Ask HN: Can't find job, should I beg/employ empathy? - <AUTHOR> I taught myself iPhone development and the last few years have been shipping apps and making a living as an indie developer. I also did a 6-course certificate program at a local university (CS1 & CS2, Unix, etc.). I've shipped millions of downloads, had a small acquisition event, etc.
I've done about 5 in-person interviews so far, all rejections. There are only so many iOS roles in my city (Toronto) left to apply to.
It could be that I'm bad at technical interviewing/whiteboard programming (although I have prepared quite a bit by doing HackerRank and such). But even with easy interviews, I'm getting passed on. I'm beginning to suspect that when I'm being compared to the competition in the market, hirers are going with the safer bets (CS degrees, internships, previous corporate experience).
My thought now is that maybe I need to get an internship or junior role, but I'm almost 30. I'm not sure conventional application processes will work for me, I may need to hack this by emailing founders directly and basically "begging" to prove myself.
Does anyone have advice on what I should do?
Thanks <comment> 52-6F-62 I work and live in Toronto. I can provide some anecdotal support, I think.

I was, like you, previously working independently doing mostly simple websites for small businesses (and volunteering with the UN online service[0]) after leaving a job I really didn't like. (Though I'll add, I'm capable beyond that)

It took me months of pursuing, piping out applications and receiving no word back in order to get a job. Ultimately I was hired by a very large company for a developer position in media. It's not my dream role, but it's great for learning, getting a feel for a corporate environment, and good for the old resume.

From my experiences I would say that if you have had 5 interviews in and around the city, you're doing pretty well as it is.

Just keep applying, and do so in a variety of ways. If you can get ahold of a person, then try writing them but don't grovel. Try out other services, too.

Hired[1] operates within the city, and they seem to have a healthy pool. Get on LinkedIn as well. While it might seem a little hokey or geared toward corporate lifers rather than tech professionals, you'll find Toronto seems to still lean heavily on it and as such there are a lot of recruiters on there constantly head-hunting. I say this and I very rarely use it.

edit: I'll add if you've been solely focused on tech companies, then try branching out. The big banks are always hiring iOS devs. So are companies in media and many other places. Thomson Reuters labs operates here, Amazon operates here now, there are so many and they're all hiring. Granted, you'll see a salary lower than what's expected for the same roles in the US, but it's a starting point at least.\\\

edit no 2: I'm also without a CS degree. Completely self taught, started when I was a kid.

[0] [https://www.onlinevolunteering.org/en](https://www.onlinevolunteering.org/en) [1] [https://hired.ca/](https://hired.ca/)

</comment><comment><USER2> _I 'm beginning to suspect that when I'm being compared to the competition in the market, hirers are going with the safer bets (CS degrees, internships, previous corporate experience)._

If this were true, you wouldn't make it to the interview. How did you think you did during these interviews? If you thought it went well, but they passed, maybe it's just a matter of cultural fit. Keep trying and you'll find something.

<comment><AUTHOR> The interviews with algorithms questions I probably don't do as well.

But there were a few without those, and I felt I did good. One thing I might be answering poorly on is process experience "Are you familiar with Agile? Do you write unit tests? What's your experience working in teams?".

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> FWIW, a mid-level developer with success working independently or freelance is typically a great fit for a startup willing to hire remote workers. Your background may be less appealing for a typical corporate job at a larger company.

And remember that junior/senior titles don't refer to age. They refer to level of experience or skill. And experience isn't just about churning out code. It's also about working on a team and within a formal (yes, that includes agile) software process. A title is just a title. Take a position where you can learn the things you need to learn to take the next steps in your career.

</comment><comment><USER4> May be you should try to know the companies where you want to be hired and adapt your proposal for each of them. For example:

\- A big company would prefer to play safe, no degree, no job (similar to "nobody will be fired for buying IBM").

\- A startup has certainly totaly unreasonable expectations (too new in HR...)

\- Are you assertive/ambitious enough? HR might be suspicious , you know everybody lies during interviews... I have seen CVs proposed by subcontractors that were redacted and look at the current inflation in qualifiers "extraordinary coder" etc...

</comment><comment><USER5> Consider more interviews (5 is nothing), remote jobs, stretching beyond iOS, etc. before begging. Be positive.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree 5 isn't much, but I've applied to so many more. There aren't too many job listings left that I haven't applied to.</comment></comment>


In 1962, a college student answers an ad: "Mortuary Assistant required" - <AUTHOR> http://laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/my-first-mistake <comment><USER3> >"The black lungs of heavy smokers I would weigh once, then squeeze under cold running water for fifteen minutes until they became baby pink and tripelike, and then weigh again: the difference in the two figures, often a couple of pounds or more, was the weight of the tar and nicotine that quite possibly was the killer."

A few _pounds_? If you'd asked me, I would have guessed the weight of lung- accumulated smoking gunk would be an order of magnitude smaller.

(Also, not a bad hack for measuring some of the effects of smoking.)

>It wasn't only smoking that lacquered up one's innards with tar. Living in the London of the day was none too healthy, either.

Hmmm. Wonder how long I should continue to live in LA?

<comment><USER4> Modern LA is orders of magnitude safer than London in the '60s and earlier. Those conditions would have been comparable to some parts of China today.

<comment><USER5> Hmmm. Wonder how long I should continue to live in Beijing?

:( (today is a clean air day, but my wife and I had this argument already once this week)

<comment><USER4> I posted a link to this in another post, but here's a chart showing how bad the pollution in London during the great smog of 1952 was: [http://www.st- andrews.ac.uk/~dib2/atmos/london.jpeg](http://www.st- andrews.ac.uk/~dib2/atmos/london.jpeg)

Notice that SO2 and smoke particles are measured in units of _milligrams_ per m^3 (today such measurements are in micrograms per m^3). To put Beijing's air in the context of this graph, the smoke particles in Beijing on a bad air day will go up to 0.2 to 0.8 mg/m^3 and SO2 will spike up to 0.3 for short periods. Compared to the Great Smog of 1952, Beijing's air isn't nearly as bad, but it's still incredibly bad. The Great Smog killed 0.03% of the population of London _per day_. Beijing's air regularly gets to around 1/4 the amount of smoke in the air as during the Great Smog.

<comment><USER6> Liverpool area, early 60s: we had those thick yellow fogs less often than in London, but with added ingredients from the chemical works up the estuary.

My grandfather would be hospitalised in the winter months with bronchitis - <USER2> one occasion spending time in an oxygen tent to aid his breathing. Our teacher at school suggested we breathe through handkerchiefs on the way to school if there was a fog. Impressive quantities of tar.

Much better now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was a bit surprised to see this admission:

> In the interests of full disclosure I should add that I was also persuaded > to commit a series of small crimes during my sojourn at the hospital, and > which I hope I can safely confess at this remove of half a century. I stole > pituitary glands. About a hundred of them over the months. A research > hospital had need of them—pituitaries produce a multitude of hormones, > including the one that makes us grow, and I proved myself quite adept at > finding them: a quick probe inside the base of the brain with my fingers, > and the pea-sized gland would pop out of its cavity like a snail out of its > shell. Each time I collected a jar full, a furtive man in a white coat would > come around to collect them, handing over a five-pound note in exchange. If > ever I felt squeamish, the man reassured me that those to whom the glands > belonged would be unlikely to feel the loss, nor to complain.

There was a big scandal in England over the unauthorised removal of organs. Partly this was because doctors weren't explaining properly what they were doing to people who had no understanding of what was involved - "Can we remove some tissue?" instead of "can we take the heart of your dead child?"

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alder_Hey_organs_scandal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alder_Hey_organs_scandal)

> The Alder Hey organs scandal involved the unauthorised removal, retention, > and disposal of human tissue, including children's organs, during the period > 1988 to 1995. During this period organs were retained in more than 2,000 > pots [this is a UK term of art for plastic formalin-filled containers of > various sizes which are used to store tissues in pathology labs] containing > body parts from around 850 infants. These were later uncovered at Alder Hey > Children's Hospital, Liverpool, during a public inquiry into the organ > retention scandal.

This was discovered by people investigating another scandal - the Bristol Heart Scandal.

And it's not as if the science was any good. A lot of it was low quality; partly because the documentation of the organ origins was so poor.

Dick van Velzen did great harm and mostly got away with it.

<comment><USER8> > Dick van Velzen did great harm

Whilst I agree he comitted a crime, his subjects were all dead anyways. I don't see the _great harm_ myself tbh.

<comment><USER7> His science was lousy; he caused many people to withdraw consent for tissue donation for scientific reasons.

His subjects were dead but those subjects had relatives and many of them expressed considerable distress. I don't particularly understand that upset by I recognise that they were not lying, they did sincerely feel a lot of upset.

<comment><USER8> First point is very valid and one I hadn't considered

Second is the one I was arguing against. I certainly don't doubt they did sincerely feel a lot of upset. I suppose I still think it shouldn't matter. It would in that regard have been better had they just never found out.

<comment><USER9> I see where you're coming from with your argument, and certainly I have no qualms about the use of my organs after I die, but not everyone shares that belief and personally I don't think it's right to just disregard that. Sure, it might have been better if the families never found out, but it would have been best if the families wishes (no matter how irrational) were respected from the get-go.

<comment><USER10> Disregarding irrational beliefs is the first step to making good decisions.

<comment><USER11> Without irrational beliefs there is no meaning to life.

<comment><USER10> I don't see how that is even a remotely justifiable belief.

<comment><USER11> So give me a rational meaning to life :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I just finished my rotation at the medical examiner's office. The "couple of pounds" of tar in the lungs was probably more mucus than anything. Also, they may well have been washing out the congestion caused by respiratory depression. But it's quite unlikely that it was "tar", though I'm sure plenty of black carbon, or "anthracotic pigment" came out too.

I say this because a smoker who dies of, say, a sudden massive heart attack, doesn't have especially heavy lungs. The heaviness comes from other, secondary issues.

Also, I had never heard of this before. We mainly just weighed the lungs and then examined them under the microscope.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, this made me wonder, in lieu of a lung transplant, what if they just took out a smoker's lung and gave it a good wash and then stuck it back in again? It sounds like you are saying that alot of other things go wrong with such a lung, not just a buildup of tar.

<comment><USER14> At the very least, once the carcinogens have done their job and induced a cancer washing them out would be a bit of "shutting the barn door after the cows have run away".

<comment><USER9> Cancer isn't the only smoking related illness, I wonder what it would do for someone with emphysema or the like..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> German native speaker here. Fleischhacker actually _does_ mean butcher. It's just that most Germans would call a butcher a "Metzger" I guess. Us Austrians tend to call it a "Fleischhauer".

To be honest though, I think the term Fleischhacker is used more often to describe a foul playing soccer player than a butcher.

<comment><USER16> And really just flesh-hacker in an engineering accent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The worst job I've had was called 'putting up hay'. It amounted to climbing into the loft of a very dust-laden barn with 3 or 4 of my college buddies, catching hay bales as they spat out of the hay elevator, and running them over to stack in uniform 3-d arrays. After a couple of hours, our employer called us down for rejuvenation with Coke-a-cola and glazed donuts, and we'd blow what seemed like pounds of dusty mucous out of our noses and then head back up into the loft.

$5/hour seemed like a lot of money at the time...

<comment><USER18> Reminds me of tagging along with my older brothers to mow lawns. After a few hours of weeding and taking my turn at the push mower they would take me to get a Slurpee. My own Slurpee that I didn't have to share!

Later in high school doing construction work for my dad digging ditches with a pick and shovel, he would walk by and casually ask if I was feeling motivated to do well in school.

<comment><USER19> Yep, as a teenager I cleaned out urethane spray booths and other shit jobs no one else would do. That motivated me to do quite quite well in electrical engineering.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> We really need to appreciate how lucky we are:

 _More than once the bus I rode to work had to be led by a policeman walking on the road with a red flashlight, so thick were the greasy, sulfur-dioxide- laden pea-soup fogs that in 1962 were so bad as to send people by the hundreds to hospitals some days. One Monday, after a weekend of especially thick smog, I arrived to find no fewer than thirty bodies waiting for their preparation, all of them felled by respiratory complaints._

<comment><USER4> The pH of London air was sometimes as low as 1.4 back then. People were basically breathing sulfuric acid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This takes me back to a time when I was 17, and I applied for a job at a funeral home in London- it was offering a ridiculously high salary. It was my first time having an interview where one person sits off to the side and watches you, which I found quite unnerving. I was woefully unprepared for the interview, but it was going really well until the one question I hadn't thought about came up:

"So how do you feel about bodies?"

Me: "Umm, they're great! I mean, ahhh, well, um, could you define what exactly you mean by bodies?"

I didn't get the position.

</comment><comment><USER22> Its stories like this why I come to HN. HN may have started as interesting stuff for the Silicon Valley VC circuit, but you can't survive on a diet of just high risk investing weirdness.

<comment><USER23> You don't have to come to HN exclusively. I like the idea of HN or any other website being focused on single-theme. If I want to read about startups and tech I come to HN. If I want to read about something else, I go else where.

I enjoyed this post very much but I would be very sad if posts like these became more frequent over here as I wouldn't have a good source of startups and tech anymore.

<comment><USER24> The thing is, aside from reddit (and perhaps Digg) what sites are "like" this, but not focused on tech?

<comment><USER25> Try our platform: [http://snapzu.com](http://snapzu.com)

We have tons of differentiating features from reddit and HN.

<comment><USER24> I checked it out, very interesting. The front page was very different than what I was expecting -- I like that. Would it be possible to get an invite directly from you, or should I request one via the site?

<comment><USER25> Of course! I don't think HN has a PM option so I'll just post a few for anyone to grab, first come first serve:

SPZU-AI1ABLII8IIZP

SPZU-0KUXJ0U86OA7W

SPZU-QNOKQG5Y4U1G3

SPZU-GQI7XVHO2ZSOA

SPZU-6TBV5ATE15JWH

SPZU-WW5ICQ53ZBB4O

SPZU-34MFZ049TSKT9

SPZU-T7G36FFZRYC1G

EDIT: I exchanged the old used codes for new fresh ones.

<comment><USER26> Really interesting.

I'd like to check it out but all the invites seem to be gone. I guess I'll wait for a real invite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I quite liked this other article of his on being banned from ever returning to the remote island of Tristan da Cunha.

[http://laphamsquarterly.org/travel/take-nothing-leave- nothin...](http://laphamsquarterly.org/travel/take-nothing-leave-nothing)

<comment><USER28> I read this article twice and am completely at a loss for what hurtful secret was revealed! Do you know?

<comment><USER29> the islanders considered the story of hagan and booy scandalous in a "skeletons in the family closet" sort of way, and his book essentially dug up the old scandal again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> >On the other hand, the pathologist assigned to work on the bodies I would prepare was a German, and she was named Fleishhacker, which sounded to Mr. Utton as though it should mean butcher, but actually didn't.

It actually does though: [http://dict.leo.org/ende/index_en.html#/search=Fleischhacker](http://dict.leo.org/ende/index_en.html#/search=Fleischhacker)

<comment><USER31> Yeah. One never would translate butcher to "Fleischhacker", since that word isn't really used outside of last names, but it clearly means a butcher.

<comment><USER30> To clarify, _Fleischhacker_ is a legitimate translation of "butcher", but only in a figurative sense: [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/slaughterer#Translations](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/slaughterer#Translations)

I'm guessing that the original author was saying that it doesn't literally refer to a person who cuts meat for a living (like _Metzger_ ), which is true. However, it's still a sort of funny name for a person in that profession to have.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I can't help but speculate whether Frau Fleischhacker was a concentration camp alumna.

</comment><comment><USER32> >"I also had a girlfriend [in Canada]"

Yeah, right!

</comment><comment><USER33> A girlfriend of mine once had this job, she said it was a dead end career.

<comment><USER34> Weird, seems to me like everybody could see their future in it.

<comment><USER33> Ok, joke aside, the article was well written and as you say it must have been quite an experience to observe death so personally.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: When do you sell your stock grants? - <AUTHOR> I'm just about to receive the first chunk of stock from the publicly traded company that I work for. I'm wondering when to sell, and how much. I'm a very risk averse person, so my instinct is to sell it all as soon as I can, since the unvested grants are about 10X my current net worth and I don't want to be too invested in one company.
Lots of my coworkers seem to just hold their stock though. Am I crazy that that's a bad idea? My mind always flashes back to the scenes from The Smartest Guy in the Room, when the CEO of Enron was encouraging his employees to put their 401k's in the company stock.
As a bonus question, at what point do you get a financial advisor? It seems like it'd be a reasonable time to get one, but I don't want to pay a bunch of fees for basic advice. <comment><USER2> Imagine you had the money today (you'd already, automatically sold all the stock). How much would you buy?

Once you've figured that out sell everything except the amount you would buy.

It's effectively the same decision, but framing it this way can be helpful. Say your stock is worth 100KUSD. If you had no stock and 100KUSD, would you really spend 100KUSD on the stock? 5K? 10K? That's how I have made these choices in the past.

Also, keep at least one share. The information you get by virtue of being a shareholder is often interesting.

<comment><USER3> It's _almost_ the same. The biggest difference is the tax consequence of selling. If I have $100K of cash then I have no tax liability to enter any distribution of holdings. If I have $100K of shares of company X then liquidating it will incur a tax consequence of the full value (assuming I got them at a price of zero as a bonus).

Now that's not justification for keeping it in company stock. If anything, you're better off liquidating it and putting it in something else you're not going to sell for a long while (say diversified ETFs). But it's not apples to apples like having the cash to start.

<comment><USER4> In publicly traded companies the shares are taxed when they vest. So when they give you the 100k in stock, you are taxed on the 100k (usually they withhold a portion of the stock in vesting programs).

<comment><USER5> +1 you pay at the time the stock vests. When you sell you pay tax on any gains that occur after the stock vested. If you sell immediately there is no/little tax burden.

<comment><USER6> This is why you heard stories of people getting heavily underwater when the stock that had vested crashed. Not many of these stories recently, but the time will come again.

<comment><USER7> If you're worried about the price, either sell a portion to cover the taxes, or buy call options offering downside protection.

<comment><USER8> Nitpick - calls are for upside. Puts provide downside protection.

<comment><USER7> Sorry, you're right -- typo. Put is what I wanted to write. Long day!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Lots of my coworkers seem to just hold their stock though. Am I crazy that > that's a bad idea?

They are gambling. If you sell and they hold, they might make more money than you. They might make a lot more money. Or, they might lose most or all it.

Playing the lottery is a bad idea, but lots and lots of people do it.

One way to view it is you can trade your potential (but less likely) future gains for a guarantee today. If you won't feel bad taking your 10x now and watching a co-worker get 100x later, if that possibility doesn't bother you, then sell and don't worry about it.

As far as an advisor, if you have goals and already know exactly how to meet your goals, and you stay on top of your investments, you might not need one. Lots of people are like me and hate actively managing their money. Lots of people don't know what their investment options are and don't have concrete steps in mind for reaching retirement with a specific amount of money.

That said, I've found the fees for financial advice to be worth the money almost always. Similar to getting a lawyer or having someone do my taxes. I usually discover that doing it myself is a mistake and that getting professional help is worth paying for.

<comment><USER10> > Playing the lottery is a bad idea, but lots and lots of people do it.

There is a big difference in playing the lottery and having shares in publicly traded companies.

The closest to gambling that this is is "putting all of your chips on red".

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I would not hold stocks from the company you work for. In a downturn, there will be a threat to your salary and your investment egg simultaneously.

<comment><USER12> That's a reason not to hold hold all your stock in the company. It's not a good reason to not take a calculated risk wig some of it. Receiving vested shares of a publicly traded corporation you work for is one of the few situations where you can actually profit on insider information, if you're share allocation is low enough as to not be caught by special rules. As a general principle you cannot be forced to sell your property. Insider trading is only on buying or selling shares. So if you receive vested shares, and then you decide not to sell based on insider info that you think the stock will go up, And then you finally do so later when that information is public and the stock does go up, that's not illegal. (I'm not a lawyer, you should consult one etc. etc.)

Prudent financial planning would mean it is wise to put a large chunk of your savings in something other than the company you work for. But rationally optimal financial planning should incorporate the benefits of a vesting stock plan as well. It's a balance.

<comment><USER10> > Receiving vested shares of a publicly traded corporation you work for is one > of the few situations where you can actually profit on insider information

If you won't be caught by the SEC, you're probably not an insider. If all/most employees know something; it's probably "public" enough information.

<comment><USER12> That's not the legal definition of insider trading though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sell it all as soon as you possibly can.

I've worked for public companies that went from $80/share to $2/share (Sun Microsystems) and from $24 to $4 (Groupon) and in both cases, I knew a LOT of people that just held on, thinking the decline was temporary.

In fact, if it's a regular monthly or quarterly vest, look into setting up a 10b5-1 plan to automatically sell your shares even during blackout periods. The broker handling the shares for you will often do this for free.

<comment><USER14> The brokerages I've received my RSUs through all give tax election option. I can elect to a) pay money ahead of time and keep 100% of my RSUs, b) sell to cover, where I keep ~70% of each grant and the rest goes towards taxes, or c) sell all immediately, regardless of blackout periods (though I can only change my selection during trading windows).

I had to pick one of them, so I think describing it as "setting up a 10b5-1 plan" might be inflating the difficulty of the process somewhat, even if that might be what I was unknowingly doing at the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I sell immediately. But I currently work in a relatively old tech company. My belief is that I already have too much invested in my company with them paying my salary. If I add on having a large portion of my savings as company stock then it would be double the trouble if the company had financial problems which caused the stock to fall and them to lay me off.

I can remember [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron_scandal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron_scandal) and how some people had all of their 401k money in Enron stock. They got laid off and their 401k balance went to $0 :(

Myself I sell my RSUs and invest them in a low cost S&P 500 index fund instead.

</comment><comment><USER16> Don't get a financial advisor until the generally accepted advise of "Vanguard index funds" doesn't make sense anymore. Typically this is at the point where you're considering a second home or something that costs approximately as much, but if you live in the Bay Area or somewhere similarly expensive, you could do well with an advisor well before reaching that point.

When you do, be aware that financial advisors who take a commission have an incentive to sell you products that will make them money. Look for a fee-for- service FA who has a fiduciary duty to you. NAPFA[0] can help with this. You pay them for their advice. They don't make money off your investments.

[0] [https://www.napfa.org](https://www.napfa.org)

</comment><comment><USER17> {Random advice from the internet}

\+ When you sell, don't broadcast it to people in the office. Office politics may portray it as signaling a 'lack of faith' and there is no upside to publicizing the decision anyway.

\+ One way to look at the money from the sale of stock is as the _return_ on an investment. This means that it is ok to protect that return for the future rather than following the conventional advice that it should be risked for further growth. Walking away from the poker table with money in your pocket is not foolish.

\+ The general advice of financial advisors is for ordinary individuals to gamble against professional and institutional investors. There's no need to pay a fee for that advice. They pitch a system based on the idea that dumb money can beat well capitalized professionals over time when those well capitalized professionals sole objective is to take dumb money.

\+ The booming current market hasn't brought back the 401k's that were wiped out in 2008. Portfolios that lost 50% of their value would need 10 years of sustained after inflation 7% growth to get back to where they were (with no fees while ignoring the time value of money). [1] [2]

Good luck.

[1]: Edit, the growth would have to be specific to an actual portfolio and not generalized to a market or an index.

[2]: Edit, this also assumes no losses after 2008, i.e. someone pulled their money out and sat on it (hard to do with a 401k without incurring a penalty).

</comment><comment><USER18> Figure out what your tax situation will be before selling. Short-term capital gains are taxed at your ordinary income tax bracket whereas long-term capital gains are taxed no higher than 20%.

If they'll be taxed at the short-term level, wait one year until they turn into long-term capital gains. You'll be saved from paying thousands in taxes.

<comment><USER19> Disagree: you are avoiding taking a gain (assuming the stock grants are below the market value of the stock) in order to avoid taxes (but you will still GAIN money, even after taxes), in exchange for risking that the stock will decline in value.

It all depends on your risk tolerance of course, but avoiding selling at a gain RIGHT NOW in order to avoid taxes is not a good reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It totally depends on the company you work for.

I work for a company whose stock is going up. This makes it a great company to hold stock in. Unless, some other company's stock is going up faster. Which there always will be, but I don't necessarily know which one. I could be making more money. The trick is knowing which, unfortunately reading tea leaves is difficult.

So I diversify. I leave some money in my company, I put some money in other investments. That way, if my own company goes down in flames, I am not totally lost, and if they continue going up, then I gain.

What you need to do is understand your company, its products, its history, likely future, and risk factors. Yes that is a lot of stuff to research, but it is the way to sleep better at night while feeling good about yourself and your investments.

</comment><comment><USER5> Start by reading [https://www.amazon.com/Four-Pillars-Investing-Building- Portf...](https://www.amazon.com/Four-Pillars-Investing-Building- Portfolio/dp/1932378014)

Your intuition is correct. Holding your employers stock means that if your employer implodes not only do you lose your job you lose a nice chunk of your savings.

Money is fungible. Your vested stock is just the amount of money it's worth today. If you wouldn't go out and buy that much of the stock today then you shouldn't hold it. You should sell it and go buy the thing you would have bought with that money instead. Don't be anchored by the wrong thing.

In my case I strongly prefer diversification and reducing tail risk over potentially more lucrative outcomes that I might get from having concentrated holdings in successful companies.

I would like to say I sell the stock as soon as it vests, and that is my goal, but I've been misbehaving and had a limit order open for 6 months. I really shouldn't do that considering the risk and upside are not at all proportionate.

RE financial advisers:

The #1 rule of financial advice is never take financial advice from someone who takes a percentage of your investments. Anyone who charges based on AUM is only interested in soaking you for fees with expensive investments that give them kickbacks.

You want a fee based adviser if you want one at all. I don't think you do if you are in the accrual stage. Just invest passively in the entire market of things you can cheaply invest in using index funds with a low expense and pick a ratio of stocks to bonds that you are comfortable with and let it grow. The most important skill is staying the course, staying in the market, and purchasing regularly (don't time).

I only own one fund. [https://personal.vanguard.com/us/funds/snapshot?FundIntExt=I...](https://personal.vanguard.com/us/funds/snapshot?FundIntExt=INT&FundId=0122)

It's a wrapper around several other index funds. Simple. I don't have to think about rebalancing or anything else. I'm going to keep buying this fund until I am in my 50s or 60s and have to rethink as my time horizon shortens. When this fund is not available such as my 401k I mimic it's allocation using the available index funds.

I used to try and do it cheaper by buying the underlying funds with lower expense ratios. Gaming taxable vs tax deferred. I lost interest.

</comment><comment><USER21> If you're risk averse, you might want to invest that money somewhere else. If the company were to start struggling and you lost your job, it would be nice to not have your investment go down at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER22> I think you have to not only look at your net worth, but your annual salary. There is no stock answer here, but in general if you could not stop working for several years, and your equity is several multiples of you annual salary maybe you should consider selling some. Another way to look at it is what is your goal for stock options in terms of your salary. Are you looking to double it? Quadruple it? It's easier to make a decision if you have a specific financial goal for your grants as opposed to something vague like "enough to retire", or something like that. In terms of financial adviser my advice would be never. At the very least learn as much as you can on your own first. This is a short (15 pages or so) pdf that can go over the basic of saving for retirement with some suggested reading.

[https://www.etf.com/docs/IfYouCan.pdf](https://www.etf.com/docs/IfYouCan.pdf)

If after you've done some reading and you have some specific investment you are interested in, maybe it makes some sense.

It's not crazy to hold stock, as long as the company has a good business and management and you think it's prospects are good. But it's not an all or nothing choice. What is crazy is to hold onto stock if you can't afford to wait out a downturn in the stock market, which can be many years.

</comment><comment><USER23> Currently I liquidate 90% of it, or so, and then use the proceeds to fund my index fund buys and my covered-call/put strategies in a number of other equities. I used to liquidate 100% of it, but things are happening that make me suspect a modest boost to the share price has a slim chance to occur in the next year, so I'm keeping some to share in that benefit, if it happens. If it doesn't, I'm not out that much in terms of the opportunity cost.

</comment><comment><USER24> I almost always sell immediately. The only times I haven't are if I believe the stock is temporarily depressed and I am highly confident that it will recover. In my 20 year career, I think I've made that decision maybe 2 or 3 times. I am very happy with the results of selling immediately throughout that period. Could I have made more if I held on? Yes. But at a much higher risk, and for me that's not the tradeoff I want.

</comment><comment><USER25> In my opinion, always be wary of your CEO asking you to buy more company stock. If possible, do your own research or if you are working in the core product team, see where things are going. Or use stop losses and limit orders etc to make full use of the stock brokerage account.

When I got my RSUs in my last company they were worth $45, the company had just announced that the company had lost some customers. While I thought things could only get better from thereon I put in staggered stop loss order - sell x at $42, y at $40 etc, while letting the upside open. I did sell some of the RSUs at $42. Then things turned around and I was lucky to sell some of the stocks at $70.

Recently I quit the company. The quarter just before quitting was terrible. The CEO talked about the stock prices during the All Hands and asked people to pour in some more money into the company stock. This sent alarm bells ringing. I sold everything as soon as the meeting ended.

Then again, this whole thing might not be for every one.

</comment><comment><USER26> Sell. Diversify. The ONLY reason I can see to hold is if you can get tax benefits from doing so.

<comment><USER27> I would at least sell 50% (or some number) and keep the rest. I have seen people sell stock bought from options on the first day you could and then live to regret it when it screamed up later. If you sell a portion and keep a portion you always get something, and maybe you will get more later, but never zero.

<comment><USER28> Never zero? You know companies do go bankrupt, right?

<comment><USER29> Yes, but the stock doesn't go zero like immediately. You can always put a trigger and get out when it all goes down.

<comment><USER26> Not if you're in a blackout window.. eg, 2/3 of the year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> As soon as they vest. I'd sell them if I were you. I/you have enough risk tied up with a company simply from receiving a pay cheque from them.

</comment><comment><USER31> Depends on the kind of stock

RSUs are already taxed, so not selling them is like a conscious decision to buy the company's stock.

</comment><comment><USER32> Sell stock in your company as soon as you are legally and contractually allowed to do so.

For a case study in why you want to do this, just look at what would have happened if you were paid in IBM stock and laid off in their restructuring in 1993.

</comment><comment><USER33> It's typically best to sell immediately, unless the stock has a fairly historic pattern and is currently oversold. Instead of looking at the the grant as part of your investment portfolio, simply treat it as a cash bonus...

<comment><USER13> >unless the stock has a fairly historic pattern and is currently oversold

If you can predict and act on these patterns better than the market, you should go open your own hedge fund.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> On the financial advisor front, you can always use a robo advisor service like betterment or Vanguard's.</comment>


Tell HN: Starting a search startup, please review our project - <AUTHOR>

The website is http://www.metahint.com
Currently we have a working prototype for searching some of our favorite blogs. We are soon sending out beta invites, and opening it up for general use.
Our idea is to make an embeddable search widget for websites, that generates suggestions from the content of the site. This came from the frustration that the search boxes on the vast majority of websites today do not suggest anything. While Google and Bing suggest previous queries, for small websites that might not be useful, so instead we extract phrases from the text and rank them by how well they describe a given page.
Let us know what you think, we are lkozma and pceelurd, lkozma has been on HN since the first days, when it was still SN.
Thanks ! <comment><USER2> In a similar vein, I used Google's Ajax Search API and made this last year: <http://chir.ag/projects/drop-search/> (Google even interviewed me for it: [http://googledata.org/google-code/google-narratives- series-c...](http://googledata.org/google-code/google-narratives-series- chirag-mehta/) ).

'Drop Search' lets any site owner create a search box customized to their own domains using just a few lines of JS code. There's an example of drop-search at my own site in the top-right corner: <http://chir.ag> (search: cat). It does not have the neat lightbox + readability view that metahint has. But it does have excerpts from search results. Metahint users will most likely want that.

Personally, I think metahint is a great execution of a good idea and that's partly why I made Drop Search. It didn't become popular but then I created it as a mini project for fun and not a startup with marketing goals. I wish you the best of luck. I would suggest to you that you take a look at Google's APIs. I don't think the search results are bad at all. I haven't tried Bing. Creating your own search engine is kind of a big deal. Ask Gabriel Weinberg @ DDG.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very interesting, Chirag, and thanks for the suggestions. I was following your projects in the past but somehow I missed drop-search until know. I think there is room for more experimentation and new services, as the majority of sites currently lack a usable search, so I'm happy to see others attacking the same problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I tried it out, and the bottom line is: this is really slick, and I want it on my blog immediately. How soon are you sending out those beta invites?

Now to make myself useful:

1\. This pulls in about 50 kB of very useful JavaScript: jQuery, jQuery-ui, TopUp, jCarousel Lite. Your own JS code is very light in comparison. All this is minified and gzipped, which is good, but that's still a fair amount of stuff. Do you have any plans to lighten this a bit? Perhaps use something like Closure Compiler with advanced optimizations to get rid of functionality that you don't use, and package it all into a single file?

2\. How are you going to check for updates to the blog's content, so you can re-index it? The traditional way would be polling the RSS/Atom feed; the shiny new way is to get realtime updates via PubSubHubbub where available, and fall back to polling when that's not available. This can be simplified by using a service like Superfeedr to handle the polling fallback for you and just provide everything as PubSubHubbub feeds.

3\. It's probably too early to talk about tweaking your ranking algorithm before you've started getting actual user data (you are storing complete logs, right?), but I'm sure there's a lot of room for improving the results. Again, this can happen after you've started to get more blogs and more user data.

4\. A lot of people have blogs on Blogger, and despite being run by Google, their search box is pathetic. However, terrible as it is, it occupies some prime screen real-estate. I would like to have some Blogger-specific JavaScript I can drop in to replace that search box with yours.

5\. If I type in a search query and press Enter without selecting one of your drop-down menu suggestions, nothing happens. It would be nice if pressing Enter did something, even if it just sent the user to a Google search.

6\. Seriously, when are you sending out beta invites? ;-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, great questions, I'll try to answer them:

1\. Yes, it is critical that we minimize the amount of JavaScript necessary. Most of the libraries you observed are needed for the demo webpage: the horizontal scrollbar, the popup box, etc. The widget, if embedded on a webpage will need very little code, only the part that does autocomplete. We'll do our best to make that minimal.

2\. Yes, we want to check for updates, and we will try to use all methods that are available. So far we use our own http crawler, and where they are available RSS/Atom feeds or sitemaps. It would be easiest if the sites would notify us automatically of changes, but otherwise we can recrawl at a given rate.

3\. Yes, we are still tweaking the algorithms for ranking and building phrases. One of the reasons behind doing this demo is to get feedback on what could be improved there.

4\. Good idea, we will try to do somthing like this. This is one of the reasons for going for blogs as the first target: they have well-defined format so we can do specific things for Blogger, Wordpress, etc.

5\. Yes, we want to do this. This demo showed just the suggestions, but we will have traditional search as well.

6\. Soon, hopefully... We are aiming for a few weeks from now. Thanks for your interest !

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks great! I can think of countless sites that need this.

Even if when you embed you take the colours of the site you are embedded in you still need to improve your own site to make the pitch; it just looks too plain jane at the moment. I'd recommend heading over to colour lovers for some inspiration from their most popular palettes. [http://www.colourlovers.com/palettes/most-loved/all- time/met...](http://www.colourlovers.com/palettes/most-loved/all-time/meta)

You could build a database from those palettes, detect colours on a users page and automatically select a complementary colour from the database for your widget when you are presenting the demo (or three different colours to select from as little boxes in the top right, also - perhaps provide an inverted colour option for the readability widget). A test embeddable phase that works from their last week of posts/RSS feed would also be something cheap/fast to implement. So they can point it at their blog and then get a quick demo of the search working on their last 20 posts in a handsome widget that already looks like it belongs on their site.

Also rather than site owners, perhaps you could work towards the readability widget thing you have going. So a user comes to you, plugs in all their sites and then they can read cleanly with that widget and/or do a mass export to pdf or their kindle. So bookmarks+readability+pdf/ebook = personal magazine specifically for bulk reading/offline reading/distraction-free reading. I know there are endless RSS readers out there, but how many are catering to ebook readers with a pleasant search or even older types who like to print things off. Your main strengths are in user interface and simplifying various workflows, rather than search technology, so I'd play to those strengths.

<comment><USER5> Just wanted to thank you for that link, one of those palettes was exactly what I needed for my work today. I've used Kuler before but never seen colourlovers. tyty

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like it. How would integration work with my site? How would you make money with this?

I'd also be curious to hear what you're doing behind the scenes. Also, what's the general method for extraction the primary content of a page the way you do for the lightbox preview?

Overall, it's very fast and the results seem relevant, plus you've identified a niche where you can get a foothold, so I think you're on the right track :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment.

We want to make the search widget customizable and in general unobtrusive, so it should fit well on any site. Initially we target blogs mostly.

Behind the scenes we crawl the websites with our own crawler, we filter the content and run our own algorithms for building and ranking expressions.

For the preview we use TopUp (lightbox clone) and we filter the page with arc90's readability algorithm. If someone is interested we can write a blog post with more details about the tools and libraries used.

For monetization, freemium would be the default route. What would you suggest otherwise?

<comment><USER7> I would love a blog post about how you guys went about doing this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just wanted to throw my companies product out for a bit of shameless promotion: www.picosearch.com.

We support suggestions (which drive an auto-complete feature) based on the sites content, much like you guys.

I always welcome new competition into the search space, good luck on your startup.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting, I was not aware of picosearch. Do you have an example link where auto-complete is used with suggestions from website contents?

I agree that competition is good in this space, especially since most websites don't have a usable search, let alone one with meaningful suggestions.

Thanks for your comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like it -- very useful.

A few questions:

* Why only blogs? I'd love to use it on other types of sites. (For example, maybe a wiki.)

* I like the keyboard support. (Search, hit down, press enter.) However, I'd like to be able to hit Esc to return to the list -- without using my mouse. It's pretty standard for Esc to close modal windows.

* When I click to see an entry full-screen, I'd rather it just open in the current window rather than a pop-up.

* If you don't mind, I'd love to hear a little about the backend. Is it Lucene?

<comment><USER10> * We said we'll start out with blogs, because that's where we miss such a feature dearly. In the long run, anything which contains plenty of text could be "metahinted".

* Very useful suggestion, thank you. It is implemented now: ESC should close the popup window.

* Few commenters have suggested that. Would you prefer to see the entry occupy the entire screen or fit in a text-area of some sorts?. Anyways, reworking the preview functionality is on our TODO list.

* We'd respectfully defer answering this question in ample details to an upcoming blog post. We appreciate your understanding in this matter. To give you a short answer, however: no, it's not Lucene.

Thank you for your comment!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wow, it's really cool!

I searched for some obscure words just for fun (like "nirvana" on scott aronson's blog). It came up with no suggestions. A google search revealed that the term nirvana only occurred in comments. Are you not indexing comments?

Also, why can't I just search for any words of my choice? It looks like I have to choose one of your suggestions.

Edit: Oh and it would be a lot nicer if the results are just displayed below the search box instead of the animated lightbox, which just makes me wait more.

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently we only index the blog posts and the demo shows the suggestion feature only. We will probably add the option of searching for arbitrary queries. When the widget will be integrated on websites, the result will take you to the given page, instead of the lightbox used in the demo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Though I haven't fully explored it yet, I would like to give you a suggestion. After a user enter some search keywords and press enter, the resulting blog(or article) is shown on different window(and control no longer remains on the main site page). It discourages a user to search more on your site as everytime he would have to close that new window and return to your main page. I think it would be better if you use space below search fields on the main page itself for this purpose.

</comment><comment><USER13> Do site owners get some kind of analytics to see what people have been searching for (and maybe to tune the search process)?

<comment><USER10> Yes, we've got a nifty set of statistics in the making.

<comment><USER13> Cool - looks like a really nice product. Good luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I found that pretty impressive.

I'm pretty sure that the Google AJAX search API bases suggestions on your site though, and they have just launched the ability to edit suggestions. But I think your thing compares quite well with Google AJAX API, assuming it's going to be easy to setup.

</comment><comment><USER15> <http://www.metahint.com>

<comment><USER13> Doing a search for lisp in Paul Graham's essays (predictable, I know) gave a list of results where the first three look identical (Lisp Lisp Code Lisp) - clicking on any one of them gives a message saying "Looks like we couldn't find the content.".

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, good catch, we fixed it. It was for the page: <http://paulgraham.com/lisp.html>

We will have to watch out for such pages with minimal content.

<comment><USER13> The dialog box that opens when you click on one of the suggestions pretty much always seems to have a scrollbar - which is on the right.

The X icon to close the dialog box is on the left - meaning that if I have been scrolling I have to move across to the left side to close it. Which is a bit annoying...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Any reasons why can't I search words like "the", "a", etc?

<comment><USER10> These words (and a few more) have been filtered out because they are far too common in everyday English and statistically not [so] important. Had we left them in, they would probably outweigh the meaningful suggestions.

<comment><USER17> Pretty cool site.

You might want to look into TF-IDF (term frequency-inverse document frequency) weighting as an alternative to filtering for common English words.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tf%E2%80%93idf>

<comment><USER10> Thank you!

We are using both techniques (filtering + TF-IDF weighting), actually :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Your site isn't working now!

</comment><comment><USER19> Pretty cool. Seems to work awesomely. The animation when you preview a site is a bit gaudy, though.</comment>


Darpa Wants to Build Conscious Robots Using Insect Brains - <AUTHOR> https://futurism.com/darpa-wants-conscious-robots-insect-brains/ <comment><USER2> > "Furthermore, these organisms are possibly able to display increased > subjectivity of experience." It goes on to say that there's evidence > suggesting that "even small insects have subjective experiences, the first > step towards a concept of 'consciousness.'"

Even if there were such a thing as a coherent definition of "subjectivity of experience", how on earth could we know if an insect has it? A new level of consciousness woo woo.

<comment><USER3> More importantly... why would you want your robots to be conscious?

<comment><USER4> Alternative sensors/controllers?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The following is not common knowledge, but I'm fairly knowledgeable in the area so hear me out :)

We thought for a long time that neurons were fairly easy to imitate. After all, most of what they do seems to be exchanging neurotransmitters, whereas internally they have an electric potential which is encoding most of their behaviour. While not easy, individually they are also not super duper complex compared to say, a microprocessor. Taken from this perspective, it looked like the main difficulty was in simulating them in large enough quantities to obtain interesting behaviour.

The argument in the paragraph above is foundational to how we think about intelligence. There are various other aspects to it, like morphological intelligence, but the above seems the most relevant when we want to create an artificial intelligence. While these days there are also more engineering- focused arguments for why we think artificial neural networks are interesting for research, underlying there is the idea that the only intelligence we know is made out of small simple things in large quantities that exchange simple signals. This is a key thought when you want to use artificial neural networks to create artificial intelligence. For instance the Human Brain Project in the EU (cost ~1 Billion EUR) is kind of built on this argument.

Now, and this is very recent research, this foundation is starting to shake from the biology side. It appears that neurons are also exchanging RNA, trans- scripting the RNA received into proteins and that those proteins seem to interfere with the transmission of RNA by the neuron [0]!

That is something completely different from the argument I poned before! In a computing analogy, every single neuron is a computer which is receiving and transmitting program code (RNA) and executing code it receives (transscription) and we know that the program it receives is interfering with the neurons receiving and transmission of programs to other neurons.

If intelligence does require such complex mechanisms, we are VERY far away from simulating (or understanding) that at scale.

Now we don't know whether this complexity is necessary. But the old argument of an upperbound to the level of complexity needed seems to be crumbling too.

All in all, putting some real neurons might prove to be a viable alternative for creating artificial intelligence, as it might circumvent the problem I sketched above. It might not, but it at least seems to be a direction worth exploring as a second bet next to simulating neurons.

[0] [https://www.cell.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0092-8674%2817%2931...](https://www.cell.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0092-8674%2817%2931504-0)

<comment><USER6> Knowledgeable skeptics have been voicing concerns about neurons not being the right level of abstraction to look at for decades. See, most prominently, Chomsky, and by extension Gallistel.

<comment><USER7> Here is an analysis of Chomsky's opposition to forms of statistical reasoning. [http://norvig.com/chomsky.html](http://norvig.com/chomsky.html)

Im not familiar with Gallistel.

<comment><USER8> Gallistel wrote a book 'Memory and the Computational Brain,' in which he argues that neural storage and computation via synaptic strengthening alone is implausible, and that the brain must have a real read/write memory. He points out that genetic material is an ideal substrate for such a capacity...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It is not a few hundred insect brain something easy to emulate? How can you say that this brain has conscious and the emulated one not?

<comment><USER10> AFAIK, it's not. Biological brains are rate encoded (very difficult to efficiently emulate in a Von Neumann machine) and still plenty mysterious. The last time I checked, sea cucumber nervous systems which are literally only a few neurons, are difficult to emulate.

There is something called Moravec's paradox -stuff which is hard for smart people to do, say, playing chess, is reasonably easy for computers to do. Stuff like controlling musculatures and involving perception and mobility are really hard for computers to do (as the autonomous vehicle people are finding out).

I dunno if bug brains will be conscious, but they'll be able to do things easier than an intel chip.

<comment><USER11> Could you elaborate on what you mean when you say "rate encoded"?

One aspect of consciousness that I think we will have a hard time nailing down is the nature of our perception of time and how it aids computation and awareness.

Von Neumann machines follow predictable cycles, information follows predictable paths at predictable speeds.

Human brains interpret a wealth of signals simultaneously, with various delays between each signal, yet our perception is that all of these signals are being processed at the same time.

You see a ball drop close by and hear a loud slam exactly at the moment it hits the ground. But sound and vibration travel slower than light, both inside and outside your organs, and it takes different amounts of time to process them. We're talking on the order of several milliseconds. But our brain is able to warp our perception of time, which we still experience as linear, in such a way that things happening at different times appear to happen simultaneously. In fact, this phenomenon holds true for up to a ~20-40ms difference in signal timing before your brain stops trying to compensate for it. Eventually the ball is so far away that the timing difference between the audio and visual signal are too great to handle.

Another example is if I were to slap you across the legs. You would likely hear the slap and experience the sensation of pain at the exact same time, despite the fact that transmission of information through your pain receptors and CNS up to your brain is magnitudes slower than transmission of a signal from your ears to your cortex. Your brain warped your perception of time, effectively "rewinding the clock", so that you could experience both at the same time.

This intelligent muxing, sampling and holding of signals is tantamount to our ability to rapidly react to various situations. I also believe, and this is just conjecture, that our brains form maps which keep track of which kind of signals which should be experienced together, and tries to make them synchronized, running simulations which adjust its timing, similar to how your motor neurons simulate outcomes and compare them to the real outcome to adjust their electrical potential.

Until we begin developing systems which track things like this, with better distribution of computation and intelligent synchronization of state, we will be very far off from "consciousness" in a form that is intelligible and tangible to the one experiencing it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Funny I thought they would go the way of NIMH and invest in rats[0].

[0]: [https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6573-brain-cells- in-a...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6573-brain-cells-in-a-dish- fly-fighter-plane/)

</comment><comment><USER13> A million dollars doesn't seem like the right payout for something like that. I'm not an expert in the field but my guess is this is a small team of people dedicated for a while and need technology to support it. Seems like $10M would be a better target.

<comment><USER14> it starts with a million, then another one - that makes two millions already! then it goes on until there is an AI winter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Robots randomly falling in some aspects of their work?.

Thousands of neurons are dying constantly each day, even in healthy animals. Would be like having a hard disk with thousands of new badblocks each day.

</comment><comment><USER16> How to nuked by terrified geopolitical rivals: Build insectoid killbots and parade them across the global stage.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanks_in_the_Cold_War#The_deve...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanks_in_the_Cold_War#The_development_of_antitank_weapons_and_countermeasures)

<comment><USER17> I'm sure there's simulations for the reality of getting nuked one way or another by someone somehow.

The one thing that seems to catch heat the fastest is nuclear proxy states. China and Russia don't have to worry about retaliation if Iran and North Korea are the suicidal nuclear combatants.

But nuking populated civilian cities is largely a game of bluffing your opponent. Nuclear assault on targets without direct military value is a tactic of absolutely last resort, at or near the point of total invasion, overrun and occupation.

Occupation, for the victor, is no fun anymore. So why do it yourself. Just encircle the conquered cities with gigantic robotic fire ants and cybernetic killer bees, and let nature take its course.</comment></comment>


The Linux kernel, how it is developed, and how we stay sane doing it - <AUTHOR> https://voicerepublic.com/venues/223/talks/982 <comment><USER3> I really prefer to have a transcript available. This is for users who prefer to get a feeling of the talk (is it interesting enough for me to stay on it for 30 minutes?) and also for accessibiliy. People who cannot hear should be able to read the transcript, even though I can safely the # of deaf users using your service is so low, but still a transcript would be really nice. I don't expect 100% accurate, which means i am okay with it done by a machine (much like Youtube's transcript). Knowing half of the content is good. This surely is a big project but consider it at some point.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd really like to listen to that talk. But first it didn't work on firefox 29, it does though on Chromium 34, for me. But the audio quality is _HORRIBLE_ , my ears are bleeding, I had to give up at 1:21.

I tried to search youtube, but no luck so far. If anyone has a better recording, _please_ share.

Edit: Since it seems there are no slides anyway and others are having problems with the site, if it doesn't work in your browser, you can try [http://voicerepublic.com/vrmedia/982-clean.m4a](http://voicerepublic.com/vrmedia/982-clean.m4a) with a media player, vlc works for me. still doesn't change a thing about the quality of the recording though.

<comment><USER5> I was actually surprised by how bad the recording quality was. I had flashbacks to listening to crappy mp3s of HOPE/Defcon presentations in the late 90s and early 00s. I wish there was a nice VLC plugin to clean up audio like this. I imagine an hour with Audacity and one could clean it up, but I have never done anything in Audacity that ended up being as simple as I thought it would be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why am I getting a talk on Openstack at Cern, and not the Greg KH talk?

<comment><AUTHOR> CTO of voicerepublic.com here

All talks have unique URLs, so when you click the link from HN, you shouldn't find yourself at another talk. If you can reproduce that problem, I would be very interested in a detailed bug report, though.

However, we have multiple talks on Openstack[1], if you were interested(;

1\. [https://voicerepublic.com/search/1/Openstack](https://voicerepublic.com/search/1/Openstack)

<comment><USER7> I just saw the same problem. I just clicked through to [https://voicerepublic.com/venues/223/talks/982](https://voicerepublic.com/venues/223/talks/982) and the recording is for OpenStack at CERN (the text etc refer to Kernel development). The talk starts out "We have a few hundred thousand lines of perl code..." That was a nice little start for a talk about Kernel development!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm using Chrome on Linux and I got "You are using an outdated browser - <USER2> are using an old version of Chrome whis is 28."

That's a little snarky. Chrome on Linux doesn't have automatic updating and I tend to forget to update. Here's a mirror:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:LWDDNOb...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:LWDDNObuvhgJ:https://voicerepublic.com/venues/223/talks/982+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

<comment><AUTHOR> CTO of voicerepublic.com here.

Sorry for coming off snarky. We develop and run VR using Debian Stable which ships Chromium 33 right now.

We are a very small team building voicerepublic.com and did launch just last week. To offer a perfect experience, we only allow browsers that we actually could test. Whence the team grows, we certainly will test and support more browser versions.

<comment><USER8> Good answer. And hey, on the bright side, you reminded me to update Chrome!

<comment><USER5> How are you not getting chrome updates from your distro?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Doesn't work at all for me in either Chromium or Firefox (all extensions disabled) on Ubuntu 12.04. I just press play and it tries to load and goes back to a play button.

</comment><comment><USER10> Is firefox 20 really that old that this should not work?

(ah, well according to you yes, they are now on 28). But is there a reason it shouldn't work? I mean, I understand not supporting I.E6 but it wasn't that long ago I installed this. Or else time is running together on me.

Just a tip from a user perspective. If you can avoid forced browser upgrades it's a good idea. I generally don't go any further unless I really really want to see the content.

<comment><USER5> [https://www.mozilla.org/security/known- vulnerabilities/firef...](https://www.mozilla.org/security/known- vulnerabilities/firefox.html)

<comment><USER10> Ok, I looked the list of updates. Some of them don't apply to me, many I don't care about, a few I do. So I appreciate the reminder (thanks guys who did the site) and will upgrade ASAP.

Still, I didn't identify any change would prevent the site from working so I'm just curious. Anyone care to shed some light on this?

<comment><USER11> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7757894](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7757894)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why on earth doesn't that player have a volume control?

<comment><AUTHOR> Because most machines these days have volume control built in. You can pause the talk, though, if you want it to shut up for a moment.

<comment><USER13> I think most people would expect for an audio player to have volume control. I can't think of another web audio player that doesn't offer it.

<comment><USER14> But they're completely redundant. What would you use it for?

<comment><USER15> A web page shouldn't act like it has exclusive ownership of system resources like audio; there may be other pages or applications running, and it's often useful to be able to control them independently.

For instance, if I have Gmail open in the background, there's no reason that adjusting the volume of whatever's in the foreground should also force me to change the volume of incoming chat notifications.

<comment><USER16> On this note, it's annoying that OS X doesn't provide an external per-app volume control like Windows has. For example, Gmail's voice chat doesn't have a volume control; if I'm watching an iTunes video at the same time (along with the person I'm voice chatting with) and want iTunes to be louder than the chat (due to background noise from the latter), the best I can do is turn the iTunes volume up, but setting it to maximum is insufficient. With such a feature, I could just turn down the browser's volume, though I suppose it's still worthwhile to have volume controls directly embedded in video players for convenience.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple File System Reference [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://developer.apple.com/support/apple-file-system/Apple-File-System-Reference.pdf <comment><USER2> In past, I implemented HFS+ on an embedded rtos platform,. Technical Note TN1150 [1] proved to be extremely useful asset. From a cursory look, I feel TN1150 was much more detailed, and perhaps can be treated as a pre-req to this document. At least it should have been mentioned in this document.

[1] [https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/technotes/tn/tn1...](https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/technotes/tn/tn1150.html)

<comment><USER3> You got me curious, can you explain why you needed to implement HFS+? Was it read only?

<comment><USER2> I was working on a video recorder product that could record videos directly to iPods, iPhones and other media players. iPods were formatted to HFS+, if you connected them to a Mac out-of-box, and were formatted to FAT32, if you connected them to a PC. The platform i was working on was an RTOS, and we had to develop both FAT32, and HFS+ from scratch. It was not read-only, it supported both read/write.

<comment><USER3> Nice, that sounds fun, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This seems like it's probably enough to re-implement APFS on non-Mac platforms; in fact, the about page (page 6) says as much.

Kudos to Apple for providing the information. It's a hell of a lot better than reverse engineering the thing (see how many years it took to get NTFS down...)

<comment><USER5> There is already one third-party-implementation in the works. They sure find this helpful in their efforts.

[https://github.com/sgan81/apfs-fuse](https://github.com/sgan81/apfs-fuse)

<comment><USER6> This is user space – hopefully a kernel level one will come out as a result of this.

Or does it matter, performance-wise? People that know more can chime in.

<comment><USER7> Yes, FUSE is slower than in-ring0 implementation, even by the sheer overhead of the syscalls.

<comment><USER8> Iirc, it's relatively straight forward to migrate to a module though?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> At last! Apple's old APFS docs always had this mysterious note about Fast Directory Sizing:

"You cannot enable Fast Directory Sizing on directories containing files or other directories directly; you must instead first create a new directory, enable fast directory sizing on it, and then move the contents of the existing directory to the new directory."

but there was never any documentation on how to do this, and no Apple engineer would say. The most common internet theory seemed to be that this feature was purely automatic, and all mentions (like this) in the docs were just incredibly misleading.

Now it seems we have an answer, in this flag: "INODE_MAINTAIN_DIR_STATS: The inode tracks the size of all of its children."

</comment><comment><USER10> The 'Fusion' section at the end is interesting. macOS 10.13 didn't convert Fusion drives to APFS, but 10.14 will. Presumably this specific support for Fusion drives is new in 10.14.

HFS+ had no knowledge about Fusion drives, the caching was handled entirely at block-level by the lower CoreStorage layer (although later versions did add some flags so CoreStorage could pin metadata/swap blocks to the SSD).

Now what I'm really interested to see is if they open-source the filesystem driver along with the macOS 10.14 code drop. HFS+ (and its utilities) has always been open-source, last year APFS was not.

<comment><USER11> The only bad thing about Apple supporting APFS on Fusion Drives is that it gives them an incentive to continue selling future iMacs and Mac minis with Fusion Drives.

Having had to replace failed HDDs in Fusion Drive iMacs at work, it's certainly no fun. For all new Mac purchases I ensure they are SSD only now.

<comment><USER10> On that note, I am surprised that they added Fusion-awareness to APFS, rather than just putting APFS on top of CoreStorage.

It certainly is better to have the filesystem aware of the Fusion situation, but...measurably, significantly better? Would the experience have been significantly worse without it? 10.13 betas allowed APFS use on Fusion drives, presumably without any Fusion-awareness in the FS.

I'm surprised, but happy to see they did it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There are several cases where the file system has monotonically increasing integers that, when overflowing, are unrecoverable errors.

Those counters always are 64 bits, and won't overflow in normal use (for example, the text says: _"if you created 1,000,000 transactions per second, it would take more than 5,000 centuries to exhaust the available transaction identifiers."_ ), but I can see people making 'interesting' disk images, for example ones where writing to a specific directory is impossible or, depending on how the implementation handles it, even panics the OS.

</comment><comment><USER13> One of my long-time favourite macOS applications -- iDefrag -- had support withdrawn shortly after APFS appeared. Reasons cited were lack of an APFS spec and increased System Integrity Protection.

I fear this is too little, too late to have iDefrag make a comeback. I understand defragmenting an SSD typically does more harm than good [edit: and I only defrag spinning drives), but nothing touched it for effectiveness on spinning drives.

[https://coriolis-systems.com/iDefrag/](https://coriolis-systems.com/iDefrag/)

[https://coriolis-systems.com/blog/2017/9/what-works- macos-10...](https://coriolis-systems.com/blog/2017/9/what-works- macos-1013-high-sierra-what-problems-ex)

<comment><USER14> I haven't defragged a disk in almost a decade. When is defragging an SSD ever a good thing?

I only have spinning rust in my (older) NAS or as backup drives.

<comment><USER15> Probably often but there is no way to tell really because the controller has a mind of its own and they are all different.

<comment><USER16> > Probably often

Defragging an SSD is often a good thing? Why? It would seem to greatly increase wear for no benefit.

<comment><USER17> If your fragments are really small like 16kb then you could see a significant performance improvement, due to better predictive loading and packet overhead. This is clear from SSD benchmarks.

But I don't see how this would ever realistically happen.

<comment><USER16> What about the massive effect on wear?

<comment><USER15> You don't know if there is wear. The controller is a separate computer. It may be clever and just remap blocks if you copy or move them around. It could be that defragmentation allows the system to work in a way that is better for the controller or allows that controller to place the blocks in a better way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm still sad that this filesystem does not contain file data checksums. It looks like we will be stuck with it for some years to come.

<comment><USER19> Care to enlighten ignorant me why we would want that?

<comment><USER20> Simple, to help prevent "bit rot". The problem is exacerbated further in that many of us treat cloud sync services as backup, which they arguably aren't - they can inconveniently just spread the decay.

I'd also hoped that a next generation file system from Apple would have had more to say on this topic, but it seems like features that promote their iOS device agenda took front seat over less "sexy" features like data integrity.

In the days before iOS devices dominated OS level decision making at Apple there was an assumption that Apple might adopt ZFS as their next generation file system, which is apparently much better in this regard. There's various evidence of a cancelled MacOS ZFS project scattered throughout past MacOS releases.

> > [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_degradation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_degradation)

> [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/06/zfs-the-other-new- > ap...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/06/zfs-the-other-new-apple-file- > system-that-almost-was-until-it-wasnt/)

<comment><USER21> Might it not be the case that combating bit rot is best done at higher layers of the stack similar to how it is best done at levels higher than the IP layer in a networking stack?

For example, data painstakingly entered by the user a character at a time with a keyboard might deserve more redundancy than for example a movie downloaded by iTunes.

<comment><USER20> I'm no expert, but my understanding is that bits can "flip" and introduce errors due to things as unpredictable as background radiation etc, even on files the system has had no interaction with, which is why it's kind of desirable to implement this kind of integrity check at the file system level. A higher level check may be completely unaware of this kind of passive background error.

Also, if I pull the drive and move it to another machine, again it's kind of nice if the data integrity features are tied to the drive format rather than higher level software. I don't think it's too unreasonable to expect the file system to make sensible guarantees that the sequence of bytes I record today will remain the same until I next interact with them.

I'm not sure how appropriate comparisons with IP error correction is either; it's a markedly different class of problem really (you are not dealing with long term storage issues at all).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The EFI jumpstart is particularly clever. A straightforward recipe for locating and verifying the file system driver, and then once executed the UEFI pre-boot environment can fully navigate an APFS volume.

<comment><USER23> Uhhh, personally I'd prefer that UEFI stay away from the OS particulars. But anyway, afaik Windows' boot code had about the same feature―at least it certainly did in regard to the chipset drivers, the result being IIRC that the OS wouldn't boot if you moved the partitions a bit.

<comment><USER22> The pre-boot environment needs to find the kernel and initramfs somehow. My guess for how Apple is booting from APFS, now that it's all APFS, without a separate recovery partition? They've got this minimalist EFI jumpstart code in the firmware, it loads the EFI file system driver for APFS, and now it can locate the bootloader, kernel, and kext cache.

For a long time Apple has had an HFS+ driver baked into the firmware. The way APFS is implemented with EFI jumpstart, they've got much less filesystem code in firmware.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's nice to see that this is finally up; I know a lot of people have been clamoring for a more detailed reference for a while and this should hopefully make it easier for them to interact with APFS.

</comment><comment><USER25> fonts?

<comment><USER26> Should be San Francisco.

<comment><USER27> Every time I see the San Francisco font mentioned anywhere, I don't think of Apple's rather lovely neo-grotesque, but rather Apple's original San Francisco. (Which is also lovely, in an _oh cool, this 1984 era computer has a variety of fonts_ kind of way.)

[http://luc.devroye.org/SusanKare-- SanFrancisco-1984.png](http://luc.devroye.org/SusanKare-- SanFrancisco-1984.png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> swingline-747 Good find. Wonder if there's as much doc of ZFS/OpenZFS.

<comment><USER4> Indeed there is: [http://www.giis.co.in/Zfs_ondiskformat.pdf](http://www.giis.co.in/Zfs_ondiskformat.pdf)

It glosses over and assumes knowledge of XDR from an external source. That is documented here: [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1014.html](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1014.html)</comment></comment>


Covid-19 mentions on the NYTimes front page - <AUTHOR> https://eddietejeda.github.io/nytimes-covid-frontpage/ <comment><USER2> Nice! Would it be possible to download all the pdfs in one go?</comment>


Flagship phones in 2018 will all have glass backs, whether we like it or not - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/3/5/17080062/apple-android-flagship-phones-glass-mwc-2018 <comment><USER2> ... only to crack the thing when slipping the back cover off to change the non user-serviceable battery. Been there, done that (Nexus 4). Slid inside a rubber case that came with the phone, no one would see this 'bling' anyhow.

<comment><USER3> I loved my Nexus 4. I did think the phone was very pretty though in a case(without a clear back) you could see that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Says it all: [http://dilbert.com/strip/2017-12-26](http://dilbert.com/strip/2017-12-26)</comment>


Australia Post's free Amazon locker-style service - <AUTHOR> http://auspost.com.au/parcels-mail/parcel-lockers.html

<comment><USER2> The Danish postal service has these as well. They're aren't great during the winter when the doors freezes shut. It's not to bad when the postman is prevented from loading your packages, they'll just end up at the post office. The real problem is when people have unlocked the door to get their package but then are unable to actually open the door.

</comment><comment><USER3> Such a service exists for a long time in Germany <http://www.dhl.de/en/paket/pakete-empfangen/packstation.html>

<comment><USER4> Also exists in Belgium: [http://www.bpost.be/site/nl/residential/parcels/pickup/bpack...](http://www.bpost.be/site/nl/residential/parcels/pickup/bpack247.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been an early adopter of this since May 2012. I've used it quite a lot and it's great. The mileage is going to be on how other courier services are accepted. If you have a package couriered to this address from anyone but StarTrack, it's not going to be accepted. So for national deliveries this service is great, however international shipping (which is generally couriered) ends up being a problem. Either way you should sign up if you're Australian, this is the best thing Auspost have done in years.

<comment><USER6> Looking forward to some of the major US carriers like UPS, or even USPS signing on to this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Notice that it's a free* service.

* conditions apply - see Little's Law.

Interesting, because, on a marginal basis, it probably saves Australia Post delivery costs, making this another example of the security/convenience trade- off.

Normally, you want the convenience of home delivery - but this allows you to trade that for security.

<comment><USER8> It's not convenient in Australia to have packages delivered, if you're not there when they're delivered then they generally end up either at the Post Office or at some random courier's warehouse in an out of the way part of town.

<comment><USER9> Wow, your delivery gut checks whether you're there? Most of them have decided that coming to the door is too much work and just drop the "come collect your parcel" card in the letter box.

<comment><AUTHOR> That used to happen regularly to me too, when I lived in an apartment. I managed to make a complaint about it once to the local postmaster.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> They have this in my Apartment building in Japan.

When the postman comes and I am out then there are a series of electronic lockers of varying sizes in the foyer that he can put the package in then leave the key code in my letter box.

Works excellently although I am not sure how they avoid abuse by people.

</comment><comment><USER11> This service is amazing. I've been using the pilot for about 6 months and it's the best thing they've done. Get an email or SMS about a package and a code, rock up, punch your name and the code, the locker pops open and you get your package!

</comment><comment><USER12> NZ post is introducing a similar service, currently on a trial basis:

[http://www.nzpost.co.nz/products-services/online- shopping/pa...](http://www.nzpost.co.nz/products-services/online- shopping/parcelpod)

<comment><USER13> NZ post also has parcel forwarding service from the United States. It's pretty great being able to order anything from US online stores.

[http://www.nzpost.co.nz/products-services/online- shopping/yo...](http://www.nzpost.co.nz/products-services/online- shopping/youshop)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Oops, this isn't a new service apparently - it has been running since October, 2012.

<comment><USER14> I've never seen or heard of these before. They have a decent number of locations (one is quite close to where I live). I'm not sure why they are not pushing this harder. Having to pick up a parcel from their stores between 9 - 5, monday to friday is the only painful part of using AusPost.

<comment><USER15> FYI some post offices, in NSW at least, have an "early bird" collection window for parcels and PO Box holders. My local opens from 07:30 to 08:30 IIRC. Handy for avoiding the queues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Canada Post put parcel lockers in the lobby of my building before Christmas this year, too.

<http://instagram.com/p/TT99kWmyd5/>

</comment><comment><USER17> I used it, but because I didn't collect the item within 2 days it was moved to the local post office :(

</comment><comment><USER18> Is this basically BufferBox but in Australia?

<comment><USER19> Looks like it. For reference, Australia Post is the equivalent to the USPS.

<comment><USER20> except they don't deliver on Saturday, don't pick-up mail from your mailbox and a letter costs 60c instead of 44c

<comment><USER21> "except they don't deliver on Saturday"

Neither will the US, probably, soon ([http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo- way/2013/02/06/171264853/rep...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo- way/2013/02/06/171264853/reports-postal-service-will-move-to-halt-saturday- mail)). I don't think that includes packages though, which is all I care about. One less day of junk mail is fine with me. Although I guess that just means more crap on Monday.

<comment><USER22> They also don't deliver most junk mail, and the private companies that do deliver junk mail will stop pretty much entirely if you write on your mailbox 'no junk mail'.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Failing Fast Is Not Fun, Satisfying or Pleasant - <AUTHOR> http://tbbuck.com/failing-fast-is-not-fun-satisfying-or-pleasant/ <comment><USER2> I can't figure out what this product does. What does "save" a site mean? What does it mean to "contact" a site?

The site's frontpage seems to be designed to sell half of the designer's brain to the other half of the designer's own brain. It might not actually take much iteration to turn this into a product that would sell. We just need to know what the hell it does.

<comment><USER3> After visiting the site on 2 separate occasions, I also still can't tell what the site does and how it can help me right now.

Usually, if I don't find that the first 3-5 seconds upon visiting a site, I'm outta there..

so my suggestions are: 1\. bigger headline (UVP) 2\. small subtitle clearly explaining the main benefit 3\. picture on the right needs to better define your product (add "marker notes" on the picture if necessary)

hope it helps!

<comment><USER3> also, none of the titles for the 4 benefits on the homepage mean anything to me. they have to tell me specific things your product does to help me right now.

good luck and i'd say don't give up yet. tweaking marketing and a/b testing are relatively inexpensive (and imo a lot of fun) and who knows, you might stumble on a winner!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You are selling a product in an unvalidated marketspace. Want to sell a bug tracker? Just call it a bug tracker. I don't know what the category of your product is, so I don't know if I need one.

Why do I need to contact a website? Am I looking for a job, and cold calling companies to look for openings? Am I marketing something? It's kind of a lightweight CRM? But don't say CRM, because I don't know what a CRM is ;) Maybe you could look at how 37 signals sells their CRM.

</comment><comment><USER5> Tom, what do you do for a living?

You might consider targeting this application to specific professions that would benefit from it, i.e. "CampaignBar: A sophisticated bookmark and contact manager for blogging professionals" or whatever.

When a tool comes out of left field and solves a problem that I didn't know I had, you need to show me that I have that problem in the first place. Give me examples of how my way of getting work done right now is broken.

</comment><comment><USER6> There's a potential problem with the "fail fast" mentality. Are you sure you've looked at all of the reasons the product failed and attempted to resolve them? You may be abandoning the project too quickly. In this case, it might be worth bringing someone in to improve the communication of the landing page. And it might also be worth doing some targeted marketing. How do you know when you've failed after making a proper attempt, versus giving up too quickly?

<comment><USER7> _Are you sure you've looked at all of the reasons the product failed and attempted to resolve them? You may be abandoning the project too quickly_

This has absolutely been a concern - maybe I've just not put enough into the marketing. I reached out to two target audiences: outsourced marketing; and link builders. Plenty like the tool, but not enough to pay. My suspicion is that it doesn't save enough time to bother paying for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think that a couple of weeks is far too soon to decide that something is a failure. It's barely even enough time to gather enough data to decide what can be adjusted and improved.

An article that has been posted here before comes to mind:

[http://www.sodaware.net/dev/articles/shareware-amateurs- vs-s...](http://www.sodaware.net/dev/articles/shareware-amateurs-vs-shareware- professionals.htm)

I tend to agree with it. If you're fairly certain there's a market for what you're trying to sell, don't give up on it too soon. Instead, use the information you've gathered to continually refine the product, and execute a marketing plan to try to bring your product to the attention of people who are going to use it. Keep on evaluating, refining, and executing.

In the end, it still might not work out. The danger in failing too quickly, however, is that you'll give up on products that could be quite successful just because they weren't successful right away.

<comment><USER7> _I think that a couple of weeks is far too soon to decide that something is a failure_

Agreed. This was originally launched at the start of the year though.

 _An article that has been posted here before comes to mind_

I'm reading through that article now, thanks! :)

 _The danger in failing too quickly, however, is that you'll give up on products that could be quite successful just because they weren't successful right away._

I agree 100%. All I'm after some form of validation for the idea, not huge success, and so far... well, there' not been a lot ;)

<comment><USER8> My apologies; I must have misread something in your post.

Validation can be a strange thing. Sometimes you'll make a little change that seems inconsequential, and it will make all the difference. If nothing else, look at it as a fun opportunity to try to find those seemingly tiny differences that end up being huge to potential users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a great example of why people shouldn't give up and "fail fast". You need to work on your marketing copy. We just launched LazyMeter on Friday after months of questionable data - especially when we first went into beta, we easily could have decided our idea was a failure. Eventually, we realized our users had no idea what we were trying to do for them. We designed a new website and wrote new copy (nice theme by the way! heh). We launched on Friday and converted over 1/3 of our visitors, achieving thousands of users on our first day. Keep at it!

<comment><USER9> PS: Can someone please design some more SaaS wordpress themes? This is getting ridiculous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Incidentally, on your CampaignBar website, one of the first (most important!) headlines has a typo:

'Find websitse, save and manage their details.'

-> 'websites'

<comment><USER7> _Incidentally, on your CampaignBar website, one of the first (most important!) headlines has a typo_

Damn, that's what you get for live updates. Thankfully caught within a minute or two of going live, thanks :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm failing to see what value this adds to standard bookmarking.

</comment><comment><USER12> The "fail fast" method is more of a learning style rather than a road to success.

<comment><USER7> _The "fail fast" method is more of a learning style rather than a road to success._

But surely it should help get you off the path to failure?</comment></comment>