Return of incandescent light bulbs as MIT makes them more efficient than LEDs - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/03/12/return-of-incandescent-light-bulbs-as-mit-makes-them-more-effici/ <comment><USER2> This news article doesn't even mention the article's name, the authors, or when it was published.

It was actually published in January, and has just now been picked up by the Telegraph.

Here is the citation:

        Ognjen Ilic, Peter Bermel, Gang Chen, John D. Joannopoulos, Ivan
        Celanovic, Marin Soljačić. Tailoring high-temperature radiation and
        the resurrection of the incandescent source. Nature Nanotechnology,
        2016; DOI: 10.1038/nnano.2015.309

And here is the actual paper, via Sci-Hub: [http://sci- hub.cc/10.1038/nnano.2015.309](http://sci-hub.cc/10.1038/nnano.2015.309)

The Telegraph's explanation is terrible: "with a special crystal structure in the glass they can bounce back the energy which is usually lost in heat, while still allowing the light through."

The tungsten filament is sandwiched between two plates made up of layers of oxides, designed to selectively reflect infrared radiation and transmit visible light.

They used a numerical model to design and evaluate various candidate compositions for these plates. For a proof-of-concept, they chose one which uses layers of silicon oxide and tantalum oxide, with 90 layers in total per plate. This reflected about 90% of infrared radiation, producing a luminous efficiency of about 6.6%. This is comparable to commercial LEDs and compact fluorescents, though far from state-of-the-art.

However, the results closely matched their numerical model, and a more complex structure comprised of layers of silicon dioxide, aluminium oxide, tantalum oxide and titanium dioxide, with 300 layers in total, should produce a luminous efficiency of 40%. This is significantly better than the state-of- the-art in LEDs (about 15-30%). They did not, however, actually build that one.

I have no idea how expensive this would be to commercialise. It doesn't sound like the physics is particularly complex, but manufacturing costs could be prohibitive. I think it's safe to say we won't be seeing it outside the laboratory any time soon.

<comment><USER3> "The Telegraph's explanation is terrible: "with a special crystal structure in the glass they can bounce back the energy which is usually lost in heat, while still allowing the light through."

The tungsten filament is sandwiched between two plates made up of layers of oxides, designed to selectively reflect infrared radiation and transmit visible light."

Whats terrible about that? Its the same as what you said using words that could be understood by a child.

<comment><USER4> Ask the child to draw it, you'll notice the problem. One description makes me think that the glass has some new treatment, the other makes me think that there is a new structure within the bulb.

<comment><USER5> Splitting hairs. The point, as succinctly as possible is that:

Incandescent bulbs are inefficient because they lose a lot of energy as heat instead of light.

This counters that by introducing a crystal that selectively blocks the heat and lets the light through.

Maybe the explanation is wrong in the minutiae but it gets the fundamental point across.

<comment><USER6> I don't understand how that's supposed to make the bulb more efficient. If you're trying to _keep the interior of the bulb hot_ , mission accomplished. But the problem we're trying to solve is that when we run a current through the filament, some of the energy we supply becomes visible light and some becomes infrared light. We want more of it to become visible light and less of it to become infrared light. How does preventing infrared light from leaving the bulb help with that?

<comment><USER7> Here's my take on this (corrections welcome): the thing you need to get light out is a hot filament. You use electricity to a) make it hot and b) keep it hot. Both are easier the better the filament is thermally isolated.

Caveat: if that argument is correct, I would think a bulb with triple glazing would help, too. Has that been tried?

<comment><USER8> The thermal mirror needs to selectively reflect infrared while being transparent to visible light, and it needs to bounce radiation back and forth, which requires a certain geometry. The novelty of this paper is creating a big flat filament sandwiched between high-temperature plates that reflect infrared and can be deposited as layered coatings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> People complaining about LEDs being too "bright" or "clinical/sterile" were too bothered to look into the different color temperature options. The annoyingly bright bulbs are around 5000K brightness which would make a home at night feel like a fully-lit classroom. I have 2700K bulbs which give off a much cozier incandescent glow: [http://blog.batteriesplus.com/2013/seeing- things-in-a-differ...](http://blog.batteriesplus.com/2013/seeing-things-in-a- different-light)

Sure, the bulbs take about 1/5 of a second to turn on, which is not instant, but the cheaper LEDs can take up to 2 seconds to reach full brightness. You have to buy a better made bulb to get the quicker "on", which means spending more money. People only trying the cheapest LEDs available are the ones complaining the most about them, I'd assume.

<comment><USER10> Yep. I've replaced about a lot of the bulbs in my house with LEDs. The key is to buy a number of them, find ones that you like, and then put the ones you don't like in places that the color doesn't matter as much (garage, storage areas, etc).

For me, a lot of the Philips LED Soft White (2700k) bulbs worked.

<comment><USER11> I've found that that Walmart "Great Value" brand 8.5 W, 800 lumen, 2700K, 20000 hour bulbs are nearly indistinguishable from the 60 W incandescent bulbs I had before, except that these LEDs are not dimmable.

They are nominally about $2 each, although they frequently drop the price to an astounding $0.17 each. I'm not sure if these price drops are due to some sort of automatic at-the-register rebate from the local power company, or just an internal Walmart effort to promote efficient lighting.

<comment><USER12> The same company that manufacturers these for Walmart is called TCP and they sell the bulbs on Amazon as well. I've bought about 30 of them.

Pretty happy with them so far. The only problem I have had (as with all brands so far) is led bulbs seem to interfere with my garage door receiver signal (if placed right next to it).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> We switched to LEDs about two years ago and have switched back to halogen bulbs recently for few reasons.

1) It didn't actually make much difference on our electricity bill. I believe this is because we use most of our lighting during the winter, and the wasted heat from the traditional bulbs isn't really wasted at all -- we just shifted more work to our electric heating system.

2) Many of the bulbs had burnt out. I am now very skeptical of all the "20 year lifetime" claims since we lost many expensive bulbs in two years.

3) The light quality just isn't great. People will argue this point, and I can't point to any evidence to support my claim, but our perception was that the light was either too blue, or too yellow, and just "looked weird." I wonder if it's related to the strobing of the LEDs.

LED slow motion: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAfWKcg8Bq0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAfWKcg8Bq0)

Halogen slow motion: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCD5BMr6LsA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCD5BMr6LsA)

<comment><USER14> I have to agree. Every few years I'll try again with LEDs and energy efficient bulbs. I'll look online, buy a few different brands and specifically look for the ones with a "cool" colour temperature that should look natural.

In every instance the lighting was terrible. I really haven't yet found an energy efficient bulb that didn't make my place look like a jail cell.

My current place has halogen track lighting and I really like it.

<comment><USER15> You don't want "natural" lighting if you want it to look like an incandescent. "Natural", ie "day" light is very blue. You specifically want a _non_ -natural, warm color temperature.

<comment><USER16> Fire is plenty natural.

In architectural lighting, the reference spectrum depends on color temperature. Warm whites are measured against the black body spectrum, cool whites are measured against the daylight spectrum.

<comment><USER15> What do you mean? Daylight is very close to a blackbody.

<comment><USER16> Close but not quite, atmospheric effects block some portions. We use the CIE d-series illuminants as an approximation: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_illuminant#Illumina...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_illuminant#Illuminant_series_D)

That's done because it's very unusual to get a black body radiator that hot on Earth, so if you're talking about something on the cool white end odds are high it's daylight or trying to approximate it, not a tungsten filament or a campfire.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Traditional incandescent bulbs have a 'colour rendering index' rating of > 100, because they match the hue of objects seen in natural daylight.

> Previously researchers have warned that the blue light emitted by modern > bulbs could be stopping people from getting to sleep at night

These two sentences do not go together. Daylight contains LOTS of blue light.

5 seconds of research into CRI says that the first sentence is false. CRI compares a light source to an _ideal black body_ , not necessarily daylight.

<comment><USER18> Most photographers understand the color temperature differences between incandescent/tungsten light and daylight, and have to account for them by setting their camera's white-balance (manually, or automatically).

So it comes as a shock to me that a traditional incandescent bulb's coloring matches that of natural daylight.

[http://lowel.tiffen.com/edu/color_temperature_and_rendering_...](http://lowel.tiffen.com/edu/color_temperature_and_rendering_demystified.html)

<comment><USER19> I think this is a difficult concept for people because our brains do such a good job compensating for mixed lighting. Our built in auto-white balance is too good. One example I use to explain this is the classic Hollywood 'moonlight' trick, which is achieved by using a daylight balanced source like a large HMI, and then using film or a camera that is balanced for tungsten. Looks like daytime to the eye, but on camera it looks like moonlight.

There are even special gels just for correcting various light sources CTO (color temp orange) CTB (color temp blue) and minus green (correct gross flo lights). The rest are usually regarded as 'party colors' since they are for non-technical corrections.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This article read an awful lot like a marketing puff piece and failed to answer some obvious questions. There is way too much "those evil fluorescent bulbs are making your life miserable" in the article.

1\. How long are the bulbs going to last? 2\. How expensive would they be to manufacture? 3\. When could we see these in stores?

Often times there is a long road from laboratory prototype to production, and the supposed cost savings in electricity won't matter if they only last 1,000 hours and cost $100/bulb.

<comment><USER21> Anecdote time. Those evil flourescent bulbs have made my life miserable.

They don't last substantially longer in the real world. I am routinely replacing them within 12 months.

They cost an order of magnitude more.

They are considered toxic waste with special clean-up and disposal considerations.

The amount of energy they save as a fraction of my total electric bill is inconsequential.

<comment><USER22> > They don't last substantially longer in the real world.

Yes they do, I have a lot of them and I write the installation date on the bulb - they have failed more or less inline with what the package said.

> They cost an order of magnitude more.

They cost $1. There is no reason they need to cost more than that.

> They are considered toxic waste with special clean-up and disposal > considerations.

That isn't true, it's one of those urban myths that spread by email.

> The amount of energy they save as a fraction of my total electric bill is > inconsequential.

What are you spending so much on electricity on?

<comment><USER23> >> They are considered toxic waste with special clean-up and disposal considerations.

>That isn't true, it's one of those urban myths that spread by email.

It can be hazardous waste, you can't categorically say that it isn't true. Both of you are technically wrong. While it's correct that low mercury bulbs can be disposed of in dumpsters according to EPA, some states have stricter rules with respect to even low mercury bulbs. I believe CA, WA, and VT all require specific recycling of low mercury bulbs, for example.

Beyond that, looking at bulbs that are NOT low mercury, those DO become regulated hazardous waste after they burn out according to federal laws. So those MUST be recycled properly to comply with federal and state laws.

In any case, 100% of fluorescent bulbs contain mercury, which is really bad for the environment. So even if you're legally allowed to throw them in dumpsters, it's really not something you should be doing if you care about the environment or the people in it.

Bottom line: Depending on the bulb and jurisdiction, a spent/broken bulb might be classified as hazardous waste legally requiring special cleanup considerations, or it might legally be able to be thrown in a dumpster. But regardless of the law you should properly recycle 100% of bulbs because they contain mercury (even if in small amounts).

<comment><USER24> Well explained, thank you for that.

This is off topic but, would you mind changing your username? I get that it's mostly harmless but it's against the usual HN guidelines.

<comment><USER23> Dongz is a surname, fyi.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This article also doesn't mention the current U.S. law which says it is now illegal to sell incandescent bulbs across state lines. The law should have been written to mandate efficiency, not implementation. Now there must be a legal fight to allow incandescent bulbs again (for the U.S., at least).

<comment><USER26> Why should a UK newspaper cover domestic US laws?

And in the US, the law described at [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Independence_and_Securi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Independence_and_Security_Act_of_2007#B._Lighting_Energy_Efficiency) suggests that the ban is not on technology choice but on efficiency, such that a more efficient incandescent bulb would be fine.

<comment><USER25> From the legislation:

      (C) Candelabra incandescent lamps and intermediate
                    base incandescent lamps.--
                              ``(i) Candelabra base incandescent lamps.--A
                          candelabra base incandescent lamp shall not exceed
                          60 rated watts.
                              ``(ii) Intermediate base incandescent lamps.--
                          An intermediate base incandescent lamp shall not
                          exceed 40 rated watts.

Anything over 60 watts was to become unavailable by 2012, with a schedule to retire the 40 and 60 watt bulbs. Ironically, this meant that to get the same lighting levels, you were permitted to buy more 40w bulbs, but not a single 100w bulb.

As to the "why cover US law?" question, I thought it relevant because the discovery was made by a US team at MIT and for there to be a "return" of incandescent bulbs would require both US and UK/European markets to be opened back up. Even if only as an irony juxtaposed with the location of the discovery, it was related.

Now the law as stated would seemingly permit incandescent bulbs of equivalent brightness to old 100w bulbs, but only if they are 27w or less. Or, you know, you could just buy a gaggle of 27 watt bulbs.

<comment><USER26> What is your point about a candelabra incandescent lamp?

That concerns only lamps which use a "candelabra screw base as described in ANSI C81.61–2006, Specifications for Electric Bases, common designations E11 and E12." Moreover, that is from a section which specifically allows them to be incandescent, so long as they don't exceed a given power limit.

You also seem to have missed the part where it says:

> The rulemaking— (I) shall not be limited to incandescent lamp technologies; > and (II) shall include consideration of a minimum efficacy standard of 45 > lumens per watt.

or the "Backstop requirement":

> If the Secretary fails to complete a rulemaking in accordance with clauses > (i) through (iv) or if the final rule does not produce savings that are > greater than or equal to the savings from a minimum efficacy standard of 45 > lumens per watt, effective beginning January 1, 2020, the Secretary shall > prohibit the sale of any general service lamp that emits less than 300 > percent of the average lumens per watt emitted by a 100-watt incandescent > general service lamp that is commercially available on the date of enactment > of this clause.

This allows incandescent bulbs so long as they are significantly more efficient than those sold before 2007.

As to why UK newspapers writers are supposed to understand the details of domestic US law, and why UK newspaper readers are supposed to care, in order to get an extra moment of irony - well, that seems like a lot of work for very little gain. Especially when the EU has very similar laws, so UK readers may default to think that the US is already in the same boat, so there's little to no irony available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> From the paper: _" This experimental device is a proof-of-concept, at the low end of performance that could be ultimately achieved by this approach."_

Somebody really needs to get MIT's PR department under control. The hype level is so high it's embarrassing to a good school. Especially in materials science articles. It's like reading the National Enquirer of science.

<comment><USER28> Publish or Perish… Publish at all costs without going the extra mile.. A pity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> > _The clinical white beam of LEDs and frustrating time-delay of 'green' > lighting has left many hankering after the instant, bright warm glow of > traditional filament bulbs._

Sheer garbage. LEDs come on instantly, and are available in various color temperatures, thanks to filtering: you can have then in 2700K. If your LED isn't coming on instantly, it has some problem with the power supply, probably because you bought the lowest bargain-bin crap you could get your hands on.

I've had Phillips flood lights (3000K) in my kitchen and living room for several years. They come on instantly and put out a warmly colored light that is consistent from the center of the spot to the fringes.

<comment><USER30> And your apples and oranges are the wrong color because the color rendition on them is so poor that Philips doesn't even publish the number. The only downlight I could find on their site has a CRI of 80 -- basically garbage. CRI is imperfect but things glow green until you get to the low 90s.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I built a house a couple years ago where the lighting used is predominately LED bulbs and I absolutely hate it. The pre-determined lighting plan for the home was presumably based on the brightness given off by certain incandescent bulbs and placing LED bulbs in those locations that are supposed to be wattage equivalent has resulted in a fairly dark house with what I would consider to be low quality of light. Many of the bulbs used in certain fixtures also emit a noticeable high pitched noise when on.

<comment><USER32> Sounds like pretty rubbish bulbs. Have you not tried replacing even one with a good quality brand?

Of course, it might also just be that the lighting design wasn't very good in the first place...

<comment><USER31> I have no idea what a good quality brand is. And if I did find better bulbs it would cost a fortune to replace all of the bulbs I just bought two years ago.

<comment><USER33> Sounds like somebody spent a lot of money without doing any research.

I must have tried samples of a half-dozen different brands before buying enough LED bulbs to retrofit all of my ceiling cans. Actually I sort of wasted my time, because the (subsidized) $2.99 65w replacements from the hardware store on the corner proved to be as good as any of them. No failures a year later (N = about 36) so they seem to be working out OK.

<comment><USER32> Similar story here, I found my favourite LED bulbs at the supermarket!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Didn't see it mentioned in other comments, but a particular failing of LED lamps is their unsuitability for critical color matching applications. Fluorescents and CFLs are available for that use, but to date haven't seen LEDs that are satisfactory.

This is important in art studios, museums and other venues. For many years I've used specialized 48" T12 fluorescents with good results. Incandescent/halogen lamps are also essential because color selection can depend on the target environment, there's a world of difference between indoor illumination and daylight in this respect.

The high-efficiency lamps described in the article will likely be very useful and a welcome refresh of a light source that's so far been hard to emulate with LEDs.

With IR energy being pumped back into the filament, maybe it's an option to run a hotter filament emitting a higher color temperature. More likely the input energy is just decreased so the resulting filament temp remains in conventional range. There still might be an issue re: time to filament burnout not differing from conventional lamps unless the filament is modified in some way.

In the long run I imagine LEDs will be improved, curbing the disproportionate blue output, while enhancing and smoothing the long end of the spectrum. LED dominance will probably be complete when color rendering is optimized, they work properly with electronic dimmer switches, and lamp envelopes produce illumination as diffuse as classic sources, e.g., like "frosted" incandescents.

</comment><comment><USER35> So, if I understand dkbrk correctly, this is a glass that transmits light but reflects infrared. This seems to have a huge number of other applications (assuming it is practical). Make windows out of it, so that your house stays cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter. Keep your car cooler in the summer. Better face shields for fire fighters. Put a window in your refrigerator. Let people get closer to metal foundries/casting metal.

</comment><comment><USER36> So, if this works and is 40% efficient compared to LED or florescent bulb's manage ~14% efficiency, do we ban all LED purchases in the US?

<comment><USER37> It is interesting to think about how this commercial product might have to fight the anti-incandescent laws. Would this bulb be illegal in many states/countries right now?

<comment><USER38> In the EU, there are no incandescent laws, there are only limits on efficiency.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> >Researchers at MIT have shown that by surrounding the filament with a special crystal structure in the glass they can bounce back the energy which is usually lost in heat, while still allowing the light through.

Why can't/don't they use those same crystals on LED lights?

<comment><USER40> The crystals reflect back heat in order to improve efficiency by keeping the filament hot. LEDs don't work by being hot.

<comment><USER39> They do lose energy in the form of heat, though.

Ever seen the massive heatsinks required for a high wattage LED to work?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> This was posted a while back and picked apart by the comments, as it has been here too. This is all just "potential" improvements, just like we've been hearing about "crazy new battery technologies" for the past few years and have seen next-to-nothing come of it. Always good to see new tech and ideas, but let's not kid ourselves into thinking this will make it's way back into homes anytime soon.

"Return of incandescent light bulbs" is an incredibly misleading headline that implies that due to this new tech, we're already starting to use these great new efficient bulbs- um, no.

Not to mention, the prototype/initial version is nowhere near the "potential" level of efficiency they are claiming.

</comment><comment><USER42> Here is an interesting thread about color quality (something rarely brought up when LED gets mentioned).

[http://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3757505](http://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3757505)

</comment><comment><USER43> > The clinical white beam of LEDs and frustrating time-delay of 'green' > lighting

I hear a lot about the "delays" in incandescent alternatives, but all of mine are barely perceptible. My Flux bulb has like 400ms; it's palpable but how could it ever annoy me? How often were you trying to illuminate something with a light bulb within 400ms and missed it?

And of course, many of the adjustable/smart LEDs can mimic incandescent light temperature with ease. They cost more, but not necessarily over their lifetime.

As mentioned, this article was fluff.

<comment><USER44> "Green" and "energy saving" are often used to refer to florescent lighting in the UK. Florescent bulbs take some time to warm up before they reach full brightness, which is what they are complaining about. LED bulbs like your Flux don't have a delay.

<comment><USER22> > Florescent bulbs take some time to warm up before they reach full brightness

They've had instant on fluorescent bulbs for a decade now, and they don't cost more. If yours are slow switch to a different supplier.

<comment><USER45> Instant start is not what the comment you're replying refers to. Instant start is about how an arc is struck to get the gas to glow initially. The comment above is referring to how the light gets brighter as it runs longer, well after the gas begins to fluoresce.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorescent_lamp#Instant_start](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorescent_lamp#Instant_start)

<comment><USER22> I know, I was not referring to instant start either. (I said instant on, so I can see how that might be confusing.)

The CFL's in my house are full brightness immediately. I suppose a lab could measure a change in brightness, but it's nothing that is visible to the eye.

<comment><USER44> Zero-warmup florescent fixtures do exist, but I've never seen them installed in a home. They work by continuously running a small current through the filaments to keep the bulbs warm, which requires a separate always-on power feed in addition to switched power. Normal (instant-start) florescents start producing light instantly, and in sufficiently hot weather don't need to warm up, but if it's below freezing expect less than half of rated brightness for the first five or ten minutes. It's worse for CFL bulbs than for straight tubes, and worse still for CFL bulbs installed upside-down because the mercury settles.

<comment><USER29> So it's like the "stand by" mode of a tube amplifier, which keeps the filaments on.

Even though fluorescent lamps are called cold cathodes, "[a] cold cathode does not necessarily operate at a low temperature: it is often heated to its operating temperature by other methods, such as the current passing from the cathode into the gas." (Wikipedia, Cold Cathode).

Obviously, the tech you're referring to requires a special circuit, since an ordinary light socket goes comletely open circuit when switched off. (I.e. anyone who claims to have these zero-warmup CFL's in ordinary light fixtures is confused.)

I find that the slow warm-up time of regular CFL's is excellent for bathrooms. When you have to "go" at wee hours in the morning, you don't want the full glare in your sleepy eyes.

Your notes about the ambient temperature effect on warm-up time are spot on. People who are not seeing the effect with CFL's may be living in a warm climate or well heated home.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> What are the chances of seeing this at retail in the next decade?

</comment><comment><USER47> Thank goodness! My LED Easy Bake Oven takes _forever_.

</comment><comment><USER48> Philips has already had car headlight bulbs that do this "radiate heat back as light" trick.

They are VERY VERY bright. In fact the brightest headlights before you go to real xeon. But they are not much more power efficient.

9011 HIR and 9012 HIR models

[http://store.candlepower.com/hirlighting.html](http://store.candlepower.com/hirlighting.html)

</comment><comment><USER45> Am I the only person that doesn't like "warm" light? I wish I could have all the lights in my apartment be D65 like my monitor. It makes everything look like a calm, cloudy day. At least with my monitor calibrated to that temperature, anyway.

<comment><USER49> They should rename "warm" to "nasty dingy yellow".

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> "However even 'warm' finish LED or florescent bulbs can only manage an index rating of 80 and most are far less."

This is simply not true. Current state of the art is >80\. If you search a little you'll find LEDs with CRI 95.

</comment><comment><USER51> I'm suprised noone brought this documentary up: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1j0XDGIsUg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1j0XDGIsUg)

</comment><comment><USER52> The most interesting thing I ever read about light bulbs is that they used to last 100 years. But manufacturerers limited this due to sales : [http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/history/the-great- lightbu...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/history/the-great-lightbulb- conspiracy)

There is still one active for over 114 years and it has a 'live' feed [http://www.centennialbulb.org/photos.htm](http://www.centennialbulb.org/photos.htm) ( 1 million hours and it's not that efficient anymore )

</comment><comment><USER53> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumen_%28unit%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumen_%28unit%29)

</comment><comment><USER54> When you live in a cold climate some light-bulbs become more efficient due to the fact that the heat is not waste heat.

As it helps to heat up the room they are in.

<comment><USER55> Heating your home with electricity is probably the most expensive and the most wasteful way.

<comment><USER56> Depends. If your electricity comes from coal/gas fired power stations, yes it is wasteful - just burn the fossils locally instead. If it comes from hydroelectricity, solar, nuclear, or wind, then no it is sensible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Grrr!

Incandescent lights, when heating would be used, are 100% efficient.

They provide 3% light output, and 97% heat output. A single one on provides a great amount of heat and can easily provide spot-heat where humans are.

Instead there's CFLs and LEDs. And CFLs are a great way to spread mercury pollution across a great area. Snopes has a decent article about hazards and response: [http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/cfl.asp](http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/cfl.asp)

<comment><USER58> The electricity for my lights comes from thermal power plants with maybe 40% efficiency and then loses a little bit more in transmission. If I use LED bulbs, then that heat is replaced by my natural gas furnace, which is somewhere around 90% efficient. Net result, even in the dead of winter it saves energy to use more efficient bulbs. In summer, when I'm using electricity to cool my house, the difference is even greater.

Resistive heating with electricity is just terribly inefficient. If you have to do it anyway (because you need to run equipment, and that equipment is already as efficient as it'll reasonably get) then you can benefit a little by ensuring that this heat is put somewhere it's wanted. But if you don't have to do it, don't do it.

CFLs suck, but LEDs are great. I fear that the CFL interregnum may have hurt the cause of efficient lighting in general.

<comment><USER22> > CFLs suck, but LEDs are great.

I have both. There's basically no difference, except the LEDs are hot on the base and CFL's are hot on the bulb.

Power consumption is identical, CRI identical, and Cost per Hour (before failing) is basically identical (assuming the hours listed on the package is the truth).

> I fear that the CFL interregnum may have hurt the cause of efficient > lighting in general.

It has not. I've been using CFLs for about 20 years (almost since the day they came out), and they work just fine.

<comment><USER58> CFLs take longer to come on, don't reach full brightness immediately, are less efficient, don't last as long, and contain mercury.

I don't know what your personal statement about using CFLs for 20 years has to do with my fear about the cause of efficient lighting being hurt. Your own preferences don't necessarily reflect those of people in general.

<comment><USER22> > CFLs take longer to come on

I have both. That isn't true. I have some LEDs that take longer, some CFL's that take longer, and some (of both) that are effectively instant.

> don't reach full brightness immediately

Also not true. It used to be that way, and perhaps some poorly designed ones. But there is no reason to buy any that are not instant.

> are less efficient

Again, not true - make sure to compare bulbs with equivalent CRI.

> don't last as long, and contain mercury.

This is true, and irrelevant. Also, LEDs cost more, and I'm not (yet) convinced the hour ratings are actually accurate.

> I don't know what your personal statement about using CFLs for 20 years has > to do with my fear about the cause of efficient lighting being hurt.

Your fear is unwarranted. CFLs work perfectly fine, and I know that because I've been using them for a long time.

<comment><USER58> I don't know what to say, besides that your statements run contrary to my experience where they conflict, and I don't understand why you think it's irrelevant that CFLs die quicker and are more poisonous.

A whole lot of people experienced CFLs and came away with the conclusion that they suck. I fear that they will assume LEDs also suck.

<comment><USER22> > I don't know what to say, besides that your statements run contrary to my > experience where they conflict

Did you buy CFLs recently or only more than 10 years ago? What brand? I've had excellent results with GE and GreatValue. Mixed results with Feit.

> and I don't understand why you think it's irrelevant that CFLs die quicker

Because I don't (yet) trust LEDs to live as long as they say. So that advantage doesn't exist as far as I'm concerned.

> and are more poisonous

Because it makes no difference in actual use. You can toss them in the trash if you want, or take them to Lowes/Homedepot to recycle. The amount of mercury is too small to hurt anyone if they break.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> This will find enormous success in the theatrical market. Nobody is willing to give up the CRI of tungsten filament fixtures.

</comment><comment><USER60> I love the first paragraph's insertion of a little EU-paranoia in the run up to the referendum. Vintage Telegraph.

</comment><comment><USER61> Add a solar panel and one of those newfangled forever batteries and I'm sold.

</comment><comment><USER62> Is there anything to be said for their durability and versatility though?

</comment><comment><USER63> So happy as they are the healthiest night lighting anyway.

</comment><comment><USER64> I know the article is fluff when I see MIT in the title

</comment><comment><USER65> wow. that is so fantastic. i wonder how they came to the 40% figure.

</comment><comment><USER66> Good - no more toxic chemicals from so-called eco-friendly bulbs in our homes.

</comment><comment><USER67> It's ironic that the factories that make incandescent bulbs are being shut down.</comment>


How HackerNews ruined my morning - <AUTHOR> http://swanson.github.com/blog/2011/02/22/how-hackernews-ruined-my-morning.html <comment><USER2> Here's an idea: find _someone else_ with a problem and work on that. This works especially well if the someone else is in business, very busy, and has some money. Chances are better that your solution to their problem won't have much competition: if it did, they would have already gone with it.

I know this is the opposite of "scratch your own itch", but I always found that advice overrated. I have always been much more successful scratching other people's itches.

<comment><USER3> 1000x this. The Internet doesn't mean every idea you have will be built by 10 other people first; it means that every idea you have that serves 20-something geeks will be built by 10 other people first. Build for other people. Added bonus: other people tend to actually spend money for solutions to their problems.

<comment><USER4> Can I recommend building for ladies? It's like you get to avoid 98% of the competition _for free_.

<comment><USER5> The issue is that it's hard to know what ladies want, but then again, that's your competitive advantage...

I mean this in the "It's harder to come across this information" sense, not the "LOL ladies, amirite?" sense.

<comment><USER3> It's not at all hard to know what ladies want. Start by talking to ladies. The Internet improves your nerdy guy private life in a variety of ways. Distill them to crisp examples. Seek isomorphisms in your conversations with women. You buy hobby item X, they may buy hobby item Y. Or, maybe they buy X too, but are too put off by the culture of the sites/apps that help you with X. You have job N. They have job K. You rarely think about K because you're an N and a guy. And so on.

Teaching. Fabric and crafts. Child care (holy is there ever a billion dollars waiting for whoever cracks the code on babysitters). PR work. Marketing/communications. Office managers. Metalworking. Literary fiction. I'm sure you can find something.

<comment><USER6> I don't want to be a negative nancy, but every idea I can think of along those lines with an obvious profit angle actually _has_ been built by 10 people first. For example, babysitters — there are tons of sites in that space. Just Google "find a babysitter" and you'll get a full page of sites dedicated to just that.

<comment><USER3> Not one of them work. We spend thousands on this problem every year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've created successful products (pretty close to commodity products, in fact) before where I tried to evaluate direct competitors, and found over 50 of them before stopping counting.

Here's what emboldens me when learning about competitors: When you initially had this idea, you weren't aware that all of these competitors existed. Which means that some segment of the market, including potential customers who are * similar to you* also don't know about all of the competitors. To them, the other people with the same idea might as well not exist.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is a great point, thanks for the advice!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _"A few hours (and a pity party) later, I realized that this isn't the end of the world. The concept has been validated"_

This is an important realisation. Just because there is someone else already doing something isn't a reason _not_ to do it. It seems like this affliction is curious to software, and possibly more pronounced in web based software.

In his post entitled "Making Ideas Work"[1], Chris Savage (CEO of Wistia) relates his experiences prior to starting Wistia:

 _"There are tons of viable startup ideas that get stopped before they get a chance to start. These ideas get left un-executed for a multitude of reasons including fear, money, and time. But, the most common roadblock I see is overestimation of the competition. The process goes like this: come up with an idea, google to see if it's been done, find someone doing something similar, and give up.

As it turns out, this is the exact process we went through when trying to start Wistia. We'd think we were onto something exciting because our idea was so unique, then we'd find a company doing something similar and we'd give up on that particular approach. We continued this vicious cycle for 4 months until we realized that absolutely no one else had heard of the 'competition' we'd found. It turns out that it's actually really, really hard to get people to pay attention or use anything. After this epiphany it was easy to forge ahead."_

Now I'm not saying your book side-project is, like, your _startup_ idea or anything but obviously you've fallen victim to a very, very common thing in our industry and that's to drastically over-estimate the value in being a first mover.

If something already exists, don't be afraid to compete! The "market" out there is unimaginably huge and people just wander round trying out all sorts of things. Not only that but it's constantly growing, not only due to population growth but the growth of the internet itself. There's room for everyone to get in there and have a slice of the pie.

[1]<http://savagethoughts.com/post/1591677111>

<comment><USER9> _"... the most common roadblock I see is overestimation of the competition ..."_

Such a profound observation of why competition is important. There is a problem with competing in exactly the same space though. The pie slice I'm not so sure about. There is a strong correlation between Internet sites, and users which gives you an upper-bound on returns: _Adermic, Huberman_ , _"Zipf's law and the Internet"_ ~ <http://www.scribd.com/doc/3254689/Zipfs-law-and-the- Internet>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> A year and a half ago I was working on a python realtime push server I'd serendipitously code named Cyclone. It was an alternative to having to use twisted or Orbited and I was super excited about it.

Then one morning I woke up to this [http://techcrunch.com/2009/09/10/facebook- open-sources-frien...](http://techcrunch.com/2009/09/10/facebook-open-sources- friendfeeds-real-time-tech/)

I got drunk that night and whined a whole bunch feeling that my work was wasted, but the next day I dug into their code and was really excited. It was a much better implementation saving me a ton of time and I've been happy using it ever since.

</comment><comment><USER11> When I spent more time writing songs, I would go through a similar emotional and mental strain but in smaller iterations. There would be periods in which no matter what chord progression or melody I came up with, it always seemed to sound like a song that someone else had already written. When this happened I would discard the song in frustration, even if it had great potential.

In time I figured out that some of my favorite songs had the same chord progressions, structure and melody as each other but they still did not sound the same. Why not?

Every artist has a vision and a song written by someone else should have no impact on that vision. My problem was that I was too worried on being original instead of being focused on having a vision.

Just as music has been passed from generation to generation so are ideas. Many ideas seem to owe to some other idea. Don't worry about being the first. Worry about being the best.

</comment><comment><USER12> I used to think like him in the past. But these days I am already so occupied with executing on things at my job and in my free time that I thank the high heavens every time I realize someone else has executed on "my" idea.

Every time this happens, someone else solved a problem for me for a fraction of the cost that would it take me to implement. I can just pick another thing from my ideas.txt file and work on that.

This happened quite a lot recently because I want to break into Android development with a friend of mine. The first three ideas we came up with have already been done. It turned out that one of the ideas is an amazingly popular apps in the Android store already. Too bad it was not us who did it. But then, now we have finally found an Android app idea nobody has executed on yet and we will start working on it today.

</comment><comment><USER13> Hey Matt! I'm the guy behind HackerBooks - I certainly can relate, because I felt the same way more than once (for hackerbooks, earlier on for learnivore, and for other sites as well).

But here's the trick: there's really room for more than one app on each topic.

Take the "time tracking" topic for instance: search how many profitable business work around that topic. You'll be amazed!

I can only encourage you to release your app, which I will definitely use!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Thibaut, thanks for the kind words and the email. Hopefully some friendly competition can help us both improve :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Has the idea been "validated" just because it made the first page of Hacker News?

Anyway, I write apps for Android, and I actually entered a really crowded space because I thought I could do better, and now I have the #1 app in my genre.

It's a big world. There are lots of people. And I don't see any reason why there can't be room for 2 similar products, as long as they are both great.

<comment><AUTHOR> I considered it validated because HN is the ideal target market and there was a lot of interest in the comments, not just because it was on the front page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> _"... The sting is even worse when you have invested time and resources already. The idea may be "worthless", but it sure doesn't seem that way when its YOUR idea. ..."_

And you give up so easy?

First understand why determination is important ~ <http://www.paulgraham.com/determination.html> There are also multiple suggestions on how to generate ideas worth working on found in these articles:

\- <http://paulgraham.com/ideas.html>

\- <http://paulgraham.com/bronze.html>

</comment><comment><USER15> Another obvious lesson to take from this is that it is sometimes better to release something imperfect and improve upon it, rather than wait for the perfect product, because by then you may be irrelevant.

The downside to this is lack of agility due to trying to maintain backwards compatibility, and being bogged down by support.

<comment><USER16> That's very true. A project I'm working on at the moment has some of the worst code I've seen. Copy and paste crap everywhere. No understanding of good programming practices or web design. A mountain of technical debt.

Yet, the company is doing well, making money, hiring people and expanding quickly.

Had they waited until their skills were good enough, or spent a fortune on experienced developers, they would not be where they are today - with a heap of technical issues sure, but also with the money to throw at these issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> At the risk of sounding presumptuous, since I have another one of the sites you mention, I think I need to say a couple of things.

It's a mistake to view all these book sites as somehow enemies of each other. The simple fact is, at 7% commission and an audience of 100K or so, you aren't going to be buying yachts off the Mediterranean coast any time soon. hn-books was a hobby site for me. I used it to test out a few different ideas I had about how to deploy internet apps. The only reason you keep seeing posts from hn-books is because I had a bet with JacquesM about how viable the site would be. I thought it was nothing more than a lark, while Jacques thought it had a lot of potential. So I thought doing a dozen book reviews or so would at least show traction or not. So far I'm winning the bet.

The second thing is that execution beats everything else. I spent 2 weeks on hn-books and I was done with it. No more coding, no more anything. I don't sit around and obsess over it, I don't plan all kinds of new features, and I don't worry about how it's traffic compares to others. The only thing I worry about hn-books is that it gets enough votes when I post a review to come off the "no-follow" list. And that's simply because the bet with Jacques wouldn't be fair if it didn't. A lot of you guys have spent ten times as much time as I spent on hn-books and still don't have anything to show for it. Maybe a little less thinking and a little more execution? We have a couple dozen guys with site ideas and only a few deployed? Surely we can do better than that.

So if you want to do books, have fun with it! Try some new stuff out. Do something you've never done before. But whatever you do, don't sit around planning or dreaming up how it might be great or horrible or how your competitors might do this or that. All of that is just a waste of time. Execute. Then decide if you want to keep working on your site or move on to something else.

Yes, you can do some Chinese Math and convince yourself that there is a fortune in tech books and somehow we're all in some cutthroat competition. But do yourself a favor: don't do that. You can execute perfectly and still fail completely. So worrying won't get you anywhere. In the end, a site like you want has to be for yourself first, the community second. If you start thinking outside of that, you're probably wasting energy.

Also, I would be careful about taking every comment over in that thread as some kind of to-do list. There's a difference between asking a bunch of folks to comment randomly on some neat site and figuring out exactly what you need to do to accomplish some goal. Sometimes you just have to say no.

BTW, I posted a link to hackerbooks on my blog. I'm happy to post a link to your site as well when it comes up. Just let me know. I refuse to make this competitive. This should be something that helps everybody out. I'm hoping to learn some stuff from you guys! I'm excited about all the ideas out there.

Recently I've thought that after I do the first dozen or so books, I might continue on for a while. But not because of any great business plan: I just like reading great books and reviewing great tools and talking about how cool they are. I know some people think that's pumping the tools or books, but I like 'em, they've helped me, and I'm going to explain why I like 'em. Screw everybody else. I think you have to work from inside out on this stuff. (Quite frankly, my advice to you is if you want to execute on something to make a few dollars, find something besides books. For some reason, everybody and their brother are into books nowadays. Edw is right: if you want to make money, find somebody with money who is in pain and help them, don't concentrate on scratching your own itch so much.)

Let us know how it goes!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Daniel, I did not intend to make into a 'battle'. The site is just a hobby for me as well, I have no delusions about getting bought out by Amazon or spinning this into a huge thing. My goal, in fact, was to make enough money each month that I could buy a new book :)

The enemies reference fit in nicely with Getting Real -- which I recently finished reading and was what pushed me to build the site -- but I hope that it didn't come off as being overly aggressive/hostile.

Thank you for the advice, I will take it to heart.

<comment><USER17> tptacek hit the nail on the head: find something somewhere else.

hn-books is extremely powerful: as a laboratory to tell me how to do other sites. As a book site it isn't hitting on so much (as much as I am growing to like it) If you were to find another market where there aren't 40 thousand guys writing code? Something like that might have a LOT more traction. (wink, wink, nudge, nudge)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is exactly how I feel over the past couple of years, and each time I convinced myself that it's better to have competitors.. because it makes sense, right? (potential users, their needs, etc.)

But somehow this feeling that other people also came up with that cool idea ("my idea", "the idea") took all my passion about the project away.

My biggest disappointment was when I see flavours.me while I was coding exactly the same. I was thinking to make the website involved with information retrieval/recommendation though, but the interface was going to be exactly the same. At that time, I even started a master's program with an emphasis on machine learning in order to code this project better and my thesis advisor was an author of one of the machine learning books that's being recommended at hackerbooks.com and probably one of the best academic I can study on machine learning). Everything was going perfect --until a friend of mine told me about flavours.me... and all my passion just went away because I was exactly looking at the project that I was gonna implement -even the backend was going to be much more different.

But then, when about.me got acquired by AOL, I disappointed much more because they did the same project with flavours.me and they got successful.. Now, I can realize that it's not about the unique idea. It's about to fill tiny gaps, and keep trying until you bet your competitors. And a couple of months ago, I started my project again and I think it's gonna be awesome.

But still, I think it discourages to see an implemented copy of your idea before getting started to work on it. Maybe it's better to come up with a quick (but not that dirty) implementation of the project, and then looking for competitors (and hopefully, to see you are doing better) and then improving your idea.

</comment><comment><USER19> I love it when I have an idea and find out that someone else already did it - it lets me cross it off my list! I produce FAR more ideas than I can execute, and it makes me feel bad to let them fester. I would love to find people who need help with the ideas and can do much of the execution (and in fact I work this way with some people, to good effect.)

</comment><comment><USER20> It's almost a naive thing to say and I probably wouldn't ever do it myself either (and perfectly understand everyone's reasons not to) but somehow it's awkward that no one said "come on guys, join forces".

No criticism towards the respective project owners either, don't get me wrong. And like other comments pointed out, there's definitely room for more than one solution.

</comment><comment><USER21> Go work in industry: you'll find plenty of products or pieces of infrastructure that have been developed solely because a) there was no money for the best solution, b) best solution was open source and we can't use it (think finance, insurance, etc.) or c) someone thought they could do a better job. But I agree, it's very discouraging to work on something that isn't the first or you know there are very many of. First year in college, the first full-time group project we had was done by all the 200 other CS students at the college, in groups of 5. That's 20-30 groups all developing the same software according to the same 40 page requirements package. Oh, and they used the same project for 3-4 years. That's 120 solutions to the same essential problem and is very demotivating, even for students.

</comment><comment><USER22> Glad you realised it's not the end of the world. Just remember there are 6 billion people in this world. Probably 1 billion have internet access. The likely hood someone else has the same idea as you is very high. You discovered half a dozen people with the same idea. But if half a dozen people have a product to show there where probably hundreds who initially thought that such a service would be a good idea. The only thing separating those hundreds with the half a dozen is action.

So instead of competing with hundreds on the idea alone you are competing with half a dozen on implementation. I'm not sure about you but I like those odds.

</comment><comment><USER23> I was listening to a 'To The Best of Our Knowledge' interview last week with Chuck Close, the American painter, and he said something interesting and relevant. He said that we are all very good at problem solving, but not good at problem creating. Problem creating is the process of finding interesting challenges. He found it in his art, and suggested that if we can find our own interesting, unique challenges, we don't need to find ways to keep up with everybody else, or worry about others taking our ideas. Kind of interesting and unique perspective.

</comment><comment><USER24> I don't like the statement that "Hacker News ruined my morning." That seems like you're either creating a link-bait headline trying to appeal to the emotions of HNers or you're trying to shift responsibility from yourself to another entity.

I really don't think that you're trying to do either; it seems to me you just wanted to vent and share your thoughts. Though, you may want to consider how your headline may read to your intended audience. I typically don't respond well to these types.

Use the fact that competition exists as validation for a market. I wish you the best of success.

</comment><comment><USER25> Whenever I start a project in the internet/web app field, the first thing is to come up with a great idea and get excited about it.

Then do nothing.

The next step? Check thoroughly to see if it was done already.

</comment><comment><USER26> This could have been me writing this article! In fact, it's ironic because just this morning I wrote post on HN asking if I should release early or add some more polish for this very reason. No, my site isn't related to books! Yes, variations of the problem I'm trying to solve get announced here more often than I would like to see! :-) I guess your post was better written, cause mine only got a few points! Maybe your title worked!!!

</comment><comment><USER27> Competition proves the market. Why are you disappointed to learn that other people might have the same idea? It means it's worth pursuing if more than one person is doing it, right? Just add your own flavor, and have integrity and faith in the individual value of your product.

On the other hand, if your faith in your product hinges on how avant-garde the concept is, I don't think you're going to routinely be satisfied with your creations.

</comment><comment><USER28> _The sting is even worse when you have invested time and resources already._

This is why they say release early and release often. Try not to fret too much. At least you didn't spend tons of resources on an iOS app to have Apple change the terms of service in a manner that you can't comply with. Sucks to be those guys.

</comment><comment><USER29> Perseverance. I you hold to your vision long enough you may have some nice surprises along the way, like competitors giving up or pivoting.

It happened to me recently when wetpaint decided to pivot out of the market for simple wikis (under the "pressure" of impatient VCs maybe...).

</comment><comment><USER30> If anything, having competitors validates that you have good ideas; there is also a clear, widespread pain if some one else is tying to solve the problem.

If your implementation is indeed better, and you can hustle, its likely that you'll do well.

</comment><comment><USER31> It's bad when you find out that idea that you working on is already develop by someone else. But if that happens you have two options: try with some other idea or try to make 'stolen' idea better : )

</comment><comment><USER32> This guy just doesn't cut it to be an entrepreneur.

Other start-ups developing a product similar to yours will help you boost your business, not sink it. PG made it by doing something other people were making too. He thinks the programming language his company were using gave them an edge. I don't think so. I think it wasn't about the programming language itself: it was about smart people who were able and dared to really think different, knowing that "different" was "better".

Your business is just your people and you, not your product. Think about building a great team, not a great product.

</comment><comment><USER33> Dude - 'C'est la Vie'.

</comment><comment><USER34> How a typical person thinks: "Lots of people are already doing that. I give up. They've taken all the money there is and ever will be for this product/service!"

How a typical business person thinks: "If I can take 1% of each of my 5 competitors' market share, I can make $x millions. Better head over to EDGAR and read some 10-K reports."

How uber-startups like Google and Facebook think: "If I can take the majority of all of my competitors market share through superior marketing and technology, and increase the size of the market at the same time, then we're worth $XX billions."

Notice how you don't have to invent anything completely new, just innovate on existing stuff that's proven to make money.

<comment><USER35> If that's what the typical business person thinks, they're wrong. It's not about taking fractional shares of existing markets; it's about finding defensible niches. Fractional market shares have a way of going to zero if your product is just a me-too.

<comment><USER34> I think you're wrong. Take a look at the toilet paper selection at the supermarket next time you're there. Every single brand you see has a fractional market share, and very few of them are going to zero any time soon. There's millions of dollars to be made in wiping asses.

According to your theory of market dominance, there should be only one type of TP available after all the 'fractional' players go to zero. Or at the very least, several 'defensible' niches - how exactly would that apply to the squares of paper you wipe your shit with? To me they look the same. They're rolls of paper on cardboard tubes that differ in price and softness.

Business goes way beyond websites.

<comment><USER35> You answered your own question: they differ in price and softness. There's a "basic TP" niche and a "premium TP" niche -- and maybe a couple more, but not many.

Okay, you say, since no two products are exactly identical, how is my talk of niches not vacuous? Because it's not enough for the products not to be identical: they must be differentiated in the mind of the market. That is, the differences must _matter_ to at least some part of the market. If you have a small market share, and you are unable to differentiate your product from its competition in some way -- price or features or both -- your market share _will_ go to zero. The world is littered with examples; I'm sure you can think of plenty yourself.

Ask any angel or VC you know what they think of a business plan that proposes to capture a small fraction of a huge market, without laying out a viable marketing plan for differentiating the product.

<comment><USER34> I'm not talking about ideas that angels or VCs like, I'm talking about running a real god damn business. Your mind has been twisted into thinking like a VC. You're talking about the toilet paper market having niche market segments. Are you out of your mind?

Angels and VCs want 100x+ multiple exits. Business people don't need that, or anything at all like it. What they need is a business with customers.

<comment><USER36> > Are you out of your mind?

I humbly suggest that this might not be the tone you ought to take, and it might not be the tone you'd like to take.

<comment><USER34> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2252152>

Here's an entire thread for you.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Every startup needs a story - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/design-startups/3e224d9c6cd9

<comment><USER2> Great article Ryan, I am (as I'm sure most founders reading this are) actively working on my startup's story - so I found it very useful. One thing that interests me is how the story changes over time. This seems to have been the case with Instagram. Like you said, Burbn was a very different product and over time they realized people were using it mostly for photos so they restarted with what is now Instagram. Was the well-crafted story you described there from the beginning, or was it developed as they worked with users and iterated through early products? Stories definitely give a company direction, allow designers and engineers to focus more on the few important features that really matter, and make it easier to speak to users, but it seems that getting to that story can be a journey in and of itself.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Figuring out a startups story is often the most difficult part of the entrepreneurial journey, and can take weeks, months or even years. With Burbn, they began with a very different story, but over time it changed into what became Instagram. Where the trouble lies is figuring out what features are most unique and compelling with your product, and focusing on those. In the next article I'm going to break this process down and I think it will answer your question on how an entrepreneur like Kevin could start with a product like Burbn, and wittle it down into a product like Instagram.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Well done Ryan. I felt like you read by mind. We are in the middle of incorporating many of these points into our design process.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Chuck! I'm glad it was helpful and it was your tweet that really provided the thesis for the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A very timely post, indeed! Would like to hear more...

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Look for the next article sometime next week. I'm going to discuss taking a products story, and turning it into a product flow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The story _is_ the message. :)</comment>


Show HN: "Zeus Living" for short getaways from urban cities in India - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
I'm Arjun and one of the co-founders of Kipstay (https://www.kipstay.com/).We design and rent homestays for short getaways that are 2-5hrs away from urban cities in India.
In India, booking homestays as an alternative to hotels is frustrating on many levels - the experience is unpredictable, no transparency in pricing, inaccurate listing information and photos and trust issues.
We simplify the process for homeowners to upgrade their homestays to a higher standard and rent them out by the night on our website. City dwellers/travellers get getaway homes that are affordable ($50 per night), accessible (2-3 hrs or fewer from the city), and at ease (secluded and serene). <comment><USER2> How is this different from AirBnB?

<comment><AUTHOR> Airbnb is a marketplace.Verified homeowners list properties. Airbnb dosen't involve themselves in the operations of the homes themselves like speaking to guests, making sure the amenities are well stocked,the property itself is not verified, no control on pricing and inventory.Even with everything they have done, there are trust issues from a local market perspective. (speaking from the experience of being an Airbnb host in India). This may lead to a unpredictable experience for travellers.

And if you want a more standard experience from Airbnb you would have to book a - Airbnb Plus home. Airbnb Plus is a DIY (Do-It-Yourself) model where set guidelines are given and the host has to adhere to the guidelines to maintain a Airbnb Plus status.The Airbnb plus program is yet to launch in India for leisure travel.

We offer a DIFM (Do-It-For-Me) model where we help hosts uplift their property standards to our brand standard via. a playbook that we have created. We help them with this process and also take care of technology back-end,marketing & distribution, operations in terms of guest communications etc.

For Travellers: 1\. Experience - Significantly better and predictable experience for travellers.(Like a Zeus Living Home). 2\. Affordable - $50 per night. We control the pricing and inventory unlike other marketplaces and OTA's. 3\. Accessible - All homes would be in scenic locations 2-5 hrs from urban cities, perfect for short getaways. Our competitors do not reveal the exact location unless a booking is made, which is frustrating for a traveller while planning. 4\. Differentiated branding with a chic design and unique millennial voice. 5\. Travellers need not choose between an authentic experience or dependable customer service and basic amenities.

For Homeowners: 1\. Ease of converting a regular home to a branded Kipstay Home via. Our easy to execute playbook. 2\. Product features - we provide branded amenities, marketing and distribution, pricing and inventory management via. A tech backend. 3\. Higher occupancy rates (higher than 50%) due to Kipstay brand which directly increases earnings. 4\. We offer a DIFM (Do-It-For-Me) model instead of DIY model which is time consuming and expensive</comment></comment>


Court rules that sending too many emails = illegal - <AUTHOR> http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/08/10/182224/Court-Rules-Sending-Too-Many-Emails-Is-Hacking In usual Slashdot style, the headline there is a tad misleading, but the ruling comes down to the fact that flooding someone's inbox violates the computer fraud and abuse act.<p>Can we go after spammers next? <comment><AUTHOR> In typical Slashdot style, the headline there is a tad overblown, but the gist of it is that flooding someone's inbox is a violation of the computer fraud & abuse act.

Can we go after the spammers next?

</comment><comment><USER2> See also: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2865380>

More discussion there.</comment>


Ask HN: Fun Tech Book Recommendations? - <AUTHOR> I'm currently reading Seven Databases in Seven Weeks [1] and finding it to be a really fun and interesting look at some tech I don't know much about. I'm wondering what other interesting books there are out there that focus less on teaching you all the technical details of a technology, and more on what makes it exciting and interesting.<p>What books do you suggest?<p>[1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13130963-seven-databases-in-seven-weeks <comment><USER2> "Domain Modeling Made Functional" by Scott Wlaschin*

Talk about a great book from cover to cover! Functional language evangelists are always ranting about types and their usefulness but fail to concretely convey how and why they can help. In this book Scott uses F#, but it applies to the broader range functional languages with a strong type system like Haskell, OCaml, Scala etc.

The main thread of the book is building an ecommerce shop of and he begins at the base foundation what the "business" needs and how it can be modeled using the type system to carefully detail and build on the idea of making "illegal states unrepresentable".

Highly recommended as it shows that the author has spent quite a bit of thought on conveying the useful ideas and being concise in explaining them. If you're new to the world of functional programming it does a great job of explaining the concepts and how to use them. For the experts, it specifically helps you be aware of better modeling around types.

* [https://pragprog.com/book/swdddf/domain-modeling-made-functi...](https://pragprog.com/book/swdddf/domain-modeling-made-functional)

</comment><comment><USER3> "Land of Lisp" by Conrad Barski: [http://landoflisp.com](http://landoflisp.com)

Oh, and his Haskell tutorial seems fun as well: [http://lisperati.com/haskell/hasktut.pdf](http://lisperati.com/haskell/hasktut.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER4> I had a really good time myself reading: The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business( [https://www.amazon.com/Phoenix- Project-DevOps-Helping-Busine...](https://www.amazon.com/Phoenix-Project- DevOps-Helping-Business/dp/0988262592) )

</comment><comment><USER5> [https://www.amazon.com/Cuckoos-Egg-Tracking-Computer- Espiona...](https://www.amazon.com/Cuckoos-Egg-Tracking-Computer- Espionage/dp/1416507787)

<comment><USER6> Thats an absolute classic that reads like a spy novel detective story, and, at times, Unix manual. Perfect.

<comment><USER5> you'll never see a pack of benson and hedges and think of anything else again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension" is really fun, but it's not really tech, it's more just math. But I do a lot of work with scientific / numerical computing so some may group them together. In addition to math, it covers some interesting algorithms and fun ways to use spreadsheets for images, etc.

I also really enjoy books about the tech used in the early space program. "Digital Apollo" is probably the one that makes the best light / easy reading.

</comment><comment><USER8> "Learn You a Haskell" by Miran Lipovača: [http://learnyouahaskell.com/](http://learnyouahaskell.com/)

"Learn You Some Erlang for great good" by Fred Hebert: [https://learnyousomeerlang.com/](https://learnyousomeerlang.com/)

"If Hemingway Wrote JavaScript" by Angus Croll: [https://nostarch.com/hemingway](https://nostarch.com/hemingway)

"Clojure for the Brave and True" by Daniel Higginbotham: [https://www.braveclojure.com/clojure-for-the-brave-and- true/](https://www.braveclojure.com/clojure-for-the-brave-and-true/)

<comment><USER9> No Starch Press has several books in a bundle for a few more days: [https://www.humblebundle.com/books/data-science-no-starch- bo...](https://www.humblebundle.com/books/data-science-no-starch-books)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Recently someone on HN recommended _Unix: A History and a Memoir_ by Brian Kernighan. I'm almost finished, and it's been a wonderful read.

I love reading about the development of early programming languages and computing environments, but I was surprised to find how helpful it is for deepening my understanding of things I use every day. It's amazing to me that tools like grep, which I use without a second thought, were written in the 1960s and 1970s and the code behind them hasn't been changed all that much.

[https://www.amazon.com/UNIX-History-Memoir-Brian- Kernighan/d...](https://www.amazon.com/UNIX-History-Memoir-Brian- Kernighan/dp/1695978552/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Someone recommended this book on here a couple of weeks ago: [https://bigmachine.io/products/the-imposters- handbook/](https://bigmachine.io/products/the-imposters-handbook/)

This is a pretty neat book, that explains a lot of difficult concepts in technology in an easier to grasp manner. Things like P=NP and Big O get covered.

<comment><USER12> Thank you, I just bought it :-)

</comment></comment><comment> W-Stool Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder. Pulitzer Prize winner for non-fiction in 1982.

<comment><USER13> Haven't read Soul, but I read and very highly recommend one of his other books, Mountains beyond mountains. Incredible story about how much one person can impact the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> LOL (Let Over Lambda) is fun to read if you are not try to get the information in your head as fast as possible but rather read two or three pages a day very carefully and feel how your brain bends :) It is a hardcore technical book, but the language (Common Lisp) will not make you more money in 2020 or boost your new startup faster to market. So, read it to entertain your brain, it is worth it!

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

</comment><comment><USER15> Mazes for Programmers

[http://www.mazesforprogrammers.com/](http://www.mazesforprogrammers.com/)

<comment><USER16> The same author Jamis Buck also recently came out with a book called The Ray Tracer Challenge [1]. He came to my University's Game Dev class while I was there and he showed us all about maze algorithms and such. I thought one of the more interesting applications he brought up was over world (a.k.a. map/game world) generation using a maze algorithm. Which is awesome, because maze algorithms primarily try and create a single path between any two points which seems like a great property to have in a traversable game world. You could then choose to open up additional paths to your liking.

[1]: [https://pragprog.com/book/jbtracer/the-ray-tracer- challenge](https://pragprog.com/book/jbtracer/the-ray-tracer-challenge)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Anything by Gerald Weinberg is great. The technology is dated but the insights about working as a programmer are as relevant as ever, and the writing style is so enjoyable that my ex girlfriend who hates computers wanted to read it.

<comment><USER3> +1, Weinberg's "An Introduction to General Systems Thinking" [0] blessed me with the Systems Triumvirate:

1\. Why do I see what I see?

2\. Why do things stay the same?

3\. Why do things change?

I notice that I am very often using these questions to get a general grasp of something I don't understand. I think this book is considered a classic in the systems thinking field by many.

0: [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/583766.An_Introduction_t...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/583766.An_Introduction_to_General_Systems_Thinking)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> [https://poignant.guide/](https://poignant.guide/)

</comment><comment><USER19> I really enjoyed Writing an Interpreter in Go - [https://interpreterbook.com/](https://interpreterbook.com/)

</comment><comment><USER20> There aren't many tech books I've read front to back and done pretty much all exercises. Exceptions include "The Little Schemer" and "The Seasoned Schemer".

Importantly, they really up one's ability to write higher order functional (and pure functional) code leaning heavily on a style that would help in any functional language with tail call optimization.

</comment><comment><USER21> Don't know if it qualifies but I believe all Joel Spolskys books are fun and about tech.

[https://www.amazon.com/Joel-Software-Occasionally- Developers...](https://www.amazon.com/Joel-Software-Occasionally-Developers- Designers/dp/1590593898)

</comment><comment><USER22> Side question: Do people read dense technical books for fun?

<comment><USER23> The dense, technical books I've read, I've done so because I wanted a deep understanding of whatever the book's about. I want that understanding because I believe it will somehow lead to good things, like being able to accomplish certain goals, or build stuff that will benefit me. I guess I may get something of a thrill when understanding certain things, and when later I'm able to build or do things I couldn't before. I guess that's fun.

However, while I read _for_ fun, I don't find reading fun. Even for story books, I read because the content is fun, not because visually parsing ink on paper is fun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Unity in 24 hours is pretty cool. If you haven't done game development before this will open up a lot of possibilities for you and it's pretty fun. For example, not only will it show you how to create 2D and 3D games but it's pretty easy to turn a 3D game into a virtual reality game. But especially with virtual reality it doesn't have to be a game. So it's actually super practical in my opinion.

[https://www.amazon.com/Unity-Development-Hours-Teach- Yoursel...](https://www.amazon.com/Unity-Development-Hours-Teach- Yourself/dp/0134998138)

</comment><comment><USER25> Not sure about fun but I collected some book recommendations here:

[https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz/books#recommendations](https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz/books#recommendations)

</comment><comment><USER26> Game Engine Black Book: Doom - [http://fabiensanglard.net/gebbdoom/](http://fabiensanglard.net/gebbdoom/)

Game Engine Black Book: Wolfenstein 3D - [http://fabiensanglard.net/gebbwolf3d/](http://fabiensanglard.net/gebbwolf3d/)

Fabien Sanglard

Both are a fascinating read about hardware of the early 90's and how id Software took advantage of it to produce the results they did.

</comment><comment><USER27> Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System

Is a good read about the Atari 2600 and how the devs were able to fight within the limitations of 1970s and 1980s hardware to develop a gaming platform.

[https://www.amazon.com/Racing-Beam-Computer-Platform- Studies...](https://www.amazon.com/Racing-Beam-Computer-Platform- Studies/dp/026201257X)

</comment><comment><USER28> Simple and fun to read + you build full game console and games for it. Has more practical knowledge than my full undergrad degree in Computer Engineering: [https://www.amazon.com/Black-Video-Game-Console- Design/dp/06...](https://www.amazon.com/Black-Video-Game-Console- Design/dp/0672328208)

</comment><comment><USER29> CODE by Charles Petzold

<comment><USER30> Fantastic book. I learned everything it covers in college, but the way it masterfully connects them all together is incredible and made connections in my brain that I didn't have before.

There's also something satisfying about seeing incremental abstractions develop in an intuitive way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs [1]

[1]: [https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/sicp/index.html](https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/sicp/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER32> Can recommend Ge Wang's Artful Design. Dense, photo-graphic-novel hybrid you can sample for hours. And low-key it's an encyclopedic History of Computer Music ;)

[https://artful.design/](https://artful.design/)

</comment><comment><USER33> "Mostly adequate guide to FP (in javascript)"

I really enjoyed this one.

[https://github.com/MostlyAdequate/mostly-adequate- guide](https://github.com/MostlyAdequate/mostly-adequate-guide)

</comment><comment><USER34> "The Signal and the Noise" might qualify. How to reason about systems of messy data.... like the weather for example. Very well written and entertaining.

</comment><comment><USER35> The 7-in-7 series is quite good. If that was your first book in that series i would recommend one of the other books in that series

</comment><comment><USER36> The Little Typer</comment>


Show HN: Chartify – simple and lightweight charts for React.js - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kirillstepkin/chartify <comment><USER2> I've been using Recharts [1] lately. It offers many different chart types and has a high level interface that makes it easy and quick to use for basic charts. If you want to customize you can still do so because almost every part of a graph is composable. (I have no affiliation)

[1]: [http://recharts.org/](http://recharts.org/)

<comment><USER3> I was looking for a lib like this 2 weeks ago and I've never heard about this one... Looks like it's the most stared repo and it's actively maintained, but the Github link is not on the first page of Google with the keywords "react chart". (Edit: the "official" site is in 6th position, I've probably missed it or didn't scroll up to it)

Finally I've been using React Chartjs 2, based on Chartjs 2.

[https://github.com/gor181/react-chartjs-2](https://github.com/gor181/react- chartjs-2) (157 stars, actively maintained)

[https://github.com/chartjs/Chart.js](https://github.com/chartjs/Chart.js) (26,256 stars, actively maintained)

<comment><USER4> If I'm looking for a library now, I start the search on github, not Google. The github search can be filtered by language and sorted by stars, among other things. Obviously not every project in the world is on github, but it's usually much more efficient to start there, rather than Google.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Do not mistake "simple" for "simplistic".

</comment><comment><USER6> How does this compare with Victory?

</comment><comment><USER7> How is it that everyone keeps calling it React.js? The name of the library is and has always been React.

<comment><USER8> Because "react" is difficult to search for due to all the "reaction videos" and related nonsense. I agree it's a bit odd to use it in a name like that but more than once I've had to add "js" as a qualifier when trying to google for something React-related. I'd imagine for some people this becomes so reflexive they simply call React "React.js" to avoid ambiguity.

Adding or dropping a "js" suffix to library names like that is actually pretty common throughout the entire JS ecosystem. Many library officially call themselves "<name>.js" but then go on referring to themselves without the suffix throughout the documentation and release their packages that way too.

I recall something similar in Python where libraries would frequently be called "Py<name>" or "<name>py" and people would sometimes add the "py" affix even when the library didn't actually have one in its name to clarify they mean the Python library of that name rather than something else.

<comment><USER9> Similarly, Go/Golang.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does it support tooltips? I'd like to see examples with all features highlighted.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it supports tooltips. [https://kirillstepkin.github.io/chartify/](https://kirillstepkin.github.io/chartify/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Looks nice.

It would be nice to see even more examples, especially how it looks with smaller graphs. For example 200px wide by 30px high. I am looking at jquery- sparklines at the moment and this looks like it could be a neat twist to that look.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, I will change demo to show all features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> but , but d3.js

<comment><USER13> D3 is more of a basic tool to create any visualization you want.

These Charting libraries are pre-configrued easy to use stuff.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Wikiful – Pain-free wikis for individuals and teams - wes-k https://www.wikiful.com <comment> wes-k Hey there, co-founder of Wikiful here. We built this because we were tired of existing wiki platforms that are unintuitive, clunky, and slow.

Some neat features:

      • Easy to create internal & external links

      • Flexible privacy and collaborator settings

      • Markdown shortcuts

      • Export wiki to PDF

      • Search

      • Code blocks (uses CodeMirror)

      • Tables & embeds coming soon

You can try our functional demos without signing up. We'd love any and all feedback. What documentation tools do you currently use? What's your wishlist, and what are your frustrations? We want to take the pain out of wiki building!

<comment><AUTHOR> how is this wiki different from [https://www.nuclino.com/](https://www.nuclino.com/) ?

both are prosemirror based.

<comment> wes-k Specifically, a couple key things we did differently:

Nuclino is a block-based editor that can be more cumbersome to use. You're also always stuck in edit mode, which makes content harder to read, and requires a lot more clicks for tasks like visiting links or even editing a link (try editing an internal link), or opening images in an image gallery, etc. We took a different tack — clean, uncluttered view mode when you're navigating the wiki. Straightforward, centralized editing tools when it's time to make changes.

More broadly:

Nuclino can be a great option for some teams, but we found that it (and other similar platforms like Slab) didn't do the best job of making wikis accessible to everyone.

Some of our early adopters include teachers, emergency room nurse practitioners, nonprofit boards, non-tech startups, friend groups planning a group vacation, individual entrepreneurs and co-founders — i.e., folks who benefit from building and sharing wikis, but are a square peg in the round hole of existing products that are mainly geared to mid-sized tech company teams.

Also shoutout for ProseMirror, I don't think this would have been possible with any other editor!</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook Takes Steps to Improve Advertising Data After Criticism - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/10/business/media/facebook-takes-steps-to-improve-advertising-data-after-criticism.html <comment><AUTHOR> The title's the boring part. The interesting bit is this:

> Procter & Gamble, with brands including Gillette, Crest and Charmin, is the > biggest advertiser in the United States, spending $2.4 billion in marketing > last year, according to Kantar Media.

In other words, P&G is setting $2.4b (3% of the Education Department's budget, FWIW) on fire every year to fight over the fixed-size market for commodity goods like disposable razors, toothpaste, and toilet paper. I don't see how this ends well.</comment>