Making Netflix's Data Infrastructure Cost-Effective - <AUTHOR> https://netflixtechblog.com/byte-down-making-netflixs-data-infrastructure-cost-effective-fee7b3235032 <comment><USER2> When I read something like this I realise just how immense of a lead tech companies are building vs 'normal' companies. There's just layer of expertise in how to streamline and organise themselves that anyone without a 1000 strong engineering team and huge engineering budget just are never going to think about.

<comment><USER3> Having worked at some of those companies, along with small startups, the biggest difference isn't really plain old sophistication, but expenses so high as to make the engineering effort worthwhile.

If your production system is 10 instances on some random cloud, a 10% efficiency savings saves me 1 instance, so maybe $2k a year. Taking into account opportunity costs vs doing things that raise revenue, said startup would consider the effort a waste of time unless it took a few hours.

With the same architecture, but instead 20K instances, then suddenly that 10% is saving 2000 instances, and 4 million a year. Unless there's a major engineering shortage, chances are that spending a over a month on 4 million in yearly savings will be completely justified, and would even be a highlight in someone SRE's review.

Chances are that the optimization wasn't even any harder in the big tech company: It's just that small savings on big piles of money are suddenly worth it. It's not possible to find millions of dollars in loose change between the proverbial couch cushions if you didn't have the chance to spend hundreds of millions in the first place. Heck, in a growth company, even at that size, 4 million might not be enough savings, as there might be even bigger things.

Same with dev tooling: Saving a company 5% CI times is not great with 10 developers, but if you are making five thousand developers more productive, suddenly you can hire an entire team of very specialized developers, and it's not a luxury.

This is also why often copying what large companies is foolish when you are small: The tradeoffs are going to be completely different. What would be an unacceptable flaw in a large company is just fine in your startup.

The real trick IMO is the 200-800 range: Large enough that the simple solutions for small companies have probably broken down and are causing pain, but nowhere near the staffing to hire yourself a team to, say, add types to Ruby, get a team to build around the weaknesses of your database, or whichever other problem you have that any member of FAANG would just throw 10 million dollars in staffing costs without batting an eye. I've seen way too many companies that stopped being able to grow their company at those intermediate sizes, and get stuck in technical hell.

<comment><USER4> The problem is that managers at small companies with some, but insufficient, technical knowledge also read these articles and think they need to do the same. I come across overengineereed stuff at small companies all the time for things they don't need but only do because it's what Google/Facebook is doing.

<comment><USER5> Engineers do this mostly, not as much managers (even less so for technical managers). Managers typically either want things done yesterday and would see this as wasteful over-engineering, or would be delegating and trusting a senior or staff engineer if they said this was truly necessary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why does Netflix have half a dozen different database/database-esque systems?

Snowflake, Hive, Cassandra, RDS, Druid, Presto

Is there a good reason for this that people without experience at FAANG orgs can't grasp? To the naive, it seems like mixing Postgres, MySQL, Mongo, and Oracle.

Also why is it on Medium under a Paywall, they are worth, quite literally, nearly $200 billion dollars =/

<comment><USER7> Not sure about all of them but different databases have different use cases. It's not necessarily Postgres vs. MySQL where they are competing databases for the same use case. Snowflake, for example, is a data warehouse that (I believe) stores data in a columnar format. This makes it much better at performing aggregate queries (how many shows were watched on netflix today?) but a lot slower for specific queries (where in this episode is gavinray currently at?).

<comment><USER6> Hive is a Data Warehouse that runs on top of Hadoop.

Snowflake is a Data Warehouse/Lake, but it's also it's own custom SQL DB.

Cassandra is a NoSQL DB

RDS is running (some standard relational DB)

Apache Druid is a columnar analytics DB centered around realtime uses. It has it's own query language and delegates to Apache Calcite for specific DB/datasource drivers. Can integrate with Kafka/Hadoop.

Presto is (to my understanding) like a meta-DB that can query multiple databases. Similar to an integrated Apache Calcite or Google's ZetaSQL.

There are a LOT of overlapping concerns here, which is why the confusion.

Essentially they have 2-3 different products in several categories targeting generally the same usecase.

<comment><USER8> AFAICT, Hive/Snowflake are the only overlapping concerns here, and I can see why they would have both (Snowflake may be the better product, but at the end of the day Netflix owns their Hive install).

Everything else solves different problems at Netflix scale. I'm spitballing here but Cassandra could be used for metadata serving (high throughtput, embarassingly parallel reads with high uptime), RDS for their billing system (transactions, ACID, etc), Druid for realtime OLAP and Presto as an interface to Hive/Snowflake.

A smaller company wouldn't need this level of complexity (if you aren't large, you could probably serve your metadata from MySQL, and just use Snowflake as your OLAP engine).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hard sign-up walled :<

[https://i.imgur.com/mSk4uiI.png](https://i.imgur.com/mSk4uiI.png)

<comment><USER10> nope; opened just fine in an anon chrome window with ublock origin

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder if Netflix is spending a lot of money and effort on things that consumers don't really care about.

I don't really care for personalized recommendations. As long as the movies and TV Shows have some type of keyword or grouping, I am happy. Given the relatively fixed size of the catalog, and that most movies and TV shows are already classified (for example as Action or Romance or Comedy etc) this doesn't seem like something where a lot of data would do a lot to help.

For me, most streaming movie companies are pretty equivalent in their experience. The only data I really need them to keep track of about me is what I have watched so I know if I have already watched something before, and where I am in the movie/tv series, so I can pick back up when I log in again. Everyone pretty much does it. As for streaming quality, basically everyone knows how to transcode movies and put them on a CDN. The size and quality of the catalog is the biggest differentiator for me.

<comment><USER12> "I personally don't use feature X"

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Am I getting it right and Netflix' own hardware is negligible or non-existent and all their infrastructure is deployed to AWS?

<comment><USER14> Netflix runs its own CDN system. That's a significant amount of hardware to own & manage, but their operating costs are probably less than what a conventional data center would have, because it's in the ISP's interest to host a local cache (to minimize bandwidth use).

[https://datacenterfrontier.com/mapping-netflix-content- deliv...](https://datacenterfrontier.com/mapping-netflix-content-delivery- network/) [2016] [https://openconnect.netflix.com/](https://openconnect.netflix.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why on earth would Netflix want their blog behind a paywall?

Absurd.

<comment><USER16> You can open it in incognito mode to avoid the paywall.

<comment><USER17> Problem solved, absurdity not solved.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Wow so a very large portion of their spend is on Cassandra. I bet it's heavily modified for their needs but I wonder if Scylladb would be able to replace some of those clusters for a considerable saving in maintenance time and money.</comment>


Instant SSL Demo - <AUTHOR> http://www.instantssldemo.io/ <comment><USER2> Today is the day when Certificate authorities can no longer take your time and money for something that can be easily automated.

[http://www.instantssldemo.io/](http://www.instantssldemo.io/) is live demo of letsencrypt.org technology.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not even served over SSL....

<comment><USER4> Currently there is an invalid certificate from happy hacker fake CA. It is the testing Let's Encrypt CA.

<comment><USER4> And now finally there is a trusted cert.</comment></comment></comment>


Female CEOs Blast Forbes List of Innovative Leaders That Includes Only One Woman - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2019/09/11/759899375/female-ceos-blast-forbes-list-of-innovative-leaders-that-includes-only-one-woman <comment><USER2> I would be more sympathetic if they could point to someone who had done something super cool in the last few years. Yes, 23 and Me was a clever company a long time ago, but lately I've been wondering just what they'll ever do for an encore. How many times can people test their DNA and find a connection to one of the endless 5th cousins that make up my listing?

Or look at her sister, the one who runs YouTube. The user interface hasn't changed in a bazillion years. It may even predate her arrival. The only "innovation" lately is canceling more and more people, not exactly a proud moment of innovation. It's more like the return of fascism.

I could go on. Spanx, another company mentioned in the piece, was a very clever marketing idea but it was founded in 2000, almost two decades ago. And lets face it, the girdle was really an invention from post WWII.

So yeah, let's make the list diverse but let's not populate it with fakes who are from the conference cycle where their only claim to fame is being the token X who codes.

<comment><AUTHOR> The fact that you can't think of several innovative women demonstrates why such a list is necessary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The responses to this Twitter post from the Forbes journalist read like a classic Struggle Session - [https://twitter.com/RandallLane/status/1171175020992876544](https://twitter.com/RandallLane/status/1171175020992876544)

Forbes made list, other people don't like that like, that should be the end of it. But people are making out that the publication of a list of CEOs not including enough women is tantamount to a reversal of womens sufferage.

<comment><AUTHOR> NOT ENOUGH? When there is only ONE?!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Can there be a YouTube with the Wikipedia model? - <AUTHOR> I was wondering about all those awesome channels in Youtube like CPG Grey and Veratasium, Crash Course, Smarter-Everyday. Sometimes I feel like those channels get buried, among all the other Youtube garbage.<p>I was wondering if there can be video platform like Youtube that doesn't run on ads, but donations? Or would that be too expensive? Is there a platform like that already? <comment><USER2> To run a centralized video platform you need lots bandwidth and storage [1]. Paying for this will be a challenge if you rely only on donations.

If you run a peer-to-peer video platform you are competing with other peer-to- peer video platforms, most of which are not very well-known [2].

[1] [http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/04/cheaper-bandwidth- or-...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/04/cheaper-bandwidth-or-bust-how- google-saved-youtube/)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-to- Peer_Assisted_Streamin...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-to- Peer_Assisted_Streaming_Solution)

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you think not even Wikipedia could pull this off? Maybe is content was limited for Scientific channels? Maybe if Wikipedia buys Subbable, and uses VP9 to reduce some bandwidth costs?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why would changing the revenue model change the problem of discoverability of these channels, unless the problem is that these channels don't get enough money to pay for advertisement or increase their production values?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, I was thinking more in terms of discoverability. Like if we treat Wikipedia for answers about facts, we should have a place like that for videos. If there was a video about science, and people are looking for that content. My main struggle with Youtube it's discovery page, and content creators having to do certain things to compete with mediocre content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How would running on donations help discovery of those channels?

<comment><AUTHOR> I was thinking maybe in terms of editorial content, regulated by a few of smarty pants. Less about views or likes.</comment></comment>


Webpack Virtual Module Plugin - <AUTHOR> https://sysgears.com/articles/webpack-virtual-modules-plugin/ <comment><USER2> Nice! Sysgears has some seriously cool projects</comment>


Puremise.js: Purely Functional Promise Monad Implementation - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/f/puremise.js

<comment><AUTHOR> Please shoot my mistakes, I'm just trying to learn FP and open for reviews. :)</comment>


Vue-Cli and Express Build SPA Blog - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/alloyteamzy/vue2_blog/ <comment><AUTHOR> Just when the development of vue, encountered a lot of problems, but also made a lot of mistakes, but now, their own harvest quite many. Own vue blog (message board) has been developed to complete. I want to say is that the sparrow is small, fully equipped, although only a small application, but it covers a lot of knowledge points, including front-end, back-end, database and other sites must be some of the elements, for me, Learning great meaning, willing to encourage each other!</comment>


VR-OS Demo - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMwqiAeQDUc <comment><USER2> Looks really cool. I think a workspace in vr would be great and the new oculus quest probably has the right resolution</comment>


The Passing of the Indians Behind Glass - <AUTHOR> http://theappendix.net/issues/2014/7/the-passing-of-the-indians-behind-glass

<comment><USER2> This is silly. I live in Arizona, and many of our parks have dioramas that are very informative about past cultures.

I live in the mountains, and with docents from the forest service I have hiked to and appreciated about 100 ancient Indian ruin sites. I like to imagine what life would have been like when I am on site, and I do use mental images from dioramas.

Hopefully not off topic: I volunteer at a historic farm, and we all get to grow food for ourselves as a perk for doing __lots __of free work for the forest service. There is a very old Hopi Indian who has a patch near mine and it is more than interesting talking with him. He is a shaman and travels a lot giving talks.

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't advise dismissing it so irreverently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As a glass-window diorama alternative consider the exhibits at the Mashantucket Pequot museum:

 _The Mashantucket Pequot Museum & Research Center features 85,000 square feet of permanent, indoor exhibitions including life-size dioramas, films, and interactive computer programs._

Pequot Village: _Observe daily life in a recreated 16th-century Pequot village, pre- and post-European contact. Walk among the trees, wigwams, and people who are cooking, talking, weaving, and working. Hear natural sounds and smell the aromas of the woodlands and campfires. All the figures were life- cast from Native American people; the traditional clothing, ornamentations, and wigwams were made by Native craftspeople._

[http://www.pequotmuseum.org/PermanentExhibits.aspx](http://www.pequotmuseum.org/PermanentExhibits.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER5> Its really too bad-the exhibits at the UofM Museum of Natural History (the museum mentioned in the article) has/had truly beautiful dioramas. Sure they were old, but they were incredibly detailed and very accurate.

<comment><USER6> The problem, as I understand it, is that the dioramas were dehumanizing to the point that registered members of the tribes depicted were offended.

At the end of the article they mention the alternative being full-size recreations that the visitors can touch and interact with. While it limits the number of displays a museum can offer, I think it does show more respect and offers more depth to visitors:

 _" For non-Makah visitors, it is a diorama in which the viewer doesn't examine the Indian under glass, but takes her place."_

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I grew up in Florida and started school around 1989. We were exposed to a lot of indian culture all throughout my grade school years.. In fact we were the "Indians". I remember Indians visiting our school as early as 3rd-4th grade as a cultural learning opportunity. We also learned about the trail of tears, the reservations, and yes we saw the exhibits.

I find this a bit of a shame as I really enjoyed those dioramas myself as a kid. I'm not sure anyone would argue that the Indians did not have an "ancient" way of life when the Europeans came.. To me this feels like just pushing the fact that we destroyed their way of life under the rug.

</comment><comment><USER8> What if instead of taking down the Indians Behind Glass, we created more modern scenes behind glass? Like a UN general assembly, or Oktoberfest, or a military base in Afghanistan? That would be super cool.

<comment><USER9> It would make more sense to have such dioramas in a museum of human history, but I understand dioramas of indigenous people who still exist today not having a place in a natural history museum.

<comment><USER10> The 19th century Indian culture depicted in those dioramas _is_ extinct now and definitely does have a place in a history museum - in exactly the same manner as the (now extinct) 19th century white American frontier town culture or the (now extinct) 19th century Bavarian farmer culture.

The fact that there are living descendants of all those cultures, and some of them [try to] follow traditional aspects of this culture does not diminish the historical value of illustrations about the culture as it was back thin.

There may be valid reasons to remove exhibits - for example, if the depictions are misleading and based on assumptions now known to be false; or if the depictions are irrelevant and boring. But if some people are offended by their own history, then that's not a reason worth considering, much less acting on it - if the depiction is factually accurate (which, as much as I understood from the article, isn't disputed), then it should stay.

If the current treatment seems unfair, then producing more relevant dioramas of the other cultures would be a reasonable response - such exhibits can be very effective illustrations about all the "non-native" populations as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The only thing that I could think of was trying to imagine what the Museum Dioramas will be like once the third or fourth generation of consumer VR rolls out?

</comment><comment><USER12> Excellent policy: now non-indigenous sub/urbanites can learn about indigenous history from `Pocahontas` and `Dances with Wolves` instead.

</comment><comment><USER13> As an Indian, this headline intrigued me to draw a click. Then I realized that the article was about Native Americans and this usage, as always, filled me with a mild rage for a few seconds. Is it really that hard to just use a non- confusing term for native americans in written language now that it's clear that India is somewhere else on the globe altogether?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9VMY8X9rU8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9VMY8X9rU8)

<comment><USER14> The simple answer is no. The longer answer is yes, but ... it would confuse more people that it would help. When you start throwing around terms like aboriginal X or native X, you're getting somewhere re: clarity. However, when the term is modifying an ambiguous locator like "American" it makes it worse again. To United States citizens, "American" means them, but (I can't speak for Canadians, not ever having had this conversation with any) all my friends in Brazil, Chile and Mexico consider themselves American, too, and they are.

"Indian" to mean indigenous United States tribes is a cop out but it is by far the simplest way for writers to refer to these diverse groups without having to get deep into technical explanations.

p.s. Besides, it isn't our fault the Europeans were shitty navigators. :)

<comment><USER13> _" The longer answer is yes, but ... it would confuse more people that it would help."_

Can you describe a scenario where replacing the word "Indian" with "Native- American" in the headline of this article will confuse more people than the original version? None of what you said to support your assertion seems to make that case.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: StatusPage.io - Hosted, white label status pages - <AUTHOR> https://www.statuspage.io <comment><USER2> When I heard about this product, I was excited. There are 100 small things you need to have in place when you start to become a real business. I am happy as a clam when people take one of those things and will do it for us in a way that makes us not care about paying them. They help us do a better job serving our customers for a price less than an hour of an engineer's time each month. Awesome value prop.

<comment><USER3> I appreciate how you compare the value add relative to the cost of the time it would take your own engineers to do it themselves.

If it isn't strategic or core to your business, don't be afraid to consider outsourcing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been playing around with this for a little while now and it seems like a great service for the status page itch. One that we weren't scratching very well in the past.

I haven't even begun to dig into the API yet, but I've been happy with the ease of setup and how simple it is to create, update, and complete an outage or disruption report.

Thanks for the solving this problem, guys!

</comment><comment><USER5> It would be good to mention where the service is hosted so that we can make sure that the availability profile isn't the same than our service.

Right now the meta page is hosted on Heroku so I wouldn't use if for anything that's on EC2 for example.

<comment><USER6> Question - if this is really to be the ultimate status page - a service wouldn't want to use their own DNS - correct? They'll want to use [domain].statuspage.io - right?

<comment><USER7> Perhaps. Or have multiple domains and DNS providers and point both status subdomains to statuspage. (We created status.phaxio.com and status.phaxio.co after the whole Zerigo fiasco last year. co is on zerigo, com is on Route53 )

<comment><USER6> I like that - dropping the "m" in .com would retain a sense of ownership of the url.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is great! We (Balanced) open sourced our status page a few months ago, and received some really positive feedback from HN. How could we contribute our design as a template to statuspage.io?

<https://status.balancedpayments.com/> <https://github.com/balanced/status.balancedpayments.com> <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4812222>

<comment><USER9> We're looking to do more premium layouts and add metrics tracking in the near future. Where can I email you at to talk more about this?

<comment><USER8> founders at balancedpayments.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interested to know what people think about the market for something like this. While it definitely serves a purpose, is this something that is sustainable and that people will pay money for (vs building it once, and setting it up internally)?

Not being skeptical, just wondering what people think... I've had ideas similar to this, but am still trying to figure out the threshold for payment on things that companies fully need but can justify building internally.

<comment><USER10> If you don't have the resources to build and host your own status page, then you're probably too small for people to care about your status.

<comment><USER11> But it adds operational overhead, as now you need to set up a second hosting provider, manage another environment, etc. An internally-hosted status page isn't very useful when your datacenter goes down.

This is the perfect thing to pay someone else to run for you. I'd gladly pay $50/mo for it.

<comment><USER12> Agreed. It's the perfect thing to pay someone else to run for you. Someone who's very focused on making this service great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I found this service while doing research into launching a similar competing service. I didn't really expect it to show up on HN, though! Congrats on the launch. :)

</comment><comment><USER14> The meta question. Does StatusPage.io use StatusPage.io...

<comment><USER15> speaking of meta: <http://meta.statuspage.io/>

<comment><USER16> The statuspage.io link on that meta page is broken btw - the : is missing from the url.

Edit: really like the service - considering using it for our status page

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Great product that solves a little but important problem the right way and hassle-free!

Plus, I really like the Series T Financing idea (see footer link).

</comment><comment><USER18> Very happy to see this project. Had status.io (recently sold) for the very same purpose but wasn't able to implement it. Please make it more than just a status page, make customers understand the process (both external/internal) and we'll all be much happier as users.

Good luck!

PS: are you able to survive your customers problems (if things like EC2/EBS goes down again?)

</comment><comment><USER19> On the pricing page, those two rows where the bold is not at the beginning slightly annoys me (I like things that match and line up).

I do like how easy it is to access pricing though.

There is also something going on with the testimonials on a 1080p screen, unless it is supposed to be spaced like: [x][x] [ ][x] [x][ ] where the blank boxes are white space.

</comment><comment><USER19> +1 for offering support at all to free users</comment>


The worst project I ever funded on Kickstarter - <AUTHOR> http://a.wholelottanothing.org/2012/01/lessons-for-kickstarter-creators-from-the-worst-project-i-ever-funded-on-kickstarter.html <comment><USER2> The one thing that Kickstarter has taught me is something I don't really want to accept, but it's the sad truth: most project creators don't see Kickstarter as a real commitment to business, it's a way to get money for their "neat project" that they want to complete but without the hassle of raising money properly or selling pre-orders. It's a complete non-commitment and it seems a substantial number (enough for me to notice) take it this way.

Kickstarter really need to fix this side of the site, I won't be backing any projects from this point on unless they absolutely have a pre-created product and I'm happy with what I can see at the time of backing, putting money into "creative" projects or "prototypes" seems to be a guaranteed way to come away with something you didn't expect (if you get anything at all). I would love to see either some retribution for people that never deliver or project curation from Kickstarter.

On a positive note I backed "Romo" ([http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/peterseid/romo-the- smart...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/peterseid/romo-the-smartphone- robot)) a couple of months back and had an absolutely wonderful experience, they delivered on all their promises (so far) and the project is everything they promised.

<comment><USER3> _most project creators don't see Kickstarter as a real commitment to business, it's a way to get money for their "neat project" that they want to complete but without the hassle of raising money properly or selling pre-orders._

But that's true, of course. Kickstarter isn't a marketplace like e.g. Etsy where customers buy items. Kickstarter lets people fund cool projects they like. Often (but not always) the item istelf is offered as a "perk" for backers. But that's not really the point of Kickstarer, it's just about funding a project.

<comment><USER2> This is what I'm talking about, if I choose to fund a project and the reward I choose is that project, isn't that the point of funding? For example, [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/petertreadway/spnkix- wea...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/petertreadway/spnkix-wearable- mobility) is a project being funded at the moment and will reach it's goal, I've backed with $500 so I can get a pair, if they don't deliver on that isn't that an issue? Kickstarter does not present it as a chance to _maybe_ see a project and if not, well great free money for the project creator, it's presented as a way to fund a project to creation, to delivery.

<comment><USER3> Here's one I funded. It's a documentary: [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/textfiles/the-jason- scot...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/textfiles/the-jason-scott- documentary-three-pack)

They haven't even been shot yet. Heck when I pledged, the guy hadn't even bought the cameras to do the shooting yet. There's no gurantee about the content of the films. Sure, I'll get a copy, eventually, but that's not really why I pledged. I pledged to fund the _making of_ these films.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm helping out with a Kickstarter project ([http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/studentrnd/plasma- speake...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/studentrnd/plasma-speaker)) which is already 2 months behind the delivery date, and I just wanted to offer a view from the other side.

Shipping a product is hard. Our initial prototype used some components we had in our parts organizer, and a $100k variable DC power supply Boeing donated. It was pretty cool, so we put it online, and it picked up $20k in donations.

As soon as we put it online, we started working on improvements to the design, and when it was to a point we considered done, we made a board design and ordered parts.

And of course, nothing worked.

We've been working on it for as much time as possible since then (as mentioned in our Kickstarter, the lead designer is a high school student), and even with the help of some local EEs, it's taken forever to get it to even start. The flybacks and PSUs took forever to get to the US, customs held up the package, and FedEx refused to deliver them. Our laser cutter, which we ordered to make the enclosures, was a week late, and took a few days to set up.

Now we're at the point where we're balancing sound quality and time. We can redesign the entire project so it sounds better, but that means another few weeks to get the new boards and parts, or we can just ship what we have.

If we do any Kickstarters in the future, we're obviously going to have a totally more realistic timeframe. But it's apparent that anyone who hasn't shipped a product is going to have no idea of how involved trying to reproduce something in a mass scale is.

That said, it looks like these people took an AWFUL approach to customer support. We've tried to keep people as up-to-date as we were, we've refunded anyone who asked for it and offered to ship laser cut cards to anyone who was planning on giving the plasma speakers as a Christmas gift.

tl;dr: Kickstarter is hard. As usual, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

<comment><USER5> >we've refunded anyone who asked for it

If you don't mind me asking, how many refunds have been requested? It might give an insight into what people expect from Kickstarter

<comment><USER4> I only see two in the notes section on Kickstarter. Amazon Payments would be the definitive place to check but I don't know the password for it, and I probably won't be in our office until Thursday because of snow in Seattle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was backing this project until the day they decided to raise shipping costs. It wasn't the raised shipping costs that made me withdraw my backing, but the fact that they had no respect for the backers.

Just pulling a few quotes from the project starter... That is why I backed out of it.

\---

@Jeffrey Sorry you feel that way. But I owe you nothing. No one does.

@PAIK Jackass, it's right here >> <http://screencast.com/t/aPOddZQtDJ> Stop harassing me!! And as I said, it was in the comments.

@Noor from day one of the project we've always stated that there will be international shipping charges. So nothing has changed. Secondly. I don't believe that the customer is always right. And there's actually a strong community of business people out there that feel the same way.

<comment><USER7> Just more lessons on what not to do when raising funds. It's not even so much what he said, but his "tone."

<comment><USER8> Seems like kickstarters are mostly okay with the risks.. it is inherent in the site, after all, but man, it doesn't seem necessary to be mean about things..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wish people would stop thinking of Kickstarter as a shop.

It's not.

The site is very clear in it's FAQ that once a project is funded, delivery of the promised perks is up to the project creator, not up to Kickstarter: [http://www.kickstarter.com/help/faq/backing%20a%20project#Wh...](http://www.kickstarter.com/help/faq/backing%20a%20project#WhoIsRespForMakiSureProjCreaDeliWhatTheyProm)

I've seen some great projects on the site, but you have to realize that you're not buying something.

When you see a project that is developing a product, and the promised reward is one of those items, you are _not buying one of them_.

You are pledging your money to the sponsor in good faith that they will provide you with one. In effect, speculating your money on Kickstarter against the risk of the project failing after it's fully funded.

If you want to buy something, use a shop.

I actually think that Kickstarter (despite it not being in their best interests) should place an upper limit on the funding available on projects that effectively try to use Kickstarter as a shop, and dupe the public into thinking they are buying things.

There's really nothing to stop me creating a "cool laptop" shop on Kickstarter, claiming to "rebrand" macbook airs and resell them with laser etched designs for $500 each, take all the money and walk away.

</comment><comment><USER10> I just cannot help but notice how much the perception of what Kickstarter is has changed from its initial days. I learned about Kickstarter at the time the Diaspora project was there collecting money. It was clear that people are not "buying" but "investing". They were not "consumers", they were "investors". Diaspora wasn't a "product" on "pre-order" but a "project" which was "under development". How the intent and purpose of the site changed in the minds of both "backers" and project makers is just amazing. Its like the identity of what Kickstarter started out to be has been lost somewhere.

Kickstarter was supposed to replace angle investors and VC. They were supposed to help the little guy start up without all the control of the big guy who had money. The idea, as explained to me on this very forum, was that this was crowd sourced investment. The users here went on to say how this will change the startup culture and help people start more bootstrapped startups without any strings attached. The "rewards" were never a guaranteed thing. They were sort of a thank you and giving out rewards were supposed to be a way to show off that they actually succeeded. Now it seems the whole thing has shifted to a marketplace of sorts. It seems like people are using it as an alternative to ebay or amazone, just that they can have higher flexibility and more contact to their "consumers". The inherent risk of "investing" has been lost and given way to the guarantee of "buying" a product.

<comment><USER11> Kickstarter's guidelines specifically say

> Offering financial incentives, such as ownership, financial returns (for > example, a share of profits), or repayment (loans) is prohibited.

If they ever claimed pledges were "investments", that was dishonest and I think the SEC could actually prosecute them for it.

<comment><USER10> I think I made the wrong choice of words there. I am really truly sorry. I think donations is much more appropriate. I don't know, maybe someone will understand. I just wanted to say that kickstarter didn't imply any ownership in anyway. Ever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Disclaimer: I've never used Kickstarter

This being said, I was under the impression that funding a project is still a bit of a risk - I'd expect that some projects (like businesses) simply don't work out how they planned - this seems like that type of problem. Of course they should have mentioned the signal problems (and even reached out to see if they could crowd source a solution) but buying in as an early "funder" would imply that there is a risk that it doesn't work, in my opinion.

Seems like they simply couldn't deliver on the project, glad that it's only happened to him once in 72 times.

<comment><USER13> I've funded a few projects of friends. One never materialized but it was worth the shot and the others are in production. If you spread your investments out, some are bound to take off no? I'm in line to receive some great products that wouldn't see the light of day otherwise and I'm excited. You don't get this excited over many things you can buy.

I must say though, reading the content of this Kickstarter they don't deal very well with their failure. With the proper tone they could have gotten another round and kept their investors happy.

<comment><USER14> I don't quite understand what the "investors" are getting out of KickStarter. It doesn't seem like prouducts are _that_ unique or cheap. The risk of a project failing or being delayed means I wouldn't buy anything I really needed from there.

It seems like all the benefits are on the producers side. They can start a project with little risk, ask for more money when they mess up their budgetting and still finish up making a tidy profit.

<comment><USER15> As an investor you help create something that didn't exist before. Maybe something cool or interesting or important that you think should exist. Maybe something you desire to own as well.

Sometimes the rewards are worth more than the investment, sometimes the personal value of contributing to something worthwhile is enough. People volunteer their time and donate their money to things beyond helping sick children and the poor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is a fairly known issue in elec. design. What is happening here is that the case is acting as a Faraday cage (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage>) that blocks out signals.

It is not just enough to wear the designer hat. An engineer hat is absolutely essential as well.

<comment><USER17> It pretty well blows my mind that they just wrapped the whole antenna in metal and didn't think that it might cause problems. You shouldn't need to wear any hats at all for that one, just apply some common sense.

When I saw the thing, I assumed they must have come up with some extremely clever way to avoid signal attenuation. Turns out they were just ignoring the blindingly obvious. Oops.

<comment><USER18> > they must have come up with some extremely clever way to avoid signal > attenuation

Which itself would be fairly incredible, considering that Steve Jobs and Jony Ive wanted to make the iPhone out of metal, and for three years they couldn't do so because of the antenna issue, and finally after spending what must have been many millions of dollars and many engineering man-years they came up with a sophisticated solution that was pretty good but even so _still had widely publicized issues when it first came on the market_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> After the iPhone "antenna gate" with a _rubber_ bumper as the resolution, how did 1,053 backers conclude surrounding an iPhone 4 with a metal band would be a good idea?

The author even owned Apple's bumper, but perhaps had not realized why it was rubber. Then the author's other stated reason was frequently dropping the phone. How shock absorbent does he imagine solid metal is, compared to that rubber bumper?

As easily discerned from the photos, this antenna blocking, shock transmitting, "case" doesn't even extend past the face glass, allowing it to shatter if dropped on any front face corner.

Seems like this project's backers should consider it a $65 lesson in weighing the plausibility of marketing claims for oneself.

</comment><comment><USER20> _When you are designing a product for Kickstarter and you show prototypes, backers will assume you have worked all the bugs out first._

Do backers on Kickstarter really assume that all the bugs will be worked out before the prototype is shown? I'm not familiar with how the community works, but would assume that the prototypes would be used to identify more bugs and design flaws, as well as elicit feedback from early users.

<comment><USER21> Yes. Backers on kickstarter are not sophisticated startup people. They're regular consumers. Most kickstarter projects are ones that appeal to them, and are also low tech. If a project expects a lengthy development process they can say it in the project.

I've done some mechanical engineering, but I'm no mechanical engineer. I can't know whether an iPhone dock is going to require 3 prototypes and 4 nearly complete versions before being ready to ship, and all this will take 9 months, or if what they're showing in the picture can be manufactured in 60 days in volume, all they need is the money for the injection molding forms, which are very expensive.

Hell, I bet most people who fund kickstarter projects don't even know injection molding forms are expensive.

So, if the project has high risk, and this isn't disclosed by the leader of the project when asking for funding, that's an error on their part.

The problem projects I've seen (that are products, rather than pieces of art) tend to pitch themselves as completed products that just need manufacturing help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I bought an aluminum Element Vapor Pro and it has no problems. I actually got it to see how it fits in my current Kickstarter project, the Elevation Dock, b/c a lot of people asked and they love them.

It has plastic around the top left corner and small foam pads so the aluminum never touches the steel antenna. If I were these guys, I would machine out the corner and make a polycarbonate piece to fit.

If anyone here has one, I'd machine the modifications for you just to show it.

<comment> X-Istence You have no idea much I am looking forward to having the Elevation Dock in my hands and using it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've seen some neat things coming out of Kickstarter projects, but I get the impression most backers don't understand they're not guaranteed to receive an awesome perfectly functioning polished final product pitched by the creator.

Kickstarter needs to make that more clear.

Also, they need to do something about overfunding. Perhaps hold some of the money back until the product is ready to go into production or something.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm not familiar with the outcome of any other "failed" projects, but has Kickstarter ever forcibly refunded money or intervened in any way? If not... they're obviously growing (nearly 4x as much pledged in 2011) and I don't know if more strict guidelines would really help.

</comment><comment><USER25> I've put done close to $300 to help fund a programmable espresso machine. Funding closes this Friday. Get in quick if it might be your sort of thing:

[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zpmespresso/pid- controll...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zpmespresso/pid-controlled- espresso-machine)

Just yesterday they posted a very good update letting people know where they stand. Notably that the shipping times are already longer than originally stated, and that now is the time to ask them questions (before the money is taken). They also specifically state that they're not a storefront, and that setbacks in the schedule are possible:

[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zpmespresso/pid- controll...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zpmespresso/pid-controlled- espresso-machine/posts/163017)

Seems like a sensible way to set expectations upfront.

(I discovered this project as I was close to spending $700 on a machine that is (on paper) lower spec'ed (but, to be fair, available now). I'm willing to wait the few months and risk some cash to give some guys a chance at producing something new/different.)

</comment><comment><USER26> Could the founders take only a small portion of money and proceed till the bugs were resolved?

<comment><USER27> With hardware a lot of costs are up front. I have some knowledge of PCB manufacture.

So, you need to design the PCB. You need to get artwork made. You need some prototypes. Then you need to decide whether you'll re-design, or include a mod. Re-design is expensive, that is balanced by having a bit of wire soldered between two points and a track cut by a low paid operative in some random factory.

You now have some PCBs. You need production aids. You may need stencils for screen printing solder paste. The design can be generated from the PCB gerber files. But again, there are artwork costs for this. You need a pick and place machine program. If there are many conventional components you'll want a cropping machine plate made. (A steel plate which the PCB sits on with small holes for conventional components; you then put this on the cropping machine which pins the components down while a blade slides and crops the component leads).

Then you build your prototypes. You need someone to buy components; to put these onto the pick and place machine (Which means stripping that machine down from the last job); to load the programs and set the reflow oven and align the screen print stencil.

You can new see that it's just as easy to produce ten as it is to produce one. (I'd recommend people building prototypes to build a batch of, say, 3 rather than just 1 or 2. That gives you an early alpha; a beta, and a neat and tidy beta to create documents and production drawings from.)

Hopefully I've shown how many of the costs are up front. The costs of components and actually building stuff is relatively cheap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I got burned by a kickstarter project. Like others, I naively believed that they were at least an above board outfit. I also appreciated that Amazon was the payments service because I believe they are above board as well.

I fell for the "Hexbright Flashlight" project: [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/527051507/hexbright- an-o...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/527051507/hexbright-an-open- source-light?ref=live)

His pitch was that the product was designed and that he just needed the funding to underwrite manufacturing startup costs with asian and local suppliers. Having been well down the path of getting a consumer electronics product manufactured, and knowing the costs and understanding that a lot of those costs are upfront, I this seemed very reasonable to me. I thought his asking amount was a bit low, but the project was overfunded to the tune of $800,000 - more than enough to cover these startup costs.

Once funded, however, the October delivery date-- two months from the funding date, was never mentioned again.

Instead the updates have increasingly focused on design choices. In fact, the early updates made it very clear that many of the design choices hadn't even been settled!

He's clearly taking his time, doing some updates once a month or so, but it doesn't even look like this is full time. (excuses for having a new baby, etc. Jeez guy, you took on an $800,000 project with a baby on the way, really?)

I have the very strong impression that it was a slight con job-- he got the money to dick around with his ultimate flashlight and "really do it right", but doesn't seem too concerned about his commitment to deliver the flashlights in a timely manner.

I do believe has has every intention to deliver these flashlights... eventually.

But I bought them for christmas presents, I've been out several hundred dollars for 6 months and I don't even have a promise date for delivery. In fact, the whole thing is so half assed that he doesn't even know which colors I want because he didn't give us a way to tell him.

So, I contacted Kickstarter. I figured they had contingency plans for this kind of situation. I figured they were a standup organization. Their response? A form letter telling me that they advise their project leaders to deliver in a timely manner to backers. That's it. No suggestions for alternatives, nothing like that.

Of course the 30 day credit card dispute period has long passed. But I don't think it will come to that.

The FTC has a rule, that if you take money for a product, you have to deliver it in 6 weeks. This is why TV commercials and magazine ads often say "delivers in 4-6 weeks". Because they're using drop shippers, or whatever. If you don't deliver in 6 weeks, you have to get the customers permission to delay shipment, or you have to refund their money. Thems the rules.

Its debatable whether the 6 weeks started at the funding date when our cards were charged (and kickstarter got their $80,000), or at the "end of october" when they were originally supposed to ship. Either way that time is up.

Because I think this guy intends to deliver them, and was only dishonest about the level of completion of the project, and because I know that last %10 can take a lot of time, I'm going to give him a bit longer. Maybe the end of January. I'd go to the end of February if he promises to ship in that month.

After that point, I'm going to take up the dispute with Amazon. I expect that amazon, having handled the payment will resolve the issue, but if they don't then I'm going to escalate.

I actually blame kickstarter more than I do the guy behind the project. They should not blow people off when projects fail to deliver. This isn't a donation to some kid who wants to take pictures of trees in the Sierras. They are selling products here, and they are promising tangible goods on a specified date in exchange for the funds. That's the definition of being a store.

I don't mind giving people some time. I only even got annoyed about this one after christmas came and went and there wasn't even an apology for not shipping in a reasonable amount of time. And I only got upset when kickstarter blew me off when I wrote them. Because of that, if this isn't resolved in 4-8 weeks, I'm going to Amazon, and then the police.

Needless to say, I won't be backing any more Kickstarter projects, and until they start taking some responsibility, I no longer consider them a trustworthy outfit.

Here's the introduction of the project: "I am offering pre-orders for two unique and powerful lights, the HexBright Prime for $35 and the HexBright Flex for $60. Both models are virtually identical looking with an ergonomic, very comfortable grip and use the best available LED light source. ... The major difference between the Prime and Flex models is the HexBright Flex is USB rechargeable and USB programmable. If you want, you can re-write the default code and tweak the HexBright Flex however you desire."

He's offering pre-orders. That's what the project promised. (Elsewhere it gave a "late september, early october" ship date, but that has since been removed.)

Kickstarter offers a FAQ. Here's the FAQ entry for this project: When will you ship? "Short answer- as soon as we can. Long answer- HexBright is not a product already on the shelf ready to be shipped. You are funding development of a top quality product where almost all your money is going into the parts and materials with almost no overhead, marketing or middlemen costs (we are projecting future retail prices to be over $100). As the saying goes, "CHEAP, FAST, GOOD, pick any two". Our price is fixed so we are choosing between "fast" and "good". Good wins every time. "

The thing is, this FAQ was changed. Kickstarter helpfully tells us so:

Last updated: Monday Nov 14, 1:22pm EST

So, during the time he was asking for money, we were given the opportunity to "pre-order" these flashlights that are described as already existing:

"the HexBright Flex is USB rechargeable and USB programmable."

NOT: "the HexBright Flex WILL BE USB rechargeable and WILL BE USB programmable."

Then, about 2 months after he was supposed to ship, the FAQ changes to "You are funding development of..."

So, the project says one thing, but the FAQ says another, and the wording on the FAQ, updated 2 months after it should have started shipping, implies that people who expected it to ship when promised weren't actually promised a shipping product on any specific date.

<comment><USER28> I totally appreciate your perspective on this. But I think you were missing part of the point of kickstarter.

These are projects, not products. You're making a donation, not buying something. For that donation you are often promised a reward, but you are not guaranteed one.

There is a certain amount of risk associated with backing a project on kickstarter. Projects don't always turn out the way you hope. Budget issues, design flaws, etc, are all par for the course.

I've backed a number of projects now. I just checked, and I've backed 15 projects out of which 9 have received funding ($346 pledged, $284 charged) since August 2011. So far I have only received two items.

I hope to receive all the items I've funded, but I know that even with the best intentions, not every project will be able to deliver.

Since you believed you were "purchasing" items, perhaps kickstarter needs to do a better job of making it clear that what you are doing is making a donation, and the whole thing is running on the honor system. They do say that ([http://www.kickstarter.com/help/faq/backing%20a%20project#Ac...](http://www.kickstarter.com/help/faq/backing%20a%20project#Acco)), but I guess they could do a better job of stressing it.

Because it's a donation, it's my understanding that kickstarter, amazon, and the police would have no real recourse unless there has been serious fraudulent claims of some kind.

Anyway, I would urge you to change the way you look at kickstarter, and then give it another go. I'm a huge fan of the model, and have enjoyed both the items I've received so far. You can always give them for xmas next year :)

<comment><USER29> > You're making a donation, not buying something.

I'm not making a donation, I'm buying a product in advance that hasn't finished being developed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I don't see it as the worst project. I don't know why you are so dissapointed

<comment><USER27> Kick Starter appears to need to manage people's expectations of projects a bit better? People are not buying product, they're "investing" to help someone create a product. The return on a successful investment is a cheap version of that product, or some stickers, or a warm fuzzy feeling of helping someone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Without Apple-like innovation and fabrication technology, how could could they got the aluminum casing to not completely block out the signal? It seemed like the entire project was doomed from the start.

<comment><USER32> "Apple-like innovation"? What's "Apple-like" about making an antenna? Wasn't "Apple-like" the reason for free bumpers and "you're holding it wrong"?

<comment><USER33> My guess is vast resources...</comment></comment></comment>


Russia to ban US from using Space Station over Ukraine sanctions - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/10828964/Russia-to-ban-US-from-using-Space-Station-over-Ukraine-sanctions.html

<comment><USER2> I really don't see this working out in Russia's favor. It'll hurt them more than the U.S. As we've seen with NASA funding recently, we apparently don't care whether we make it back up there any time soon (well, most of us at least) while Russia needs all the advancements it can get.</comment>


Even better bug reports - <AUTHOR> http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html

<comment><AUTHOR> This submission claims to talk about good bug reports, but it's woefully light on details:

\+ <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1474566>

I thought I'd provide a better guide. Here's one from the author of PuTTY, and CoRoutines in C

\+ ( <http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/coroutines.html> )

which were discussed here:

\+ <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1380044></comment>


DrChrono Lets Doctors Accept Payments Via Square, View Real-Time Insurance Info - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/07/drchrono-now-lets-patients-pay-doctors-via-square-see-real-time-insurance-info-on-ipad/

<comment><USER2> If you're looking for a truly disruptive startup, you should tackle insurance billing. This is a $1 Trillion+ industry powered by people making phone calls and sending paper mail.

Just look at this list of insurance payers: <https://drchrono.com/public_payer_search/>. See how they all have different enrollment forms? Every clinic that wants to do electronic billing with insurance has to fill out an enrollment form for every insurer on that list (though most only do a subset). Filling out those forms is powered by people.

For those of you that haven't dealt with insurance, a real-time eligibility checker is actually a huge deal. The best of class eligibility providers define "real-time" as "we'll respond within five minutes to your request, and only between the hours of 8am and 6pm Eastern, and often the service will be down for many of those hours, and requests will fail randomly, and we can handle a full 10 requests per minute." When clinics get eligibility information wrong they end up eating the cost of service or sending out a huge unexpected bill to the patient.

(Actually, it looks like DrChrono is using Emdeon, which has many of the problems described above.)

The (stealthy) biotech startup at which I work has to deal with a huge number of insurance companies. I've been working on insurance claim integration and had to build out a parser for the absurd file format standard the healthcare industry uses (<https://github.com/sbuss/TigerShark>). We're parsing and handling claim acceptance/denials pretty well (resulting in, literally, a 300x boost in productivity of our billing & support team).

<comment><USER3> This is absolutely true. The opportunity to disrupt insurance is massive, and at this point, almost a certainty.

Through Leaky, one of the things that we've always liked is that there's room for disruption in all parts of the spectrum. Customer acquisition, retention, quoting, pricing, binding, billing, etc ad nauseum. You can even decide if you want it to be B2C or B2B.

For us, we've focused on 1) simplifying the comparing and ultimately the purchasing of personal lines insurance (auto, home, life) and 2) creating a real-time (truly real-time; not the "we'll call you back in 5 minutes" model) commercial insurance comparison and purchasing platform.

There are a lot of headaches to disrupting insurance as an industry, namely there are a lot of regulations and a lot of litigious parties. However, our view is that mounting public frustration (for all forms of insurance) and the current lack of software-based solutions make insurance a ripe industry for disruption.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The state of Healthcare Informatics in virtually all its manifestations is outrageous. Do I think Dr Chrono is "the" solution? No. Does it help move the ball forward? Yes. And for that, I applaud them.

</comment><comment><USER5> "Specifically, the company is adding two new features to its product line-up today: iPhone patient payment processing, which allows doctors and staff to process payments using the Square card reader attached to an iPhone or iPod Touch..."

Isn't the whole insurance problem that I'm not the one making the payments, my insurance company is?

<comment><USER6> I had a similar reaction.

I guess this would be for co-pays, or the balance owed for what isn't covered by the insurance company.

<comment><AUTHOR> Correct. Square is used to pay copays or balances that may remain after insurance payments have been processed (deductibles, denials, etc.).

The main interface allows for the doctor to press one button to easily pay a known copay, or press another button to pay an arbitrary amount. In the screenshot here [1], the patient could pay his $490 balance by pressing the "Payment" button, or the $20 copay by pressing the "Copay" button.

[1] <http://d.pr/i/Ulh5>

edit: added a bit more detail

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't see the "major upgrade" here. As a doc you can already use Square to process payments, and you can look up "real time insurance information" easily already via the web.

Breathless pronouncements from a supposed technical company that physicians will use their app because it "makes them feel modern" are a trifle annoying. Docs will consider using an app like this when (if ever) it is demonstrated that input/dictation of specialized vocabulary is robust on pads, and when (if ever) there is something at all good to say about trusting a commercial third party to store a practice's protected health information remotely, eg when (if ever) questions about security, access levels and logging, deletion, and backup policies of remote data storage of protected health info are fully addressed.

<comment><AUTHOR> > As a doc you can already use Square to process payments

Yes, but the application is integrated with the Square app to make it more efficient. Payments made via square also automatically sync with our billing/accounting section of our application, which saves the doctor/biller a _lot_ of time. If the doctor is solely using square to take patient payments, then the accounting is basically automated through our system.

> you can look up "real time insurance information" easily already via the > web.

Most doctors call the insurance company directly to verify eligibility. Checking via the iPad (which is already used to onboard the patient) saves the doctor or front office some time.

> Breathless pronouncements from a supposed technical company that physicians > will use their app because it "makes them feel modern" are a trifle annoying

Doctors want to feel modern. It helps bring in patients. How do you feel when you go to a doctor still using paper, and wait 5 minutes for them to shuffle through file folders to find your chart?

edit: formatting</comment></comment>


Show HN: A podcast for software engineers struggling at work amid Covid 19 - <AUTHOR> https://veamly.co/podcast <comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys, we recently launched a brand new podcast around engineering productivity and wellbeing during this pandemic especially. Season 1 is available on your favorite podcast platform. Your feedback and guest requests will be super helpful as we are currently prepping for season 2. Thanks!</comment>


Fake Barack Obama delivers a PSA about "deep fakes" using a deep fake video - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/tldr/2018/4/17/17247334/ai-fake-news-video-barack-obama-jordan-peele-buzzfeed <comment> white-flame > _It 's a time when we need to rely on trusted news sources_

That's the rub, isn't it? Who's a "trusted" new source? All the major players have shown biases, corruption, and manipulation. Lots of people therefore consider some fly-by-night facebook feed that says what the majors don't to be more "trusted" in response.

We shouldn't "rely" on single points of perceived trust, especially in this massive for-profit, for-power media industry. We need to be broadly informed from various angles to have a better chance of piecing together a reasonable sense of what's going on.

<comment><USER2> The problem lies in the motive. News organizations are (not surprisingly) entirely motivated by profit. Breaking even is not enough. Doing well is not enough. Improving profit drastically quarter over quarter is the goal.

To do that, you cannot simply "provide news" anymore. You need conflict. You need confirmation bias. You need to create a wild, screaming echo chamber that induces panic and fear. You need conflict, even if you have to fudge the details to get it. You need to focus on some things and ignore others to increase it.

It's no longer a partisan issue. I'm 40 years old. I remember when you had to really pay attention to catch bias in the news. Do this yourself: go back and look at newsreels from the 80s and 90s. It's almost surreal. They were still biased, but presented information in a factual manner and then tossed in some emotional stuff. Many of them even... showed both sides of the argument. It's weird to watch now.

A news network simply cannot run with this format in 2018. Fox News was the leader, they were using bias, fearmongering, and propaganda almost from the start. They enjoyed very high ratings because of it. Now the other side has caught up. Because they had to.

It's a mess, but one thing is for sure: we can't trust any of them anymore. Not 100%.

<comment><USER3> > News organizations are (not surprisingly) entirely motivated by profit.

That's an over-simplication.

Sure, Jeff Bezos probably wants to make a profit with his purchase of the Washington Post. But the profits there are probably not his main objective as they are too small to make much of a difference to a person of Bezo's wealth.

Bezo's goal is to have a mouthpiece to push his agendas, such as pushing Amazon and trashing Musk properties. So you say that the purpose in doing that is to make more money. But the problem with that line of thinking is that you could reduce almost any action to "profit". You could reach further back and go a level lower and say that making profit is motivated by reproductive fitness, and thus "News organizations are entirely motivated by sex". But at some point you have to let go of the circuitous route from action to final motivation and focus on the immediate drivers of an action.

Politics, money, sex, job security, prestige, etc all all motivations for news organizations, as well as many other organizations.

<comment><USER4> Thinking that Bezos wanted WaPo to advocate for Amazon and trash Musk is to treat him as a rich person, not the wealthy person that he actually is.

<comment><USER5> Could you explain what you mean by the difference in a person who is "rich" vs. "wealthy"? I don't think that's coming through in your comment.

<comment><USER4> It's a question of mindset, but often correlated with scale. A rich person is a successful car dealership owner who has a net worth of $50 million, drives a Lamborghini on the weekends, lives in an 10,000 square foot mansion, has a sweet private movie theater, and owns a 60 foot powerboat. His economic activity is focused on consumption. He wants to leave his kids enough money to be rich for life. I can't give many examples because these people are soon forgotten, but Donald Trump was almost one of these guys until he got some new ideas late in life.

A wealthy person has a net worth of $100 billion, is driven around in a Mercedes S600, has a 120 foot sailboat, goes to private parties at Sundance, values their time above everything else, and is focused on his legacy and place in history. His economic activity is focused on investment. He wants to leave his kids with enough money, connections, and capabilities to become among the great American families, shaping policy and public life for centuries. Think Rockefeller, Carnegie, Gates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's what I'm worried about with fake video. If you think fake Russian bot news in US politics is a problem, consider the following.

Facebook is increasingly populated with a large number of new users from developing nations who are basically one or two generations removed from subsistence farming. The level of naivete and rumor spreading that you can see in Pakistani Facebook is alarming. Now combine nation-state funded agitprop campaigns with naive users and fake video. Read the following article and imagune how much worse it could be if a malicious organization with funding decided to further weaponize content on myanmar-oriented Facebook groups and pages.

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/03/revealed- faceb...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/03/revealed-facebook- hate-speech-exploded-in-myanmar-during-rohingya-crisis)

<comment><USER7> Why should we assume that being one or two generations removed from subsistence farming implies that a user is naive? There are plenty of naive persons worldwide who grew up in middle class households in the West who are just as naive. I don't think the connection is that clean.

<comment><USER6> As an example:

[https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/01/the-f...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/01/the- facebook-loving-farmers-of-myanmar/424812/)

My spouse, who is a native fluent speaker of the languages, follows a large number of Dari and Urdu language Facebook groups and friends. If you think _Americans_ have a problem with reposting stupid things that can be easily debunked by Snopes, you would not _believe_ the amount of naivete on display daily in those language formats. It's hard to explain unless you've seen it firsthand.

People who are one generation removed from subsistence farming are not less intelligent than others. However, they and the family have had a lot less time to view mass media bullshit (tv cable news, internet, etc) and develop the mental callouses necessary to understand the nature of media biases, who owns what media organizations. And in general have had less formal secondary education at the post high school level that teaches critical thinking, skepticism and gain some degree of innoculation against propaganda.

<comment><USER8> Your example is literally of a farmer who is 0 generations removed from sustenance farming.

<comment><USER6> And on a scale of 1 to 10, since I doubt he knows of the _existence_ of advanced video fakery techniques, how likely do you think it is that he could be completely fooled by a faked video of a Myanmar domestic celebrity or politician?

<comment><USER8> I'm saying that people 1 or 2 generations removed from the farming WILL get it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't know, for this type of fake video, you don't even need a face mapping or a voice mapping implemented by deep learning.

Just take any random Barack Obama video which we have plenty of, use similar male voice, or copy&paste convenient Obama's voice without context, and some people believe it.

It won't fool everybody but that is not that important. Some people still believe it and act accordingly(Pizzagate conspiracy theory) and that's more than enough to achieve the malicious intent.

</comment><comment><USER10> BuzzFeed's article with the backstory behind this video: [https://www.buzzfeed.com/davidmack/obama-fake-news-jordan- pe...](https://www.buzzfeed.com/davidmack/obama-fake-news-jordan-peele-psa- video-buzzfeed)

(Disclosure: I work for BuzzFeed)

<comment><USER11> Off topic, but what is working for Buzzfeed like? I used to hate everything Buzzfeed-branded, but it seems like it's been improving journalistically recently. How are the working conditions? Do you believe in your purpose?

<comment><USER12> Even "lately" is unfair, I think. They hired Mark Schoofs (ProPublica) in 2013 and have steadily been doing _work_ since probably even before that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think people are seeing the risks of people creating fake videos but there's another risk that I think is being overlooked. As convincing fake videos become a reality and articles like this inform the general public of that reality it becomes incredibly easy to dismiss any inconvenient videos as deep fakes. If Mitt Romney had made his 47% comment in the present climate he likely would have been able to skate by saying that was a deep fake, created by political adversaries.

</comment><comment><USER14> Many people already fool themselves by simply refusing to fact-check anything that doesn't support their biases. If you thought "alternative facts" were bad now, just wait for this tech to hit 100% believability.

<comment><USER15> The disturbing fact is that this stuff is progressing in near real-time. A year ago these things were still totally unpassable. Now this Obama video could very easily fool a good percentage of people on mobile. I've no doubt it will be imperceptible within another year or two.

<comment><USER16> It doesn't take much for people to panic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The voice sounds wrong, is the voice AI? I'm sure I've seen better AI voice demos than this --- though the video is impressive.

<comment><USER18> The voice is just Jordan Peele (comedian) doing a Barack Obama impression. The 'AI' is in the video, specifically the lip syncing.

<comment><USER19> What'll really be interesting is if someone gets deep voice conversion to produce a plausible output, and combines it with this technique. As is, I think it's still not enough to really fool people, at least with that particular voice actor... But people really tend to trust voices.

<comment><USER20> Adobe has demoed software for this (interestingly, Jordan Peele also in this video):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOpSV3ZcUcw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOpSV3ZcUcw)

Whether the demo is accurate or massaged, I can't say as I've never used the software myself. But if it is anywhere near as good as their demo suggests, it produces output that is more natural than the current deepfakes video outputs (though it also isn't perfect).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Can the misleading headline be fixed? The actual headline is more clear about what this is.

<comment><AUTHOR> Added "Fake" in front of Obama. Let me know if you have any other suggestions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Can we get the link changed to the non-amp version? [https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2018/4/17/17247334/ai-fake- new...](https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2018/4/17/17247334/ai-fake-news-video- barack-obama-jordan-peele-buzzfeed)

</comment><comment><USER23> Non-Amp (Canonical) URL: [https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2018/4/17/17247334/ai- fake-new...](https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2018/4/17/17247334/ai-fake-news- video-barack-obama-jordan-peele-buzzfeed)

Speedtest comparison: [https://www.webpagetest.org/video/compare.php?tests=180417_X...](https://www.webpagetest.org/video/compare.php?tests=180417_X6_31f1012439e81cf8edeff5385b1f6cfb,180417_JG_9bac43c1583615cbfa464953736f2861)

<comment><USER24> Another comparison (goes the other way after 4.5s) [https://www.webpagetest.org/video/compare.php?tests=180417_F...](https://www.webpagetest.org/video/compare.php?tests=180417_FK_cee1cf11d92a90a01c8354ae88bef2d3,180417_PE_d9c937eab738e6e85f82ee1253f72094)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> that doesn't sound like Obama.. ppl would definitely comment wondering why he sounds different.

<comment><USER5> Right, it's just Jordan Peele doing an impression. I agree that a lot of people would immediately notice the difference and get that it's fake, but I expect there's also a significant number of people who wouldn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> That sounds like a really bad Obama impersonator. The video is OK but still obviously fake.

If you look at the progression of film CGI, with its persistent flaws despite massive budgets, there's no reason to suspect that indistinguishable fakes are coming any time soon.

<comment><USER27> We've been able to fake voice recordings for decades. Doing it again is not the impressive part of the video. It's a tech demo for the video showing how close it is to working. The point of the video is that this was made with Adobe After Effects and FakeApp and 56 hours of rendering time. COTS software on COTS hardware.

You won't even need a good impersonator, however. The same technology behind FakeApp that blends this video together could be used to blend _audio_ together.

This is supposed to look fake and sound fake because you're supposed to see it as fake. What happens when that isn't true anymore?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm a little disappointed that it took this long for people to get over the 'OMG celebrity porno' thing about deepfakes to actually start dealing with the real potential consequences. Deepfakes open up an amazingly large list of questions, from the mundane to the truly challenging. That someone will see imagery that fulfills a sexual fantasy is, by far, one of the most trite and harmless possible uses of this technology.

Realtime video synthesis has been around for awhile. I recall reading in 1999 that if you watched the ball drop on New Years Eve, the advertisements on the buildings you see won't be the advertisements that are actually present in real life. They were being replaced on the fly with different ads. Now, it's basically possible to replace people. Everywhere that people appear. And this isn't something we can deal with simply by going off of gut reaction and intuition, it really raises significant questions.

Who will be the first politician to use a younger version of themselves to promote themselves? Which celebrity will be first to replace not the face, but their body, in film to make themselves more attractive? Which movie studio will be first to film a movie using cheap performers and then re-use the right they have to a major celebrities likeness by just faking them into it? Or maybe they'll only bring in the actual celebrity for close shots?

This can be done on commodity hardware, and will only get easier. It will be used for schoolyard bullying, for amazingly uplifting and important artistic works, for debasement and aggrandizement. It's one of these things that we've got to do some thinking about as a society.

<comment><USER29> > Which movie studio will be first to film a movie using cheap performers and > then re-use the right they have to a major celebrities likeness by just > faking them into it?

I believe that studios have done with dead actors. Paul Walker and the guy who played Grand Moff Tarkin in Rogue One being examples that came immediately to mind.

<comment><USER30> That's using fully digital versions of those actors though. We're a long way from being able to use AI for those kind of performances yet.</comment></comment></comment>


HIV Patient Zero cleared by science - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/health-37767179 <comment><USER2> > Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo was seen as the city that > started the global pandemic. From there it spread to the Caribbean and the > US around 1970.

I think that was the only new part of the story. The've known for a long time that HIV existed before patient zero and that it was estimated to have crossed to humans around 1900.

</comment><comment><USER3> Gaetan Dugas actually died in March 1984 before the retrovirus now known as HIV was supposedly isolated. At the time AIDS was a clinical syndrome whose cause was unknown.

The cluster study that fingered Dugas as Patient Zero was used to argue that AIDS was a sexually transmitted disease rather than, for example, the results of cumulative toxic effects of drug abuse among the victims, notably the use of "poppers" by large fraction if not all of the original victims.

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

The study traced sexual contacts and was interpreted to show a sexually transmitted disease that resulted in death in about 10 to 18 months after transmission.

Dugas was said, not just in Shilts book, to have continued having unprotected sex with other men despite having been warned by the researchers that he was carrying an as yet unidentified super-killer sexually transmitted disease.

How true is this? Who knows, but it was widely repeated in documentaries and other sources well before Shilts book. It seems to have been promoted by the CDC.

In the subsequent three decades, the purported latent period between infection and death of AIDS/HIV has been lengthened to at least ten years. The modern theory of the disease, to the extent that one can pin it down, is grossly inconsistent with the early studies and claims by the CDC.

In the mid 1980's, after HIV was proposed as the cause of AIDS, the government did what one would expect. They infected about two hundred chimpanzees, thought to be man's closest animal relative, with HIV, or more accurately fluids thought to contain HIV. Of these, two have died of symptoms said to be similar to AIDS.

[http://discovermagazine.com/2002/may/featchimp](http://discovermagazine.com/2002/may/featchimp)

One, known as Jerom, apparently came down with the symptoms spontaneously.

[http://www.releasechimps.org/chimpanzees/their- stories/jerom](http://www.releasechimps.org/chimpanzees/their-stories/jerom)

The second was supposedly infected with Jerom's blood or fluids from him and so is not a spontaneous case.

One out of two-hundred is 0.5 percent, about the incidence of AIDS in the general human population.

Here is another article about the remarkable immunity of chimpanzees to HIV.

[http://www.mareonline.nl/artikel/1011/17/1401/](http://www.mareonline.nl/artikel/1011/17/1401/)</comment>