Ask YC: I think i have some great ideas for websites, but I don't code. What to do? - <AUTHOR>

I can't code to save my life, but I know a fair amount about graphics and usability. I'm pretty tech'd up on the web-social scene too. I don't know any coders who'd work on ideas (all too busy on careers)
Is it worth going the rentacoder route? Will it bite me in the ass if takes off?<p>I have my ideas on paper, with specifications, screen designs etc etc. How can I create these into websites? <comment><USER2> Why not learn? "I can't code to save my life" -- this doesn't have to be a permanent condition. Unless someone's truly a moron, I don't think there are many people who truly _can't_ code, just like there aren't many people who can't learn to play a musical instrument or to write well or to play chess. Coding is a skill like any other. Since you have an interest in tech, give it a try. There are plenty of people on the Internet who are willing to help you out.

<comment><USER3> Ever hear of a phrase cost of opportunity?(Unless you are unemployed, chances are its a better financial decision to work and pay someone 20K to code a product, than spending that time learning and coding it yourself) + chances are the quality of code, a complete amateur creates will not be optimal.(full of bugs, not secure, with a very crappy design etc)

<comment><USER4> If you just need to build some special purpose application sure, it's better to hire a specialist to do it for you. But if you're talking about starting a business it pays to either learn how to develop software yourself or get a partner that can do it. Trying to outsource the core of your business is just nuts.

While the initial code you write might not be optimal you'll at least understand the code, have a clue what to do when something goes wrong and be better equipped to hire technical talent when the time comes.

<comment><USER3> You are approaching this as a hacker, you know your stuff. Chances are you can build a _____ clone in a weekend. While in that same time the non-hacker who is trying to learn, will achieve at most a hello world application.

Lets face it, the web moves very fast, if you take an extra month to roll out, you increase the chances that another competitor will get into your space and will eat up all the market share, way before you even get your product launched.

Ideas are not unique, if you have an idea chances are a hundred other people are already working on that same idea.

So between hiring someone and having a product out in 3 months, and doing it yourself and learning and having it out in a year(if that)...I'd go with 3 months, each and every time. Nothing is stopping you from learning that same code while your app is being built by someone else.

Should you know how to read code? Absolutely, but it takes that much less effort to learn how to read code, compared to writing it and figuring out the hundreds of different technologies.

Lets face it, most of the stuff on the internet is not that innovative. Usually its just a mashup of existing tech/ideas...if that. So you really aren't giving away any state secrets to the people you outsource to. And as long as the company is in USA you have plenty of legal ammunition to prevent them from stealing your ideas.

And maybe outsourcing your business is nuts, but at least when you outsource you have the option of actually getting your business off the ground. Instead of destining it to failure because you really didn't know what you were doing.

As far as having a clue when something goes wrong, once again you are approaching this as a hacker. You know what to look for when code crashes.

An amateur would be much more happier to call/email his development company and have them fix the problem, instead of reading through thousands lines of code to see what could it be, that went wrong.

You do have something with technical talent, but you can always bullshit your way through that, by either hiring a recruitment company or having a few hackers recommend you some people.

<comment><USER5> completely agree. you can make progress quickly and cheaply, and start learning about the customers and technology, by outsourcing. in my view, it will be nice to have a scaling or slow code problem--for many web apps, that proves that there is demand and its worth investing more time an d$.

using a rented coder has worked in the past--digg was started with help from elance.

<http://digg.com/programming/Digg_com_created_for_only_200_00>

elance, guru, and odesk offer cheap options to start small.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> <http://searchyc.com/non-technical+founder>

<http://searchyc.com/%2522idea+guy%2522>

<http://searchyc.com/non-coding+founder>

<http://searchyc.com/outsourcing>

</comment><comment><USER7> It really depends on what your ideas for a website are. If you are thinking along the lines of a brand new web app, you'll certainly need to look for someone or spend some time learning, if it's something simple, you might be able to do most of it on your own.

First thing I would do: Create my own website. It doesn't have to be anything special, just a 5 page html-only site. This will make sure you understand the basics of websites. If you're already comfortable with this you could step it up to setting up a blog with wordpress or another content manager. This will give you a brief introduction to databases.

If you already are at this level, great. If not, it will help you to communicate with whoever you end up working with. It also gives you some idea of what's involved and what is and isn't possible _.

_ When you get down to it, almost anything is possible. It just takes significantly more effort if something is done one way and then a change is attempted.

</comment><comment><USER8> <http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ojbyrne>

worked once...

</comment><comment><USER9> NONONONO! Please do not bother with a "Rent a coder" route.

Find a coding partner who will partner you.

If you truly have a great idea and the drive, you will be able to find the right person.

Most of the "business" people who whine about not being able to find the right partners are the ones with the terrible ideas and lack of drive.

M

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is my first post, i registered to ask this. Hope that's ok. Fwiw I've been reading here for a long time ...

<comment><USER10> I can code... would you like to give me a brief overview of what your idea is?

Email me @ gmail.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This may be a bit contrary to public opinion here, but realistically, depending on the difficulty of implementing your idea ... learning to code might not be good enough. It'd be a good idea to do anyways, but might not be your answer.

University/Work/Church/Geographical Region -- look extensively into your current network of friends, family, colleagues, etc.

Or find someone here.

<comment><USER12> Or a perl, java, .NET, python, ruby, PHP user group or a Linux /BSD user group.

You could take a 2-prong approach: see how far you get on your own by defining the core functionality: database schema , the CRUD operations you'll be doing (transactional side) and report generation / summary tools you'll need (analytical side). Don't worry about HTML, CSS and javascript, Shoot for something that barely renders in 1 browser (opera or firefox), but you'll have to learn mySQL or postgres or SQLite reasonably well, and it'll tell you how complex the app is, roughly.

Then write up a RFP describing the core functionality, something you could take to a web app developer and they could put together numbers of how many hours to produce wireframes, basic models and controllers and a first prototype.

and, oh yea, do some searching on searchyc.com, reddit, techcrunch, see if somebody's done it already. This is tricky, you may go through dozens of sets of keywords.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Learn to code -- that's what I did. It doesn't take much to get to the point where you can implement your ideas.

If there's one thing I believe in, it's not waiting for other people to help you or cut you a break -- just learn what you need to learn to make it happen.

</comment><comment><USER14> I tried the route of learning programming myself and I can tell you that even if you can learn the basics in no time, it will take far longer to get up to speed with most of the folks on this site in terms of ability. I took up Rails and am glad I did, but I realised that my skill was severely lacking. I was lucky to somehow find a partner with excellent programming skills and a server to host our baby. What I suggest is to teach yourself programming in the mean time, while you are waiting for your partner. Don't jump into it for the sake of it or if you're not fully comfortable or sure of the other person. I'm sure you wouldn't do that with marriage. :)

</comment><comment><USER15> Show off your design skills. Great developers are always looking to pair up with great designers.

</comment><comment><USER16> Learn, programming is not rocket science, it is easy as you go along. There are tons of good people and documentation to hold your hand as you go along. You can only learn swimming by jumping in the water, So Just Jump.

<comment><USER17> well it can be ;) (I joke)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Add me to your messengers and let's discuss them. I'm always interested in new projects. Yahoo: shrimp20 AIM: evicerator52 MSN: email@example.com Email: webmaster-at-michaelwalesREMOVEME.com

</comment><comment><USER19> learn how to code</comment>


Commencement address by Bill and Melinda Gates - <AUTHOR> http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/june/gates-commencement-remarks-061514.html <comment><USER2> "Bill and I talk about this with our kids at the dinner table. Bill worked incredibly hard and took risks and made sacrifices for success. But there is another essential ingredient of success, and that ingredient is luck – absolute and total luck.

When were you born? Who were your parents? Where did you grow up? None of us earned these things. They were given to us."

Totally true, and very important to remember, especially for the HN crowd.

<comment><USER3> Melinda's comments are truly amazing:

> Melinda: Let your heart break. It will change what you do with your > optimism. On a trip to South Asia, I met a desperately poor mother who > brought me her two small children and implored me: "Please take them home > with you." When I begged her forgiveness and said I could not, she said: > "Then please take one." . . . When I talk with the mothers I meet during my > travels, I see that there is no difference at all in what we want for our > children. The only difference is our ability to give it to them.

This is such a tremendously important message that I don't think you can even hope to accurately perceive the world without really internalizing it.

The other day, someone told me a story. He was working maintenance in an apartment building, and went into a unit one day. Inside the unit, he saw a couple passed out on the couch, and a baby screaming in his crib. He went over to the baby, and saw a cockroach crawl out of his diaper. The diaper was stuck to the baby's skin. He called 9/11 immediately, the police came, and the building fired his maintenance company for not going to the building management first. This wasn't South Asia, it was here in the U.S.

I heard that story, and then thought about how our daycare e-mails me daily an itemized list of the time of every diaper change and whether it was wet and/or BM. I thought about how unfair it is that she started life with a leg-up, from the hospital where she took her first breath, and yet how I'm totally driven to give her every unfair benefit I can ("you know honey, we _could_ afford private school from pre-K if we budget carefully"). Intellectually, we want life to be fair for everyone, but being a parent means having this overwhelming urge to clear the path ahead for your offspring, burning down the forest if you have to.

I'm certainly not going to send my daughter to an inner-city public school to make a point. What gets to me is our inability as a society to acknowledge the cognitive dissonance, and speak about this issue honestly outside of graduation speeches. To talk about traits like intelligence and patience in terms of what they are: winnings in the genetic lottery, rather than as the result of moral virtue. To acknowledge that "equality of opportunity" is a vicious fiction and understand that not as a call to any particular political ideology, but as a fact of the universe that we must reconcile with any political ideology.

<comment><USER4> This is why I have some trouble with the term "winning the birth lottery". On one hand I did nothing to earn my good circumstances, but on the other hand, my immigrant parents worked extremely hard to afford me the huge advantages I have today. To me, labeling this as just "luck" seems disrespectful to my parents.

So while I do not necessarily buy in completely to the idea of the birth lottery, I do believe that I do have a elevated level of responsibility to do good with the advantages and resources at my disposal.

<comment><USER5> Moreover, calling it "luck" discourages others from adopting these repeatably beneficial habits and ideas for pulling a family out of poverty.

How could I make sure my offspring have a better life than I did? If my only option is "luck", then why bother trying?

<comment><USER6> Working hard is making sure you don't toss your winning ticket away. More people, working to keep their families out of poverty, changes the odds of the lottery.

But that doesn't change that it _is_ a profound fortune to be born into such a family.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reminder: you aren't Bill or Melinda Gates, but you are still rich from software. Maybe you could spend some of your funny money on someone else's healthcare?

I just sponsored a hysterectomy for $180 (1 year of Netflix) in 3 clicks on Watsi. That's _crazy_.

Maybe you can sponsor someone too: [https://watsi.org/fund- treatments](https://watsi.org/fund-treatments)

<comment><USER8> We made a donation to watsi today too, as part of our in-house flossing contest. A dry-erase marker and a bathroom mirror keeps the tally, and about once a month, someone wins. When the tally gets reset, the total number of flosses is donated, in dollar form, to a charity.

You win, because $1/floss is worth it in aggregate to prevent future dental bills. Someone else wins, because they get the treatment they need to live a better life.

<comment><USER9> I love this idea!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've long guessed, and this OP reinforces that, that much of what Bill and Melinda are doing now was driven by Melinda 'selling' Bill on some values that Melinda deeply held and got from her nuns and the Catholic church. But, yes, the story of Bill's visit to Soweto showed that some of Bill's own experiences made him fertile ground for Melinda's values and goals.

I may be underestimating Bill's initial drive for their work now, but generally I have to guess that Melinda is the main hero here. Oh, not to forget, one little thing Melinda did: She talked both Bill and Warren into handing over, what, ballpark $100 billion? Then for her second day, the set up a value that all wealthy people should give about 50% of their wealth to philanthropy and got, apparently, quite a list of wealthy people to do just that.

Another good thing to respect about them clearly seems to be their marriage; it looks like on of their beet examples. Perhaps not just coincidentally, their love and relationship, if more widely followed, would have helped those woman and children abandoned in South Asia. My view is that their example of a good marriage is huge not just for themselves but for their goals of curing poverty, that is, it is easy to see that letting marriage break is one of the biggest wastes in civilization, in particular, leading to poverty and the problems they are now trying to solve.

Why so many people are so eager to bust up their marriages, or just not be very devoted to each other at all, seems to be a grand determination to extract miserable defeat from the voracious jaws of magnificent victory and just inexplicable.

Congratulations to them both.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is so, so good. An upvote alone is not enough to get across how much I appreciate this. These are the principles I've built the plans for my entire life around, these principles are at the core of who I am as a person. Seeing such an eloquently put and important message like this appreciated by so many people is absolutely incredible. Huge, huge respect for bill and melinda gates for the work that they have done and the good message they are spreading.

</comment><comment><USER12> Here's the video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wug9n5Atk8c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wug9n5Atk8c)

</comment><comment><USER13> I know it's cliche to have the founder of Microsoft be your idol person when going into software development, but Bill Gates is certainly worthy of that position. We at HN (an overwhelming portion, anyway) are so comfortable in our lives. Even little sacrifices could change the world for some of those less fortunate. Imagine what big sacrifices could do - they could change entire villages, countries, even continents. Think big. Even if you aim to help millions and only affect a few, your work was not in vain.

This was a really inspiring read, thanks OP.

</comment><comment><USER14> Incredibly introspective and appropriate coming from one of the most successful people on earth.

[http://youtu.be/wug9n5Atk8c?t=22m00s](http://youtu.be/wug9n5Atk8c?t=22m00s)

</comment><comment><USER15> "Optimism is often dismissed as false hope. But there is also false hopelessness."

A poetic touch from a tech genius of our generation.

</comment><comment><USER16> This was truly phenomenal. I grew up in some of the poorest places, went through a lot of shit before things got better. It is really really hard to go through all that and come out with optimism and hope for the world, or even think you can make a difference as one human. Good on the Gates for believing that and having the resources to push this forward.

</comment><comment><USER17> > Let your heart break. It will change what you do with your optimism.

<comment><USER18> Let your heart break.

That was the headline summary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Powerful. So much money and still big souls. There is hope.

</comment><comment><USER20> Here are some of the highlights of the speech on Youtube tagged by time: [http://www.deebrief.com/#!/consume/53a37a3ba109a8020091e663](http://www.deebrief.com/#!/consume/53a37a3ba109a8020091e663)

</comment><comment><USER21> Commencement address video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wug9n5Atk8c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wug9n5Atk8c)

</comment><comment><USER22> > "If we have optimism, but we don't have empathy – then it doesn't matter how > much we master the secrets of science, we're not really solving problems; > we're just working on puzzles." Brilliant and moving!

<comment><USER23> I wonder how much empathy was involved in writing the AARD code. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code))

<comment><USER14> I'll take a sinner turned saint over continued arrogance any day.

<comment><USER24> (Shrug) It's easier to trust people who don't do things like that in the normal course of business. Can a leopard change its spots?

<comment><USER25> This leopard-changing-its-spots analogy is the wrong way to look at things. It assumes that ethics and morality are permanently writ onto our cores, and that to change those values, one would have to become another person entirely. This is a false belief.

As I mentioned in a comment below, numerous studies have shown that a person's ethics are heavily influenced by their present circumstances and environment, not some unchangeable inner nature.

<comment><USER26> > a person's ethics are primarily dictated by their present circumstances and > environment

Citation needed. I can accept "influenced by" or even "heavily influenced by" without too much argument, but "primarily dictated by" is an extraordinary claim, requiring extraordinary proof.

<comment><USER27> It is rather normal for people to change their political stance over the years as they go from young people who think they live forever to people with kids and responsibilities.

Its probably not as obvious here in the US with a two party system but other places like Denmark and Sweden you see this change more clearly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> bill go hard

</comment><comment><USER29> I wonder why these scumbags choose my country ( India ) for painting poor life conditions always ? Agreed, there are cases of extreme poverty, but so in US, Africa, Brazil ( yeah, hosting world cup !) , Eastern Europe etc. Why pick India for prostitution ? As if in US there is no prostitution. Why not pick on own country. Just look at backpage.com thousands and thousands of girls doing open prostitution. How is that good thing ? or not a poor thing ? I wonder if there was political agenda for picking India ( since we are good friends with Russia ). Bill Gates is not a hero. Did you read stories from Paul Allen ( another co-founder those who don't know )?

here is the link : [http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2011/04/15/microsof...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2011/04/15/microsoft- billionaire-paul-allen-talks-bill-gates-revenge-and-cancer-video/)

Why Stanford , a prestigious university, would invite such scumbags ?

If Gates favors so much of charity why not donate everything except $1 Billion ? Are $1 billion not sufficient to live for rest of the life ?

Is his charity ( which comes to around 30 %) a simply proxy for tax saving ??

Whatever may be reason , please stop painting India a bad country.

I am from India , lived in America for 10 yrs before returning , travelled all over US and I can tell you there are classes, hungry people, children / women related crimes all over the place. So first look at your own country, how they are killing people in other countries and then lecture others.

Worst commencement speech in history of Stanford I would say.

</comment><comment><USER30> hmm, that's interesting. I posted this last week, but no bites...maybe because I'm a newbie.

Anyway, a great duo-commencement speech, which inspires and provides some real-world advice

<comment><USER30> Somehow I have negative karma, why downvote this?

<comment><USER31> They're just internet points. Sometimes one submission will go somewhere while yours won't. It happens and those who seem to gripe about it will often get down voted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> "a college in the suburbs of Boston"

love this

</comment><comment><USER33> Im going to be down voted for this.

To me, the speech was fairly embarrassing. Its as though some rich people saw some poor people on a poor person safari. Now they come back to tell of what they saw, as if everyone in their audience would be just as amazed at such things as they were.

Perhaps for a stanford graduate audience that is true?

Theres suffering in the world!? :O

Thats what I was left with. No-one rational could disagree with their points, the validity of the foundations purpose, etc etc and all of that.

But the speech made me cringe a little.

<comment><USER34> Came hear to find out if Bill and Melinda were saying the same old things they usually say over and over. Yep.

There is one social model that has been truly successful in human history and has truly brought unlimited masses out of the darkness and into the light, and it is not based on altruism. It is based on (a) rule of law, not of men and (b) individual rights, especially property rights.

The Gates would do well to start preaching this model instead of the one that has failed over and over and over all throughout history, which is: you have a duty to be your brother's keeper (altruism).

<comment><USER35> I'd bet a 100 bucks there's an objectivist / Randian here; we all read the book as kids, but we recognized that the Randian model couldn't particularly deal with children, or family for example. Wealth creation is a laudable goal, but not the only one.

<comment><USER34> Yes, I'm an Objectivist.

You have some common misconceptions, allow me to teach you something new.

\- I know a great many PhDs who are Objectivists (hopefully myself soon, too). It's really not a philosophy for teenagers and that is just something people spread to put it down without using a real argument.

\- Objectivism can deal with children and family just fine. Lots of Objectivists have children and families, including Ayn Rand's closest philosophical associate, Leonard Peikoff.

\- Objectivism does not say that wealth creation is the only goal. It says (summarizing) that self-preservation is the root of all values, and experiencing your values (in myriad ways) produces enjoyment. Wealth creation is just one way to experience your values, not the only way. Another way is, for example, through family. There are lots of Objectivists who choose non- lucrative career paths.

<comment><USER36> How does it deal with the elderly and the disabled?

A society is to be judged by how well it treats those who are worst off. Optimize for that. Not the average, the median or the mode.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> That was very moving, I'm not sure how it hasn't been voted onto the front page.

</comment><comment><USER38> Remind me, which university did Bill Gates graduate from, again? ;-)

</comment><comment><USER39> Bill Gates has good intentions and in some cases is doing well.

If only he wasn't so swayed by the likes of Geoffrey Sachs and Bono. There is a great book written by Nina Munk about Sachs, if only Gates could try and change his mind and look at it a little differently.

[http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/The-Idealist-A-Cautionary- Ta...](http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/The-Idealist-A-Cautionary-Tale-From- Africa)</comment>


A New York Power Plant Is Mining $50K Worth of Bitcoin a Day - <AUTHOR> https://www.coindesk.com/a-new-york-power-plant-is-mining-50k-worth-of-bitcoin-a-day <comment><USER2> > _" The plant used to only open at peak times in the summer and winter > months; the new mining initiative means it now operates all year round."_

This is actually pretty sad. This isn't power that would otherwise be wasted: they are emitting _more_ pollution and greenhouse gasses in order to mine Bitcoins.

Bitcoin has created a perverse incentive to pollute here.

<comment><USER3> Not any different than dumping massive amounts of cyanide into the environment so we can get some shinny yellow rocks.

<comment><USER4> Gold is quite useful industrially, however. Last I checked, you can't coat wires with Bitcoin to make them less prone to oxidation.

<comment><USER5> Bitcoin is also quite useful industrially, that is not the problem.

<comment><USER4> The thing is, it's not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think everyone involved in this project should be ashamed. Energy shouldn't be wasted into bruteforcing sha1 checksums of lists of transactions, a hash of a previous block to have a neat Merkle tree, and random data to find checksums starting with enough zeros. This is so unnecessary when we have global warming and much better things to do with our energy budget.

<comment><USER7> What if I told you that you can use this "useless" BTC to purchase carbon offsets, invest in renewable energy (which otherwise would have no funding), etc?

Sure, money has no value when you're stuck on an island, but a bow and arrow does. Similarly, a bow and arrow has little value in Tokyo city and money does. Money is the engine that drives motivation - it can be used to compel others to do good things.

Also, people don't understand what Bitcoin mining in wholistic sense is.

Model A: Energy -> Factory (Assets) + Labor -> Revenue

Model B: Energy -> Mining hardware (Assets) -> Revenue

It is surprisingly the same (we can even argue that labor is involved in building mining assets, GPUs don't grow naturally). You can argue that any economic endeavor is a waste.

<comment><USER8> Not only is nobody using bitcoin for that, bitcoin is also a negative-sum game, and no actual new wealth is created. If you were going to buy those credits, you would get more if you cut bitcoin out of the equation entirely.

<comment><USER9> That's assuming it never creates any utility, which might be a fair assessment now but the same argument could have been made about many early stage innovations

<comment><USER8> How many decades is it going to take for bitcoin to not be "early stage"?

<comment><USER9> Maybe never, but just dismissing the technology as worse than useless seems a bit irrational. If your position is that the entire crypto space is just delusion, it's probably good to take a step back and consider that you are the one that's missing something.

<comment><USER8> I am not actually doing any of those things, even though they would all be fair to say.

I am saying that the economic system built around bitcoin is, by definition, negative-sum. And there is nothing about the technology that can change that.

<comment><USER9> Can you give an example of why an economy using bitcoin would be negative sum? If I'm producing widgets and transacting in crypto, value (widgets) are created, the transaction medium seems irrelevant to me.

I don't actually think switching exclusively to a deflationary currency is a good idea, but I don't buy that it creates a situation where value can only be destroyed..

<comment><USER8> The only input of wealth is people buying tokens on the market. The only output is people selling tokens on the market. There is a constant drain of this wealth from both market fees and from miners minting new coins and cashing them out.

There is no wealth creation anywhere else in this system. There are only these factors, and they are negative-sum, except for market operators and miners.

If you are producing widgets on the side, that is entirely unrelated to the token market. You can do that with any currency, and it is entirely orthogonal to the tokens. You are not creating wealth within that market, you are creating it outside that market, and possibly transferring it into as a separate step, to be siphoned off by market operators and miners.

<comment><USER9> Maybe I misunderstood what you meant by "the economic system built around bitcoin", I thought you meant "the economy if bitcoin were adopted would be negative sum".

Now that I understand your point: how is this different from any currency? Currencies are a medium of exchange, by definition they don't have intrinsic value. The value is defined by what you can buy. They are simply a convenient accounting system for value, not the source of value.

How does your argument not apply to every other currency?

<comment><USER8> Currencies do not exist in a vacuum, like bitcoin, it is an instrument of an entire country's economy. There is wealth created inside that economy, unlike bitcoin.

<comment><USER9> Right that's exactly my point, you're critiquing bitcoin as an alternative to the "economy" part, but that's not something it has ever claimed to be. It's an alternative for the "currency" part.

<comment><USER8> Those are not two different things. They are one and the same, in a regular currency.

Bitcoin implements only half of it, and pretends this is just as good. It is not. It is just gambling.

<comment><USER9> > Bitcoin implements only half of it

What does that mean? That the dollar implements the entirety of the economy? No currency "creates value"

I understand what you mean by saying bitcoin is zero sum, but I'm asking for an explanation of how that's any different (for example how is the dollar NOT zero sum)? I don't think you've explained what, in your opinion, is the differentiating characteristic here.

<comment><USER8> The dollar does not exist on its own. It is an integral part of the US economy. The two can not be separated. The dollar represents, in some sense, a unit of the US economy.

Bitcoin has nothing like this.

<comment><USER9> Bitcoin could theoretically become an integral part of some economy (or a smaller part of every economy). Then by your standards it would no longer have a problem?

It seems like a catch 22 you're presenting. It's a bad currency because nobody uses it, and nobody uses it because it's a bad currency. To me that's kind of a circular argument, and the same argument could be made about any early-stage network (the internet, facebook, etc.)

<comment><USER8> No, this can not be changed. It doesn't matter how many people use it or not. It very deliberately, by design and implementation, does not represent anything at all. This would not change even if an entire country used it (putting aside that it is not technically capable of doing so).

<comment><USER9> > This would not change even if an entire country used it (putting aside that > it is not technically capable of doing so).

This is the point you need to expand on. When I asked what the difference between bitcoin and the dollar is, you said the defining difference is that the dollar is used by a country. So if that's not the difference what is?

If bitcoin was adopted, would it not also represent a unit of the economy?

Does your argument boil down to "it's not officially backed by country therefor it cannot serve as a medium of exchange"? If so I ask you WHY that prevents it from being a medium of exchange?

I really don't follow the "negative sum" argument. It seems like that applies to every currency, so it's kind of an irrelevant point

<comment><USER8> It is not that it is USED by a country. It is that it is an INTEGRAL PART of the country's economic policy. The country can, as part of managing its economy, also manage the currency.

Bitcoin is not managed this way. It has rules set in stone it follows entirely on its own, without external input. This means it exists in isolation, unaffected by whatever economic activity takes place around it. This is entirely unlike a national currency.

<comment><USER9> > The country can, as part of managing its economy, also manage the currency.

You think a requirement for currency is that the country using it can manage it? What about all the non-US countries that use the dollar? They absolutely cannot manage their currency. What about in the past when the US and others were on the gold standard? There are a million counterexamples.

And again, let me reiterate (because it seems we're drifting away from the point here) that we were originally discussing whether bitcoin was "negative sum". I'm telling you that if it has utility (like any other currency) there is value being created.

> This means it exists in isolation, unaffected by whatever economic activity > takes place around it.

I don't really know what that means, everything is subject to outside economic forces.

<comment><USER8> They moved away from the gold standard for some pretty good reasons. And countries don't use other currencies unless they are in a very bad position and have no other choice. Bitcoin is gleefully copying all the bad features of these kinds of systems, and not really any of the benefits.

And I have explained why it is negative sum. It is an exceedingly simple system and easy to analyse. There is no value creation involved at any point. Any value creation happens _outside_ of the bitcoin economy.

There are only three factors:

1\. People putting real money into markets. 2\. People taking real money out of markets. 3\. Exchanges taking a cut of that real money.

Nothing else involves actual value.

The combination of 3 and the fact that miners are allowed to do 2 without transferring any value in means that for the reason of the users, the sum is negative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Curious questions:

Are we converting increase in thermodynamic entropy with decrease in information entropy (with some loss)?

What if we use bitcoins mined by renewable resources (for e.g. Hydroelectric generator) to purchase carbon credits? What would the energy balance and economics look like?

<comment><USER10> Already this is happening in a roundabout way. Much of the bitcoin mining is unused hydroelectric in China, they are using the excess power that is basically free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Not just in the Finger Lakes. Various firms have set up shop in northern NY near the St. Lawrence River to access cheap power. Two years ago, authorities became concerned because of the impact on residential rates:

 _"[These] companies are using extraordinary amounts of electricity — typically thousands of times more electricity than an average residential customer would use. While such a significant amount of electricity usage might go unnoticed in large metropolitan areas, the sheer amount of electricity being used is leading to higher costs for customers in small communities because of a limited supply of low-cost hydropower," according to the New York State Public Service Commission._

[https://www.northcountrynow.com/business/blockchain- industri...](https://www.northcountrynow.com/business/blockchain-industries- pulling-out-massena-nypa-moratorium-puts-coinmint-plans-jeopardy)

After NY state authorities set higher rates for crypto mining, one of the local communities withdrew from the local power agency so it could set its own rates, which has prompted at least one company (Coinmint) to announce plans to relocate there. [https://northcountrynow.com/business/cryptocurrency- mining-c...](https://northcountrynow.com/business/cryptocurrency-mining- company-will-move-plattsburgh-operation-massena-winter-0268560)

</comment><comment><USER12> _The server farm currently consumes 14 megawatts of the 106 megawatts of Greenidge 's capacity. That's enough electricity to power well over 11,000 average U.S. homes._

<comment><USER13> It's fascinating, such a machine, so much power, with no visible (tangible) output. Other than heat.

<comment><USER14> It's a 100% efficient 14MW electric heater.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The opposite situation would be where we'd redirect excess nuclear energy (or other energy that can't be throttled easily) to mining BTC. That would be pretty OK in my opinion. Though I hope that future of crypto is more energy- efficient consesus mechanisms. As far as redirecting excess energy goes, there are surely better uses too.

</comment><comment><USER16> Imagine how much pollution Bitcoin would create a day if it became 10x more valuable. Roughly 10x. This is because the cost to mine a resource trends towards the value of a resource. Disclaimer. I invented a cryptocurrency that pays stakers inflation instead of miners.

<comment><USER17> [https://thedailychain.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-hex-the- quick...](https://thedailychain.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-hex-the-quickest- scam-of-the-decade/)

<comment><USER16> You probably want to delete that link lol. Check the facts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> HN is very Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general-hostile so I'm not going to debate about how bad it is or isn't for the environment or set up a strawman with gold mining. However, I'll say this: in a world where Bitcoin did not exist, I don't really think that power plant would have remained idle.

</comment><comment><USER19> oh huh it's really happening. I've been trying to work out the effects of this for a while - bitcoin will always be more profitable than curtailment, but supply and demand should push the cost of bitcoin down below most other uses of electricity... except in places where the generators are distant from other kinds of capital. But some of those bitcoins will probably go towards buying other kinds of equipment by the power company? (direct air capture to high value molecules, eventually, I hope.) If the cost of utility power gets inflated, more people will buy solar panels.... lowering demand? It's complicated!

</comment><comment><USER20> Reminder: not all cryptocurrencies are this wasteful. Don't disregard cryptos in general for the pitfalls of the first one.

<comment><USER21> Why can't the less "wasteful" currencies compete with bitcoin? (serious question; I've never owned it and though the crypto seems straightforward enough I don't feel I understand the market in general)

<comment><USER20> Several reasons. There have been to many scam projects so it's hard for most people to separate wheat from shaft. Bitcoin is oldest and therefore the most accessible one, with more ways to buy it and trade it. Finally, there's vested interests that help keep the status quo as it is. For example, miners who have invested capital in mining equipment and who wish to keep making a profit.

<comment><USER21> The first several reasons seem plausible; the last one does not. It isn't clear why the cryptocurrency community would care about others' investments in mining equipment. If I had made such investments, I would use bitcoin, but that wouldn't force anyone else to use it.

<comment><USER20> True, but you could use your money and influence to try and prevent the market from moving to other, more efficient cryptocurrencies. Remember that BTC started in 2009, significant efforts have been made to build infrastructure around it. Many people got rich thanks to the increase in price. There's a lot of money and emotions invested, for material and philosophical reasons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> But if they use the heat to heat homes isn't this a good use?

<comment><USER6> It's better to use heat pumps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Wat a shame!

</comment><comment><USER24> Waste

</comment><comment><USER25> The comments in this thread ...

Well for what its worth, i think its a bit weird theyre doing this - and hope we get fusion power soon.</comment>


What it looks like to process 3.5M books in Google's cloud - <AUTHOR> http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.com/2016/02/what-it-looks-like-to-process-3.5-million-books-in-Googles-cloud.html <comment><USER2> Would have been nice to include a cost estimate.

<comment><USER3> Did I miss any discussion of what the "processing" is?

Using the Stanford Part-Of-Speech tagger, my goofy project, Ashurbanipal, can tag all the words in one book in about 8 seconds on one core, or ~25,000 books from the Project Gutenberg 2010 DVD image on my 4-core (hyperthreaded) laptop with a 10GB JVM heap in about 8 hours.

<comment><USER4> Nope, there was almost no mention of what this was actually used for. The closest I found was a mention of the final output:

"single output files, tab-delimited with data available for each year, merging in publication metadata and other information about each book"

[edit] More info in a link at the bottom of the article: [http://blog.gdeltproject.org/3-5-million- books-1800-2015-gde...](http://blog.gdeltproject.org/3-5-million- books-1800-2015-gdelt-processes-internet-archive-and-hathitrust-book-archives- and-available-in-google-bigquery/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Anybody find a download for the dataset? Would prefer to take a look at it locally.</comment>