American Infrastructure Report Card (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/ <comment><USER2> The state of US infrastructure, compared to most other advanced countries, is embarrassing (my opinion).

At the same time, markets are offering to lend gobs of money to the US federal government for 30 years at 2.2%/year.[1]

Why not take advantage of these low rates to borrow and invest in public infrastructure like sustainable energy generation, modern high-speed transportation, and ultra-fast (100GB) internet connectivity? Put a team of top technology entrepreneurs in charge of awarding all contracts to sidestep corruption and idiocy.

Why not?

[1] [https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart- center/i...](https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart- center/interest-rates/Pages/TextView.aspx?data=yield)

<comment><USER3> Honest question -- I always see people argue the need for ultra-fast internet, but I'm not sure what the economic benefit of increasing speeds beyond their current rate of improvement, which in most parts of the country seems reasonably sufficient for the vast majority of work, especially given the bottlenecks are quite often in the home. Would it really provide a comparable increase in GDP/utility to say, improving transport and saving people 30min/day in their commute?

<comment><USER4> I feel like every time internet speeds increase I find reasons why I'd want it to be a bit faster. Currently, 4k video adoption is likely being held back by bandwidth speeds: [http://blog.streamingmedia.com/2015/01/4k-streaming- bandwidt...](http://blog.streamingmedia.com/2015/01/4k-streaming-bandwidth- problem.html) \- Youtube recommends encoding 60fps 4k video at 53-68 Mbps, which is beyond many people's internet connections. The business potential of technology rarely arises until the mainstream customer can use it.

This study quantifies the gains from a fairly macro perspective: [https://www.ericsson.com/news/1550083](https://www.ericsson.com/news/1550083). 0.3% GDP growth for doubling internet speeds seems reasonable and is not unsubstantial. My guess is doubling internet speeds is cheaper than e.g. adding public transportation to even a small number of cities.

<comment><USER5> What's the current market penetration of 4K video? I work in the industry and have no need for a 4K device. How many normal people even want, let alone have 4K capabilities?

<comment><USER6> How long did it take for consumers to go from 480p to 720p to 1080p? 4k+ provides little benefit for the average consumer because TVs aren't quite there yet but with VR/AR on the rise, how long with that remain true?

There are also huge network effects which may cloud the benefits, until suddenly some mass market consumer application makes it blatantly obvious. Youtube and Skype are so successful because a significant portion of the world has access to fast Internet and microphones/cameras to the point where I can talk to my grandparents in rural Russia despite not being able to visit them in person for almost a decade. What if our Internet was fast enough and our displays cheap enough that working remotely or across international offices becomes as simple as installing several wall sized monitors in geographically spread out rooms? The display tech will get there eventually (just look at the stuff Corning is working on), but if there isn't any infrastructure to utilize the tech it will take much longer for mass adoption. It's a chicken and egg loop but while the technology improves, we have to make the positive decision to invest in infrastructure even if the benefits aren't immediately clear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> After I looked at this page I immediately wondered who funded it.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Society_of_Civil_Engi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Society_of_Civil_Engineers)

An interesting read!

My main, and likely cynical take away from this however is that this is funded by people likely to benefit from an increase in infrastructure spending. This isn't exactly an unbiased view.

<comment><USER8> While I normally welcome that train of thought, in this case I'm inclined to ask if they aren't also the leading experts to comment on this sort of thing? It certainly brings the conflict of interest evident in e.g. cable regulation vs. industry members, but in this case at least, the organization involved seems to have more in common with e.g. the ACM/IEEE, and as such I give them a little more leeway and am more than willing to look for logical arguments. Sure, always be aware of bias, but in this case, I'm glad that it's a professional society of civil engineers telling us how dire the civil engineering situation is; frankly I hear it as a common complaint in CS that we often don't have our expertise on our domain heard by those in power :)

<comment><USER9> Last week, my plumber told me how dire the situation was under the house. Even though he is an expert, I still got 2 other quotes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> 4 trillion to start to fix our country's infrastructure but we spent $6 trillion in Iraq [1][2] that resulted in ISIS. We used to help rebuild economies like in Germany/Japan with economic plans implemented after WWII where everyone mutually benefits. Many other things could have been done to better economics, economics wins all wars. Maybe that is the long goal but it is almost two decades in and is in worse condition.

Building up infrastructure leads to better economics on those improved platforms. How about upgradeable GB internet across the country? How about an electric car upgradable highway charging system? How about paying down some debt not making more of it after each war since WWII? We sure know how to invest...

[1] [http://articles.latimes.com/2013/mar/18/business/la-fi-mo- ir...](http://articles.latimes.com/2013/mar/18/business/la-fi-mo-iraq-war- cost-20130318)

[2] [http://www.businessinsider.com/why-the-iraq-war- cost-2-trill...](http://www.businessinsider.com/why-the-iraq-war- cost-2-trillion-2013-3)

<comment><USER11> Fiscal consolidation seems like an orphaned child in USA. The left does not believe in it and the right does not care anymore.

<comment><AUTHOR> If we could pass a public stimulus to help banks become too big to fail, why can't we get together and pass something similar to help our Infrastructure too strong to fail?

<comment><USER11> I think as a rule of thumb government money will always flow in the direction where self interests of politicians and government servants are better served.

Building a road is a time tested government program. It is mature, there is lots of competition and opportunity for publicity or kickbacks is limited. The profit margins of the road construction companies are pretty thin too. I dont think politicians benefit by building a road or bridge. Today they benefit by having outrageous programs like high speed train that will not see light of the day for decades to come (or probably never) or transmitting American programs into Cuba (which the cubans cant hear because the signal is blocked).

The only way is to put a hard constitutional limit on the government spending as a % of GDP. The government is then forced to take measure to increase GDP if they want to subsidize education of Chinese prostitutes or spend $$$ on study effects of LSD on monkeys.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'd characterize the state of Bay Area roads as decrepit.

It's angering that the extra wear on my suspension is costing me money, and it's really embarrassing when I think about all the folks who come in from say, Japan or Germany. They have to really wonder what we are thinking.

I suppose it's taken a long time for the state to refill its coffers after the financial crisis, but that was what, 8 years ago now? Can we get on with it?

<comment><USER13> I think the root issue is that most people would rather drive a Tesla on 'decrepit' roads than pay 50% marginal tax rates and $2/L for gas to drive a Honda on the Autobahn. Give or take.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> We already did that. Remember "shovel ready jobs?"

To bad it was all a scam.

<comment><USER15> Reminds me of a bridge I saw under construction over an interstate in IL. No road leading to it.

Or the billions in telecom tax breaks for higher speed Internet infrastructure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can someone please change it's to its in the title?

<comment><USER17> Yup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> *its</comment>


You're Not Allowed to Criticize Startups, You Stupid Hater - <AUTHOR> http://minimaxir.com/2016/01/startup-haters/ <comment><USER2> I think that's the point of the Valley, isn't it? That you can try to do something stupid and people will give you the benefit of the doubt? Idk about you but I made $6k off AirBnB last quarter, which was nice, so I'm not complaining. That's a big obvious one, but I could probably list 20 others from the area that have affected me in a positive way. (My point being that sometimes something great comes out of what seems dumb, as is well known.)

I don't disagree at all that serious looks at what went wrong are very, _very_ useful to everyone else, but I personally _like_ that Silicon Valley is a sort of safe space for experimenting with dumb ideas where people won't make a big deal out of it if one or more of your ideas don't work out.

<comment><USER3> You didn't counter his assertions at all. The first thing is anecdotal and meaningless: give me a person who benefits from most I can give you someone who doesn't. Overall data is more important. This is about startup companies, though, not individuals.

Back on startups. Sure, it's great that you can experiment. We can still experiment while calling bullshit when we see it. There's a huge gap between "They're trying something we think might be cool or make it but ton of risk here as prior examples illustrate" and "World-changing app here whose initial uptake indicates billions in making and any problems are just a hiccup! Get it today!"

A bit more of the former will at least let people spot problem areas and maybe avoid them more often.

<comment><USER4> "Avoiding problem areas" is the last thing you should do if you're working on a startup. It's a good thing that people make stupid mistakes because sometimes something extraordinary comes out of them. If everyone acted in conservative manner because they don't want to make mistakes and be called an idiot by others, we will have much slower innovation.

<comment><USER3> You going to build a bunch of services on Gopher protocol anytime soon? Require people pay large amounts of money upfront for stuff they usually get free? Expect no browser? Do a mobile solution that requires a specific device rather than smartphone?

There's all kinds of products that failed for specific, sometimes-lasting reasons. You should avoid them in your next startup if those reasons or contexts still apply. Otherwise, your startup's chance of failure just skyrocketed with little justification.

" If everyone acted in conservative manner because they don't want to make mistakes and be called an idiot by others, we will have much slower innovation."

That doesn't contradict what I'm saying. I'm saying people shouldn't act in an ignorant manner when confronted with data saying they'll have problems, are having problems, or totally failed. They can be conservative or risk-takers. They just better keep lessons of history and business reality of their market in mind when making their decisions. It's considered common sense in other aspects of life.

<comment><USER4> > You going to build a bunch of services on Gopher protocol anytime soon? > Require people pay large amounts of money upfront for stuff they usually get > free? Expect no browser? Do a mobile solution that requires a specific > device rather than smartphone?

Yes. This is exactly what I am talking about. While most people won't bother to try, there will be some people who keep on trying. Most _experts_ will say the same thing: "This and that company already tried this and failed you idiot". But here's why sometimes it works: Startups don't succeed purely based on their absolute value. It's all contextual and relative, which means the same model that didn't work last year may work this year because of how the situation has changed. But nobody knows that until it actually happens. The reason why a lot of disruptive startups are built by inexperienced people just out of college instead of experienced people is because experienced people already know too much and have seen certain models don't work and their thought process is just like you stated. Whereas younger people who have no idea will just try (and most of the times will fail) and sometimes it works because of the right context.

In fact your rhetorical questions I quoted above--which you probably meant cynically--are very interesting questions and I encourage that you seriously think them again. You seem to think they're idiotic but I think they are brilliant questions. YES, it is possible that a new model can arise that will make people want to pay for stuff that they usually get for free. Yes, there can be something that completely rethinks how we consume information (not our contemporary browser). Yes, there can be an entirely new device that can replace a smartphone.

<comment><USER3> "It's all contextual and relative, which means the same model that didn't work last year may work this year because of how the situation has changed. But nobody knows that until it actually happens."

"In fact your rhetorical questions I quoted above--which you probably meant cynically--are very interesting questions and I encourage that you seriously think them again. You seem to think they're idiotic but I think they are brilliant questions."

I agree. The point I'm making is you can _sometimes_ know these things because they were obvious with 20/20 hindsight & market feedback. The questions weren't cynical so much as best examples I could squeeze out of my brain in a hurry that I could justify with examples. Glad you liked them. :) Let's look at them.

First, Gopherspace is gone in about every way you can think of. I predicted it could return on feature phones with a new implementation. There's a system in developing world that's essentially that & text-based. Yet, it's an inferior experience to both Web and native due to lack of rich content and network effects. Almost all growth happens due to network effects. So, deny the network effects, then you're almost guaranteeing no growth. An imitation of or improvement in Gopher model will fail unless it addresses this. Every company that I ever heard of that tried failed. Of course, modifying Gopher to have network effects basically turns it into Web 1.0. ;)

Second example is paying a _lot_ for what they can get free. The exception where this works is luxury or coolness markets. I'm ignoring that here, which I should've mentioned, because it's the exception. You release an email client for personal, not business, users that cost $50 a month... you will fail. Even high-assurance security, my subfield, had a _really_ hard time pushing messaging and email systems that baked in strong, endpoint and protocol security due to premiums charged for high cost. We saw same for usability, platform integration, etc. It had to have certain features and not be too much money. Even Apple, an outlier, went through hell trying to fight this rule until they acquired Next Computers and their I.P. that was worth extra money by being substantially different and cool. Even iPhone follows my rule because they had to basically put a Mac in a phone & hit coolness crowd to charge what they did. Try this stuff with a basic differentiator and too large a value? It will fail. Companies keep trying and failing on that.

Third example: "Do a mobile solution that requires a specific device rather than smartphone?"

Pagers. Mobile communicators. Briefcases for secure, satellite phones. Ultra- thin, netbook-like devices. GPS systems. PDA's. Tomagatchis. All sorts of things came before cellphones got good enough to do the same stuff with more convenience, low weight, etc. People kept trying to market the same kinds of stuff from there with 100(?) failure rate. Question mark as something successful might have slipped past me that wasn't an outlier. Browsers, productivity apps, note taking, telling time, games... all of that goes on mobile outside extremely nich markets (eg Garmin's). Smartwatch's might be an outlier that cleverly exploits that a watch is only other thing that's acceptable and semi-mandatory to carry. It doesn't break my rule: it replaces an existing, marketable category of product with added value. Otherwise, virtually everything like before is failing if it's not on a phone. Next one will too without compelling reason.

So, it's not about experts or limited views. Even an average person will tell you they don't want to carry a 2nd device for your note-taking app. They want a pretty Web interface or good native one over manually navigating Gopher folders. That the app isn't worth a bunch of money if something else does almost same thing for free (also see "Worse is Better" for 90% rule). In all of these cases, someone should've stopped to interject these issues to steer the startup toward an offering that lacks these risks and has components of success. After all, the ones that succeeded mostly had those components and we're play the odds where we can right?

I'm for experimentation and risk-taking where context changes. It's just that many attributes keep showing up in both successful and failed products. So, making one or avoiding the other could benefit from those most of the time. That's all I'm saying. Past that, a proven thing that applied in the past might suddenly apply again in new circumstances seen only by a visionary. Go for it. Try it. After all, I am "that guy" (or one of them) on Hacker News that keeps reminding IT people they're always re-inventing stuff (good & bad) from the past without learning lessons from those that did it right. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think this depends on the demographic and context more than anything. Sometimes a start-up will be posted to HN and it feels like everyone in the comments section has "drank the kool-aid" and othertimes it seems the exact opposite possibly being too critical (though I feel like a healthy mix is the usual around here). As far as HN is concerned I don't think there is a general "you can't hate on start-ups" mentality but there are times when things can be click-y on any conversational site.

Now news sources like TechCrunch? Good luck. If a start-up is on the rise they'll publish whatever gives them more clicks. When a start-up is on the decline they'll still publish whatever gives them more clicks. If that means "not admitting they're wrong" then that's just how it'll be.

As for Peach I downloaded it to try it. I didn't "get it". Thought it was terrible because I couldn't share or do anything without finding people first. So I uninstalled. I don't have time to cultivate friends on yet another social network; it needs to essentially be done for me. Which yeah sounds super lazy but I don't think it's off the mark either.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is HNs, plenty of people think they know everything about startups because they can deploy a React app on Digital Ocean.

Running a startup is difficult as hell, so IMHO, if an app manages to have a successful launch, then more power to them. At the end of the day, it boils down to capturing value to be able to make it. For some businesses Techcrunch/Buzzfeed/etc press may be a key factor in this process, for others, it is just vanity. Why do we even care?

</comment><comment> rm_-rf_slash I'm not entirely convinced by the argument that criticizing startups is a social faux pas. My friends and I talk about startups like sports teams and there's no small share of schadenfreude when our predictions of failure came true.

<comment><USER7> It depends on what circles you're in. I'm in your boat - most of my friends talk about startups and tech and are routinely skeptical, if not brutal, in our assessments.

But I also know a few people who are much closer to the money side of the business who don't ever shit-talk startups, no matter how crazy and dumb they are, or no matter how scummy their behavior.

I would say that the social acceptability of criticizing startups is proportional to your professional distance from a VC. Accordingly, the social acceptability of criticizing the meta-aspects of startups (fundraising, investing, etc) is the square of your professional distance from a VC ;)

There's definitely a "cone of silence" effect around VCs/incubators. Everyone walks on eggshells around them and criticism is extremely muted. Forget optimism/pessimism, even criticism of downright unethical/illegal actions is largely nonexistent.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash >Forget optimism/pessimism, even criticism of downright unethical/illegal actions is largely nonexistent.

This is something that scares me about Silicon Valley. That kind of attitude opens a market for respectability, and once that becomes accepted, the tech bro douchebaggery is going to get shunned, hard. The services they made so cheap will make it even easier for someone else to eat their lunch, and even pointedly NOT being a part of the Valley could be a point in a company's favor (privacy-centric consumers who see SV companies willingly send personal data to NSA dragnets). Then it becomes a matter of fashion. ("You're still using snapchat after X came out? What are you, 12? The government is reading all of your snaps by the way.")

But leave it to a society of nerds to forget the vital necessity of being cool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It seems most people criticize software not because of hate but because of _confusion._ Digital products like software don't have a physical "shape" that makes it obvious what they improve on. (E.g. the initial confusion about the intended usages of Adobe Lightroom vs Adobe Photoshop.)

Imagine if blind person was told about a bicycle and how it can transport a person from point A to point B. Then someone else presents him with a description of a car and how it has 4 wheels. The blind person might say, "but what the hell would I want 4 wheels instead of 2?!? That's twice the maintenance and replacement parts!" But then you explain that the 4-wheel can self-balance without a kickstand and can transport 5 people instead of just 2. Those kinds of conversations never happen because people can _see_ the obvious differences between a bicycle and a car.

Unfortunately, the "shape" of software is amorphous. We can all be "blind" to the value proposition of unknown software. Software is described with "words". (Sometimes with screenshots too but then again, the screenshots themselves often have more "words" surrounded by GUI boxes or colors.) This is why so many "Show HN" threads have the question, " _what exactly does this do?_ " or " _how is this any different from X?_ "

As for your theme... I don't know about Techcrunch comments but on HN, there's a propensity to be skeptical & criticise rather than fawn & praise. ([https://venngage.com/blog/why-you-need-to-stop-obsessing- ove...](https://venngage.com/blog/why-you-need-to-stop-obsessing-over- comments-on-hacker-news/))

To me, " _hater_ " is somewhat clickbaity but I think it originates from the " _haters gonna hate_ " meme so if you want to riff on that, I get it.

<comment><AUTHOR> > To me, "hater" is somewhat clickbaity but I think it originates from the > "haters gonna hate" meme so if you want to riff on that, I get it.

Yes, it's a riff of that, and a term I've seen expressed by the startup crowd frequently. (That, and "anyone who criticizes my startup is just trolling," which is a related but different problem.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> To be fair, there is a lot of hate on tech forums, because that is generally the attitude of most techies. "Oh, that's stupid because of X. I've seen that back when it was Y." Most people in tech appear to believe that if you think of reasons why an idea will fail, that somehow makes you smart. I've learned the opposite, that figuring out how to make idea work is what makes you smart.

That said, HN is the Mecca of all startup-wannabes. You're going to get a disproportionate amount of lashback here either for or against all-things- startup.

Like anything, if you're going to post a comment, or a product, expect a lot of dumb negative feedback and ignore the haters. Take the good negative feedback and internalize that, though.

</comment><comment><USER10> Ha, nice writeup. It looks like it was well organized campaign to launch app, they did everything right, yet even with all this 'cheating' involved, it is genuinely hard to make a successful app.

Plus this is area that is crowded with apps and probably not the best place to focus your efforts.

<comment><USER7> Messaging is hard, speaking from experience having been part of an attempt that failed.

IMO it seems like Peach did everything they possibly could and the execution was in broad strokes excellent, but a messaging app in 2016 is the Hail Mary of Hail Maries.

Firstly, there are no "new users" to messaging. Literally everyone is already using something for messaging - Hangouts, Messenger, Line, WhatsApp, etc etc. Unlike other areas of tech, _social messaging is a zero-sum game_ where every user you gain means someone else loses a user. This is hard environment for any new product with no existing traction.

Messaging is also one of those things that is used so much that it's driven heavily by habitual behavior. Which also means you have to break a user's muscle memory/habits before you can have a shot at keeping them in the long term. The default for a competent messaging app is that people try your app out, think you're cool, and then promptly go back to whatever they were using before, because you haven't broken their old habit and/or haven't formed a new one. 14-day cohort retention is going to be nearly zero in the default case.

Habit-formation within users is really, really, _really_ f'ing hard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Good write-up. What we're seeing is something similar to the Gold Rush and Dotcom Boom of the past. There's a bit more reason involved thankfully. Everyone has their eye on the prize and golden ticket to it (tech startups) that they're ignoring every detail that distracts from it. They continue to do this even when the details show they're stepping away from the prize or probably won't achieve it. A chance to pivot or cut losses in favor of different product/service is lost due to how this perspective blinds onlookers.

To be honest, it's a lot like a religion. Creating, pouring energy into, praising, and not blaspheming startups is the religion of Silicon Valley. They need more reason and less religion.

</comment><comment><USER11> The existing puff piece aura of most startup articles has a more simple explanation: selection bias.

Many people have an incentive to write "Startup X launched!"

If Startup X never raised significant funding, no one has an incentive to write "Startup X died."

</comment><comment><USER12> This is the guy who became "famous" for commenting ALL the time on TechCrunch. Sorry, I can't take you seriously.

<comment><AUTHOR> Incidentally, one of the reasons I started commenting on TechCrunch was because the authors were being too soft on startup shennanigans.

<comment><USER13> Hey man, I didn't realize until the end of your (well written) article with your photo that it was you, the celebrity TechCrunch commenter.

I'm a fan. Keep at it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Top and 3rd comments on the HN thread are both criticism, and if you actually read the follow up article on tech crunch:

 _Some say it's dumb, some say it's great, and a lot say something in between_

 _What do I feel about it? It feels fresh_

 _Mind you, it's on a massive hype-train right now so take it all with a grain of salt_

That doesn't sound like you're not allowed to criticize a startup.

<comment><USER15> To me those statements feel like they're covering their ass for being positive on the rest of the article about an app that's ho-hum at best.

Fresh? What exactly is fresh about it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's one thing to needlessly criticize a new business (start up), or an espoused goal (hyperloop) but a completely different situation when bringing in some run-of-the-mill skepticism. I think skepticism is healthy - it's one of those interesting emotional/intellectual mechanisms. In the most effective circumstances, skepticism seems to blend past experience + current facts + future hypothesis, all of which fit into the context of the referenced article.

Generally I don't bring much of any philosophy into the skepticism approach. Every once and a while though, it does play a role. I'm not really proud of it, but I'll publicly admit that I was so utterly repulsed by the Aurous concept that I did a little happy dance when market forces (i.e. the RIAA) took on Aurous, shut it down fast, and moved on from the dead carcass. Am I happier for its demise? Yep.

</comment><comment><USER17> Meh. The valley needs its naysayers, but it mostly works because a select few can ignore naysayers completely. Unless, I see a reason why this is dangerous to anybody other than private consented money, this is a molehill not a mountain.

<comment><USER18> Yea. We're only really looking at the criticism of _one_ startup. If we looked at the whole, we'd probably find that a vast amount of startups are simply not even "starting up" because of criticism, which is good.

Perhaps the point here, which we could explore more, is that startups backed by tons of money typically push relatively unoriginal ideas to the forefront that are simply "marketed better" because of $.

<comment><USER17> SV famously values "execution". A combination of finding the right market (slightly more complicated than just pumping money into marketing) and staying doggedly focussed.

Sometimes if you focus on the wrong thing, you die (and get made fun of). The press coverage the author seems to have such an issue with is famously fickle.

Make an electric car that looks like a toaster and a fish and market it to the general consumer. You die. Make an electric car that looks like a luxury sedan and market it to the top end of the market. You become Tesla.

Obviously, in the latter case he backed up that market selection with world class engineering. The two then get inextricably linked. You have to look past the predilections of the establishment to get there though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Well played. You took a dying app, and managed to bring it back onto the radar by spinning a story that has nothing to do with the app itself.

There must be some sort of pro version of the Hype Cycle circulating in the Valley ([http://www.gartner.com/technology/research/methodologies/hyp...](http://www.gartner.com/technology/research/methodologies/hype- cycle.jsp)). "Okay marketeers, we need to begin the 'underdog' portion of our marketing campaign. If that doesn't work, then we may need to engineer a scandal to boost traffic".

<comment><AUTHOR> I have zero affiliation with Peach, if that is what you are implying.

"Any publicity is good publicity" is another fallacy I'd like to take a closer look at.

<comment><USER19> Naw, I just meant it in the same vein of your article :) Being critical of people being critical by being critical.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Too much of what gets called "criticism" comes from people who aren't really qualified to make that criticism, and is expressed in a way that is not civil or objective or relevant, let alone constructive.

Some critics are just sniping at their competition. Many critics are just trying to show off and look smart. Many critics have the crab bucket mentality. A few critics are the kind of people who entertain themselves by pulling the legs off of animals.

That is why we have the word "haters" to describe those kinds of critics. It's a useful word.

<comment><USER21> Oh please, so critics have to be credentialed now? We're not THAT precious around here now are we?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> People criticize startups on HN just fine. What you're not allowed to do here is post linkbait titles.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's not cool to criticize startups in silicon valley because that's what the place stands for. There's already enough people in the world who will say it's a stupid app (probably 99.9%), I don't see anything wrong with some encouragement from a small community. And like you observed, an app won't get traction no matter how famous the founder is if it's not good enough, so life is not exactly "unfair".

<comment><USER23> > It's not cool to criticize startups in silicon valley because that's what > the place stands for.

Fucking what? Would you say nobody in Hollywood should ever judge a movie script because the place is _about_ making movies? "Well, whoever wrote this script obviously put a lot of effort into it, so here $50 million"

<comment><USER4> No investor says "Well, whoever wrote this script obviously put a lot of effort into it, so here $50 million". But I'm sure hollywood community also encourages each other for their creativity no matter how crazy something sounds. Encouragement and actually putting in $50million are very different things. Everyone outside of silicon valley will react the same way you do, and that's why silicon valley is necessary because it's one of the few places on earth where you can talk about ridiculous stuff and not worry about being judged, which encourages creativity. (For example, most people will think "AirBnB for pets" is an idiotic idea and it probably is, but the fact that people can talk about these things freely is a good thing)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I would imagine that many in Silicon Valley has pushed the issue of hyper valuation into a deep dark pit inside of themselves. They don't want to consider what would happen to them if this turns out to be a bubble that may one day pop. You'll make these people insecure if you start questioning the way the system currently operates.</comment>


Show HN: Matters.ai – Keep track of company emails - <AUTHOR> https://matters.ai/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN,

We built an easy-to-use system to organize and search email correspondence.

While running a consultancy, we noticed that companies struggle with keeping their emails organized. They send and receive up to hundreds of emails a day, and they needed a simple solution to keep them organized.

We thought of creating a system where emails could be logged simply by sending it to an address. For example: If you receive a new invoice, you can simply forward it to email@example.com (or your custom subdomain), we handle the rest.

Matters.ai started as a consulting project for law firms. We couldn't find a simple solution to fit their needs, and the only options were expensive complex document-management solutions.

We already have a number of clients on the platform. It's still in beta and we just made it public: [https://matters.ai/](https://matters.ai/).

We'd love your feedback, experience, and thoughts!

<comment><USER2> I had a similar idea. The search aspect of your service covers it but I think it would still be worth considering.

I work in science so we are often talking about specific samples Or entities with unique identifiers. I wanted a way to construct a database of all the conversations surrounding a given sample name - so I could browse through it or lookup the history of the conversations surrounding a specific sample.

The idea would be to supply a regex pattern to match all of the sample names and construct the database using that.

Similar situations exist in most industries I imagine - so having a way of recognizing patterns and classifying/organizing/browsing them might be worth considering for your service.

Also slack and similar services should be integratable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Have you thought about doing this for Slack/Teams? The native search their is _awful_ in my experience.</comment>


The $25 Tablet - <AUTHOR> http://www.thinkdigit.com/Mobiles-PDAs/Ultra-low-cost-Sakshat-tablets-set-to-take_6986.html

<comment><USER2> "software applications including Word, Excel, .. flash video." 1100 Rupees, which is the consumer price, is $25. Windows phones with mobile Word start at ten times that, with very little or no profit. This can't be true.

</comment><comment><USER3> The article says USD 35 --- where do you get your $25 figure from?

<comment><AUTHOR> The Government is reducing the price by 50% for students, Rs. 1100 which is $24.5</comment></comment>


The Zappos Exodus Continues After a Radical Management Experiment - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/01/13/after-a-radical-management-experiment-the-zappos-exodus-continues/?_r=0 <comment><USER2> I suggest people read the comments on article.

1\. Zappos offered a very attractive payout and most people at an average company would take it.

2\. 14% in first few weeks and 18% thus far, so after first few weeks the "exodus" nearly halted to the low 4%, that is low.

3\. Radical ideas, take some time to adaption.

<comment><USER3> You cant come to the company with a radical new plan and have no idea what the answers to basic questions like "How am I going to be compensated?" before switching over to that strategy, that's highly questionable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Zappos Holacracy documents I read were nuts. Bad, batshit crazy. "Tensions" and "next-actions" and "accountabilities" and Policies and Domains and . . . the Holacracy Constitution reads like they were going for flat, but freaked out and decided to obfuscate a power structure after all. The Glassfrog documents are the hesitation marks of ditching a hierarchy. It's like they want people to execute a script rather than actually do work. At its core, Glassfrog is afraid of itself.

Try some of the documentation here: [http://www.holacracy.org/constitution#art1](http://www.holacracy.org/constitution#art1)

(Oh, and it looks like there are companies that will consult with you and help you move to a Holocracy. Big surprise).

I work in an org that is flat. There's none of that nonsense. You don't need it. You really don't.

<comment><USER5> The documentation reminds me of one of my favorite quotes:

"Consultants invent these kinds of phrases to label things we've all known all along—it's a perversion of business life that fancy words always cost more than plain ones, even though the plain ones are more valuable."

From Agile Development with Rails, 4th edition.

<comment><USER6> > _From Agile Development..._

I assume the irony is intentional?

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the laughs for the day. Even as a Rails Dev I've been wary of those calling themselves as Agile Consultants.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I found the Super Cloud bit interesting. 350 employees haven't been able to move an e-commerce store onto Amazon's infrastructure in 27+ months. "For well over a year, Van Beek wasn't even sure the migration was technically possible ... the difficulty of this effort is almost unfathomable". Are the services Amazon makes available to its own teams substantially different from AWS? If so, why not just use AWS, and figure out the internal billing?

<comment><USER9> It's probably rewriting Zoppos retail app in Amazon's retail platform. That's like a redesign, re-architect, and rewrite of the whole app, plus the whole backend pipeline. That's a huge task. Also retail is driven by huge amount of data: product category, inventory, pricing, customer info, experiment data, marketing, ad, clicks, billing, etc. Migrating those data without interruption with live operation is like changing engine in mid flight.

<comment><USER10> You're right it's pretty challenging but 27+ months and 300+ engineers challenging? I would have suspected to take half the time which makes me wonder what their architecture originally looked like and what they've been doing for so long.

<comment><USER11> What I think you're hinting at is that a development organization with nobody driving direction devolves into a pile of people working on pet projects rather than doing the terrible boring work of shipping product.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law)

<comment><USER12> I don't see how Conway's law relates to what you said. Can you please elaborate? Do you think if no hirearchy is driving direction then there is a lack of communication between groups that work on projects?

<comment><USER13> Holacracy implies no organization. It is a freeform, organic, shapeless philosophy with possibly no direction.

The migration project has taken 27 months with 300 staff, about 8100 man- months, with apparently little to show for progress. Lots of people in a project with no tangible features, like a blob.

I would say Conway's law fits perfectly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Once the fad is over, will we admit that hierarchy can be beneficial? People don't want to admit that. Ideological bias.

<comment><USER15> I second the "fad" perspective.

As a DevOps guy with a great deal of startup experience I briefly worked at a hierarchy-less organisation and found it soul destroying. In the absence of any hierarchy decisions tend to be made by whomever can shout the loudest; projects go unmanaged; the needs of minorities (in my case long-term operational requirements for hosting the damn product) get ignored and appeals to reason with the company's owners were politely ignored.

My inner cynic wonders if founders love this fad because it saves the payroll they'd need to spend on experienced managers and absolves them of any responsibility to run the internals of their organisation, freeing them up to focus on overall strategy.

The result (admittedly based on a limited sample size - I'm not trying that again) was chaos. Real lord-of-the-flies stuff. One of the first questions I now ask when startups approach me is "what's your org structure like" \- and if they haven't got one I run like hell.

<comment><USER16> _" In the absence of any hierarchy decisions tend to be made by whomever can shout the loudest."_

This. Classic problem with volunteer organizations. If you have the time, you can have formal meetings using Robert's Rules of Order, which are designed to force decisions by voting after discussion. But that's unwieldy within an operating organization.

The military is formally very hierarchical but, when planning operations, is much less so. There's a military custom that, when discussing a proposed plan, the most junior people speak first. (The elder Moltke is credited with this custom.) This, of course, is to reduce the tendency of people to agree with their superiors. More than that, it's to find holes in a plan before the enemy does. Once the decision is made, everyone is expected to carry it out fully, and not drag their feet, whether they agreed or not.

<comment><USER17> I suspect this works in the military because the military doesn't tolerate rebellion - even minor rebellion - much at all. But it has unique, specific privileges that enable this - it's definitely not a model you can apply elsewhere with ease.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't know how a flat organization works in practice but to me it sounds like you end up with top management secure in their jobs and having their equity and everybody else has to constantly struggle to stay relevant. This may work for some people but most people prefer having some security in their position.

<comment><USER11> Because humans, flat organizations _always_ end up with an informal hierarchical structure, and that structure very rarely optimizes for organization success and almost always optimizes for success of the people who've clawed their way to the top of that hierarchy.

<comment><USER12> I don't know what an informal hierarchical structure means, and can tend to guess at things that I think it might mean.

What are the differences between an informal hirearchy, and a formal hirearchy that makes them unique?

<comment><USER19> An informal hierarchy is where one gain power through influence and manipulation (e.g. creating a fight between two other people so you're the only one who still have good relations with both of them and you're the only one getting the benefits of these relations). The problem with this is that you end up with invisible hierarchies with a lack of accountability. At some point few people understand why a project is stuck and it takes a while to unearth. God forbid that a small clique forms and finds a way to exploit failures in the oversight to drain the company for their own interest, blocking real progress within the company but with the inability to either point fingers or fire people.

Now with formal hierarchies everyone generally knows who's responsible for what, but in larger companies you can still end up with inter-divisional fights, rivalries, etc. e.g. Microsoft under Ballmer. But at least a higher up can roll their sleeves and clean up house because they have that power, e.g. Satya Nadella.

<comment><USER20> Basically, in both informal and formal hierarchies the same sorts of problems can occur, but in an informal hierarchy the phrase "you can't tell me what to do" is often times a valid response.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It'll be same as with Agile: when it doesn't work, consultants will just tell you you've been doing it wrong.

<comment><USER22> it doesn't work with me (or in my presence) - i don't even need a Scotsman, i grew up in the USSR and it is like telling me that USSR (or China or Cambodia or Cuba ...) were doing socialism/communism wrong.

Recently many orgs inside our BigCo have been through couple years of the best Agile/Lean/Scrum/<whatever crap> the money can buy. It was a zombie-like horror show and a spectacular failure across the orgs. And one wonderful day the management and PMs just seem to have waken up and just magically forgot all these words. We're back to normal planning and developing features like nothing happened in those 2 years. Magic.

<comment><USER23> How do you characterize your normal mode of development? Just curious if you would mention a brief overview of how you do things

<comment><USER22> like it has been for the last 25 years starting at the University and through the places i worked in Russia and here - natural cycle of plan, design, implement of the stuff slated into the next release (ie. the dirty word of "waterfall"). It has mostly been pretty large projects with multiple teams involved (though even in 1988 in high school with a friend developing a small game we followed the same "process").

As someone said "you can't successfully run marathon by running a series of sprints". One can try him/herself to run even a couple of miles by running it as a series of sprints to understand the foundational principle from systems analysis about the cost of low latency and synchronicity (normally one would expect that software engineers are aware about it without self-mutilating experiments, yet here we're ... to really feel the pain make somebody tell you, strictly each 20 seconds, where to run the next sprint) - those being the 2 main paramount features of Scrum ( note : Agile,insisting on low latency while relaxing somewhat the requirement of synchronicity, is a little bit less disastrous on its own, ie. when isn't attached to Scrum).

<comment><USER21> For me it's more like this: prototype, design, implement. I do some lightweight planning while I prototype. All of this is anathema to Agile. Prototyping alone could mean going dark for a week or two. Design, likewise, has no useful status to communicate. Implementation fits pretty well, but it's maybe 1/3rd of the work. I don't think I'd be able to deliver quality software any other way.

<comment><USER24> Agile, supports prototyping, and design, its just a task, maybe you where being too litteral about things.

<comment><USER21> Sure it does, about like the USSR supported freedom of speech. What do you report in your daily standup? What if your prototyping takes four weeks instead of two? How about if your problem is particularly gnarly and it takes six weeks? What if it's only reasonable to devote, say, two people out of the team of six to prototyping? Do they report status (which they already know) to each other? "Syncing up" with them is useless for the rest of the team. What if I'm already an adult and therefore don't need adult supervision? Why would you want to interrupt my "make time" with your bullshit, useless standup, thus knocking me out of my zone for an hour or more?

On the teams that I ran, we relied on a weekly meeting, lasting about 30-45 minutes to go over what we did last week and what the plans are for this week. The rest is handled perfectly well with ad-hoc communication. Those teams were far more "agile" than any of the Agile teams I've seen, since people expended all their effort on achieving the goals as opposed to figuring out what they're going to say in the next standup.

<comment><USER11> That's basically how I run my teams also. Weekly tempo-setting meetings to go over status and adjust planning as needed.

Plans are made with broad brush strokes and are expected to be fluid and details are figured out during development. Planning sets goals, and are used to time box the work (even if the boxes are different sizes, so no adherence to stupid 2-week one size fits all sprints). Pre-planning makes it easy to get stakeholder buy-in without having to go into deep philosophical development notions. Ad-hoc communications and _gasp_ my involvement with the teams covers 90% of the rest and if major problems occur, the appropriate parties are pulled into a meeting to discuss and resolve.

My teams are pretty consistently the most productive performers in my organization, use the fewest people and resources, and produce the highest quality product at the end of the day. As a result, my teams are consistently in demand to work on things, and once they're out of my hands and back into some scrummaster's their performance goes back to normal.

I've noticed an inverse correlation on all of these metrics the more "Agile/Scrum" the teams seem to be. Between standups, retrospectives, scrums, and whatever activities the other groups get mired down in, the consistent complaint is that nobody seems to have time to actually get anything done.

The problem is that Agile is supposed to be about liberating teams from process and tools and documentation and so on and focus on people and product. However, the Industry that's exploded around "Agile" has simply created another pile of rigid processes that bring everybody back to square one again. Even worse, most people in the industry are so young they think this is better than what the old fuddy-duddies greybeards used to do and don't have the perspective to realize they've just become trapped in another set of process ceremonies that get applied to everything without regard to the nature of the task at hand.

I just got out of sitting in another team's sprint planning meeting and they spent 2 hours trying to figure out how to fit O&M and R&D into their next sprints...30 minutes of which was spent figuring out how to model the Epics.

Agile is a great idea in theory. Agile in practice is a terrible one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This might be a case of how not to flatten an organization's structure, but there is always heavy turnover during any restructuring.

There is a key paradox of implementing a "holacracy" in an existing organization. An organizational hierarchy is trying to force non-hierarchy on itself.

A prerequisite for such rapid change seems to require an organization that can rapidly adapt to change. But part of the argument for flat organizations is creating adaptable businesses.

I haven't read what problems prompted Zappos to push for these changes. Was an overly bureaucratic hierarchical culture holding a Zappos back from continued success? Is this admitting that something was wrong with their supposedly strong culture, but missing the actual problem?

This seems part of a larger trend on insisting hires and workers should have an almost cult-like desire to be with their current employer. And leaders who obsessively manage their company's culture and its perception. People who don't buy into the whole result are treated as non-believers unfit to be part of their "mission".

<comment><USER26> It's that the CEO is kooky and likens himself a management guru, so he wants to try out his ideas while cultivating press.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The concept of paying for people to leave does not make sense to me. I see companies doing it, and seems to me that they're doing it so they can reduce headcount without having to actually fire people.

Thing is, the people who will take the buyout will be the ones who are confident that they can find another job. The company is left with the people who don't really care about their job, are afraid they may not be able to get hired anywhere else, or both.

Does this actually ever work?

<comment><USER28> No I recall when British telecom had generous voluntary redundancy several years pay plus 6 years pension payments. One guy I know got over £200k mostly tax free

They lost a lot of key technical people who took a huge pay off and joined a competitor.

And I know that for some specialties (radio planners) who where not allowed to go - the competition brought them out by paying $100,000k starting bonuses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'm concerned Hsieh decisions show a blatant lack of concern for maintaining a meritocracy. Also it doesn't really seem like Zappos cares about attracting talent. I might even venture to say the decision is driven by the chance to maximize profits. Imagine how much money you save by firing all your manager. I've worked at companies that stress how important their bullshit "culture" is. It's usually to distract from shitty compensation and rare promotions.

</comment><comment><USER30> Interesting opinion on the subject: [http://themodernteam.com/flat-will-kill- you-eventually-why-e...](http://themodernteam.com/flat-will-kill-you- eventually-why-every-company-needs-structure/)

<comment><USER31> Another nice opinion article which cites the tendencies of "flat" organizations to create opaque hidden hierarchical political structures, with some references to Github, Valve, and 60's commune and feminist groups.

[http://www.wired.com/2014/03/tyranny- flatness/](http://www.wired.com/2014/03/tyranny-flatness/)

      Critics say flat organizations can conceal power
      structures and shield individuals from accountability.
      This idea dates to the 1972 essay The Tyranny of
      Structurelessness by Jo Freeman, who describes her
      experiences in "leaderless" feminist organizations in the
      1960s. "There is no such thing as a structureless group,"
      Freeman wrote. "Any group of people of whatever nature
      that comes together for any length of time for any purpose
      will inevitably structure itself in some fashion."

      The problem with supposedly non-hierarchical groups, she
      wrote, is that power structures are invisible–and
      therefore unaccountable. That inevitably leads to
      disfunction and abuse. Charismatic leaders could use their
      position to advance their own agenda, award desirable
      tasks and projects to an "in group," and shift blame for
      mistakes.

and more on Valve's flatness in practice, [http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-07/09/valve- managem...](http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-07/09/valve-management- jeri-ellsworth)

<comment><USER32>
      Charismatic leaders could use their
      position to advance their own agenda, award desirable
      tasks and projects to an "in group," and shift blame for
      mistakes.

And how exactly does that differ from formal hierarchies?

<comment><USER33> because it's the privileges of management without the formal responsibilities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Regardless of your prejudices and perhaps negative experiences with holacracy, I would highly recommend the book, 'Reinventing Organisations', that Zappos' employees were encouraged to read. You can download it here: [http://www.reinventingorganizations.com/pay-what-feels- right...](http://www.reinventingorganizations.com/pay-what-feels-right.html)

It is a fascinating read and will help you think about how to structure your organisation regardless of what structure you deem fit. The most interesting insight, which I can see most of the commenters here are probably not aware of (as I wasn't), is that in Teal organisations (such as ones who implement holacracy), it is recognised that different structures and behaviours are applicable depending on the situation. For example in a war an army better have some hierarchy or they will get wiped out but in a modern company the hierarchy is not as necessary if at all. Anyways, even if you never touch a holacratic model, go read the book. Guaranteed to be at least a rewarding thought experiment.

</comment><comment> norea-armozel I like the idea of parallel/independent organizations but I think the problem I see with their use in businesses is the fact that it can impede the very purpose of a business: to make a profit from a good or service. To achieve part of that mission is to specialize where you have someone directing production (managers) and someone who knows how to produce a part of the good/service (labor). Now, I do believe managers and labor can be the same thing at least in terms of dual roles. But to get there you can't bomb out an existing firm's structure which is what I see Zappo's CEO doing. The turn around is either going to take a VERY LONG TIME or it may never happen at all with high churn of employees.

</comment><comment><USER35> What a surprise: Zappos, as a division of Amazon and not a profit-seeking free-standing company, has plenty of capital to waste on humoring their sales- hustling CEO's lunatic ideas about human potential.

</comment><comment><USER36> Anyone have a serious analysis, based on specifics of how they implemented Holacracy, ideally from multiple people with direct experience?

<comment><USER37> Had the same question; found some info here: [http://wiki.holacracy.org/index.php?title=FAQ](http://wiki.holacracy.org/index.php?title=FAQ)

...and a list of organizations currently using it here: [http://structureprocess.com/holacracy- cases/](http://structureprocess.com/holacracy-cases/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Valve, a company that also practices a system similar to holacracy, mentions that it's not the right fit for some (most?) people. But that style, is the right fit for Valve.

<comment><USER39> mumble mumble chapter 3 mumble.

but, yes. valve does make some pretty cool stuff.

<comment><USER38> Well there in lies the beauty of Valve. From my outside observation, no one is making a HL3 / HL2 Ep3, because that project can't get critical mass to build (although there is a part of me that wonders if they'll pull it out for the SteamVR launch).

It's an interesting method to build entertainment software--build something you're passionate about and can get others passionate about it, rather than taking money from a publisher to build something that has someone made a business case for.

That philosophy doesn't work unless you have deep pockets, which Valve does.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> What's interesting about holocracy is that informal hierarchies tends to play towards women's social strengths more than formal hierarchies do.

</comment><comment><USER41> I'm more intrigued by the "Super Cloud". How different is it from the consumer AWS?

<comment> jon-wood My guess is that it's a collective name for all the retail systems Amazon are running to manage logistics, inventory, and everything else that makes an e-commerce business tick. A lot of that may well be running on AWS, although whenever that comes up you always hear people mentioning quite a few of their core systems have yet to be migrated.</comment></comment>


Chrome Web Browser Most Secured Against Attacks - <AUTHOR> http://www.securityweek.com/new-research-says-chrome-browser-most-secured-against-attacks

<comment><USER2> It's only as secure as the weakest extension in your current profile...</comment>


Japanese Spacecraft Will Shoot Martian Moons in 8K Decision - <AUTHOR> https://www.newshables.com/2020/09/11/japanese-spacecraft-will-shoot-martian-moons-in-8k-decision/ <comment><USER2> This is an auto-generated story, not sure how it was written but definitely not human. For example:

'...it might be the primary time in historical past Mars and its moons are captured in such element.

To drag it off, the 2 organizations are teaming as much as develop the "Tremendous Hello-Imaginative and prescient Digicam..."

What software would write "to drag it off", obviously this is based on the idea behind "to pull it off" as no one ever says 'drag' in that context.

I feel like this kind of auto-article-spam is increasingly polluting the open web...

<comment><USER3> Compare to the linked source (at least they link the source!): [https://futurism.com/the-byte/japanese-spacecraft-shoot- mart...](https://futurism.com/the-byte/japanese-spacecraft-shoot-martian- moons-8k)

"...it could be the first time in history Mars and its moons are captured in such detail.

To pull it off, the two organizations are teaming up to develop the "Super Hi- Vision Camera..."

Looks like it's replacing words with synonyms while failing to take context into account.

(Why are they doing this? Google penalizes content that's copied from somewhere else. The high-effort way to circumvent that is to have a human rewrite the article, just like futurism.com rewrote phys.org's post of JAXA's press release. The low-effort way is to mutilate the content until it becomes unrecognizable.)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for explaining!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In other news Nihongo pacifier won Karáte match by a unanimous resolution.</comment>


The Kawa language framework - <AUTHOR> http://www.gnu.org/software/kawa/index.html <comment><USER2> Are they trying to re-purpose the Haskell logo?</comment>


Ask HN: Best resources for learning about entering the B2B market? - <AUTHOR>

Have been recommended "The Four Steps to the Epiphany" - Steven Gary Blank<p>Any others? <comment><USER2> "The Four Steps to the Epiphany" - Steve Blank [https://www.amazon.com/dp/0976470705/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=sm...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0976470705/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=smacovlan-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=0976470705&adid=1RAHFN03MMTCCMN5G06A&);

</comment><comment><USER3> In my opinion, B2B is a business model, not a market. Stocking washrooms with toilet paper, providing office temps, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux support all are in different markets.

Domain expertise is important.

<comment><USER4> B2B is a business model, but it redefines a market segment ultimately

Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Domain expertise is extremely important as brudgers said. But you can hire that expertise to some extent.</comment>


Third-party voters are "trading votes" with Clinton voters to defeat Trump - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/3/13478042/third-party-clinton-vote-trading <comment><USER2> Trump is not defeat by clinton....</comment>


18.104.22.168: Cloudflare DNS Resolver - <AUTHOR> https://22.214.171.124 <comment><USER2> Interesting. It only strikes me as odd that neither blog linked on that site mentions it, and the IP address won´t resolve on any DNS server around. What gives?

<comment><USER3> 220.127.116.11 doesn't need to resolve. It _is_ a DNS server. It's an open, recursive public DNS server, ala Google's 126.96.36.199, or OpenDNS, etc.

$ dig news.ycombinator.com 188.8.131.52 +short

news.ycombinator.com.cdn.cloudflare.net.

220.127.116.11

188.8.131.52

Edit: It occurs to me you mean reverse resolution. A dig +trace seems to stop at ns3|7.cloudfare.com.

<comment><USER2> Yes, I was unclear in my comment, I meant reverse resolution. probaly just too paranoic these days...</comment></comment></comment>


Opera Now Has a Totally Free and Unlimited Built-In VPN - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/opera-now-has-a-totally-free-and-unlimited-built-in-vpn-1772216276 <comment><USER2> Unfortunately Opera just wants to sell your web history.</comment>


The Apache Software Foundation Announces Apache HAWQ as a Top-Level Project - <AUTHOR> http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/www-announce/201808.mbox/%3C1535018445.244439.1483573136.21DE3ECB%40webmail.messagingengine.com%3E <comment><AUTHOR> [http://hawq.apache.org/](http://hawq.apache.org/)

Apache Hadoop Native SQL. Advanced, MPP, elastic query engine and analytic database for enterprises</comment>


Announcing LayerVault 2 - <AUTHOR> http://layervault.tumblr.com/post/21723378193/announcing-layervault-2

<comment><USER2> I hadn't previously heard of this, but had signed up for Pixelapse. My curiosity (and a quick visit to Google) led me to this Quora question: [http://www.quora.com/Design/How-do-LayerVault-and- Pixelapse-...](http://www.quora.com/Design/How-do-LayerVault-and-Pixelapse- compare)

Interestingly enough, there are responses from both sides, and I won't get into it in detail here, but it is quite a read…

</comment><comment><USER3> This looks like a very nice service and looks to be well designed - I'm not a designer myself, but if I was, I would probably use this.

I do have one comment: the spinning background on the homepage is giving me this weird vertigo effect that makes it really difficult to read any of the text on the page. Perhaps instead of animating the background you could make it static or perhaps make it static but with random placement (something like what Simple[1] does on its homepage background).

Other than that, great job!

[1] <https://www.simple.com/>

<comment><USER4> Thank you for the feedback.

The spinning background is a risk we took. We'll report back if it pans out or if it inflicted more motion sickness than conversions. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The idea of a "github for designers" has yet to be perfected. This new iteration of LayerVault looks like a step in the right direction.

</comment><comment><USER4> You can take a tour of our new stuff at: <http://layervault.com/tour></comment>


Japanese Addresses: the opposite is also true [video] - <AUTHOR> http://sivers.org/jaddr <comment><USER2> But getting to places in Japan is still stupidly difficult, even when you have local knowledge. Street naming is a _better system_ because we walk along streets, not blocks. Unless you're Godzilla ..

<comment><USER3> That has not been my experience, and my direction sense is nil. The address system also has not harmed the Japanese distribution industry, which is quite possibly the most efficient in the world.

(These days all the routing is computerized, but prior to that all routing made use of the fact that Japanese addresses get progressively more specific. You used that to sort the parcel at every location so that it got to a distribution center closer to the destination, at which point one of your carriers who had worked in that neighborhood for years would get it directly to the proper door.)

<comment><USER4> Sounds similar to sorting by zip code.

I don't know how many postmen share each zip code. In Copenhagen the western district has been sub-divided into a lot of zip codes so it could be that each is its own route, but they only did it for the western district, the other districts still only have a single zip code — I suspect that they did it to simplify sorting but found that people are more likely to make mistakes (when you have a dozen zip codes for the colloquially same district).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In the German city Mannheim streets also don't have names, blocks do. Well, only in the old city center, but still.

Mannheim's old city center has these regular, almost quadratic blocks (called "Quadrate") which are very unusual to find in any European city. If those regular shaped blocks made Mannheim name its blocks, not streets, why didn't the same thing happen in the US (where those kinds of blocks are much more common) at least once? I think that's a intriguing question.

[http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datei:Mannheim_Inn...](http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datei:Mannheim_Innenstadt.jpg&filetimestamp=20061013191902) (Photo)

<http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadratestadt> (sadly, only in German)

</comment><comment><USER6> This is a very nice post showing that sometime you need to go far away to see what assumptions you are quite unaware that you are holding.

</comment><comment><USER7> Um, I was just in Japan and streets definitely have names. For example, this is in Nagasaki:

<http://flownet.com/ron/fukken_street.jpg>

<comment><USER8> The street outside my window in Kobe has a name because it's pretty major, but the two running orthogonal to it on each side of my block don't. This is typical. IIRC Sapporo has a western style street system, and is laid out on a grid, but otherwise the video is correct.

Meeting points and directions are generally expressed in terms of landmarks like train stations.

The system isn't really that strange. We (in america) use the same system of space decomposition for states, counties, and (in some places) cities. This just continues breaking it down to city regions (区), district name, chunk of blocks(丁目), block number, and finally house number. It's consistent with the larger scale system, and it handles change pretty gracefully.

<comment><USER9> So how do you give directions? I know you must have a system, but I'm not sure exactly how it works. "Head down to Block 16, take a left and turn right at block 22"?

<comment><USER10> "Turn right at the next crossing, then at the 4th street turn left, then after you see the Buddhist temple turn right". Major streets also have a name, and there are maps at a lot of places, most importantly at the train station. Around my place there are even detailed, apparently hand-drawn maps with the shops' names written on them.

In the block themselves there may also be a map of the block with the houses and the family names of the owners. Houses themselves don't have a number plaque but they have the owner's name at the entrance. Apartment buildings tend to have a (more or less pompous) name as well. Here "mansion" means an apartment :)

Generally you don't need to ask though, since the websites for japanese shops usually have a detailed map, and people who invite you will give you landmarks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A couple of completely unrelated thoughts:

Even in America, there isn't necessarily some standard format for giving directions. If you spend any time around career military folks, they tend to give directions which include north, south, east and west as a critical part of the explanation. Many civilians cannot make heads nor tails of such directions.

I am reminded of an anecdote (probably from Reader's Digest) where an American man working with a Japanese company was frustrated at his inability to get on the same page with these folks. One day when things finally seemed to be getting better, he remarked they were "thinking along parallel lines". The Japanese man agreed. Some time later when they were again at an impasse, he referenced that discussion. The Japanese man then replied "Parallel lines never meet".

</comment><comment><USER12> The conclusion of this was very much in line with my proverb that "every proverb has an equal and opposite counterpart."</comment>


Jellyfish are taking over the seas, and it might be too late to stop them - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/133251/jellyfish-are-taking-over-the-seas-and-it-might-be-too-late-to-stop-them/ <comment><USER2> Jellyfish have been around for 500 million years or more. Some are really meaty-looking and some are totally transparent like little glass bells. They can live in salt or fresh water. They swim beneath the Arctic ice. Warmer temperatures because of climate change contribute to jelly blooms, and over- fishing means less competition for zooplankton (food source). Fertilizer run- off depletes oxygen in water, but jellyfish thrive in low oxygen environs. Then all the drilling and various structures built in water are just big nurseries for baby jellyfish and polyp sacks. It isn't only jellyfish that are overtaking the oceans. Slowly but surely. Pathogens are shifting as temperatures change. We see sicknesses in lobster that we didn't see before. All across the board, the seas are changing. By the time that it's a big mainstay news story, sadly it will already have reached a critical situation. There seems to be a dearth of caring right now, about what we are doing to our oceans. And without our oceans as a wholesome, viable resource, we will be _in the soup._</comment>


India's Leading Payment Gateway "CCAvenue" Hacked by SQL Injection - <AUTHOR> http://digitizor.com/2011/05/05/ccavenue-hacked/ <comment><USER2> I am surprised on this. Why CCAvenue did not conduct a vulnerability test on their applications? It is standard practice to conduct a VA on production systems, which will certainly identify this kind of vulnerabilities. A Payment facilitator going down because of an SQL injection attack is ridiculous.

Indian market is paranoid about online security. This will bring down the number of online sales. Too bad for start-ups depending on CCAvenue.

</comment><comment><USER3> CCAvenue CEO talks about this hack: [http://www.medianama.com/2011/05/223-vishwas-patel- ccavenue-...](http://www.medianama.com/2011/05/223-vishwas-patel-ccavenue- hack/)

<comment><USER4> Important replies from above link:

 _So you're saying that the merchant data has not been accessed?_ > It hasn't. If you see, apache 2.2.14 – we've been live with apache 2.2.17 for last five months.

 _You're also saying that merchant account passwords have not been stored as plain text?_ > They are encrypted, and not stored as plain text.

 _Have you ever been told that there is a security hole of some sort?_ > We are looking into this, and this is the intial report. From time to time what we get, I am sharing with you. As more information comes out as we investigate, we will share it.

<comment><USER2> encrypted?? then, it can be decrypted. Why they were not hashed so that it cannot be decrypted.

More updates posted here... <http://www.medianama.com/2011/05/223-ccavenue- hacked/>

<comment><USER5> Yep. Typically passwords are hashed and salted. However, I have seen non- technical folks use the terms hashing and encryption exchangeably. Hopefully thats the case here. Anyways, since CCAvenue didn't store the full CC number (and they definitely didn't store the passcode - for that it redirected to the issuing bank/organization), this doesn't seem to be a very serious issue, even if true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If what is published in hackerregiment.com is true, this is the most irresponsible thing the company "CCAvenue" could have done - to store plain text passwords.

They also claim to have PCI DSS 2.0 certified. In light of all the discussions happening repeatedly about need to regenerate passwords & not to store plain text passwords if they have it this way, this is so stupid.

<comment> dav-id I have been evaluating payment gateways in India and quite frankly I would not be surprised if this is true. If you just look at the CCAvenue website you will see what an absolute mess it is, they do not reply to any form of communication I try to make with them.

If I were a customer of CCAvenue I would close my account and move to someone like DirecPay from Times Of Money.

<comment><USER7> Have you tried it? I am waiting to get out of CCAvenue -- so many times the payment crashes that my customers are now preferring to mail me a check! Their customer service is pathetic too

<comment><USER8> I Have been using <http://ebs.in/> and they pretty good at it.

<comment><USER6> Do you mean that ebs's payment pages do not crash as often as ccavenue's?

May be this is an opportunity for these kind of payment service providers to come out clean & prove it out to the world (at least in forums like HN) as to how paranoid they are about security?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> more info. on the hack - when user tried to forgot password ,they got their original password back. If it was stored as encrypted then there is no way to decrypt them. And also in interview CEO claims they use "2.2.17" for past 5 months but <http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=www.ccavenue.com> shows differently

</comment><comment><USER9> Its plain stupidity to store plain passwords. Some user said,he tried forgot password ,it returned him 'his original' password.

</comment><comment><USER10> CC Avenue denies the attack: <http://ndtv.in/jy6RAO>

<comment><USER11> Isn't it obvious? They don't have right culture within their organization. Had they been like Amazon, Twitter and others, they would have accepted what happened.</comment></comment>


Ask YC: Would you stay at Yahoo or would you go now? - <AUTHOR>

If you were a Yahoo employee (I'm not), you would leave now or stick it out until there's an acquisition?  Is it likely for you to get a severance package offering or is that only in the case when you are laid off, not voluntarily leaving? <comment><USER2> You know, as much as people say a Microsoft acquisition is inevitable ultimately diluting whatever spice Yahoo! may have left, I think there's a chance for Yahoo! to emerge with much more force.

With Buzz, Fire Eagle, etc., their recent dabbles with Google, exceeding revenue expectations, and the prospect of going under, this situation may serve to provide Yahoo! with motivational and creative drives to create really cool applications and services. The drive people can acquire when they realize the severity of the situation and what's at stake can be astonishing.

So, for me, I'd wait it out. Some really innovative things can come of this.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think Yahoo does have some promising products, but is facing an AOL-ish future of scatteredness. Also, the employees might be patient enough to wait it out, but are the shareholders willing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I would wait to get laid off with severance package, or survive with my job. Will working in Microhoo be that terrible? I don't think so.

In the very long term, I don't see bright future for Y!, since they don't have any really unique technology. They basically profit from their being the first who created big directory of www links, which is now rather irrelevant.

But talking about employment, I don't think it's useful to think long-term, so it would be perfectly fine for me to work there right now.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yahoo is still a multi billion dollar company; I think it's unfair to talk about as a small shop. What ever happen to Yahoo, employees are still much better off than in most places.

</comment><comment><USER5> There are some blogs(alleyinsider and techcrunch) that are saying a lot of the Yahoos are only waiting until the merger goes through since some contract clause would kick in to accelerate their pay, vest their options, etc.

If this were true I'd imagine I'd stay until the acquisition and then move on to greener pastures.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Also what do you guys think timing wise for an acquisition? It's moving at a far slower pace than I thought, though with such huge companies, I shouldn't be so surprised.</comment>


Ask HN: what software do you use for analyzing apache logs? - <AUTHOR>

What software do you use for analyzing apache logs? I would prefer open source ones that will work on Linux, although this is not a deal breaker. <comment><USER2> I use 'visitors' ( <http://www.hping.org/visitors/> ), which was written by my friend, YC.news visitor antirez.

I tried Google Analytics too, but found it kind of annoying in that it's sort of a pain to get the information I want.

<comment><USER3> Thanks David, note that in most debian-based distributions all you need is apt-get install visitors.

 __Edit: __Also if you could like to play with real-time analysis to get detailed information about how your users are interacting with your web site please feel free to write me at antirez -at- gmail ~dot~ com for a free invitation for<http://lloogg.com>

<comment><USER4> cool, you wrote Visitors? thanks for saving me a lot of work!

I used it from 2004-2005 for clicktrails... great idea and implementation. Graphviz makes everything better (corollary: anything that needs Graphviz is interesting enough to get better)

Google Analytics and/or Visitors are about all I would think a person needs. And now that you have lloogg.com out there, it looks like clicktrails are covered in a GA-style interface. Kick ass! Great idea, _again_ , best of luck.

I haven't run into many websites that couldn't be improved by clickpath analysis and refocusing navigation on the ways people actually use a site -- optimizing for the common case, in other words. It baffles me that any site would fail to do so. Now they _really_ have no excuse.

<comment><USER3> Nice to hear that visitors was useful :) and sure Graphviz is very cool, it was a great help in our startup (the main product we developed is a digg/reddit/...-alike system for the Italian market) in order to visualize voting patterns and try to improve the algorithm for fraudolent voting patterns detection.

LLOOGG is still pretty raw and we are developing the "filters" part of the UI, but still it seems pretty useful to check what's really happening in a web site. We have a lot of success stories of people using LLOOGG for some week and then modifying the site structure to optimize the user experience.

Thanks for the comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Started with Webalizer, switched to Google Analytics.

Webalizer's ok, but it's missing a bunch of features like sane user agent string parsing (to give an overview of the browsers accessing your site). It also displays most of the stats by page hits (such as country and user agent) rather than "visits" or unique IPs, which I think is a better way to group.

I've been pretty happy with Google Analytics so far - it has a ton of options for sorting and grouping data (like viewing users' paths through the links on the site) and good IP geolocation. Plus, the JavaScript tracker gives you stats on visitors' screen resolution, which can be handy. On the downside, all our data is belong to Google.

<comment><USER6> If you have $3K to spare, you can purchase Google Urchin 5/6 (Analytics was based on it) and keep all the data. As a bonus, it also analyzes log files.

<comment><USER7> Free trial for Urchin 6? <http://www.google.com/urchin/download.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> apachelog is a nice python module for parsing log lines from apache. it works as a great base for doing your own analysis. <http://code.google.com/p/apachelog/>

It's based on this perl module: <http://cpan.uwinnipeg.ca/~peterhi/Apache- LogRegex>

To manage log files, use cronolog

edit: I use cronolog to break up the logfiles daily and then I run a python script (which uses apachelog to handle the nasty parsing) to create a summary dictionary of parameters from that day. For example:

{num_unique_ips:140, num_pageviews:532, ...}

I pickle that dictionary and save it as a file. So every day has a raw log file and a "summary dictionary" file. To make plots I go through the summary files and unpickle them to extract the quantities of interest.

</comment><comment><USER9> AWStats with GeoIPFree is pretty good, but a major hassle to configure.

</comment><comment><USER10> #!/bin/bash

sudo awk '{print $11}' access_log | grep -v 'yourowndomain.com' | grep -v 'bloglines.com' | grep -v '"-"' | grep -v 'feedburner.com' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -20

</comment><comment><USER11> We use Google Analytics, Webalizer, and AWStats, plus some custom Perl bits. Clicky looks pretty swish, but I haven't taken the time to try it.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm using W3Counter (<http://www.w3counter.com>). It's like Google Analytics minus the 1-24 hour delay, and all the goodness that comes from realtime reporting. But I keep GA installed as well for some of the more detailed back- reporting it doesn't have.

</comment><comment><USER13> Stone Steps Webalizer: <http://www.stonesteps.ca/projects/webalizer/>

along with cronolog and a bunch of custom Python scripts to autogenerate webalizer configs.

</comment><comment><USER14> I use <http://polliwog.sourceforge.net> open source, runs on Java. Not suitable for large websites since it provides a LOT of information about your site.

</comment><comment><USER15> Webtrax (<http://www.multicians.org/thvv/webtrax-help.html>) is a good open- source tool.

</comment><comment><USER16> A Windows solution, but WebLog Expert works great for us: <http://www.weblogexpert.com/>

</comment><comment><USER17> <http://code.google.com/p/recordstream/>

</comment><comment><USER18> I use analog.

<comment><USER19> I use a combination of analog and some custom scripts. analog is written by a profession statistician and is a steadfast tool. The custom scripts look for interesting searches. Classics include "What does the fur on a rat do?" and "How do I connect an airbrush to a scubadiving tank?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Use Awk or Perl. They are available on every Linux system already so it's highly portable and very powerful.

</comment><comment><USER21> I like bbclone a lot, it's not like the usual stats but gives me very uniquely useful information and much better than many of the others as its so direct,</comment>


Show HN: Commit – Tech News for Activist Coders - <AUTHOR> https://commit.ws/ <comment><USER2> Great idea, would love to see some AMAs or a podcast on there with your favorite activist coders.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you've got volunteer opportunities for code.org, it would be great if you could share them on Commit! I was thinking "VO: Code.org needs X" would be a good convention on post titles.

Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I love this. With the role technology played in this last election cycle it seems like there must be ample opportunities to contribute via code.</comment>