A New Form of Social Withdrawal in Japan: A Review of 'Hikikomori' (2009) - <AUTHOR> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4886853/ <comment><USER3> Hikikomori is not only a Japanese phenomenon. I was Hikiki for a year after dropping out of college.

I lived with my parents playing WoW all night and sleeping all day. I had very few social interactions.

What dragged me into that lifestyle was the complete destruction of my ego. I was simply unprepared to live as an adult. It's not much of a surprise I couldn't cope. In high-school I was coddled for being smart and never developed a work ethic. College hit me like a sack of bricks.

I'm sure there are myriad reasons why people choose to withdraw from society; my case is merely a personal anecdote. Nonetheless I think my case is not a rare exception.

Ultimately what pulled me out of that malaise was successful employment in a software company. It was only after I recovered a sense of self worth that I could finally step out of my cave.

<comment><USER4> I did something similar for a few months (right down to becoming a nocturnal WoW troglodyte). It started when I quit my job to go traveling, and continued after I returned. For me, it was due to a bit of an existential crisis - <USER2> 'life script' had always been 'work hard in school, get good grades, get into uni, do well at uni, get a job'. I'd finished the script and was lost. What now, and why should I care?

What dragged me out of this state was the one-two punch of getting a job and meeting a girl. Neither ended up being particularly good for me but they got me started again.

<comment><USER5> How did you get a job and meet a girl when you played WoW all night and slept all day?

<comment><USER6> I survived like this by sleeping only 3 hours a night for years. It is possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have been living as a Hikikomori for the last eight years. Every two years I leave my home for a few hours, but I spend the rest of the time in front of my computers.

I don't have any friends in real life or online and the only people I interact with are my parents.

Every meal is prepared for me so the only thing I have to do is my laundry once a month.

I often think about how fast time flies when living this lifestyle. A year feels like a month to me.

The sad part is that I have missed out on most things a normal person experiences. The twenties for most people is about experiences, creating lifelong memories, parties and fun. It feels like my twenties was over in the blink of an eye and left a book with empty pages. My youth has run into the sand.

<comment><USER8> I really appreciate you sharing your experience. What made you decide to be hikikomori?

It's never too late. Tell your parents that you want to change life. Turn their support into something positive. Go out of your house to buy pizza, ice cream, whatever. Get your body moving, the mind will follow.

Try to stay in your room without digital devices... for one week. It will clear your thoughts and force you to deal with reality. You will feel bad, at first. But it's going to get better. It's the beginning of your new life. Isn't it exciting? A whole new journey lies ahead of you!

Take a long walk in the countryside, far from other people. Nature is truly amazing and hiking scratches that same itch of sensory overload (Internet and gaming).

Everyone makes mistakes. But you should not be defined by them. You're living a defeatist narrative. Get out of that narrative. Forget your biases and expectations. Don't let other people define you.

If you want to keep in touch, post your contact info.

<comment><USER7> I wouldn't say it was an active choice, I didn't even known about hikikomori until very recently, but the description fits my lifestyle.

I went to trade school and graduated as a network technician/systems administrator, but I never got a job and then time just went on and suddenly I hadn't left my home for years.

I wrote in my first post, I'm sad I missed out on so many things in my youth, but sometimes I think the reason why I'm sad is because I have been conditioned by social conventions to believe that I should be.

If I had been going to parties in my twenties, according to social conventions, I wouldn't have missed out and should be happy, but what if I should be true to myself?

I have actually never really enjoyed other peoples company and had I been invited to parties, there is a great chance that I would just stand awkwardly in the corner waiting to go home.

I do get extreme enjoyment from programming and doing other computer stuff alone, and I'm able to do it 24/7\. Maybe I actually have the most fulfilled life that I could ever have, following my personal preferences, but social conventions are preventing me to acknowledge it?

It's a double-edged sword.

<comment><USER9> Your post is really fascinating to me. I do think it's possible to be happy living unconventionally. My life is also unconventional, though in a different way.

Do you socialize online a lot? Do you work freelance at all or are you financially supported? How do you usually pass the time other than programming? What do your parents think about it?

<comment><USER7> I don't socialize online at all as it would quickly feel like a burden to me.

I don't work freelance or have any income at all, but I'm very low maintenance as I don't eat much and don't like material possessions. All I own is a few computers and a toothbrush, but I don't have any debt either. I think it would be impossible to make my life more minimalistic than it is now.

Once a month I do my laundry and all other time is spent at the computers. I work on a project for some months, delete it after completion and start over with a new project.

I think my parents has gotten acclimated to it as the change was gradually over a long time and not from one day to another.

<comment><USER9> > _I work on a project for some months, delete it after completion and start > over with a new project._

Damn, that is hard to hear. Is it because you don't think the project is good enough? Will you get to a point where you don't delete your projects?

I am a little like you otherwise, especially in being low maintenance and owning almost nothing except for a computer. I don't hang out with much of anyone besides my wife anymore, but I do go out nearly every day to exercise under the sun. And I prioritize working as little as possible, just a freelance project every few months to keep enough money for food and leave as much time as possible for my own projects (but I don't delete them!).

<comment><USER7> > Damn, that is hard to hear. Is it because you don't think the project is > good enough? Will you get to a point where you don't delete your projects?

It not so much that, I have enough time to work them into perfection, but there is no use for them after completion. It's not like when an employer request some work to be done that is going to be used afterwards, it's just me trying to make op some project ideas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> ...so is partly a matter that these parents are enablers?

At one time in my life, I'm sure I'd love to have done nothing but stay alone in my room for months of time sleeping and doing internet stuff, with my meals and such prepared for me and placed by my bedroom door, but there is no way my parents would have allowed that.

<comment><USER8> > _Another study of 88 hikikomori found that 60% lived with both parents, 18% > with just their mother, 3% with their father, and 16% in a 3-generation > household... authors have suggested overprotectedness is more common in > families of hikikomori._

Enabling parents are one part of the equation. But hikikomori might just be a cultural variant of Internet fixation. Independent adults are less likely to be called out on their addictions, because no caretaker is watching over them. How did the study find 88 hikikomori? They were reported by their parents or friends.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Outside Japan, there are just two case reports of hikikomori syndrome, one in Oman and one in Spain."

I agree that this should be quite common around the world.

In the U.S., there are a lot of 20-year-old men who live with their parents or have a part-time undemanding job and spend most of their time playing video games, etc. and don't intend to get married.

<comment><USER12> Most/all of what you describe is not hikikomori.

The "pure" form of hikis will rarely even leave their rooms. The idea of a part time job is very much not something a pure hiki would do.

There is a lot of social maladjustment in Japan -- I've never seen this to the same extent in the US or EU. It might be possible in some middle eastern countries due to extreme religious reasons (e.g., Oman), but the underlying reasons strike me as different.

Anyway, please don't conflate this with "playing a lot of video games" \-- this is an extreme form of isolation that most people have never seen.

<comment><USER13> I dunno.

I do know people with panic disorder (and the associated agoraphobia) and social phobia who live on a "Non24" calendar (they might call you at 2am in the morning but not be awake at 3pm.) Depression, anxiety, drug use all compliate the equation, but it's hard to believe that this phenomenon is all that different from hikkiomori.

Many cultures take pride in an imagined exceptionalism and Japan is one of the leaders in that. It serves their ideology to believe that they have a disease that others don't.

I also have the impression that many people have subclinical agoraphobic or social phobic disorders. For instance, my dad was high functioning in many ways but he absolutely refused to go to any kind of retail space, including the store my mom worked at.

Social phobia has a strong association with bullying; some people survive bullying pretty well, but it has a devastating effect on many. Behind the misogyny of the tech culture you might find deep anger about how many smart people were shut out socially in high school. Some people find a pillar of stability that helps them get through it, but the experience of being in a hostile crowd can damage you profoundly.

<comment><USER12> What you describe is definitely "an issue" \-- I know people like this in the US.

This is not the issue that hikikomori is representing.

FWIW, I don't think that this is actually unique to Japan -- I just think that it has become easier to document in Japan because so many folks in Japan are starting to think that being a hiki is a good idea, and there is societal infrastructure there to support it.

<comment><USER13> How do I do the differential diagnosis between "hiki" and the social phobic?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I played an mmorpg for 630 days of playtime over two years of my life. I had saved up a good amount and was on a rather generous severance package during the financial crash.

I recall my moment of change when a girl (irl) asked for a date and I missed a dungeon run. The missing run meant that I would have to wait in line for the item for another few months and it completely broke me of my urge to play.

While I know this isn't hikkikomorism in true form, I learned just how powerful human biology is.

</comment><comment><USER15> It sounds like modern technology and culture are just more enabling of the kind of withdrawal that is typical of depression. In past decades it would be much more difficult for a human to willingly wall him or herself inside of a single room for extended periods; now we have the internet.

</comment><comment><USER16> Awareness of it is becoming part of the culture in Japan too, too: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welcome_to_the_N.H.K](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welcome_to_the_N.H.K). and the anime derived from it come to mind.

</comment><comment><USER17> One of the most hard things to comprehend in life is how different can you feel and how different can your own ideals become.

I was like that; as described before in the same thread, a western, light version of hikki - staying at home, eating tv dinners, spending time in front of the computer. Almost no social interaction, cut in a loop, 26 hour days, and happy with it.

And I'm looking where I am now: doing sports, enjoying and throwing parties, keeping in contact with a lot of friends, a lot of whom said me that I have an outgoing personality and charisma... And all of that with almost no time left for TV series or videogames. And I am happy and feel in harmony in this state, too.

These two people don't understand one another and can't comprehend how the other lifestyle can be enjoyable. And I don't really understand how the hell a happy, self-content man can transition from one such state to another - but it happens. In my experience, people do actually change a lot in their lifetime, even if they don't expect it themselves, and one of the most surprising things about this article is how stable the lives of those hikki are over a long amount of time.

</comment><comment><USER18> "New"

I don't want to sound dismissive or anything but I remember discussing this topic in highschool Japanese.. in 2004.

<comment><USER19> Yep, this has been a thing since the early 2000s, if not 90s.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> A manga and amime on the topic: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welcome_to_the_N.H.K](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welcome_to_the_N.H.K).

It gives a good introduction to the topic as well as other Japanese cultural phenomena.

</comment><comment><USER21> I identify with this a lot, even though I go to college and have a job. But it's a very, very thin line between the life I have currently and complete isolation.

</comment><comment><USER22> On HN last month: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13895134](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13895134)

<comment><USER23> Seems like this topic is pretty popular on HN for some reason.

<comment><USER24> /s/</comment></comment></comment>


FBI Breaks into iPhone. We Have Some Questions - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/03/fbi-breaks-iphone-and-we-have-some-questions <comment><USER2> Most likely it's already been fixed.

The iPhone 5C in question uses an A6 processor. It encrypts data by comingling the passcode with the unique device ID to create a a strong 256-bit key, so you can't just pull and brute force the flash memory chip. Meanwhile the OS will wipe the key if you guess a wrong passcode too many times, making the data forever inaccessible.

However there is one vulnerability with the A6 that some have theorized.[1] If you could somehow get around the wiping part, you could keep guessing passcodes. A typical 4 or 6 digit passcode could be guessed in under a day. So it may be possible to copy the flash memory into a soldered-in test rig that is effectively wipe-proof. It would restore the contents every time it's wiped. So that's the best guess I know of for what happened here.

But starting with the A7 Apple added the secure enclave. This now enforces at the hardware level an escalating time delay with each wrong passcode guess. It goes all the way up to a one hour delay.[2] That's also where the (unreadable) unique device ID resides, so there's no swapping out the processor with a rig. The key is forever wedded to this protection against brute forcing.

That is pretty darn spiffy from a security standpoint. If it works as designed, about the only hope anyone has of getting at data from an A7 or later device is through iCloud backups.[3]

[1] [https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-future/one-fbis-major- claims-...](https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-future/one-fbis-major-claims- iphone-case-fraudulent) see also [http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2014/10/why-cant- app...](http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2014/10/why-cant-apple- decrypt-your-iphone.html)

[2] [https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf](https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf)

[3] Either that or some kind of peek into the secure enclave. It's specifically designed to inhibit this at a hardware level, but perhaps a nation-state could figure it out (e.g. verrrrry carefully grinding it down without destroying it and looking at state with an electron microscope).

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't assume that nation-state attackers would be thwarted by the Secure Enclave. Organizations which can deploy taps on undersea fiber optic cables from nuclear submarines, attack centrifuges deep inside air-gapped underground nuclear facilities, etc would likely be able to mount the kinds of specialized attacks needed to break into HW trusted computing models.

Something that is tamper-resistant isn't tamper-proof.

It will likely take some time to develop a capacity to attack these chips, but it is not impossible in principle nor intractable.

<comment><USER2> Hey, I updated my comment with a footnote on exactly that. Not sure if you saw it. I agree it may be possible to develop an attack against the secure enclave with a big enough budget and access to lots of sample chips to practice on. But keep in mind secure enclaves are designed to self-destruct under these circumstances, so I almost think it may entail pushing the frontier of electron microscopy and/or techniques for exposing it that are more delicate that grinding down the chip.

In other words yes, I'd bet money there's a "secure enclaves" team at the NSA with a few million bucks to play with. Or teams.

<comment><USER3> Another possibility is a tailored-access type attack further upstream the supply chain. For example, Apple relies on Samsung or TSMC to fab chips. It's possible the chips could be modified before manufacture, or after, to contain a flaw. I've read about such attacks demonstrated in principle already. There was a worry about the Chinese government executing such attacks for example.

One of the downsides of the way global manufacturing works today that there's so many stages in which components can be intercepted.

You don't know that the device you bought actually consists of unmodified versions of the components that were part of the original design.

Could the NSA partner with the Korean government and Samsung to put a backdoor into components? I wouldn't rule it out.

<comment><USER4> It would be considerably cheaper to just replicate the ASIC you want to attack in your own silicon.

The secure enclave isn't so magic it's just a secondary processor that handles cryptography it has it's own memory to store variable such as failed attempts.

Attacking the SOC might be more complex and expensive but eventually it's exactly the same as attacking the NAND or any other integrated circuit.

For all we know the NSA could (and most likely does) develop their own in circuit debuggers for common ASIC/SOC's and just dumps what ever unique values the target SOC stores and takes a crack at it. This also isn't out of the realm of possibilities for companies that specialize in in-circuit emulation, hardware design, and forensics to create as a turn key solution.

<comment><USER2> _> it's exactly the same as attacking the NAND or any other integrated circuit_

Not really. Secure enclaves have added defenses that NAND does not. They don't have an API that lets you read their embedded secrets, for instance. You can't just hook up a debugger.

You'd have to try to get at the state of its transistors with an SEM or something. But additionally some have physical defenses against delayering that will self-destruct their contents in the event of a physical compromise. So while I ultimately agree that a nation-state could potentially craft an attack against a specific design, you're understating the difficulty.

<comment><USER4> Hence why I said it was more complex and expensive if you are going to quote some one please do so in full. Additionally NAND doesn't have an "API", NAND mirroring works by desoldering the memory hooking it up to a device and mirroring it to another chip by flagging the mirroring bit.

There are other ways to attack hardware, you do not need to get a SEM(or AFM for that matter). Devices that probe transistors on a microscopic level exist in the industry (e.g. [http://www.tek.com/sites/tek.com/files/media/document/resour...](http://www.tek.com/sites/tek.com/files/media/document/resources/Probing%20Transistors%20App%20Note.pdf)), hence the more complex and expensive part.

<comment><USER2> The tool you linked to actually requires an SEM.

Also, you cannot "desolder" the secure enclave and hook it up to a "mirroring" device. That attack requires the NAND to be encapsulated in a desolder-able memory chip that supports reading out state. Not the case with a secure enclave.

<comment><USER5> The NAND is encapsulated in a desolderable memory chip that supports reading out state. There's an anti-replay counter, but supposedly that's just stored in another external NOR flash chip with the Secure Element having no onboard flash storage at all - the process Apple builds their chips on doesn't support on-chip flash memory even if they wanted it.

<comment><USER2> Interesting. What's your source? Apple's whitepaper suggests otherwise, to my reading:

 _" The device's unique ID (UID) and a device group ID (GID) are AES 256-bit keys fused (UID) or compiled (GID) into the application processor and Secure Enclave during manufacturing."[1]_

What this says to me is that while rewritable data storage is indeed kept in regular commodity flash memory chips, it's all encrypted by a unique device- specific key that _is_ somehow burned into the secure enclave. So that one little secret kept inside the enclave would allow it to store everything else off-chip.

[1] [https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf](https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf)

<comment><USER5> That unique device-specific key provides no protection against replay attacks. So in practice, the newer Apple devices don't appear to provide any more protection against an attacker with physical access than the one that the FBI just cracked - they should be able to get everything they were demanding in their warrant without Apple's help on any iPhone.

<comment><USER2> Maybe I don't understand what you mean by "replay attack" in this context, but the secure enclave does in fact provide protection against brute forcing passcodes. It is detailed in Apple's security whitepaper (see p12). Basically, you have to give the passcode to the secure enclave to get the data decryption key which is derived from the device-specific key contained therein. And the enclave enforces time delays between wrong guesses.

If you can envision a procedure for hacking around this I would love to hear it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Two questions that I still have on this:

(1) Does the public accept that the FBI is even telling the truth on this (i.e., did they actually "break into" this iPhone)?

(2) If they did gain access to the iPhone's info, was it actually through the use of a vulnerability, or did they discover some other info that led them to the passcode?

<comment><USER7> And if they gained access, did they have it all along and lie about it all along? I suspect it is a career-limiting maneuver to prosecute the FBI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've gotten so used to gargantuan lies from both governments and corporations that worst case scenarios now seem the most likely. It's easy for me to believe that apple already did the work with an agreement put in place to keep it all under wraps by having the FBI drop the request.

</comment><comment><USER9> > If the FBI used a vulnerability to get into the iPhone in the San Bernardino > case, the VEP must apply, meaning that there should be a very strong bias in > favor of informing Apple of the vulnerability. That would allow Apple to fix > the flaw and protect the security of all its users. We look forward to > seeing more transparency on this issue as well.

It seems reasonable the FBI could still notify Apple of their method of entry and then later notify the public in time.

The EFF, as much great work as they do, is showing a bit of impatience here. Perhaps they feel they have a bone to pick with the government, as the government seems to feel they have one to pick with tech. Neither party looks great by leveling such public complaints prematurely.

<comment><USER4> The FBI said that they've gained access to the phone via a 3rd party (the 3rd party (who it was, not that one was used) is unconfirmed, potentially cellebrite) so most likely they have no way to inform Apple of anything.

Not to mention that if indeed this was a physical attack NAND mirroring or ASIC replication there isn't really what to inform Apple about.

Apple can't design a chip that wont be borken, all of them including those which use a secure enclave can be broken by physical attacks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The FBI has shot themselves in the foot on this one, if you ask me.

Let me just say at the outset that I am entirely unsympathetic to the FBI with respect to the Apple case. I side with Apple unreservedly. But the FBI started this case because they claimed there was "no other way" to get into the phone. Then, Lo and behold!, it turns out that there was another way.

The next time the FBI tries this, I think the public reaction will be that the FBI can find a way, just like they did the last time. In other words, the FBI is now the Boy Who Cried Wolf.

</comment><comment><USER11> Apparently a 3rd party from Israel ([http://www.cellebrite.com/](http://www.cellebrite.com/) [unconfirmed]) helped the FBI which begs the question, how did they do it? Do they have universal access to all iOS devices or just this particular device?

If there is a known vulnerability, I'm willing to bet Apple will find it rather quickly. I'd imagine Apple has engineers pouring over the source code now.

<comment><USER12> It is not known that Cellebrite helped them. The rumors that they did stem from a contract they have with the FBI that is unrelated.

In fact the contract they have with the FBI doesn't supply anything that can break into an iOS 9 device so unless they had a separate product line not included in a contract only two months old it's unlikely it was them.

<comment><USER4> Cellebrite has allot of products that aren't advertised directly which are provided through their CAIS services (and there are also at least additional 2 unlisted service tiers).

They have allot of turnkey solutions for various markets as mobile forensics is only a part of their portfolio, but quite a few of their forensic services and products are not publicly listed.

*I worked for an Israeli information security firm that is a research partner and service provider for cellebrite.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's going to be amusing when Apple tries to sue the FBI under VEP and they're told pound sand.

<comment><USER14> It'd make great Apple marketing PR though :-)

Did you see Charlie Stross's speculation that from Apple's end this is all about them becoming a retail bank via Apple Pay: [http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog- static/2016/03/follow-t...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog- static/2016/03/follow-the-money-apple-vs-the-.html)

<comment><USER15> Really interesting article, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It doesn't have to be vulnerability to get around it. I think the EFF is a bit too eager here, assuming that encryption is absolute when it is far from it. All encryption gets cracked sooner or later.

</comment><comment><USER17> If the FBI pays a third party to break in, does VEP still apply?

</comment><comment><USER18> FBI allegedly* breaks into iPhone.</comment>


Ask HN: The best books / resources for wanna-be software architects? - <AUTHOR> Hi, I am a software engineer and I would like to become software architect. I am looking for the best books / resources about this topic. Could you please share your propositions? If you ever been in a similar situation in the past, please feel free to share your tips, experiences etc. Thank you! <comment><USER2> Domain-driven design Evolutionary architecture Ship it! Everything by Michael feathers</comment>


How to Make a Giant Bubble - <AUTHOR> https://journals.aps.org/prfluids/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevFluids.5.013304 <comment><USER2> Non-paywall source: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.00537](https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.00537)

The article title is somewhat misleading. The authors have only investigated "the properties of surfactant and polymer solutions commonly used to make giant bubbles with surface areas approaching 100 m^2", and they don't provide any insights as to why giant bubbles are stable. In fact, they don't investigate giant bubbles at all! A clearer title would have been "Shear rheology of soap solutions used for making giant bubbles." But that wouldn't sound half as interesting.</comment>


The Fall of WeWork: How a Startup Darling Came Unglued - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-fall-of-wework-how-a-startup-darling-came-unglued-11571946003?mod=rsswn <comment><USER2> _As he was preparing for an IPO that would make him a billionaire many times over, Mr. Neumann was surfing in the Maldives when executives in New York called to go over the all-important document that would be released to investors. Reluctant to cut his trip short, Mr. Neumann summoned a WeWork underling to the Maldives for an in-person briefing, according to people familiar with the episode._

The We controversy didn't catch my eye at all initially, but this is something else.</comment>


Can you crowdsource a sales team? Yes. - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/can-you-crowdsource-a-sales-team-yes-7000022745/ <comment><USER2> It's the second time I read about LeadGenius on HN and I'm still not clear what they do. A simple example would've gone a long way here.

"Here's this company, Abc, and we helped their sales process by furnishing/prequalifying/cold-calling N leads, of which M has been closed as sales". Something like this.

<comment><AUTHOR> We do lead generation, lead qualification and email (and phone) outreach.

<comment><USER2> Yes, I understand that.

Can you give an example of what this translated to for one of your clients?

<comment><AUTHOR> Here are a couple of case studies on how this works for some of our clients. [http://files.leadgeni.us/CaseStudyCaviar.pdf](http://files.leadgeni.us/CaseStudyCaviar.pdf) and [http://files.leadgeni.us/CaseStudyZenefits.pdf](http://files.leadgeni.us/CaseStudyZenefits.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Would this work for a band, by chance? I spend an inordinate amount of time hunting down, calling, and following up with club owners, HR people (for corporate gigs), and 'regular folks who just want live entertainment for a party'. I would LOVE to be able to outsource this drudgery to someone else, so long as they can get the same or better results than me doing it myself.

<comment><AUTHOR> There is no reason this won't work for a band. Your use case is actually pretty exactly what most startups use it for. If you fill this form out someone will get in touch with you on Monday. [https://fairtradework.wufoo.com/forms/thanks-for- contacting-...](https://fairtradework.wufoo.com/forms/thanks-for-contacting- leadgenius/)

<comment><USER3> Done. I'm always looking for ways of making drudgery less hateful :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The biggest issue that I see with crowd sourcing your sales team is that you lose control of interactions with your client. How can you ensure that your temp sales team isn't making long term promises that you can't fulfill? They don't care because they are already thinking about their next gig.

<comment><AUTHOR> Leadgenius is not designed to replace your sales person. You can outsource everything via leadgenius except the final deal making. We will get the client on phone with you and after that it's your gig.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> How is this different from affiliate marketing? Does this involve offline sales too? Is this just a sales rep jobs board or a hand holding affiliate marketing site (at a flat fee)? The use of the word virtual is a bit confusing here and I am not really sure what it means. Honestly in reading the article all I saw were a bunch of buzzwords.

<comment><USER5> OK, I think I understand what they do now. From the FAQ: "LeadGenius is a service from MobileWorks" Then to the source ([https://www.mobileworks.com](https://www.mobileworks.com)): "We recruit workers, run interviews, and ensure projects are done with the highest quality – automatically."

So, basically Lead Genius is an inbound marketing channel for Mobile Works for the sales customer segment.

<comment><USER6> yup that sounds about right. looks like they're allowing to you hire partial FTEs for sales support.</comment></comment></comment>


The Personal Side of a Bootstrapped Startup - <AUTHOR> http://arcware.net/the-personal-side-of-a-bootstrapped-startup/

<comment><USER2> Having bootstrapped my own business, my biggest issues were dealing with stress and 'the unknown'. I was unmarried at the time so I could handle the pay decrease and living without niceties.

Cash flow was always on my mind - if a client postponed payment, or flat out refused to pay for whatever reason (happened to me a few times, even from 'established' clients) I would be mentally overloaded trying to figure out how to get by for the month.

You go through such a roller coaster ride of emotion - There is no better feeling of joy and accomplishment than having a client sign a contract and pay with a nice check; there is no worse feeling than sitting at your desk, staring at the wall trying to figure out how you'll pay the bills for the month...

Anyhow, I would never trade the experience for anything, though I'm not sure if I could have handled it if I were married at the time; I would echo Dave's sentiment that bootstrapping is hard but also extremely rewarding. You'll come out a tougher SOB for it, thats for sure! ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree that the experience is worth it. I'm currently in it with a wife and 3 kids, and I wouldn't trade it for anything right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Good job pointing out the effect on your family. Bootstrapping is more than just a pay cut when your spouse and/or children will be affected as well. Discussing the potential risks with them is 100% necessary before taking a major leap.

<comment><USER4> So how many bootstrappers have spouses and families? Seems to me like the kind of risk that's easier to take for those who are younger and/or have fewer responsibilities.

Also, how many boostrappers make lifestyle changes months before they leave their day job for the uncertainty of boostrapping? I would imagine you'd want to have enough saved for 6 months of expenses (the general rule of thumb for anyone actually) and an idea of what your new life is really going to be like.

<comment><USER3> I'm not married yet, but live with my girlfriend, so it's a similar situation. She's OK with my trying to bootstrap it and also offered to help me with my share of the rent, if necessary, for a month or two. She doesn't make enough to support the two of us indefinitely, but it's helpful to have somebody else with more stable income. The other nice thing about having a spouse (that I can't cash in on yet since we're not married) is that you can use their health benefits, which will get you better coverage and save you money.

Having kids changes the equation altogether. If I had kids, there's no way I'd try what I'm doing now with as little safety net.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure I understand the pay cut part. Why not start it up on the side and keep your regular job until it grows big enough to replace your existing salary? If it fails then you can just keep doing what you were doing before. Seems less risky and stressful than going all in on something you're unsure about.

<comment><AUTHOR> Trying to get your startup going on the side while maintaining your current job is certainly an attractive option for many people. But the risk with that approach is that the startup never gets launched and off the ground. They tend to stall and stall and stall, all because they have that big safety net of their current job and salary. It can work, but not always.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would also add: how well do you handle rejection and failure?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good call. If you're not used to failing, and failing often, then this isn't for you.

<comment><USER7> Though on the other hand, how else do you learn?

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair enough, but you can fail in something other than a bootstrapped startup and learn from it, all without risking your own personal stress, finances, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you're in a position to try starting your own company, you're already in a position of great privilege. Either do it, or don't do it, but don't complain.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure if this was meant for me or not, but I hope I didn't come off as complaining in that post. I just wanted to make sure people thought about the personal side of things before diving into it. People tend to overlook the spouse's point of view, and I wanted to make sure I pointed that out.

<comment><USER9> I don't think it came off like that at all. I think you sounded realistic and pragmatic.

My spouse does add extra pressure, though not on purpose...it's just there. However, I'm permanently unemployable, so what else can I do? :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As far as bootstrapped startups go I can say one thing -> they suck.

When you're in that spot where you don't really know which bill to pay this month and which can probably wait a little while longer, all the while you're asking the bank to extend the limit on your bank account and trying to look all "Yeah hey, I sure as fuck am making enough money to pay for this! Yeah!" ...

... it's not a fun place to be.

But on the other hand, it's a whole lot more fun than when I had a somewhat cushy job as a webdev doing repetitive mindnumbingly horrible things for an advertising agency.

<comment><USER11> I think there is another way to look at it -> Bootstrapping allows you to stay in control.

You get to decide how many financial sacrifices you take for your business. We do 3 days of contracting and spend another 3 days working on our product. Yes, this even includes one "free" day on a regular basis.

I don't even think it hurts our progress that much. Personally I couldn't focus on a business while not being able to pay my bills.

Being limited on time, but having a little extra cash has been a very good combination for us so far. We spend our time efficiently, and we can sometimes hire people to help us with stuff we're not good at.

Note: I live in a nice big place in Berlin paying most expenses for myself and my girlfriend (she is studying). Not fancy, but certainly not sacrificing anything either. (YMMV, especially in a more expensive city or with kids)</comment></comment>


Postmates launches Amazon Prime-style subscription service - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/31/postmates-launches-amazon-prime-style-subscription-service-hits-1-million-monthly-deliveries/ <comment><USER2> > "Postmates is limiting the free deliveries to orders over $30, which make up > about 50% of the orders"

1\. I guess as a single person, I don't fall in this 50%. I never have orders that large, which makes this service something I'm obviously not that interested in. They should have made it appeal to all 100% of their users, like Amazon Prime. They could have made it so it was free delivery based on just select places where it made sense. Why cut off 50% of your user base for the subscription service?

> "..free delivery on all orders from over 3,000 Plus merchants..."

2\. This is incredibly misleading. "over 3,000" has to refer to their entire market because here in Chicago, I've only ever seen about 10-15 places that show up in the "Plus" section. That's a pretty limited amount of restaurants in the "Plus". That list has also only changed maybe once or twice in the months they have had "Plus". And it's a very small variety (of honestly, not that amazing places). I wonder with the addition of this service they actually end up beefing that number up in their various markets because right now, that stat is just marketing fluff.

As you can see on my two points above, I'm not sold this is going to play out anywhere as well as Amazon Prime did. I bet they see a pretty slow adoption rate on this until they make it much more compelling. Or I also assume a lot of people are going to sign up for this only to be disappointed by the lack of options I mentioned in my 2nd note above. They are definitely marketing it in a misleading way.

Also, it's worth mentioning that Postmates has one of the worst custom support teams I've ever seen. On two separate occasions I have sent an order issues support ticket to never get a response back. Which was even more frustrating when it said they always get back to you within 24 hours after I submitted the issues. I had to eventually complain about it on Twitter before I finally got a reply from them. Quite the bummer.

EDIT: I do want to add a quick note to this. While I'm very critical above, I do indeed think Postmates has the best UX and app of the similar services available. Once they can just iron out some of the kinks I mentioned above, I think the potential of the service is indeed high.

<comment><USER3> Postmates Co-founder here:

1\. We will bring this down over time, give us a few weeks. ;)

2\. We have over 3,000 Plus merchants across the markets we're operating in. I can't think of a direct competitor who has more and we're adding many, many every week.

3\. Our customer service has been suffering lately - this is a totally valid point. At some point we didn't catch up well enough with our growth. I'm personally working with the team and we're doing many things to improve this. I hope we can move the needle here soon.

<comment><USER2> I appreciate the (quick) response, bastian! I do like the UX of Postmates, and I hope this subscription service ends up panning out well for everyone! I don't think I'm in that target market for the subscription service just yet, but I will be excited when I am! Hoping you can ramp up the CX side of things, too. Best of luck to you and your team!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Between my wife and myself, I've ordered from Postmates over a hundred times. But we barely use the service anymore because it has gotten so unreliable.

Even aside from the frequent "No Postmates are available", a large number of orders have issues, from excessive delays to missing items to even orders that don't show up. And while they eventually get taken care of by customer support, after waiting for two hours for dinner only to find out it's not coming, getting a refund is small consolation.

(I almost feel like sometime last year they switched to a model where the delivery person places the order instead of a call center. If that's true, it would help explain the drop in timeliness).

So while the app UX is decent the overall user experience leaves a lot to be desired.

I realize it's a different model, but we have way better luck with caviar.

<comment><USER3> I 100% agree. We faced some pretty crazy challenges in scaling our support team. Placing orders from over 50K merchants (per month) is not a simple task BUT i'm not trying to find excuses here. We're doing the right things and they will hopefully move the needle. If you order from our Plus merchants, the order is placed electronically and this reduces the error rate drastically. Email me at: firstname.lastname@example.com and i will mark your account with a free subscription so you can try it out.

<comment><USER5> I say this having ordered probably 1000+ times through Postmates: It's not about the merchant. It's about the delivery.

Your dispatch system needs an overhaul. It has improved again lately but there was a period of several months when not a single Postmates delivery went right for me, and I'm in SOMA, and only order from restaurants around here.

I used to be 100% Postmates, spending maybe $2k/m but now I'm this:

      IF HOT FOOD REQUIRED:
        IS AVAILABLE ON UBER EATS:
          UBER EATS
        ELSE
          POSTMATES
      ELSE
        DOORDASH

UberEats is unfortunately a much better experience than Postmates now. :/

<comment><USER3> I can guarantee you that we will be relentless in improving dispatch, ordering and customer service. Recent changes dropped our average delivery times. In April we will switch to an auto-accept mode for all deliveries and we will also aggressively target faster pick-up times. Sorry we've let you down pbarnes.

<comment><USER5> Eh, dispatch is hard, especially for what I guess is 95%+ food orders where the difference between happy and unhappy is 10-15 minutes.

I used to work for a large courier company writing dispatch algos so... pet peeve. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > In order not to lose money, Postmates is limiting the free deliveries to > orders over $30, which make up about 50% of the orders on Postmates.

New employee here (just joined this week) -- one of the things that I find so compelling about Postmates is that it's focused on building a profitable business, without having to subsidize orders.

<comment><USER7> > one of the things that I find so compelling about Postmates is that it's > focused on building a profitable business, without having to subsidize > orders.

So, like...ummm... a real business?

<comment><USER8> Don't tell anyone but that's kind of unusual around these parts.

<comment><USER9> This must be the secret sauce I keep hearing about!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The article mentions "merchant" over and over again and never "restaurant". Does this mean Postmates has shifted its focus away from restaurants?

Edit: thanks for the replies below. Restaurants are the vendors where I most often find myself wanting something very specific delivered in a timely manner and been willing to pay a small premium - Postmates serves this use case better than any other service - glad to hear you will continue to support it even as you invest in other markets as well!

<comment><USER11> Disclosure: I am on the B.D & partnerships team on Postmates.

We haven't shifted focus away from restaurants. We have about 3000 Plus partners today of which a majority are restaurants. We've always done more than restaurants. Food is most of what we do but there are also grocery, apparel, electronics, essentials retailers on Postmates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I feel like uber deliveries, postmates, amazon prime, google express are all converging towards similar business models.

<comment><USER13> I'd say Amazon Prime is a different animal entirely, but Prime Now and all those other businesses are all focused on building a new "last-mile" delivery model (with some nuances around point-to-point delivery vs warehouse fulfillment)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I feel like Postmates will be acquired by Amazon or Google. Then again DoorDash intended to do more than food in the beginning, so I wouldn't be surprised to see them challenge Postmates soon.

</comment><comment><USER15> Correct me if I'm wrong, but you can only upgrade to this service of PostMates if you have an iPhone? That seems kinda odd...

</comment><comment><USER16> I went to postmates.com and saw they supported Boston. Great! So I enter my address, and then get an error message saying they don't support my area, why don't I browse their list of current cities - which includes Boston. Is there a map somewhere of the subset of Boston they actually support?

<comment><USER17> [http://zones.postmates.com/](http://zones.postmates.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Anyone have any math on how many orders / how much you would have to spend a month to make this worthwhile?</comment>


I'm sad because you don't upgrade your browser! - <AUTHOR> http://www.internetexplorertan.com/home

<comment><AUTHOR> If you spoof your user agent, or use IE11, you don't get redirected to the "crying" page (the page uses 301 redirection BTW).

      Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko

Also worth noting, an excerpt from the IE blog[1]:

      Obviously, maintaining Compatibility View Lists requires a significant investment
      on the part of the IE team—resources which could be used to implement more
      new standards, performance improvements, etc. Please please please: use
      feature detection rather than User-Agent sniffing.

If the IE team doesn't want people to use UA sniffing, they should teach by example.

[1]: [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ieinternals/archive/2013/09/21/inter...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ieinternals/archive/2013/09/21/internet- explorer-11-user-agent-string-ua-string-sniffing-compatibility-with-gecko- webkit.aspx)</comment>


Trump's favorite tech company could win TikTok - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/how-trumps-favorite-tech-company-could-win-tiktok-7a42b950-e0a5-446d-b49e-21edd083d116.html <comment><USER2> I can't think of a faster way to kill a trendy app's popularity than getting bought by Oracle.

<comment><USER3> At least the user base for this app's reaction will be "Who?" rather than the more appropriate "We should leave. Now."

<comment><USER4> They'd probably keep the majority of users by leading with "from the company who brought you Minecraft's Java"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It would be hilarious and speak to the dysfunction of every part of this situation if Oracle ended up owning tiktok.

<comment><USER6> It really isn't hilarious. This is how the US loses its long-term reputation as a level playing field for business, a great place to work/set up shop, etc.

This whole process has been unbelievable. The president dusts off some obscure law to ban or block tiktok. Now a forced sale is about to happen and the administration gets a say in who buys it? And they want some kind of finder's fees!?

This stuff isn't supposed to happen in the US! We aren't Zimbabwe, with a dictator who runs around with suitcases full of cash making no compunction about awarding contracts to people closest to him! This is major, high-level corruption! Are we going to start judging other M&A deals by who donates the most to a campaign?

This whole thing is just a huge, stinking, disorderly mess. We can't decide whether we're going to ban Huawei or not. Then the whole mess with ZTE. Now Tiktok. It's capricious and corrosive to the rule of law. And what's worse, not only is it ham-fisted, but this administration makes such a big deal out of "freedom", when having a president stepping in like this is anything BUT freedom -- it is the very antithesis of it, where winners and losers are decided based on personal favorites?

<comment><USER7> _This is major, high-level corruption!_

It's not. The CCP is not playing by the rules. It's not a recent thing. It's been going on for ages. Stop defending CCP companies. We're not talking about EU, Japan, Indian, Australian, etc. companies. Stop conflating this with _lack of freedom_.

If you want to be mad at someone, be mad at the CCP and their absolute disdain for the rules by which everyone is playing.

 _We can 't decide whether we're going to ban Huawei or not._

Of course we can. It's another CCP tool. We ban it. That's it.

 _This whole thing is just a huge, stinking, disorderly mess._

Only because you chose to make everything related to Trump _a mess_. Remove Trump from the equation, judge those companies for what they are: the leading edge in CCP cyberwarfare and espionage,

<comment><USER8> > Of course we can. It's another CCP tool. We ban it. That's it.

This is how to conflict quickly.

<comment><USER7> We are at conflict already. It's not standard engagement. It's not even Cold War engagement (yet). But there's definitely a war being fought in some fronts. Propaganda and economy, among others. And Huawei/ZTE/TikTok are the tip of the spear.

We may as wait for another 40 years till the CCP is prepared enough so no one can stop them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't know what Oracle is thinking, I mean, aside from everything else. Buying a consumer-oriented company would run counter to all their strategy for the past 40 years, I don't know how they can feel confident in their ability to manage such a business.

Well, it could be one way to get a big customer onto Oracle Cloud.

</comment><comment><USER10> Everyone who doesn't understand why this makes a ton of sense for Oracle, and why they should fight to win the deal, has clearly never heard of Datalogix. (The fact that nobody discusses this point in the tech press shows just how terrible they are at doing their jobs, but I digress.)

<comment><USER11> Given that Oracle has never run a large b2c application before and its lifeblood is enterprise b2b, I don't see how this synergy is even worth mentioning. Obviously there's a lot of money to be made in an application like tikok, the question is if you can run it and maintain it's brand successfully. Anyone familiar with Oracle is going to question that and that's what the journalism is going to reflect. A synergy with a data collection company (a b2b company they bought), isn't particularly worth mentioning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The question then is will Oracle kill TikTok like Solaris?

</comment><comment><USER13> Why does this make sense for Oracle?

</comment><comment><USER14> The TikTok/Trump battle has been great for schadenfreude lovers. Adding Oracle and Larry Ellison into the mix makes for three players that I'm happy to see in this battle of dysfunction, losing money.

</comment><comment><USER15> As much as I dislike Trump, I hate polarizing headlines that have no evidence in the article to back it up. They merely say that the administration _could_ have power over the choice of acquirer through CFIUS. That Ellison is a donor to the Trump campaign so theoretically that could make Trump like them. But it's all hypothetical and not backed in evidence.

This is the type of journalism that is killing trust in professional news organizations today. It's exhausting and I am sick of it.

<comment><USER16> Indeed, whenever a headline contains "Trump" and "could"; I just automatically tune out. Same as for headlines ending with a "?", you know that it'll be speculation that is unlikely to be true or relevant in any way.

<comment><USER17> Spectacle is not the only motive for journalism like this. Speculation about presidential conflicts of interest is valuable and relevant to national discourse because the public's reaction to their existence directly impacts their power.

<comment><USER15> That's great if it is presented as speculation. But with clickbait headlines and initial paragraphs that make it sound like fact and that direct evidence is found is just bad reporting.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The U.S. is spending millions to solve mystery sonic attacks on diplomats - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/90286767/the-u-s-is-spending-millions-to-solve-mystery-sonic-attacks-on-diplomats <comment><USER2> My personal opinion is that the so-called 'sonic attacks' are actually work- related injuries caused by something being used WITHIN the US diplomatic missions.

The finger has been pointed both at sound weapons and at microwave weapons, but nothing external to the diplomatic missions has been detectable. Hardly the situation if the weapons are as powerful as has been described.</comment>


Ask HN: idea for an android app - <AUTHOR>

hi everyone this summer i want to practice building android apps but don't really have any idea
so i'd  like to ask the HN community about somme ideas to make.
 i'll publish it on the android store for free and the source code on github <comment><USER2>
      > don't really have any idea

First try and figure out what will motivate you enough to keep working on the app, and then pick an idea that fits with your motivation.

For example, I'm very motivated by user feedback, and I'm just not as interested in coding things that are just for myself or are hidden away on a server. So I tend to enjoy working on things that others will use, like user interfaces or APIs.

Things that I've seen motivate others are:

      * optimizing performance
      * making money
      * solving their own problems
      * working with large data sets
      * graphics and games
      * working with hardware
      * working with real-time data

You definitely don't need to come up with an original idea.</comment>


Let's Publish Everything - <AUTHOR> https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/05/29/lets-publish-everything/ <comment><USER2> The lede got buried here. This article does not just propose "let's publish everything", it proposes "let's publish everything and have endorsement as a completely separate step." I think that is a far more rational approach than the current model. The current model assumes that the only way to distribute information is by printing on paper. That is clearly no longer the case, in fact it is a laughable assumption. So let's get the papers published online, and then separately have discussions leading to various kinds of endorsements. Or not, depending on the strength of the arguments.

</comment><comment><USER3> The same thing is trying to happen in scientific publication that's been happening in every other published medium: scarcity is gone. So why not embrace the abundance? Well if there's any contrary case to be made, it's that the explosion in quantity inevitably reduces the average quality. In the arts, low quality corresponds to that ineffable quality of _shittiness_. In news, it's fakeness. In science, it's irreproducibility. So what do you do? All the former built-in scarcity-based ways of filtering for quality went out the window along with the scarcity itself. You can no longer use the limited space on physical sheets of papyrus (or vinyl LP records, or celluloid) as an excuse to exclude things. So you need new ways of sorting out good quality work from the (suddenly vast) quantities of mediocre work. Seems like you're doing pretty well if you're lucky enough to have a whole new class of people step in to help with the filtering part. Unless of course you believe a scientific discovery is fundamentally the work of a person, an ego, rather than a fact that existed long before that particular person happened to discover it.

Democratization ends elitism; unfortunately elites sometimes really do consist of the best of a given thing. Especially newer elites. Every elite starts out as a meritocracy and ends up some kind of weird legacy-based cabal/cartel that deserves to be overthrown (that's the one you're probably accustomed to thinking of when you hear the term "elitism").

<comment><USER4> (I agree with the parent poster, but this seems like the right place to add the following.)

One thing that people who claim "the scarcity is gone, let's just publish everything" do miss is that there still is a scarcity: The time and attention of researchers.

Let me expand a bit on that from my own field of studying reconnection in astrophysical plasma. As you can tell from the description it is not a well defined closed topic. Instead there is tons of more or less adjacent fields. The study of solar flares (which might be triggered by reconnection), the study of coronal heating (the heat might be due to magnetic field getting converted to heat by reconnection), astronomical observations of AGN jets (reconnection might be what produces energetic particles there that we see in the SDE of those sources), observations of pulsar wind nebulae (the energetic particles there might have been accelerated at the termination shock. or due to reconnection), observations of giant pulses in (some) pulsars (that might be due to reconnection at the Y point of the current sheet just outside the light cylinder) and so on. On top of the related physical topics I need to keep on top of development methods in the simulation method I use (particle in cell codes) and in several related simulation methods (either because improvements there might make them viable to study reconnection which wasn't possible before, or because the neat new trick in method X might also improve the characteristics in PiC codes).

If I wanted to I could spend easily 100 hours per week just reading papers. But staying current with the field is just 5 or maybe 10 percent of my job. So what I do is the following: Papers that fall close enough to my special topic I will read. All of them. I will actually print them out, annotate them, go over them with a fine toothed comb. For many other papers I will read the abstracts (10 to 50 each morning) to find the 1 or 2 paper that are worth reading. And this is where selection by the editors and limitations to publications come in. They rank important papers. I am much more likely to read "a novel approach to plasma simulation" if it was accepted into the Astrophysical Journal than if it just appears on ArXiv. Because ApJ does not like pure code papers. So if it made the cut 2 or 3 experts in the field deemed it worth the time of the community.

Now that doesn't mean that all ArXiv papers are bad, that we should publish less or anything like that. When I talk to a colleague and ask about a technical detail I am SOOOO happy when they say "it's in the Arxiv paper ID 1906.bla". And on the other hand there is the notion of "it was in Nature but it still might be right". Bottom line is:

Do not discount the sorting by topic (numerical vs observational vs theoretical), impact ("here is one data point" vs "here is a completely new approach") and quality ("I'm not too convinced, but maybe it gives somebody an idea" vs "holy smokes how did we all miss that!") that journals provide. Any better, future alternative needs this sorting and ranking. Just dumping it onto the internet is not the solution.

<comment><USER5> Interesting. This seems to correlate almost exactly with discovery in music streaming too. Given the torrent of new music available, how do you discover the new music that you like?

At the moment, AI is doing a pretty bad job of this - my Spotify Discover Weekly is an interesting listen, but I know it's not the best selection of new music out there suited to my tastes (to be fair, it's not really trying to be that, though). My "recommended" list on Netflix bores me. I get why they're recommending them, but it's all things that I've seen and rejected from My List, rather than things that I would find genuinely new and interesting.

I think this is the next big problem to solve, for everyone. The combination of Discoverability (how do I get my music/paper/novel/art/film discovered by the audience of people who will like it?) and Search (how do I find new music/papers/novels/art/film that suit my tastes/research subject?).

<comment><USER6> Way back it was always through word of mouth that one discovered things. I still hold it true. You may have 10 friends how have their nieche and once in a while they recommend something they think you want to listen to.

I think that the music matter more based on whom recommended it. An algorithm won't have the same effect. It's missing the storyline on how you ended up with watching x movie or listening to y song.

<comment><USER5> really good point. There are a number of bands that I listened to (and ended up liking) purely because of who told me about them.

<comment><USER6> I think the same applies to most stuff. Your idols influence alot. I see this as the best reason to not rely purely on algorithms.

Producing playlists is also a sort of art.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> >>> Publishing in Psychological Science and PNAS has value because these journals reject a lot of papers.

That seems to be the crux - scientific papers will have to fall into two camps "blogs or basically deciphering the lab notes of everyone in your field" and "look this is a real effect and worthy of your attention"

People seem to want the second without wading through the first - but i don't think you can

<comment><USER8> For PNAS, I've heard, getting sponsored by a NAS member greatly increases chances for publication. So it seems an odd example to cite for "value".

<comment><USER9> Its more that NAS members can publish some articles basically for free, so co- authoring with them is a good way to get in easier.

That being said, NAS members I know do not want to erode their reputation by publishing junk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am in sympathy with the author's goals but the major problem with publishing everything on arXiv like forums is that: (i) it becomes impossible to sort out the good stuff from the nonsense produced by cranks, and (ii) it unfairly advantages "high profile" groups.

Today, if I have a grad student interested in security who wants some ideas for things to work on, I could ask them to go look up papers in Oakland, CCS and NDSS over the last couple of years and see if anything catches their fancy. This works because there's a reasonable number of papers that I could reasonably expect a PhD student to look through. Asking them to look up all the stuff that ends up on arXiv or the IACR's ePrints is not reasonable. There's just too much stuff there and most of it is not worth looking at that.

So, you might say the endorsements will take care of this. CCS et al. could just endorse some limited subset of the IACR ePrints. But this leads to problem (ii) above. Right now, we have a bunch of high-profile researchers (who are mostly at places like MIT and Stanford) who just put up stuff on arXiv without any peer review and they start picking-up citations right away because of their "elite" status. Some of this is deserved, because these people have done good work. But some of this is also just a publication cartel where everybody cites their friends' work and make it impossible for others to break into a field.

The larger point is that in a scenario where there are so many papers that nobody could possibly look at all of them will lead to a few groups accumulating all the citations and all the awards. This will especially be unfair to researchers in the developing world -- people at places like Bilikent, Tsinghua, and the IITs -- where researchers don't have the PR muscle power to highlight unpublished stuff.

<comment><USER11> > I could ask them to go look up papers in Oakland, CCS and NDSS over the last > couple of years and see if anything catches their fancy.

Isn't this exactly the major thing that is wrong with research today? Limiting work/creativity to a few well known conferences done by elites for elites? I read blog posts, posted daily here on HN, that are way more informative, honest, and replicable than many papers published in the three conferences you named.

> "elite" status. Some of this is deserved, because these people have done > good work. But some of this is also just a publication cartel where > everybody cites their friends' work and make it impossible for others to > break into a field.

Elite status happens exactly because there are conferences like the ones you mentioned. If you work with an advisor that publishes in Oakland, your chances of getting a paper in Oakland gets increased multiplicatively. And hint, that's not because your ideas (or papers) are better than anybody else's.

> The larger point is that in a scenario where there are so many papers that > nobody could possibly look at all of them will lead to a few groups > accumulating all the citations and all the awards.

This is already happening. Look at all the "prestigious" conferences.

> where researchers don't have the PR muscle power to highlight unpublished > stuff.

Who cares? If the work is worth anything, people will cite it. If not, it will remain as is. Why does it matter? Why do you care if 10 people cited your work or 100 people if you are happy with the work?

Unfortunately, nobody in this forsaken field (computer science) cares about the scientific aspect of the field anymore; everybody wants their name to be known and that's all there is to it. The measure of success is how many papers you publish in elite conferences ...

I do actually think that by breaking down all the barriers people care less about having their name in conference X or Y and more about the scientific aspect or citation cartels. First one is good, second one can be fixed (at least more easily than giving a few elites lots of power with no checks and balances).

<comment><USER10> > Isn't this exactly the major thing that is wrong with research today? > Limiting work/creativity to a few well known conferences done by elites for > elites? I read blog posts, posted daily here on HN, that are way more > informative, honest, and replicable than many papers published in the three > conferences you named.

I totally disagree. The quality of papers at the "elite" conferences is way higher than most things I've read on HN. What is an example of an HN post that in your opinion is better than equivalent academic research in that area?

> Elite status happens exactly because there are conferences like the ones you > mentioned. If you work with an advisor that publishes in Oakland, your > chances of getting a paper in Oakland gets increased multiplicatively. And > hint, that's not because your ideas (or papers) are better than anybody > else's.

Sure, having an advisor on the Oakland PC helps a great deal. But it doesn't follow that your work is just the same as everyone else. Have you peer reviewed papers for these conferences? A majority of submissions, even at the "elite" conferences are just junk. That doesn't mean everything that gets published is not junk, but the stuff that does get published is significantly better than the average submission.

> Who cares? If the work is worth anything, people will cite it. If not, it > will remain as is. Why does it matter? Why do you care if 10 people cited > your work or 100 people if you are happy with the work?

Because the point of my research is not to sit in an ivory tower and produce academese that no one cares about. The goal is to have real impact on computer system design, and in my specific case, push practitioners towards methodologies that make systems more secure. That's not going to happen if no one reads our work.

Another way of looking at it is that a lot of our work is funded by taxpayer money. They aren't paying us to have fun proving lemmas that no one else cares about, the taxpayer would like us to produce research that results in tangible improvements in computer system design. In the system that we have today, the only way to have this tangible impact is to produce high quality papers that other people read, cite and build on top of.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I believe that there is a misunderstanding regarding the role of academic publishing. Before the Internet era, the only way to make your work known to other scientists was to publish it in a journal—prestigious if possible. Journals were a medium to spread scientific information and make it _available_.

Nowadays the situation is very much different. For example, there are preprint repositories such as arXiv where researchers can publish papers with very little oversight[1]. The journals don't serve the role of making information _available_ anymore. Their main role is to act as a _filter_ for scientific information, and the reputation of a journal signals whether it's a high-pass or a low-pass filter. Researchers want to publish in prestigious journals since it signals that their work is high quality, and it gives greater exposure to their work—prestigious journals have a broader reader base than unknown journals.

This considered, the author got a point. In experimental domains of science such as Biology, Physics, Chemistry, Psychology (and sometimes even Math! [2]), reproducibility is of paramount importance and publishing negative results helps both researchers save time by not doing repeated work and avoid statistical bias in meta studies.

In fact, what the author of this article implicitly looks for already exists![3] But they usually fail to gain traction, and this for a precise reason: writing and publishing a paper takes a great amount of time. Publishing a paper in favor of the null hypothesis usually does not bring much recognition, and the time could instead be used to research or write the next paper.

What can be done then? A solution could be to create a platform where scientific _results_ can be made available without the whole publishing overload. No literature review, no verbose explanations, only "what we did" and "what we got". And if possible, in a machine-readable format. Any fellow HNers?

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArXiv#Controversy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArXiv#Controversy)

[2] [https://arxiv.org/abs/1201.0749](https://arxiv.org/abs/1201.0749)

[3] [http://www.jasnh.com/](http://www.jasnh.com/)

</comment><comment><USER13> It's a good idea, but without scarcity and the attendant prestige of being a reviewer for fancy publications, how do you get people to volunteer their time to review and endorse papers?

</comment><comment><USER14> _> the authors of the above article, and other people who present similar anti-replication arguments_

Study replication is good, and fairly rare.</comment>


Passfindr – Secure all your passwords, bookmarks, notes and more in one place - <AUTHOR> https://passfindr.com <comment><USER2> Because putting on your eggs in the basket is a good idea.

There is no way sites like this get hacked.... [https://www.hackread.com/lastpass-hacked-this-time-for- good/](https://www.hackread.com/lastpass-hacked-this-time-for-good/) [https://www.pcworld.com/article/3185731/lastpass-is- scrambli...](https://www.pcworld.com/article/3185731/lastpass-is-scrambling- to-fix-another-serious-vulnerability.html#tk.rss_all)

<comment><AUTHOR> Auto filling passwords is pretty convenient but every password manager user needs to find the balance between automatism and security. Browser extensions may not be the best thing out there when it comes to information security. We decided to not support auto filling with Passfindr and rely on copy/paste. It's easy to use and works on all platforms.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: awesome web-based documentation? - <AUTHOR> We're currently rewriting our documentation for Zencoder, and are looking for examples of good web-based docs. For example, I still use Slicehost tutorials for Linux work (http://articles.slicehost.com); they're really well done how-to guides for web hosting and linux sysadmin work.<p>Any other examples of good doc systems, or tips for creating effective documentation? <comment><USER2> <http://us3.php.net/strstr> -> The php docs have one redeeming quality that I wish all of them had: comments! Whenever there is odd behavior, a gotcha, a pitfall, it's always in the comments. No need to trawl through blogs and mailing lists.

<comment><USER3> I agree, and have an additional comment:

If the comments become part of the documentation, then you need to ruthlessly edit them to remove incorrect advice, duplication, and redundancy. If you simply leave everything there forever, then the comments become worthless. Integrity of information is everything.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. It would also be worth considering using Stack Overflow-style voting for comments.

<comment><USER2> Pet weekend project / software as a service?

<comment><USER5> I know with Disqus comments you can sort by Most Popular or Highest Rated. Not sure if you can default to one of those.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Flask's documentation is my favorite. I sat down and read all of it one night just because it was so beautiful and readable.

<http://flask.pocoo.org/>

<comment><USER7> Another vote for Flask. The Sintra docs are also quite good. <http://www.sinatrarb.com/documentation>

<comment><USER8> Related to Sinatra, the Padrino docs and guides are really good. On top of reference style documentation, guides and tutorials like the ones at <http://guides.rubyonrails.org/> that are topic based are really helpful

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is my favorite documentation... <http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/>

The table of contents dropdown tab at the top is a cool way to organize the different categories of information... the styling of the docs is also consistent and easily legible

</comment><comment><USER10> CodeIgniter: <http://codeigniter.com/user_guide>

The interface is really simplistic which allows me to read the documentation a lot longer than other site (ex. php.net). Also, it's very well-organized and completed, I can go there every time I have a question about the framework and don't need to Google much.

</comment><comment><USER11> SQLAlchemy <http://www.sqlalchemy.org/docs/>

Mako Templates <http://www.makotemplates.org/docs/>

Beautifully written, well documented, plenty of examples and use cases... and then a super responsive developer that appears to never sleep and answers questions posted on the mailing list within minutes.

Pyramid (The Pylons/BFG Merger) <http://docs.pylonshq.com/>

Documentation + 100% test coverage and also a very responsive development team.

<comment><USER12> I can vouch for the developer of Mako and SQLAlchemy. Michael Bayer has even added features to SQLAlchemy just to get one of my previous employers to use it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> <http://jashkenas.github.com/docco/> <\- good doc system AND documentation

</comment><comment><USER13> In addition to the great links already posted, if you are looking to really describe your code, check out the Underscore.js docs: [http://documentcloud.github.com/underscore/docs/underscore.h...](http://documentcloud.github.com/underscore/docs/underscore.html)

<comment><USER14> Along with Coffeescript's docs and annotated source <http://jashkenas.github.com/coffee-script/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I really like msdn. Especially when you switch the presentation to LightWeight of Script free

[http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/preferences/experien...](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/preferences/experience/?returnurl=%252fen- us%252flibrary%252fms123401)

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm rather fond of Django's: <http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.2/>

<comment><USER17> Similarly, <http://djangobook.com/en/2.0/> . I really like the user interface for this one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> jQuery and CakePHP have been very helpful in the past.

<http://docs.jquery.com/Main_Page>

<http://book.cakephp.org/>

Also, the PHP documentation is very good. The layout could be better but it's kept really simple with lots of examples to help you out.

<http://www.php.net/manual/en/>

<comment><USER19> It's funny because everyone ALWAYS complains about the CakePHP documentation on #cakephp, but whenever it is pointed out that it is a wiki, the following excuses come up:

\- I'm too busy

\- It should already be there, this is a common problem

\- I don't know enough to edit

\- How do I make an account

Good documentation for a community is hard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Nanoc has excellent, comprehensive documentation with great typography and style in the layout:

<http://nanoc.stoneship.org/docs/>

backbone.js docs are concise and easy to follow, also well designed:

<http://documentcloud.github.com/backbone/>

</comment><comment><USER21> The best documentation I've ever read is Heroku's new addon provider docs: <https://addons.heroku.com/provider>

Click any of the links on the bottom. They're gorgeous, informative, and have fantastic examples.

</comment><comment><USER22> The Mongoid docs are really pretty: <http://mongoid.org/docs/installation/>

People either love or hate the Ruby docs - I like them, personally. I never have issues finding what I need. <http://www.ruby-doc.org/core/>

I also like the rdoc.info stuff. It's a bit spartan, but it's usable, as long as the gem author actually included documentation. <http://rdoc.info/github/mislav/will_paginate/master/frames>

</comment><comment><USER23> <http://blog.dexy.it/247> should be ready soon. The product allows your documenation to be ran like normal code, no matter the language, therefore you will always have working docs(if regularly running it against a vm)

</comment><comment><USER24> I like the Google Closure documentation. It has a nice search functionality. <http://closure-library.googlecode.com/svn/docs/index.html>

</comment><comment><USER25> I think the Compass docs rock: <http://compass- style.org/docs/reference/compass/>

(But if I remember correctly, they don't rock in all browsers.)

</comment><comment><USER26> PHP.Net and Django.

PHP's multiple examples are really neat. that and people commenting.

</comment><comment><USER27> No one mentioned Apple's docs? I find them pretty well-written.

<http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/navigation/>

</comment><comment><USER28> i like publican, you have to feed it docbook (xml), but it then outputs pdf/html/epub, allows for pot-po based translations and is nicely stylable.

in one setup i put asciidoc (a wiki-syntax-to-docbook tool) before publican to make writing/editing the docs more straight forward.

i cannot give you one-size-fits-all documentation tips, it depends heavily on what document you work on (api docs, a user guide, etc.) and what is the target audience.

personally i like to avoid the word "you" in documentation.

</comment><comment><USER29> Playframework: <http://www.playframework.org/documentation/1.1/guide1>

A step-by-step example helps alot.

</comment><comment><USER30> Surprised noone has mentioned Heroku. Simple, accessible, and generally easy to navigate. <http://docs.heroku.com/>

</comment><comment><USER12> I like racket's documentation (although some more examples would be nice): <http://docs.racket-lang.org/>

</comment><comment><USER31> For reference documentation, I find this one great: <http://railsapi.com/doc/rails-v3.0.1/>

</comment><comment><USER32> Tornado: <http://tornadoweb.org/>

Django: <http://djangoproject.com/>

NOT Python.

<comment><USER33> Why, I really like Python's documentation. Did you mean that the Python documentation is NOT good?

<comment><USER32> I'm not crazy about the formatting, honestly. I prefer more conversational documentation, personally, and Python's documentation always reminds me of Javadoc, which I generally abhor.

I think the one thing that I dislike, if I had to pick out something in particular, is that they include a function reference inline with discussion about it. I'd prefer to see them separated, though I freely admit that may just be me being peculiar, rather than any particular deficiency in the docs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> <http://readthedocs.org/>

Cool idea for Sphinx-based docs.

</comment><comment><USER35> Slicehost's documentation is the BOMB. I aspire to be like PickledOnion one day.

</comment><comment><USER36> Django and Linode</comment>


A Visit to the Large Scale Systems Museum - <AUTHOR> http://www.righto.com/2019/10/a-visit-to-large-scale-systems-museum.html <comment><USER2> Now We know where John Tutor can get his IBM 5100.</comment>


Money doesn't buy happiness, but success does... - <AUTHOR> http://www.american.com/archive/2008/may-june-magazine-contents/can-money-buy-happiness

<comment><USER2> Can you buy success with money though? I always looked at the lottery as VC or angel funding without payback to stop bootstrapping my ideas. The main problem with the authors reference story is that the man stopped living life, stopped working, went public with his winnings and did not follow through on his plans.

</comment><comment><USER3> Our genes (via our brains) drive us to succeed. But why should we listen to our stupid mammalian brains? Maybe the Buddhists have it right after all, and the best goal is to transcend desiring.

OK, back to my startup.

</comment><comment><USER4> Money _can_ buy happiness.

Money can buy a waverunner. Find me one person who is sad on a waverunner.

</comment><comment><USER5> Money doesn't buy happiness but it eliminates 90% of the problems that are caused by lack of it</comment>


Ask HN: How worried are you about coronavirus? - <AUTHOR> I can get stressed very easily by news stories like this, and honestly I'm stressed now! I'm unsure if I'm having an over reaction or not. How stressed do you feel about it? And/or how do you manage that stress? Thank you <comment><USER2> Its like..imagine flu were twice as likely as it is now but 10x as deadly if you got it, especially if you're over 50. Is it nothing? No. Is it bubonic plague? No. Can you catch it? Not at the moment unless you're in hubei? Its a bit like 90% of it is in hubei, 9% rest of china and 1% rest of the world..

Most of the problem is health systems cant scale for 2x flu in a short time.. But the world has a bit of time for prep since its mostly a chinese problem at the moment..

The rest of it is mostly economic fallout from secondary effects like travel restrictions and large scale quarantines(like the chinese have done). Unless you're in the travel and hospitality industry..theres probably little impact at the moment?

Why are you stressed?

<comment><USER3> Imagine if the flu caused irreperable lung damage.

<comment><USER2> Imagine striking lottery.

Hubei has like 60 million people. Maybe 70k cases of covid-19.

<comment><USER4> > Maybe 70k cases of covid-19.

This is almost certainly not the case.

From the MRC Centre, Imperial College, London:

"the team estimate only about 1 in 19 people infected with COVID-19 in Wuhan are being tested for infection and therefore being reported as confirmed cases."

[https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/195217/coronavirus- fatality-...](https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/195217/coronavirus-fatality- rate-estimated-imperial-scientists/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> the best thing you can do for yourself is get yourself off the news. it is incredibly toxic psychologically and unlikely that it will increase your happiness. cut out what doesn't serve you. Your handle says "FailMore" so try new things with the time freed up from ditching your phone, even if you fail it will still be better than staying in whatever the algorithms are feeding you. (keep in mind that your surrounding is also in the same algorithm prison and you might have to take active measures to tune out the BS).

fwiw, I grew up when the HIV epidemic went through the news cycle in the 80ies. And the news were similar in tone but exposure to news was limited (no Internet, no phones). So I often wonder what would happen if something like HIV comes around today in the age of the Internet. It would be mayhem I'm sure.

There is also a lot of disinfo around covid-19 popping up: [https://twitter.com/CT_Bergstrom/status/1228525855208427521](https://twitter.com/CT_Bergstrom/status/1228525855208427521)

</comment><comment><USER2> Now-ish is the time to take advantage of cheap flight+hotel deals in asia.. The chinese are stuck at home with their covid-19... Do get travel insurance though?

</comment><comment><USER6> I feel zero stress. CDC estimates 16,000-41,000 flu deaths for the 2019-2020 season (through 15 Feb) in the US alone.

[https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in- season-e...](https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season- estimates.htm)

Look at US coronavirus deaths. Do the math. Sleep easy.

If not in the US, substitute $YOURCOUNTRY. Do the math. Sleep easy.

<comment><USER3> How do you do math on fake numbers of covid-19.

The one thing that should be obvious at this point is that developing countries are not reporting their real numbers.

China didn't report until international cases arose. Same with Iran. if you look at the map of infected countries, there are several that mysteriously are between infected countries and somehow have zero cases.

You cant do math when you have bad data.

<comment><USER7> Assume a pandemic. In other words, assume you are going to get it and maximize chance of surviving.

From what we know so far, many have very mild cases, some have severe to very severe. Some die from disease directly (e.g. loss of ling function due to a viral pneumonia), others from follow on complications (e.g. septic shock, secondary bacterial infection).

Based on published data it appears to kill about 1 in 500 of those under 50, assume 80% of cases are mild and that becomes in in 2,000; assume 95% of cases are mild (e.g. another cold or flu) for those under 50 and that's 1 in 10,000. So you risk if you are under 50 is likely somewhere between 1 in 2,000 and 1 in 10,000.

Above 50 those odds get worse up rapidly, more so if you are a smoker or live in an area with bad air pollution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not at all. In the worst possible case, global pandemic, it'd kill maybe one in fifty people. That case is very unlikely.

If you take basic precautions as you would for flu--wash your hands properly, etc.--your odds are even better.

Better to worry about what matters: Quit smoking, use your seat belts, eat healthier, etc.

</comment><comment><USER9> I got a large life insurance policy to support my family if I die before the kids are grown.

<comment><USER3> Is there a clause for death by pandemic?

<comment><USER10> If there was, and the pandemic was very deadly, would insurance companies be able to actually pay out in the event of a large scale outbreak?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm very worried because:

\- We don't have good data on the true morbidity rate.

\- The actions China is taking seem very extreme and they have the most experience with it.

\- Isolated quarantine of infected patients seems like the only way to prevent its spread and this is hard to do given our 2020 way of life.

\- Did I mention we don't have good data? But the reports of longer than 14 day incubation periods, re-infection, and asymptomatic spread are worrying.

\- The US health system seems quite unprepared. We have ~100,000 ICU beds total.

\- Not to mention the economic impact. So, so many goods made in China and SE Asia, and in fact, in the least developed countries whose health systems are worst.

\- Vaccine or a kind mutation seem like the best hope to me, and these are very uncertain.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes it's the actions that China are taking that seem so out of whack with the current 'it's flu+' narrative. I don't think China _enjoys_ doing this to it's people, it likes minimising the risk of unrest and this does not do that. And I also think that, if the actions they are taking are necessary, there is no way for a western country to replicate them (right now 60 million people are banned from driving, that's like banning the whole of my country's population!)</comment></comment>