Ask HN: How to sell e-commerce private label business? - <AUTHOR> We grew a particular niche brand selling mostly on Amazon (via FBA) and for 2019 I am trying to decide maybe I want to sell it. It makes about $400k with revenue of around $1m (did not finish year-end books yet) and takes me part-time to run it without touching stock or shipping much myself.(I have a full-time job on top of it)
What avenue I should approach to get an idea if it is sellable and for how much? The typical response I see online is 1x - 2x multiplier, which doesn't make much sense to me (I'll just keep increasing sales, and perhaps quit my full-time job then).
Also, what is a typical process of talking with prospective buyers? I want to protect data, and at the same time I want to give enough information to prove it is viable and relatively easy to run (comparing to a brick and mortar store for example)
What kind of lawyer I should be looking for to prepare a sale contract to make sure I will not be screwed?
How such transactions are structured typically? (i.e. people pay all in cash, or obtain financing from a bank, or always require seller financing, etc)
What are the tax implications of such a transaction and what I should be looking for?
Any thoughts, experience, and ideas are really appreciated. <comment><USER2> As an attorney who does this type of thing, I can comment on a few of these things:

1) 1x-2x multiplier isn't offbase historically. Remember, though, that not every niche brand can be maintained on a part-time basis without touching stock or things like that. So, when one thinks of, say, a 2x multiplier, the calculus on the part of the selling company is much different than yours (i.e. they are selling to cash in and avoid further expense, effort, etc..., as well as hedging risk, of course, which presumably is a goal you share). But it doesn't necessarily impact the acquiror's calculus - depending on the type of buyer, they are going to fit your brand into their existing sales infrastructure. So, the effort and expense you incur doesn't matter to them quite as much as you would think.

In other words, you might not be able to reasonably expect a much greater multiplier because this business is so easily self-maintaining. Instead, it might just not make sense for you to sell.

Mind you, this is assuming the acquiror has an infrastructure your brand would fit into. Other types of buyers may feel quite differently and could pay a hefty premium for a business like yours. Finding that type of buyer is something I'm not sure how to do.

2) How these transactions are structured depends in a large part on the type of buyer. And there are a lot more structuring variables than all cash vs. financing.

3) Tax perspective? Not sure how you are structured right now. You may be able to qualify for QSB treatment, which would exempt much sale value from capital gains taxation. But I'm not sure you are structured now to allow that (or if you are an entity at all). There are way too many variables in terms of tax implications and you just need to make sure you have an experienced tax attorney (or accountant, if they have the right experience) looking at your proposed deal structure and working with the main attorney representing you.

4) In terms of the type of lawyer, an experienced corporate and commercial business attorney makes sense. This is not the size of deal that would be cost effective at a large firm. So, maybe I'm biased given what I do, but I think you'd be looking for a smaller firm that has business M&A experience. PLEASE make sure you go to an attorney before you sign a term sheet. You'll have a much harder time negotiating things if you haven't done so at the term sheet stage.

Hope this is helpful and happy to answer other questions.

</comment><comment><USER3> In the price range you are looking at, [https://feinternational.com/](https://feinternational.com/) is a popular choice.

</comment><comment><USER4> Empire Flippers</comment>


My two-week review of Google Glass - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/+Scobleizer/posts/ZLV9GdmkRzS

<comment><USER2> <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5617429> <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5617165>

<comment><USER3> I thought duplicated were automatically removed? Bug with hacker news?

<comment><USER2> Nah, Google+ links can be very irregular.

<comment><USER4> these are identical

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think it's probably better for Google to stage it with a higher price at first (for early adopters), get a lot of feedback and spend a couple of years to improve the voice commands and then release it to the mass market.

I know for me when using Siri, I am disappointed 80% of the time. Siri fails actually at least 80% of the time when I use it, so I really cannot use it, because it's too annoying to keep trying until Siri gets it right. Much easier to type than to try and talk to Siri.

Google glass is going to have significant challenges with the voice commands and early adopters will be willing to go through the pain of asking it several times, but the mass market will quickly get frustrated if the voice commands do not work 90+% of the time.

</comment><comment><USER5> > "success of this totally depends on price"

Maybe partially but the real success lies in designing something like this that can be worn without the user looking like a huge nerd. Otherwise it will never hit the mainstream. I mean, I even know many tech early adopters who think its a cool experience but would never use it in public the way it looks now.

<comment><USER6> Restated: Price was not a barrier to the adoption of the iPhone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't buy that this will make people want to Google+. You can't change the fact that there just aren't enough people on it. Outside the tech community I literally I don't know a single individual who uses it.

<comment> Digit-Al If most people who use it leave it on the default setting of uploading pictures, etc. to Google+, and the right people start using it then more people will start using G+ just to see their pictures. If those people start using G+ more then this could just be the killer app that kick-starts G+ to the mainstream.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm really not interested in this.. But I dont consider a smartphone worth the extra weight / pocket space usage / charging... I'm rarely far from a _real_ computer that I can do stuff on efficiently</comment>


Ask HN: Do your company's values mean anything to you? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> No they don't because company's don't have values people do.

In my experience, a company holds to it's stated values because it has a strong central leader. A zealot if you will that's holdiy to them and inspiring others to stick with them. They are willing to risk it all because it's the right thing.

Most company's, values are extremely flexible depending on how profitable the company is. Companies with boards, shareholders, etc... First duty is to be profitable to them. If they can be profitable and good moral values that's great and many times it starts that way. When times get difficult it because values and morals go out the window.

</comment><comment><USER3> No. I'll read them sometimes if I'm standing in a hallway for some reason.

The only value that matters to me: Do the right thing, as best as you can determine that, as best you can.</comment>


Dark matter may be an illusion caused by the quantum vacuum - <AUTHOR> http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-08-dark-illusion-quantum-vacuum.html

<comment><USER2> >Hajdukovic's paper on a dark matter alternative is also an attempt to understand cosmological phenomena without assuming the existence of unknown forms of matter and energy, or of unknown mechanisms for inflation and matter- antimatter asymmetry.

so he brings in unknown negative gravitational charge. Basically giving another name to unknown machinery behind the observed phenomena.

<comment><USER3> It's not comparable. Dark matter involves hypothesizing something that is being hypothesized solely to explain certain cosmological problems. If we didn't have those cosmological problems that need explaining, no one would be suggesting dark matter.

The possibility of gravity being repulsive between matter and antimatter was hypothesizes long before we ran into those cosmological problems, and has been subject of sporadic ongoing debate at least as far back as the early to mid 20th century.

<comment><USER4> > Dark matter involves hypothesizing something that is being hypothesized > solely to explain certain cosmological problems.

Waiiiiit.... isn't this the way with ALL unknowns? We see some thing we can't explain (a "problem"), and we come up with a hypothesis solely to explain it? Sometimes we're wrong, and we start over with a new hypothesis?

We hypothesized the existence of some hitherto unknown and "dark" agent we called a "germ" to explain infection. We hypothesized the existence of an unknown and invisibile "X-ray" to explain how film got ghostly images on it. Etc.

I'm sure I'm missing your meaning here; can you clarify?

<comment><USER3> The distinction I'm making is being hypotheses that involve new objects and hypotheses that involve new properties for old objects.

For instance, consider planetary motion before Newton. You could have hypothesized a "dark" force that moved the planets. Or you could hypothesize that a force you already know exists (gravity near the Earth's surface) also exists for each body of the solar system, has unlimited range, and follows an inverse square law.

<comment><USER4> Ok, I get your distinction, but (and I'm a complete neophyte non-professional here, so bear with me), the layman's explanation for dark matter has been, "We don't know what's causing it, but it acts like gravity, and the only thing we know of now that has gravity is matter, and it appears (hah) to be invisible to all of our known electro-magnetic radiation, so we call it "dark"".

So I apologize if I've misunderstood, but based on that I don't think hypothosizing this unknown phenomenon as some sort of "dark matter" is entirely out of line.

Thanks for your explanation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not hugely likely, but interesting to explore.

There are also things like neutrinos which wouldn't fit.

<comment><USER6> Why wouldn't neutrinos fit?

<comment><USER5> They're observable particles. They probably wouldn't fit unless it somehow turns out to explain the entire Standard Model. What I'm getting at is that it might explain some dark matter, but it is unlikely to explain all dark matter even if it turns out to be a correct model.

That whole thing about neutrinos oscillating between flavors still freaks me out though. One of the weirder things in quantum mechanics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can't take this website seriously. Full of ads in the middle of the page.

This _appears_ to be the real paper which the page apparently does not bother to cite. <http://arxiv.org/pdf/1009.3333>

</comment><comment><USER8> I like the elegance of this theory, if nothing else. Dark matter always seemed painfully _ad hoc_ , and MOND kludgy. Now, we need to know more about antimatter and gravitation...

</comment><comment><USER9> If anyone wants an introduction to the dark matter problem, I think this one is excellent: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77yXhAibQp4>

</comment><comment><USER10> Non-physorg link?</comment>


Show HN: Open-source SIMD-accelerated math library for C/C++/C#/Java/FORTRAN - <AUTHOR> http://www.yeppp.info

<comment><USER2> Great! Will test it this week.

When I was trying to compile GnuRadio for the BeagleBone, I ran into problems just at the SIMD functions for the ARM processor. If it works there, I'll finally have my chance to give back to GnuRadio.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Please let me know if you run into issues about using Yeppp! with your project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Great, thanks for this awesome contribution!</comment>


A Coder's Musings: Curve fitting with Pyevolve - <AUTHOR> http://acodersmusings.blogspot.com/2009/07/curve-fitting-with-pyevolve.html <comment><USER2> This is a cute example, but the problem could probably be solved much more efficiently with standard optimization methods, like Nelder-Mead. See Numerical Recipes...

<comment><AUTHOR> It is a cute example. It's meant to teach Pyevolve and basic genetic algorithms with an example that doesn't seem too contrived. But thank you for noting that -- I'll add it to the article as a disclaimer.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for writing this up. Seeing "cute" examples like this is actually helpful, because I don't need to learn a particular application area while reading about the solution method. It's a great way to get me started thinking about new ways of approaching old problems.

While you play around with the how the algorithm parameters affect its ability to find the polynomial coefficients, it would be nice to see how adding some random noise to the sample points affects it, as well. This would make your example more realistic (because it would mean you'll never be able to generate a perfect fit).

<comment><AUTHOR> You're welcome.

I do plan to try to add some Gaussian noise to the sample points -- thank you for reminding me. I also hope to find ways to optimize the fitness function and selection function. I think there is much that can be done to fix it up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The problem with curve fitting examples for GAs is that on one side there is often a more efficient way to solve the problem and, more importantly, that it assumes you know what the equation looks like.

Having used (and still) genetics algorithms to build a good approximation function for a natural phenomenon, I found that I needed to spend a lot of time crafting my chromosomes structure so that it would get a better chance of eventually solving the problem. I also had to put correlation in the fitness function because it would otherwise get stuck in a local maxima where it completely eliminated most of the inputs but the resulting curve looked nothing like the targeted one.

However I am still not completely satisfied with the approximations I get and I would be VERY interested in recommendation for more advanced reading on the subject. Anyone?</comment>


Process Streaming Data in Real Time with SQL - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/amazon-kinesis-analytics-process-streaming-data-in-real-time-with-sql/ <comment><USER2> Powered by SQLstream, which have been around since early 2000's:

[https://twitter.com/SQLstream/status/763826133401866240](https://twitter.com/SQLstream/status/763826133401866240)</comment>


Mango: Git completely decentralized - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@alexberegszaszi/mango-git-completely-decentralised-7aef8bcbcfe6 <comment><AUTHOR> Looks to be a combination of Git, Ethereum, and IPFS.

Interestingly, this was posted to HN 8 times in 2016, and of those 8 posts, only 1 received a comment:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Mango:%20Git%20completely%20de...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Mango:%20Git%20completely%20decentralised&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

This is the Git repo. Hasn't had much action since 2016:

[https://github.com/axic/mango](https://github.com/axic/mango)

There are a few issues where the MS acquisition of GitHub is a topic:

[https://github.com/axic/mango/issues/5](https://github.com/axic/mango/issues/5)

[https://github.com/axic/mango/issues/4](https://github.com/axic/mango/issues/4)

Potential future project possibly leveraging EOS blockchain:

[http://www.source.lol/](http://www.source.lol/)</comment>


Tripful Launches Q&A for Travel - <AUTHOR> http://www.tripful.com/ <comment><USER2> Interesting.

I am wondering how this is going to be better/different than a smart search engine, or a travel/review site that may be entrenched in its space for a long time and may have a lot of UGC around places.

E.g. A google or yahoo search on best coffee shops in San Francisco turns up a list, a map and links to sites like yelp with a lot of UGC. What would a user gain from using tripful? Just wondering.

</comment><comment><USER3> Check out <http://travellr.com/> too, it has been running for a while now.

</comment><comment><USER4> Useful for when you want to learn about the places you will travel !

</comment><comment><USER5> Sounds like a pretty cool idea, hope it goes far.</comment>


Facebook Executive Answers Reader Questions - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/11/facebook-executive-answers-reader-questions/?ref=business

<comment><USER2> This exchange ticked me off:

Q: It used to be that I could limit what strangers saw about me to almost nothing. I could not show my profile picture, not allow them to "poke" or message me, certainly not allow them to view my profile page. Now, even my interests have to be public information. Why can't I control my own information anymore? –sxchen, New York

A: Joining Facebook is a conscious choice by vast numbers of people who have stepped forward deliberately and intentionally to connect and share. We study user activity. We've found that a few fields of information need to be shared to facilitate the kind of experience people come to Facebook to have. That's why we require the following fields to be public: name, profile photo (if people choose to have one), gender, connections (again, if people choose to make them), and user ID number. Facebook provides a less satisfying experience for people who choose not to post a photo or make connections with friends or interests. But, other than name and gender, nothing requires them to complete these fields or share information they do not want to share. If you're not comfortable sharing, don't.

Why should I have no choice in whether or not my photo is public?

<comment><USER3> They're pretty presumptuous they are about what kind of experiences people join Facebook to have.

If Facebook is a less satisfying experience for people who choose not to post photos, then why have those people chosen not to post photos? If people are unanimously less satisfied without posting their name and list of connection to the entire world, then why do some people deliberately keep that information private?

Instead of adapting to their users' actual desires, Facebook is forcing their own vision on everyone. I can't see this working out well for them in the long term. They're trying to consciously exploit the network effect they've been lucky enough to develop over the past few years, but are severely overestimating the value they create and the loyalty of their users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow. What a politician. He'll fit right in with Zuckerberg.

Q: "Why not simply set everything up for opt-in rather than opt-out? "

A: "Everything is opt-in on Facebook. Participating in the service is a choice."</comment>


With ventilators running out, doctors say the machines are overused for Covid-19 - <AUTHOR> https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/08/doctors-say-ventilators-overused-for-covid-19/ <comment><USER2> Looking at the announcements about alternate manufacturers starting to turn out 10s of thousands of vents, I think we're about to be drowning in the things. Especially as it becomes apparent that for many patients a vent is the wrong answer after all.

<comment><USER3> I've been following the whole ventilator fiasco for weeks, esp. since they have a 66% - 90% mortality rate with corona.

This is one of the best articles by far.

A summary is:

\- corona's effect on the lungs resembles altitude sickness, not common diseases

\- stay on a cannula, cpap or bipap as long as possible, preferably at home

\- US doctors are choosing ventilators to prevent aerosol contamination, at the expense of patients' lives.

AMA.

<comment><USER2> > AMA

Alright ;-). For someone who already owns a CPAP for sleep apnea, is it of any use should they get infected with corona?

<comment><USER4> I have a BPAP for sleep apnoea, and am also curious to know this.

<comment><USER3> Yes to CPAP and BIPAP, for a couple of reasons:

1) Because corona is like altitude sickness, even a little more oxygen in the bloodstream may be sufficient.

Chinese doctors recommend and have been using cannulas, CPAPs and BIPAPs.

2) Because ventilator intubation and required anesthetics for out to 21 days is basically a death sentence with 66& to 90% mortality, cannulas, CPAPs and BIPAPs are much better.

There are many health problems with ventilators, but forcing air under high pressure into your lungs turns them to mush.

The issue with cannulas, CPAPs an BIPAPs is that a breathing corona patient infects bystanders, so in your bedroom you'd want to avoid using AC/heating vents (use a window or quartz heater) and tell your housemates to wear a mask.

Good Lancet summary from a Chinese hospital: [https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2...](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600\(20\)30079-5/fulltext)

The patients on ventilators might be sicker, but they definitely have extremely high mortality.

Doctors are looking at how to interpret blood gases to better understand which kind of breathing assistance is actually needed, rather than automatically reaching for a ventilator.

<comment><USER4> Thanks, this is pretty interesting stuff</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Retesting AMD Ryzen Threadripper's Game Mode: Halving Cores for More Performance - bauta-steen http://www.anandtech.com/show/11726/retesting-amd-ryzen-threadrippers-game-mode-halving-cores-for-more-performance <comment><AUTHOR> I wonder if someone has tested it for Ryzen SIGSEGVs and hangs. I know AMD said it's not affected, but it'd be good to see some third party confirmation to that.

<comment><USER2> Yes its been tested by a bunch of folks at phoronix. The script that causes issues on Ryzen has so far not caused any issues on either Epyc or ThreadRipper.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's good to know. I've been itching to put in an order.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I thought that it disabled SMT, not the actual cores. That would make it 16c/16t not 8c/16t.

<comment><USER3> No, I'm an idiot. It turns off one of the Zen modules, to kill the intermodule latency.

<comment><USER4> That seems like it could less destructively be done by setting CPU affinities appropriately. And, by extension, automatically through better kernel code.

Or is there more to it than that?

<comment><USER5> I wonder if NT considers Threadripper a NUMA.

<comment><USER3> So this one I actually know - Threadripper can be configured (to present) in NUMA or UMA modes.

<comment><USER6> Sounds like "content" mode is UMA and all cores/threads active. "Game" mode is NUMA, but with half the CPUs disabled.

Seems like most folks with a decent OS would want NUMA and all cores/threads active. Is that possible?

<comment><USER3> Yes, but the software actually needs to be NUMA aware. A lot of current server software works that way - groups of tightly coupled threads target the same node, which prevents major performance issues in multi-CPU systems.

In general such systems are very good at multitasking, but not so good at running a single demanding application (if it is not NUMA aware).

The same thing applies with Threadripper - albeit with lower internode latency.

<comment><USER5> I guess the next step is to make game engines and web browsers NUMA aware.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


LittleD – SQL database for IoT, can run queries in 1KB - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/graemedouglas/LittleD <comment><USER2> I am the author of LittleD.

I am more than happy to answer any questions. It has mostly been an academic project while I was doing during my undergrad, but I am now looking at continuing the project as part of a Ph.D. Of course, I would love to coordinate a broader development of this project. :)

You may also be interested in another project I and some lab mates have been working on over the last couple of years, IonDB: [https://github.com/iondbproject/iondb](https://github.com/iondbproject/iondb).

EDIT: You might also be interested in the initial paper, which can be found here: [https://people.ok.ubc.ca/rlawrenc/research/Papers/LittleD.pd...](https://people.ok.ubc.ca/rlawrenc/research/Papers/LittleD.pdf)

I investigated query precompilation in another paper I am waiting to here back on, and once everything has been a little better tested, that code will get pushed out as well. :)

And seriously, if anybody is interested in contributing, I would love to have some help. Get in contact with me!

<comment><USER3> How did you learn to write a database from scratch? What books, courses, tutorials do you recommend?

<comment><USER4> I took the same course @geedy is speaking of (with him, in fact) and there are two good comparable resources I'm aware of:

(1) Ramon's (excellent!) lecture notes themselves are currently (but not always) available on his website: [https://people.ok.ubc.ca/rlawrenc/teaching/404/notes/index.h...](https://people.ok.ubc.ca/rlawrenc/teaching/404/notes/index.html)

(2) Garcia-Molina, Ullman and Widom's book and courses taught on their work: [http://www.amazon.ca/Database-System-Implementation- Hector-G...](http://www.amazon.ca/Database-System-Implementation-Hector- Garcia-Molina/dp/0130402648) [http://infolab.stanford.edu/~ullman/dbsi.html](http://infolab.stanford.edu/~ullman/dbsi.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When would you actually _need_ a relational database running on such a small platform, today?

I understand programming in general and microcontrollers; I was paid to program one. Still, surely nowadays a system with a tiny 8-bit microcontroller is probably considered as auxillary to some kind of larger machine, which should be way better equipped to do the heavy lifting such as SQL databases?

<comment><USER6> There are still lots of uses for tiny microcontrollers that don't connect to a larger machine, or only do so on occasion. By having a database backend, you make it a lot easier to query the microcontroller out in the field for a specific subset of data, instead of it needing to dump everything out, wasting time and battery life.

<comment><USER7> You can easily get just part of your data using a binary tree or a hashtable and simple C functions like _for_ , _while_ , _if_. In most cases there is no need for a full-blown SQL engine.

<comment><USER8> On the other hand, microcontrollers typically have ample Flash storage for code, but very limited amounts of RAM. Instead of making everyone rewrite their own memory-efficient data structures, it might well make sense to have a single, general-purpose implementation -- even if some of the code goes unused in a particular application.

<comment><USER7> Keep in mind that the Flash storage has a limited number of writes, so keeping frequently changing data in memory and choosing a right data structure can be crucial for your data's life span. SQL is not an universal solution for all use cases.

<comment><USER2> You are not wrong, but consider that the problem may be handled a number of ways. Once I move to storing everything through IonDB, you will be able to choose key-value stores that could wear level, should one be implemented. Such algorithms have been suggested in other works. Furthermore, if the device supports a storage API that already does wear levelling, you than a SQL layer on top should not hurt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I haven't created large amounts of C/C++, so I'm certainly not an expert, but I was impressed by how well the source was commented and structured. Nice to see well documented, well thought out code, congrats

<comment><USER10> I _have_ written large amounts of C/C++ and I too am impressed by how well documented the code is (trust me, most C++ code isn't!)

<comment><USER2> Thank you! I actually have become more anal about code quality as I've gone along, to the point of annoying people. IonDB represents a much better coding standard, in my mind than LittleD. Like I say, every bit of documentation and cleanliness helps!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This looks like a very cool project. I cloned it and generated the docs, and while the code is certainly well-document, I didn't see any type of high-level narrative or public APIs. Was hoping to see at least a "littleD.h" or something, but it seems you have to do some source diving or look at the tests to figure out how to use this library.

<comment><USER2> I absolutely need to improve that side of it, there is no doubt. Thank you for the feedback!

<comment><USER12> Get a link to the paper up front in the readme.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'd be quite interested to see this on an ESP8266 board. I use the Adafruit huzzah version[1] which comes with a lot of extra fluff for developers, but the core microcontroller is a 32 bit MCU with 64k of ram. It is about the size of a US Quarter Dollar coin and can be had for as low as ~$2 USD.

[1] [https://www.adafruit.com/products/2471](https://www.adafruit.com/products/2471)

<comment><USER2> We've actually been looking at getting some newer devices, I'll look to add this to our list. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> What is the advantage of using a database vs. rolling your own data structures on such a small device?

<comment><USER15> Dynamic queries and data serialization. Imagine sending just a text query (in SQL) around to a sensor network. It would be a fair amount of work to reproduce that on your own but seems like it can open up some nice features for distributed IoT

<comment><USER14> It still seems pretty inefficient. With 4KB of RAM I'd just store my data in an array of structs and send it in raw binary to the central server. The SQL also leaves potential for running unwanted SQL.

I'm reminded of a commercial home automation platform that had agonizingly slow response times because the LCD controllers were sending raw, unauthenticated Python code to the 70MHz central controller.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> As someone who has spent the past year and change developing an automation system using the targeted platform (Megas) I can say that this sounds like a very bad way to do things.

While I applaud the effort, and it will certainly be useful for many people for many other reasons, I don't think IoT is the best use case here. If your data is at all valuable/useful, you don't want it sitting out somewhere on some device that will hopefully/maybe be online when you go to query it. Plus now just to be able to query it remotely you will still need to develop some sort of API that lives on the device that can talk to the LittleD database.

Finally if you really are doing 'IoT' you clearly have a bunch of things that you want to view/control from a centralized platform. When you have the devices talking to a server, you can do this. When you have to ask each device individually what is going on with it, this becomes much harder.

<comment><USER2> There isn't really a targeted platform. There just only happens to be one of me at the moment, and so I've only managed to compile it for a few devices.

As you noted, its not really an IoT databases. It could be used as such, but thats not the reason I built it.

I have also been working on the data transfer problem, because without the ability the share the data it is in fact kind of a useless platform in many applications. I have a job manager being developed that will allow for scheduled or ad-hoc execution of functions. I've also written some small library to encode LittleD results for network transmission. Using some basic networking stack, it would be easy to assemble these pieces into something that could be viewed/controlled from a centralized platform. LittleD could even be modified with relative ease to actually query over other LittleD instances!

EDIT: I would actually like to encourage you to divulge some specific criticism for the IoT application. Are you specifically speaking to your automation system, or to IoT at large? It seems difficult to predict exactly how any one person might apply any given technology.

<comment><USER17> We've built a sync-enabled database, and even at 500 kb it's getting a lot of uptake in IoT applications.

Open source databases: [http://developer.couchbase.com/mobile](http://developer.couchbase.com/mobile)

Info about how GE is using it: [http://www.couchbase.com/nosql- resources/presentations/offli...](http://www.couchbase.com/nosql- resources/presentations/offline-first-and-how-ge-integrated-couchbase-mobile- in-less-than-90-days.html)

Long story short: when you get the network stuff figured out, it's gonna be an interesting product.

Feel free to contact me (info in profile) if you want to chat about how this can fit into the industry.

<comment><USER18> When you say IoT applications, do you mean phone apps which are dealing with data which originated from a "thing" in the IoT, but that the data has already gotten to the phone or cloud through some other, non-Couchbase Mobile channel?

Or is it possible to run or communicate/sync with Couchbase Mobile directly from a "thing" itself?

<comment><USER17> Couchbase Mobile has an optional on device rest API we use for p2p sync. You can also use it to push data from edge devices to a handset or base station, but typically phones will ping devices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is really neat. What's a realistic use case for a SQL-like database running on a microcontroller?

<comment><USER2> Author here.

Any time you want to store historical data, and query that data later.

Very similar to how you might imagine using a database for a website, just at a smaller scale. The project that inspired this work was a water metering project in Kelowna, BC. Basically, a friend of mine took a bunch of micro- controllers with soil moisture sensors, shoved them in the ground, and tried to come up with better demand-based watering schedules. It took them two months to develop the data management code, and knew it could have been days or hours with a proper database.

<comment><USER19> Thanks! What would the storage look like for this?

(I have an ulterior motive for asking, which is that I will probably end up shoplifting this code and embedding it into the next set of levels for our CTF game, which is serverside-emulated AVR).

<comment><USER2> I did a fair amount of testing with arduino-based SD-card storage, but as long as you had some sort of way to store bytes to your preferred medium, that shouldn't be too hard to hack yourself. Check out [https://github.com/graemedouglas/LittleD/blob/master/src/dbs...](https://github.com/graemedouglas/LittleD/blob/master/src/dbstorage/dbstorage.c)

EDIT: Please let me know how/if you end up using it! Or if you run into bugs! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Interesting. Hope the author gets a usable subset there in a flexible coding style. Might be ported to other devices and become a general thing.

Love the name, too, haha.

Note: How much of a need is there for a SQL database on 8-bitters, etc? Can't one do that in a front-end at the client side and just have simple commands sent over network to device? What I always did for limited or security- critical devices. No way I'd put a whole 4GL on them lol.

<comment><USER2> My goal has always been to support a wide-variety of devices.

As for the name, I cannot take credit. There is a good story behind it though. ;)

As for the need, I sort of explained the motivation this comment: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10622675](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10622675). Data management would drastically reduce the development effort associated with data-intensive applications for smaller devices, in an IoT setting or otherwise. I've actually recently travelled to the University of Michigan to talk about this work, and got lots of good feedback. One of the professors invited me and has asked me to study with him, because he feels there is a need. One of his graduate students there is working on integrating LittleD into some of his work already!

<comment><USER20> Interesting. The main drawback I saw was that your paper is one of those paywalled behind ACM. Many end up freely available on academics' sites, Citeseerx, etc. Yet, some portion are stuck where few will ever look at them. Another example recently on here was OcaPIC: Ocaml on PIC MCU's. Recent paper locked up where people can't read and improve it.

Is there a public copy of your paper for people here to read? Might increase interest and contributions.

<comment><USER2> [https://people.ok.ubc.ca/rlawrenc/research/Papers/LittleD.pd...](https://people.ok.ubc.ca/rlawrenc/research/Papers/LittleD.pdf)

<comment><USER20> Excellent design and tradeoffs. I doubt people would've believed you two would've taken it this far down. Keeping a copy in case techniques like this might apply to future 8-bit work. :)

<comment><USER2> Thank you for the feedback!

I actually have a lot of thoughts of ways to improve this too, which is why I am applying to do a PhD in this area.

<comment><USER20> Good luck on the PhD!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I discovered my IOT camera in my home runs sqlite.

</comment><comment><USER22> Do we have transaction (ACID) support? If not, have you thought about it? Is is feasible with the IOT constraints?

</comment><comment><USER23> In the project's defense, I didn't see the size comparison anywhere other than this submission.

</comment><comment><USER24> What are the actually memory usage/recommended RAM sizes for LittleD?

<comment><USER2> LittleD can be run using as little as 1KB of RAM for simple queries involving selections (WHERE clauses), projections (not just SELECT *) and joins. For queries with more than a couple joins, 2KB of RAM should still suffice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This would be a good learning project in CS classes as well.

</comment><comment><USER26> Is the size of SQLite really a problem? Is its reliability something that hardware devs are willing to sacrifice?

(In other words, how big is SQLite and what are the size restrictions for IoT devices – I haven't built one before)

<comment><USER27> +1

SQLite is probably on of the most well tested piece of software on this globe. I do not know if this space saving is worth it.

<comment><USER20> It is if the space savings gets your product sales due to lower unit price with big $$$ resulting. That's why there's a market for 8-16bit processors. _Most_ developers don't want it so much as need it because getting job done for $1 a CPU is better than using $10-$100. ;)

EDIT to add two links by Ganssle to explain it better:

[http://www.ganssle.com/rants/8bitsisdead.htm](http://www.ganssle.com/rants/8bitsisdead.htm)

[http://www.ganssle.com/articles/8and16bit.htm](http://www.ganssle.com/articles/8and16bit.htm)

I think Microchip's 8-bitters doing $1+ billion in business with better profits and dividends vs troubles of many in 32-64 bit markets says a lot.

<comment><USER28> Those articles are over a decade old. The size of silicon between an 8 or 16 or 32 bit ALU contained in an MCU is miniscule. Most of the space is taken up by peripherals and this is where Microchip has historically thrived but this is no longer so. There are a number of 32 bit MCUs that are cost competitive with 8 bit parts.

<comment><USER20> How about this month with a market survey? ;)

[http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/embedded- insights/44408...](http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/embedded- insights/4440832/8-bit-isn-t-dying--it-s-growing)

Interesting details on how 8-bit companies are doing that from John Donovan the year before:

[https://www.digikey.com/en/articles/techzone/2014/feb/is- the...](https://www.digikey.com/en/articles/techzone/2014/feb/is-there-a- future-for-8-bit-mcus)

We'd need a price list for the other thing. Can you get 32's with decent memory & low watts for a few bucks a CPU in low volume? Aside from that, you still think they're dead and useless with the new articles?

I'll add that many chips from old nodes survived for decades due to stability. The new process nodes have all kinds of issues and break faster. So, there is that to consider if the application is long-term, safety-critical, or security-critical. Many in high assurance design stayed with old stuff (esp on SOI) because manufacturing bugs were less and interference/wear issues are lower.

<comment><USER6> Yes, the tiny Freescale, Cypress, etc can be obtained for less than a dollar in a reasonable quantity [1]. The microcontroller market is changing pretty rapidly of late, with the number of products getting more and more broad. For your high reliability stuff, you'd probably want to look at the cortex-r series, which is built for the type of use cases you describe.

[1] [http://bit.ly/1NbLYov](http://bit.ly/1NbLYov) redirects to digikey search.

<comment><USER20> Appreciate the confirmation. Outside embedded, one use for these people aren't appreciating is offloading interrupts or security checks of I/O devices. Along with sensors/mgmt stuff you can trust more. Cost being so low let's one do physical partitioning of domains instead of software.

Also, thanks for the mention of Cortex-R as I hadn't heard of it. A quick glance at their description looks good. About $8 on low end to $50 on high- end. Getting quite cheap indeed for what 8-bits would be required for. Way cheaper than the old champ (RCA 1802 MCU) is today ($150 w/ 1k units).

[http://www.intersil.com/content/intersil/en/products/space-a...](http://www.intersil.com/content/intersil/en/products/space- and-harsh-environment/harsh-environment/microprocessors-and- peripherals/CDP1802A.html?part=t&_charset_=UTF-8#overview)

Ok. So, I'll probably not have to go to 8-bit or drop large $$$ if I take-on certain projects. Good to know. Dirt cheap chips with large ecosystem, lock- step, real-time, and MPU's... it's like the golden era in tech for embedded start-ups, eh? :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple's Software "Problem" and "Fixing" It - <AUTHOR> https://medium.learningbyshipping.com/apples-software-problem-and-fixing-it-via-twitter-c941a905ba20 <comment><USER2> _" In any absolute sense the quality of Mac/iOS + h/w are at quality levels our industry has just not seen before.... On any absolute scale number of bugs — non-working, data losing, hanging mistakes — in iOS/Mac is far far less today than ever before."_

iTMS loses track of what songs I own.

iTunes _will not_ sync my music to my iPhone correctly.

iTunes has also deleted entire libraries full of irreplaceable music.

macOS High Sierra shipped with not one but _at least two_ root access bugs.

macOS High Sierra also _exposed FileVault passwords in plain text as a password hint._

These problems are inexcusable, and it is simply untrue that Apple's quality is currently higher than average, let alone higher "than ever before."

<comment><USER3> These are just anecdotes but to pile on: A while back I switched from Android to an iPhone because despite loving the flexibility and freedom I hated the instability I was trading to get it. Now I'm holding out on buying an X or 8 because the buggy experience and daily crashes since I updated to iOS 11.

I'm sure if I do a fresh wipe and don't restore my data I'll be back to normal. And I'm sure an X or 8 is going to work great. But I don't want to _have_ to do that kind of stuff. I want it to just work. I bought into the walled garden because that locked down environment is supposed to be trade off that makes things stable and secure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like that the author acknowledges the incredible success Apple has had with their software development, and the debt they owe to NeXT. NeXT came in because of the failure of Apple over many years to develop a new operating system. After the acquisition of NeXT they developed a lot of really successful updates to that OS, and some good products and some bad products. Maybe they have gotten to the place where they were in 1996, where they need a major change to revitalize their thinking. I don't think there is a great example of thirty years great years of continuous software development.

<comment><USER5> But do you think another NeXT-Situation would be actually possible? As in: We'll scrap our biggest product for something developed more or less from scratch?

I know sunk cost is a fallacy, but in this case, I suspect the sunk costs to be rather substantial. And catching up with OSX development from the beginning sounds like almost an undoable task to me...

Or do you think other parts than the main OS should be the target of the next NeXT incident? If yes, I'd be interested in which ones. User-facing software only?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > The following was shared as a twitter thread. Here's the medium version.

I'm wondering if this could have been a much more accessible piece of writing if it wasn't 44 tweets copied-and-pasted together.

<comment><USER7> Indeed; it reads like some kind of bad manifesto.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Maybe Steven is right and the recent dip in perceived quality is an artifact of perceptions aggregated at scale as well as natural blips in process as certain scale markers are hit.

Or, maybe many pieces of Apple s/w required a zealous overbearing quality freak at the helm to prevent their quality performance from regressing to the mean and without that cultural monolith, their other software has started to the way of iTunes.

This is almost a great piece, but it fails to identify WHY Apple was knocking it out of the park, then assumes that because Apple was insanely productive while maintaining quality that they will continue to do so.

Maybe they will, maybe they won't. Either way, I'm glad that the scope and process side of things were fleshed out in this piece.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, I keep coming back to the anecdote where Jobs called somebody at Google on a Sunday because the shade of yellow in a Google app didn't look right.

The Apple ecosystem is huge now. I don't think applying one SJ to all the issues would have prevented them from happening. I am very curious what the pre and post Jobs culture differences are, though.</comment></comment>


New Details Show Broader NSA Surveillance Reach  - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324108204579022874091732470.html

<comment><USER2> Here is the behind-the-pay wall link: [http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB1000142412788732410820...](http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424127887324108204579022874091732470-lMyQjAxMTAzMDIwMDEyNDAyWj.html)</comment>


Ask HN: Best movie about work/business? - <AUTHOR>

What do you think is the best movie about work/business?<p>(imo it's "Gung Ho". It's motivational, funny, and educational. "Office Space" is awesome, though.) <comment><USER2> _Pirates of Silicon Valley_ is set in offices and workplaces to a great extent and covers the early life of Apple and Microsoft. I've watched it a few times and always enjoyed it.

I also thought _Boiler Room_ was pretty good. Some interesting work pep talks (one potentially being Ben Affleck's best scene ever), office scenes, sales calls, and insights into how empty the lives of the traders/scammers were outside of work.

<comment><USER3> If you liked the recruiter's scenes from BR (as did I), be sure and watch Glengarry Glen Ross.

<comment><USER2> Whoa, I will. I seriously wrote that movie off in the past just based on the title, thought it was some Scottish "Braveheart" type movie..

<comment><USER3> That's funny, as I also avoided it for years based on the title (and Alec Baldwin's presence).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _The Wall Street Journal_ pointed out that _Ghostbusters_ is great for entrepreneurs.

</comment><comment><USER5> Blow. <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0221027/>

It looks more into the underlying psychology behind why we pursue things, though.

The movie does look into these topics, albeit not directly on the surface, I am extrapolating from my own experience from viewing it:

\- How partnerships are formed and broken

\- Why we pursue money, and the costs associated with it (depending on the path we take)

\- The fact that there are no set rules when it comes to business, you create your path

\- It's not only what you know, but who you know

\- What happens when the haters be hatin' (Feds and Colombians in this case) ... on a more serious note, I'm saying that you will always have opposition when you start creating ripples

\- All business is arbitrage

\- Don't keep all your eggs in one basket

\- Your organization may take shape like a house of cards: if one card (an employee, a certain contact, an investor, a certain code, etc) is not taken care of, it could topple the whole operation

\- If the house of cards does topple, you can pick up some cards for your next venture

I can go on and on. It's a great movie, and it's on Netflix Instant. Watch it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Seems like a circular question. _Office Space_ is a movie about work because it _specifically defines itself_ as a movie about work. But when I nominate (as I now will) _Apocalypse Now_ as a great movie about the experience of being a soldier in Vietnam, everybody will look at me funny. As if soldiers weren't professionals being paid to go to work.

Of course, I might be wrong about _Apocalypse Now_ , as I've never actually been an infantryman in the Vietnam War. I have been a science grad student, however, and I can say without hesitation that _Real Genius_ is the _Apocalypse Now_ of graduate school. Even the physically-impossible hacker tall tales in that movie are note-perfect.

EDIT: More examples. _Adaptation_ is very much a movie about being a professional screenwriter. And there are dozens of movies about being a professional cop, musician, athlete, reporter, or artist.

<comment><USER7> And Swordfish is a great movie about being a hacker... specifically the common recruiting process.

On a more serious note, I do agree with you. Some decent movies with a office environment/work theme: Boiler Room (2000), Duplicity (2009), Glengarry Glen Ross, Other People's Money (1991), Swimming with Sharks and Wall Street (1987).

I've also enjoyed the dramatized real-life stories in Rogue Trader and Barbarians at The Gate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Office Space for humor. Wall Street for drama.

<comment><USER9> Seconded on both. I also enjoyed The Social Network.

On documentaries, I highly recommend Code Rush, a story of Netscape. It's actually in full here (scroll down to The Film): <http://clickmovement.org/coderush>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's a bit dated now but Startup.com: <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0256408/> Pretty good documentary on what it was like to be inside a high flying late nineties venture funded startup before the balloon burst

<comment><USER11> Yeah, it was an interesting film. Specially insightful if you weren't around the scene when the bubble burst, but want to know how things were like from an insider's perspective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> the new Social Network movie is pretty damn good. Doesn't exactly focus on the work side, but it has some good cues on business strategies and the social side related to SV.

</comment><comment><USER13> "Extract" is a great manufacturing/blue collar work movie. It's also a Mike Judge (Office Space) movie, so it is quite hilarious.

</comment><comment><USER14> Glengarry Glen Ross ABC Always Be Closing!

I'm dating my self here but Risky Business.

</comment><comment><USER15> I tend to be fond of movies based on true stories. For true stories about people who set an impossible-sounding goal and accomplished it, I will nominate "October Sky" and "Cool Runnings". Neither has an office setting. The first is about a young man who did not want to end up a coal miner, like his father. He and some friends began making rockets and managed to parley that into college scholarships. IIRC, he ultimately ended up working for NASA. The second is about the origin of the first Jamaican bobsled team (that went to the Olympics).

Hopefully, people will see how this might be relevant to folks wanting to found a new business. Office Space is a good movie but is now kind of disturbing to me as someone who currently works in cubicleville. I think of it as "dire warning" rather than "inspiration".</comment>


SF's Rising Rental Prices beat NYC: $3500/month for single family homes - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sfgate.com/ontheblock/2012/09/05/what-3500-gets-you-in-sf-single-family-homes/ <comment><USER2> San Francisco has limited land, so there is a natural constraint on growth; in addition, there is a form of rent control and then there are lots of stipulations for building new units in the city. these things contribute to the low inventory, I think.

I wish they would allow more common sense building in the city. For example, in some areas, the shadows from new buildings may not be allowed to cast on neighborhood parks from 10am to 4pm, or so. This has killed a few projects. Then you have powerful neighborhood groups (like the ones along the embarcadero) who won't allow dense building because they would limit their view. I understand their position, but it's a selfish one. No one "owns" a view. More over, their buildings obstruct buildings behind them, but they would insist on having their own buildings be demolished to give others a view --nevermind that this could go on till very few houses were left.

The building requirements, in my layman's view, is that the requirements are onerous (compared to say San Jose) and make housing in SF an artificially limited/scarce resource which puts pressure on housing. The Peninsula is not much better. Neighbors always bring up traffic but then never approve BART to alleviate some of that traffic concern (or some other form of local mass transit (let's say spurs from the main Caltrain stations meandering to the local downtowns which host offices). My frustration is such that I wish someone like ABAG were given the power to overrule locals and allow them to do proper (integrated regional) planning and allow building up (vertically) to take the pressure off of housing in the Bay Area.

<comment><USER3> >No one "owns" a view.

I agree with your sentiment about neighborhood groups using the law to protect their high property values, but you can, essentially, own a view. You can purchase the "air rights" above existing houses and buildings from their property owners if you wish to prevent them from building something taller and blocking your view. Trump World Tower in New York is an example of a building that did this.

If you can't convince the owners of such air rights to sell them to you at a rate you're willing to pay to guarantee the view, you don't deserve to prevent them by law from blocking your view (basically stripping them of their air rights without compensation).

<comment><USER4> If you were designing a new city from scratch, this makes sense. Much like in software, cities have "legacy systems" to deal with. In the case of homes in San Francisco, "air rights" had largely been priced into properties by way of historical architecture limitations (lack of elevators, then earthquake resilience).

What the zoning restrictions have done is serve as a mechanism to allocate air rights. Effectively, properties come with the air "in front of" them, not "above" them. This is reasonable, and consistent. I doubt anyone bought low- lying property in SF with the idea in replacing it with a skyscraper, but most people up on a hill definitely paid for the privilege. A shift in pricing of air rights would cause a dramatic market shift from the previously existing condition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think the increase in rental prices is going to continue for quite awhile. My recent experience moving to SF and trying to find a place was incredible. I was just looking for sublets, but most people that I got to personally meet told me their email rate for a CL ad was 150-300 emails a day. I quickly learned that unless I was discovering the ad within 2 hours of posting there was no point to even replying.

I was only able to get an apartment after (1) enlisting my mother on the East Coast to spend all her spare time on CL forwarding me appropriate listings, (2) calling an ad's phone number 22 minutes after it was posted, (3) making sure I was the very first person that was personally screened, and (4) forcing a check for two months' rent into their hand unsolicited with the message that if they found anyone better I'd just stop payment. It's a rough market and it is still getting crazier. I think someone on a previous HN comment thread mentioned the city gained only 270 new housing units last year.

<comment><USER6> Sounds crazy. Are there any real estate brokers who can do this job for you?

<comment><USER7> This tickles my funny bone. Of all the New York-isms to import to the west coast!

So now instead of signing away your firstborn for a studio at a stabby corner of the Mission, it's now your firstborn _and_ 2 months rent for the privilege!

<comment><USER6> Skipping the above process is clearly worth something! Though two months is too much, even in Manhattan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This chart from Lovely was making the rounds of /r/sanfrancisco the other day, sounds relevant to this post: [http://cdn1.uptownalmanac.com/cdn/farfuture/N3k8kY5x460_wHNR...](http://cdn1.uptownalmanac.com/cdn/farfuture/N3k8kY5x460_wHNRZtkp6o_AmKVLJEfZ8idNV6rTQCU/mtime:1337022082/sites/default/files/images- on-cdn/5-14-12uuugggghhhh.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER9> San Francisco is a nice enough place, but I fail to see the attraction: high taxes, fees for everything you do, a fascist city council, homeless people pretty much do whatever they want and people that love to berate you for not driving a Prius. The geography of San Fran is nice but it's like living in an Al Gore version of Animal Farm. Aside from the weather, Texas is a far more logical place to be. In Austin, $3500 per month would buy a palace compared to San Fran.

<comment><USER10> The Texas cities (Houston, Dallas) have some of the most pollution this side of NJ. They're like LA without the culture.

<comment><USER11> > "The Texas cities (Houston, Dallas) have some of the most pollution this > side of NJ. They're like LA without the culture."

Much of the pollution in North Texas, (from traffic, cement and power production), is due to the influx of people from the surrounding states, the coasts and overseas by the looser regulations attracting businesses.

Eventually I will probably move elsewhere. The pollution and the allergy environment is wreaking my health. Traffic is a crazy mix of over aggressive yuppies, over careful illegals and commercial trucks. The water system is stressed and the deregulated power system is over priced and in decay to increase profits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I dont think this article is comparing apples to apples. There are no single family homes to be had in most of manhattan and parts of Brooklyn. I'm living in pacific heights now and also live in lower manhattan. Manhattan is still a bit more expensive IMHO.

</comment><comment><USER9> "Rent control protects tennants from higher prices.."

That's bullshit. What rent control does is distorts the market so you have people hanging onto apartments when they may not need them. As a result, it creates shortages. When some dude in Soho NYC is paying $600 for a nice two bedroom, and his next door neighbor is paying $4500, then there's a big problem with that system.

<comment><USER13> Absolutely correct. When prices go up, newer tentants end up subsidizing squatters who are paying below-market rates. If rent prices were variable then the market would be more liquid and the total supply would be higher, and thus new rentals would be lower.

I guess it's nice not having your landlord jack up your rent each year (and landlords can't price little grannies out of their homes). But you also get stuck in one apartment because the cost of moving keeps getting higher.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Isn't this just a symptom of san francisco proper being much smaller than new york city?

A more fair comparision is comparing San Francisco to Manhattan.

<comment><USER7> I just moved from SF to Manhattan. Apples to apples (insofar as it's possible), SF is more expensive.

Obviously I wasn't looking at single-family homes in Manhattan, but when it came to studios and 1BR apartments, the busy parts of SF (e.g., not the Sunset or Outer Richmond) are probably marginally more expensive than Manhattan.

If you want to get as close, lifestyle-wise, as possible, you're comparing Rincon Hill to Midtown, and Rincon Hill will be more expensive. Even if you expand the parameters out to the high-rises in western SOMA (towards crack- stab-town) SF will still edge out.

If you're comparing more residential-y areas, like, say, the Upper East Side to Hayes Valley or the Castro, SF will still win out, though you will probably get a tad more space in SF for your troubles.

It's hard to declare with great certainty who is the clear winner (or rather, loser), but SF is definitely neck and neck with Manhattan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> San Francisco is now for all intents and purposes a boom town.

At one end of the spectrum it is awash with tech money from the likes of Google, Facebook and Twitter. On the other you have pretty much everyone else.

I'm familiar with this coming from Perth, Western Australia. Australia is undergoing an unprecedented resources boom thanks to China's insatiable appetite for metals and petroleum products. This has affected different parts of the country differently. Perth, Brisbane and some region centers have ridden this wave for more than a decade.

On one side you have those who have owned property for this entire time who are sitting on huge windfalls (eg a house you could buy for $85,000 in 2001 cost $350,000 by 2005). Now you won't find a house cheaper than $250,000 in the Perth metropolitan area which stretches for 100 miles of coast and 50 miles inland (at peak; it's in between a triangle and a semicircle).

To view this is a positive is ultimately shortsighted. You see, it's incredibly difficult for new people entering the market. And I'm not just talking about purchasing. It flows on to renting. Those rents are inputs into all other costs and this all adds up to an inflation bomb just waiting to explode.

The "haves" in Australia are those associated with mining and construction (since mining demands a lot of infrastructure). The "have nots" are everyone else. The have nots are, at best, asset rich and cash poor.

At some point the economy simply ceases to function. Office space is incredibly expensive in Perth such that, for example, there are fewer and fewer software engineering jobs as companies relocate or centralize to Sydney and Melbourne (exacerbating a natural trend), which incidentally is one of the reasons I moved a couple of years ago.

Honestly I think it's cheaper for me to live in Manhattan than anywhere central in Perth now. _Manhattan_. Rents are more expensive here but not by much. Everything else is cheaper. I can walk into a large number of eateries and have appetizers for <$5 and entres for <$10, just as one data point. Utilities in Perth are super-expensive. I know people with $1500 electricity bills... for _two months_.

Now Perth isn't land-contrained like San Francisco (or Manhattan) for that matter but the socialist bent in SF is ultimately a problem.

Rent control is a huge problem in SF. This has been covered here previously. Some estimates run at 1 in 8 rentable units being left permanently vacant, arguably due to rent control.

The city's building restrictions mean new units simply aren't entering the market.

NYC has several things going for it here:

1\. It did away with rent control in 1973. It provided a smooth landing with rent stabilization, which is now rapidly disappearing from Manhattan;

2\. Manhattan has excellent transport links, probably the best in the country. The fact is if you work in Manhattan, you can live in the five boroughs, New Jersey, upstate New York, Long Island or even further afield without having to drive into the city.

Compare this to the woeful transport situation (in comparison) in the Bay area. Caltrain is barely serviceable and at best runs once or twice an hour.

3\. New York allows new construction, at least in some areas. Financial district, Battery Park, Midtown West, etc;

4\. The surrounding areas of NYC are more densely populated. Compare this to, say, Menlo Park, which reserves almost all land for single-family residences on large blocks and like much of the rest of the Valley, virtually prohibits high-rise construction.

This low density is ultimately shortsighted as it comes at the expensive of amenities and will at some point impact the ability for employers to stay in the area as the rising property prices make commercial activity increasingly untenable.

5\. The geography doesn't help SF. Whereas New York, London and other densely populated urban centers can expand in multiple directions, SF is more constricted.

Facebook really wanted to stay in Palo Alto. Zoning restrictions made it difficult. They had split offices and eventually had to move. Twitter for some reason is sticking to SoMA but as the seedier areas gentrify and go up in cost, this is going to become increasingly difficult. At some point it's simply going to make more sense to relocate out of these kinds of areas.

What happens to SF when large numbers of jobs move out of the city?

The whole rent control and construction limits is going to have to end. The longer it goes on, the worse the correction will be (IMHO).

<comment><USER10> Zoning for singe-family residences is so bizarrely 1950's, it's ironic that a high-tech place like Silicon Valley would buy into such idiocy.

<comment><USER9> It sucks living in a beehive. I don't particularly want to share walls with random people unless I have to. There's no virtue in being crowded unless that's your thing. Suggesting that everyone should be crowded to fit some urban planner's idea of efficient is the real idiocy. The people making the rules don't live in 400sf apartments.

<comment><USER16> There's a big difference between making your own choices and forcing other people to make your choices, which is what density restrictions do. Housing markets reflect the collective desires of people that live in an area, and SF housing markets are begging on their hands and knees for density. It's the urban planners that are standing in their way.

The most maddening thing for me about this issue is that removing density restrictions in inner cities actually makes it _easier_ to live in a detached single-family unit with two cars, since more people living downtown means fewer people competing to use space and freeways out in the suburbs.

<comment><USER17> I don't think it's purely the urban planners, as if they've usurped power against residents' wishes. The desire of would-be _new_ residents may be for density (which is what markets would reflect), but in much of the SF Bay Area, the desire of current residents is in the opposite direction, which is what their elected officials and planning boards therefore implement. So that's another kind of collective desire, but of a different collection. Places like Palo Alto, for example, retain rules requiring single-family homes with certain minimum lot sizes, because that's what Palo Alto residents want their city to be like.

You actually get that in the private sector as well, if a municipality doesn't set such rules. The neighborhood I grew up in in Houston had minimum lot sizes and restrictions on subdividing houses for rental, all implemented via contract law. When the subdivision was built, all buyers agreed to set up a homeowners' association and certain rules, which are now conditions attached to the deeds. In an alternate world where Palo Alto had been set up that way N years ago, with subdivision organizations and contract law mandating lot sizes, rather than municipal government setting them, the end effect seems like it would be largely the same, so it doesn't really seem like a government vs. market distinction (at least, unless you restrict freedom of contract enough to make this kind of private-sector zoning impossible).

<comment><USER10> These sorts of restrictions are all wildly inefficient. Buying property doesn't buy you the right to control how the composition of the area changes with time. If you've got 10 people in a neighborhood with single family homes, and 100 people who want to move into the neighborhood into high density apartments, why should the minority be able to override what the market demands?

<comment><USER17> But the market is what set up the restrictions in the first place, in Houston's case! They're just private-sector agreements in contract law that you agree not to do X/Y/Z to your property, in return for your neighbors agreeing to the same.

Is the argument that people shouldn't be able to agree to a contract saying, "I will not subdivide this land, and will only sell it to someone who agrees to the same condition"? I'm not entirely averse to that, but it seems like it's a more complex issue than just allowing whatever the market demands, because there's market demand for these restrictive covenants (people really do sometimes want reciprocal agreements with their neighbors about what each will do with their land), which would have to be prohibited by restricting what kinds of contracts people are allowed to sign.

<comment><USER10> Just because something is achieved contractually does not mean it doesn't undermine market mechanisms. Cartels are contractual but that still undermines the market.

There is a proposition in the law of property that restraints on the alienation of land are to be avoided whenever possible. restrictions on alienation reduce the fungibility of property and increase transaction costs, reducing efficiency. In some states, e.g. NY, there are limits on what sorts of restrictions on alienation courts will enforce when written into deeds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> We got lucky. 1.5 years ago, we rented a house in SF for $2700, and the rent was frozen at $2700 for up to 3 years. A friend of ours moved into our neighborhood and is paying $3300/month for a comparable place.

I'm not sure what we're going to do once the lease is up in 1.5 years, hopefully the rent prices will stabilize. I know my friend in SOMA who bought his 2 br condo for $580k can now sell it for probably $800k, and charge at least $4k/month for it. It's absolutely crazy how much rents have gone up, it's as bad as during the dotcom boom, where my rent went up $500/month after the 1st year lease. (I moved out to a worse neighborhood instead of renewing the lease).

</comment><comment><USER19> Let's not forget: AirBnB isn't helping either. No, not the AirBnB employees; but the loads of people renting out their spare rooms, when earlier they would have taken in a roommate. I just checked, and 2300 listings came up for San Francisco.

Plus, SF Tenants Union is very powerful. Once you are a renter, you can basically do anything and the landlord can't kick you out. Consider this example from today's paper: [http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Landlord- nightmare-in-...](http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Landlord-nightmare-in- eviction-attempt-3849250.php) . As a result, some people are leery of renting.

In other words: while the demand has gone up, the supply seems to have come down.

<comment><USER20> _Once you are a renter, you can basically do anything and the landlord can't kick you out._

People seem to think that this is entirely independent from the evil tech firm seducing naive owners into believing 40% utilization of a room non-regulated beats 90% utilization regulated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> :( I've been living with roommates for a few years in SF. I want to move to a 1BR place I guess it won't happen till the bust happens.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is nothing compared to Sydney. We were paying $4k AUD for a run down 3 bed apartment in Newtown. This has been the norm for quite some time, and is probably down to the fact that Sydney has 1% vacancy.

I've since moved to a town called Newcastle and pay $1700.

</comment><comment><USER23> My friend and I always talk about how, given our salaries, we could have both bought houses by now if we weren't living in the Bay Area. A tempting idea is just to save as much as possible for a few years and then move someplace cheaper.

</comment><comment><USER24> Finally, something New Yorkers are happy to be #2 at.

</comment><comment><USER25> how are the prices in the rest of the bay? equally high?

<comment><USER26> No, they are high but not as high as SF.

Honestly the quoted price sounds low to me for a single-family home in SF.

<comment><USER27> _What does $3,500 a month get you in a San Francisco house?

In the <Sunset>, you can get three bedrooms, two bathrooms, an attached garage and a big yard._

Not all neighborhoods are equal, presumably

<comment><USER28> Yep. $3,500 gets you a 1br in SOMA where you actually see the sun.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Amazon, Up in Flames - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/08/amazon-up-in-flames/ <comment><USER2> It's hard to understand from this blog post what the problem is. Can someone summarize the complaint beyond "Amazon was willing to republish some out-of- print books that other publishers weren't!"</comment>


No one is ready for California's new consumer privacy law - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/31/21039228/california-ccpa-facebook-microsoft-gdpr-privacy-law-consumer-data-regulation <comment><USER2> _Going to be mildly toxic for a second, because I care about my privacy a lot. Apologies for the vitriol in advance_

Boohoo. Y'all had 15 months to figure it out, not including the prep time while the referendum was debated in public.

>How is a company going to ensure it is deleting the right customer's data without collecting more information to verify them?

Why are you collecting PID without the ability to verify it belongs to the right customer in the first place? Why do you want to store the information I use to verify myself to you _after I ask you to delete everything?_

>The broad definition of 'sale' is a pain point for a lot of companies because it potentially includes sharing information for online advertising,

You're goddamn right it does. This is exactly why I voted for the bill.

</comment><comment><USER3> While we're here, would be good to report Vox Media, the owners of The Verge to your European DPA. They have offices in London; and their cookie dialog is bullshit:

> We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing > experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze > site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from. To learn more or > opt-out, read our Cookie Policy. Please also read our Privacy Notice and > Terms of Use, which became effective December 20, 2019.

> By choosing I Accept, you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking > technologies.

I don't consent. And I hope GDPR and CCPA take their toll on this kind of scum. How did we get to the point where websites that I don't sign into have ToS? Meanwhile, I'll be adding yet another site to my PiHole blacklist.

</comment><comment><USER4> Complying with the GDPR is easy so long as you are honest and not exploitative. Just only collect information that is needed for the operation of the service.

</comment><comment><USER5> Hah I read this and thought... well consumers are ready, businesses are not ready though.

In all seriousness though, this is going to take a while to shake out, same as GDPR.</comment>


Ask HN: *app.com or *.co? - <AUTHOR> Hi HNers,
Brief scenario: Planning to launch an app and I've landed on a very apt name. The .com is taken and the registrant isn't responding to e-mails (even to a reasonable offer) at all. The domain has been parked for years. The app is going to be web + ios + android. I am going ahead with the same base name of the app, and have 2 choices to use the webapp domain:
(1) append "app" to the name and make a .com [name]app.com
(2) make a .co. [name].co
Thoughts? I've gone through the round of "Let's not focus on only this name, let's try to find others" and finally got back to the name because it's so apt to convey the app's meaning to non-technical audience.
Thanks. <comment><USER2> There's been plenty of startups that launched with bad domain names but wound up hits. thefacebook.com, getdropbox.com to name a couple.

Going the appname+app.com route you are quite literally signing up to work for the guy that owns appname.com. Think about it. Some day you will be paying him a huge cash sum for simply squatting on your name. Some day you may come to find he doesn't want to sell it ever, and will happily take advantage of this. Are you okay with either of these scenarios? I certainly am not.

Ideally you want one or two short dictionary words in a .com format, but all of those are taken. So what do you do?

IMO, the best option is uniquelySpelledName.com, no prefixes or suffixes, no non-.com domain names. Preferably it's short, 5-8 characters. People can only remember 7 or so new things at a time without much effort.

Ex: Your startup name is coolhats, but coolhats.com is obviously taken. Fine, register KewlHatz.com. Done deal. Memorable. Unique.

Why no alternate TLDs? Because they don't pass the grandma test. It's too much to remember. Your company ends up being "Foo Bar Co, withouot the m. Not .com, but .co" or "Foo Bar dot eye oh, <explanation>" ... grandma ain't gonna be remembering any of that.

Think about this. Do you really want to be explaining something as simple as your web address over and over again? I don't.

HTH

<comment><USER3> I agree. Dont be too attached to your name that is taken. Chances are its really not as memorable as you think. Spend more time and think of another one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> .com

Undisputed king. Anything else is a noise. Come up with creative .com brand name that is not taken.

<comment><USER5> Yep. In my experience anything .co people will just think is .com causing confusion. I will never buy another .co domain and would not recommend any buy one unless it is a word like flamen.co

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Do some a/b testing with friends and family. Not just "what is better". I believe there is survey templates for this kind of stuff. Does it sounds legit? *App makes it harder to pronounce? Use it as a verb? I do not think there is a universal answer even if you can disclose the name.

</comment><comment><USER7> PG wrote this 2 years ago. I think you should read it:

[http://paulgraham.com/name.html](http://paulgraham.com/name.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> Does you name have or can be played out on the new TLDs that ICANN just allowed?

We built a game called Virtual StockXchange but we had a hard time coming up with a domain name for it. Everything was either taken or too long. So we tweaked the name a bit, made it Virtual Stock Guru and got the vstock.guru domain. Recognizable and remember-able enough and not easy to be mistaken with .co/.com domains.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'd say, go for .io if it's a developer-centric product, else .com undoubtedly.

I've been using [https://instantdomainsearch.com](https://instantdomainsearch.com) (no affiliation, just a happy user) for years to find great domain names.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER10> Why not register both? You can A/b test them and see if one converts better. This way you don't have to worry about someone scooping up one of them if you get popular.

</comment><comment><USER11> I think .co is too similar to .com. I would just go with the +app version. Or, a lot of startups are using .io these days. That's what I did and I'm happy with it.

</comment><comment><USER12> Why not .io ?</comment>


I still prefer Eclipse over IntelliJ IDEA - <AUTHOR> https://techblog.bozho.net/still-prefer-eclipse-intellij-idea/ <comment><USER2> _I still prefer Eclipse over IntelliJ IDEA_

Same. I tried IntelliJ earlier this year, and thought it was pretty crap. Certainly nothing about it wowed me to the point that I thought "Gee, I need to ditch Eclipse and use this instead".</comment>