I launched 06-10 and constantly feel helpless and lost. What advice do you have? - <AUTHOR>

In 2006, I graduated from college and took a 2 month trip through Europe. I realized that travel help was limited to huge corporations that gave outdated info and that there was no one true aggregate for all things travel.
I began to build databases, polish my idea, and save up money for programming. In 2008, I had compiled and cleaned up databases for:
* Embassies worldwide including telephone number, address, URL, email, and fax #
* Airlines including partners, reservation numbers in all countries around the world, and frequent flyer programs. I also went one by one and marked all the low cost carriers in each country.
* Airports including maps to show proximity to surrounding areas (useful when traveling low cost airlines)
I then hired my buddy to do the design and programming. We created a travel blog section where users could create travel scrap books (journals, albums, video embed, plus other features) that also allows you to add places that you have eaten, partied at, and slept in. The idea was to create a 100% user based recommendation system without the big corporate glut of advertising and all that stuff.
I now have a product that creates travel guides for countries and individual cities, but without users, it becomes very difficult to grow. I've gotten some feedback from friends and family, but they don't really care to help out much.
The idea is two fold:
1) Have people sign up and add things about their home towns so that other users can travel to that city and have the ability to do touristy things and non-touristy things
2) Have people sign up and add things they find while they explore the world to help filter out the garbage.
My site is http://www.QTripper.com I write articles once in a while and also try to fund the development by having affiliate products that are relevant to what people might want.
I spend most of my time attempting to link build and trying to find & fix bugs.
I have a bunch of tools I want to add that would be very useful for travelers (pro and newb) but I have minimal funding left and want to focus on marketing.
Any advice is much appreciated
TL;DR I spent all my money developing and have nothing left over to market properly and even if I did I would have no idea what I am doing! <comment><USER2> Fake it. Create fake users, fake traffic, fake places they've been to, fake trips.

Creating fake but believable data will drive real users who think "this is really cool, I love User1023's trip data."

<comment><USER3> Don't create fake data all by yourself - it will have your hand obvious, rather pay people to create content how only they can do it. You can give them the brief instructions of course.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've seen places where I can get services. I think it was Odesk.com and I think there are some others. But yes, getting disenfranchised with a project usually involves doing a lot of work yourself!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Checked out your site and as an avid backpacker found the idea pretty cool, but yes, it feels empty.

My experience is that backpackers tend to use Facebook a lot, so integrate your login with Facebook Connect for starters. Make it more social by hotels/restaurants/etc. having Like buttons that points to your site.

Create a Facebook group, where these people can get to know each other. It is also a good opportunity to advertise your page.

Try to fetch data from Google Maps/Yelp/Foursquare and put it on your site. Make badges and achievments like Foursqare does, that users can earn and show off. That makes them wanting to go back to your site and make activities.

<comment><AUTHOR> Facebook Connect is in the works. I was thinking of having an internal like button to use with the internal point system each user gets for being active.

facebook group already exists and it has supporters.

I will look into those sources to populate the site with info.

Aside from it being new and empty, is there anything off the top of your head, as a backpacker, that would make you not want to use the site?

<comment><USER4> For me the main raison holding back is that I don't like to register to new websites. I like for example Hacker News' Clickpass authentication, because it's easy to use and I don't have to remember another password. But on your site Facebook connect would be even better, because it opens a lot of possibilites.

Another thing is that I don't know how the blog looks like because I can't find a link to it. So a Tour or Help would be nice, or a link to active blogs from the main page.

Other ideas:

Make a contest for newly registered users for a prize of something cool, e.g. iPhone4. Also make a mobile optimized version of the site, or an iPhone app, where the users can find, comment, upload images based on GPS coordinates.

<comment><AUTHOR> I feel an iphone app may be too much time/money spent when I don't have the base of the site fully functioning or very usable. Resources are tight now, so I would want to focus on the usability of the main site vs iphone app.

Same things goes for the mobile version. I've had this conversation with many people and it always ends up in the chicken vs egg debate. Some people argue that having a mobile/smartphone add will increase user base, others agree to focus on the main site and have those as addons after I complete certain milestones

the header Travelers section has the blog info, but I will probably populate the homepage with them as suggested elsewhere

<comment><USER5> As you make changes to the main site, just keep in mind how that same URL will render on mobile devices, and make changes accordingly. There are many 'full' sites I use on an iPhone because it's still easy to consume info, even though it's not a dedicated 'mobile' version.

<comment><AUTHOR> will do. We originally had a flash banner and crap like that ... that was opted against for various reasons

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Make the homepage more focused. Have a primary call to action.

Fake user content, for now, to breathe life into your site. Several respected people on HN have noted this works well.

Issues:

* I'm not exactly sure what I'm getting for clicking on "sign up." Is it only a travel blog platform or is there more?

* I don't care "what's happening right now" on some map. That is prime homepage real estate that is being wasted. Perhaps leave that for when I'm logged in on a "news feed" page; and then only show my friends (via Facebook or Twitter connections); also, you could show other site users in whatever town I'm now in (if I'm traveling now).

* The Hot News and Travel Deals columns are competing for my attention. And I am repulsed from bothering to read them. It's the 50-50 column widths. And there's too many (10); try showing only the top 1 or 2 of each.

* You ask the user "are you a QT?" I don't get it. Maybe I'm missing something.

Credibility: I like to travel, I blog about my travels on my own Wordpress blog, and I read a lot of other people's travel blogs and travel-lifestyle blogs.

I hope that helps.

<comment><AUTHOR> * I'm not exactly sure what I'm getting for clicking on "sign up." Is it only a travel blog platform or is there more?

Travel blog that scoops up recommendations to populate travel guides

* I don't care "what's happening right now" on some map. That is prime homepage real estate that is being wasted. Perhaps leave that for when I'm logged in on a "news feed" page; and then only show my friends (via Facebook or Twitter connections); also, you could show other site users in whatever town I'm now in (if I'm traveling now).

Brilliant ideas! I was already thinking of removing that section and was going to add search functions for the items on the left, but I like your suggestions a lot more!

* The Hot News and Travel Deals columns are competing for my attention. And I am repulsed from bothering to read them. It's the 50-50 column widths. And there's too many (10); try showing only the top 1 or 2 of each.

I was going to eliminate the Hot Deals section as it does get a lot of attention. I mainly threw it in there as a way to post deals via aff links and make money, but so far I haven't made a dime.

* You ask the user "are you a QT?" I don't get it. Maybe I'm missing something.

That was before I had any idea on call-to-actions and a poor attempt at viral. I am going to get all of these suggestions and redesign the home page.

Thank you!

On a side note, if you checked out the travel blog section, what would entice you to drop your blog and join this community?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The short answer is, do it yourself.

There are a number of _EXTREMELY_ insightful HN users who have talked at length about doing their own marketing, SEO, client acquisition and related topics. The most prolific is Patrick (HN user: patio11). His personal blog is filled with a great deal of useful information

<http://www.kalzumeus.com> <http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=patio11>

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you, will look into this

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you're 100% serious about this and "nothing left over" means you can still afford to then travel. Seriously. The cost of living in, say, South-East Asia isn't high. And your core customer base is sitting in the computer room in a hostel somewhere, looking for things to do and looking to share their experiences with others. Probably a carefully placed sticker will catch their eye. Or they'll be chatting to you at about all the places they've visited anyway. Maybe the hostel themselves will be so pleased at being listed on your website they'll stick up a "rated on QTripper.com" sign in reception. Don't underestimate the power of offline marketing.

Of course the cheap way to start off is going door to door in all the hostels in your own home city, assuming people travel there.

In terms of beefing up content, which apart from facts and figures your site currently lacks, checkout Wikitravel (CC-sharealike licensed) as a possible source for data if you haven't already. Even if it's just a temporary solution to your lack of content in many parts of the world it's a solution to the chicken-and-egg problem I think you're struggling with. Wikitravel bootstrapped by starting their country pages off with Wikipedia articles, incidentally.

To get more money coming in, improve your deal titles - "Lightweight travel laptop at bargain price" probably works better that "Acer modelnumber...." which just looks like a generic irrelevant ad. Have you looked at programs like Hostelworld. Can't imagine the commissions being huge - but it's establishing the usefulness of your site as a hub for useful travel links some of which happen to pay you.

Encourage and incentivise signup. Is your "Sign Up" button to QT-ly clever for its own good? Low signup rates suggest maybe. It's not really clear what you get for filling in all these boxes, especially when you can leave comments without it, and there are no calls to action to encourage you to "get your own travel ranking" or "recommend your favourite restaraunts in Prague" on the relevant sub-pages when I might want to register

Love it or loathe it, Facebook Connect seems to be the way forward for this sort of thing too, so that Bob can tell your site visitors _and all 300 of his friends_ he's just found a really sweet hostel in Kota Kinablu. Probably one or two of the friends met him in the hostel back in Kuching and are doing a bit of travelling themselves...

I may have rambled on a bit here but I did consider doing something similar in the past.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's funny that you mention this, because this is what I did this last year. I spent Dec 09 - July 10 traveling all around Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, and South Africa. I handed out well over 500 business cards and would spark up conversations all the time.

It worked, but then quickly died out. The problem is that unlike most other niches, people don't travel all the time and are too lazy to add content about their own home location.

I am trying to use the Wiki as much as I can to give a more graphic interpretation of their data, yes. And I can see what you mean on the titles. I was making them that way for organic searches, but realistically I can't compete with all the deal sites and shopping sites. Very good point.

You are 100% right on the FB connect. There is no escaping FB and the like buttons thrown around everywhere.

If you considered something similar in the past, do you like where I have ended up? Would you be interested in joining?

Ahh, I will look to see if there are any hostels around here. i'm sure there MUST be, but who really knows until you look. I know Boston has 1 or 2 for the entire city (not where I live)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like it and I'm scared for you. Here's why:

Like because: Design, interface, potential for information gathered there, potential use. You know all this.

Scared because: You're creating an information portal when Google does a better job. You need a massive amount of users to give you all this information when there is really no incentive for them to do so. Say I am in Amsterdam and want to go to a club. I go to google and type in "Amsterdam club". I will then get lots of information, reviews, photos, etc from a wide variety of sites. The very first entry is a map of a bunch of clubs linked to reviews. Fantastic! It's open, accessing every site in the world, and filled with info that is relevant to me. Your other problem that I foresee is accuracy of data. Clubs/restaurants/hostels close/renovate/change owners all the time. You need your listings to be curated and current. As soon as you fail once you lose that user.

I haven't backpacked in over a decade (1998) and when I did I relied on Lonely Planet books to get me places and then locals to steer me towards the good stuff. You get nothing more current, fresh, and accurate than locals, local zines, and lamp post billings. As for hostels there are many, many, many sites now that have traction and offer me more value (again, I just googled it). Trip journal sites abound (and offer many revenue possibilites like book journal printing). Restarant review sites abound, as well. User generated travel content sites have to be one of the toughest markets to crack. And with all the niches you're trying to combine into a walled garden I just don't see a clear path to success.

To add... as someone said, people just don't travel all the time. I used to be a member of a travel blogging site about 6-10 years ago. Haven't been back to it since and completely forget what its name is/was. It was a big one and very popular. Google replaced it for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> I view the problem of too much information as a detractor. Let's say you go to Netflix Instant View and want to watch a comedy. Most of those are 1 or 2 stars and you needlessly flip through then until you get to something with some valuable rating.

Google fixes this issue with their algorithm based on popularity. Trip Advisor, in my opinion, is a garbage site, very confusing and cluttered. There is a reason people still buy travel guides and now ebook travel guides, because of the unreliability of search results.

A lot of times, especially when traveling, search engines change to local results, which might not be in the language you are looking for. Then you click on the English version and get different results. This is an attempt to standardize recommendations. Hopefully it will be like a living, breathing Lonely Planet guide accessible free of charge on the internet all the time.

Eventually, once the site grows, I will give incentives to the owners of the "recommendation" area access to update the contact information, but not the criticism, which will hopefully allow for more accurate data.

But yes, that is a concern.

I fully understand your concerns and I have wrestled with them over the years too. Yes, there are a bunch of travel blog sites, yes there are a bunch of review sites, but it isn't about who did it first, but who does it better.

Will I? I won't know unless I try. Can I fail? Probably, but that shouldn't stop me from trying.

I know people who made very lucrative businesses emulating existing companies with free data from the US census. On paper it should have failed, but it worked.

I see those websites as portals to information, but not aggregates. Think about Digg. What did they do? Nothing special, just post stuff you read from around the internet from the websites we all frequent. Reddit replaced it as king because it did that better (much, much better actually).

The idea is to improve on an existing niche. Give the people something your competition doesn't give them. Although many travelers use google for research, there is a bunch of garbage that needs to be filtered out. They do a good job, but not a great one. Do I want every hotel or restaurant listed? No, I prefer just the really good ones and provide quality control to steer people towards the must-not-miss for quality, value, or whatever.

One more note. When I started this project, my expectations where for every 100 people, 10 create blogs and 90 come for the information. Out of the 10 blog users, if 2 were consistently active, I would view that as a success. So, the blog section needs 2% active use for it to be a success because my reality is that most people:

1) don't write or care to share 2) view it as a hassle

I am a story teller and want to give other story tellers the ability to do so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Clickable: <http://www.QTripper.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I had no idea how to do that

<comment><USER11> You can't - in the description at least.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you just focused on providing people with clear information about embassies and visa applications, that would be a HUGE help.

From my personal experience as an Indian with an Indian passport and lots of friends who don't have American or European passports, visas, even for holidays, are the biggest travelling pain. Suffice to say, I travel less because I hate applying for visas, not least because finding the correct information is really hard. If you took some of the pain out of that problem, you will get a lot of users.

I know it's not as sexy as making a social network for travellers who can check in to cool places around the world.

But, it's a real problem and will really help people.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, the embassy section is the most developed part of the entire site as it is the oldest. Most of the date is kept up-to-date in terms of contact information for the embassies and we have a widget that provides visa information for free.

The widget will also take you to a service that will help fill out your visa application and deliver it. Their fees depend on the service you require.

I also constantly email all the embassies/consulates in the database for updated information because, and many people don't know this, embassies/consulates in smaller countries are usually the house where the ambassador lives. So when they change (and they often do), so does all the contact info.

<comment><USER12> That's awesome. Your embassies page is quite good.

You could make it even easier to navigate by adding a map.

Instead of listing by embassies in a particular country, you should list by embassies _of_ a country. To give you an example, if I'm thinking of going to France, I'm looking for the French embassy's website, not where I am applying from. That second bit of info is also needed, but you could ask that in the second filtering stage or by guessing the user's location.

<comment><AUTHOR> By map you mean a generic map with clickable countries to take you to the embassies of that country? I'll consider it. I'll have to see how size would play into the visible area of the page.

I have tackled the embassies in vs embassies of on the listing and quite frankly, I don't have enough points of reference to make a call. There is a nifty search box on the right that allows you to filter though

<comment><USER12> If you get a lot of visits to that section, then you could A/B test to choose which is the better way.

A simple alternative I could think of is to get rid of the list of countries and make the search form on the right the main interface. You only need to ask "where are you going?", "where from?" and "your nationality". Simple search boxes or dropdown menus with flags would be great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> You definitely need some sort of a mobile app - people usually don't think about their travel much before they actually go. But once on the road they will be more inclined to check your info.

<comment><USER13> Perhaps one that you can take notes/leave reviews on without being connected to the internet. These will then sync when next connected to wifi (like evernote does)

Data romaing charges abroad are massive, and your target audience are travellers.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is in the works and your second suggestion is brilliant! Hadn't thought of that. Can also update on WiFi (which is what I was thinking about)

I think it is a little premature for a mobile app as there are a lot of kinks to still get through on the main page and investing time/$$ into a mobile app might be too soon, especially since funding is tight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for all the attention and fantastic suggestions. I have begun implementing most of the suggestions here and we are going on a revamp of the site based on these recommendations.

It is very easy to become disenfranchised with a project such as this, but it is good to know that there is support somewhere!

Will it work? Maybe. Will it fail? Possibly. But it is worth trying

</comment><comment><USER14> Go about emailing some prominent travel bloggers from communities like bootsnall, (like the families going across the world, etc.) and then try to give them some sort of incentive to update your site, and then talk about it on their blog. Use some way to integrate with a few that are influential (even if you have to pay them) and hope that it catches on in that community.

<comment><AUTHOR> interesting idea .... i will def look into it

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I guess your audience is the backpacker type, the ones who travel for an extended period of time (3+ months). Have you thought of approaching travel agents who specialize in these sorts of holidays so you could somehow partner with them? No sure what the deal would be but I guess your audience is right there..

<comment><AUTHOR> The audience right now is focused on the backpacker type, but I want to eventually give it a feel as a go-to place to add your travel stories.

My idea is to eventually have backpackers in europe, a family going to disney land, or people taking a small trip who update their pics and status on facebook use the site.

And yes, I have looked in the travel agents but to no avail. At first I wanted to develop APIs that I would trade in exchange for their clients as my users. I've also pitched having them fund the development of a tool in exchange to use that tool for free. No one bit

<comment><USER16> Why not become that travel agent yourself? This might be a longer-term goal.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have thought about this, but that is a very very long term goal. I can't juggle too many balls and have to create income off whatever I have first before I go into growth.

But, frankly, yes, a lot of my close friends have suggested I jump ship to that career because of my passion for travel.

<comment><USER16> If you say that travel is your passion, then I bet you could do a great job at it _and_ figure out how to innovate and disrupt that industry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> [http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2011/01/04/15-mistakes- young-...](http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2011/01/04/15-mistakes-young- entrepreneurs-make-but-don%E2%80%99t-have-to/)

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you, very helpful

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Have you tried getting mentioned on travel blogs? Try looking specifically at the ones targeting backpackers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, i've been rather successful at getting reviews for the project on some travel blogs, which did produce some results, but died out over time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What kind of visitor numbers/member numbers are you getting? Do you know where people are finding the site?

<comment><AUTHOR> I get an average of 3000 visitors a month and have 148 registered users, of which 60 or so are family and friends.

Most of the traffic generated has come from Google Adwords and testing ads for the embassy section. Next up is google organic, again, mostly for the embassy section. The rest are referrals from blogs/forums mainly to the Travel News section.

<comment><USER13> Are people responding well to it in forums? Do you find users promote it among friends?

<comment><AUTHOR> The articles get a decent response. Activity usually lasts 2-3 days but the users only click on other articles from there and then bounce.

There isn't a lot of promotion as most people view this as something they might use while traveling as opposed to adding content in the city they already reside in. And, thus, there is very little word of mouth.

I have seen some people join from marketing efforts, especially people who are leaving for a trip, but end up not using the site. I have a rough idea as to why (usability) but it is not concrete enough for a radical change</comment></comment></comment></comment>


GPL software in cars doesn't kill people (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2016/08/13/does-not-kill.html <comment><USER2> Proprietary software vendors market their software as being more secure through FUD in general. This isn't specific to the car industry.

What's sad is that this article uses _exactly_ the same rhetorical tactics. The failures of Therac-25 had nothing to do with open vs. closed codebases. It had to do with quality control at the level of the engineering team.

> At least one person has already been killed in a crash while using a > proprietary software auto-control system.

This is just a silly argument. If there were an adequate sample size of open auto-control systems you could make a case.

> Meanwhile, there has been not a single example yet about use of GPLv3 > software that has harmed anyone.

Has there really not been an exploit used on an GPL webserver that hasn't been used to "harm" someone in some way? Not much software has the impact to directly physically harm someone in the same way a car does. But user information and data?

There's so much more wrong with this article that it would take an even longer article to explain it. This is literally the stupidest thing I've read in years.

<comment><USER3> > > At least one person has already been killed in a crash while using a > proprietary software auto-control system. > This is just a silly argument. > If there were an adequate sample size of open auto-control systems you could > make a case.

You are taking the sentence without context, making it look like a silly argument. Kuhn was juxtaposing it to unfunded claims that open source is known to be more dangerous than closed source.

Later on the discussion takes a rational approach: "until you can prove that proprietary software assures safety in a way that FLOSS cannot..."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I had no doubt that it does. But this article has so little substance that maybe I should reevaluate my opinion.

<comment><USER4> For context, the original title was something like "Security Through Obscurity Kills People (2016)"

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Good statement of the very respected Bradley M. Kuhn from the Software Freedom Conservancy ([https://sfconservancy.org](https://sfconservancy.org)). But my current view nowadays is that the automotive industry is more and more open. Foss unless it seems for new developments in this sector. Of course the battle is definitely not over, due to fad discussions on security and open source. Nice one on this subject is [http://security-and-privacy-reference- architecture.readthedo...](http://security-and-privacy-reference- architecture.readthedocs.io/en/latest/)</comment>


Today - The Day Twitter Died - <AUTHOR> http://www.reynoldsftw.com/2009/02/the-day-twitter-died/

<comment><USER2> Well, that posts at Reynolds didn't have a TIME, but within an hour that it was posted at HN Twitter was back up. Sounds like pretty fast recovery, even if the error message could have been done better. And... at least the outage was in wee hours of morning (MST).

<comment><USER3> Wee small hours of the morning in the US, but not in Europe. Twitter is global now.</comment></comment>


Why we use MySQL and not SomeNewDB or Fork or Cluster - <AUTHOR> https://vividcortex.com/blog/2014/04/30/why-mysql/

<comment><USER2> "Most readers of this blog will know I spent years at Percona. I know what they've changed in Percona Server and why, and we don't need those changes."

Can you go further into why you choose not to use Percona? I was under the impression it was mainly just MySql tweaked to perform slightly better?

Are you using Percona's XtraBackup? If not, why?</comment>


The most possible True Random Number Generator - <AUTHOR> http://pyevolve.sourceforge.net/wordpress/?p=631

<comment><USER2> I guess one could game this approach by spamming twitter. So it's possibly not very safe.

</comment><comment><USER3> It looks like this rng uses a publicly-available seed.</comment>


Getting Started with Functional Programming in F# - <AUTHOR> http://codeopinion.com/getting-started-with-functional-programming-in-f/ <comment><USER2> I've recently got back in to F#, one thing I like is the fact you can leverage the world of .NET

For instance, first thing I did was I used suave.io to expose a webservice for a digital IO module ( [http://www.mccdaq.com/](http://www.mccdaq.com/) ) and it amounted to around 50 ish lines of code. Runs flawlessly.

The F# community is pretty awesome as well with a good ratio between experts and people learning the language.

<comment><USER3> SuaveIO is really nice to work with. Peformance is terrible but that could be fixed. Its on my list of things to have a go at improving some time with some PRs. I think the big low hanging fruit would be switching from async await to either Hopac or TPL, which is above my pay grade but there are lrobably othwr areas that could be tweaked. I encourage perf junkies to have a go at it, as it wonderful to work with.

<comment><USER4> There's a new F# project out there to utilize ASP.NET Core, which has got Kestrel under the hood. I just discovered it and have yet to do any performance testing, but I'd imagine it's pretty in-line with C# results.

[https://dusted.codes/functional-aspnet-core](https://dusted.codes/functional- aspnet-core)

<comment><USER3> That looks promising!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm currently learning F#, and liked everything so far, in particular that you can learn both functional style as well as interaction with existing .net apis, which allows you to build typical use-cases faster (as you would know them from imperative/oo languages, like building a small crawler). I wish there was a good ML-style language for the JVM.

VS Code has good integration, check out the Ionide plugin.

For a language introduction, this wikibook is quite ok: [https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/F_Sharp_Programming](https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/F_Sharp_Programming)

<comment><USER6> > I wish there was a good ML-style language for the JVM.

Scala?

<comment><USER7> This! Don't be fooled by the prevalence of Haskell-like libraries and patterns in the Scala community (or a vocal subset). Those are absolutely useful but you're free to use them or not, and if you want to just write ML style functional code then Scala is great for that too.

There is actually a really interesting (to me) discussion going on about where Scala sits on the Intersection of Java,ML & Haskell going on in the r/Scala subreddit at the moment:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/scala/comments/5sv1w5/the_divergenc...](https://www.reddit.com/r/scala/comments/5sv1w5/the_divergence_of_strongly_typed_programming/)

<comment><USER8> So, I just started learning Haskell and I learned a bit of Standard ML in the past.

I was/am expecting Haskell to be broadly similar to ML - what's the main way the two languages differ?

edit: never mind, from the reddit discussion you linked:

> while these languages are undoubtedly strongly typed, they are not > referentially transparent by default, and actually embrace some levels of > imperative programming.

Good read, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I just started learning F# with the help of a well known F# dev. It's been a fun challenge. Give yourself the chance to try it out. Do check out [http://fsharpforfunandprofit.com](http://fsharpforfunandprofit.com) Its a great resource.

<comment><USER10> I worked through quite a few of the exercises on [http://exercism.io/](http://exercism.io/) and can recommend the challenge and the community around it for learning by writing code.

<comment><USER9> Nice, thx. Ill check it out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great video!

If you want to get an intro to the language w/o installing anything, give Jupyter notebooks a try - F# intro/tutorial:

[https://notebooks.azure.com/library/fsharp/html/FSharp%20for...](https://notebooks.azure.com/library/fsharp/html/FSharp%20for%20Azure%20Notebooks.ipynb)

(you can just browse it, or sign in to clone & run & edit & ... )

</comment><comment><USER12> [http://www.tryfsharp.org/Create](http://www.tryfsharp.org/Create)

With Silverlight installed, you can try it in the browser. They really need to update this to work with just a modern browser!

</comment><comment><USER13> When is 4.1 with .net core support going to be out?

<comment><USER14> I can do this -

PS C:\foo> dotnet --version

1.0.0-rc4-004771 <\- vs 2017 RC4

PS C:\foo> dotnet new mvc -lang F#

Pretty certain this is 4.1 and already out.

Articles have been around for a while [https://medium.com/real-world- fsharp/using-f-with-net-core-a...](https://medium.com/real-world-fsharp/using- f-with-net-core-aa6cfc9ef547)

<comment><USER13> Fsharp 4.1 does not appear to be released yet. The download for windows is still 4.0. Last I looked ionide did not support .net core. I'm betting it will be released as part of the VS 2017 visualfsharp update. They just called for help testing RC3.

I'm looking forward to the release and the subsequent smoothing of the .net core fhsarp ecosystem.

<comment><USER15> A few things still need to be ironed up.

Expect full support around .NET Core 2.0 time.

[https://github.com/Microsoft/visualfsharp/issues/2400](https://github.com/Microsoft/visualfsharp/issues/2400)

<comment><USER13> Awesome. IMHO to really "take off" fsharp is going to need a super smooth .net core story including .net core ionide support. It's not a sure thing, but I can't stress enough my belief in these two things:

* Seemless x-platform with dotnet core

* ionide working with dotnet core(and ideally on par with at least xamarin fsharp support)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mattel's new ThingMaker is a $300 3D printer for toys - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2016/02/15/mattel-thingmaker-3d-printer/ <comment><USER2> It is good to see a company find a use for 3D printing and revive an old toy brand in the process.

Making 3D Printing so it is safe for children to use. Doing it in the style of Creepy Crawlers, and going beyond that to use software to design your own toys and things. Then pricing it at $300 and maybe selling toy designs they can buy and use. I think it will make Mattel a lot of money.</comment>


Show HN: Generating Piano Music with Neural Networks - <AUTHOR> http://www.lawsonhe.com/music.html <comment><USER2> What do you mean when you say "MozartBot reimagines Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata 1st Mvt"? That MozartBot somehow got to something that resembles Moonlight Sonata? Or that you somehow fed Moonlight Sonata into it and asked for a variation?

<comment><USER2> Ok, the answer is in there: you fed in the chord progression.

Actually these were the best results, not the original compositions, but even those are great for game soundtracks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> I'm impressed, very impressed.

<comment><USER2> RagtimeBot is probably the most consistent and produces the best results. Because its dataset is simpler?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you sir. I agree that RagtimeBot is the best, and its dataset is indeed simpler in the sense that the rhythms and note structures are very similar among all data points. I.e. The left hand usually plays low bass note on beats 1 and 3, and higher chord on beats 2 and 4. The right hand is usually monophonic, with a syncopated rhythm.

The Beethoven dataset had the largest "note vocabulary" and thus had a harder time generating nice sounding music.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> should add a dataset for the emotions</comment>


New use for the "Gremlins" of the 90's - <AUTHOR> http://www.riltpedia.com/18/leptin-ghrelin-hungry-hormones-which-is-which

<comment><USER2> I use to lovvvee that movie ! Flippen disgusting monsters though !</comment>


Ask HN: Do you use a glossy screen? Has your eyesight gotten worse? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Yes, and no. I switched years ago and my prescription has not changed, nor do I have any strain issues. I prefer glossy screens now.</comment>


Apple wants to swipe your iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/29/swipe_patent/

<comment><USER2> if this is a 'gesture based' patent, I'm wondering how it differs from what Palm did with their OS. I wouldn't think that making something 'finger-based' vs pen-based is a non-obvious extension.

Thoughts?</comment>


Canada beats the U.S.A., and Twitter beats the New York Times - <AUTHOR> http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2010/02/canada_vs_us_twitter_vs_nyt.html

<comment><USER2> Does The New York Times really care about being first to report hockey news? I thought they were more about investigative reporting and analysis. It would be stupid, in my opinion, for them to try and compete with Twitter on this front.

<comment><USER3> While I completely agree, and upvoted you for it, I think the implication of this is more along the lines of "whoa, the NYT is no longer the formost producer of breaking news (mostly.)"

The NYT _should_ focus more on investigative reporting and analysis, and Twitter should stick to being about getting information out there as fast as people can type. To each it's own, right?

 __EDIT __: To those who downvote, I'm curious as to why you did; this makes a lot of sense to me, and I'd like to hear contrasting opinions.

 __EDIT2 __: I think I must not have been clear at all: I agree with the OP. Completely. I'm just saying that no, the NYT doesn't care about getting out information as soon as possible. BNO does, that's why they're slightly better than the NYT at it. Twitter delivers a little bit of news in small bites – for some, that isn't sufficient (and it isn't for me either, though Twitter is a nice heads-up for when I'm not watching the news). But bites of news can be transmitted in 140 characters, or at the very least they can contain links to news (such as, again, BNO's links.) I don't see the controversy here, but I suppose that must be the Twitter kool-aid.

<comment><USER4> _A minute later, at 2:54 p.m., the news was in the Breaking News Twitter feed. Two minutes later, at 2:56 p.m., the New York Times had the news in its Twitter feed, and word of the result buzzed into my phone via the Breaking News app. Three minutes after that, at exactly 2:59 p.m., the NYTimes.com news alert showed up in my email inbox_

All of this happened in a span of time shorter than the interval at which most email clients check for new mail. I think the case against NYT here is overstated. And this news was about the outcome of a sporting event which is exactly one bit of information which becomes available at a predictable time. Basically it comes down to who can hit the button faster. When real news happens (a natural disaster, an assassination) it will take at least those few minutes to figure out WTF happened and write it up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you look one step further upstream, everybody on Twitter probably got their news from traditional media: NBC's broadcast of the game.

<comment><USER6> What about the tens of thousands of people at the game?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It could also be that the people at the NYT hit the button first, but their email servers are not quite as quick as Twitter.</comment>


Yahoo says Marissa Mayer has fixed its biggest problem - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/184046/yahoo-says-marissa-mayer-has-fixed-its-biggest-problem/ <comment><USER2> 3 of Yahoo!'s problems are in much better shape today than before Mayer joined.

      1 - Stock price
      2 - Employee retention / happiness
      3 - Viability for acquiring companies</comment>


A little late...Awesome iUI Video! - <AUTHOR> http://ajaxian.com/archives/joe-hewitt-presentation-on-iui-video

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome video by Joe Hewitt on the iUI library. Thanks to

<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ashu>

for mentioning iUI.

</comment><comment><USER2> Why late? I don't think the SDK will kill iUI (or iPhone web application development more generally) - it's targeted at a different developer audience.

<comment><AUTHOR> Late because I posted it after ashu posted his news.yc interface for the iphone.</comment></comment>


Wirecard and me: Dan McCrum on exposing a criminal enterprise - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/745e34a1-0ca7-432c-b062-950c20e41f03 <comment><USER3> It is heartening that the FT funds - and stands behind - its excellent investigative team so well. Years of dogged pursuit of truth, in the face of well-resourced crooks deploying lawyers, spies and dirty-tricks merchants - and making complicit fools of regulators and auditors in the process - <USER2> paid off.

From the piece:

> Overseeing the surveillance effort was a maverick Libyan, Rami El Obeidi. He > was briefly the head of foreign intelligence in the transitional government > installed after the country's leader Colonel Gaddafi was killed in 2011. He > liked to be addressed as "The Doctor" and always stayed at the Dorchester > when in London, meeting there with officials from the UK's Financial Conduct > Authority to press a case that I was crookedly conspiring with short-sellers > to bring Wirecard down.

> It was "Dr Rami" who brought in an ex-special forces guy from Manchester > called Greg Raynor to work the Wirecard case. He, in turn, reached out to an > ex-MI5 counter-terrorism operative, Hayley Elvins, and together they > assembled a collection of 28 private investigators to follow me, my > colleagues and a baffling array of investors and hedge fund bosses, > including Crispin Odey. ...

> Meanwhile, international law firm Herbert Smith Freehills jousted with the > FT's lawyers, and a daisy chain of investigations by Fieldfisher lawyers and > consultants at Control Risks — based on information carefully provided by > Wirecard — was used to reassure the audit team at EY about issues raised by > the FT. By the time Wirecard collapsed, it was spending £120m a year on > "advice".

Well done Dan McCrum and the rest of his FT team. I wonder how much similar corporate crookedness goes unpunished because so few news outlets nowadays have the resources to afford such tenacity.

I cannot wait to read the book, or to see the film.

\- edited to add ellipsis between 2nd and 3rd quoted paragraphs.

</comment><comment><USER4> Amazing.</comment>


Carbon Dioxide Fertilization Is Greening Earth - <AUTHOR> https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth <comment><USER2> Perhaps this additional plant growth is the key to the growth of the seasonal "rise and fall" of carbon dioxide since 1958. (see [http://carbondoomsday.com/](http://carbondoomsday.com/))

i.e. in 1962 the seasonal cycle up-down was roughly 6 parts per million. By 2017 it is 40% bigger, 10 parts per million.

Full article from Nature: [https://sci- hub.tw/https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3...](https://sci- hub.tw/https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3004)

If plants sucked up more of it we would be all set -- though carbon dioxide keeps rising in the atmosphere for now :O</comment>


Welcome to Day One of your New Startup Job - <AUTHOR> http://www.gobignetwork.com/wil/2007/7/11/welcome-to-day-one-of-your-new-startup-job/10176/view.aspx <comment><AUTHOR> Great article on the difference between corporate life and working for a startup...unless you work for a big corporation.

</comment><comment><USER2> "None of us have taken time off in the last three years..."

...

"Just don't forget that you really aren't going to get paid in cash this week. Or next week. Or next month."

I don't know when you throw in the towel on your own baby, but it certainly seem questionable to _join_ a startup that's been in crunch mode for 3yrs and still can't make payroll.

<comment><AUTHOR> LOL....true, but I think each point was a separate theme. I think author didn't mean all of this happens at the same time.</comment></comment>


Poetic.io – the simplest way to transfer files (for free) - <AUTHOR> https://poetic.io

<comment><USER2> Seems sketchy... how are they offering their services for free? What's the gotchas?

<comment><AUTHOR> why sketchy? The biz model is beautiful ads (on the free side) and a pro version (still to come).

<comment><USER3> Terms of use, Rights you license[1] (emphasis mine)

"In order for us to provide you with our file transfer service we require you to grant us licences in respect of the files you wish to transfer. Specifically, when you upload a file to our site, you grant us a _perpetual_ , worldwide, nonexclusive, royalty-free, transferable licence to use, reproduce, distribute, and perform that file to enable us to transfer and store your file; and the right to _sublicense this right to third parties_. We claim no ownership or knowledge of content of your files as we only require what is necessary to facilitate your file transfer."

Sounds sketchy to me

[1] [https://poetic.io/legal/poetic_terms_of_service.pdf](https://poetic.io/legal/poetic_terms_of_service.pdf)

<comment><USER4> When you think of it, it doesn't sound _that_ sketchy: all they need is the authorization to move files around on their storage provider servers so they can be retained for the chosen period of time and sent to the recipients. The importatn part from the ToS here is _to enable us to transfer and store your file_ ; it doesn't say it will use them for any other purpose, such as marketing, customer targeting, or anything else.

Now of course these are only words and the only way to be sure is to encrypt your files.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The OWebl Cookbook - <AUTHOR> http://www.meetowebl.com/cookbook

<comment><USER2> I've often wondered why OCaml isn't more popular. There was a time when it utterly _dominated_ the various benchmark games, both in brevity of code and in performance.

Of course, I never used it for anything, so I should probably ask myself why I never used it, knowing how concise it is and how fast it seems to be...

<comment><USER3> It suffers from a lack of tooling and libraries, mainly. If more people used it, it would create a demand for these gaps to be filled. Anecdotally, the runtime also falls down when you need to use large arrays or strings, or do lots of floating-point calculations.

Even though it doesn't have all the features of OCaml, I think F# is an eminently practical substitute, considering that the CLR and Mono are both quite solid, battle-tested runtimes, and using F# gives you access to a large body of C# libraries.

Then again, there are a lot of things to like about OCaml. The compiler is fast, the error messages are good, there are some advanced type system features to improve the correctness and performance of your code, and (as with F#) you can freely mix imperative and functional features as you see fit.

<comment><USER4> > Anecdotally, the runtime also falls down when you need to use large arrays > or strings, or do lots of floating-point calculations.

Anecdotally from one specific well-known troll. (I'm not saying it is or isn't true, just that almost all of these claims originate from a single individual with an axe to grind).

<comment><USER3> I was referring to my own (limited) experience and stuff I've read from Jane Street. If people have axes, let them grind them.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


California launches online voter registration - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/09/california-launches-online-voter-registration/

<comment><USER2> Direct link to registration website: <https://rtv.sos.ca.gov/elections/register-to-vote/>

It works surprisingly well. Crazy that this is new.

<comment><USER3> I was just at my library trying to get a form, but they were out. Great surprise to find this link on my return.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm super impressed by this. I'm grateful that government websites are finally starting to shape up. I'm on a break from California in good ol' Virginia right now and have been eager to register to vote. I just finished the registration in about 5 minutes, luckily I know all of the things it requested by memory. WOOT!

Now I won't have any regrets about voting down the road when i'm at some backyard BBQ talking about the president. I'm looking forward to voting in this upcoming election.

</comment><comment><USER5> I find it interesting (but not surprising) that California is making an effort to make voter registration easier, while many states (mostly Southern) continue to try to put obstacles in the way of many people (mostly African- American, or poor, or both) being able to register to vote.

<comment><USER6> This online system only works if you have a state-issued photo id.

<comment><USER7> I don't know where you got this from. There is a "I don't have a california ID" box you can check, input your social security number and you're done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This absolutely rules. I just re-registered (due to having moved) and it's quite straightforward, and you can request a permanent vote-by-mail ballot (most secure way to vote).

For those paranoid about "online voting" - this is nothing of the sort, it simply updates the county voting registry with your details, they do a human effort to match it up with your existing info.

Now if only the swing states had this in-place, it could enfranchise millions of folks who can't/don't have the time to register or don't realize they might have missed the registration deadline.

<comment> B-Con > vote-by-mail ballot (most secure way to vote)

[Citation needed].

<comment><USER9> one that immediately comes to mind is the US Mail system is a best effort delivery protocol.

<comment><USER10> Best effort? You haven't met my mail carrier, who was busy one day and decided to remedy that by skipping delivery to my neighborhood that day, marking my package "no such residence at address," returning it to its sender, who just happened to send it from another country.

So, yeah. I'm pretty sure it's a least-effort-without-getting-fired delivery protocol.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I must have done something wrong. I filled everything out and it had me print a form that I'm supposed to mail to my registrar in order to register... which of course is registering via mail and not online.

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure what conditions led to that outcome. My successful registration (using my license #) yielded the following message: _Congratulations! Your DMV signature has been retrieved and attached to your voter registration form and will be provided to your county elections office. Your form is now complete. Thank you for registering to vote! Please print a receipt for your records._

<comment><USER11> Yah that's the problem... I don't have a CA license. I'm a student but I'm from a different state, whose voter registration says to register to vote in CA. Oh well... mail works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> About f'ing time... it's 2012. This year is also the first year you could file online CA tax returns without a middleman (or at least the first I noticed). When is the IRS gonna get off its butt?

</comment><comment><USER14> Note: If the DMV doesn't have your signature on file, you have to print out the application and send it in.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is great. Just registered and the process took about 15 minutes.

<comment><USER16> 15 minutes seems surprisingly long. What took the most time?

<comment><USER3> Took me less than five minutes. I knew all of my information except for my Driver ID #. I'm guessing he had to search for his information.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Here's hoping for online voting soon, as well.</comment>


Ask HN: Is the comparison of social media to drugs a hyperbolized one? - <AUTHOR> Is our obsession with social media akin to us being hooked on heroin? If that is the case, why isn't this a much more serious issue? Aren't we all doped up then?<p>Or is this just fear mongering? <comment><USER2> I don't think comparing social media to drug addiction is hyperbole. But, I do think that the conversation is often phrased poorly. I believe that our standards for social media addiction are _too low_.

The reasons we worry about drug addictions all apply to social media addictions. Worse, the social media platforms are (eventually, if not intentionally) structured in a way to exploit human psychology. If social media is: exploitative, addictive, intrusive, can cause physical/mental harm, can influence behavior negatively, and so on... then why shouldn't we talk about it like it's a drug?

I haven't seen my friends thrown out on the street because of social media. But...

...I've had them zone out of a serious conversation to check their social media.

...I've had to call a friend, because they wouldn't stop texting me while driving.

...I've watched friends with social media tear each other apart due to differing political opinions during the last election--although they were polite when in person.

...I've watched a couple sit on a bench facing away from each other, on their phones instead of talking to each other.

In the USA alone, 9 people die and >1,000 people are injured _daily_ due to distracted driving.[1] The NHTSA reports that 3,450 deaths due to distracted driving in 2016 alone, and an estimated 391,000 were injured.[2] How many of these people, predominantly in their teens and early 20s, would be alive today? The government doesn't distinguish between texting and driving, and posting to social media and driving, but I'd love to know how prevalent the 2nd is.

And yet, social media use is still socially acceptable--even when inappropriate to the situation, or addiction/level of use.

[1]: [https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/distracted_driving/in...](https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/distracted_driving/index.html)

[2]: [https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/distracted- driving](https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/distracted-driving)

(Edit: formatting)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not aware of people committing crimes to fuel their social media habits.</comment>


F.A. Hayek Denounces The Patent System - <AUTHOR> http://www.impressmyself.com/post/36074833768/f-a-hayek-denounces-the-patent-system <comment><USER2> I think 'denounced' might be a useful change to this title since Hayek made this denouncement in 1944 and died in 1992. He hasn't changed his position.

That said, I appreciate the post and agree with Hayek in that patent law and corporate law should be very carefully governed so that advantage isn't given to the wealthy and the connected who can afford political and/or legal advantage (I may be injecting a lot into Hayek's rationale).

<comment><USER3> FWIW, Hayek was a "classical liberal." [1] It's more likely he wanted to get rid of the laws creating patents and corporations, than he wanted them to be highly governed.

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism>

<comment><AUTHOR> If you read the road to serfdom, you would see he was a very reasonable thinker often making room for necessary intervention. He rarely makes a case for out-rightly abolishing anything. Rather he carefully chooses to say that we must be highly analytical and skeptical of all things the government does. Especially in terms of regulation, taxes, laws, and programs.

<comment><USER4> btw, if anyone is interested, one of the best books i have ever read is hayek's challenge (a bio) - [http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo362...](http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo3624545.html)

i was not (and am not) a fan of his economics (at least as seen in current cartoon-like views looking back), and cannot remember why i started reading the book, but it really is excellent (very well written bio with a fascinating subject).

and yes, he was a very smart guy who adapted his views as necessary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like Kinsella's book on this subject which has much deeper critique of the harm caused by intellectual "property", which is broader than the damage done by software patents alone: <http://mises.org/books/against.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER6> I was just discussing the merits of IP with my dad, who happens to support it. His reasons for supporting IP was mainly to support the "little guy" who managed to come up with an invention.

I can't imagine living in a society where patents don't exist, and someone comes along and says "Hey guys! Let's grant legal monopolies on ideas!". It seems like it would take some serious propaganda to get people like my dad to support IP.

<comment><USER7> Ask your dad to cite some instances of little guys who benefited from the patent system working as designed.

I would then direct his attention to the case of Robert Kearns. (See <http://www.me.utexas.edu/~me179/topics/patents/case3.html> for basic background.) Even though he was legally in the right and won his cases, after legal fees, time, etc, he still lost. (He did win more than his cases cost, but I've heard that, thanks to inflation, he actually lost money. And even if he didn't, he still made considerably less than he would have if he hadn't devoted his life to the lawsuits.

"The little guy" is a convenient fiction.

<comment><USER8> Think instead Dyson and Ben and Jerry's. Both were propelled as businesses as a result of winning similar suits.

It is likely that Kearns found the case harder to win after waiting 12 years to bring suit. But wiki shows that the Chrysler judgement was 30M, so we have 2.2M profit from the Ford settlement and likely 22M from the Chrysler judgement. In my opinion this is much more than he would have gotten in licensing fees.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kearns>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _F.A. Hayek a prominent economist and political thinker... wrote the following in 1944_

\-- Title Mod (1944)</comment>


Facebook Tries to Lure Journalists Away from Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/09/facebook-gives-journalists-new-way-find-news-facebook/ <comment><USER2> The reason that journalists are using twitter is because it allows for a feed of short posts, and works well for directing traffic to specific articles... Facebook isn't so much a raw feed as a heavily filtered subset of what it thinks you may want to see, aligned with your views.

Twitter simply works better for this, mostly... the reply tracking could still use some work, but other than that, I like twitter better for this... that said, I don't keep up with the feeds much.</comment>


Teachers Are Using Airbnb and Uber to Supplement Pay - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/08/teachers-in-the-sharing-economy/567772/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> It's great that they have both options available. Things would be worse for teachers if they didn't exist.

</comment><comment><USER3> Makes sense for Airbnb.

They have homes and free time during the busiest travel times of the year.

Probably open to new people more than average.

Same for Uber.

</comment><comment><USER4> So are prison guards as per Orange is the New Black.</comment>


Ask HN: Has anyone had any success with distributed development teams? - <AUTHOR> What are your tips for a effective distributed development team? <comment><USER2> My team (me + 3 others) are distributed around the world, everyone is in a different time zone, and most are opposite me.

A few simple rules makes it work:

Only hire "self starters" who you trust to get the job done. This is most important.

Then small operational stuff: Don't ask to ask. Don't ask to call. Everyone has Skype open, if you have a question, just call. If you can't take the call immediately IM back straight away, or call back straight away.

Everything in trello.

Everyone has a "downtime" card in trello. These are tasks that you can go on to if a clients work is waiting on something, or you're held up. These are kind of like your 20% time things. Can include non-coding activities (swimming, biking, whatever)

I'm gonna push you to grow, that means you get autonomy, mastery and purpose, but I expect excellence in return. Give me the best of you, and in return, I will help you grow and achieve whatever life goals you have.

Have fun! We joke and laugh a lot.

<comment><USER3> I ran a distributed team for the better part of three years. I think all of this advice is right on the mark.

The one thing I would say is that everyone worked the clients hours, for the most part, with at least a 4 hour overlap. That meant that I would often find myself checking and answering chat messages around the clock because a single question could easily lead to a 24 hour delay. I would do my best to clear whatever roadblocks came up as soon as they did to avoid this. I also think we all became better at thinking through the work we had scheduled since it meant we would identify the issues upfront when possible.

The last bit about having fun was the most rewarding for me. I made a few good friends and we spent a lot of time laughing over Skype as we faced down the pressures of software delivery.

<comment><USER4> I ran a semi-distributed team. 4 hours seems to be the sweet spot. Once you start moving to 5 hours, it's just a little too far to do easily and some things start being dropped. One thing I found helpful was to have flexible hours as well. When I was 4 hours away, I would start work at 10 or 11 local time (or 6am client hours).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The company I work for, has devs/teams in multiple countries (at least 4 that I know of) and most of us work on the same product. The only people who will find it hard to survive are those who need to be hand held. Personally, I follow "asking for forgiveness is better than permission", _except_ in production and money related activities. If I have an idea to test it, a new library (or design or whatever) to use etc, I rarely ask, I just do it. Once in a while it will be a waste of time, but no one gets upset because I tried something new.

Communicate effectively, be a self starter and above all, organize everything well so people aren't scrambling to find stuff when you are not around. Those would be my tips

Of course, everything in moderation and all that...

</comment><comment><USER6> Our team at Idea To Startup ([https://ideatostartup.org/](https://ideatostartup.org/)) is a fully distributed one and we have been running very effectively since last year.

To be effective, we have spent a huge amount of time on hiring the right candidates. (Our acceptance rate is less than 1%). We consider the following factors while deciding the right candidate for a distributed team:

1\. Self learner. (Given sufficient time and guidance, you can learn any tech on your own using online resources.)

2\. Talented and Hardworking. (Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard. )

3\. Responsible. (You take responsibility for all your actions in both success and failure and don't make excuses. )

4\. Reliable. (People can rely on you. When given a task, they know you will do it to the best of your abilities)

Hope it helps. -Nikhil

</comment><comment><USER7> I worked on one for nearly 2 years. We were distributed, but across the same time zone.

Every day for standup we would skype into a standup call. After the meeting we would all leave the call open but put out mics on mute. If I needed someone all I had to do was unmute and say their name.

It gave the benefit of working remote, but being able to communicate like we were working next to each other. It also let us have an "open environment" where I can listen on any conversation but also turn my volume down if it was distracting.

There was also an added benefit that if part of the team was doing a screen share (trying to fix a bug, or go over UX) anyone was able to watch if they were interested.

We two rules and they worked well.

1\. If you were going to turn your volume off or leave the call you had to leave a message so the team knew. If someone needed you they could call you directly. 2\. Be considerate of chatter. If a conversation or screen share was going to exceed 30 minutes, take it to a private call and leave an open invitation to others. This was so a single conversation couldn't dominate the main call

It was the most effective and performant team I have ever worked on

</comment><comment><USER8> People who know what they are doing.

 _Honest_ communication.

A manager who truly supports both, and who understands the domain thoroughly. And who is willing to -- and politically capable of -- running some interference, when necessary.

100% assignment, or close to it -- a real team. Not 20% this team, 10% that team, and oh help these guys out, but not over 2 hours a week. Yeah, people may get "loaned out" once and a while, for a week or two, maybe even a month. But no steady-state divided loyalty and demands from management.

And even when you're on loan, you know who you belong to. See further, above, re "running interference".

P.S. What I mean in part is, with a seasoned team and good management, this actually facilitates work. People are enabled to solve problems -- including independently. Belonging somewhere, and having effective management, help to keep external BS from gaining too much traction on them. These are people who want to do their job and do it well. And who can think for themselves and make good choices independently, while also communicating them clearly and without feeling -- or feeling the need to be -- overly defensive.

At least, this is what I saw on one of the most effective teams I was assigned to, with several remote members. Physical location didn't matter -- the rest did.

</comment><comment><USER9> From an enterprise standpoint, I was lead of a team with engineers both in Oregon and Hong Kong. What made us successful was a few key things.

1\. We ended up with dedicated BAs and QAs on site in HK so the engineers could get their questions answered in real-time. Those colleagues collaborated with their counterparts in Oregon in the same way the engineers did. I think this was the biggest success factor.

2\. We had a daily synch-up video conference at end of day Oregon time, which was beginning of day HK time. This face to face time was great even though most days it was only 5-10 minutes long. It made us feel more like a team and helped morale.

3\. The engineers were all self starters (as others have mentioned) meaning they could operate under ambiguity or without direction as needed.

4\. I, as lead, managed most of the merging of code (this was before our org used GIT, so we weren't really doing PRs as much as old style, manual code reads).

5\. Occasionally, maybe twice a year or so, we'd fly out the HK teams to Oregon to join us for major events (important project meetings, etc...). During those occasions, we'd also hang out after work quite a bit, again to keep up the camaraderie.

Those things worked pretty well for my team.

<comment><USER10> We have our IM/BA with our devs overseas while our product team (product write cards) and business are onshore. Was pretty rough to begin but I think we have figured it out.

I HATE conference calls but daily standup infront of a cisco screen between 2 teams is pretty good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm on a team that's distributed half-way around the world, and everyone is remote. It works fine. None of our problems have had anything to do with remoteness. Everyone just needs to be present and responsive during core hours.

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't have one yet although I'm slowing transforming my existing team into one.

I'm doing so by.

Communication, communication, communication.

Documentation, documentation, documentation.

</comment><comment><USER13> I've been working in a company with remote teams for 3 years now.

We try to use Scrum and/or Kanban, and it seems to be reasonably successful. We do struggle constantly with shipping all the features we want introduced in a timely fashion, but I think that is true of all software development.

Here are some pain points, and some partial solutions.

Trying to run meetings over Skype is a pain. It works well enough that you think you are okay, but there are issues. Many times we would start a call, and then need to check who actually made it, and often, hang up and call again so that two more people can join. There was a lot of incidental complexity just getting a meeting together. The chat also gets really cluttered and isn't great for searching.

The best change we made, in my opinion, was switching to Sococo for our meetings. You have a virtual office building, go into a room, summon other people to the room, turn on your microphone (or web cam, or share your screen), and chat. It surprises me how much less friction there is in just talking to someone on the spur of the moment. You just knock on their door, and talk. If you need someone else, you grab them. It is a piece of cake to look and see who is (and is not) in your meeting. We've also got Slack integration working, which helps with recording typed messages and searching them in the future.

(One more nuisance is that are CEOs are often travelling and fail over to Skype when they have poor internet connections. It is a pain.)

Other pain points is that you simply aren't in a room together. Things that would be easy together -- like writing on a whiteboard, or pointing out things on a co-workers screen -- are hard. For just making notes on a whiteboard, and roughing our class diagrams, I like sketchboard.me. For tracking a scrum/kanban board, Youtrack is okay. (I really don't like Jira, and none of the tools I've tried are as simple and flexible as a real whiteboard with cards and swimlanes). Still haven't solved the pairing up issue; we can share screens readily, but typing/pointing/controlling another screen isn't built-in to Sococo, is a little awkward with Zoom.us (because it sends key codes but doesn't compensate for different keyboard layouts), and was okay with, um, TeamViewer.

Being spread around the world is a pain for synchronicity. If you can, get your devs to work core hours together (if they are working in teams, anyways, and not as scattered soloists around the globe). You'll also find that even when you are in the same timezone, different cultures take lunch at different times. (I expect noon in Canada; my coworkers in Mexico want lunch at 2pm). We also try to work on the same days, but you'll find the stat holidays are different; for example, Easter was a week earlier here than in Macedonia, and the mind-numbing start/end times for daylight saving time also differ.

All in all, though, we work together, and ship software, so I think it works :-)</comment>


Psychiatrists Can't Stop Mass Killers - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/11/opinion/psychiatrists-mass-killers.html <comment><USER2> In areas with strict gun control but access to a black market, mass killings still happen with firearms (see the November 2015 attacks in Paris or the 2017 Quebec City Mosque Attacks).

In areas with strict gun control but limited access to firearms, mass killings still happen with other modalities. A lot of things can effectively kill a bunch of human beings assembled in a restricted area: knives, machetes, bombs, trucks, etc..

The idea that restricting one modality of mass killing will prevent all mass killings is misguided. Would it reduce the frequency or the lethality ? That's debatable. Someone who has decided to pursue mass killing as systematically as the Las Vegas shooter will simply find another weapon to kill en masse.

<comment><USER3> > In areas with strict gun control but limited access to firearms, mass > killings still happen with other modalities. A lot of things can effectively > kill a bunch of human beings assembled in a restricted area: knives, > machetes, bombs, trucks, etc..

If these things were as effective as suggested, why is it that in America, one of the prime examples of loose gun control, just about all the recent mass killings have been committed with guns?

The other modalities exist but they're less effective (knife/machete/truck) or are hard to manufacture and use (bombs).

To give an example in favour of reduced frequency/lethality, have a look at Australia. We just don't see many mass killings there.

<comment><USER4> "The other modalities exist but they're less effective (knife/machete/truck)"

No, they aren't. This guy in Las Vegas killed ~160. The 9/11 attackers killed ~3,000.

> or are hard to manufacture and use (bombs).

No, they aren't. The Happy Land Social Club attacker killed 87 with a dollar's worth of gasoline.

<comment><USER5> 58 were killed in Vegas, as of today's count.

<comment><USER4> Thanks... I think I momentarily confused it with the number of wounded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Psychiatrists can't, because nothing can.

People don't want to internalize the reality that society relies on an overwhelming amount of trust and there will always be abuses of trust. There are thousands and thousands of systems to prevent abuses of trust, and establish trustworthy institutions in society, but they all come at a cost, and are all fallible.

[https://www.amazon.com/Liars-Outliers-Enabling-Society- Thriv...](https://www.amazon.com/Liars-Outliers-Enabling-Society- Thrive/dp/1118143302)

</comment><comment><USER7> mental illness is more about isolation, stigma, guilt and shame than it is about the individual, mostly

</comment><comment><USER8> The only way to stop mass killers is to ban and confiscate guns from the public.

The public should not be allowed to defend themselves with firearms. Only the government should have the monopoly on violence in a proper, respectable advanced society.

<comment><USER9> Again: governments have killed way more people than insane gunmen over the last 100 years.

Yes, America has seen a number of mass shootings. But you have not seen any Rwanda, Srebrenica or Birkenau on your soil.

I absolutely think there exist a better way (as seen in Sweden, Norway, Austria and a number of other countries with very many guns on private hands) but removing _all_ guns from the population should't be what you are looking for IMO.

It's kind of like insurance: costly and totally pointless until your house burns down.

<comment><USER7> there's a good point that slavoj zizek makes, imo, about how you can't have a genocide without a poet (often, leading it); the case for all of those examples (rwanda, srebrenica, birkenau), for sure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Arguably though, if we invested in way better mental healthcare for all, we might save lives / improve the quality of life for enough individuals to offset the cost off mass shootings. That being said, I think we need to restrict access to guns in general. If the government wanted to take you out, an AR15 is not going to save you from a predator drone or whatever we have in our arsenal.

<comment><USER11> Take Mexico as an example of a Country where nobody is allowed to have guns. People are regularly abducted from their houses & cars without any means of defense. More have been killed by OC than by mass-shooters.

<comment><USER3> Take Australia as another example of a country where nobody is allowed to have guns (well they are but they need a good reason). The intentional homicide rate is 1/5th of what it is in the US.

Cherry picking examples doesn't really bring much to the discussion.

<comment><USER5> ...and strangely enough they have less than 1/10th the population as the US. There are more people in the greater-Los Angeles area than there are in the entire continent of Australia

<comment><USER3> The rates I'm comparing are per 10k people, so they take this into account.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Top ISPs threaten to be less innovative and spend less on network upgrades - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/05/top-isps-threaten-to-be-less-innovative-and-spend-less-on-network-upgrades/

<comment><USER2> Great plan! They allow their infrastructure to decay, then cities/counties seize their infrastructure through eminent domain and run them as local utilities. The local utilities get regulated as monopolies, so they won't be sending every single deferred upgrade dollar ("profits") to their shareholders. A new crop of ISPs all have access to the network at regulated rates, people get a choice of ISP, competition blooms in the desert.

Or, y'know, the FCC rolls over and gives them what they want, and they continue to be less innovative and spend less on network upgrades as per usual, and they spend generously on brib--er, lobbying and campaign financing.

</comment><comment><USER3> How will we know if/when this happens?

I've had the same DSL "speed" since May of 2000. No amount of talking to manager's managers has or will change this.</comment>