VCs need one large exit to see good profits - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/01/the-meeting-that-showed-me-the-truth-about-vcs/ <comment><USER2> VC isn't necessarily designed to have returns that are better than the public markets, only to have returns that are _different_ from the public markets. If you have billions of dollars to invest, you want to diversify. So the core part of the message that VC is broken because most of them don't beat the public markets doesn't really matter.

> One-two years for scouting and finding 10 A-round startups, four-five years > for growth. Add some non-stop pressure on the founders to sell all the way > around.

Holy moly. How well would this have worked for Google to sell to Yahoo or Facebook to sell to Google? You are throwing out the baby with the bathwater here.

If a company blows up, the vast majority of the returns are coming after 4-5 years. I mean, look at GOOG, and _only_ returns since it went public (~6 years after founding). Google's stock is up 1700%, the public markets are only up ~150%. You want them to sell those returns to somebody else? And obviously this post-IPO gain is just a multiplier on the returns from Series A --> IPO which is just astronomical returns you'd be not getting.

> Invest in more startups/less cash in each.

Just doesn't make sense. For many VCs the limiting factor is their ability to spend their time and effort trying to help their portfolio companies. Good VCs don't just give money, they give guidance, advice, strategy, etc. You can do this with 2-3 companies, not so much with 20-30.

> The ancient "2 percent and 20 percent" should be killed off and replaced > with something that endorses higher alignment. Let the VCs fight for their > supper.

What is the suggestion?

<comment><USER3> Here's an easy one: 20% of profitable returns, without the 2%. If you don't make the money, you don't get the money.

<comment><USER2> How are the VCs going to keep the doors open?

If you take away the 2% return, you've basically said that only super rich people that can afford not getting paid for 5-10 years should be VCs. Do you think that all the best investors in the world are super rich people?

Also, when to take that 20% is an issue. Perhaps a VC that is strapped for cash would push a company to exit sooner, or sell the stock right after the IPO, so they could take some of their profits off the table and thus get some working capital. However maybe they'd get a better return for both themselves and their investors by waiting another 5 years. Sequoia has very famously said that they've gotten more returns from their companies _post-IPO -- > now_ than they have from _initial investment -- > IPO_. If you believe in the long term prospects of a company you essentially want to never sell the stock.

I'm not suggesting there isn't an alternative, but I'd like to see it. The LPs who continually agree to this fee structure aren't idiots.

<comment><USER4> >If you take away the 2% return, you've basically said that only super rich people that can afford not getting paid for 5-10 years should be VCs. Do you think that all the best investors in the world are super rich people?

You can take away the 2% and leave some value value that still pays the investors. The problem with 2% is that the fund managers often taken home %1 type wages without actually performing. A %1 fee with a clause that caps all fund managers salaries at $60k (or some livable wage) ensures that the investors can live, but puts all of the income incentive on their bonuses which is tied to fund performance.

<comment><USER5> > The problem with 2% is that the fund managers often taken home %1 type wages > without actually performing.

Right, and fund managers will work for free instead. I know quite a few of them and I would not want to trade with them. Spend half your life in transit lounges of airports and the other half in hotel rooms, maybe if you're lucky you get to see your kids on the weekends. I know divorced couples that get more family time than some of the VCs I work with, they're the hardest working people that I know, much harder than most founders.

I suspect that your viewpoint is not illuminated with actual experience of the VC world.

Note that people that made enough money to start a VC fund usually value their time well and if you want to get them to pull your cart for you (as an LP you have to do absolutely nothing) they expect to be compensated for their time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Kauffman foundation published a study about venture capital a few years ago; we read it in my Tech Entrepreneurship class. They reached similar conclusions:

[http://www.kauffman.org/-/media/kauffman_org/research- report...](http://www.kauffman.org/-/media/kauffman_org/research-reports-and- covers/2012/05/we_have_met_the_enemy_and_he_is_us.pdf)

> Venture capital (VC) has delivered poor returns for more than a decade. VC > returns haven't significantly outperformed the public market since the late > 1990s, and, since 1997, less cash has been returned to investors than has > been invested in VC. Speculation among industry insiders is that the VC > model is broken, despite occasional high-profile successes like Groupon, > Zynga, LinkedIn, and Facebook in recent years.

EDIT: This is actually linked from the article but I thought it was worth calling out nonetheless.

<comment><USER7> > despite occasional high-profile successes like Groupon, Zynga

Are those really the definition of a VC success story?

<comment><USER8> The Kaufmann report was published in 2012. At that time, both companies looked like VC darlings.

<comment><USER6> It's funny to look back on that now. Only makes the finding that much more poignant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Clickbait title for a naive look at a pretty well-understood, much-scrutinized topic.

Digging in further:

\- assumptions are bad. 7-8% in RE / public equities? Hmm, dubious.

\- poor understanding of TVM. 12% is 3x? Except, in the real world, there are incremental cash flows on both capital calls and returns ... so IRR.

\- completely ignores cyclicality. Vintage year is the single biggest determinant of venture performance.

One big plus: takes a bit of the wind out of the "we VCs are paid to take risks" strutting. Of course, professional VCs gauge risks and make informed bets. But as the author points out, it's mostly with other peoples' money. True. Entrepreneurs are the ones taking the real, personal risks.

<comment><USER10> Historical returns on the S&P 500 are about 10%.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It is important to understand that these studies really are looking at the 'post dot com' VC industry or perhaps more succinctly "what it became after that event."

And it would be wrong to assume that there aren't market forces, working even as we type, to 'correct' the imbalance. If it had not been for the exceptionally anemic returns to be had in general, I expect this correction would have happened sooner.

But unlike startups that post 'incredible journey' type farewells, VC firms that evaporate are rarely reported on. There are firms which are contractually following through on their existing funds, raising no new funds, and entertaining no investments in companies they aren't already invested in. These are dead venture capital companies that are waiting for the end of life support.

I am curious what the next chapter will look like. A lot of people think it will be more 'integrated' VCs that look more like Y-combinator and less like Sequoia. Hard to say.

</comment><comment><USER12> The math in the article seems to be based on the assumption that the money committed for the fund is payed by the LP up-front. My understanding is that that's typically not the case -- instead, the LPs commit to some dollar amount, but only actually write checks when the VC round makes an investment.

I haven't done the numbers to see how this changes the outcomes in the article, but it seems like it probably has a pretty big impact, considering how much the article focuses on the liquidity aspects. I wonder what the contribution graph tends to look like over the lifetime of a typical fund.

</comment><comment><USER13> The problem is the market only cares about companies that have the potential to be the next Tesla, Facebook, amazon, etc., so unless you're in a this very special and exclusive niche, exiting is very hard. It's not like in the 90's when all tech sectors did well...now it's just social networking, apps, Tesla, and Uber. A very lopsided, winner-take-all market.

</comment><comment><USER14> Nice, clear statement of the fundamental theorem of VC funds: _...the only realistic way for a fund to get acceptable returns is to try to find only the companies that could be the next Ubers, Facebooks and Airbnbs. Under these rules, it doesn't make sense for VCs to invest in anyone that can't get to unicorn stage. There's just no place for "average" companies..._

<comment><USER15> > _There's just no place for "average" companies_

Sure there is: bank loans, growth capital, corporate backers through a JV, _et cetera_. This is how new business was financed for centuries. If you're talking about companies that grow up to be "average" but still fail at the rate and with the recovery rates of aspiring unicorns, then ofcourse not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> None of this is "news", just another re-hashing of "yet another explanation of how VC works, because VC's will never admit their mode plainly". Here ya go:

[https://blog.wealthfront.com/venture-capital- economics/](https://blog.wealthfront.com/venture-capital-economics/)

[https://blog.wealthfront.com/venture-capital-economics- part-...](https://blog.wealthfront.com/venture-capital-economics-part-2/)

[https://medium.com/startup-grind/technology-due-diligence- or...](https://medium.com/startup-grind/technology-due-diligence-or-lack- thereof-fbeb46687bec)

EDIT: Just re-read, makes sense why this is "news"... " _I recently had a meeting...talking about the macro view of venture capital and how it doesn't actually make sense....It took me a while to understand what this really means. "_

</comment><comment><USER17> > There's just no place for "average" companies looking to be worth and sell > less than $500 million. At least not with VCs.

Ummm, yeah, that's right because those investors are called growth equity investors. They don't get the attention VCs do but they are out there.

<comment><USER18> The mythology around VC investing is so intense in the valley it is at the point where people don't know (or don't have to know) that there are alternatives that don't rely on massive growth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> > I'll clarify: Ninety-five percent of VCs aren't actually returning enough > money to justify the risk, fees and illiquidity their investors (LPs) are > taking on by investing in their funds.

Illiquidity? Well given the huge amount of capital in the markets, there is next to zero other way to invest your big monies while also wanting some above-inflation return... the only real exceptions are pennystocks (aka spread and hope for a unicorn, just without a VC as "middleman"), real estate (which may or may not crash soon-ish, given that the bubble in Western markets, esp. London, has been created by Chinese and Russian investors hoping to stash money away before capital flow regulations) and VC.

Everything other is dead: State bonds, e.g. the German bonds, even pay negative interest, "conventional" lending is also downhill, and the market is too short-term-thinking to go long on "classic" stocks.

To summarize: Yes, there is a huge amount of risk and fees involved when investing with VCs, but they are not creating illiquidity when there's next to nothing where liquidity can flow into. And only when looking via this viewpoint one can understand how Yo could get 1.5M $ VC at 10M $ valuation.

<comment><USER18> This is the natural consequences of growing income inequality, especially as fueled by our failure to tax investment income at the same rate as other income.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> >Invest in more startups/less cash in each. The assumption today is that VCs want to own 20-25 percent equity of any startup in which they invest, assuming they have cash to follow up. The reasoning being, if there actually is a realization event (exit/IPO), they want to score big.

This isn't the reasoning behind it. The actual reasoning is more like constraints in number of worthwhile investment opportunities.

If the fund has $100M to invest and a hundred startups that meet their criteria, the fund _has_ to average $1M per investment in order to invest all the money that they want to. If they have $200M, the average investment has to go up to $2M.

VCs are already talking to as many companies as they can. Investing in more opportunities means lowering their standards. Assuming that VCs are rational about their standards, this is a poor choice.

</comment><comment><USER21> The 2/20 model doesn't go away because it is a signaling mechanism for quality during fundraising with LPs. A16Z actually raised their carry to 30%. Since only 1/4 of VC funds actually outperformed the S&P Index in a Kauffman study, it doesn't pay to advertise yourself as the "cheap" VC.

</comment><comment><USER22> This 4:30m video of Mike Maples explains very simply what VC is all about.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=a5nVkkk2NtA](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=a5nVkkk2NtA)

</comment><comment><USER18> The one problem with this post is the idea that past performance predicts future results. Do previously-successful VCs actually do better in the future?</comment>


Ask HN: Best programming course for an absolute beginner? - <AUTHOR> A friend of mine, who has a banking background, asked me for a code/programming course recommendation. He isn't technically inclined, but I believe he's in the perfect spot to take up something new. Hence, I like to give a great recommendation, but have a hard time judging what would be a good choice for an absolute beginner. <comment><USER2> This question almost always needs further qualification, to determine what the goal is. Learning to program is different from preparing for a new career. You get the drift.

That said, for "pure" learning to program, I like the DrRacket IDE and the course book "How to Design Programs" ( [http://htdp.org/](http://htdp.org/) ) because it teaches problem solving with programming. And that's what it's about. Should give a newb a sense of whether this is something they want to spend their time doing.

The concept are transferable to other languages; the specific language skills not so much.

<comment><AUTHOR> Lets say he'd like to explore programming first and take something usable for his day to day work. I thought about finding something with VBA, as he's doing a good amount of his work with office products, but Python might be suitable, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like recommending "How to automate the boring stuff with Python": [http://automatetheboringstuff.com/](http://automatetheboringstuff.com/). And if they're still interested after a few chapters of that: Harvard's CS50.

</comment><comment><USER4> Your friend needs to start a few to see if any are actually for a beginner, or for a beginner with experience.</comment>


Vivaldi/Spark Tablet OS-images now available for download - <AUTHOR> http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2012/03/forums-bodega-client-code-partners.html

<comment><USER2> I hope this succeeds for the well being of the linux community. It seems like currently there are alot of different arm linux things popping up, linux on arm is really gaining momentum. Of course I also wish this on the other devices as well, such as the raspberryPi. I hope this year will be the beginning of linux, real linux not andorid, in the main stream!

<comment><AUTHOR> Well that would be very nice, but I think we are a far way away from actually having non-technically users choose linux over andorid/ios or windows/osx

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> great, this could be useful for mobile applications which require more control on graphics access performance. Like Augmented Reality and such.

Also might be useful for app-dedicated installations. For example, a set of educational games for little kids, leaving no option for misuse :)

<comment><USER2> yea and especially because we are closer to the hardware we can use the special ARM neon instruction set, at least i think the AMLogic chip supports them

<comment><USER3> any idea when they plan to start shipping the hardware? I couldn't find much information

<comment><USER2> as far as i know in about a month or so, there is a post Aaron did on his blog that said i think early may or something like that, but dont quote me on that, it was with the post about the preorder distribution

<comment><USER2> here is the post [http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2012/02/spark-pre-orders- closed.h...](http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2012/02/spark-pre-orders-closed.html)

<comment><USER3> I'd say mid-Summer at best that you can order one and get it within reasonable time

<comment><AUTHOR> perhaps, they also announced a 10" version

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can't wait to see this tablet arrive at my door ^^

<comment><AUTHOR> im very interested in trying the images out on mine, also there is a work-in- progress kernel on github: <https://github.com/hillbeast/Kyorakernel.git>

<comment><USER4> Heh you know its gonna be big, all sorts of work being done for a tablet that doesnt have an official release date yet :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yay mobile linux!

</comment><comment><USER3> Yay finally a multi-user tablet!</comment>


TIOBE Index for January 2018 - <AUTHOR> https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/ <comment><USER2> One thing I find odd about the index is that perl is still so high up. I've only once encountered it in a business and even then it was on the way out.

I do mostly web dev so I might have been working in the wrong places, but it's still an interesting observation for me.</comment>


Your National AngelHack Winners: Appetas, GiveGo, And ShareBrowse - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/13/angelhack-winners/

<comment><AUTHOR> The actual link for GiveGo is <http://givego.co/></comment>


How use async / await to run code in parallel in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/42158853/how-run-async-await-in-parallel-in-javascript <comment><AUTHOR> A lot of folk seems to miss this, writing code which runs in series instead of parallel.</comment>


The Mission to Save Vanishing Internet Art - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/23/arts/design/the-mission-to-save-vanishing-internet-art.html <comment><USER2> One of the things I'm really concerned about personally is the archival of web comics. A number of comics that I've read over the years have already vanished from the net like Ugly Hill, Simulated Comic Product, and Minus (once linked to by XKCD! Now it's gone...).

archive.org, of course, has partial copies of some of these -- but it often seems to have trouble with comics and is usually missing _years and years_ of content as a result.

<comment><USER3> I've actually been working on-and-off for the last year or so to make a site which makes it easier to keep up with webcomics. As a part of crawling the sites to see if there are new comics, it's pretty easy to also archive them to be able to show partial thumbnails.

Part of my motivation is similar to your worry that these things will disappear forever, despite having been a huge part of our culture. And I figure one of the best ways to get help on archiving comics is for people to complain "hey your site doesn't do comic X" and then I know that it exists and can get it into the system for crawling.

I know saying "hey I'm working on it" isn't much better than "hey I thought about that too" but if you're interested I can attempt to let you know when I get far enough to put it up on the web instead of my workstation at home.

<comment><USER4> Have you seen this project[1]? It's a pretty customizable piece of software that has support for a lot of web comics out of the box.

Obviously, re-hosting web comics is a murky, at best, territory, but this will easily allow local only access for your personal benefit.

[1]: [https://github.com/jodal/comics](https://github.com/jodal/comics)

<comment><USER3> No, I hadn't seen that yet. Thanks!

I think rehosting is pretty bad, copyright infringement at best and not very nice to boot. That's why I decided that cropping and thumbnailing would be the way to go; enough of a picture to let someone say "yeah I saw that one already" but not so much that they don't go to the artist's site to see new comics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Link rot really is a bastard. There's a ton of pre-2000 Internet culture and history that is, as far as I know, simply gone. Even stuff that was popular is somewhat tough to dig up in its original version rather than getting a bunch of remixed variations.

</comment><comment><USER6> An excellent long-form thesis on this topic:

[http://aaaan.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/archiving-the- di...](http://aaaan.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/archiving-the-digital.pdf)

With links to [https://www.incca.org/articles/aktivearchive](https://www.incca.org/articles/aktivearchive)

<comment><USER7> Also relevant:

[http://idlewords.com/talks/deep_fried_data.htm](http://idlewords.com/talks/deep_fried_data.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The demise of Flash killed plenty of online interactive art project, unfortunately. HTML5 didn't replace Flash as a medium for artistic experiments on the web, or it performs so bad on decent computers it's just useless.

<comment><USER5> To me the big thing is that even if it had been pulled off beautifully, the HTML5 transition doesn't say anything about the existing corpus of .SWF content. Contrary to seemingly popular belief, it wasn't all streaming video, spinning logos, and mystery meat widgets; people actually made stuff in Flash that was meant to stand on its own, not just be a component of a website. Open source .SWF players exist, but are tremendously under-resourced and have been struggling with compatibility and performance problems for years. Basically, .SWF is the .DOC of interactive animation.

<comment><USER9> I've got several Flash games I made a long time ago that I'd love to update, but it seems that HTML5 just isn't up to snuff for the art and animation heavy games I had (not to mention it would take forever to export all of that art and animation).

It sucks, because as I get older I have less time and energy and more and more competing projects that compete with that limited time.

<comment><USER10> I heard Adobe's authoring tool now has HTML5 export. I hoped that would make the transition easier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'd love to find the original Napster Bad video... all I can seem to find online are the re-edit, the 2nd and 3rd ones. Not the first one. The napster bad you see online wasn't the original I remember.. I seem to remember another take of it before, that was changed and re-released.

<comment><USER12> I think I have somewhere the 1999 original in flash format ... but so many brilliant AMV are gone :( Like Rammstein evangelion

Can we create a tube clone in some copyright haven ... the culture belongs to humanity.

<comment><USER10> Sure, if you're in Antigua and all your users are in Antigua. [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/29/business/global/dispute- wi...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/29/business/global/dispute-with-antigua- and-barbuda-threatens-us-copyrights.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Anyone remember hell.com ?

There are many snapshots on [https://web.archive.org](https://web.archive.org) but no actual content. Because it was only available to approved guests. Except for some enigmatic abuse, and pushing hell.com addresses. So it goes.

<comment><USER14> I can't think of another website that made quite the same impression on me as that one did. Maybe it was my young age, or the newness of the medium, but it was like a brilliant magic trick. Like the kind that actually scare you, even though you know better.

<comment><USER13> Well, it was all Javascript and Flash, so maybe really scary. And some of those web artists considered malware as an art form ;) But not the hell.com folks, I think. That was more 0100101110101101.org style.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Only 100 works of art? I guess the highend art world thrives on artificial scarcity.

<comment><USER10> They only have $200,000 to make a permanent archive.

<comment><USER15> At that price I could archive a few million online works of art, at the least.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Rhizome is an art organization, and they are approaching it in the context of art, rather than online culture. They began implementing an archiving project in the early '00s called Art Base that contains over 2000 works. These new efforts are an extension of that, bringing in current thinking on virtualization and emulation.

It is a challenging project. Many of these project have both client and server side technologies that must be recaptured, so it is more than just Flash (or Director/Shockwave). I made a project called Airworld that may be part of this Rhizome initiative [1]. It was originally commissioned by the Walker Art Center in 1999 and ultimately involved two different servers that used Perl CGI scripts, mySQL and RealServer on the back end, HTML and RealMedia plugin on the client side. The museum lacked the infrastructure and personnel to keep it alive and it slowly died over the course of 10 years. Even though it's still in the institutions collection.

It is a big problem for 'off-line new media' too. Artist's CD-ROMs, for example. The Rose Goldsen archive of New Media Art at Cornell University Library has made a huge effort to maintain these works [2]. And physical, sculptural 'New Media' works also take massive effort to maintain. I know from experience. [3].

Museums are experts in conversation. They are beginning to think about the challenges that digital technologies bring. But there is a lot of work to do.

[1] [http://www.walkerart.org/collections/artworks/airworld](http://www.walkerart.org/collections/artworks/airworld) [2] [http://goldsen.library.cornell.edu/general/cd.php](http://goldsen.library.cornell.edu/general/cd.php) [3] [http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of- art/2002.274a-e/](http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/2002.274a-e/)

</comment><comment><USER17> Wasn't Mozilla working on a browser with automated micropayments to content creators? Combined with distributed content.. something like storj.io which promises distributed (bittorrent) encrypted storage for files & cryptocurrency payments to those opening their harddrives.

[https://brave.com/about.html](https://brave.com/about.html)

[https://storj.io/](https://storj.io/)

<comment><USER10> Not Mozilla, but Brendan Eich, who used to be at Mozilla.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> On a donor-supported website I operate, people can download an e-book version of our entire catalog of writings in exchange for a modest donation. A large part of my motivation for this approach is so that these DRM-free files may serve as a distributed archive in the event that our project perishes.

The reception has been positive, I recommend the strategy to other content creators.

</comment><comment><USER17> Related: "It's Just Emulation!" \- The Challenge of Selling Old Games[http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1023470/-It-s-Just- Emulation](http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1023470/-It-s-Just-Emulation)

</comment><comment><USER19> This isn't a new phenomenon [http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/once- lifetime](http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/once-lifetime)</comment>


Ask HN: How to market developers / data scientists at $100-150 online? - <AUTHOR> Hello HN!
I have a team of developers (and data scientists) here in Sweden. Normal rates are around $100 / h for on-site work, and it would be nice to be able to get approximately the same online.
Comparing ourselves to freelancers on eg Upwork there is a massive price differential. Even for sites like Toptal.com you can only expect to get $75 or so (not hard data, just my impression, could be wrong on that).
What is a decent strategy for overcoming this obstacle?
I'm guessing the answer has something to do with "finding a really special niche" and "selling on value, not on cost"? <comment><USER2> You might look at some kind of blended offering. Obviously at those rates your talking about senior type roles. So, some of the work could be done with Junior type developers.</comment>


John Deere and the Birth of Precision Agriculture - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/silicon-revolution/john-deere-and-the-birth-of-precision-agriculture <comment><AUTHOR> It is worth mentioning that "the plow that broke the plains" is thought to have been in part responsible for the Dust Bowl.</comment>


Thinking about your next job - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedahv.com/blog/thinking-about-your-next-job/ <comment><USER2> One thing I wish would change in hiring is that you are never allowed to be honest about your values if you happen to be a "work to live" type. For some people, a job is just a job. Sure, they might care about the company, the colleagues, and all else equal they want work to be meaningful. But they aren't actively emphasizing what they are passionate about as a factor in any job search.

Nonetheless, I can't tell you how often HR screeners or job ads go on about how only passionate people should apply.

I think we need to be more honest, and to allow candidates to be more honest during interviews, instead of trying to make everyone do an insincere song and dance about why they are passionate.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I feel you. Like I wrote about, I can feel myself growing toward the middle though I like to feel like I care about my company's raison d'être. On the same token, I regret seeing good candidates get passed up because of some undefinable sine qua non (I swear I don't use so many French sayings, these just happen to work).

Here are a few thoughts I have in response:

\- "passion" as a term has sort of been hijacked by Silicon Valley-esque startups, particularly in B2B spaces. This is a cynical take, but how else are you going to convince someone to take crappy pay with poor chance of equity return to work on a risky idea? \- passion doesn't always have to mean cause- oriented. Can you be passionate about good engineering? About boring, reliable, predictable success? Maybe there is a value you are "passionate" about but you haven't encountered many companies also passionate about that. I write about this too. It's just useful to be open-minded about defining what it means to you, but you probably do care about how you spend your time away from home \- there is also the matter of being passionate about just straight up doing great work. I used to think I wouldn't like contracting or consulting, but I've met some awesome firms in Seattle and they are full of people who like swooping in, solving hard problems and moving on to the next thing

And finally there are lots of industries where "punch in, punch out" is ok. My friends working in healthcare info systems come to mind. Government work (18F and sundry contract companies) is getting more interesting.

I am totally with you about being honest. It's a good way to discover where you don't want to work. I want to recognize though it is a privileged position to being in a position where you can survive not getting or turning down a job.

Thanks for taking time from your day to read and reply!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It has been a while since I contributed to HN! I sat down to share some thoughts and ideas that have been useful to me weighing new jobs against my career goals. Hope you find something useful!</comment>


Ask HN: How many people still build their own data access code generators/ORMs? - <AUTHOR>

Just trying to get a feel, I work on a fair number of client projects annually and I don't see this much anymore but have ran into two recently.  Basically where someone has decided that they are going to build their own ORM or database code generator.  Usually I see Hibernate, nHibernate, Activerecord (or based on it), Dapper, Entity Framework or any of a dozen commercial equivalents.
If you build your own, generally why do you do it? What features are missing that cause you to do it?
If you use standard frameworks, what is your reason to do so?
My own 2 cents is I always use and steer clients toward using an appropriate well supported framework as generally they aren't in the database business.  Clients just want to store and retrieve their data in a clean simple way without lots of coding or overhead.  But I am just wondering if I am missing something?? <comment><USER2> One possible reason for people developing an ORM from scratch is that the established ORMs are built upon the ideas derived from countless projects, thus they are an aggregation of the "MOST COMMON" ideas, which is applicable in say 98.9% of the scenarios. But, crazy as the human mind is, it is always the case that someone comes up with an idea, which is not implemented in the ORMs, and there lies the opportunity to create one of your own.

Of course, most of them start off as problem-specific ORMs, which are then converted to general-purpose generators over time and through experience.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea, I see your point. I guess my lazy coder part comes out in me and says, ok I will use this framework and add this weird functionality I need to it. Versus writing a whole new one that I would have to support. But I definitely see what you are saying.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Revaluate – Real Estate Analytics - <AUTHOR> https://revaluate.com/

<comment><USER2> Is this where your getting all your info [https://data.cityofnewyork.us/](https://data.cityofnewyork.us/)

It's weird to me that your usage case on the site is for an individual person, but you only offer monthly subscriptions. In my experience people usually aren't looking for a place for more than 30 to 60 days, so why would I want to buy into a monthly subscription model with usage caps. Kind of annoying to have to sign up then almost immediately cancel.

A smaller developer or investor would probably be more interested in a regular subscription.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, some of the data comes from that site but we have a lot that actually isn't available anywhere online.

Agreed on the pricing. We're still trying to dial that in. I think a single 30 or 90 day access makes sense and then possibly a monthly subscription for real estate agents that want to provide reports to their clients.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Just FYI, the top nav rolls down when screen width is narrow: [http://cl.ly/image/0k2j34200n38](http://cl.ly/image/0k2j34200n38)

Otherwise, this looks cool. I work in the real-estate space, so it's nice to see some innovative ideas coming through. You mentioned in another comment that you use public data but try to be very careful about what goes in. How do you do that? With humans or with automated tools?

Looks fantastic either way. Good luck. I'd like to see what you can come up with in other cities.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! I actually did notice that issue you mentioned on an iPad this morning (adding a new link to the top yesterday broke it).

In terms of the data collection, currently it's a mix of manual and automated. We're pushing to get is all automated so it'll be easier to maintain and expand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think you should change your colors in the main page. Here: [http://imgur.com/L7OBTOB](http://imgur.com/L7OBTOB) I was thinking how weird it was that Lex. Ave had a very bad safety score... where in fact it is just red for no reason, it is actually really safe. I only realized that when I scrolled down to the details and it told me the opposite ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, very good point. Never really considered that. We'll definitely discuss how we can make that more clear. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> How do you get all the data though? No home owner is going to give you this data. And what is you have something wrong on there, and a owner sues you for it, because your lower rating might adversely affecting their sale.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a fair question. A lot of the data comes from complaints and reports filed through local government agencies. We try to be very objective with the data and present it to the consumer so they can judge for themselves.

We have also talked about the idea of allowing building owners to comment or make a request to prove that issues in a building have been fixed. Though that would be a little ways down the road.

<comment><USER5> Good service. I can totally see myself using this one, but I am in Canada. There will be a bit of risk in this service, and that's ok, not everyone will be happy. it is like carfax, or even like yelp for houses. It requires a bit of polish though. I looked at the sample report, and upon clicking a link give some indication that the data is loading. i clicked 3 4 times before knowing the data is loading. Chronological order of reports/issues should be latest first. Right now, I saw 1997 report on top.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much for the feedback. The loading is still something we're trying to improve. It's pulling in a large amount of data that takes a bit of time. I think we'll end up doing a nightly roll-up of that data to help improve page load times.

I'll take a look at the chronological sorting issue. From a first glance it is working for me but it could be something else going on. Thanks again for the feedback.

<comment><USER5> See the elevator in frequent need of repair page pop-up. 1997 report is first. I do not know how the data is being sorted, maybe give user the power to sort it?

Also, I just noticed that the data is actualy quite comprehensive. You have a lot of fluff in-between the detailed data. Dashboard, then some picture carousel, and then map. But the cream of the crop data is buried below. That data is really awesome, pest control, neighbourhood crimes. I am not a UI /UX person, but there has to be a better visual representaion for it. I like how you mention milestones and even famous celebrities in the vicinity, but at first it seems a bit confusing at to what purpose those pictures serve until it hits you. I did not even scroll down at first. I just stopped at dashboard, clicked the reports and that's it. Really good idea, polish it really well. I know a bit superficial advice, but you can get this thing going pretty well. Offer a one-time service too for $20 or so.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool, I'll check out the sorting issue some more.

That's great feedback as well. We'd debated whether we needed to put a heading above the celebrity carousel and decided to leave it out. I guess we might want to add that in.

Totally agree that the meat of it is down in those datatables. One of our top priorities is to figure out a way to better visualize that. It'll also make the page load much quicker since all that raw data is a lot of HTML to render and send across the wire.

We're still trying to figure out pricing and at this point just want people to use it for free so we can get feedback and iterate and improve before we think about charging. Thanks again for the great feedback.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We just launched our new startup this morning. Huge thanks to the HN community for advice and feedback. It's been a great journey so far. Any new feedback would be greatly appreciated!</comment>


Apple makes around 15% of its App Store money from developers - <AUTHOR> http://nottheinternet.com/blog/depressing-thoughts-about-the-app-store/

<comment><USER3> The analysis in the article is breathtakingly wrong. The data used is wrong. The math used is wrong. The conclusions are wrong.

First, the article assumes each developer creates one app (160,000 * 8700 = $1.392B revenues, $1.392 * 30% = $418mil "profit"). This error leads to further errors down the line.

Second, Apple App Store sales is estimated to hit apx $4.9B 2012 [1]. This means apx $1,470mil in gross income (what the article calls "profit"). The article uses only $1.39B revenues and $418mil in gross income in its calculations as outlined in point one.

Third, this analysis assumes every developer would not purchase an iPhone if they were not developing software. Given that the vast majority of iOS developers do it part time, I think this assumption is highly unlikely.

Fourth, including profit from phones as a % of appstore profits is just wrong. Phone profits are not included as part of appstore profits. Thus it cannot be used as a % of it. It is _additional_ income, on top of the appstore.

Finally, just to give you an idea of how little profits from developer matter... In the last 4 reported quarters, Apple earned a pre-tax net income of $49,000mil. Or $134mil per day. This versus the article's $64mil over the entire year from developers. Somehow I don't think they spend a lot of time or effort trying to get money out of developers.

[1] [http://www.mediabistro.com/appnewser/apples-app-store- revenu...](http://www.mediabistro.com/appnewser/apples-app-store-revenue- expected-to-increase-70-in-2012_b26843)

<comment><USER4> The reason the number in this article is interesting is that it is a compelling absurdity: the notion that Apple might make an appreciable amount of money off the average developer due to "developer on-boarding" costs as opposed to fees from selling their software.

The analysis in the (simple) article, thereby, is actually quite funny, and is part of an overall correct narrative; although, I agree that it was not described in quite the right context, and lends itself to your math complaints, which are technically quite correct.

From this standpoint, using the average developer income does not destroy the analysis (and is in fact required of it): if I were using a similar analysis in a talk, I'd want to speak to the people in the room, to give them a feel for what Apple will make from that sample.

Secondly, it is not problematic to ignore that the developer might have otherwise purchased an iPhone: the purpose of this kind of analysis isn't to demonstrate that Apple is "trying to get money out of developers", it is to demonstrate a comparison in the money made.

However, you are quite right that the math in the article is flawed: thankfully, some parts compensate by being conservative; once you take into account processing fees and other fixed costs (as various others have done), Apple's profit on the App Store is closer to 10%, not 30%.

We then get $4.9b*10%/160k, giving (conservatively, working back up towards 12%) ~$3500/developer. ($300+$99)/$3500 is >10%, which is still an interesting figure to be able to trot about at conferences (especially if you try to estimate the money spent on Macs).

(If I were to try to undermine the math in this argument, I'd probably do so from a different angle: the $99 is not pure profit, as Apple has employees scanning over the contracts and vetting corporate accounts; the fixed per- signup costs need to be removed.)

(Additionally, I question whether the average developer buys the most expensive device Apple offers, or instead purchases an iPod touch to use only for development; and then, keeps the iPod touch for longer than a year. A bi- yearly iPod touch would destroy this math.)

<comment><USER5> > compelling absurdity

It's also plausible.

Early Autodesk's entire business model was built on top of fleecing their dealer (value-added reseller) channel.

Ditto franchises, pyramid marketing, ponzi schemes.

That said, if you're smart and very lucky, it's possible to make real money playing in someone else's sandbox.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What's really depressing is that Apple's App Store revenue (whatever its source) comes from basically having strip mined a thriving freeware and shareware community. They did at least wait until CNET clear-cut the VersionTracker rainforest, but still.

Three years ago, a hobbyist could make an app in their free time, put it out there for cheap or free, and see what happened. If the app was any good, what would happen could easily be that they made a livable income off of their creation.

Today, that hobbyist has basically three options:

1\. Pay Apple $99/year for the privilege of showing their creation to the world, and release it through the App Store. Feel their enthusiasm for the project drop as they go through that tooth-pulling process, but expect that it will all be worth it since the App Store will at least give them some good exposure. Watch as it doesn't.

2\. Pay Apple $99/year for the privilege of showing their creation to the world, and release it on their own. This is a lot like the old days, except that now Apple is taxing you, and the old tools for spreading the word have largely starved.

3\. Don't pay Apple a dime and release the app unsigned. Explain on the download page that the end user will have to edit their security preferences to allow unsigned apps. This looks sketchy to users, and now our hobbyist is suspected of being a criminal.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure what it is about software that makes people so damn cheap.

Consider all the other activities that people do as hobbies that have absolutely no possibility of even breaking even. Some of these require expensive equipment, fees, time. Getting set up to develop for iOS, even allowing for the cost of buying a Mac, compares well to what else you could be doing.

<comment><USER6> It's not just the cost. It's also the bureaucracy and loss of control that the App Store creates. Releasing and maintaining an app as an individual developer is difficult enough without adding a whole layer of unnecessary red tape and fees that serve no legitimate purpose.

<comment><USER8> Also it makes it very hard to just leave apps up. Do I keep paying Apple every year just to give a free app away to people?

<comment><USER7> Why not? If you have a half decent app and it helps people, and that gives you some satisfaction, do it. That's a well spent $99. Everyone already spends more money on less worthy things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _Very few apps do make $8,700 (but those that do, often make far more)_

is that true? i would have thought it's a power law. in which case it would be more correct to say "Very few apps do make $8,700 (and of those that do, few make far more)" since with a power law distribution, no matter what level you pick, the extremes are still extremes (if you see what i mean - the 1% have their own 1% who are the crazy rich part of the crazy rich...)

so does anyone have any numbers?

[it strikes me that, depressingly, you could summarize this as: no matter how good you are, getting an order of magnitude better is still hard.]

<comment><USER10> Right it's the average a single app makes that matters, the heavy hitters like Rovio can make up for your dime a dozen fart apps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I doubt apple makes a substantial amount from developers alone. Quoting [1] which is the research I believe rmah is talking about...

"Global Apple App Store revenue is set to increase to $4.9 billion in 2012, up from $2.9 billion in 2011, according to an IHS Screen Digest Mobile Analyst Commentary from information and analytics provider IHS (NYSE: IHS). This means that nearly half of the revenue generated by the App Store in its five-year history will be earned this year alone."

Those are some pretty strong numbers. Given that the number is projected, even with a generous error rate of +-20%, any revenue from developer fee will be eclipsed by 4.9 billion.

While the author's estimate that apple generates 15% of its revenue from developers is inaccurate, it has to be said that the entry fee to get into iphone / ipad development is high. I would know since I'm currently developing a product that works across iphone / android / web. Here are our costs thus far (excluding phone-device prices ).

Apple:

Mac Air 1200$

Developer account 99$

DUNS number 200$

Server certificate for notifications 175$

Android: Developer account 25$

<For development - Use the mac or boot an old clunky win laptop with Win-XP on it>

Web: 0$ so far

Developing for apple devices is costly. For the same 1200$ that I could spend on mac air, I can get 2 powerful Win-7 laptops - ~ 500-700$ each [2]. Device fragmentation on android does require you to test on more devices, but there are services[3] that allow you to work around that problem. Besides, when netflix can release their app by testing it on a subset of 8 android devices [4], I don't see why that strategy is not good enough for others.

The author does have a point, but one that should not have been expressed as a percentage of apple revenues.

[1] - [http://www.isuppli.com/Media-Research/News/pages/Maps-and- Pa...](http://www.isuppli.com/Media-Research/News/pages/Maps-and-Passbook-in- iOS-6-Help-Propel-Apple-App-Store-Growth-in-2012.aspx)

[2] - <http://www.dell.com/us/soho/p/vostro-laptop-deals>

[3] - [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1852248/is-there-an- andro...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1852248/is-there-an-android- testing-service-i-can-use-to-give-me-real-debug-information)

[4] - [http://techblog.netflix.com/2012/03/testing-netflix-on- andro...](http://techblog.netflix.com/2012/03/testing-netflix-on-android.html)

[EDIT] - <USER2>

<comment><USER12> All of the costs cited are rounding errors in comparison to the scarcity of good developers' time, especially developers capable of delivering product across iPhone / Android / web.

Developing on "an old clunky win laptop" in particular is far from zero cost.

<comment><USER13> I always love how much developers think they can save skimping on hardware. $700 is a day worth of downtime. My Macbook Air is easily worth $4000 to me now because it broke 3 times and they turned it around each time in under 24 hours. When my windows laptop breaks im with out it for 2 weeks requiring me to purchase another one.

<comment><USER11> Who said anything about skimping on hardware ? My point was that you don't get the same horse power for price ratio on an apple laptop that you get from a Windows laptop. As for support it depends on your geographical location. You were able to get your mac air replaced thrice within 24 hours each time and I get similar support for my Windows laptops. It took me 4 days just to get a human being to respond to a problem I had with apple up-to-date support.

Developer time is more valuable than hardware costs hands down. The horse power that you can back in return for that hardware cost varies between apple and windows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Even if the stats were correct, it wouldn't make any difference to me as an iOS developer. The author seems to suggest iOS development is apple-win and developer-lose. Which might be the case if iOS were not an in-demand skill.

But as a developer, your own income is obviously not limited to what you can make on your own apps, and since diving into iOS six months ago my income has far exceeded any investment i've made in the platform. Mostly through making apps for other people, by my own app itself has very nearly recouped my total apple investment to date.

This is somewhat tangential to the author's main point, but my take is that there are many angles the author has failed to think of, and it's not a fair analysis of either apple or developers.

<comment><USER15> This really hits on a key _long term_ solution. A hobbyist could pick up a macbook pro, or already have one because they're trendy, and play around with Xcode and the simulator for a long time _for free_. Once the lightbulb flicks on and that hobbyist decides to plop down $99 for the paid account and signing certificate, releases one or two apps into the store, that _developer_ is now a highly sought after asset to thousands of companies as a full time employee or contractor.

Where's the back-of-the-envelope calculations on spending $500-$1500 for a Mac and $99 for the Dev Account and turning that into a lifelong and highly valuable skill? It might be more money than $800 + $25 for the same on a Windows PC and Android, but it's not a huge difference when you compare the output. What other hobbies can be turned into a lucrative career with a soft cap of $2000 and 6 months to a year of practice?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I did the math out for people in my talk at JailbreakCon, and <1% of Apple's iPhone-related profit could possibly be coming from the App Store, and it is likely quite a bit less than that (I made a couple conservative estimates, and totally ignored iPod and iPad hardware).

(The talk was recorded, and I believe has been posted in various places; it also goes through why tiered pricing models for things like bandwidth work the way they do, as many people who are confused by the App Store also never worked that out for themselves either.)

<comment><USER6> Edit: Ignore me. I misread the parent comment.

"I've done the math before, and this post is wrong" isn't very compelling when the post in question shows the math behind its conclusion. What would be most compelling would be to point out the flaw in the post's math, and also to show us your own approach.

<comment><USER16> Actually, he was saying "I've done the math before, and the results are actually even more skewed than the post suggests".

So you can take the post as right on the basis of the math in there, or even -more- right on the basis of saurik's calculations.

I think "The talk was recorded, and I believe has been posted in various places" was basically "you can find a citation if you look but I don't have one handy, sorry", which is fair enough for a brief HN comment; I, at least, still find the data point somewhat useful.

<comment><USER4> No. I was pointing out yet another quite specifically different number, and pointing out a way for people interested in this to learn more on this topic.

This article is focusing on a specific number that I actually found quite hilarious (money made from the App Store being swamped by developer hardware), and is not something I have previously analyzed.

<comment><USER6> Oh I see. I misread your comment. My apologies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> How many developers are doing precisely the same thing? How much revenue is Amazon making because I can read Kindle books on my iPad vs buying a kindle? How many skinner-box game developers are hocking virtual sheep with a free to sart game?

</comment><comment><USER18> <http://www.elearnenglishlanguage.com/difficulties/its.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> Ta, fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Well Apple's content (iTunes, App Store) exists mostly to move their hardware.

Compared to Amazon where the hardware exists to give users access to content.

Explains some of the price differences between the devices.</comment>


Apple TV 4: Gaming and Siri will be major focuses - <AUTHOR> http://9to5mac.com/2015/08/31/apple-tv-gaming-siri-bluetooth-remote/ <comment><USER2> Forget about deep gaming integration, I need something as simple as the ability to perform searches on all (or at least on 2-3) content providers at once. Right now, when using the (horribly designed) Remote App on an iPad, I have to search HBO Go, Netflix, and Hulu _separately_ and the app doesn't even remember the last search.

<comment><USER3> The current Apple TV is one of the worst devices in this case. Quite a few others support cross-service searching, including the Roku and Xbox One (depending on which price range you're looking at).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder if there's a certain amount of rumor leakage on AppleTV coming in the next week or so to deflate the expectations about a unified streaming TV service.

Seems like the OTA networks wouldn't budge, so there's nothing to announce there. _But look over here...games!_</comment>


Windows update knocks out internet connections - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-38301548 <comment><USER2> So Microsoft recommend rebooting your machine and then if that doesn't work, go to their website for further instructions?

It's "Keyboard not found, press any key to continue" all over again!</comment>


Sears Kit Homes Changed Housing - <AUTHOR> https://www.curbed.com/2018/10/16/17984616/sears-catalog-home-kit-mail-order-prefab-housing <comment><USER2> The person who does the McMansion Hell blog has a guide to historical kit houses:

[http://mcmansionhell.com/post/155602312686/the-mail-order- am...](http://mcmansionhell.com/post/155602312686/the-mail-order-american- dream-an-introductory)

Part two: [http://mcmansionhell.com/post/155922980391/the-mail-order- am...](http://mcmansionhell.com/post/155922980391/the-mail-order-american- dream-part-ii-the-hunt-is)

</comment><comment><USER3> There's a recent 99% invisible episode about this:

[https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-house-that- came-i...](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-house-that-came-in-the- mail/)

<comment><USER4> That's where I first heard about this. Excellent podcast episode. It's pretty different to actually see photos though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The "DIY with basic tools" approach of Sears extended well beyond houses. Sears also sold motorcycles [0] that came with a thick manual that gave instructions on how to do everything from assembling the motorcycle from the shipped pieces in the crate to fully disassembling and rebuilding the engine. I've restored a handful of them before, and they are a lot of fun to work on. They are simple enough that there aren't too many hurdles to get over, and they are always a good conversation starter when you're parked somewhere.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puch_250_SGS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puch_250_SGS)

[1] A build log of one restoration that needs updating [https://zachwick.com/sears-allstate-project-1-n/](https://zachwick.com/sears- allstate-project-1-n/)

</comment><comment><USER6> > Sears promised that a buyer with only rudimentary skills could assemble a > kit home in 90 days.

People used to be handier than they are today. I don't know anyone who would dare take on this project.

<comment><USER7> I would, until the neighbors started threatening to sue me in planning meetings and the local authorities demanded $30,000 of architect's drawings and then I was told I had to have two parking spaces for some reason and that my house was too small for any decent individual.

<comment><USER8> > I had to have two parking spaces for some reason

The reason for that is that in ten years' time, you may have moved on and sold your house, and the next tenants will probably own two cars (this being the US), and so will end up parking on the street. If everyone does this, it's a nightmare

Enforcing a number of parking spaces per dwelling is very common even here in France

<comment><USER9> And these are exactly the kinds of things the home buyer should take into account. But if the builder doesn't need or want something, they shouldn't be forced to build it for the sake of a theoretical buyer decades in the future. If the builder doesn't put in something that is in high demand it will negatively impact their ability to sell the home or they'll have to price it accordingly. Seems like a pretty good system without having a government commission tell someone they need an arbitrary number of parking spaces that they have no use for.

<comment><USER8> The problem is that the impact is also external. Maybe the future buyer doesn't mind parking in the street, but the neighbours definitely do.

The government isn't telling anyone anything - it's a purely municipal decision

<comment><USER9> Municipalities are governments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> You can buy a house kit today from places like Menard's - my uncle purchased a garage and we assembled it over a couple weekends, I could see doing a house with much more time and skill

[https://www.menards.com/main/building-materials/books- buildi...](https://www.menards.com/main/building-materials/books-building- plans/home-plans/shop-all-home-projects/c-9919.htm)

<comment><USER11> The prices are literally unbelievable to me. What's missing? These sure look like the spiritual successor to the Sears homes.

<comment><USER12> The labor and the land. Those are by far the most expensive components of a home.

<comment><USER13> Yep. People outside of the construction business can be shocked by how cheap materials to build a house actually are. It's the land and labour where the money goes.

<comment><USER14> Contractors are like lawyers. You're not paying them to argue your case. You're paying them because they have a professional relationship with all the other parties that's been built upon years of doing business with them.

The lawyer knows the prosecutor and the judge. The contractor knows all the inspectors and bureaucrats. They get favorable treatment compared to some nobody off the street. A huge chunk of what you pay them is compensation for all the time they spend building that professional relationship with the people who you need to appease. The fact that services are rendered is what blurs the line between business and corruption.

<comment><USER15> This guy remodels.

Seriously, good luck getting the subcontractor back to finish quickly when somebody who has been providing him with work consistently calls and needs a hand. As a homeowner you are back burner.

<comment><USER12> Very similar to trying to get support from a software company, when you're a one-off $19.95 customer, and their biggest enterprise clients are also calling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> According to the CPI inflation calculator, The Classic home from 1916 for $918 would cost $22,282 today. That's actually quite a bit less expensive than the same size houses being offered by Menard's today, by about a factor of 2. I don't have any good insight as to why the cost would actually be higher today after 100 years of productivity gains. Productivity has increased by about a factor of 5, so all other things being equal the same house should cost only $4400 today. What gives?

<comment><USER17> I'm not sure where you are getting your numbers, but the construction industry has long had notoriously slow productivity growth. In the US, labor productivity in construction has stayed essentially flat since 1947, and decreased since its peak in 1968.

"Reinventing construction: A route to higher productivity", McKinsey Global Institute (2017) (pdf, see page 23): [https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/McKinsey/Industries/Capital...](https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/McKinsey/Industries/Capital%20Projects%20and%20Infrastructure/Our%20Insights/Reinventing%20construction%20through%20a%20productivity%20revolution/MGI- Reinventing-construction-A-route-to-higher-productivity-Full-report.ashx)

<comment><USER16> My numbers are very very approximate and come from eyeballing the following graph, which was the best I could get from a google search:

[https://images.slideplayer.com/27/8913519/slides/slide_9.jpg](https://images.slideplayer.com/27/8913519/slides/slide_9.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There are several Sears kit homes near me. They succeeded because they offered value. I don't know about the coasts but the homes were very popular in the Midwest.

So popular that close to eighty years after they were last available it is very common to mention a property is a Sears home in real estate ads.

Amazon may have sped up their demise but Sears lost track of offering their customers value decades ago.

<comment><USER19> Amazon had close to zero role in the demise of Sears. Keep in mind, Amazon had a mere $34 billion in total sales as recently as 2010. Sears was realistically already a zombie ten years ago, long before Amazon was taking a consequential bite out of retail.

The rise of Walmart, Home Depot, Lowes, Best Buy, etc. serving the Sears customers better - as you mentioned - is entirely what killed Sears. They ultimately lost in every category to those guys, from clothes, to electronics, to home & garden. They kept doing a lot of things, and did nothing well. Any article that claims Amazon played a role in the demise of Sears, is selling click-bait.

<comment><USER20> Arguably they did a couple of things (e.g. appliances) at least competitively. But the competition in those areas definitely increased from the big box stores, department stores in general have been in significant decline, and Sears as a whole was quite a mish-mash.

<comment><USER21> It used to be that Sears house brands--Kenmore, Craftsman, etc--provided good value to the customer. Not luxury or top-of-the line, but reliable stuff that worked and was worth what you paid for it. But in recent years that hasn't really been true. But then, it's not really true for just about anyone any more. Amazon copied the Sears model--sell everything to everyone--but it has also opened the floodgates of third-party sellers selling cheap crap and counterfeit goods. It's less like the old Sears and more like an old-world medieval bazaar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> So, does anyone else offer catalog homes? If not, why not? Have building permits gotten too complex?

<comment><USER23> Cabelas does log homes

<comment><USER24> Not anymore (at least not referenced on their site anymore). They're also at a huge markup compared to other kit log cabins.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> If you ever watch a house being built, there's a huge pile of waste lumber from cut off ends. Carpenters don't look through the pile looking for an end to reuse, they just pull a fresh board and cut off what they need. With some careful design, and pre-cut pieces, one can nearly eliminate this wastage and cut costs substantially. It's not just the boards, it's the millwork, plumbing, carpet, etc.

<comment><USER26> When I was in construction all ends longer than a foot (30cm) were saved and most were used. They look like the are to be discarded, because most are created the first day and just sit there. However the very last thing before we leave we look around and verify that there is backing in all the corners to attach the drywall to. This used most of the longer scraps.

I don't know about the other steps you name.

<comment><USER25> > other steps

I recall reading about a spec house builder who would design the houses so that the dimensions of the rooms would fit an even multiple of the widths of carpet rolls. This nearly eliminated carpet waste, and made installation cheaper, too, as there were no seams.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I live in one on these houses! The construction is very solid, the insulation is thinner than you would ideally want but overall it's a nice house. The trim work is beautiful, every piece fits together nice and tight. My only complaint is that I wish they hadn't used lead paint on it.

</comment><comment><USER27> I didn't know they sold homes. Kind of amazing. It's a surprising footnote in the tragedy of Sears.

The popular narrative of an out-of-touch company unable to compete with the likes of Amazon is false. The CEO is a hedge fund manager who pillaged the company, sold off it's best assets (sometimes to himself), loaded up the company with debt, and used it to pay himself millions.

[http://prospect.org/article/it-was-vulture-capitalism- killed...](http://prospect.org/article/it-was-vulture-capitalism-killed-sears)

There is no good reason we are losing this company which has been the backbone of American commerce for over a century.

<comment><USER23> You need to see one of the old Sears catalogs, the ones that were two+ inches thick and sold ploughs, wagons, blacksmithing tools, everything you could imagine of use to homesteaders. It's fascinating to flip through, excellent coffee table reading material.

<comment><USER2> Shotguns, corsets, wagon wheels, pocket watches, derringers, medical apparatus, furniture, top hats, bowler hats, Masonic accessories, oil lamps, wood stoves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Those are nice looking houses, I'm surprised.

My wife and I are thinking about building a new house. I'm surprised how many new houses are still built from bespoke plans, and how much the plans cost. You'd think house plan 'Open Sourcing' would soon give us better houses at better prices. (I hope so, anyway.)

</comment><comment><USER29> I'd be really interested in what these "kit homes" end up arriving as to the customer. Are you shipped a bunch of wood and materials at a spot and you start building? Is there some prefab stuff going on?

Very interested in knowing what the user experience is on this sort of product, so to speak

<comment><USER30> These questions are hilarious because all of us are just a bunch of young "know it alls" and all the old timers would be able to tell you all about these sears homes....too bad no one here is older on this site.

<comment><USER31> The youngest person to have conscious memory of these things would have to be 82 or 83, and wouldn't be much of a help in building them. The 95 year old adult in 1940 is even rarer still.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> First time I heard of 'home building kits'. I don't think they are popular here in Europe (Belgium at least?) but the idea is quite neat.

Then again, I don't consider myself handy enough to take on such a project anyway :)

</comment><comment><USER33> How does being a kit home affect resale value if at all?

<comment><USER34> I don't think it does. I think it's regarded as charming. There's a whole enthusiast community. Also: they're kit houses, but they're not like, mobile homes or pre-fab; they're just houses, like any other.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: how do you share news stories you like? - <AUTHOR>

Email to group? Broadcast to FB/Twitter? SMS? Post to your blog? <comment><USER2> Totally depends on the article and expected audience. For me, Twitter is for articles that are startup/tech related. I work hard to maintain my public persona on Twitter and really filter what gets posted there. I syndicate everything from Twitter to Facebook. Facebook is for funny stuff my mom will like. Email is for specific clusters of folks that will find the article relevant, though I usually end up sending articles to the same 2-3 groups of people. My blog is a special case. I only post stories there that I think reflect my personality and deep interests.

</comment><comment><USER2> Also, after an experiment that automatically posted my Google Reader starred items to GroupMe via <http://ifttt.com> (awesome service), I've decided that SMS is the wrong way to share articles.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I find myself emailing news stories to the same email group over and over, but unable to find a history of what we talked about.

</comment><comment><USER3> My current project is a solution to this.</comment>


Microsoft getting into the platform as a service market in a rather major though stealthy way - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.zdnet.com/Greenbaum/?p=158

<comment><USER2> I like the look of some of these products that MS are working on but there is noway I am going to touch them until they become offical 1.1 releases.</comment>


Flocking for Road Traffic Efficiency Improvement - <AUTHOR> https://highwayflocking.github.io/

<comment><USER2> This is meant for self-driving cars, right? Because I can not see this happen with human traffic.

I was also waiting in the video to see busier traffic simulations, but didn't see any. I suspect the model of keeping distance then breaks down completely and creates lots of congestion, ifnot collisions (if the road is full and you need to evade an oncoming vehicle...). On the upside, you use the whole road dynamically instead of only a fixed few lanes, that is a nice improvement.

<comment><USER3> Yes, this is for self-driving cars.

I think you under-estimate the numbers of cars on the road.

I don't remember the exact throughput used for the video, but I think it was around 5500. On a equivalent road the minimum distance between two cars is about 2 seconds. That gives a throughput of 1800 cars per road per lane (3600/2). For two lanes (resembling the one used in the video) this would give a absolute maximum throughput of 3600 roads per hour.

Which means that our system, with about 5000 cars per hour, give a much higher throughput than the maximal on a standard highway.

All the details is in the thesis (link in the url, or [https://highwayflocking.github.io/Flocking_for_Road_Traffic_...](https://highwayflocking.github.io/Flocking_for_Road_Traffic_Efficiency_Improvement.pdf)).

<comment><USER4> could you easily simulate human speed control, with gentle variance and effective repulsion between vehicles? or overload the road and see how it breaks down.

<comment><USER3> Yep, in our thesis we have tried with throughputs from 2000 to about 15000, and with different types of load. We assume that all vehicles are automatic, so no human speed control.

<comment><USER5> How feasible would it be to simulate non-automatic vehicles with the models you've provided? My hypothesis is that humans, too, could implement the proposed steering behaviors (albeit likely with some degree of imperfection) and thus could feasibly implement some or all of the proposed flocking strategy, but I wouldn't know where to begin with testing things like blind spots and slower reaction times.

At the very least, I reckon the "yield to higher-priority traffic", "maintain distance from other vehicles", "maintain distance from road boundaries", and "drive forward" behaviors to be (relatively) easy for human drivers to implement, seeing as they do these things already (albeit with lanes as visual reference points), and do so even better with modern driving assistance technologies like blind spot indicators. Dynamic adjustment to asymmetric load would be harder, but I suspect even this could be feasible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Currently all vehicles fit in the space of a lane. Unless your road is really large, the most efficient packing of cars really should be neatly aligning them alongside. Vehicles are also very stable in the direction across the road, so stimulating separation in the perpendicular direction seems unnecessary.

I mean, if we are using AI to drive cars might as well use the most efficient configuration (and not one that only interacts with local neighbors as is required for fish).

Dynamic lanes seem useful though (if a bit scary).

<comment><USER7> Separation in the perpendicular direction is required to allow room to maneuver left or right in the event of unexpected events (or even expected ones like oncoming traffic or emergency vehicles). This applies for both self- driving vehicles and human controlled ones.

<comment><USER6> Autonomous vehicles could coordinate to allow manuevering. I mean, if there is enough space, surely you can keep cars at whatever separation, but in heavy traffic the most efficient would be leaving a lane on the right or left exclusive for emergency (or maybe coordinating vehicles for clearance).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Imagine a road without lanes? No need to imagine, visit Cairo!

<comment><USER3> One of the original authors here. In our thesis we actually have cited a paper that used an analysis of the traffic from India for something resembeling what we have done.

<comment><USER9> Fascinating! Could you provide a link, either to your thesis or that paper you cited? I'd love to read more.

<comment><USER3> I have uploaded the thesis to [https://highwayflocking.github.io/](https://highwayflocking.github.io/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> 400 meters of road with no driveways, no intersections, no traffic lights, is just a waste of time. These results do not apply to the real world.

<comment><USER11> The interstates are hundreds of miles without driveways, intersections, or traffic lights.

<comment><USER12> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gaps_in_Interstate_High...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gaps_in_Interstate_Highways#At- grade_intersections_and_traffic_lights)

In any case, typical interstate highways certainly have numerous interchanges, which are the other kind of junction.

<comment><USER13> Looks like a perfect list of shovel-ready infrastructure projects (TODO fixes to the interstate system).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This reminds me of the description of traffic on the Motie home world Mote Prime in "A Mote in God's Eye"

I found this quote from it at the following link: [http://aramink.com/blog/2012/08/31/the-mote-in-gods- eye-35-y...](http://aramink.com/blog/2012/08/31/the-mote-in-gods-eye-35-years- later/)

"Tall, ugly buildings loomed above them to shoulder out the sky. The black streets were wide but very crowded, and the Moties drove like maniacs. Tiny vehicles passed each other in intricate curved paths with centimeters of clearance. The traffic was not quite silent. There was a steady low hum that might have been all the hundreds of motors sounding together, and sometimes a stream of high-pitched gibberish that might have been cursing. Once the humans were able to stop wincing away from each potential collision…"

</comment><comment><USER15> Not to be a naysayer, but birds and fish can move in three dimensions, which naturally makes collisions much rarer. There are more than two directions to turn to avoid a collision.

<comment><USER3> The ideas still applies in two dimensions, we just have one fewer dimension. (Actually, looking at Particle Swarm Optimization, ideas from flocking is used from 1 dimension, to many more than 3).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> * The 72% increase in throughput was achieved with diverse asymmetric traffic.*

Does that mean "If you have most of the cars going one way it's more efficient to use more of the road for traffic moving in that direction"? It sounds like it does. And, well, duh.

</comment><comment><USER17> hah, I already saw this happening in Vietnam. People don;t give a damn about lanes.</comment>


CQRS/DDD by Greg Young - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXqrBySgX-s <comment><USER2> Title should be ammended to include "(2011)"</comment>


Ask HN: Email client alternative to Nylas N1? - <AUTHOR> I am currently using Nylas N1 and I did see some alternatives last month. I decided to try them after I was done trying out N1. Well, now I cannot find the links and I think my browser messed with my bookmarks ;). So, kindly list the alternatives any of you are aware of. I did check all the links on http://alternativeto.net/software/n1/, but no good. <comment><USER2> If you have feedback about N1, I'd love to hear it! :) You can post here or always email me directly. (I'm the founder/CEO.)

<comment><USER3> Hi! I'm looking for alternatives too, mainly for two issues:

1) I can't insert inline images 2) My emails are not being marked as read in server, so it's a mess when I go to my iPhone...

<comment><USER4> Try Canary Mail [http://canarymail.io/](http://canarymail.io/), snappy and beautiful. And its slack channel is quite robust (not like Nylas, please forgive me) although there only two people in its development team.

<comment><USER2> How do you think we could improve the Slack room? We currently have 2253 people there, so it's usually quite busy. It's free to join here: [http://slack-invite.nylas.com/](http://slack-invite.nylas.com/)

(The mark-as-read issue has been fixed and we're working on shipping support for sending with inline images. Gmail didn't have this for about the first 6 years.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I tried polymail(no imap support for months), Airmail (no link tracking or read tracking,oddly slows my mac,lot of small bugs, UI felt sluggish), apple mail(haha - next one), outlook (too skeumorphic on mac + too heavy + no swipe gestures)

Went back to N1 now - so i guess i am not much help. Sorry mate.

</comment><comment><USER6> I use Polymail and love it so far. It's fast, has a great UI and syncs very instantly. [https://polymail.io/](https://polymail.io/)</comment>


German Tank Problem - <AUTHOR> http://threestandarddeviationstotheleft.wordpress.com/2006/08/22/german-tank-problem/ <comment><USER2> Key quote:

> The statisticians believed that the Germans, being Germans, had logically > numbered their tanks in the order in which they were produced.

The moral of the story is, never do anything that could give your opponent information, unless you're controlling what information they receive. It would be better to produce tanks with pseudo-random serial numbers, up to a maximum of whatever you want your enemy to think your production capacity is[1]. Brings back memories of reading the Cryptonomicon.

[1] My gut tells me the expected estimate is likely to be slightly different than your max value for small values of n. Bonus points for confirming or denying.

<comment><USER3> Sometimes though, information denial is more of a pain in the ass than a gain.

For all the intelligence directed at Nazi Germany during WWII, the outcome of the war was decided by a few Russian snowflakes, really.

<comment><USER4> _the outcome of the war was decided by a few Russian snowflakes_

Not by cracking Enigma?

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

And remember, "the war" was also being fought in the Pacific, also with a spectacular imbalance in cryptology strength between the Allies and the Axis.

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

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_%28cryptography%29>

In general, code-breaking had a lot to do with the outcome of the war.

<http://www.cs.virginia.edu/jillcrypto/>

<comment><USER5> What decided the war in the Pacific was that the USA had vastly more industrial capability than Japan. Even if Japan's leaders had made all the right decisions, and America's leaders done everything wrong, America would still have won any protracted war between the two countries.

<comment><USER4> _Even if Japan's leaders had made all the right decisions, and America's leaders done everything wrong_

If America's leaders had done everything wrong, they would have ended the war without big territorial gains for their side, with a negotiated peace leaving Japan in control of Asia. (That, by the way, is exactly what Japan's leaders got wrong from the strategic point of view. They really believed before the war started that that was a likely outcome of the war. They didn't count on the Allies insisting upon unconditional surrender after the sneak attacks on Pearl Harbor and Singapore.)

<comment><USER3> US leaders did do almost everything wrong until well into the war.

They were saved from their mistakes by superior equipment (especially aircraft) and eventually better and more experience personnel. They didn't start tactically winning battles until well into the Pacific Campaign.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I recall reading that the same kind of thing used to happen with standing field armies, (think Napoleon sized blocks) where you could almost instantly assess an opponents forces based on simply recognizing divisions, regiments, etc.

My guess is Napoleon-era field marshals did a cost-benefit analysis and decided that managing their forces simplistically (i.e. no irregular sized units) outweighed whatever inconvenience enemy intelligence posed.

Relating this to the OP my guess is the Germans made a mistake and overlooked the serial numbers, rather than simply not caring.

</comment><comment><USER7> There are a few "flaws" to this solution actually, although the flaws are in assumptions + bayesian vs. frequentist philosophy differences.

The solution mentioned in the link solves a different problem:

You get a sample of K ints uniform randomly from 1 to N, where N is unknown. Based on your sample, what is your best estimate of N, so that if we repeatedly continue to give you independent random samples, the average answer your algorithm gives will be the correct answer, and provides the minimum variance compared to other algorithms?

However, if we can put an upper bound on the number of tanks that could possibly exist, say definitely no more than 100 million tanks, and if we believe it is slightly more likely that older tanks will be on the front lines than newer tanks, or any other prior knowledge, then the proposed solution will be more incorrect.

One of my former co-workers proposed computing a posterior distribution for estimates of N based on equally-weighted priors for N = max-observation to N = maximum cap (100 million tanks). Then the estimate is the expected value of the posterior distribution.

<comment><USER8> Is there for every commonly used frequentist estimation method a bayesian prior that gives the same answer?

<comment><USER9> For every commonly used frequentist estimator, there is an uncountable infinity of intractable Bayesian estimators.

<comment><USER10> ...probably.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I guess one might also want to take into account the probability of capturing 5 tanks with all odd serial numbers (3.125%) vs the probability that the Germans had numbered their tanks in increments of 2

</comment><comment><USER12> Is there a simple derivation or justification for this estimator?

<comment><USER13> There is, had to learn it in a probability class. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_tank_problem>

<comment><USER12> To sum up the derivation for those looking for crib notes; model the problem as choosing k items u.a.r. from [1..N]. Compute P(max = i), and from this compute the expectation of the max. After simpliciation this is given in terms of k and N, and hence we have an estimator for N in terms of k and max.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> As someone who spends a lot of time working with future high-school math teachers, I'd be really interested in reading some more by this author; but I can't find any contact information, and the blog moved to an 'invitation-only' Blogspot account in 2007. Does anyone know how to get in touch with the author to request an invitation?

</comment><comment><USER15> I want to comment on how pretentious that website title is ("three standard deviations to the left"). I took that to imply the author (or his intended audience) is three standard deviations above average (intelligence?).

Anyway, he says he am IB teacher... not surprised, this attitude of intellectual superiority is an IB hallmark.

<comment><USER16> Wouldn't that be 3 SDs to the RIGHT instead?

<comment><USER17> Yeah I took it as meaning a website for the brain-dead, which was much wittier than pretentious.

Unless he meant right and said left, which is even funnier.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Filter through all your FB friend's relationships - my weekend project - <AUTHOR> http://relationbook.me/

<comment><USER2> The only reason I didn't try this is because when you use these apps it shows up as "so-and-so is using relationbook" and I don't want everybody to see that. I know there's a way to hide it, but I never trust that it hides it completely.

<comment><USER3> We won't post without your permission! We ask you to do it, butr you don't have to, you can use the app without posting

<comment><USER2> Okay, I'll give it a shot!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Used it for less than 3 minutes, got more than 10 "Share with your friends!" pop-ups that if you hit "no" on forgets the action you were trying to perform before it showed the pop-up. Very annoying.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry we will fix that asap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I see that friends are showed twice when they are in a relationship with another friend of you.

So if I have two friends: A and B, they're listed twice like:

A is in a relationship with B B is in a relationship with A

Bit redundant imo.

<comment><USER3> It is a bit, but it's important to have both of them there, so that you can accurately filter by gender. Also, If I would hide one of them, and then you search for that person, you won't get results

<comment><USER6> Just a heads up: "both of them" may be the same gender.

Doesn't affect the app, just a note on the language.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> FYI: Facebook's legal team really frowns upon any domain name that uses xxxxbook.xxx - you should expect to hear from them soon.

<comment><USER8> I don't really see a clear legal basis for this. is there any legal precedence?

<comment> throwaway54-762 I assume they can revoke any app's access at any time, without legal action.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is restoring a feature that existed in circa 2005 Thefacebook. You could easily browse your friends in various relationship states. Many more people would actually set their status as "Single" back then too. Nowadays, in my friend circles, most single people just don't broadcast their relationship status.

</comment><comment><USER10> Does anyone else find this quite a creepy concept?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's what Facebook was originally built for and then failed at making it easy to use...

<comment><USER11> I love your thinking, Ben. You are a problem solver. Well done!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Nice weekend project. Fortunately for mankind (unfortunately for your app,) it seems most people (as scientifically sampled by my friend list) do not consider Facebook the canonical representation of their relationship status.

An ex-girlfriend who recently was married still has her status as single (not making that up.)

Personally I never have, and never will, assign a facebook status to my relationships unless I am married.

Interestingly, the once popular "open relationship" status now has zero takers in my friend list.

</comment><comment><USER13> Is <http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/15/thedatable-launch/> the inspiration behind this ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope, we started building before we heard of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Nice idea and great execution, congrats. I tried it for a while and I already discovered some friends who got married (and I was not aware of it) and some other friends who are not divorced.

I would love your web app even more if it would provide me with a list of updated events. I don't check FB very often and it would be lovely to just use your service once in a while and see, in a glance, who got married, who got divorced, etc.

<comment><USER15> While it doesn't cover all the relationship status changes, the Break-up Notifier (<http://www.breakupnotifier.com/>) provides part of that functionality. Arguably the most useful part :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Thank you for the preview of the app given before connecting with Facebook! I wish more applications which require connection to another service did this.

</comment><comment><USER17> I also have the same issue with it crashing. Safari on the iPhone (5.1.1)

\- Starts to load Friends

\- Screen goes to black as the app is terminated

Also, it does not load at all on Chrome for iPhone (the main site loads, but nothing happens after you click on the "Lets Go" button; besides opening a new tab).

</comment><comment><USER18> Unfortunately, this web app reliably crashes Mobile Safari on my iPad 3. Perhaps the logic is done clientside over the set of all my ~1000 friends?

<comment><USER3> Hey, yes the logic is all clientside, in fact there's no server side code here at all. I will look into the crashing issue asap. Thanx (on my 356 friends it works ok on ipad 2)

<comment><USER19> That's not your fault. No web app should be able to crash its browser. It is like a browser causes blue screen of death. If you figure out the reason write a blog post about it and send to Apple please. It happens while fetching friends stage, so I believe it could be about storing large data on client via js if you are doing so. Just saying. Wanna try that out when it is fixed! Cheers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Nice job, and in particular it looks great. Is the design a template or did you make it from scratch? If so where did your inspiration come from?

</comment><comment><USER21> you mis-spelled RelationBook as RelatiobBook in the authorization dialog

<comment><USER3> Thanx! fixed

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is cool. Now add age and sexual orientation filtering!

</comment><comment><USER23> It keeps crashing Mobile Safari (5.1.1) for me.

</comment><comment><USER24> check out <http://servletsuite.com/fbdir/>

</comment><comment><USER25> Needs an age filter</comment>


Be Careful with OS X Sierra – file sync has a serious bug - <AUTHOR> http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/maybe-be-careful-with-osx-sierra <comment><USER2> I had none of these issues. Enabled it on two different Macs, and it all worked just fine.

With any product release, there are always going to be a few users with use cases that beta testing just didn't catch, though.

</comment><comment><USER3> I avoid everything iCloud. First thing I disable.</comment>