the gatekeeper to the group, then how is this helping privacy issues? Seems like I would be losing control not gaining it.

It does make sense to classify relationships and share based on those classifications, but I bet there is a better way.

<comment><USER13> If you don't trust someone to be the gatekeeper of the group, you logically should not trust them to view your information at all: they could always copy it and forward it on to other parties.

Maybe there's a difference if you do not trust their competence, rather than their intentions. You have recourse there, though: it's easier to test (or improve) someone's competence than to do the same for someone's intentions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Suggestion:

Place a demo group on the home page. It's very hard to figure out what this site does from the minimal home page.

Make a single click demo group with full functionality, (but reset it every hour or so to avoid it collecting too much spam). Or even better, set a cookie, and new users will always get a fresh demo, which those with a cookie will be able to keep modifying their private demo for a while.

<comment><USER5> That is a great suggestion and we just hacked one together. When someone wants to leave the demo group (too much spam or tired of the group) anyone can leave a group in Group settings and click leave group.

Thanks for the suggestion!

<comment><USER14> You should make the demo group visible without needing to register first.

Or supply a demo email address.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wonder how they are generating value? The funny thing is that it appears the group based social network idea is in the air right now, and there was even a post on HN by someone trying to make something rather similar (see: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1579400> ). Unless they move in first and fast this space will get really crowded.

They could make something that exploits their social graph, kinda like Aardvark, but that again is something really long term. So, what is their value proposition in making users join _right now_?

<comment><USER5> That is the cat and mouse problem we are trying to solve. For private networks what is the immediate value if no one is on it?

We have tried to make the sign up and group creation as simple as possible so any event or social gathering can be another use for the fridge. A crazy frat party, potluck dinner, family vacation. anything where you have a temporary social network for people to come together around, start socializing and if it dies ok. but if you make a few new relationships and create a new group or two with them that is the goal...

We know we need better tools to bring people in. But we are noticing once people are in with a few friends and groups they love our platform.

<comment><USER16> Why wouldn't I just make a Facebook event?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Privacy and sharing are opposites of each other.

When you share something on the internet, you are relinquishing control of it. Someone can always manually redistribute content you create (for instance, saving a photo you share with them). As such, you should never put content on the internet you never want being made public.

<comment><USER18> I disagree. Privacy concerns are not over intentional sharing but over unintentional sharing.

Unintentional sharing on facebook is solely caused by its horrendous interface. The interface makes it too hard to precisely determine what is being shared to whom. Given that cognitive faculties and time are limited resources, the average user will not have time to decipher facebook's sharing settings. The result is they have a high likelihood of unintentionally sharing information, resulting in privacy concerns.

In real life, if I tell something to a trusted former high school friend living in a different state, I can assume at over 98% confidence that my boss at work will never know the content of the conversation. They are two completely distinct social circles, or groups of friends. The channel of communication is different for different groups of friends. This is how real life works.

People expect a well designed website to work in the same way.

<comment><USER5> Yes. This is how we designed the Fridge. Each group is an intimate circle of people coming together around a shared context. Could be very large like an event or could be small like a family network.

But because each is separate and you can communicate freely within each group and not worry that it might accidentally get shared to another group you start to see more meaningful engagement.

Now no one can prevent someone from taking a screen shot and sending it out but like hosting a house party you trust that your guests won't be jumping on your furniture or tearing down the wallpaper (unless it is that kind of party...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I was working on something like this until BrainTrust.io revealed itself on HN. How do you guys differ from BrainTrust.io or DropBox if you are going more file focused?

<comment><USER5> Braintrust seems to be more company and enterprise centric which is a great market to grow in. Dropbox doesn't have the social component, group feed, and conversation around the media. Soon enough we will allow people to upload any media type and share it with the group and perhaps partner with a dropbox or dropio around hosting and serving the files.

However we are going to stay focused on the socialization aspect of groups and try to address this notion of simple, private, and/or temporary. Definitely more to come!

<comment><USER19> Great to hear but BrainTrust (and perhaps the creator can step in and clarify) was focused around groups of people originally until A/B testing and the ever- present need to make some income pushed it towards companies/project teams. BrainTrust has group feeds and per file discussion which DropBox does not as you've said (different focuses). Nonetheless I look forward to seeing how you guys overcome these barriers so I can selfishly learn from your approach.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If your going to go down this road having an open link in which anyone can use sounds like it could cause trouble. Another good option would be to have a list locked down at the start of the group and then require group members to ok people being added. Another idea would be people joining can only see new content.

I know this doesn't completely solve the problem but to me unless it was really locked down somehow it doesn't differ enough from what facebook are offering.

<comment><USER5> Well the invite links for each group can be reset or killed at anytime and the group owner can kick out anyone that doesn't belong at anytime.

Like i said earlier these groups are like a themed house party or potluck where you only invite your friends you know are interested in the theme and trust them to bring a good dish and not jump on the furniture.

<comment><USER21> i like the idea, but do have a few reservations/questions. I am thinking about using this for my family (cousins, aunts, etc...). Is there only one group owner? Or can there be multiple owners/admins? I'm thinking like how yahoo groups works where different users do have different permissions. Also can anyone add photos to an existing album? So let's say we all attend a family wedding and we each have photos, can they all upload to that same album? Or does it not do that...couldn't tell from the demo group.

Other than that I like the idea and fact that this type of system helps facilitate more conversation than a traditional "group" site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Props for not having the usual tired glossy design, or as I call it "page frosting". I don't see any drop shadows or gradients, and just slightly rounded corners :)

<comment><USER5> Thanks! We have a few new site coming out soon that "polishes" this up a bit but still keeps it super simple. nothing wrong with a gradient or two?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I just tried it out a bit and I must say that I think it has potential.

Small change I recommend: make the "Add photos and post" button more visible. Now you have to put the cursor in the post field for it to become visible.

I wish you all the luck.

<comment><USER5> Thanks! This was a preview version to get the site out and bang at it. We have a new version that will address a lot of these interface on ramp issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Does this site have a backup/export?

I might be interested in using it, but startups fail sometimes, and I would not like all my info to be lost if this happens.

<comment><USER5> At this moment it is on the list! We had a file export to download all media by post or by group which we are bringing back to include all posts.

Hopefully we don't go down before we get that up...!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Any plans to make this an openid server? It would be a good way to validate groups that other applications that require validation could leverage off.

<comment><USER25> For it to work at all, each user would have to have a different URL for each group they were in.

Along with nearly every other SSO solution short of LDAP, OpenID infuriatingly _only_ authenticates the username — it provides no means whatsoever for context about the user, much less group membership.

Brad Fitzpatrick (the creator of OpenID and founder of LiveJournal) has been working on a new protocol called WebFinger to add context to usernames, but so far they've avoided trying to codify a mechanism for group membership.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Seems like FB could just make it a teensy bit easier to create and manage groups and there's no longer really a problem to solve.

</comment><comment><USER27> Are you guys sharing any invites on HN?

<comment><USER5> it is actually up and open to the public now. you can create a group by simply entering your email and click "get started". Share the invite URL with your friends or input their email addresses to send an invite.

</comment></comment><comment> mike-cardwell Please make this work without javascript enabled. Even the simple login form doesn't work without it...

<comment> mike-cardwell Also, please make it 100% https.

Or at the bare minimum, secure the login so password details aren't sent as plain text over an unsecured channel

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Serious question: How will you make money?

</comment><comment><USER29> austinchang - Are you working on an iPhone app? android? blackberry?

</comment><comment><USER30> Seems they broke the fridge!

<comment><USER18> Yeah I would definitely try this out if it was working.

Facebook started to deteriorate when they made it even harder to group friends. Before it was really simple to assign someone to a certain friend- group at the same time you accept their friend request, this functionality appears to have been removed.

Facebook would be vastly better if the interface was simply more group oriented. If grouping friends as you add them was front and center. A group list, where each friend-group element contains links to functionality such as: what you share with this group, news feed\number of new posts of this group, number online to chat in this group.

Would be vastly better than having a list of groups for newsfeed, list of groups tucked away under privacy settings, list of groups tucked away in chat box. Friend Groups are parents of features rather than Features being parents of friend groups. It just plain psychologically works better.

I think facebook is a genuinely useful site compromised by a shit interface. The facebook interface is like urban sprawl: an uncontrolled expansion that ocassionally gets band-aids rather than a centralized plan based on User Experience.

<comment><USER5> Yes! we are up and running at www.frid.ge

this is one of the reasons why we build the Fridge. It is hard to filter and organize your friends into lists, keep track of the privacy settings for those lists and then hope that the people you are friends with have done the same thing on Facebook. People are either not posting real content anymore, not using their real name or are just boring on Facebook

The Fridge interface organized not by friend requests but by groups. Each group is completely private from any other group with it's own news feed where everyone can contribute whether it is for a personal and private conversation, common interests of a specific group, or temporary networks that come together for events, parties, or any social gathering.

People are invited to groups and people follow groups. If you get bored of a group you can leave. If the event or activity is over you can start another group around another event or activity based new or on going relationships.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any resources on the best physical UI? - <AUTHOR> For example, car interiors, fighter jet interiors, destroyer interiors. What are the best practices for physical interaction with a machine? <comment><USER2> I can't speak to best practices, but I can to worst. _Tragic Design_ [0] is a text I've recommend to others in the past. It's important to not just know _what_ to do, but also _what not_ to do and _why_. I haven't reread it since it came out of beta, I read it a few months before it was published and found it to be good. It gave a lot of examples of poor design decisions with physical systems and analyses of how they led to accidents (or near accidents).

Two examples that have stuck with me:

Descent angle/rate shown and entered on the same display, the mode determined whether you were entering an angle in degrees or a rate of change in altitude. The difference in display, aside from the mode indicator (a single light) was a comma (rate) or decimal (angle). Entering an incorrect value because the pilot thought it was in a different mode resulted in a much faster descent and accident. Imagine this on a simple LED display (but smaller than your standard alarm clock):

      .
      1,000

      1.000

And it's not the only control or display in view and those two numbers mean _very_ different things.

Another was a control for a ferry boat with two engines. Depending on which engine, the control for engine speed could mean different things depending on which engine was the active engine. Visual aid:

        |</comment><comment>==|
       X          X
       1          2

If engine 1 is active, pushing the speed control away may mean go to the right, if engine 2 is active it means go to the left. The indicator to know which engine was active (as I recall) was the same uniform sized small indicator used for every system status indicator. Forgetting that they had switched engines (to "pull" the ferry to its destination versus "push", due to damage or other issue with the desired engine) the operator accelerated rather than decelerated at the destination.

[0] [https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/tragic- design/978149192...](https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/tragic- design/9781491923603/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I can recommend you book Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman.</comment>


Facebook Acquiring SF Design Firm Hot Studio - <AUTHOR> http://www.hotstudio.com/thoughts/hot-studio-joins-facebook

<comment><USER2> Javascript needs to be turned on to view hotstudio.com . Also their HTML does not validate. Why are they acquiring a firm that does not care about valid HTML?

<comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps you misread the headline or post? They are being acquired by _Facebook_

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> i guess facebook will become even more B2B</comment>


DevTools Challenger for Firefox - <AUTHOR> http://devtoolschallenger.com/ <comment><USER2> Took me a minute to realize this is developed for use with Firefox Developer Edition. If you're using Chrome or vanilla Firefox, you're going to be a bit lost when trying to follow the tutorial.

<comment><USER3> Well, it seems like it was created for the launch of Developer Edition v44, so that would have been when the stable release was v43. The current stable release is v44, so in theory everything in this demo/tutorial should work with current stable. I found a couple things didn't, though. I couldn't get the CSS eyedropper tool to apply the color I clicked on; however, manually entering the hex code for the new color triggered the completion event. I also couldn't get the event to fire in the second-to-last task.

Regardless, it's a neat little distraction to do while eating lunch.

edit: clarification

<comment> TD-Linux No, Developer Edition version 44 releases today. Stable will be version 42 after the release.

<comment><USER3> Yep, my mistake. Erk...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> tl;dr This is a series of interactive demonstrations showing off some of Firefox Developer Edition's developer console features, with emphasis on CSS animation.

<comment><USER5> Yep! If you're rather read about the features, we've got a blog post up at [https://hacks.mozilla.org/2015/11/developer- edition-44-creat...](https://hacks.mozilla.org/2015/11/developer- edition-44-creative-tools-and-more/)

The DevTools Challenger page is meant to be a more hands-on set of exercises to familiarize people with the new / improved animation tools. You should be able to complete it in regular Firefox (or even Chrome), but the experience will be a bit nicer in DevEdition.

<comment><USER6> The Challenger site seems to consistently crash Firefox if you have [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/react- devtool...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/react-devtools/) installed. I don't know if React was used to make the site?

Not too sure if is this something that should be reported to Mozilla or to Facebook.

<comment><USER5> An add-on crashing Firefox is definitely a bug on our end, even if it's also a bug in the add-on. :) I've filed [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1221273](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1221273) to track this, but I can't reproduce the crash myself. The page doesn't use React, FWIW.

If you could stop by that bug and leave a comment with your OS, Firefox version, and build info from about:support, I'd appreciate it.

<comment><USER7> (If you find a bug in the React devtools, please report it on our GitHub page and we'll get it fixed.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> That's an awesome idea! To mix the knowledge, I learned some things. There needs be another for Chrome, and it'd teach all kind of tricks, and with an unknown reward at the end. This is good, this is artful teaching. Reminds me of the hacking challenges.

</comment><comment><USER9> Do we have official 64-bit stable version for Windows? [https://download- installer.cdn.mozilla.net/pub/firefox/relea...](https://download- installer.cdn.mozilla.net/pub/firefox/releases/42.0/win64/en-US/) Because I use 64-bit Windows and when it has updated to 42 it was still 32-bit version.

<comment><USER5> We aren't officially supporting Win64 with Firefox 42, but we _are_ producing builds which you can find at [http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/42.0/win64/](http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/42.0/win64/)

There are only a few bugs left before we can officially support Win64: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/showdependencytree.cgi?id=55844...](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/showdependencytree.cgi?id=558448&hide_resolved=1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Problem is that if you scroll too fast, the text visibility animation doesn't kick in fast enough and you just see a blank black screen.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is cool. And I just found out I had a reason to start using Firefox again.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm sure someone had fun making that but it is a really weird way to present something.

</comment><comment><USER13> would be nice if it worked in something besides FF.

</comment><comment><USER14> The problem with Firefox Devtools is that they are slow.</comment>


Sergey Brin and Larry Page: Inside the Google machine - <AUTHOR> http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/sergey_brin_and_larry_page_on_google.html

<comment><USER2> something we hear all the time now:

"yes, i know all of you are thinking yet ANOTHER social network."

but that was sergey in february of 2004 (in reference to orkut). facebook launched that very month.</comment>


Ask HN: Feedback collecting software? - <AUTHOR> Just wondering if anyone knows any adfordable feedback collecting software similar to Intercom Respond? <comment><USER2> Base usage of [https://www.tawk.to/](https://www.tawk.to/) is free. They offer you pay $9/month to remove their branding.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hi I've started [https://insightstash.com](https://insightstash.com) try it out.

If you have questions about how to start, let me know.

<comment><AUTHOR> Neat tool and great to see another Torontonian!</comment></comment>


How startups such as Dropbox, Airbnb, Groupon acquired their first users - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/2clqa3/how_startups_such_as_dropbox_airbnb_groupon_and/ <comment><USER2> In short: spam (AirBnb), cheat (fake Reddit users), and/or gamify your process to addict your users like a casino would (Foursquare). This is usually seen as unethical, but if you make a lot of money then it's all right in the end.

I'm going to take these examples whenever someone asks "what's wrong with marketing? "

<comment><USER3> I find none of this unethical and actually pretty typical web marketing stuff - tame even. Not exactly sure who was harmed and in the end the consumer really wanted what was offered.

<comment><USER4> I worry that tech's gamification - gone too far for addiction - will be this generation's big tobacco settlement.

<comment><USER5> That's quite a hyperbole.

<comment><USER6> I mean, social media preys on people's insecurities and need for validation and is allowed for anyone over 13.

Pay to win mobile games are designed to be addictive and upsell you to continue playing.

At least in a casino you have a chance of winning money.

The most terrifying thing is that with tech, the data harvesting is immediate and far reaching - people's entire jobs in UX are basically to make games more _engaging_ (aka addictive).

Currently the addictiveness of tech is evolving faster than human wisdom and regulation can keep up so while hyperbolic, there is some sense to the doomsaying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've always found it amusing how shocked/surprised people are about the Reddit fake users strategy. It's like, the best way you can tell people had no experience with internet forums or community management before the days of social media.

What Reddit did here is basically what about 70%* of internet forums did to get their initial users. Made up a bunch of fake user accounts and posted under them for however long it took until actual people started using the site. Heck, some people did this on an almost industrial scale with stuff like Yahoo Answers feeds and what not.

That's because people don't use a community that isn't active for much the same reason they don't tend to eat in a restaurant that's deserted; they take the lack of activity as a sign of low quality. So if you want to get a community site active, you'll need to resort to 'questionable' things.

* I say this because there are other means of getting forums active, like doing post exchanges with people on admin/forum promotion sites or signing up to services which give you points for posting on other websites in the network and then do likewise for people who use your own site. But to some degree, almost all forums and community sites get big due to 'enticed' users that aren't posting there purely for the love of the topic/community.

<comment><USER8> The best forums I've been a part of/moderated were forums that originally served for customer support for a product/company, and naturally became a hang out spot for people with interests in common.

I've been part of several dozen such forums over the years, from hundreds to tens of thousands of users. None of them had capital dedicated to community building. I've also seen many people try to follow the model you outlined (faking users) and none of them were successful.

Obviously that approach seems to work in some cases (if you have cash to burn?), but I'm glad that I've seen only more genuine undertakings succeed. Seems more like the kind of internet I want to be a part of.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, it's likely different for a support forum/forum that used to be a support forum. In that case, the popularity of your product or service can create a community without needing to do anything special on the forum side of things.

But what I said about fake users definitely applies a lot more if your forum is the entire website and the community is the only goal there. Your average gaming/film/tv/music/sports/whatever forum lives or dies based on how many people appear to post/visit every day.

Also, it doesn't take any cash to have fake users/activity. Just a lot of free time to spend posting away under pseudonyms. If you don't have that time, you can always do things like literally edit the forum stats (there are plugins for that[1]), 'buy' services from certain websites to post for you[2] or if you're really morally questionable, set up a script that takes random people's accounts and makes them appear to be online[3].

Really, community management is a lot like SEO. You've got everything from people who don't do anything in the slightest bit 'shady' to build activity and just kind of hope they can market the forum on their own to those who do things 100 times less 'ethical' than having fake user accounts.

1\. [https://web.archive.org/web/20080905041551/https://www.vbull...](https://web.archive.org/web/20080905041551/https://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=117933)

2\. [https://forumpromotion.net/forum/forums/posting- packages.6/](https://forumpromotion.net/forum/forums/posting-packages.6/)

3\. [https://xenforo.com/community/resources/th-fake- users.4845/](https://xenforo.com/community/resources/th-fake-users.4845/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One of "How I built this" best episodes, IMO, is about Airbnb.

[https://soundcloud.com/best-of-tech-startups/how-i-built- thi...](https://soundcloud.com/best-of-tech-startups/how-i-built-this-airbnb- joe-gebbia)

</comment><comment><USER10> In contrast, Paypal initially paid a sign-up bounty of $5 per user.

<comment><USER11> Square sent out free card-to-headphone adapters, so you could plug it into your phone and start receiving payments through their app.

<comment><USER12> IIRC, they were also the first to get a card reader into that form factor. They were the first to make mobile credit card payments feasible.

<comment><USER13> Square wasn't the first by any means, and in fact Square's first card readers were unencrypted (cc data sent plain over the audio jack) while most of the industry had moved on to encrypted readers.

What they did was make it cheap, reliable, and iPhone styled. Many of the swiper sources cost upwards of $40/unit and were prone to failure, not to mention black bulky and ugly.

Source: I made an early MVP for a potential Square competitor.

<comment><USER14> THat's why your parent said "in that form factor", I think.

<comment><USER13> At the start, all Square did on the hardware side was slightly repackage an existing generic swiper. Our MVP swiper was equally small. It was the overall easy onboarding (free decent software, no cost swiper) and marketing that really did it. There were several competing companies who just didn't play the growth game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't know what lines exactly you can draw through all of these. Maybe..., how you get users at first may not be what you will be doing later on.

Some of these are treacherous, if you keep in mind that there are various hindsight biases inevitable in a list like this. Forum sockpuppeting is a little dishonest, but it doesn't give me the creeps. On a dating sites it would. More sensitive feelings involved. Acquisition methods can get "addictive" if they are not surpassed by other user acquisition methods, so there's a danger of becoming a spammy, creepy company. This is where hindsight biases probably blind us to all the AirBnBs that got stuck spamming craigslist rather than using it as a stepping stone.

The stories I like best here are Tinder, Groupon and the other "start local" strategies. FB did this to an extent too. It's hard to answer the chicken-egg riddle generally, but if we're asking about an individual chicken the answer is obviously "egg."

Unscalable local stuff lets startups compete on a seperate playing field because "doesn't scale" often means no one else is doing it. It also lends well to meeting users and starting simple. It also helps for thinking up startup ideas. If the question becomes " _how to get 70 people in one area using this thing &_" problems become more tractable, and ideas flow better.

</comment><comment><USER16> And Spotify started with being a torrent client for the employees MP3 library: [http://gizmodo.com/early-spotify-was-built-on-pirated- mp3-fi...](http://gizmodo.com/early-spotify-was-built-on-pirated-mp3-files- new-book-1795109991)

</comment><comment><USER17> About the video making part, can someone provide some resources on making videos (company, websites, software etc)? Looking at kickstarter, I find many of their video share a common "theme". I wonder if there are company/online service that dedicated in making video for kickstart campaigns?

</comment><comment><USER18> A lot of people here in the comments section are saying that the things these companies did to launch were unethical. I disagree. It just goes to show you the lengths one must go to successfully launch a new product/service out into a vacuum. To create something new and original from nothing, you may have to go to extreme lengths.</comment>


React-lifecycle-visualizer v2.0 released - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Oblosys/react-lifecycle-visualizer <comment><AUTHOR> Inspired by StackOverflow questions on React's new lifecycle methods, I created a light-weight package that visualizes which lifecycle methods are called and in what order. It can be installed with `npm -i react-lifecycle- visualizer`, but was mainly designed to run on StackBlitz:

[https://stackblitz.com/github/Oblosys/react-lifecycle- visual...](https://stackblitz.com/github/Oblosys/react-lifecycle- visualizer/tree/master/examples/parent-child-demo?file=src/samples/New.js)

Version 2.0 has a more consistent interface, includes TypeScript typings, and looks a little prettier. Comments and suggestions are welcome!</comment>


Ask HN: What is the smallest practical nuclear battery for a quadcopter? - <AUTHOR> There has been much recent work in quadcopters, self-assembling bees, and other types of small flying machines which require lightweight, long-lived power supplies. There is apparently no ready, tested, practical example of such a supply. "Nuclear" always comes to mind when considering lifespan, but "lightweight" does not usually come to mind when considering nuclear. I've read about atomic batteries, but have not found any good discussion of just how small they could be made, yet still be able to power our newest and  smallest flying machines for long periods. <comment><USER2> Well, pacemakers already use nuclear material due to it's long lived nature and it's stability.

Unfortunately, that's nuclear's only strength with something so small. Chemical batteries are much more cost effective, lighter and much more powerful(power-wise) than RTG's.

Also, for most things, including quadcopters, use of radioactive-material, not only is a risk, is a major waste. Most technology, in these days, appear to last 5 years(if you're lucky). Having batteries, that outlasts what it powers by magnitudes of time, is just not sane.

<comment><AUTHOR> Waste can be mitigated by designing the power supplies in the form of interchangeable packs, which can be moved from one generation of flying machine to the next. Risk can be mitigated with good design principles, overall, and advances usually aren't made by people who are afraid of handling risk. That only leaves performance as the real issue. If my quadcopter's chemical battery allows for 1 hour of flight with a load of 1 pound, then how do I increase the time or the load by a significant factor, when required? Unless there is some major breakthrough in chemical batteries, it seems that nuclear is the only real option here. Therefore: Can we build, using today's technology, a nuclear battery (or even a reactor) which can power quadcopters and mechanical bees [1]?

I use the combined example of quadcopters and bees because, perceptually, they appear to be on the same physical level (as opposed to a rock versus a molecule, for instance), but they require very different design decisions as to how they are powered. Chemical processes used for a quadcopter won't easily translate to a bee (unless we are using something exotic, such as ATP manipulated by nanotech), whereas nuclear processes could easily transition between the scales occupied by the quadcopter and the bee.

NOTE TO SELF: Write a children's technology coloring book called "The Quadcopter and the Bee", and after some initial success, turn it into a series of eyewatering, yet thought-inducing, books and movies, thus making lots of money, which would in turn be used for your "Nuclear Batteries Are Us" startup.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3606394>

<comment><USER2> The good old Power vs Weight problem :P.

The main problem with nuclear is that it doesn't give enough energy, when you want something so small.

I believe the best bet to power both the quadcopter and the bee are microwaves, in another words, wireless energy. There has been some concepts(some of them were even materialized), of RC toys, being powered like that. It will limit their range, but it will gain so much.

But who I am to predict the future? Maybe nuclear will be the way to go :P</comment></comment></comment>


Sears CEO: Retiree Pensions Are Killing Us, Not Online Shopping - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2018/09/14/sears-ceo-retiree-pensions-hurting-business/ <comment><USER2> [https://www1.salary.com/Edward-S-Lampert-Salary-Bonus- Stock-...](https://www1.salary.com/Edward-S-Lampert-Salary-Bonus-Stock- Options-for-SEARS-HOLDINGS-CORP.html)

        As Chief Executive Officer at SEARS HOLDINGS CORP, Edward S.
        Lampert made $4,334,739 in total compensation. Of this total
        $1 was received as a salary.

It sounds like a tax fraud lamenting he can't steal from previous employees.

<comment><USER3> I'm not arguing either way, but it's worth noting that's actually a relatively low compensation compared to the average fortune 500 CEO which makes about $13mm salary[1]

[1] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/dianahembree/2018/05/22/ceo- pay...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/dianahembree/2018/05/22/ceo-pay- skyrockets-to-361-times-that-of-the-average-worker/#1a377d32776d)</comment></comment>


The Carbon Dioxide We Dump into the Sky Is Just Another Kind of Garbage - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-carbon-dioxide-we-dump-into-the-sky-is-just-another-kind-of-garbage/ <comment><USER2> We need to prize garbage and the environment. Otherwise we will just continue as is and that will be bad for the future environment.</comment>


Unmanned Ship Trimaran Sailed from San Diego to Hawaii and Back Uncrewed - barry-cotter https://www.navalnews.com/news/2019/02/sea-hunter-usv-reaches-new-autonomy-milestone/ <comment> barry-cotter > The Office of Naval Research (ONR)'s Medium Displacement Unmanned Surface > Vessel (MDUSV), Sea Hunter, became the first ship to successfully > autonomously navigate from San Diego to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and back > without a single crew member onboard, except very short duration boardings > by personnel from an escort vessel to check electrical and propulsion > systems.

If this can be scaled up to larger ships and used with acceptable levels of risk this is a big deal for international trade.</comment>


An Archaeological Space Oddity - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/07/08/an-archeological-space-oddity <comment><USER2> The citizen scientist efforts are the best that internet has to offer , crowdsource scientific work by breaking it down into basics that can be quickly learned by the interested lay person and yet keep it interesting enough to get repeat engagement. I participated in this program and it was fun, though i enjoyed other such programs more like galaxy identification on Galaxy Zoo.</comment>


The First Humans to Live to the Age of 150 Are Already Alive - <AUTHOR> http://magazine.good.is/infographics/humans-may-live-to-150

<comment><USER2> How did they conclude these are going to be the first to live to the age of 150 ? God knows, humans might have lived well past 150 in the past.

I sometimes feel, we tend to overestimate our abilities in understanding history and predicting future.

</comment><comment><USER3> R.E. the suggestion people are going to work longer...

Doing what? It's hard enough to get hired at 55 never mind 75.

<comment><USER4> COBOL programmers for the Y2K+100 problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This was a rather canny ad campaign from Progressive a little while back, but it grows out of something that the big insurers and actuarial community has been becoming more agitated about over the past five to ten years, which is that the forecasts for life expectancy are becoming every more hedged with uncertainty. The people in that industry are very aware that there is great uncertainty in the development trajectory of aging-related biotechnologies over the next twenty years. Any time now a collection of therapies could be developed to add a decade or two to life spans.

A combination of senescent cell clearance (demonstrated in mice), immune rejuvenation through either selective destruction of cluttered bad immune cells (demonstrated in mice) or thymic regeneration (demonstrated in mice), and next generation stem cell therapies (demonstrated in mice) might do the trick if it turns out that accumulation of metabolic waste (amyloid, cross- links, lipofuscin) is less important than thought. For example.</comment>


KeyLemon: Webcam + Facial Recognition Software = Automatic Computer Locking/Unlocking - <AUTHOR> http://www.keylemon.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Windows only at the moment though, they appear to be working on MacOSX.

</comment><comment><USER2> does it account for someone else having a big photo of your face?</comment>


Why Let's Encrypt is a bad idea - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/swlh/why-lets-encrypt-is-a-really-really-really-bad-idea-d69308887801 <comment><USER2> cPanel hosting servers by default utilize 'AutoSSL' provided by Sectigo (formerly Comodo), but they are also free. Although I do still see cPanel customers on Let's Encrypt certificates, this is a pretty shallow argument.

If there's a key compromise at let's encrypt, the beauty of their system is that the certificates generally get replaced automatically, and best practice is to have a cron check for them nightly, or at least weekly. There should be no situation like Equifax where it goes on for months.

Finally, my employer has moved on to AutoSSL via cPanel and Sectigo, but we still have some holdouts. I'm currently waiting over a month for a certificate issuance from Enom & Sectigo because of some documentation BS. Been working with them for well over a decade, and it's getting worse all the time. We have another cheap certificate from Sectigo via Enom, and we're stuck in a fraud check hell, and they won't even let us begin to configure it. We are a company in good standing with thousands of domains with Enom, and thousands of paid SSL certificates in our order pipeline over the years with Comodo/Sectigo, and yet we can't even get a $10 certificate issued in under 2 weeks.

These companies are dying, and they have themselves to blame.

<comment><USER3> That doesn't sound right - I want to look into it for you.

Would you be able to send me any info (domain, order IDs) you can to nick (at) sectigo (dot) com, please?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is largely an ignorant and poorly argumented rant in favor of paid SSL certs.

</comment><comment><USER5> I guess the gripe is with the let's encrypt monopoly? I am still hoping acme gets implemented by other providers.</comment>


Meet Coach: up your game on the command line - <AUTHOR> https://coach.alittlebrighter.io <comment><AUTHOR> I'm the author of coach and I'd love to get some feedback on the tool. In the process of building both the tool and the website it has been enormously helpful to get small reminders to save various commands I'm running so I can search for them later. Once they're saved and I start using them I usually end up turning them into full-blown scripts that have saved me a ton of time.</comment>


Lda2vec: Tools for interpreting natural language - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cemoody/lda2vec <comment><USER2> Recent: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10919744](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10919744)

</comment><comment><USER3> Very cool indeed. I wonder if it permits incremental model generation, so that i could be usable for classifying new data and new topics?

</comment><comment><USER4> How does lda2vec compare with sense2vec [1]?

[1] [http://arxiv.org/abs/1511.06388](http://arxiv.org/abs/1511.06388)

<comment><AUTHOR> sense2vec tags tokens with information from syntactic parsing and by that offers finer grained meaning on the word level. Here is a good implementation btw: [https://spacy.io/blog/sense2vec-with- spacy](https://spacy.io/blog/sense2vec-with-spacy)

lda2vec has a different goal, namely classifying utterances with features on the sentence/document level. Thus it is to my understanding doc2vec with regularization for enhanced interpretability.</comment></comment>


Is the Insect Apocalypse Upon Us? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/02/insect-apocalypse-really-upon-us/583018/ <comment><USER2> I've made the same basic comment before, but we need to ban the residential use of herbicides and pesticides. I spoke to a beekeeper who had two hives wiped out by Mosquito Squad spraying on an adjacent property.

I recently came across a 1997 paper called: "Producing and Consuming Chemicals: The Moral Economy of the American Lawn". They cite a higher per hectare usage for residential over agriculture. We need to get rid of our lawns they are literally destroying the planet and they are greenhouse gas emitters when you factor in gas powered mowers and leaf blowers. Fertilizer emits nitrogen oxides that are potent greenhouse gases.

The paper is interesting as it talks about how lawns are marketed. Unfortunately lawns are a multibillion dollar industry. If we are going to fight climate change and environmental degradation, we need to seriously rethink letting business needs take priority over the environment and not just for lawns.

We need to allow people to have native plant yards. I've seen great results with insects. Unfortunately it's illegal where I live and probably most non- rural places. In order to allow this would mean changing state and local ordinances across the US. I honestly don't think that will happen until it's too late. By then lawns will be the last thing we will care about.

<comment><USER3> Lawns are the dumbest thing Americans obsess over. I've lived in apartments my whole adult life but if I had a lawn I'd be inclined to just let it go wild. Or maybe plant moss or something.

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately, just like with municipal support of car culture, lawns and their upkeep are often written into municipal bylaws. That's not even getting into HOAs and how restrictive their lawn policies can be - often having requirements down to which species of grass[1] you're allowed to use. Finally there's communal pressure from neighbours, who will give you the stink eye if the weeds from your wild lawn even _might_ encroach onto their manicured grass.

[1] [https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/real-estate-and- landlordin...](https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/real-estate-and- landlording/hoa-and-my-lawn/)

<comment><USER5> I just bought my first home last spring. No HOA, but I did get the city called on me for being close to the 8 inch limit on grass. We also heard on the grape vine that one neighbor blamed our longer grass for the mosquitoes keeping them from enjoying the outdoors, instead of, you know, the record rainfall and nearby drainage ditch.

Luckily my city's ordinances have a provision for a "natural lawn" made up of native grasses and plants that can be extra tall. I intend to turn my front yard into one to reduce how much mowing I need to do.

<comment><USER6> > for being close to the 8 inch limit on grass.

What the hell?

I assume simply concreting over it for more parking space would be fine though.

Most UK streets will have a property or two where the garden does whatever it is that gardens do when completely ignored for a decade. Or with meadow or wildlife friendly planting, maybe intentionally including weeds.

I love this. All over HN American folks talk now and then about how govt should keep out of things, and how that works so much better than in that terrible interfering socialist place, Europe. You regulate your front lawns and grass height. There's probably an ANSI standard for them. Sorry. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There are a few practices in modern agriculture that are probably not helping. Farmers use pesticides to kill everything but the crop they are interested in. Then they use pesticides to get rid of insects and other parasites, and finally they use herbicides so they can trigger plants to start dying just in time for harvest rather than waiting this to happen organically.

That stuff is nasty. It's actually intended to be nasty. And the side effect is that it kills a lot of animals and plants indiscriminately. Also, this stuff is possibly not that great for human consumption either. There seems to be a lot of lobbying around this topic and a lot of debate about what is considered OK here. But I'd say most people would probably opt out of having any of this stuff in their food, just on the off chance it might decrease their chances of getting some cancer, genetic defects in their offspring, etc.

Modern organic farming can actually get great yields by more clever use of soil and land and does not need pesticides, herbicides, or insecticides. There is a lot of high tech stuff facilitating this including drones, water management, use of herds of animals to manage soil (planned grazing), etc. And then there is hydroponic farming as well. Progress in this space is very rapid.

Phasing these out and restricting the use of poison in farming would probably be a good thing. This cannot be done over night but there are plenty of farms that have switched to being fully organic while increasing yields and profits. It can be done and it requires doing things differently. Now is a good time to start doing much more of that. And we might actually restore some arid lands to healthy condition in the process which would not hurt our planet either.

<comment><USER8> I'd love to see a citation on this -- my impression (grew up in farm country) was that organic farming was significantly less yield, higher expense, and totally impossible to actually run a profitable farm on without raising prices immensely. People do it, but the market for food that costs 3x is relatively small -- most moderate to lower income simply can't afford it.

Maybe things have changed, but I suspect if they have everybody would have switched already. Obviously getting rid of poisons is a great target, but I've never heard from anyone in the business that it's even a possibility.

<comment><USER6> Many years since I had relatives in agriculture and horticulture, so I may be embarrasingly outdated.

Monoculture tends to encourage everything we don't want. Needing fertilisers or rotation, pesticides, disease has many acres to spread easily through etc.

There's good organic and bad, and efficient and inefficient., but look into polyculture[1]. An old mixed farm would mix crops and sometimes livestock in the same space. The yields were lower, but there were often more yields across the farm to compensate. Thus the yield difference is often not as advertised. Sympathetic planting could actively reduce likelihood of disease and pests. Not everything scales to large farms.

It's also expensive because it's expensive. People expect and treat organic as a premium product. Supermarkets charge accordingly, in no small part because they can. If less industrial approaches to agriculture became widespread, prices would fall. Though unlikely to remove the difference completely.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyculture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyculture) (Doesn't consider organic polyculture)

<comment><USER8> I agree that it is a more sustainable method of farming to mix crops across growing seasons. However, that is "dealt with" in modern farming by using fertilizers and such -- and as you say, it doesn't scale well.

Organic is certainly a premium product, and where there are consumers that can afford it, it will thrive. Unfortunately it seems to me that right now the cost to produce it is simply too high for it to come out of that premium category and be the norm.

<comment><USER6> Polyculture also mixes during the season. A field of onions _and_ carrots as they discourage each other's pests. Or interspersing some height for a harvestable canopy. Or an orchard where chickens are under the trees, picking up grubs and fertilising. (Don't know if that works in practice, take as a for instance). Some of these were just the standard old way of doing farming. Not so amenable to the largest scale, but if less scale is what's required to keep a working planet...

You're probably right about organic right now, but before the recession, all the UK supermarkets were going crazy over organic throughout the 00s. Organic versions of most things became available and prices fell to a point where some were only 10% or 20% more. The trend was clear enough, but stopped dead by 2008.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The conclusion of the article is that even though we don't have conclusive research, the early signs are worrying and the risks are far too high to wait for better data to act.

This is the problem with things like climate change and ecological collapse. Science is extremely slow to measure and understand the phenomena. But the disasters can move far faster than the science, wrecking havoc as they go. Scientists are naturally cautious and skeptical and so will dismiss the kind of claims it takes to move people until those claims are overwhelmingly supported.

By the time scientists have enough data to comfortably support the claims, it's far too late to act on them.

<comment><USER10> It's not the scientists fault. They are highlighting that there is an issue and the consequences are potentially catastrophic. Scientists always uses measured language in papers, but in the example of global warming Scientists have effectively been screaming about it for decades in a public outreach context, politicians have not listened though.

<comment><USER11> It is easy to put this on politicians, but you must remember that politicians are largely a reflection of the people they represent. We are all to blame for finding the truth too inconvenient to handle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There's been a lot of these stories in the past year and, like all trendy reporting, I'm not sure how serious I should take them in whole. However, I can say this: I've been driving between Phoenix and Tucson consistently for 30+ years. For those of you who don't know, it is a 90+ mile ride which is almost all at top highway speed. I've noticed in the past year or two my windshield is much, much cleaner post drive whereas years ago I would almost be forced to clean my car after each trip.

Unscientific, but unsettling nonetheless.

<comment><USER13> > I've noticed in the past year or two my windshield is much, much cleaner > post drive whereas years ago I would almost be forced to clean my car after > each trip.

I've seen mentions this phenomena floating around. I wonder if this could be attributed to a change in the aerodynamics of modern windshields.

<comment><USER6> Only an anecdote, but I'm going to say no.

Mainly as I have strongly experienced the same phenomena motorcycling. My head and helmet are not changed aerodynamically. A naked bike contributes little. Yet headlight and visor catch far fewer than 30 years ago. I don't expect to break the journey to clear it like I used to.

The windscreen on the car may very well catch less, but in that case it _also_ seems like there are a lot less to catch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> 35% of our food is pollinated by insects: [https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/main/national/plan...](https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/main/national/plantsanimals/pollinate/)

We are facing a food crunch in the near future- we will number 9-11 billion before population declines begin to set in at the same time climate change will be desertifying the worlds breadbasket, we are running out of fresh water, we are running out of top soil, and insect declines will threaten the angiosperms we eat. It is not clear how insect populations will respond to the 3-5 degrees of warming expected by the end of this century (based on RCP 8.5 and RCP 6.0 from the latest IPCC report).

Mid-century is shaping up to be one of the most important and tragic periods in human civilization, if it is to survive it. We should keep in mind we are always nine missed meals from anarchy.

<comment><USER15> Well, this post covers my maximum daily dose of alarmism. Thanks

<comment><USER16> What's the alarmist version of "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you."?

<comment><USER17> > What's the alarmist version of "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean > they aren't after you."?

"Omae wa mo shinderou."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> _" the total mass of local flying insects had fallen by 80 percent in three decades"_

Ok, but what if it is now back at the 'norm' and there were just too many insects all those times?

Do we know what the norm is?

I must agree that the quick loss of so many insects does not sound normal. But we also know that insects can swarm very quickly and become a pest in good conditions.

With climate change we have a lot of data from even thousands of years ago, so we have some feeling about the 'norm'.

Does a norm for the total mass of flying insects exist?

<comment><USER19> I agree, what we should do is apply even greater amounts of pesticides to certain countries while letting others try to fight ecological collapse. then in a hundred years we can see who is right and who is dead.

<comment><USER18> I don't like your comment.

I'm not saying we should not act. I'm asking if we know what we are up against.

<comment><USER19> You were not intended to like it.

The idea that we need more data is lazy, shortsighted, and used as a primary argument to justify doing nothing.

The neighbor's house is on fire, Sparks are falling on your roof because of a breeze and you are holding of fighting the fire because the wind might change and we might be able to do nothing except high five each other about how smart we were.

In life, you never know enough to make the perfect decision. You have act on the existing data, not wait until the choice you should have made becomes clear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> [...]it's hard to take the widely quoted numbers from Sánchez-Bayo and Wyckhuys's review as gospel.

They say that 41 percent of insect species are declining and that global numbers are falling by 2.5 percent a year, but "they're trying to quantify things that we really can't quantify at this point," says Michelle Trautwein from the California Academy of Sciences.

"I understand the desire to put numbers to these things to facilitate the conversation, but I would say all of those are built on mountains of unknown facts."

</comment><comment><USER21> The answer is "Not known". A decently skeptical article. One excerpt.

"When scientists have collected long-term data on insects, they've usually done so in a piecemeal way. The 2017 German study, for example, collated data from traps that had been laid in different parts of the country over time, rather than from concerted attempts to systematically sample the same sites. Haphazard though such studies might be, many of them point in the same dispiriting direction. In their review, Sánchez-Bayo and Wyckhuys found 73 studies showing insect declines."

Start of next paragraph: "But that's what they went looking for! They searched a database using the keywords insect and decline, and so wouldn't have considered research showing stability or increases."

<comment><USER22> Maybe insects evolved to avoid such traps, cars, and people in general.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wonder if all these beehives and bee keepers are similar to a bunch of pastoral goats and herders? Almost no control of who puts a beehive somewhere (tragedy of the commons). Those bees then strip all of the surrounding area of flower nectar, leaving nothing for the natural insects, which then die. Bee keepers go all over the US to place their hives and then bring them to California to pollenate the nut trees. Plus the rise in the popularity of honey and the trendiness of having hives for fun.

In addition, bees' diets by commercial beekeepers are often supplemented by man-made sugars. To continue the analogy, imagine that there was someplace that really wanted a bunch of goats for two weeks a year to eat up a bunch of plants as a brush clearing method. People get paid a lot to have goats arrive at that location every year. The laws of the country are such that goats are allowed to roam anywhere and eat plants on people land and fences have not been invented yet. You only have to own the land where they come back to at night(the corral). The goat herders try to maximize the size of the herd by feeding the goats a cheap but nutritiously deficient food for most of their calories, but goats have to get some vital vitamins, proteins, and minerals from the stuff they eat in the wild. In fact, over the centuries the goats have evolved so that they can run fast and long away from the corral in the morning, just to get somewhere that has not already been stripped of wild food that they need, burning the calories supplied by the goat herder. The goat eats for a few hours somewhere that is not already over-grazed, and then runs back to the corral.

When the goat returns it has a way to tell the other goats where it went to find a good place to eat and the next day hundreds of goats head out to that location to strip it to dirt in one day. Other goats head out somewhat randomly on a dead run to try and find somewhere around that has something to eat.

This goat hive can only exist in one place when the grass is sprouting or in places that goats have not been in many years. The goat herders corrals are built on huge trucks so that when they need to move the goats to somewhere else, because the local area is completely stripped, they can just start up the truck and be in a new location 500 miles away in a single day.

A disease now starts spreading among the goats. They get shipped around everywhere so it spreads to other herds really fast. The goats are dying at a high rate and no one knows why or how to cure it, but the goats breed pretty fast. The goat herders can keep the number of goats high enough to meet the demand of the companies that need the annual grazing clearing, but only because of the increasing price the companies are willing to pay. This incentivizes more goat herders breeding more goats at a furious rate. The surviving herders are now searching hard for the last places that have not been completely stripped mined of wild food. Never a blade of grass springs from the Earth where a goat is not immediately there to eat it.

You can imagine what such a system would do to the wild grazing animal population. Anything wild would never find anything to eat, the predator populations would be huge, gorging on the free roaming goats that the herders don't guard. The herders have no way guarding hundreds of thousands of goats. They could not possibly watch over each one and don't even think about how that might be done.

Now add in farmers that grow plants the goats can't eat. They cover huge areas where only a small amount of the wild plants survive that the goats need. Around the farms wild plants still grow, but farms are being consolidated and those edge areas are being eliminated. Some wild animals can eat what the farmers grow, so the farmers develop chemicals that kill the animals that eat their crops. This chemical will also kill goats and gets on the few remaining wild plants the goats eat and poison them too.

Now imagine that the goats and wild animals are so small that the herders and other people in society don't really notice them at all. They only start to worry about the goats when there are not enough goats arriving every year to clear out the brush where the annual spring picnic is held. Only after that happens do a few quirky scientists start looking into the problem and notice that these wild animals that have to compete with goats have been dropping in numbers like crazy for quite awhile.

Just an analogy, but maybe some truth to it?

</comment><comment><USER23> This thread is weird to me.

How are so many in the dark about the fact that it's mainly corporate PR that are behind all off the confusion about dangerous consequences from both energy-, agri-, and chemistry business?

Energy companies have known about potential catastrophic consequences for years, scientists have known, people living in nature have known.

People are "confused", doesn't get the urgency or simply ignore the issue because of PR, astroturfing and corporate campaigns.

It's all because of huge corporations hiring armies of lawyers, marketing people and greenwashing lobbyists that write both the laws and the news. (*see my sources if you doubt this )

Forget about the politicians and the consumers - they have been massively propagandized by a conglomeration of enormous agricultural and energy sector companies for half a century.

Seriously it's __well described and documented__ and has been since Exxon found out about climate change and hid its own findings in the 70's.

How do you some of you people know so little about the culprit, and instead blame mostly consumers or the politicians who are bought by corporations?

There is no debate and hasn't been for decades - the culprit is growth capitalism and the mega-corps that ruthlessly lie and distort in service of profits.

This has happened for over 100 years when US car manufacturers killed public transport in the US, and Edward Bernays created modern public PR, that apparently is working frighteningly well still.

Read:

Merchants of doubt [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7799004-merchants-of- dou...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7799004-merchants-of-doubt)

Toxic Sludge Is Good For You [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/659246.Toxic_Sludge_Is_G...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/659246.Toxic_Sludge_Is_Good_for_You?ac=1&from_search=true)

Exxon Has Known for over 40 years: [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew- about-...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about- climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/)

</comment><comment><USER24> A rare case in the wild of Betteridge's Law failing us.

<comment><USER25> > Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any headline that > ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."

The article says that the "insect apocalypse" is not going to happen, despite pretty strong evidence of insect decline. So Betteridge's Law does hold here.</comment></comment>


Faceted Search (2009) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://disi.unitn.it/~bernardi/Courses/DL/faceted_search.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Can anyone recommend any open-source faceted search tools?

Bonus for:

      - being:
        - easy to install (via yum, apt-get, brew, etc)
        - accessible from the command line / shell
        - accessible as a library
        - actively developed
      - not requiring (though allowing) an external database
      - allowing search through regular expressions
      - emacs integration

<comment><USER2> Both ElasticSearch and Solr are services, and both are built from Apache Lucene, a set of Java libraries providing indexed search, with facets and many other features. Xapian is a C++ library with similar functionality, although it doesn't seem to have the same level of popularity as Lucene.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Right, as can see by page 9 of the book, traditional library cataloging techniques, e.g., the Dewey Decimal System, has a tough time knowing just where to catalog a book, say, _History of Nineteenth Century European Military Technology_ , that is, in history, Europe, European history, military history, history of technology, military technology, European technology, etc.?

So, _facets_ are a generalization of the Dewey system that is supposed to provide better options for such cataloging challenges. Okay.

In a sense Google's YouTube has a similar problem: Often, maybe usually, at the end of playing a video clip, there is a display of related video clips. So, if play a video of Heifetz playing the Beethoven violin concerto with von Karajan (assuming there is such), then what to recommend next, anything by Heifetz, Beethoven, violin, von Karajan, or any concerto, any violin concerto, any violin music, or just something related _artistically_ , determined however, any music from near year 1800, etc.?

Right, there needs to be a better way.

Okay, been working on that. Got some ideas and the code written. Loading some initial data now, and intend to go live ASAP.

</comment><comment><USER4> A current example of faceted search: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8834611](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8834611)

</comment><comment><USER5> I was disappointed by the content... Most of it is somewhat obvious and something I just skipped. I expected to find something valuable at least at the end, some insights for example in the front end concerns section (e.g. ideas for dynamic ranking, something I am currently working on). But again, nothing really valuable.

So to put it briefly, Faceted Search for Dummies in 100 pages (which probably could be halved without losing anything).

</comment><comment><USER6> I found it a bit weird that the "What Are Facets?" section does not actually give a formal definition of what a facet is.

<comment><USER6> but thanks for sharing :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is good stuff -- the author was in charge of faceted search at LinkedIn.

<comment><USER8> That's not where he learned about faceted search, but rather Endeca where he was a developer.</comment></comment>


List of tech events canceled due to Covid-19 in 2020 - <AUTHOR> https://airtable.com/shrETNURgXNrGWbd8/tblc49hMMykARebo8?blocks=hide <comment><USER2> Code for America Summit canceled, may go virtual: [https://www.codeforamerica.org/news/important- announcement-r...](https://www.codeforamerica.org/news/important-announcement- regarding-code-for-america-summit-2020)

</comment><comment><USER3> The Next Web [http://inside.thenextweb.com/186795-tnw- reschedules-2020-eve...](http://inside.thenextweb.com/186795-tnw- reschedules-2020-event-to-october-1-2)

</comment><comment><USER4> >airtable.com

No thanks, not since they tried to slurp my contacts and other personal data when I used Google sign-in. I think they've finally changed their scope, but once bitten twice shy.

</comment><comment><USER5> Qt World Summit postponed from May to October.

[https://www.qt.io/qtws20](https://www.qt.io/qtws20)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> If you know any more canceled/postponed events, please add them to the comments, thanks @zius and @hhhhhhhhh1

</comment><comment><USER6> Intel Extreme Masters</comment>


HN on second day from launch - <AUTHOR> https://web.archive.org/web/20070221033032/https://news.ycombinator.com/ <comment><USER2> You don't need an archive link to view HN at a given time.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2007-02-20](https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2007-02-20)

<comment><USER3> Why does Michael Arrington have the same dead comment on every post?

<comment><USER2> That's not actually Michael Arrington.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=454679](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=454679)

<comment><USER4> Interesting how pg publicizes the user's IP addresss and possible alts sharing the same IP. I bet that wouldn't happen in 2019.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Clickbait titles, useful advice "how to track user's mouse movement" (!!) , and Europe's osteoporosis. Good times though; for me Hacker news has lost a lot of its appeal in the past 4-5 years, as for some reason it has become overly political and "suits-oriented". I used to read a lot of technical commentary, which i now find on reddit instead.

<comment><USER6> I so rarely come across a commenter who shares this opinion that I feel like I want to hug you. Hacker news _has_ declined in quality. The most precipitous drop in my opinion was right after all the buzz about Facebook becoming less popular, musk joining mastodon and everyone in the comments brainstorming about alternative social media schemes. After that things really took a dive.

I think it has to do with the influx of new programmers and the growth of programming as an industry. Programming is becoming easier and more mainstream so the natural result is the ratio of excellent people to disappointing people changing for the worse. computer forums no longer intrisincly filter out stupid people.

Googling "reddit alternative," HN is on of the first results.

I find lobste.rs to still be good. It probably has to do with the fact that you need an invite to post there.

I'm really scared and disappointed by HNs decline. HN is the only good intellectual watering hole on the internet as far as I know, and I have looked. If HN were to continue getting worse or if it shut down, it would be a huge loss for me.

I've considered starting a new website, filling it with a hand-curated pool of users gathered from around the internet, and then launching an invite system. Lobsters isn't good enough because it focuses too narrowly on web development and also people are really afraid to comment there because they might mar their image or get their invite revoked, I think. I believe there is a very large amount of arbitrage when it comes to online communities.

There is so much arbitrage! A new Wikipedia that's actually good at teaching rather than just being a reference book for experts. Social sites that differentiate between curation, storing and fluid, in-flux communication and exchange. And most of all, using new techniques for raising the quality of content and comments. The space of incentive schemes is virtually boundless and there are def some veins of gold out there.

<comment><USER7> > Hacker news has declined in quality.

Alright, y'all are getting virtual hugs. I agree completely as well.

I also agree that the changing trends are a biproduct of the increasing levels of access to software development as a profession. However, I do not think that computer forums should filter out "stupid people". I had the pleasure of hearing Code.org President Alice Steinglass talk about how her professor in undergrad told her to stop studying CS after she asked what a debugger was. If we begin arbitrarily filtering out "stupid people", we are no better than that professor.

> The most precipitous drop in my opinion was right after all the buzz about > Facebook becoming less popular, musk joining mastodon and everyone in the > comments brainstorming about alternative social media schemes.

I think it happened earlier than that. Around 2015-ish to be exact. That's when I personally noticed an uptick in "pat yourself on the back" posts instead of actual good signal.

> I'm really scared and disappointed by HNs decline. HN is the only good > intellectual watering hole on the internet

I was a bit fearful as well. But after reading your full comment, I don't really fear that much now. My idea:

 _Let HN die._

More decentralized sites (like the one you proposed with hand curated content) will crop up. I'm personally investigating the Linus Tech Tips forum as an HN alternative since it seems to have the maker and hacker vibes that I used to see here (and on Reddit and JCXP before I found HN).

In short, yeah HN is dying. But I'm not really going to mourn its loss since it will free up room for better websites to come along. After all, that spirit of adventure and "what will we think of next" is what pushed me to become an engineer in the first place.

As for me, I'll probably leave here forever in a week or two if things don't improve.

<comment><USER8> > More decentralized sites (like the one you proposed with hand curated > content) will crop up. I'm personally investigating the Linus Tech Tips > forum as an HN alternative since it seems to have the maker and hacker vibes > that I used to see here (and on Reddit and JCXP before I found HN).

What if _gasp_ mailing lists made a come back? The longer I exist, the longer I realize I don't want the next iteration of Facebook, Reddit, Hacker News, or whatever comes after and uses IPFS and Filecoin for the foundation. I just want high signal and civil discussion in my inbox with a firm but benevolent dictator moderating. So, HN, but through my email client.

<comment><USER9> I would _love_ a truly hacker mentality oriented mailing list focusing on doing stuff rather than what's cool/not cool. I don't want to complain about HN, it is what it is and a lot of people like it the way it is. But I'd really like a place where the vast majority of links point to blogs of people doing things in tech, or giving me ideas about what I can do in tech, rather than links to news agencies or news papers or long format writing on non-tech related topics. If it was a mailing list it would be incredible. I'd love to go back to being able to plonk people into kill files and filter/sort topics however I want.

Of course, ironically my most upvoted comments are all about news or long format writing on non-tech related topics. But I _really_ don't have time for that and I keep getting lured in ;-)

<comment><USER10> Peter Cooper could, and should, make that mailing list.

[https://cooperpress.com](https://cooperpress.com)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Looks like it hasn't changed much... which is a good thing!

<comment><USER12> Design that stands the test of time :)

<comment><USER13> It's still as bad as it always was, if that's what you mean. :P

[http://hckrnews.com/](http://hckrnews.com/) is much better.

<comment><USER14> [https://hackerweb.app](https://hackerweb.app) is also nice if you'd like to skim through the story list and the top level comment threads using a better interface (YMMV). You can also expand specific comment threads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think people are fascinated with stuff like this because it seems impossible to predict where it is going at the time, but we hope that if we look back we can either see some king of indicator of future greatness or at least reassure ourselves that our crappy looking early stage project isn't necessarily doomed. After all, x, y or z didn't look that different back in the day. (Or whatever.)

</comment><comment><USER16> I use to run a project that looked back in time on HN, but it was pretty depressing to see so many dead links each week. Thankfully the Internet Archive solves a lot of this, but it makes you think how fragile the web is.

[http://www.waybackletter.com/issue/2012-06-06.html](http://www.waybackletter.com/issue/2012-06-06.html)

</comment><comment><USER17> Much prefer it in its current form. Way more interesting content across so many subject areas. We still have plenty of interesting stuff for startup fans, too. If anything, it's strange and kind of amazing that it got here starting from a narrowly-focused beginning. I came in too late to see how that transition happened. Would've been interesting to watch.

<comment><USER18> Slow and mostly in hindsight.

I'm not a big fan that many front page links are to big news outlets nowadays. It's not hard to find NYT, WSJ, Economist, etc news and I'm not generally seeking out that type of content here. But I see a lot of it on HN now. And geez so many paywall links.

I liked it much more when it was more independent content. More focused on learning and building. It felt like the whole start up thing was new and everyone was helping each other learn.

Regardless of time, the comments keep me coming back. It feels more like the "old" internet when it had a net positive vibe.

<comment><USER17> You could make a custom view that filters that stuff. Maybe logs it so you can spend some time scanning through any that might be interesting to you. Most of the time, though, you just see the non-news links.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Another more generic site that lets you look back on HN as well as other sites as they were a decade ago.

[http://tenyearsago.io/](http://tenyearsago.io/)

Sometimes it seems to get stuck on a certain date for a week.

</comment><comment><USER20> The second link is interesting: HN's original announcement ([https://news.ycombinator.com/announcingnews.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/announcingnews.html))

Especially the point that they tried to build a community where people would actually get to know each other. That didn't scale too well...

</comment><comment><USER21> An interesting nugget here is a post by Evan Williams about putting Odeo up for sale to focus on Twitter.

Here's what Twitter looked like then: [https://web.archive.org/web/20070225121301/http://twitter.co...](https://web.archive.org/web/20070225121301/http://twitter.com:80/)

</comment><comment><USER22> _> I dropped out of grad school today_

Second post is the co-founder of Octopart. Not surprising, since they were funded by YC, but I'm glad things turned out well for Andres.

 _> ... I'm a shell of the personality I used to be. Basically, I had been languishing in school and had gotten comfortable with mediocrity._

I know this feeling.

</comment><comment><USER23> The Wayback Machine box is bordered in black. On first glance I thought the second day of HN had a black banner and I thought damn, we lost someone on day 2?

</comment><comment><USER24> Shame we can't see the threads.

<comment><USER25> You can, actually:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2007-02-20](https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2007-02-20)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Reading this for a year and posts have become less interesting.</comment>


Show HN: Groupal end-to-end encrypted chat using the WebCryptoAPI - <AUTHOR> https://safer.chat <comment><AUTHOR> [https://safer.chat](https://safer.chat) is an end-to-end encrypted chat that allows to create rooms with up to 4 participants, the idea is to have what cryptocat used to be, without the need to install browser extensions or applications, in 2019 we have the Web Crypto API which allow us to do all operations.

We do not store any tracking information or history, the server logs doesn't include any keys, nor encrypted messages, in fact, all the server's data lives in-memory.

In order to start a conversation, you need to choose a room and a password, then, only people knowing these details are able to log into that room, this password isn't transferred in plain text.

This is a side project built by me and a friend just because we wanted to have an simple end-to-end encrypted chat available, you can expect it to be live for at least a year.

It is also partially open source ([https://github.com/wiringbits/safer.chat](https://github.com/wiringbits/safer.chat)), we hope you enjoy it.</comment>


LOFT: The Jetman Story – (Official Teaser) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZjDmgYp8ug <comment><AUTHOR> Details on project website:[0]

> _Teaser reveals world 's first ground take off in Norway by Jetman Dubai > pilots Vince and Fred_

> _Jetman Dubai announces LOFT: The Jetman Story a feature length documentary > is in production_

Also on this page presented Jetman's visual timeline chart.[1]

P.S.: [2]

[0] [https://www.jetman.com/loft/](https://www.jetman.com/loft/)

[1] [http://www.jetman.com/loft/images/timeline.jpg](http://www.jetman.com/loft/images/timeline.jpg)

[2] [https://xkcd.com/2072/](https://xkcd.com/2072/)</comment>


The reasons why NYC's subway is so expensive, and why it matters - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/1/14112776/new-york-second-avenue-subway-phase-2?times <comment><USER2> I was expecting an interesting read based o facts and figures but this article one nothing more than an opinionated piece packed with nonsensical apples-to- oranges comparisons and political petty bickering.</comment>


Ask HN: What will you look for, when hiring a web agency? - <AUTHOR>

We're going to update the site of our agency. Our current is nicely looking but doesn't have a flow - the content does not speak well; nor it has a specific customer in mind.<p>So, I am collecting information. What will you look for in an agency, if you are going to hire one?<p>(to be more specific - web development agency) <comment><USER2> Are you software developers? Are you Web designers? Two very different markets. If I am a small business, are you a company I would hire to design my web site? If so, your competition is Squarespace / Wix / my local high school student / etc... why are you more effective than them for what I need?

<comment><AUTHOR> I probably asked a way too open question which has lead to a significant portion of cognitive load.

Thus I will state the question more correctly and post again.</comment></comment>


Facebook rolls out its Offers deals and discounts globally - <AUTHOR> http://www.internetretailer.com/2012/09/21/facebook-rolls-out-its-offers-deals-and-discounts-globally?cid=FB-Article-2012

<comment><USER2> We'll see if this actually turns into a viable revenue source for them. We aggregate every Facebook Offer at <http://www.foibly.com>, and there there's been less then 1,000 since they started promoting them in March.

</comment><comment><USER3> I thought they discontinued this last year?

<http://www.insidefacebook.com/2011/08/26/discontinues-deals/>

<comment><USER2> Deals were similar to Groupon coupons - the customer pre-paid for the coupon and the business got a cut.

Offers are more like normal coupons - they don't cost the customer anything, but the business has to (now) pay to advertise the coupon.</comment></comment>