Why root for Groupon? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@andrewmason/why-root-for-groupon-8f95dea7f234#.a2x85odlg <comment><USER2> I was one of the many unhappy customers of this company. They made tons of money for themselves and investors using an aggressive and unpleasant sales force to overpromise results to small businesses, who had to discount deeply to make the system work, and who never got any repeat business. This guy was responsible, and he still doesn't get it. They can burn for all I care.

<comment><USER3> Curious what happened. Were the economics really bad for your business or did the response overwhelm? Slow payouts?

<comment><USER2> The business model was bad, and the sales tactics were bad, and the handling of the contracts was unethical at best. The salespeople pushed us to give a big discounts on the list price of our service, saying that the promotion would bring long-term business. But that never happened due to the one-off nature of the advertising. Instead, we made a loss on every customer due to the discount, while Groupon made their commission (25% of the list price if I recall correctly) whatever happened. Making excessive money while your clients lose money is not a viable business model. So we dropped them, as many others did, and they moved on until they finally ran out of victims. If I recall correctly, the second time we tried, they changed the contract percentages on us without informing us, similar to the story another business owner tells in a comment on the Medium post: [http://bit.ly/1SRjksX](http://bit.ly/1SRjksX)

<comment><USER3> You do understand that with traditional advertising you spend money with no guarantee at all that it turns into sales?

I don't understand why people are so down on advertising that guarantees foot traffic when most/all other advertising is a total crap-shoot.

<comment><USER4> I imagine it has to do with the type of customers the advertising attracts. The type of customers a Groupon attracts would generally be short-term, coupon-chasing customers. I personally have around a dozen gift cards in my desk for restaurants I wouldn't normally go to but will eventually go to for the sake of spending the gift cards. Many entrepreneurs, from the owner of a market stall in India to the owner of a bootstrapped startup in Silicon Valley, will tell you that the frugal, hard-haggling, discount-chasing customer is the worst customer to have.

<comment> X-Istence In my experience those customers also expect and demand the world for the discounted price, whereas those that pay full price are generally less demanding. Not sure why that is...

<comment><USER5> Purchasing luxury goods and services is generally about personal relationships, atmosphere, and other context.

If you pay too little (not just get a discount or other small favor, but actually pay too little) then you are compromising your own experience and actually getting _less_ value than the people paying full price.

So it's no surprise that such people are ultimately less satisfied. The primary benefit they are getting out of it is the chance to tell their friends how low of a price they got.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hi guys, Andrew here (author of the medium post). Thanks for the feedback. I'm just going to try to summarize the questions/criticisms that have been raised in the comments - it seems like they're all mostly hitting on the same few things. I think it would be great for Groupon to answer them.

Here it goes:

* Groupon attracts bargain hunters that never come back. It can't be compared to other forms of advertising because the customer you get as a result of a Groupon is less valuable than customers you get from other forms of advertising.

* Groupon cannibalizes sales from customers that would have otherwise paid full price.

* In summary, why should I believe that Groupon is a good form of advertising for small businesses when compared to the other options?

* Whatever the answer, why should I take the word of this corporation over the many small business owners who have reported poor experiences?

Let me know if I missed anything and I'll add it.

Andrew

<comment><USER7> Hi Andrew, thanks for taking your time.

Since you're trying to capture it in one place, there is a comment hidden down with ctiticism that you did not capture in your list, here it goes:

"unclebucknasty 3 hours ago

That and the fact that those customers were Groupon's customers, not the businesses'. Their loyalty was to Groupon and the never-ending stream of discounts they provided. OTOH, the businesses that offered the discounts were essentially commodities in the scheme. They created the value via their discounts that Groupon then sold to customers. Few cared about the businesses, as people were not buying the underlying service or product from those businesses. Instead, the product was the discount itself, which they were buying from Groupon."

<comment><USER6> IMO that just seems like an elaboration upon / the reasoning behind "groupon customers are bargain hunters and won't come back", yes?

<comment><USER7> I think there is a distinction here between "groupon customer" and "business customer" highlighted in that comment that goes beyond the term "bargain hunter". You can still have bargain hunters that would only come to your shop once you display 10% off or once you're selling out stock that did not go away, but they still bring value to your business. That's different than a situation where neverending stream of discounts means you can change your provider as long as you're loyal to groupon.

That might be just word semantics that I'm missing, but I think there is a major distinction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Groupon, and Andrew, really did solve something hard: local customer acquisition and attribution. Others who had been toiling away at this problem for years were stupefied. Really? That's the most valuable local commerce company (as Andrew notes)? But when those looked in the mirror they couldn't say they were guaranteeing customers with no risk. That's a powerful value proposition to the small local business.

<comment><USER9> I believe they were capable of generating an increase in customers but I think the incremental customer base rarely converted into repeat business or very loyal customers, since the sorts of people who are looking to take advantage of "too-good-to-be-true" customers are not the sort of people who necessarily express consumer loyalty.

They're looking to take advantage of whatever deals (consumer advantage) are available and so the value-proposition offered by a Groupon campaign was way- overvalued by both Groupon and the businesses who bought into it.

<comment><USER10> I do think there are those customers that are just looking for rock-bottom deals as you suggest, but I think the problem is more one of presence of mind than necessarily for the deep-discount shopping only crowd. For example, if you see a single ad, you don't remember the business... you need multiple impressions for it to start to stick. I think the same can hold true for new potential customers: the first visit may be positive, but in a couple or so weeks, it's not necessarily the first place they'll think of the next time they have need of the product.

Groupon (and others like it) represent should be one small part of a larger marketing initiative. It can give you the opportunity to get in front of customers you wouldn't otherwise get in your store/buy your service/etc. But capitalizing on that first impression is where many small business fail. With a clever bit of follow-on marketing, I think you can get it to pay off.

For example, for those that come in with the Groupon, offer another coupon for the next visit... don't make the deal so sweet perhaps, or make it a bring- your-friends sort of deal (2 for 1, etc). You train them to come back and think of you while at the same time train them to start accepting your regular pricing.

Naturally this depends on your business... if it's wedding photography, you probably don't go down the Groupon type path to begin with. But if it's say, a dining establishment... this sort of thing could work.

Of course. Many small business owners are simply not good business people when it gets right down to it. The small bookseller who loves and knows literature inside and out may not know how to market that business, find opportunities and niches, nor appreciate the financial pros/cons of any given decision. I think that's the biggest issue of all. They're the types likely to sign up for Groupon a get the initial visit, but never capitalize on that.

<comment><USER9> I agree, that's what I meant by "overvaluing" the proposition offered by GroupOn. I think they were great as an introduction or reinforcement to existing customers but the value of the deals demanded to run a promotion was too high.

A staged proposition as you have outlined seems far more prudent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Are you _seriously_ using that coupon company instead of Groupon?"

This was the bitchy-voice Groupon sales rep phoning me direct when I used a different coupon service in Japan. I asked whether she was talking about the same Groupon of "Great Osechi Ryori Disaster and CEO's Fake Apology of 2011"-fame and it shut her up real quick.

So many things wrong with this company, failure couldn't have happened to a more deserving bunch of people.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm not sure that Groupon ever had - or ever will have - a viable business model. It raised enough money when it IPO'd to keep it solvent but that safety net appears to be on the verge of running out - [http://jackgavigan.com/2015/11/04/is-groupon-on-a-glide- path...](http://jackgavigan.com/2015/11/04/is-groupon-on-a-glide-path-to- bankruptcy/)

I'd love to know whether Mason and Lefkofsky ever genuinely believed they had created a viable company or whether they knew they were riding an unsustainable growth hack.

<comment><USER13> My money is on the later. I recall reading an article in which Groupon got extremely tight-lipped about the viability of its business model. Like someone asked a few questions about how sustainable it would be once it scaled and then the person representing Groupon basically went into siege mode and gave only short, resentful answers.

Wish I bookmarked that one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Does anyone know of actual data (blog-articles, surveys) regarding the behaviour of Groupon customers: e.g. % of repeat customers, difference in CLV, difference in cost of customer-acquistion compared to other channels, etc.

The discussion of Groupon usually ends up in "they don't add value" vs "they add value" but without actual data it seems easy to find explanations for both sides.

<comment><USER15> Yes, I used to work at Groupon. As one would expect, we tracked merchant satisfaction very, very closely. Most merchants were satisfied and most did repeat business. Of course, it's usually the angriest people who are the noisiest and even in the case of very vocally happy merchants, it's not that exciting of a media story.

Also it's worth pointing out that the value proposition for different types of businesses is wildly different. As you can imagine for an info product, Groupon is just like doing an affiliate deal with virtually no downside, for a high margin item like a spa it's excellent, and for something with very high unit costs, like a meal at a restaurant, the merchant has to be a lot more judicious about creating Groupons.

I'm blown away by all the hate, though. Maybe it comes down to how good / aggressive the sales team is. From a merchant's perspective, Groupon should be treated like marketing. You don't spend so much money on Adwords that unit economics are bad without some plan to create repeat purchases on the back end. Why would promotional discounts be different?

<comment><USER16> > _Why would promotional discounts be different?_

There are several differences between Groupon's model and standard discounting/advertising. The spirit of these can primarily be summed up as "most advertising services don't compete directly on price with the clients for whom they are supposedly advertising."

Groupon's product was its discounts, which it sourced from local merchants, then sold to its own customers. The businesses were not so much customers, but suppliers. However, the businesses paid Groupon for the benefit of supplying the product (the discount), and yet competed directly with Groupon when Groupon sold discounts for the restaurant across the street the following week.

Now, here I have discounted deeply and taken a loss, however, I cannot compete with Groupon in my efforts to retain any new customers and recoup those losses. This is because Groupon encourages a certain customer mindset, based on demand for deep discounts. This is a demand which Groupon alone can endlessly satisfy because no individual competitor could sustain such losses. However, the aggregate loss of those businesses is the very source of Groupon's profit.

In short, Groupon was actually a hyper-competitor to the businesses it was supposedly serving.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why would this be taken as anything but a plea to have the stock he holds increase in value? It's sort of mind-blowing to see this discussed as if it has any other purpose.

</comment><comment><USER18> I root for Groupon because I'm in Chicago and it's great for a company of that size to have originated here. Andrew has a great reputation in the area but Eric and Lightbank are almost universally detested which is a shame. I hope the company turns around and more importantly I hope Eric and Lightbank revisit how they treat entrepreneurs.

<comment><USER19> I didn't realize LightBank was looked down on. I'm also in Chicago and work for a Lightbank-funded startup. Have you heard from other local entrepreneurs about poor treatment from LightBank?

<comment><USER18> Yes, the overall mentality of anyone I talk to is don't even approach Lightbank. Word on the street is they are terrible for entrepreneurs to work with. It doesn't help that Lightbank has seemingly had high turnover and my limited interactions with them in other matters have sent me mixed messages. Again, it's a shame. Brad Feld from Foundry replies to almost every email he gets. Chicago needs a guy like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I found the little plug for his current startup to be interesting:

> _My current company, Detour, is for all intents and purposes at its current > stage, a small local business. We sell walking tours of San Francisco. To be > successful, we have to do the exact same things other local travel companies > do._

That description brought to mind exactly the startup SideTour, which Groupon bought out in 2013:

[http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/18/groupon-buys-sidetour-to- ad...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/18/groupon-buys-sidetour-to-add-more- local-bespoke-activities-to-its-grouponlive-events-business/)

Sidetour did more than walking tours...I only used it once, to go on an excellent tour of the now-defunct 5Pointz in New York...and according to the TechCrunch write-up, the point of Groupon buying out SideTour was to include the kind of things that Detour purportedly does:

> _A little over a week after Groupon announced the acquisition of hotel > booking service Blink, today comes one more purchase that moves Groupon > further yet out of the realm of daily deals. Groupon has bought SideTour, a > marketplace where people can book places for small-scale, bespoke > activities, and post their own events, too._

<comment><USER21> SideTour sounds quite different from Detour. The latter is an iOS-only audio walking tour app. There are no humans involved in content delivery (except at the creation stage, of course). It's not the only mobile-audio-walking-tour app, but its content is really, really good.

(I'm a satisfied customer of Detour.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> "I often find myself wishing that the original deal-a-day version of Groupon was around today; looking at the other paid options available to me as a small local business owner, I can't imagine a lower risk, more cost effective, or higher impact way than having Groupon send a one-time offer to 500k people in the Bay Area about Detour, with a few thousand of them buying it for half off."

Daily deals cannot scale and Andrew knows this better than _anyone_. When you're small you can price daily deals in a way that works for SMBs and your bottom line. But when you're huge, you only have 365 deals per year and the price you need to charge is out of reach for small businesses. You have effectively equaled the reach of a traditional media company.

<comment><USER6> Here's a quick history of the evolution of the Groupon model.

Groupon started out as one deal a day. We had a massive waiting list from merchants - 9 months, at one point.

With so much merchant demand and Groupon only running one deal a day, clones started to appear. Instead of waiting to be featured on Groupon, merchants ran with the clones.

Most customers didn't really care whether they bought from Groupon or its clones. So we realized what in effect was happening was that the model was moving to a marketplace... just one that was distributed across multiple sites.

We decided if the inventory was going to exist, it would be better on Groupon than spread across a zillion clones, so we moved to a marketplace model.

In other words it was mostly competition in a fairly commoditized space, and not scalability issues, that drove us to the marketplace.

That's not to say that scalability wouldn't have been a challenge with a daily deal model, but there are things you can do. A lot of the needs in the space actually balance out nicely. Some merchants want 20k customers, others want 20. Most merchants prefer new customers, some are indifferent. Both customers and merchants want category diversity so Groupon remains interesting and non- cannibalistic. In theory you can get all those things with smart segmentation and personalization. We experimented with that in the transition to marketplace but ultimately went ahead with moving to the "many deals" (which in the short term, is exactly what customers want) to stay ahead in the brutal competition for marketshare. Hard to say whether I'd do that part differently today... if we'd been less focused on maintaining marketshare NYTimes might have just written the obituary for Groupon instead of Livingsocial.

<comment><USER22> Respectfully, I don't buy it and I think the the marketplace is bearing this out. Local advertising was _temporarily_ disrupted when Groupon owned the market (eyeballs) and offered a product that businesses _thought_ was superior to traditional forms of local advertising.

Once competition fragmented the market and businesses realized that 50% off coupons attracted bargain hunters rather than loyal customers, there wasn't any going back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> >My experience here has reinforced the truth at the root of Groupon's success: if you have a small business, it's hard to reach customers.

I love this. You are the founder of a big company known for being predatory, and you're recognizing that big companies are predatory.

</comment><comment><USER24> Ads only work when you can convince people to try someplace or something new using words and images and symbolism. There's lots of experiences and businesses that can't do that - not just because of size or money or location, but because words are fairly limited. I don't want local businesses to just have better ads; I don't even know how that would help me.

Used well I think Groupon let's a business really put themselves on the line: we're willing to probably lose money on customers because we think those customers will learn the value of what we provide by experiencing that value. That's a risky proposition, but a fair one. Used that way, yes, I think it's good Groupon exists.

</comment><comment><USER25> I have yet to hear a single positive testimonial for Groupon.

<comment><USER26> I'll give one, both as consumer, merchant and partner. I have never owned stock in the company and don't know anybody there.

As a consumer, I've discovered tons of new restaurants and services through Groupon.

As a merchant, I ran several groupons and they kicked butt. Of course you need reasonable expectations about margin and repeat customers.

As a partner, I've referred dozens of brands to Groupon Goods, who are easy to working with, pay their bills on time and pay MORE than traditional retail channels, because there zero loss/spoilage.

I can't speak to sales tactics but my experience was virtually 100% positive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> That's just sad.

Cognitive dissonance is a powerful thing. I can get why he wants to look in the mirror and say, "No, I really did do something worthwhile. Really, really!" And it's great that his wife is trying to buck him up.

But trying to convince the rest of the world? Via rambling, need-an-editor Medium posts? Where he helpfully analogizes Groupon to a drug that turns people into shuffling, addicted zombies and destroys their lives?

It's just sad.

<comment><USER3> Totally disagree. Andrew is a super smart and generous guy, built an extraordinary company, albeit not as successful now but still multi-billions in value. Local business, a totally admirable market to serve, has a very difficult time marketing and Groupon is/was a godsend.

<comment><USER27> Not knowing him, I have no opinion on his smartness and niceness. But as far as I'm concerned, Groupon was an enormous pump-and-dump built on a short-lived marketing fad.

I agree that local business is a great market to serve, which is why I think Groupon is especially repulsive. In his race to cash out, he caused enormous pain to an enormous number of local businesses. Whether he did that willfully or negligently I have no idea, but either way his attempt to chipper his way out of Groupon's history is sad.</comment></comment></comment>


Adblocker Alternative: Ad Limiter - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ad-limiter-from-sitetruth/lhenadjfjeijgkddmafcnkmdgpbnakfk <comment><AUTHOR> "Ad Limiter cleans up search results by showing only one ad per search result page."</comment>


Ask HN: Review Compound Time. - <AUTHOR>

It's a motivational tool for music students (and their teachers).
http://compoundtime.com
Thanks, Michael <comment><USER2> Interesting concept. I definitely could have used some extra motivation to practice piano as a kid and this looks like it could almost be a Pomodoro timer for studying music. Some points:

1\. The tagline mentions Nike+...what if people don't know what Nike+ is? I've heard of it before but am not really sure what it does.

2\. Mobile app would be ideal but it looks like that is already in the works.

3\. Uploading sounds clips might be something to look at...

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. I definitely need to work on the copy.

I made a simple mobile web version using jQuery Mobile, wrapped it in an Android WebView and put it on the Android Market. Could use some more work. Also need to do an iOS app.

I like the sound clips idea. I'm using jPlayer for the iTunes previews. Pretty nice library.

<comment><USER2> I tried to click the Android image and since there was no link, assumed that the mobile app was still under development. You might want to consider linking to your Android Market listing.

Also, to clarify for sound clips, I meant allowing users to upload recordings of their own practice sessions / performances. The previews on Itunes seems like a good idea as well.

Btw, I'm viewing on IE, so I might not be seeing everything correctly...

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I think Android Market recently added market listings. I'll link to that shortly. I've never viewed the site in IE. Hope it works!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Clickable:

<http://compoundtime.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!</comment></comment>


A look back: The Bloomberg Keyboard (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/professional/blog/look-back-bloomberg-keyboard/ <comment><USER2> "The Grid" is a fascinating machine. If you're interested in it the full name is the GRiD Compass 1101. It used a display I've never seen on any laptop before, an electroluminescent monochrome one, really weird tech there. It's primarily used in static displays like car dashboards because it's very unlikely to "burn out" (not even sure it's possible). I've never seen them on dynamic displays before.

More fun facts, it was used in space, and perhaps even as the "nuclear football".

<comment><USER3> It looks like the PLATO system plasma displays that were very old when I was in undergrad in the late 80s.

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

<comment><USER4> Yeah, it reminded me of the gas-plasma monochrome displays that were common on "luggable" PCs in the late '80s (like this one: [https://jshorney.incolor.com/p70.htm](https://jshorney.incolor.com/p70.htm)).

They were much lighter than a comparable size CRT, which was the display solution used on the original luggables from companies like Osborne and Compaq. But that was about the only good thing that could be said about them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I worked at a firm who's stated goal was for all the street to have the Terminal on one monitor and our product on the other. Our application was sophisticated and advanced, but it was a web app. The Bloomberg didn't really do what the app did, but it felt so much better. Responsive, native, dense, and has keybindings. Using the Terminal makes you feel powerful and in control: it is extension of yourself.

Our app on the other hand looked and felt like all the other "modern" web apps: low information density, slow, no keybindings, and frustrating. Also it logged you out every 30 minutes! It was a total joke and we had a hard time getting people to use the product.

I think companies make the mistake on just focusing on features, especially with web apps. Performance is absolutely critical and the #1 prerequisite for a good product. But despite research and studies on how users care about performance a lot, developers don't seem to. Every repeats mantras like "programmer time is more important", "... the root of all evil", "just wait a year or two and your app will be 2x faster!", etc etc.

With the end of exponentially increasing single threaded performance, I think developers are recently starting to realize how valuable performance is. Hopefully this trend continues and we software engineers start making software we are actually proud of.

The current state of development and developers is inexcusable and sad. The slow crap we make is honestly sickening.

</comment><comment><USER6> It has fractions of 1/2, /4, /8, /32, /64\. But not /16.

There must be an interesting reason why, anybody know?

<comment><USER7> There's a 1/16 on there.

I assume it is a historical oddity. NYSE prices were done in fractions up until a few years ago.

<comment><USER8> Bond futures still are [1]:

* Minimum Price Fluctuation: One thirty-second (1/32) of one point ($31.25), except for intermonth spreads, where the minimum price fluctuation shall be one-quarter of one thirty-second of one point ($7.8125 per contract).*

As are some bond-like derivatives, eg MAC swap futures, which are quoted in quarters of thirty-seconds [2]. The way prices are written out is maddening - consider yesterday's settle [3]:

107'247

This means 107 and 24.75 thirty-seconds!

[1] [https://www.cmegroup.com/trading/interest-rates/us- treasury/...](https://www.cmegroup.com/trading/interest-rates/us- treasury/30-year-us-treasury-bond_contract_specifications.html)

[2] [https://www.cmegroup.com/trading/interest-rates/swap- futures...](https://www.cmegroup.com/trading/interest-rates/swap- futures/5-year-usd-mac-swap_contract_specifications.html)

[3] [https://www.cmegroup.com/trading/interest-rates/swap- futures...](https://www.cmegroup.com/trading/interest-rates/swap- futures/5-year-usd-mac-swap_quotes_globex.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd love to know what technologies the Bloomberg Terminal, and the host side, were originally implemented with, back when they started in the 1980s. I've searched for information on this topic, but haven't had much luck finding answers.

<comment><USER10> They used [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interdata_7/32_and_8/32](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interdata_7/32_and_8/32) and the Interdata OS/32 operating system. They wrote all the code in Fortran. There is a clue about the rationale for that in the Bloomberg on Bloomberg book: from memory it's something like that they didn't want the (now defunct) investment bank they'd come from to think they'd copied anything so they used a different OS and language. I think they did some pretty interesting things with their own networking technology to get all the market data around the place back then but I know nothing about any of that.

One interesting thing about the Interdata systems is that they were the first non-PDPs to run Unix, via a guerilla porting project done at a university in Australia. Bloomberg used the native OS/32 though, and somewhere there is a paper from that Australian university that gives a scathing review of it. Some kind of timesharing, but with a single console where all output would appear. That made me laugh, because the 'console room' was Bloomberg lingo for a kind of sysadmin group.

Later Bloomberg used a lot of different commercial Unix variants. At least HP/UX, AIX, Solaris and RHEL are used, and a lot of C++, Javascript and other languages. There is still plenty of older code from the Interdata OS/32 days in service though and a lot of unusual system control scripts and commands from that defunct system. I guess (?) it's probably nearly all Linux by now though!

<comment><USER11> I was tasked with calculating OAS durations on callable agency bonds with the Bloomberg API in Perl in the 90's. Basically I'd take the price and use the API to get the OAS, then bump the OAS up and down a basis point, calculate price up and price down and get the difference.

The problem was sporadically I'd get a price back that was out of line. It would match to the 5th or 6th decimal, but then would diverge. I could make the same call 10 times in a row and the price would be identical 8 times, but 2 others it would be different in the 5th or 6th decimals. Since I was taking the difference of two prices which were relatively close otherwise, this would wreck havoc with my results.

Bloomberg support was always quick with a response, but often the first level support had no idea what they were talking about. For two weeks they kept insisting that because the yield curve I was pricing with was live, what I was seeing was because of market moves. Finally I got to someone who was on the implementation team for that bit of code, and he explained that they had both Data General and Perkin Elmer (Interdata) machines supporting that function, and the answers depended on which architecture handled the response.

<comment><USER12> When I worked there (2003-2007), first level support was where new hires learned the ropes before moving on to their actual assignments.

It was an amazing way to keep employees well in touch with customers' needs, and at least at the time the program seemed to be well-enough run to deliver great customer support. Sorry to hear your experience was different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The last one is the most uninspired & least interesting of the bunch.

<comment><USER4> The article works best if you read it as a tale of a company being dragged, completely unwillingly, into working the same way as the rest of the world does. It starts off with all these funky ideas, and slowly devolves into a bog-standard keyboard with a few extra keys stuck on.

<comment><USER14> It still has some interesting features though!

It includes a slot for a Biometric auth unit (B-Unit).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Any idea what the switch mechanisms look like? I'd like to dream that you can customize your keyboard with an array of cherry switches to your own preference.

<comment><USER16> The big white one and the current black one are both rubber domes. I'd used the big grey one about 10 years ago. I want to say they felt different but I'm pretty sure they're rubber domes too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I expected that "timeline" to end in the late 90s but huh, that is quite impressive that they still have a market for those things.

<comment><USER18> They make a lot of sense for terminal users. And the newest version is actually a very decent keyboard, so you don't have an upside by using another one. Many departments that have some terminals will just use those at every computer so that employees with a terminal license don't have to change hardware if they swap places (since Bloomberg anywhere, licenses are on a per- person basis, not bound to the computer).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The fingerprint scanner was always a curious addition to me. It seemed completely useless other than being a great way to justify the $25k spend a year on a terminal.

I'm also very curious as to whether it actually works. Is the biometric authentication properly configured to actually be more secure?

<comment><USER20> The fingerprint scanner is intended to benefit the company, not the users. It makes it significantly more difficult to share an account, which protects Bloomberg's $24,000 / user / year revenue.

<comment><USER21> One doesn't pay per user, but only for the terminal. I.e. you could have thousands of users per terminal. Per user licenses are called "Bloomberg Anywhere" which is quite similar to Refinitiv's EIKON.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Is anyone using a 2004 era CTB100 at home?

I love the extra buttons and that it comes with a speaker for voice chat.

I'm considering using one for programming, with the extra buttons remapped.

<comment><USER23> Quite a few of the keys have awkward action with excess stiction. Not great for programming (and indeed many Bloomberg programmers used other keyboards when that one was current).

<comment><USER22> excess stiction - so you means the keys requires a lot of strength to be activated.

Could it be the plastic getting older and less soft?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The latest iteration is rather underwhelming. I hope they're going back to some bigger designs again!</comment>


Google's lightweight image format makes YouTube pages load 10 percent faster - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2014/03/23/google-webp-youtube-thumbnails/

<comment><USER2> So the (rather small) page loads faster but the (rather huge) video files are still the same?

<comment><USER3> They've already begun rolling out VP9 for that purpose, claiming 50% bitrate savings. The image format was a byproduct of VP8 development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is it Google's format?

<comment><USER5> Yes, it's developed by Google.</comment></comment>


In tough economy, working 7 days becomes norm for some - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/02/23/seven.days.irpt/index.html?eref=rss_topstories <comment><USER2> Can't we program some sort of software to write articles like these? Insert say 3 names of people who are now working 7 days of week, 1 quote from each, pull some generic stat about average number of work hours per week and Bob's your uncle.</comment>


Bernie Sanders Urges Cuomo to Raise CUNY Professors' Pay - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/15/nyregion/bernie-sanders-urges-cuomo-to-raise-pay-for-cuny-professors.html <comment><AUTHOR> Higher education is being underfunded throughout the country because more and more state funds are going towards paying for Medicaid. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has increased significantly the amount of money that states have to pay for Medicaid and thus the ACA has contributed to a decrease in state funding for public universities.

Most countries that offer universal care eg, UK, France, Canada, Germany, ... have high cigarette taxes to pay for health care costs. The Federal US tax is about $1.

<comment><USER2> Interesting take on things, but what if education is actually being over- funded by the states as a percentage of their operating budget and the "free" money causes college to be much more expensive than it should?

"In fact, public investment in higher education in America is vastly larger today, in inflation-adjusted dollars, than it was during the supposed golden age of public funding in the 1960s. Such spending has increased at a much faster rate than government spending in general. For example, the military's budget is about 1.8 times higher today than it was in 1960, while legislative appropriations to higher education are more than 10 times higher.

In other words, far from being caused by funding cuts, the astonishing rise in college tuition correlates closely with a huge increase in public subsidies for higher education. If over the past three decades car prices had gone up as fast as tuition, the average new car would cost more than $80,000" [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/opinion/sunday/the-real- re...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/opinion/sunday/the-real-reason- college-tuition-costs-so-much.html?_r=0)

As far as Education Costs and Medical Care Funding, are you under the impression they are not related? Since the passing of the ACA and the Federal Government take over of student loans, the billions in interest paid on student loans now funds Obamacare, with the aptly named American Healthcare and Education Reconciliation Act [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_Care_and_Education_Reco...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_Care_and_Education_Reconciliation_Act_of_2010)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Poor bernie what a moron. Understands nothing about the real world

</comment><comment><USER3> What a god damn economic moron</comment>


White House Warns CNN That Critical Coverage Could Cost Time Warner Its Merger - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/white-house-if-cnn-bashes-trump-trump-may-block-merger.html <comment><USER2> So some anonymous Trump "allies" said... something non-specific. Wow, that's some solid reporting.</comment>


Now would be a good time for Mark Zuckerberg to resign - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/21/now-would-be-a-good-time-for-mark-zuckerberg-to-resign/ <comment><USER2> Rather: Now would be a good time for Facebook users to resign. Zuck is doing exactly the same things when he started Facebook. It's the users; The users that need to leave the platform. Does anyone really believe that a FB without Zuckerberg will all of a sudden be great for people? Reporters like these should inform users better about how their data is being used and how they can change things for themselves by simply leaving the platform. That's 1. more practical and 2. the only actual solution to the problem.

<comment><USER3> I've been wanting to delete my FB account for years. Stupid me has it connected to a bunch of other services though by using single sign on feautures... Most used of those services is Spotify and they still don't offer a way to disconnect Facebook from the account.

<comment><USER4> Spotify should work absolutely fine when FB is deactivated, just send a 'Forgot Password' email to the email you used to sign up for Facebook.

<comment><USER3> Wow never knew, I had looked into it a year ago and they only said that you could cancel the current FB shared account and register a new one based on e-mail account.

However; that would make me lose all playlists, stored music and I'd have to move my subscription around. Too much hassle at the time.

Going to try the trick you just posted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Barring egregious criminality, it doesn't make sense for someone who took a company from nothing (well, maybe a concept pioneered by Friendster and its antecedents) to $500 billion in market cap to suddenly resign.

I feel this Cambridge Analytica story is a bit overblown. When the whistleblower says "target their inner demons", he is just referring to campaigns placing Facebook Ads with certain parameters about who should see them.

Now the question of political targeting data being re-purposed from a personality quiz app, and issues of data privacy in general, are worth investigating. But the fall in Facebook stock price is a giant overreaction (unless the story invites legal regulation.)

The shock of Trump's election and Brexit have prompted more scrutiny of social media, which is warranted. But there's a limit to the benefit of worrying about Youtube algorithms, Facebook targeting, and Russian trolls. Changing the political situation will mostly require old-fashioned door-to-door politics.

<comment><USER6> Not only that but it ignores the elephant room here. And the ironic thing is the annoying phrase has been used so often it's lost its power, but this is literally the biggest "evidence" for 2016 in front of people's noses.

Clinton _won_ the popular vote. She _won_ CA for example, so clearly Cambridge didn't mush people's brains up that much. The swing states in the Midwest she _didn 't_ win she didn't campaign in. Is it that hard to understand?

Why do we have to constantly relitigate 2016? If you don't like what Trump is doing, why not fight against that instead of this constant reporting and talk of conspiracies? People who peddle/love this stuff are taking away the _wrong_ lessons from 2016.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The article goes on and on to describe how Facebook has tried to do and be many things that it wasn't before, and how it has failed in those attempts to expand beyond a basic social network.

Fine, let's assume that that's true. Facebook did indeed do some useless things. But how is this a reason for its CEO to resign? Facebook did nothing wrong! Yes they failed to become better, and their platform became bloated, but so does every other platform in the world at the moment. But since when is failing to become better now suddenly a really good incentive for it to buckle down completely like the article is suggesting?

I feel the article's argumentation is completely unsound. Premises I have no say about, but its conclusion definitely doesn't follow from those premises.

The author didn't even rein in the privacy stories that are all over the news suddenly. Now that would give their argument leverage, but they didn't.

Go hate Facebook all you like, I do too, but this article doesn't make sense and doesn't deserve to give a reason for you to hate the company or its CEO.

</comment><comment><USER8> At this point I've hidden at least 10 threads relating to this. I'm starting to think that this is a coordinated PR "attack" on facebook.

<comment><USER9> It's getting out of hand. The hate train is running off the rails here.

If this was Reddit, I'd suggest the mods pin a megathread to contain it but HN doesn't work that way. I'm generally against heavy moderation but at this point I'd vote for a moratorium like we did with politics awhile back.

<comment><USER10> Peak post Trump hysteria, hopefully.

There aren't very many more entities left to blame, tar and feather for his election at this point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It would be but there is no way that it will ever happen. Besides that he has things set up in such a way that even the board can't force him out. The only people that can fire Zuckerberg are the users.

<comment><USER12> It's almost as though a corporate structure set up to enshrine its founder as BDFL is a really bad idea. Go figure.

<comment><USER13> Doesn't seem so bad for the founder.

<comment><USER14> Not so bad for the shareholders really either. $500bn isn't a bad market cap for a photo sharing site. The people being hurt here are the general public.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> When under pressure, I'd expect a strong CEO to fix things, not to crawl away from the problems and toss them on someone else.

<comment><USER16> What are you even talking about? His response to this issue was anything but "Crawl away from the problems". Did you even read it?

<comment><USER15> I'm talking about this article, which is calling for Zuck's resignation. I disagree with the article, and I think resigning would be crawling away from the problems.

<comment><USER16> Oh, my apologies. I misread your comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> All of this is overreacting. People have the choice to leave Facebook or to accept the terms and deal with them.

This is some serious cognitive dissonance to expect to be free to share personal data but to still retain privacy regarding those. Anything you share with your friend can then be shared to a 3rd party. This is even true in "real life"

And data is not nearly as powerful as we make it to be. Populism did not win because of social networks, populism won because of increasing inequalities in both wealth and skills in a world where globalisation and automation are making more and more people uncomfortable about the future.

All data did is to identify who is who and sell them what they actually wanted. The problem is not about using data to understand audiences. It is about having people lacking enough common sense to actually check if they are told the truth. It is also about the eagerness of politicians to play with tribalism of any kind. Western democracies are responsible of those failures and they are trying to find anyone else than themselves to blame.

I left Facebook a few years ago and I don't regret it. I doubt that Facebook is worth it for most people and WhatsApp with SMS is enough for me. People more social that me could leave FB to go to Instagram though. So in any case Zuckerberg is fine.

The only way to beat Facebook is to give people an alternative they prefer. It is definitely not to try to scare them with data scandals most of them don't care about.

</comment><comment><USER18> I want to keep Facebook only to be connected with my friends. But I do not want to see their status updates. I just want to be digitally connected with them so that I can contact them. Instead of seeing their photos/posts, I would rather like to talk to them personally.

I always think about pre-facebook era and want to go back again to those times.

<comment><USER19> Get their e-mails and phone numbers. It'll be a significant improvement in your life, trust me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think that is very unrealistic.

</comment><comment><USER21> While I want him to resign, it is not for the failures of Facebook. But because once things starting to blow up, he was MIA.

It was only after, stories about his missing "statements" started to appear that he came forward.

<comment><USER16> Or maybe he and his team wanted to actually take the time to come up with a useful and intelligent response rather than a vapid response only meant for the spectacle?

<comment><USER21> So, you are saying he and his team waited 5-6 days to come up with a useful and intelligence but not a vapid response?

Sure, that sounds feasible given how just a day ago everyone went after Zuckerberg for keeping silent and a day later he releases a statement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > Attempts to make Facebook an infrastructure provider have arguably so far > failed

Adding to this list how failed to us with Parse.com

<comment><USER23> Yeah.. the feels. For a hot second I thought Parse would get a shoutout when it mentioned Facebook's attempt to be an infrastructure provider.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is hysteria. You people are crazy. This is not nearly that big of a deal. I beg my fellow hacker news readers, get ahold of yourselves.

This is a stellar opportunity for this community to have some introspection. Are we capable of it? These kinds of posts are a mirror to what we badly want to be true, whether it is actually true or not. We, apparently, badly want Facebook and even moreso Mark Zuckerberg to fail. Why do we want that so badly?

<comment><USER25> I understand the anger directed at them. Facebook are the spearhead of the closed, privacy-invading web, and this is the straw that broke the camel's back. Most people reading HN probably remember the days when the web was open and free and you actually had to remember URLs to read interesting content on interesting websites, usually run by enthusiastic hobbyists, written as flat HTML sites without JavaScript bloat or supercookies.

They're obviously not the only company at fault, but they're one of the biggest.

<comment><USER26> _" Most people reading HN probably remember the days when the web was open and free and you actually had to remember URLs to read interesting content on interesting websites, usually run by enthusiastic hobbyists, written as flat HTML sites without JavaScript bloat or supercookies."_

That open and free web is still out there, and as a non-FB user, that's the web I see every day. OK, my RSS reader remembers the URLs for me, and some of the sites are a bit bloated (which we have browser add-ons to fix), but there's definitely lots of good independent content still out there (and I've found lots of it by reading HN).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Just like it was great for Microsoft when BillG left...</comment>


Global Entrepreneurship Index – do you know/agree with this list? - <AUTHOR> http://thegedi.org/global-entrepreneurship-and-development-index/ <comment><AUTHOR> I am surprised by the rank of France, Australia (expected them lower) and Germany, Poland (would have put them higher). Does this look trustworthy to you?</comment>


Ask HN: What is your vision for the best high tech government experience? - <AUTHOR> I am occasionally pleasantly surprised at the occasional government experience (ease of renewing vehicle license), but generally dealing with the government is slow, requires old technology (like printed forms or a telephone), requires lots of repetitive actions (identification, sending contact info, tree traversal, separate payment processing per department, etc) and I am aware that lots of different departments have requirements/forms that could be unified for those who seek more benefits.
If there were no policy or budget/talent limitations, what is your vision for the best possible experience as a resident/citizen with national, state/provincial and locality governments?
I am looking for ideas around using things like QR codes, SMS, notifications, natural language processing, reviews and suggestions, one-click licensing/permitting, etc to make the experience of interacting with the government far more efficient and pleasant. <comment><USER2> * Improved access to the democratic process, e.g. allowing testimonials in formats other than attending a town hall in-person

* Improved version control and auditability of all Government documents - the authoritative source of all bills/legislation should be a markdown file in a public Git repository with each contributor accurately recorded, rather than a hard-to-find PDF on an obscure website

* Mandatory open-sourcing of code that is funded by taxpayers, in-line with what [https://publiccode.eu](https://publiccode.eu) are campaigning for

* Competitive salaries for technical IT staff - the IT requirements of Governments are so complex and diverse, yet they have the lowest-paid IT staff working on them

</comment><comment><USER3> Not interacting with it at all, except for receiving notifications about stuff I need to know (not do, there shouldn't be anything to do).

<comment><AUTHOR> Is this a serious answer (eg. from an anarcho-capitalist or you think the government should do much more so you have to do less) or a facetious answer? I realize that there's not a good likelihood that the government will likely change such that we (almost) never have to interact with it.

Given this assumption, are you willing to humor my scenario for the question?

<comment><USER3> It is meant seriously. I myself am more to the anarchist side of things, but the answer wasn't about that.

I think the government has most or all information it could possibly need - from my employer, school, doctor. I don't recall filling any form that was necessary, everything I've ever done with the government was a waste of time, because everything has already been in their system; thus my answer was mostly about making a proper computer system that does most if not all things automatically, asking for my time only when _absolutely_ necessary.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for clarifying.

I don't think I agree that the government always has this info, but I do agree that where the info already exists, different silos of the same government should be able to access this data. In a sense this already exists (eg. DMV records tend to be reused for election + jury duty rolls, car insurance info is automatically submitted to DMV), but I think it should be far more streamlined.

I guess I had hoped for specific examples of where there are tasks which could be streamlined, but currently aren't.

<comment><USER3> I should've said I am European. The government knows more things here, and yet I have to fill tons of forms with the same info again and again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Before venturing into this space I suggest reading Joshua Tauberer (founder of GovTrack): [https://medium.com/civic-tech-thoughts-from-joshdata/so- you-...](https://medium.com/civic-tech-thoughts-from-joshdata/so-you-want-to- reform-democracy-7f3b1ef10597)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good read. But I'm not interested in attempting to address any of those topics. I've already considered some of them and come to similar conclusions.

My hope was to put the pain of interfacing with current bureaucracies side-by- side with a better alternative. Then describing what design guidelines would help bureaucracies improve those features.

I actually don't want to do the work. The tech debt of all government employees working hard to maintain the status quo will always overpower my ability as a single developer to make change. I think there needs to be a marketing campaign to shame governments who have terrible interfaces, reduced friction for them to adopt better standards/guidelines, and citizens need to complain that they want the change prioritized.

<comment><USER4> Check out Code for America. You may already be aware of them. They're a non- profit aimed at addressing the tech gap in government and pushing for better tech solutions. They have fellowships and various positions in marketing and advocacy, not just coding.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm a late-Boomer, milquetoast-Libertarian, in the Classical Liberal faction.

In my country our state has a 'one stop shop' website that handles most routine state government licencing payments.

This is much better than say 10 years ago when it was a multitude of separate mailed paper bills.

I can log in and see where my car licence and registration is due, a lot of other potential Govt. services (most of the welfare services I don't use) my fishing licence (funds cover policing of regulations and community projects to conserve fish habitats).

The car rego is linked to my car service shop so when I get an annual safety check my old car requires it's automatically sent through. This used to be a painful process 20 years ago, queuing up at the motor registry that used to close at lunchtime so the staff could have lunch.

It's not the ideal Libertarian tradeoff, but much better than what it used to be and a lot cheaper for the Government to run. They actually dropped registration charges a while back, with a refund! Virtue signalling maybe, but it's the kind I like.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think our (California) DMV has started replacing the most common workflows with internet options years ago and they are definitely improvements over the previous method (take time during business day to visit one of the few offices, wait in a long queue, deal with slow paper-based forms).

There are US initiatives (Code For America, US Digital Service, 18F, etc) which aim to make the government experience better for the user on an app-by- app basis, but I'm hoping to get a glimpse of what the entirety of government _could_ be if there was a holistic approach to redesign the entire experience (from licensing+permitting to taxes to benefits to giving+incorporating feedback, etc).</comment></comment>


IE10 preview 3 supports HTML5 history API, CSS animations and 3D transforms - <AUTHOR> http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/gg192966?pp3#_RevHistory

<comment><USER2> Folks at MS are doing a pretty good job with IE recently. Even though IE9 is a bit behind "modern browsers" (text-shadow!) - it is a decent browser. And IE10 looks very promising, in fact it looks like it will have all it needs to be considered "modern". Could be even ahead in some areas (CSS Regions - <http://www.adobe.com/devnet/html5/articles/css3-regions.html> \- or hardware acceleration). My only fear is that with Microsoft's old-fashioned way of releasing updates (plus lack of support for older OSes) we still will have to support ~5 versions of IE for years.

<comment><AUTHOR> The slow updates and lack of OS support is a big deal for me. I posted about this back in February before IE9 came out ([http://www.basecreativeagency.com/2011/02/what-microsoft- nee...](http://www.basecreativeagency.com/2011/02/what-microsoft-need-to-do- to-fix-ie9/)) and the situation hasn't changed with IE10.

Whilst Google can get a really high percentage of users onto the latest version of Chrome within days, Microsoft cannot do the same with IE9 (and IE10 when it comes out).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> That's nice - but when will they add WebGL? I know about Microsoft's security concerns, but I can't wait to see how 3D rendering could innovate the web. I even have a couple of ideas myself...

<comment><USER4> Unlikely to happen soon I reckon. That's way heaps of work for them to do on the security side. They'll need to do lots of work with 3d drivers.

You can do some pretty nice things with 3d transforms. I've done some nice things anyways :)

We'll see what happens once webgl gets into mobile safari. Perhaps lots of people will use it, and then MS might be convinced that all that work is worth it.

<comment><USER5> But is it even planned to come to IE11? IE12? When can we expect it from IE?

On html5test.com IE9 still seems to score about half as any other Windows browser, so hopefully IE10 will try to catch-up with them in more HTML5 functionality. They say they want to support HTML5 but so far they are supporting it the _least_.

<comment><USER6> Every release since IE 8 has been so insanely far ahead of the previous one- you can't really blame the current team since they haven't stopped yet. They really do want to support HTML5, they just have a lot more ground to make up than everyone else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The thing that I'm excited about is HTML History support! :-D pushState here I come!

</comment><comment><USER8> Oh, good, now I can't just ignore IE users when making rich HTML5 apps. Thanks, Microsoft.

</comment><comment><USER9> Unfortunately I don't believe there is a way to install this on Windows 7... Rubbish! Was hoping to see some of my websites render as expected on IE!

<comment><USER10> This is strange. The IE 10 preview used to be available for Windows 7, but the link for it no takes you to the download for the Windows 8 preview.

[https://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2011/04/12/native- html5-...](https://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2011/04/12/native-html5-first- ie10-platform-preview-available-for-download.aspx)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Has anyone used IE10's file API and can speak to its capabilities? IE has lagged behind other browsers in replacing Google Gears for accessing file contents. Has Microsoft implemented this?

Edit: Just realized that there was in fact more info on the file API on that very page. The answer seems to be yes.

</comment><comment><USER12> When will IE allow decent plugin development? Right now you need to jump through hoops, mess with c++ code, compile dll(s) and hope the user will actually install external exe. Insane.

<comment><USER13> You're right, compared to Chrome or even FireFox it's a lot of development overhead.

But we've built IE toolbars successfully using C#, which at the very least is head and shoulders better than C++.</comment></comment>


Don't worry, self-driving cars are likely to be better at ethics than we are - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2016/6/13/11896166/self-driving-cars-ethics <comment><USER2> Interesting. I did some write-up about self-driving cars and the near future is going to look like, a few days ago: [http://fullstack.info/autonomous-cars- letter-future-self/](http://fullstack.info/autonomous-cars-letter-future- self/)</comment>


The new Silicon Valley hype machine: AngelList - <AUTHOR> http://scobleizer.com/2011/02/25/the-new-silicon-valley-hype-machine-angellist/ <comment><USER2> Interestingly, 2 companies which are similar'ish to AngelList got funding this past week, Lendio and CapLinked. CapLinked is by some former PayPal guys and backed by Dave McClure and Peter Thiel.

Wonder if there is a need/room for multiple such platforms in this space?

</comment><comment><USER3> is it really new? i tried to enlist to this list almost a year ago

or was it pivoted somehow?..</comment>


How To Make A Million Dollars In 100 Days...The Fruit Guy Interview - <AUTHOR> http://www.hardtofindseminars.com/Fruit_Guy_Interview.htm

<comment><AUTHOR> I attended a workshop about bootstrapping last week. The instructor told us a few stories about business men who applied very simple strategies that led them to success. I found the fruit guy's story really interesting and thought the HN users will like it too.

</comment><comment><USER2> PDF Transcript is here: <http://www.hardtofindseminars.com/Transcripts/Fruite_Guy.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER3> I agree with revolvingcur-- I was pretty skeptical at first, but I certainly got the value out of this for free (and was mildly entertained, too.). More to the point, just on principle, one could take a _day_ to find out how realistic any of this is. I wouldn't try selling fruit in NYC without a permit, though.

</comment><comment><USER4> It reminds me "investing gurus" selling books about how to hack the stock market to become billionaires. The only guys, however who become billionaires are those selling the books. At least this story is for free...

</comment><comment><USER5> Looks like spam.

<comment><USER6> The title is sensationalist, and yes, the guy has something to sell, but the interview audio and transcript are available for free, and it's a pretty good tale.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: For-profit, non-profit, or some kinda hybrid? - <AUTHOR>

Important Media (.org) is another entry in the "innovative models for breakeven+ creation of good online content" spaghetti-against-the-wall contest.
Currently, it's organized as an L3C -- the "low-profit limited liability company" is on the books in ~10 states, and is defined by putting 501c3-like social mission into an LLC charter ahead of profit. What this means is that it's basically organized as close as our legal system allows to a hybrid right now, and retains the optionality to take either path for as long as it's kept this way.
Background: A long time ago in a part of the bay area far far away, I started a niche blog network about environmental issues called Green Options Media. After a while, it was acquired by a social entrepreneurship incubator called Virgance, and then mostly spun back out to me earlier this year. I've nursed its 11 sites mostly back to health from disrepair, while implementing what I believe to be sustainable, scalable structures for organic growth.
Over the last few months of re-bootstrapping, I've confirmed my most important hypotheses, hit breakeven, and am ready to look at raising money to scale more quickly.
The million dollar question: is an altruistic content play (i.e. the bastard child of ProPublica and teh Cheezburger network) better served, both for short-term purposes of fundraising and for the long-term, by the for-profit or non-profit world?
I wouldn't ask here if I thought there was one clear right answer, but I've always been rabidly pro-entrepreneurship since I saw firsthand the ineffectiveness and utter lack of financial independence of environmental nonprofits in DC.
There are many, many angles to consider and I would love to take the conversation offsite to any other venue if it's more useful, but I couldn't think of a better place to get the conversation started than HN. I'm not much of a hacker myself, but I'm a firm believer in the wisdom of hacker culture. So, discuss? <comment><USER2> While I think this is a fine question for discussion on HN, you have to understand that 99% of HN users are clearly going to recommend the for profit route. HN is all about startup culture -- building, iterating, and constantly exposing yourself to market forces to see what works. It's the basic principle that everyone here lives and works by.

I happen to share that opinion, but perhaps my opinion might have added value because I've spent years in the DC nonprofit world you mentioned. And I can say from experience that the non profit structure as it is conceived by most organizations today is detrimental to innovation and success. Non profit advocacy is broken. This is obviously a huge topic, but I will quickly just comment on your specific situation.

Your startup is a content play, right? Never mind the subject matter. Sure, it's about do-gooder environmental stuff, but at the end of the day, you have to play by the same rules as all other content providers. Whether you like it or not, you are competing with HuffPo, TMZ, I Can Haz Cheezburger, etc etc. You are competing for people's attention. Going the non profit route just seems like a way to fool yourself into thinking you are insulated from market forces, when there's truly no insulating yourself from them. So why fool yourself. Expose yourself to the market, it will make you better and will give you a clearer and quicker picture of what works and what doesn't. The idea that things that make the world a better place shouldn't have to play by the same rules is BS. That's just a good way for an organization to die a slow, clueless death.

My two cents. But this is HN, so what did you expect? :)

</comment><comment><USER3> You'll have a tough time raising money from traditional angels/VCs if it's not a C-Corp.

I've heard of a couple VCs out there who want to invest in social entrepreneurship, though, so maybe you want to ask them. Check out Good Capital: <http://www.goodcap.net/>

<comment><AUTHOR> I should have covered this. Choosing the for-profit road would, indeed, meaning converting to a C-corp. Luckily, that's not too hard to do without adding much marginal cost on top of the legal costs of closing a round.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> wow, i'm surprised by the lack of response here. is HN the type of place where you need to get a bunch of people to vote up your link before anyone notices?</comment>


Why I Got Fired: America's Compliance Nightmare - <AUTHOR> http://www.gweezycapital.com/why-i-got-fired-americas-compliance-nightmare <comment><USER2> _> I turned out to be everything the company wished they never hired. I had extensive knowledge of economics, currencies, financial markets, and investment strategies. I had interned at a former hedge fund manager's website and learned to write about financial markets. I had my own financial website, and I tweeted with financial TV personalities on a regular basis. Worst of all, I had a YouTube channel chock full of rap videos I made about my favorite stocks..._

Then what the hell are you doing working at a _call center?_

Call center workers have one job: to _read from the script._ That's it. People who want to be creative do badly in those jobs, because _they are not creative jobs._

If you take a job on the grill line at McDonald's, they will not care if you can make the most juicy, succulent cheeseburgers on your backyard grill. They will not be interested in hearing how you do it. If you start trying to do it at work, _they will fire you,_ no matter how good your cheeseburger tastes. Because the goal at McDonald's is _consistency._ They hire you to make a burger _to the McDonald's standard_. Not to make the best burger you can.

And that's perfectly reasonable! There's no way to build a business on the scale of McDonald's while depending on the genius of artisanal burger chefs. It only works if you standardize.

The only way to turn out burgers on an industrial scale, in other words, is with an industrial process. And the same is true of turning out information via telephone. You could never find enough people to do it if each one needed to be a financial expert. The only way to do it is to use less expert people and give them a script to read from.

If that's not an environment where you thrive, I can understand. But the problem isn't with the environment; it works for what it needs to do (answer huge volumes of mostly basic and/or stupid questions). The problem is with you for putting yourself there. If you want to be an artisanal burger chef, McDonald's is not where you should be looking for work.

<comment><USER3> McDonald's wouldn't fire you for giving your friends burgers from your backyard grill, even if they all got food poisoning afterwards; while this business would fire you for doing anything resembling financial advice in your own time, even if nothing bad came of it to anyone.

It's the controlling attitude towards off-duty behaviour that strikes me as particularly insidious.

<comment><USER4> A company needs to protect itself from things that could potentially be tied back to it, even indirectly. This is especially true for employees that are presented as representing the company even some of the time.

I work as a SQL Server DBA and occassionally publish articles about technical aspects of SQL. But anything that rises above the level of a comment like this one gets vetted by the company before I publish it. I am quite comfortable with this because I agreed to it ahead of time and I understand why the company wants the right to review.

<comment><USER5> "A company needs to protect itself from things that could potentially be tied back to it, even indirectly."

I don't think that this sort of lockdown is a good answer. The answer should be something more like going "what the heck is wrong with our system of lawsuits and liability that the company needs to be this paranoid about its risks?"

<comment><USER6> While true, a company cannot change the laws it operates under by itself and must take steps to protect its interests. In the US most of these laws are created to protect the consumer to the detriment of the company. It is what it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> OP is an idiot. Clearly he was hired to be a cog in a machine - a repeatable, bottom-level, commodity. In the current litigious climate of America, a customer could turn around and sue over some stupid detail, and end up with legal costs far higher than a call rep is worth. so they fire you. "No, your honor, the call rep was speaking as an individual, against policy and training, and we fired him for it."

> Until compliance departments figure out how to conduct business without > micro-managing every aspect about everything, the problem remains.

companies exist to return profits to shareholders, not in the business of fixing the litigious tendencies of Americans (let alone i-bankers!). if a compliance policy is the most efficient way to manage exposure to legal risk, it's a correct move.

edit: i work in pharma

<comment><USER8> >> Until compliance departments figure out how to conduct business without micro-managing every aspect about everything, the problem remains.

This is absolutely true. One can implement compliance that would drive everyone nuts and distract from business, or one could take a more practical approach.

> companies exist to return profits to shareholders, not in the business of > fixing the litigious tendencies of Americans (let alone i-bankers!). if a > compliance policy is the most efficient way to manage exposure to legal > risk, it's a correct move.

Noone is saying that exposure shall not be managed through compliance framework, policies and procedures. The question is how to do it w/o driving employees insane and hurting business.

I am speaking based on my experience of CFO of with 7 years of pharma industry experience [regulated industry].

<comment><USER9> Presumably the organization has already performed a risk analysis and determined that the existing compliance program is sufficient to address the risks and threats while not being too burdensome. The OP and many others may disagree, but it is not their call to arbitrarily change how things are done.

I'm in charge of IT security and the designated HIPAA Security Officer for a health network. Some of my favorite conversations will typically begin with someone saying that they will follow the rules when they believe the rules make sense.

<comment><USER8> As is often the case, the people who perform risk analysis and prepare recommendations are different from people who actually implement & enforce compliance [management].

Agree that there is not much one can do, since the 'in'compliance badge is a one-way ticket.

There is a difference between following the rules at own discretion and actually knowing & understanding the rules, accurately assessing the risk for each specific business case and making the right decision.

Usually typical management types do not take time or are willing to learn the rules. Hence, in the absense of knowledge they prefer to be on a safe side, i.e. err to hitting every moving object.

<comment><USER9> My experience has been very different however I work in a place that does care about the burden placed on people by compliance. I am also heavily involved with compliance, drafting policies and the implementation of those policies. When someone wants a new policy implemented I have a rule that they are the first ones I hold to the new policy.

One example was a change to the password complexity requirements for our organization (health care); since this was approved by senior leadership I changed the passwords for senior leadership first and did not allow any exceptions to the new policy. This ensured that the people who initiated the policy and are in a position to change the policy are the first ones impacted by it. If something was horribly wrong I would only change the policy or provide an exception if anyone who met the same criteria was also to be given the exception. If the exception is by job title or position I would require that they explicitly put that in the policy; that has never been requested though.

When there is a process to communicate issues and a culture that actually cares, compliance isn't as bad. For example we instituted a stricter change management process about a year ago.

We got people together to figure out what we thought a good balance was between the compliance needs, operational needs and the problems we were attempting to solve. As we were using the new process we gathered information from people then reviewed the entire thing at around six months. Based upon the feedback we made changes to the process, loosening somethings and tightening other parts. We have another meeting to review this in a few weeks since there have been some new proposals for how to streamline the process.

As far as management learning the rules, I tend to not have too much issue with that. If they don't follow the rules and are unwilling to comply their access to all systems will be shut off; the IT security group reports to me. :) Once people know you will go so far as to shut off their access for not cooperating it is amazing how quickly they work with you when an issue arises.

For us there is always a process to get exceptions with any policy; but the person performing the action may not be authorized to give themselves an exception arbitrarily.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is an article about compliance at a call center - they aren't expecting people with lots of experience to be working there. This guy shouldn't be working at a call center, he said he was overqualified, it'd be like a gourmet chef working at McDonalds and then complaining that they are forcing him to use their procedures to cook burgers. The procedures aren't written for experts and if you don't know what you are doing there could be severe negative consequences.

This article would be more effective if it was in something which requires creative thinking as opposed to something that can be accomplished through rote memorization.

<comment><USER11> An investment firm's call center. Investments and banking are some of the most regulatory-ridden businesses there are. Those compliance rules aren't there because the company said so--those compliance rules are there because the company is legally liable for that financial advice. It's the difference between a programmer and a lawyer telling you to sue somebody--the progammer's not on the block for negligence there. This post is sensationalist, and frankly, pointless. Ironic that one of his recent posts was about McDonald's automating everything so they won't need "chefs" any more.

<comment><USER12> I'd agree with you, albeit grudgingly, when we talk about work hours, breaks and recorded (and checked) calls.

But taking down a private website is already a crap idea, this 'I got a peek on your Facebook site' thing way over the top. At that point they crossed the line and something like 'I overheard you giving financial advice to your wife in your bedroom' is on _this_ side of the fence. While not on call, outside of office hours, the employer has no rights whatsoever to check on his employees in my world.

<comment><USER11> Then either you've never had to deal with regulatory compliance, or you've caused some serious liability risks to your employers (or yourself). It's a 24/7 issue, and there's no boundary between work/life when it comes to liability or complying with the law. It's the exact same reason that your lawyer friends will not dole out legal advice unless you're on the client role.

Software is a lovely industry where these things don't matter until you're going public. But in banking, they do. A lot. The company is protecting itself from getting sued based on negligent advice given by one of its agents. This is why unless your job in a bank is to give financial advice, you don't give financial advice. Ever. To anyone outside you and your spouse.

<comment><USER12> You are correct. I have never had to deal with regulatory compliance. It's a concept that I read about and, after turning it around in my head for a while, dismiss with a sigh.

Are you _payed_ for your services 24/7 in those jobs? Because if someone really likes to invade your life like this, this surely increases your pay- check?

My lawyer friends (Here I've to insert the disclaimer that I have few) would certainly talk to me about law issues, if I ask for advice.

Funny thought: Did anyone reading this board ever decline an IT support request from friends or family with the 'Yeah, well.. Listen. I'd love to help you, but I cannot provide you with computer related advice. Sorry. Company compliance thing, you know?' outside of office hours, on his/her free and _unpaid_ time?

Certainly there are good reasons for regulations of some sectors/jobs. The article fails to mention a serious issue in this case and you couldn't convince me that there's a problem either.

<comment><USER11> It's an impossible task to convince you. The inherent problem is that you dismiss the premise: If you're an agent of an investment firm, you cannot give financial advice _in any capacity_ in the US unless you've passed certain certifications [1][2]. Them's just the breaks. It doesn't matter if it's amateur advice or for profit, the company is put into a very sticky liability situation if you're blogging and posting advice to Facebook.

If you are quick to dismiss the law, then I really don't know what to tell you. The law's the law, and the company's trying to minimize its risk and liability. There are a lot of reasons that these laws came into place, but the fact of the matter is that they exist, and it's a world that you, admittedly, know nothing about.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investment_adviser#United_Stat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investment_adviser#United_States)

[2]: To clarify, there are situations where you could give advice that would not run afoul of the law. However, the line between that and actions that open your employer up to serious liability issues is _very_ blurry, and so companies take the prudent action and make a blanket, "Don't give anyone anywhere financial advice and most certainly don't tell them to buy anything of ours unless you're paid to do that." The author knew what he was getting into, or at least should have known.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What I get from this is the guy was fired because he felt he was so special that the rules didn't apply to him. He knew the rules going in, he repeated them several times, and for him to whine about being held to those rules is the indicator of his huge ego. It seems he was going to describe this huge bureaucracy of compliance rules he had to constantly go through in his day-to- day yet the only thing he seemed to do wrong was he gave advice which he was specifically forbidden to do. Add to this the fact he knew the legal ramifications of him giving advice and yet he did it anyway. His big ego doesn't let him understand it wasn't just his job on the line if he gave bad advice, everybody sitting around him were at risk as well.

Those compliance rules may suck but they are there for one purpose, to protect the company. As he said, if he gives bad advice then the company can suffer legally. He was not hired to give advice, he was hired to answer questions with answers already printed out for him. Sounds like he really wants a job advising people on investments, why is he getting a job at a call center that is not allowed to give advice?

To stand out is to be fired? If your definition of standing out is to break rules you are clearly aware of that can have serious legal consequences for the company; then yes, your ass will be fired.

Also, if you are fired for breaking compliance rules then you are not the bottomless pit of compliance knowledge you think you are.

<comment><USER13> _"Those compliance rules may suck but they are there for one purpose, to protect the company."_

Not completely to protect the company. I'm sure the company would _love_ to drop those compliance rules and return to the good-old-days. Unfortunately, they used the "but that was just a call-center guy, why would you listen to his advice?" defense too often, after too many pump-and-dumps.

<comment><USER6> In the context of the guy's post the compliance rules he was complaining about are there to protect the company. Right or wrong, that is why they are there and he was specifically told this as he admits. Any other example is a completely different debate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> _"I was required to shut down my website [...] I was not allowed to make any YouTube videos or write any articles. I was most certainly not allowed to interact with anybody on the Facebook about investing."_

... seriously? If I was told, during a job application, that they'd fire me for what I did in my free time, I'd accuse them of wasting my time, and walk out on the spot.

I've seen plenty of blogs etc run by people who're famously employed by big businesses. They all have disclaimers to the effect of "All content is my responsibility, not BigCorp's. Also, any effects of using this website are your responsibility."

And if you're worried about being sued for one of your phone jockeys giving a bad tip, tack a recorded message onto the start of any call: "our customer representatives do not give financial advice; we are not liable for the performance of your investments" or whatever.

I can't see how liberal use of such disclaimers could be insufficient to cover the business' arse. The "protection from liability" claim in the article seems like just an excuse -- I'd say the intent of their "compliance" policy is to give them an excuse to fire-at-will; no-one can follow all the rules, but you only need enforce them against the peons you don't like.

Well, that or to crush their employees' spirits in the hope of Stockholm Syndrome.

<comment><USER14> You won't work anywhere in the financial industry without agreeing not to give investment advice or do anything that could be perceived as giving investment advice on the side. This includes having any side project (paid or unpaid) that remotely involves finance. Having been an employee of one of the big banks, I can say that I haven't seen these companies actually enforce the rules to the extent that the author details, but I suppose that varies firm to firm. I must say, though, that the author's description of the job gives me mental images of a worker at FoxConn. I think being fired was a blessing.

<comment><USER3> Does that apply internationally? I've noticed that US-based businesses seem particularly concerned about what you do when you're not at work. (The uniquely American habit of drug-testing candidates, for example.)

 _"You won't work anywhere in the financial industry"_

... yes, well. I'm glad of that, personally.

<comment><USER6> The reason for the drug-testing is to protect the company from liability. If you show up to work stoned out of your mind and cause some mishap that injures employees the company is most likely liable. Granted the drug screening doesn't necessarily protect against future decisions as it's only testing the past, but it can be a good indicator.

Or you can say companies started doing it years ago to get us accustomed to the drug testing so that one day they can start doing DNA screening and we'll just shrug our shoulders.

I've held a number of jobs (in the US) over the years and I only had to do a drug screening twice.

<comment><USER3> Hm... I don't see how drug screening would affect liability in your example.

Sure, if someone comes in to work too inebriated to do their job, and you let them carry on anyway, that'd be your fault. But if you can't tell they (say) had a joint last night, then what's the problem? For one thing, if you can't tell, it's unlikely to be materially affecting their work; but regardless of that, you surely can't be held liable for something you can't detect? (As you said yourself, periodic drug tests are not a reliable detection method.)

I don't get US liability law. I really don't.

... but don't worry, I'm not in that "they're getting us used to testing!" tinfoil-hat-brigade. It's just, if your private habits don't affect your work, then they're none of your employer's business; if they do affect your work, then your employer shouldn't need a drug test to notice. Trying to regulate your employees' behaviour when it doesn't affect your business is busy-bodied puritanism, nothing more. IMO.

<comment><USER6> Don't worry, most of us who live in the US don't understand our liability laws.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm not really sure I see how that this is a emblematic of some larger problem. This sounds like a terrible place to work. But there are lots of similarly terrible places to work even in industries where compliance is not a buzzword.

</comment><comment><USER16> As just about everyone else has already pointed out, this position was clearly inappropriate for someone with the skills of the OP.

Why did the OP take the job? He strikes me as both passionate and of above average intelligence. Is the financial sector competitive to the point that the only positions available are at _call centers_?

While I'm _not_ familiar with the financial industry, this strikes me as odd. I feel as though the OP is either overstating his skill set, or the job market is doing a very poor job of allocating resources.

This is all anecdotal, but the barrier to entry to banking careers has never struck me as insurmountable. While my friends who work in i-banking or PE have all jumped through the appropriate formal hoops to get there, financial advisors (especially retail) tend to run the gamut of educational backgrounds and intellect. Despite the fact that this is essentially a sales job, I would think it would be _infinitely_ more satisfying that being a call center jockey.

edit / anecdotal source : I was approached for recruitment as an FA right out of college. I do not have a finance education or background.

</comment><comment><USER17> I had the same problems in the foray into call center work after graduating in a down market. Either you become a work horse that assimilates new skills quickly, easily beating your neighbors and depended on to "help" out the team or dinged for compliance.

Places that fall into the first category usually run out of new skills for you to learn. Places that fall into the second are like the place were this guy landed.

</comment><comment><USER18> I personally feel this is a symptom of underemployment.

</comment><comment><USER8> I wonder how the guy lasted so long.

FUCK THEM!

And find a better place.</comment>