Feedback for UK Writing Startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.scribblesheet.co.uk/index.php Hey everyone. I setup this startup with my confounder. Its for people who don't have time to blog, to write articles/essays etc and get feedback themselves. Typically, Paul Graham-esque essays and articles are likely to be written, as opposed to news reports for example. <comment><AUTHOR> The site has been going for 2 days btw.</comment>


What is the modern backup solution for cloud service data (db+files)? - <AUTHOR>

So we have a cloud-based service we are going to be offering soon.  It is built on MongoDB for now, but could easily be MySql.  We would like to have regular backups of our database and related files that are then stored elsewhere in case something really bad happens.<p>What is the best industry practice these days? <comment><USER2> A cheap solution is to have a server sitting at your office/home that runs a nightly cronjob to rsync backups off your EC2 machine to local disk. Copy that data to external drives and keep a copy at home. Store another encrypted copy on S3. Or use Tarsnap to handle the security for you.

Every few months back it all up to some external drives and store it in a safe deposit box, or use a service like Iron Mountain.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you are on Linode kind of hosting then I guess they do provide some backup options. I am not sure whether it's paid and do they do full server backup or specific data backup. You will have to find out. Pls do post here when you do so. I will also be needing this soon. Anyone else with any experience on this front?</comment>


How to Survive Working at a Startup - <AUTHOR> https://stanete.com/survive-working-startup <comment><AUTHOR> Startups are chaotic shit shows. Nothing makes sense. Ever. Even if sometimes it seems it does. And for a short period of time, the anxiety fades away. But the next morning everything changes. Again. And our brain starts trying to solve the puzzle of uncertainty. Again.</comment>


Sublime Text 3 builds picking up steam again - <AUTHOR> http://www.sublimetext.com/3dev <comment><USER2> I'm a co-owner of a small software business, so in a very similar situation to the Sublime Text developer (with the exception that my product is much less successful). I went and looked at the linked-to list of builds. There's a bit of a gap from December 2013 to May 2014. But then there's a release every couple of months.

I know that in the past the builds have been fast and furious, but, honestly, I don't see any reason to have a new build more than every couple of months. More than that and it wastes my time; I suspect the ST developer has learned that more frequent builds waste his time as well.

Sublime Text is fast, powerful, intuitive, and--the killer feature for me-- cross-platform. It's well worth the money to me now, regardless of its long- term future (in the long run, we're all dead). While development has been sporadic, at least it seems like the developer has not succumbed to the Moby Dick/Second System effect, so that's a plus. It would be great in the long run (i.e., when the developer tires of full-time work) if it were open source, but it's nigh-impossible to support oneself with open source applications, so it seems healthier now for it to be a proprietary app.

<comment><USER3> The problem with Sublime in 2014 was not the number of releases but the fact that the developer more or less just disappeared for a year.

I am totally fine if he does not release something new for half a year, but at least he could've written a short blog post that he will take some time off. Even a short "Hey guys, I am still working on it but things are very slow right now" every 8 weeks would've been totally fine.

<comment><AUTHOR> > _I am totally fine if he does not release something new for half a year, but > at least he could 've written a short blog post that he will take some time > off._

He did write a short post of that effect.

> _Even a short "Hey guys, I am still working on it but things are very slow > right now" every 8 weeks would've been totally fine._

The TextMate guy posted frequent updates just like that -- and it got nowhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Given the discussion here, it seems there's a clear need for a text-editor that's cross-platform, fast (like ST, unlike Atom), open-source (like Atom, unlike ST), very configurable (like Atom and ST), easily extensible (like Atom) and easy to use/grasp for an user accustomed to typical windows applications (like Atom and ST, unlike vim and emacs).

Seems to be something like this could be done using QScintilla. Qt would give it an excellent cross-platform support, Scintilla a good editor with a speed of C++, and the ease of development and extensibility would be possible thanks to either PyQt (Python) or QtQuick (JavaScript). Just a thought...

<comment><USER5> My feeling is that your point about vim and emacs applies more to vim than emacs. The caveat here is that I had ~15 years of vi/vim usage going on before switching to emacs ~5 years ago. I can plainly see where modal editing is foreign to new users from the start. However, I'm not sure emacs, which ships with "normal" keyboard shortcuts by default in most packagings, is the same. Emacs has a relatively smooth path from, "I'm going to use this like Notepad++" to "Emacs is my god / lover / email client now."

At least that's my impression, and perhaps the warped impression of someone incapable of recognizing weirdness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's great. SB3 beta has been completely stable for me the past year, so looking forward to testing the new builds.

<comment><USER7> The plugin system dies for me regularly. I wish I didn't have to quit ST3 to fix that.

<comment><USER8> That sounds like a bum package, or a corrupted install. If you are using Package Control you can copy the Packages/User/ folder to a fresh install and install Package Control to try fixing it. PC will do a fresh reinstall of missing packages.

<comment><USER9> I'd venture to guess that the grandparent poster is on Windows. On Windows, after resuming from sleeping, it's known that sometimes the plugin_host.exe will crash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Too late for me. Atom replaces sublime in my workflow.

<comment><USER11> Just tried opening a file larger than 2MB....nope. End of Atom tryout.

<comment><USER10> I'm using Atom to code. If you have a source file bigger than 2mb, trust me, the Atom limit is the last of your problems. :)

<comment><USER12> I have to open CSV files all the time that can easily be hundreds of MB. I'm not doing anything wrong, it's a dataset.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> One thing that blows me away about Sublime is its grep performance on Windows. I am an emacs user but use Sublime on Windows since I havent been able to find a way to make emacs match the speed of a recursive grep search on Windows.

Another place where Sublime text is noticeably faster is in syntax highlighting large files.

<comment><USER14> Interesting, do you grep for e.g. finding symbol references? i.e. doesn't emacs have a feature of finding symbols semantically?

<comment><USER13> Often I am working with files that are not code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've used ST in the past, but due to slow release cycle, I switched to Vim. What really bugs me in ST is the fact that the guy doesn't have time to work, but still, it's not open source for the community to work together to achieve a decent release cycle.

<comment><USER16> > due to slow release cycle, I switched to

I've read this argument multiple times and I just don't get it. Is it because you were waiting for a feature that hasn't been implemented? What's a decent release cycle? How does a indecent release cycle affect your daily usage of the text editor?

<comment><USER17> Because there are many annoying small bugs that prevent the editor from being completely useful.

<comment><AUTHOR> Like what? Haven't found any in the 2+ years I'm using it for Python, PHP, JS and Go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've been a long time ST user, but when I out of curiosity started playing with Vim and slowly get used to it, I now prefer it over ST most of the time. But I'm glad that Sublime Text is alive again.

<comment><USER19> Same experience for me. I started using vim about one year ago, and I have been very happy with it. Having to take my fingers off the keyboard to move around a document or highlight things-- it's just unthinkable now. But I'm glad sublime is there, cross platform and easy to use, just in case I'm on some foreign machine and I don't have time to set up my vimrc and vim plugins. I also recommend Sublime to people who are just starting on programming in a language like Ruby or Javascript as it works just like Word out of the box.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I get `unable to apply patch` from the builtin updater. Happened for 3067 last week too. Some kind of permissions problem? I've never installed it in any kind of unusual way...

<comment><USER12> Are you on Windows? I did see a post about elevated privileges here: [http://www.sublimetext.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=17470&p...](http://www.sublimetext.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=17470&p=65365&hilit=elevated#p65365)

<comment><USER20> On OSX 10.9.5

<comment><USER12> You may want to leave a reply on the Dev build post for Jon to look at then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Meh, I'm trying to just switch over to emacs, so far its been a blast, even with implementations of AC, speedbar,yasnippit, and other packages,i dont feel that ST is going to cut it for me anymore.... ill keep it installed still its a very beautiful application. :)

I'm starting to get called neckbeard at work for being a emacs advocate..... :\

</comment><comment><USER22> As someone who finally shelled out the money for it and a few paid plugins, I'm really glad to hear this!

<comment><USER23> +1 I'd like to know what plugins people have found worth paying for.

<comment><USER24> Most notably for myself: Sublime SFTP, SublimeGit, and Sublimerge.

I'd pay for Anaconda or SublimeLinter beyond donations in a heartbeat if it did have a paid option, as well.

[http://wbond.net/sublime_packages/sftp](http://wbond.net/sublime_packages/sftp) [https://sublimegit.net/](https://sublimegit.net/) [http://www.sublimerge.com/](http://www.sublimerge.com/)

[http://damnwidget.github.io/anaconda/](http://damnwidget.github.io/anaconda/) [http://www.sublimelinter.com/en/latest/](http://www.sublimelinter.com/en/latest/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> BTW nobody mentioned Limetext, which attempts to implement a SublimeText clone in golang (and other features like a terminal frontend).

[http://limetext.org/](http://limetext.org/)

</comment><comment><USER26> Picked up, but no match with Atom. I'm disappointed as I've invested over $200 in its ecosystem (including a paid license for it).

</comment><comment><USER27> I don't really see much point in Sublime Text now that GitHub's Atom is a pretty much a one->one replica but free, open-source and has a rather nice package manager for plugins.

<comment><USER28> I don't really like Atom because of the webkit usage, but I strongly agree that using a closed source text editor is a terrible idea for a programmer... when that editor stops being maintained all the time investment learning all it's time saving tricks is lost.

Luckily I've been burned really early in my programming career by TextMate to know better: all my tools must be OSS and cross-platform.

<comment><USER29> I don't understand this line of thinking.

For me a closed-source text editor such as Sublime Text makes me much more productive than it's open-source equivelent. The accumulated productivity gains far outweigh the timecost to learn a new tool, if Sublime Text disappeared (a couple of days at most?).

<comment><USER28> Well, in some time you will lose all your productivity when you have to switch. With a proprietary tool it's not a matter of 'if' but 'when' (unless it's provided by a huge corporation, but then they try to lock you in their ecosystem).

OTOH I will be able to use vim (or a fork of it) 20-30 years from now and become more and more productive with it during the timeframe.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Image Processing with scikit-image (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.yhat.com/posts/image-processing-with-scikit-image.html <comment><USER2> I do a lot of image processing algorithm development (e.g. building custom segmentation algorithms). I started out using Matlab during my DPhil research because (a) it came with very fully featured toolboxes, and (b) most other researchers wrote their code in Matlab too.

Recently I've started making heavy use of Python at work. It's made significant strides in terms of its image processing libraries. I haven't used scikit-image much, but we routinely work with OpenCV at our office, because its feature set is a great complement to Matlab's. However there still remains a lot of really useful 3rd party code that's only accessible with Matlab.

Our current workflow, as a result, is to use Matlab and Python where necessary (because different problems are more tractable with one or the other), and to then stitch them together. This is a bit messy but doable. (I wrote a blog post about it on my site if anyone needs to look into this.)

Bottom line - the Python libraries are fantastic for dabbling with image processing, but for serious work, depending on what you're doing, you may still need to get your hands dirty with Matlab for the time being. This is unfortunate, because Python is free and Matlab is $$$. This will likely continue until a large enough proportion of the academic image processing / computer vision Matlab researcher userbase switches over to Python.

<comment><USER3> While Matlab still probably comes ahead in image processing, surely in computer vision Python is on top? You mentioned academic research, isn't the majority of modern object recognition, segmentation, etc. done with convnets? Most popular convnet libraries are in Python.

<comment><USER4> > isn't the majority of modern object recognition, segmentation, etc. done > with convnets?

Not at all. Big networks might be popular within particular groups, and they have certainly achieved impressive results on a number of tasks recently, but it's not the solution to every problem. There are a number of other approaches - just browse over the number of subsections on image segmentation on wiki, for example:

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

or, perhaps more appropriately, take a look at the methods used in recent papers on image segementation:

[https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_ylo=2016&q=%22image+se...](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_ylo=2016&q=%22image+segmentation%22&hl=en&as_sdt=0,10)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I noticed he is using ggplot, which is the python attempt of implementing the API of the ggplot2 R-package.

What is the status of ggplot on python? Is it ready to replace seaborn and matplotlib?

[http://ggplot2.org](http://ggplot2.org)

<comment><USER6> Python ggplot is just a wrapper around matplotlib, not a replacement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Python and matlab are good for high level image processing but iterating over the pixels with for loops is incredibly slow. To implement a low level processing running in a reasonable amount of time, compiled languages like C or C++, or even FPGA are much more adapted.</comment>


Is WhatsApp Hacked? - <AUTHOR> https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/10/is_whatsapp_hac.html <comment><USER2> Original artice on Forbes: [http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2016/09/29/winteg...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2016/09/29/wintego- whatsapp-encryption-surveillance-exploits/#4c414a00dade)

<comment><USER3> The link should be updated to point to this URL.

If this were any site other than Schneier we'd all be screaming "blogspam!".

<comment><USER4> > The link should be updated to point to this URL.

Some of us can't read the original because we don't want malware.

[http://www.networkworld.com/article/3021113/security/forbes-...](http://www.networkworld.com/article/3021113/security/forbes- malware-ad-blocker-advertisements.html)

<comment><USER3> Fortunately, there are precautions you can take, up to and including permanently disconnecting from the Internet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sounds like they just remotely root the device and then extract all data on it, with a special utility that can display the Whatsapp database in a neat way.

</comment><comment><USER6> If they can install malware on the device, wouldn't it be easier to use something like the accessibility features of Android to just scrape the content or maybe take Screenshots, send them home and use OCR?

</comment><comment><USER7> The WhatsApp client is pretty forgiving about key changes. Is the attack just hoping the user ignores the notification?</comment>


Show HN: Fill Paper and PDF Forms Online - <AUTHOR> https://form.ac/ <comment><USER2> It's amazing that osx/macOS preview is still leaps and bounds ahead of standard viewers on other systems.

I can fill out forms, draw signatures and print to paper or PDF without installing new software or go looking for a web service. I just open the file and if it looks like it should be filled out, I fill it out.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. And I use HelloSign when I need someone else to sign it. The combo of both works perfectly for me. I cannot remember the last time I printed a PDF and scanned it back it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. Preview is a great option for mac users but I still find it awkward for text in boxes - account numbers, for example. I'm surprised Apple hasn't added a check mark annotate option. Not everyone knows the option-v trick.

<comment><USER3> I tried yours out and it's definitely superior - I'll be using this in the future for non-secure PDFs. If there is any way to do this offline I'd probably pay for an application bundle version.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, glad to hear we've added something. I'm working on a full client-side version which will run completely offline (including generation). It will be a while away though. Send an email to email@example.com if you'd like a notification if and when it's ready.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN, I built form.ac because I hate filling in paper forms (especially if I'm expected to scan and email them somewhere) also it is the basis of a service we provide concrete companies.

The key differences between form.ac and all the other pdf filling solutions out there are: You can photo and fill a paper form; I've focused on speed of filling - no frills just the tools to get the job done; It works well on tablets (not so good on phones); You can add photos, draw on forms and sign forms with your own signature.

I'm really looking forward to your comments - good and bad. Thanks!

<comment><USER4> The idea is nice. For feedback I'd say the domain name and the design of the site both don't feel secure, so I would have a tough time wanting to use the service. Things that would make it seem more serious / secure:

\- Use .com domain

\- Better site design

\- Paid tiers with free trial

\- Intercom or equivalent for support

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for checking it out and the feedback. I really appreciate it. The site design is a bit rubbish. It's really just a placeholder so I could get something launched.

I'm not familiar with intercom but I'll take a look - thanks for the tip.

The paid service will be a B2B service which is more about process management thank just form filling. That's a while away yet though.

I'm really interested in your comment around the .com domain. Perhaps being from NZ we're more relaxed about domain names but I thought with all the new gtlds it wasn't so important any more. Good to know that a .com domain is still important to some.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My main concern with this kind of service is that most of the times I fill out a form it has personal information which I don't want to risk leaking somewhere which is why I prefer local apps that don't transmit over the internet.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a valid concern which is why form.ac data is stored locally and is only transferred to generate the form and is then erased from the server. I think it should be possible to do it all client side with a modern browser but I haven't had a chance to do a proof of concept of that yet.

It's also worth considering what you do after you've filled the form locally. Do you then email it somewhere? What does the receiving organisation do with it? Unfortunately there are potential security pitfalls in many parts of the process.

<comment><USER6> Do you think PDFjs could be extended to write new text inside the PDF, all client side? At the moment I'm only aware of PDFBox from Apache to do this, but that's server side JAVA...

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes PDFjs is what we are looking at for a full client side version. However we've had issues with larger pdf's/images and localstorage limits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Demo does not work for me (Chrome W10); the move/resize doesn't work at all.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks again for spotting this one. All sorted now - move and resize both working correctly on Chrome W10.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Really love this.

How can I pay you to use this? I want this to be around for the long haul!

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm really pleased you like it - thanks for the nice comment. And generally I'm not one to turn down money but we're not looking at a B2C business model at this stage so hoping to keep the form filling side of it always free.

Feel free to drop us an email at firstname.lastname@example.com and if we ever have to turn off the service I'd be happy to show you how you can set up your own for free on Heroku (or on a local machine if you're familiar with rails).</comment></comment>


Hacker News Top Headline Jetpack for Firefox - <AUTHOR> http://chrisroby.com/jetpacks/hnjetpack.html

<comment><AUTHOR> After playing with Jetpack, I decided to have a go at making one for the HN community. Hopefully you'll find it useful.</comment>


Eric Schmidt predicts that Internet will bifurcate between China and USA - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/20/eric-schmidt-ex-google-ceo-predicts-internet-split-china.html <comment><USER2> It's already bifurcated. I have to build everything for our US based website three times: once for China, once for Russia, and once for everywhere else. It's annoying, but there's no way I'm putting our backend data in China or Russia.

</comment><comment><USER3> I was suggesting that cloudflare should consider doing this a couple days ago - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18022586](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18022586)

It seems to me that so many rules from different places make totally centralized possibly censored to all by whatever lowest possible denominator.

Wasn't there a ruling for (maybe Canada?) right to be forgotten needs to be worldwide search results (not just censored in country where order was made for google to removed something from it's listings)?

There are now so many groups that want things removed from the net for so many reasons. It also seems to me that the needle for what gets removed and what does not and who can direct someone to remove something - it's just gotten outta hand.

</comment><comment><USER4> I wonder if Google will split in two as well. TFA refers to the internal controversy over their willingness to censor in order to please the Chinese government. Unsurprising, but only time will tell if it will be profitable.

<comment><USER5> I think Google will actually split into more than two.

Most likely the anti-trust heat out of the EU will become aggressive enough, and the rules in the US vs EU will increasingly be different enough, that the only thing that will make sense is to fully separate off a Google EU as an independent business.

It's very plausible this will be the pattern for Facebook and Amazon as well given time. The divisions will then compete with each other globally. The EU will never catch up to the US in tech as things are now, so they'll continue to turn the screws until it becomes nigh unworkable to operate in their market if you're a US tech giant like Google. That will leave one good choice (to preserve shareholder value): split off Google EU. It's the last thing Google will want to do, they ultimately won't have a choice, other than to abandon the EU market. Influential nationalist politicians in the EU view these giants as a sort of foreign invasion, the ramping negative response won't finally subside until you give them a Google EU that they can treat as their own.

It'll be like the baby bells.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> And what about Europe?

Or does he also predict that all US based services will be fully compliant with EU law (GDPR, Article 11, Article 13) by then?

</comment><comment><USER7> It almost has.

Very few big US services are accessible or usable in China.

Very few Chinese services are widely used in the USA.</comment>


Young programmers should take up enterprise software - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/06/young_programmers_may_enliven_enterprise/

<comment><USER2> That was an article full of derision (Scripting language derision, young 20 somethings know nothing by gabbing on facebook and posting the pictures) for no good reason.

It hasn't given a good positive reason to learn the enterprise side of things at all.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not convinced that being enterprise-y is necessary. Certainly there are a lot of enterprise-y solutions out there, but I'm not convinced that was the only way to do it... Or even the best way.

It seems to me that the best things have come from making really, really solid small components, and then combining them into larger things. Simply creating a large thing without spending time on the individual pieces of it makes a really shaky system.

When you do things the enterprise way, it almost guarantees there are pieces that get next to zero attention. Bigger things also require more management, and management doesn't actually add value to the product directly.

</comment><comment><USER4> wccrawford who says that enterprise=big? Yes, that's the old way of doing things but I am with you (and Matt): we need to have small, to the point solutions to solve enterprise problems.

jmgtan rightfully points out that the companies to deliver these innovative small enterprise solutions may be small themselves (so there is no red tape to hinder creativity).

He who succeeds can make a big impact: very many happy enterprise customers (and riches in the process). Question remains: why is this not interesting to many young engineers?

</comment><comment><USER5> Having worked in an enterprise company for a few years, and while there are some interesting problems to solve, the amount of politics and red tape that you have to go through before you even get to write a single code is a big hindrance to creativity.

</comment><comment><USER6> Two problems are the amount of boilerplate customization and wine&dining by high-cost sales guys to get deals. Both are not very startup-esque and leave a dirty feeling.</comment>


Ask HN: My startup has failed. What comes next? - <AUTHOR> My startup of about two years has failed. We were hanging on for the last couple of months in the hopes of getting a big break. We're out of money now. My motivation levels are also pretty low after so many repeated failures.
My question is, for other people that have been in the same situation: What did you do after?
Did you start looking for a job? Did you jump straight into your next startup. I'm also considering whether it's possible to pick up small programming jobs on Elance to pay the bills. <comment><USER2> Hey man, Elon Musk's rocket blew up today. Even the best of us don't succeed every time. Just think carefully about your possible courses of action and try planning out different routes in your head ("If I worked in city X for a year doing Y, I could save Z, and then in my free time I could...", "If I went straight on to this startup then I could...", "If I went to work at this cool startup I know in a field I'm interested in, then....") and see which one makes the most sense to you.

I know this is cliché stuff but remember Thomas Edison's 1000 ways not to make a lightbulb, and JK Rowling getting rejected from a dozen publishers, and Elon Musk nearly going bankrupt in 2008, and that Abraham Lincoln didn't do anything particularly notable whatsoever prior to turning 52.

<comment><USER3> "Hey man, Elon Musk's rocket blew up today. Even the best of us don't succeed every time."

This is a fantastic quote. A (literal) moonshot failed, and that's not stopping anybody. Cheers for the perspective. I think it's easy to get trapped in our own little bubbles and forget the bigger picture.

<comment><USER4> " I think it's easy to get trapped in our own little bubbles and forget the bigger picture. " \- A major modern epidemic

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What do you _want_ to come next?

If you can constructively and reliably ship code to prod, you almost certainly have better immediate options than Elance.

Worst case, calling ten different web agencies in your area will probably get you enough work to pay the bills, likely at rates which are not unreasonable, and with far less pathological clients than you'd find on Elance. You might have to call another ten after that, if your luck is bad or if your sales skills are poor.

After that, what? Full-time job? Freelancing? Another startup? Get out of software and into the exciting world of fruit vending?

It's a wide world and you have skills that are in high demand. What do you want the next chapter in your life to be about?

</comment><comment><USER6> Our startup failed early this year. We didn't make any money and while we did have a few interested clients, to keep going we needed funding that didn't come. End of the day, it was the wrong product. Period.

So - lesson learned.

I did try odesk/elance for a while but you can't make any money from it. My work is more embedded, and systems programming and the jobs on places like odesk are suited for very low end webdev. (The good webdev work isn't on odesk). As a result, they are very low paying.

I called that quits pretty quickly and started looking for a job. It took me a couple of interviews (including bombing the first one) before I found work. I'm pretty happy now. It pays the bills, but I am saving up for my next startup sometime in the future.

In short, don't be disheartened. Very few actually make it, but the journey is one that's really worth it. Sometime later you will find the right idea and your motivation will be up again.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the advice on odesk/elance. I was wondering whether I could pick up freelance jobs related to data processing/data analysis.

I do agree that the journey really has been worth it, although I haven't actually got anything to show for it.

<comment><USER7> Don't underestimate the value of experience. While failing must certainly have hurt, you have actually learned more than if everything had worked out. Whatever you do, be sure to take a bit of time to regroup before you jump into another high intensity activity like your next startup or someone else's software project with a ridiculous timeline. That way you will recover quicker.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> 1\. Pay the bills, save some money.

2\. Take a vacation: _" Me and my friends have been too busy sunbathing off the southern coast of St. Bart's with spider monkeys for the past two weeks, tripping on acid. Changed our whole perspective on shit."_

3\. Tinker: [https://www.physics.ohio- state.edu/~kilcup/262/feynman.html](https://www.physics.ohio- state.edu/~kilcup/262/feynman.html)

<comment><USER9> #3 has been the key to my happiness ... and by the way I love to collaborate on awesome experiments - down any time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10>
       > My motivation levels are also pretty low after so many
       > repeated failures.

Several startups? Or failures in a single startup? Have you sat down and spent some time evaluating the failure? What did you not know that you would have liked to have known? What skills worked? Which didn't? Etc.

Many people I've known have gone to work for a larger, more stable, company to build up a reserve before putting their hat back in the ring. Sometimes they will take a different job (like working in product management instead of engineering) to round out their skill sets based on what they felt good at, or weak at, during their startup experience. Others have gone back to school to get additional training that way.

Much of it depends on your resources and what your mental state. I find it to write down in a journal as many things I can think of from the previous experience and what strategies would have either made them more impactfull or mitigate their damage. If nothing else it meant I was unlikely to repeat previous mistakes.

<comment><AUTHOR> 3 failed products across 2 different startups, over a period of about 3 years. I definitely feel I've learnt a great deal over the last few years. I've grown as a developer, but also learnt about things like management and marketing.

I think this is good advice. I've never worked in a corporate environment, and I might get a job just to see what that's like.

I'm definitely going to compile and reflect on all the mistakes I've made over the last couple years.

<comment><USER11> The success rate for VC-funded startups is historically about 10%. About 20% fail outright. The rest often end up in zombie mode, able to cover their expenses at some reduced level of activity but unable to pay back their investors.

In some ways it's better to fail. You have to stop and go do something else, rather than being on a death march to nowhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I did my startup for almost 4 years. It was this:

[https://github.com/scalien/scaliendb](https://github.com/scalien/scaliendb)

After the startup, I was "unemployed" for about 1-2 month. Then I took a chance and went to work for Prezi as an engineer. It was a really good choice. During the startup it was 2 of us coding along, not much social interaction. At Prezi there's tons of people, diversity, it was a nice break. Also, good challenges, lots of learnings. I'm approaching the end of my 3rd year here, I hope to also do a 4th. Right now I'm a "Director", which is like a engineering manager. So I'm also learning about how to manage people. After Prezi I don't know what I will do, doing another startup is at the top of the list, but we'll see...

<comment><USER13> did you end move to budapest?

Last time I spoke to people there, they were only hiring people who were local/willing to move.

<comment><USER12> I'm Hungarian, I live in Budapest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Just some suggestions through the tough times:

      - Talk to friends and family who understand
      - See if there are ways that the work done can be absorbed into another company
      - Drop a note to mentors/ advisors when you are professionally ready
      - Do some small projects for companies in your network who can pay on time, and hopefully also let you slowly ease into a different team and environment
      - Cut down on expenses
      - Plan your project portfolio and resume
      - Try to do at least some light exercise regularly (e.g. 3 times weekly)
      - Try to see how you close the loose ends (tough, but take as much time as you need and take into account your mental state)
      - Don't force yourself to go all out socially
      - Write down thoughts about why you think the startup failed, organize it later when you can look at it calmly
      - Don't try to over-analyse the situation
      - May want to explore meditation
      - May want to explore religion as a way of thinking about life's meaning and putting things in perspective

<comment><USER15> Great suggestions.

Last year, I went through the same thing. We had a great idea. We had a solid client. We build a platform that worked, and produced products that were high quality, that the end user loved.

Due to miscalculations on our behalf, and due to the client's company disintegrating, we were left in the horrible situation of having to kill the company.

We were worked to the bone. I was emotionally and mentally drained. We felt we'd let ourselves down, and let our staff down. It hit both myself and my partner very hard. But, we paid our bills, and paid our staff out of personal savings, and gracefully closed the company.

I 'forced' myself to take the time off required to get mentally and emotionally stable. For me, this involved riding my motorbike solo from Europe to Iraq (You will have other ways to decompress).

The final step in getting closure was to watch the delight of a friend's kid playing with one of our products. We _had_ succeeded.

\- Be gentle to yourself. This is really important.

\- Don't force yourself into new projects.

\- Take time to look at your startup, and highlight what you achieved. You probably paid your staff. Your code was probably solid. Your servers maybe never went down. Your final product made people happy. These are all successes - and it's very important that you congratulate yourself/yourselves for these successes.

\- If you can afford it, take some time off and travel. Change your physical and mental environment. \- Spend time reconnecting with your family, friends and contacts. The relationships have probably suffered during your crunch periods. These people will help you back onto your feet, so reach out to them.

\- If you need to get a job to pay the bills, contemplate taking a job in a totally different domain. Flip burgers (or whatever your personal equivalent might be). This will allow you to mentally build yourself up again to get back on the horse.

\- When you do try again, be aware of the warning signs you probably ignored the first times (especially the 'oh no what am I committing myself to' feeling)

You'll find that over time, and only time, the points of what you did well, and what you did less well, will percolate down into clear, future actionable forms.

Incidentally, I'm back in the saddle. On my time off, I picked up a hobby to tinker with a device, learned two new languages (Python + Qt) and a few new frameworks, and circuit design - and now have my new startup, which is hitting the market in a few weeks.

Just be gentle to yourself :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The first I would recommend you do is talk to your investors connect with them on a human level and explain why the business tanked. I did this in my case and one of the investors went on to land me very good contract.

Second I would recommend analyzing really well what caused the situation. Rarely is the answer running out of money the real reason. In my case the best way I found to deal with this is to give talks in my ecosystem on why my startup failed. This way it gave me a better chance to figure things properly because I had to explain them.

Third I would not recommend things such as Elance or Odesk, but rather direct consulting with people. I have done this personally and the financial payback from direct consulting is incomparably better then online marketplaces of services. The bottom line is that in direct consulting people are looking for your expertise while on Elance they are looking for code and we as software engineers produce code but what we sell is the expertise (ie the code is only the means to the end). Fourth for your motivation levels I would recommend forming a sporting habit. Personally I run long distances and I find it helps me stay "earthed". On the really off days I find reading science fiction is quite helpful but that is just me. Finally I would like to point our that your startup has only failed if you do not see the rewards at the end of the journey and only focus on that you missed your goal. As an example Columbus failed to reach India by a new route. If he had only focused on that he would have never gone back with the fact that he had discovered the Americas.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for this advice. We've already planned to sit down with our investor next month to do a proper post mortem. I've also been penning down my thoughts about what went wrong and what went right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Know thyself and accept that you may need a little bit of a mental health break before you're ready to jump back in.

You are probably much more employable than you think. You probably also have more connections than you realise.

As soon as you're ready, reach out to the people you know in the industry both locally and elsewhere. Let them know that you're looking for work and the kind of work you're interested in doing.

What worked well for me when I was in your situation was short term technical work with no managerial component. I found it quite relaxing to just show up, write code for a client, then go home. No team to worry about, no wage bill looming, just some issues in the backlog.

After I'd done that for a little while, I was back in a position to stretch myself again.

</comment><comment><USER18> Just one tip: Don't just follow the money if you're a product guy and get attached to your team and work. I quit a disintegrating startup with burnout and went right into the best paying corporate job, not realizing it was compensation for personal suffering. Dealing with 10 years of technical debt and a hot mess of legacy architecture together with a erm... wide variance in coworker's & bosses competence stressed me out just as much, and i quit no 12 months later.

</comment><comment><USER19> If your motivation levels are pretty low, you may want to delay job searching for a bit. Looking for the right job is hard and comes with its own setbacks that you need to be prepared for.

I started looking for a job in May. It takes a lot of time finding the right kind of company, going through all the interviews, and determining whether there's a fit. It's very draining and, of course, rejection always stinks.

You probably have a lot of great skills you picked up from building your startup, but practically no interview judges you on that kind of experience. I've encountered two main assessments: the take-home challenge and algorithm coding. Honestly, algorithm coding punched me right in the face when I started looking for jobs. It took me a little while to get back into the algorithm mentality (leetcode helped a lot).

Take home challenges are frustrating. You can put in a whole days worth of effort with no guarantee of getting to the next step where you can talk about your awesome startup experience. What's worse is that you probably are interested in the company because, otherwise, you wouldn't have put in the effort in the first place.

If you aren't ready to face this yet, I recommend picking up small coding jobs for a bit to get your spirits up and work on interview prep.

</comment><comment><USER20> This happened to me. I worked on a side project in high school that grew into a company after about eight years of work. Three years and a pivot later we gave up due to decreasing traction, and returned whatever funds were left to the investors.

I moved back to my parents for about a year to work on other side projects, but ended up looking for a job and found an awesome small company that I'm very happy working for. I'm still working on market-focused side projects and without the stress of having to make money/gain traction it's a lot more fun. I really prefer this setup, especially since a small company allows me to scratch most product-development itches I have since there's not a lot of bureaucracy.

A lesson I've learned: Quit early. If you feel bad about the project right now, end it as soon as possible As in, tomrrow. Don't stick around waiting for the big break. I've done exactly that, and while we actually ended up with some paying customers after our pivot, we would've had to achieve an insane growth to be worth anything to my co-founder and me due to the dilution of our shares. It's not worth basically building a new company for the smaller fraction of shares you have after taking an investment.

<comment><USER21> > we would've had to achieve an insane growth to be worth anything to my co- > founder and me due to the dilution of our shares.

Seems like that's the bigger lesson in this situation. Never give up so much equity that you cease to care about the outcome of the company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Id take a few weeks for yourself, then find a 6 month contract. That'll get you back on your feet again professionally and financially. Depending on how the contract rates are in your area, you should then have a small runway again to think about your options. Id avoid committing to anything too big too early.

I don't know the details of your startup, but if possible can you reduce costs / reduce scope of services to the point its self sustainable? If so, go for it. I've regretted shutting down past projects, sometimes a bit of time off can give you new perspectives on things, and you've presumably built some value even if its not realised yet. YMMV but something to think about rather than outright closing it all down.

</comment><comment><USER13> I highly recommend taking some time for yourself first, just to reconnect to your loved ones and find some kind of stasis in your life. You're going to need the space to rebuild your confidence levels to be able to show the moxie needed to land the right position.

I have found that taking consulting work is a good way to buffer your income for a while, until you find the position that is right for you.

I don't know if e-lance is the correct way to go about it tho, because there is an element of social branding and networking related to all of this.

You could start blogging, or do some presentations at local user groups of various techs. Writing about experiences like what you have been through can actually be very freeing.

</comment><comment><USER9> An innovation does not have to be a business idea, remember that. Supporting yourself can be incredibly cheap without a 9-5. Joining a team at a real office can develop your skills in ways you'd never imagine - but it's not right for everyone. It's not 'giving up' either - it can open up new opportunities, but make sure you still work towards total independence if you do that - and consider working for someone else's startup that might have more traction.

2 years is a long time - I've been in situations similar. I don't let projects last that long anymore. Motivation is an extremely important thing. You need to find what you love so you can enjoy working on it without the only carrot being a big payoff. NEVER force yourself to work on projects you don't enjoy. In life we have to do things we don't enjoy like paying taxes, apologizing, going to the DMV - but when it comes to your projects you cannot expect yourself to excel in something you don't absolutely love. You can always do 'ok' in those things but it's debilitating after a while.

Take a month, if you can afford it, to hone your skills - watch youtube videos, read a book (Meditations by Marcus Aurelius is what was once recommended to me and I recommend it to pepole all the time in these situations).

Be strong. Let the thing go, don't look back, don't jump into the next thing so fast - make sure you're taking your life in the direction you want it to go. Take a minute to pause, meditate - most people experience 'failures' because they only ever work on a business venture where success is binary - either you're profitable or you're not after x time. If, however, your goal is to better yourself, to build things that you can use and you want, to explore - to not worry about trying to make money with every concept you work on, but to be open to the possibility of it.

You can do amazing things - just admit to yourself what your shortcomings are personally, what your failures were in your last venture - and how to set up your life so that no matter what happens, it will be impossible to 'fail' because you no longer look at things as such a strict dichotomy.

<comment><USER9> Also I may get some hate for this but adderall (amphetamine salts) can potentially help some people in your situation - it's not something to get hooked on though - talk to a doctor, never get it illegally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> If your project failed, and you can take some time off, go or it. I'd suggest joining an obviously-successful project for a year or two after (a "unicorn", although they're not all great, is a good choice; a successful team at a successful company is, too), then doing a startup again if you feel like it.

Taking more than a few months off might be counterproductive (and expensive), and getting trapped doing consulting/contracting doesn't contribute as much to doing another startup again later.

</comment><comment><USER24> I was in the same situation as you at the end of last year. After 2.5 years working on a Techstars VC funded startup as a co-founder, we failed. Unfortunately at the time, I didn't have the extra cash to take time off, so I sent a few emails out (to the Techstars network) and a few weeks later jumped onboard another early startup as the first engineering hire. I honestly wasn't sure if I wanted to join another early stage company, but they offered a nice salary (I obviously chose salary over equity), a nice bonus, + some equity. They were the perfect fit for me, so things worked out well.

If you have the $$ to travel before moving on, I would advise you to take some time off to relax and get your mind away from the startup world. Go see your family, it's amazing how much they care.

Lastly, you will experience many emotions for many months following, don't take it too hard. Life goes on, things happen for a reason, and good luck! It will all work out.

</comment><comment><USER25> Contracted for a bit. When I had enough cash in the bank after a month or two I took a few months off and did some travel.

I couldn't even bear the thought of another startup (while it was always a long term goal) until I took a break. Now I'm back in the grind.

Shit happens unfortunately, its how you pick yourself up and dust yourself up that separates us. Best of luck.

</comment><comment><USER26> Life goes on. Please forgive yourself whatever happened in the past. In my case i started lokking for a job under stress and failed with the first one, so please rank your interviews and go to least interesting ones first. Sometimes going the ones you will never except helps, you will never now what it will bring to you. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER27> From experience, I can say that it's stressful and unsatisfying to do approximately "nothing." I recommend taking a hard look at your finances and setting up some kind of concrete goal(s). Take that class, build that joke app, polish your resume -- Whatever it is, just have your goal clearly defined and at the right difficulty level. You've basically just been transported forward in time 2 years and you're sure to have a lot of culture to catch up on, friends, family and acquaintances with whom to reconnect, and reflective thoughts to ponder. Don't be too hard on yourself as you build a new foundation from which you'll make your next move. As for money, my advice is to be wary of stringing along odd jobs for income. I think that kind of instability does more to harm your environment of freedom than to extend your runway of cocoon-mode.

</comment><comment><USER28> I do not know details, but it seems the biggest mistake was not failing before cash ended. I had two startups that were successes, but I had other few which were failures. The trick, back then, was to set a certain threshold in which we could call success or failure, and move on.

If you happen to have spared some cash before the actual declaration of failure, consider to take a 3 months break (I did). 3 months break does not mean not working, but actually removing from your life entirely any concerns for future plans or making another business.

It is a sort of short and strong detox, that will allow you to regroup and think better what's come next. But keep doing business... Those who felt the taste of startup never really let that go. For some reason, I can't explain, it is addictive.

</comment><comment><USER29> I got a corporate job after my most recent failure.

I am working on another idea on the side now - but it took me a good few months to recover before even wanting to work on something in my own time.

That was my first real total failure. We had €50k funding received with no notion of what to do with it - and I left before the money was even drawn down.

My advice is to relax. Take some time, play some video games, drink some beers with friends, and read some books.

If it's in your blood, you will bounce back.

</comment><comment><USER30> I started over with different idea, moved to a place where I can pay less, can live sparingly. what I learnt helped to develop/market 5x faster.

</comment><comment><USER31> _Did you start looking for a job? Did you jump straight into your next startup_

I'm always curious about comments like this. Do you have enough personal reserves to go into startup mode again and still pay rent/mortgage, household expenses for another year, whatever?

</comment><comment><USER32> Personally I wasn't a great coder after my startup failed (right after college). So I went to Fullstack Academy, and then got a job as a web developer. I plan on taking another stab at it once I get some more experience though.

</comment><comment><USER33> maybe the best thing is just to find someone to talk to in person. Someone outside looking in whose mind isn't as bogged down by the startup and can offer a more uplifting 3rd party view

I'd find someone like that to talk to in person over a beer, before jumping into what's next

</comment><comment><USER34> These are my two different experiences and hopefully one of them might help you.

My first startup didn't go that badly, which is why it left me with enough cash for rainy day during my 2nd / 3rd startup.

So without saying, yes the 2nd and 3rd crashed n burnt pretty badly.

Experience after 2nd:

I know this might sound meta, but your sanity and your self worth more than anything else and that's what you should be looking at. I was a noob by all means when I did my 2nd startup, because my first startup had an early acquisition which I didn't really go through a lot of things. So due to that my 2nd time it left me with a lot of bruises of rookie mistakes.

It was awful, but I decided take school and help me forget about Startups, business and the sorts of things I was obsessed was before. So this helped because I got to talk to people whom were not necessarily talking startup and business, which diverts your anger/disappointment towards something different.

After 3rd startup:(run out of money, quite literally)

After my 2nd startup I had enough cash to not get a job, but this time around I had a lot more pressure which left me with no choice, but getting a job. I had some great investors whom knew why I fall into this situation, which helped a lot.

Few things I did:

1- I put behind everything I was hopping for before, because I knew that I have reached a new low (which is not good).

2- Making new hopes!

3- I started fresh (joined a tiny startup and worked for them like it was my first ever time programming / building a team).

Things learned:

1- I wouldn't jump into another startup of your own. (don't, just don't) The pressure becomes too much and productivity tanks.

2- Make sure you agree on leaving behind the miseries of a startup to start something new (aka joining a team). It's a good time to let go of things when you feel your shoulder is holding too much.

3- Your sanity and your life is the most precious thing you have, after my 3rd startup I had death threats and that was the reason I had to let it go. So things like that shows you how cheap life can be in others eyes, while for you, that is the biggest asset you have your control over.

So feeling shitty or guilt shouldn't stop you from going into something new.

Also, if you have enough of experience with programming and building, then you can do some consulting or freelancing very easily.

PS: if you're in based States don't freaking try Elance or Odesk. Because that will just destroy your thoughts more, it's like race to the bottom for prices. Try using HN (Who is Hiring) or Reddit /r/forhire or Twitter or friends to get some gig.

Ah and one last thing, ego and pride can be hard to get over, but don't bury them, because these times will be your medal of honor and soon enough you can feel proud of them.

</comment><comment><USER35> I don't have "real startup" experience with, you know, investors and stuff. But I do have failure experience. Without funding, the line between failure and not is way more blurry; but you fail the same. Sometimes those failures come with emotional problems, sometimes not. When failures don't come with emotional problems, cleanup is easy. Get a job and do financial cleanup.

When the failures come with emotional problems, well, then it's harder. For me? I think it's a bad idea to go to my contacts when my performance is below a certain level, because... I'm just not performing up to my usual standards, and actually doing a job with people who expect me to perform at the level of most of my friends would be a challenge when I'm fully functional. And when I'm really messed up? expecting me to perform at the level I've been capable of performing at in the past is a bit unrealistic.

But, the problem is that my job is absolutely central to who I am. I'm not going to get better until I get a job and feel like I'm making forward progress at that job. That's just how I work.

So... personally? I go through body shops when I'm like this. Why? Mostly because employers don't go for the body shop until they've exhausted their contacts. They don't know any more good people, so they'll settle for warm bodies. And depressed-me can meet those standards, usually. I'll probably even have enough skill-margin for them to put up with the downsides of me still being messed up.

And eh, I've had good luck with getting help from the managers; I mean, my big problem is staying on-task, and that gets way worse when I'm not in a good place, mentally, and my experience? managers in those situations seem to be pretty cool with me asking them for help with that sort of thing. I think they know the score, too. They know they're gonna get second-raters from the body shop, and they're willing to put some effort if it looks like some effort can turn you into something useful.

When the economy is good like this, most of the gigs you will find are "contract to hire" \- meaning you work for them for a year, and if the economy is still good in a year, they'll offer to hire you on full-time, which gives you a nice path forward, if you still need training wheels after the first year is up. When the economy is bad, that expectation isn't set, but the rules are about the same either way.

Oh yeah, to get a body shop job? put your resume on DICE. take the calls, listen carefully, reject jobs you aren't qualified for (the body shops aren't qualified to do that, and you will go to a lot of interviews for jobs you aren't qualified for if you don't take charge of the filtering)

But yeah, especially if you are in the bay area, body shops are like a million times better than e-lance

</comment><comment><USER36> bankruptcy

</comment><comment><USER37> Couple of things: Can you sell your code? If not consider open sourcing it. Either you get some money or you get some kudos in the community.

If you still want to work in startups, look at the post a few pages back for people looking for founders: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9795503](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9795503)</comment>


PSA: Please Put Your Phone Away - <AUTHOR> http://ppypa.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I just launched this site because I see a growing number of people around me engrossed with their phones and ignoring the world and other people around them.

Please let me know if you have any feedback on how to improve the site and the message.</comment>


IPhone Apps for SEO Experts. Useful info for HN readers?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.seoiphoneapps.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I basically wrote this ebook with HN readers in mind. I'd like any input on the idea, the landing page and clarity of the message.</comment>


Pushy recruiters - <AUTHOR> http://cushychicken.github.io/pushy-recruiter/ <comment><USER2> Sounds like every sales person I've ever met. Let's be nice though and just assume they were having a bad day(s) :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Ugh. I keep getting obnoxious recruit spam from the most entitled, self- important jerks. The latest was some idiot on LinkedIn who sent an invitation with a job offer in the text, so I didn't even need to accept their invitation for them to get their spam across.

</comment><comment><USER4> Was it one of the software companies? Was is a software-only role?

<comment><AUTHOR> It wasn't a strictly software company. It was a software-only role.

Hesitant to give the company name, as I don't want this experience to reflect poorly on them. The recruiter didn't work for them directly.</comment></comment>


A man will launch himself in a rocket designed by himself to prove Earth is flat - <AUTHOR> http://www.madmikehughes.com/ <comment><USER2> He doesn't actually believe the Earth is flat, he's just lying to the flat- Earth...community, if one could call it that, in order to raise money from them.

<comment><USER3> It really does reek of publicity stunt from all angles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Science and thus mankind will only benefit from this experiment, regardless of the outcome.

</comment><comment><USER5> At least he is willing to test his hypothesis with a scientific experiment. Although I doubt his rocket making skills if he hasn't figured out that the earth is round yet.

<comment><USER6> ...it isn't round...

<comment><USER7> It's more of a sphere

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> >>The Most Innovative Man in NASCAR History

Remembers me of the South Park episode about NASCAR...</comment>


The Algorithms of Love - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/29/science/29tier.htm

<comment><AUTHOR> My favorite programming assignment in school was a Scheme implementation of the "stable marriage algorithm".

"Let's assume, for the sake of an argument, that you are a village matchmaker given the task of marrying 100 men and 100 women. Each of the men has ranked the women from 1 to 100 in the order of his preference; each woman, not to be outdone, has similarly ranked the 100 men...Rather than insist that everyone get their first choice, you are instead charged with creating 100 stable marriages. A set of marriages is said to be stable if there exists no man m and woman w such that m likes w better than his wife, and w likes m better than her husband. The notion is called "stability" as m's and w's marriages are unstable, since (albeit sordid and tawdry) m and w could optimize their sorry lot in life by leaving their mates and running off together."

Non-PDF link: [http://220.127.116.11/search?q=cache:abZ7sCKHUmYJ:www.cs.bra...](http://220.127.116.11/search?q=cache:abZ7sCKHUmYJ:www.cs.brandeis.edu/~mairson/Courses/cs21b/marry.pdf&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us)

Not the same as algorithms discussed in the article but fun and interesting.

<comment><USER3> M1 likes W1 who likes M2 who likes W2 who likes M1. Can the four of them elope as a group?

(btw, it is a dull society without WSW)

<comment><USER4> interesting point...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> eHarmony isn't successful because of the matching algorithm. eHarmony is successful because of the steep barriers to entry, perception of safety and privacy, its ability to attract women to the site, the rate at which they regulate match delivery, and the guided communication process.

The result is that you don't waste much time browsing profiles. You don't waste time trying to filter out spammers. You don't waste time coming up with clever pick-up lines. You don't get pestered by matches you close.

The matching algorithm definitely matters, but it's mostly a red herring. If I were eHarmony, I'd be far more worried about my terrible user interface than the matching algorithm.

<comment><USER6> Good analysis.

I perceive that the biggest barrier to entry is the amount of money that you have to spend in marketing. We have been able to match most of their functionality but we don't have nor want to spent that much money in marketing. We haven't been able to come up with alternative approaches.

<comment><USER5> I just want to make sure its clear that in my previous post, "barrier to join" is probably more accurate than "barrier to entry." I was talking about the amount of time, effort, and money it takes to actually sign up and create a profile. It's a relatively enjoyable process, but it weeds out people who don't have patience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How long until one of these companies makes its database available anonymously and offers a Netflix-style prize for a better matching algorithm?

<comment><USER8> The netflix contest was a spectacular failure. I can beat it easily just by using better metrics for the input data.

Really, the contest should have been about finding the data that is most representative of the expected results. But no, they want to throw resources at problems that are unsolvable with the provided data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> e-harmony is very similar to my start up. We operate in Mexico somoscompatibles.com (we are compatible). Our approach is to find personalities and rate how similar they are. I tried eharmony for several months and I don't think they really have a great algorithm, they just make it easier for you to know some people that are somewhat similar to you.

</comment><comment><USER3> Boy meets Girl.

Boy tells Girl "My love for you defies all algorithms".

Boy and Girl live happily ever after.

</comment><comment><USER9> By having an exclusionary policy, eHarmony appears to be attempting to improve their results by keeping people out that are less likely to fit their algorithm.

I'm impressed that they've hired so many PhDs, but on the other hand, I don't believe that having the computer match you is going to be very successful overall.

</comment><comment><USER10> Last year I did a lot of work under contract to build a machine learning based data web site where users would vote on people and the ML part would build up a model of what they were looking for. Unfortunatly, the site has not yet released because of trouble finding a good Javascript person to work on bits of the UI.

</comment><comment><USER11> does eHarmony still refuse to match a huge chunk of people? i've heard about 20% or so are unmatched or something like that. which interestingly almost coincides with the commonness of a certain range of personality types in the Jungian theories

speaking of which, i'm surprised Jungian theories aren't more popular. there are specific type pairings which go very well together -- like the people you meet that you just "click" with. well, that clicking can be seen clearly in the theories by the way the types are described

<comment><USER6> It seems that the more accepted personality classification is the big five. We have thought about denying access to those that score high on neurotisism. Maybe cut off the top ten percent thus protecting our members.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> eHarmony's ability to market itself/word-of-mouth is impressive. My relatives/parents are like broken record players 'You know, Roy met his wife through eHarmony...' My friend Mike met his wife through eH as well - <USER2> remember him complaining about how long it took to answer the questionnaire set.</comment>


So You Want to Buy: Startup Office Snacks - <AUTHOR> http://refer.ly/so_you_want_to_buy__startup_office_snacks/c/984171a826c511e2a4ec22000a1d0d51 I am using Referly (my YC startup) test this idea, but hopefully it will help some of you as well.  One my most frustrating yet fun statup jobs has been trying to order food for everyone (this becomes quite challenging as a company gets to be 40 or 50 people).  I tried to compile office snack ideas into a single shopping list along with commentary and advice.  Is this useful?  How could we make it better? <comment><USER2> Ah, so straight-up referral spam becomes acceptable when done by somebody who should know better? Cool!

Next up: Top 5 sites for buying V1agra and C1a1is for ma5sive gr0wth hack1ng at l0w 1ow pr1ces.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is really interesting to me, because it _could_ be helpful and useful (I mean, I just bought $900 worth of stuff for my startup so it's not just a random collection of crap) but it comes of as spam. Can you help me understand what it is that sets off the "spam bit"?

Also, what does "should know better" mean? If I wrote this as a blog post on Svbtle and it was a story with a bunch of referral links instead would it be different? Is the credibility of it damaged by the fact I could make money if you buy the things I suggested? Or something else...

And lastly, is this unique to the HN community and its acceptable methods of communication, or a broader turnoff you would notice even if you hadn't found this link here?

<comment><USER2> So is this the part where you engage with criticism, as the worst that will happen is fanning the flames of controversy which just drives more attention? But I'm not saying that your comment isn't in earnest either - you're wishing to figure out how to categorically make spam look like not spam, as your startup is based on making it easy for people to spam their friends and associates, and so is highly vulnerable to the social repercussions of bad first impressions.

A simple and easy first step to making your site seem less spammy would be to register a whole bunch of different domains composed of relevant keywords. These can be used to mitigate being banned from link aggregator sites and to delay users noticing the pattern. Markov chain generated text surrounding the links would do wonders on the less savvy users, too. I'm sure there are plenty more of such tips if you hang out in the right forums.

What you fail to realize is that credibility has been destroyed by each and every detail of the situation. The earnest blog that has the occasional spammy referral post can be mostly forgiven (although the users that upvote it shouldn't be), as it's clear that the writer has a life purpose besides referral links. I see no such redeeming qualities here.

"Should know better" refers to the fact that you present yourself as part of the tech community, while simultaneously disrespecting the general consensus on spam. Although maybe it's just that the shark that was jumped has died of old age.

Oh, I just remembered it's Sunday - I've got to go do a bit of sanitation hacking.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, creating lot's of domains is precisely what other affiliates do and what I have been trying to avoid - it feels very dishonest to me. I am extremely aware of how this looks, how affiliates are viewed, and how credibility is destroyed at every step. That's why it is so fascinating to me and why I'm trying to understand if there is a problem to solve for affiliates.

There is also a good chance that this is just not the right kind of content for this community.

How would you feel if Referly much more clearly said "hey, if you decide to buy through my links that is totally up to you - but if you do I am going to earn 6-8% commission. This doesn't change the price of your products, but I hope it will serve as a nice tip to me for organizing all this info in one place for you. If not, no worries"

<comment><USER2> I just don't see the angle. A respected blog posting affiliate links is about my limit of 'earnestly recommending products and happen to be making commission'. Referly seems primed to create low-authority (quality is irrelevant) lists which are then posted to various community sites, much like you have just done.

You _might_ be able to save some credibility by also including non-affiliate links so users are given an easy-to-act-on choice, but I cringe for even possibly helping.

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't worry, you won't burn in the pit of spam hell... we don't want to be a spam site. The sad thing is that my credibility is poorly reflected in this Referly post, but if you were to read it in the context of distributionhacks.com, daniellemorrill.com or the Twilio company blog it would have a totally different meaning. And that is the secret we have uncovered I think... the results of my experiment will be forthcoming

This is also why Klout is such a bunch of crap.

<comment><USER2> FWIW, my original comment was written in the context of what I've seen of distributionhacks (which I am not interested in, to put it mildly). I don't know if that changes your data point or what. I don't really think you've uncovered a secret - perceived motives matter _a lot_ (for example how your account has remained unhellbanned, whereas as a 1-week old 'affiliateseo7132' would have been gone quite quickly). I actually didn't doubt that you sincerely compiled a list of recommended snacks, but the context of 'how can we put stuff in people's faces and cause them be interested' coupled with affiliate links for junk food puts you in spamming territory no matter how much meta thinking or startupspeak you have going on (these things just make for the ridiculousness of it). Though I'm sure the strength of various audiences' mental immune systems will vary considerably.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've made a similar list directly on Amazon. It's awesome, as I can just click "re-order" when we're running low for the items I don't have a subscription to.

What sucks is Amazon carries nothing but garbage food (like the items you listed); no healthy snacks that don't make a keyboard greasy, or orange.

What I've consistently bought: peanut butter crackers, trail mix snacks, water.

I wish Amazon carried more _naturally_ sugar-free snack food!

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, I was really struggling to find healthy stuff on their (at least the almonds and beef jerky are a bit better but still, not by much). I have been considering setting up subscription, but not sure how long stuff is going to last. What do you subscribe to?

<comment><USER3> Strictly non-perishables that we can never have too much of. In short, trail mix and water :)

There aren't many subscription options on Amazon, either.

Something that will mature over the next few years, I'm sure.

<comment><USER4> I've found that having plenty of fruit on hand is key to being able to work long startup days without feeling like crap at the end of the week.

Non-perishables are somewhat overrated: most food will be eaten (especially once you know what people like and what they don't like), and having a few dollars' worth of fruit go bad each week is a tiny amount of your food budget.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, we get fruit and other perishables, of course. I was just describing the items I can (and do) order off Amazon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm puzzled why people buy popcorn in bags (with nasty fake butter, etc. -- there's actually a disease, Popcorn Workers Lung <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronchiolitis_obliterans>).

You can just use regular paper bags, put some popcorn in, and pop it. It works fine. There isn't a microwave susceptor or anything like that in the bag. (some tv dinners actually do include materials designed to heat up from microwaves to directly cook the food, particularly foods with low water content which would otherwise not get cooked well in the microwave.)

</comment><comment><USER6> Maybe it's just a result of us being in the Midwest, but most of the snacks displayed here aren't all that cheap to me. I can get things cheaper if I go to Woodman's (local grocery store) or Costco.

</comment><comment><USER7> In the Boston area, Boston Organics will deliver a tasty assortment of organic fruits weekly. We get this at my office, and it goes fast. <http://www.bostonorganics.com/>

I'm sure there are equivalents in other cities.

</comment><comment><USER8> Would love to see a healthy version next.. :)

Also anyone who buys Diet Coke on Amazon is crazy.

<comment><AUTHOR> I will work on the healthy version, but have found it is surprisingly hard to come up with at a reasonable price, it has always been a challenge in companies I've worked at. I usually buy Diet Coke at Costco, where do you get yours?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Gross, this list is a 1-way ticket to the Cancer Ward!

</comment><comment><USER5> Also, Jack Link's brand beef jerky is disgusting. Really. almost any of the commercial stuff is disgusting.

If you don't make your own, my favorite is <http://www.bigjohnsbeefjerky.com/>

It's actually made from tolerably good meat, not overly processed, and is cut into nice thin slices which are easy to eat.

</comment><comment><USER10> The food on there is pretty disgusting. Not sure why startup culture goes together with junk food. It's like buying poison for your team.

</comment><comment><USER9> i don't have a problem with the referral links, but all this so - called food is the worst stuff for your health. If you want to poison your employees then go ahead feed this to them. You should learn a little bit about living healthy.</comment>


Seattle is getting serious about transit - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/1/14/14222492/seattle-transit <comment><USER2>
      Around 2014, however, things started changing.

You mean, 1996? That's when ST1 was approved. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Link_light_rail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Link_light_rail)</comment>


Choosing a web dev platform: Rails or PHP (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.shlang.com/post/70877607/web-dev-rails-php

<comment><USER2> How relevant are these comments 6 years later?

<comment><USER3> Um, one could argue that Rails has lost quite a bit of hype recently, mostly to the hands of Node.js, but Node isn't as mature as Rails was at that time, nor trying to solve the same problem.

PHP is still hugely popular, and much better than it was in 2009, and still getting better, ever so slowly. Arguably because of the beauty of Rails.

Depending on one's definition of "enterprise", Java is slowly become less enterprise, pulled towards to cool side of the Force by Clojure and Scala.

And I'l go out on a limb and say that the evolution of front-end technologies, and the popularity of REST interfaces makes the current web friendlier towards wacky multi-language setups, hence friendlier towards wacky languages.

You see people suggesting stuff like using a compiled lang as the REST server for a front-end JS app using a Node.js instance to do server-side rendering.

But no.

The conclusion remains: it's totally legit to start new projects in PHP these days.</comment></comment>


AdNauseam Browser Extension: Clicking Ads So You Don't Have To - <AUTHOR> http://adnauseam.io/ <comment><USER2> The source is here:

[https://github.com/dhowe/AdNauseam](https://github.com/dhowe/AdNauseam)

This actively poisons the advertiser/publisher relationship, which in my opinion is a much harder stance than simply blocking ads.

edit: I've tried it using the abp/adnauseam combo but it only worked on one out of 5 heavily ad laden pages. It's funny, I have so many layers of this stuff running that it took me quite a while before I managed to see any ads at all and then to re-enable just ABP. So, on FF at least, not really recommended by me, maybe someone else has a different experience. (tried it on two different machines)

<comment><USER3> By poisoning the advertiser/publisher relationship they are also poisoning the publisher/user relationship. Like it or not publishers have to pay the bills and these types of efforts are either going to result in paywalls (which users of this plugin will no doubt try to circumvent) or by the content going away all together.

I think a much better option for those opposed to advertising is to just not visit those publishers. Anything other than that strikes me as theft of service.

<comment><USER4> I'd be totally cool with a paywall instead of slow and distracting ads.

Here's an idea - why don't a bunch of publishers (or a third party) get together and build a subscription service for a reasonable monthly fee that automatically gets me through their paywall when I visit their sites. In theory it would be open for any publisher to join, and they get to split my monthly fee based on pageviews.

<comment><USER5> You'd think that would exist already: A service that costs, say, 8$ a month. It should remove ads and paywalls, and pay the publishers some amount relative to how much I've browsed their site.

<comment><USER6> $8 a month is a pittance. You can't even get the NYT alone for that. You can't get the WSJ either. You can, just barely, get the Linux Weekly Newsletter for that much.

This is like the GMail-without-ads idea. The provider and the user are far out of sync with each other. You _can_ get a Gmail without ads today, if you want. It'll cost you $50 / year.

To make it worse, that decreases the value of your advertising space. When you have a free-only service, the value of your advertising is the benefit of showing the people who can afford things ads. If you have a free and a paid ad-free service, the value of your advertising is significantly lower, because the people with money (and willing to spend it) are no longer going to be shown the ads.

Great, now I'm going to advertise to a bunch of poor people and skinflints. There's no chance I'm going to pay the publisher an equal amount for those ads as I'm going to pay them for the rest. So that publisher will have to charge paying users enough to make up the shortfall.

<comment><USER7> > _$8 a month is a pittance. You can 't even get the NYT alone for that. You > can't get the WSJ either. You can, just barely, get the Linux Weekly > Newsletter for that much._

It would work poorly for the regular NYT readers, but I'd argue that's not most of the Internet. People don't browse websites, they read articles they found using a search engine or were linked to somewhere. I'm not paying NYT, the Economist, WSJ, The Atlantic, and a hundred other websites $10 each, when I read on average one article every two month on each of those sites. So I think the idea mostly works, but we need to make sure that those who read more articles from a single site pay correspondingly more to it.

> _Great, now I 'm going to advertise to a bunch of poor people and > skinflints. There's no chance I'm going to pay the publisher an equal amount > for those ads as I'm going to pay them for the rest. So that publisher will > have to charge paying users enough to make up the shortfall._

So the system stabilizes at some price point and there are no ads? I'd say "mission accomplished" :).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Maybe I misunderstand. Although it's nice not to load and see ads, and it's really nice not to be tracked and correlated, it's really really nice for an advertiser not to be aware of me personally, at all, correlated or not.

So this thing poisons the stream, but it also says "there's a person here, put him in the database." It's like responding to spam; there's no future in it.

I don't mind _advertising_ at all, and when I used to read physical magazines and papers, none of the ads bothered me, I'd either look at them, ignore them, or throw away a whole section if that's all it was.

It's _tracking_ ads, and the ad networks more generally, that I object to.

If a site just sold and showed static ads, with no information about me personally sold to or detected by the ad buyer, I'd be among the first to whitelist such a site. Until then ... fuck off.

EDIT: Actually I guess there'd be no need for whitelisting, the ad would just show up with the editorial content. So, Wired, when you whine at me for using a blocker, why not instead just show me a picture of Suntory? [http://whiskey.wikia.com/wiki/Bill_Murray_and_Suntory](http://whiskey.wikia.com/wiki/Bill_Murray_and_Suntory)

<comment><USER9> Quite. What does it matter to an advertiser selling cars if I also indicate that I like holidays to El Salvador, Dove washing liquid, and videos about giraffes? They will still think that I want to buy a car.

<comment><USER8> Apparently it matters a lot, because they pay for that information.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "The Electric Monk was a labour-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder. Dishwashers washed tedious dishes for you, thus saving you the bother of washing them yourself, video recorders watched tedious television for you, thus saving you the bother of looking at it yourself; Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe."

Douglas Adams

</comment><comment><USER11> This looks interesting. I personally think the anti-tracking brouhaha is overblown and don't mind if "corporations" send me fewer irrelevant ads thanks to tracking. But for those militantly opposed, this seems like a clever way to fight back.

<comment><USER12> What happens is first you get "relevant ads". Then you get a different price of the book on Amazon than I do, because you discussed buying it in a "private" chat on FB with a friend.

Next you visit an airline website and you get a higher fare becuase of the knowledge that you have already booked a hotel in that city so they know what day you have to travel. What part of that do you believe is already here, and what part is dystopian future?

I'm against the whole idea of information as a commodity, and the ad business today is just that: it's customer information as a bulk commodity. I don't mind being shown _ads_ I just don't want my information collected and used. You could argue that website owners actually give me something (the content) and want something in return (a payment or an ad impression), but I disagree with how the transaction takes place without my knowledge. Just use static image ads served from your domain, then my browser can't know it's an ad. It will be a "dumb" ad, but those have worked in magazines and bus stops since forever.

<comment><USER13> I hear you. You click on an ad because you might be interested in a trip and now you're penalized all over the web because you actually showed some interest in an ad?!

<comment><USER12> Worse, you'll be penalized because your mom clicked an ad, and they know you are related, for example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> When you install an ad blocking browser extension, you are trading limited, specific, mostly non-personal data sharing with publishers, for complete, unrestricted, uncensored data sharing with extension providers.

Extensions can see the entirety of every page a user visits. This includes their bank account, what they searched on google, what they searched on duck- duck-go when they didn't want their search to be recorded, what sites they are a member of, how frequently they visit those sites, at what times they visit those sites, what emails they have sent and received, what they typed in their encrypted proton-mail account, what 20 word passphrase they chose for their bitcoin wallet, what they posted anonymously on 4chan...

From a pure privacy perspective, it's a huge net loss.

Even if you only enable extensions on non-sensitive sites, the difference in the amount of data being given to the extension provider vs the data being restricted from the ad provider, is very large during that time.

<comment><USER15> > Extensions can see the entirety of every page a user visits. This includes > their bank account, what they searched on ...

At this point why do you even trust your browser, or the OS it's running on both of which have access to all of that and more? I browsed through the code of uBlock and uMatrix and found nothing suspicious, it's not exactly a large code base. Sure, it's not a formal audit or anything but it's enough where I trust it.

I have to trust a single piece of software whose source is totally transparent to me, compared to trusting every single ad network on every site I visit, and every agency that data is sold to, and every state that data travels to. From a privacy standpoint it's a huge net benefit as all that data the extension has access to is never recorded and doesn't leave my machine.

<comment><USER14> >At this point why do you even trust your browser

I don't trust my browser :) and do expect some major data breach of my browsing history at some point in the next 20 years - but it's worth it to be able to browse.

Here people are trying to attain privacy by opening themselves up to possibly much less privacy - just want to make sure they know what they are paying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Are you people really that naive? Any decent adtech company will detect this as click fraud and filter it. This does nothing but waste computing and network resources for everyone.

<comment><USER17> Oh, so it only DDoS the ad networks who aren't adhering to No Tracking standards. Alright.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> As someone who runs a number of blogs, I have been following the "adblocker wars" with interest. Here is my opinion on a not malicious alternative for publishers looking to monetize:

[http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2015/11/surviving- an...](http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2015/11/surviving-and-thriving- amidst-adblocker.html) [http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2015/11/how- to-make-...](http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2015/11/how-to-make- paypal-tip-jar.html)

I will suggest you promote that idea if you really want to see fewer ads and not have to debate (internally) the morality of whatever of poisoning the stream, etc. I think it is a payment model that can work. Your readers need to value what you offer, but, ideally, they should be there for that reason anyway.

</comment><comment><USER19> This will only help advertisers. If a large group of users click ads and bounce immediately it will be obvious they are using this service. Send them a fake ad, see it they click. If they do, don't count/charge for their clicks anymore. Now Google has effectively found everyone who don't convert with ads, and doesn't target them. This makes normal ads more targeted, increases conversions rates, increases ctrs, and lets Google charge advertiser more.

</comment><comment><USER20> Why is Hacker News encouraging a project that aims to defraud advertisers and websites? It's hard enough to run an ad-based business without having to deal with getting blocked by Google from fraudulent clicks. If you don't like ads, the solution is simple -- don't go to sites that have them.

<comment><USER7> It's not Hacker News (site) encouraging a project, it's users of Hacker News.

Also, I don't see how this is defrauding (in legal sense), it's just shoving shitty behaviour back at the source.

Also, even if you don't like it, it's _still_ more ethical than what Uber is doing, so I think it should be encouraged at least as much in the tech world. ;).

<comment><USER20> Because Uber, a company in a completely unrelated field, is engaging in what you see as unethical behavior does not give you the right to defraud other companies of any kind.

It's fraud because it aims to register false clicks to deceive and confuse the companies that provide ads. It causes trouble for website owners, who can easily lose their entire income stream because they will be banned if the amount of false clicks on their site is deemed to be too high. If you don't like ads, don't go to sites that have them.

<comment><USER7> Uber is related here because you asked about HN (site or community) supporting something, and Uber is one of the most popular startups in the tech crowd. I further conclude that if said crowd doesn't seem to mind Uber's behaviour then it definitely shouldn't mind this extension, because it _also_ provides value to users and, as opposed to Uber, _is not actually illegal_.

But let's drop that, it was just me being snarky in the morning.

It's not a fraud, no matter how advertisers want to call it. It wouldn't fly in court. You serve me some buttons, I click them. I haven't signed any document, implicitly or explicitly, between me and ad network that would oblige me to view or click their buttons in a way they want it to. So let's not use strong words where they don't belong.

Yes, it aims to register false clicks to deceive and confuse the companies that provide ads - because those companies give negative utility to users an it's in everyone's personal interest to get rid of them. It's tracking, it's spreading malware, but it's also simply shoving ugly shit in users' face. We have a right to strike back.

> _It causes trouble for website owners, who can easily lose their entire > income stream because they will be banned if the amount of false clicks on > their site is deemed to be too high._

I say, good riddance. Site quality and trustworthiness is anti-correlated with ad count anyway.

> _If you don 't like ads, don't go to sites that have them._

No. If you don't like people not viewing your ads, paywall. Oh, but your paywall has to be leaky or else Google goes away? Well, welcome to the Internet. It was supposed to be a medium of information exchange, not a shopping mall.

<comment><USER20> Some men just want the world to burn.

<comment><USER7> And some just want to burn out the weeds that have taken over the garden.

You should consider it lucky that we're only talking about this extension. Per the other article that's currently on the front page[0], we could instead build an army of robots that would roam the world and punch advertisers to keep them down.

[0] - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10611053](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10611053)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What a waste. If you can detect the ads and trackers, just block them instead.

Besides which, their claim that 'targeting and surveillance becomes futile' is untrue. You're still letting all the ad networks and trackers watch every web site you visit.

<comment><USER7> It's not a waste, and not everyone cares primarily about _trackers_. Some find _ads_ a problem, and this is one possible approach to reduce that problem at the source.

<comment><USER21> Sure, not everyone cares about trackers. But the people who might care are being misled by the lies on the web page.

<comment><USER7> Fair enough.

Their point, presumably, is that with enough noise tracking becomes pointless, but I see how this extension doesn't really generate tracking noise, only buying-preference noise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Well this is amazing!

I honestly think if a majority of people start using this, Click Fraud will eventual become indistinguishable from clicks made my AdNauseam and ad companies for once will worry about milking the ad-cow.

But then... I know this will die in someway or the other.

<comment><USER23> This won't have the push as ad-blockers, it doesn't have explicit benefits on the user side while sabotage the publishers. So it will be very hard to sell.

<comment><USER2> Another weak point is that it does end up loading the ads which would slow down the connection and it confirms the pages you've seen to the networks increasing the amount of tracking done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I would be very careful with this. It may constitute fraud.

<comment><USER2> How so?

<comment><USER24> If a publisher was to use this to click their own ads, it would be fraudulent clicks. If they're charging on a cpc basis it would be defrauding the advertiser.

<comment><USER2> Ah, you mean the instance where a publisher would install this plug-in. I see, well that would be _supremely dumb_ of such a publisher, but I don't think this plug-in is aimed at publishers to commit click-fraud. I thought you meant fraud on behalf of an ordinary user, your comment made no mention of publishers.

<comment><USER24> Well I mean in addition, if you work for a competitors company, if you yourself are an advertiser in any capacity etc. There's many scenarios where you could find yourself in trouble.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Fraud As A Service.</comment>


Free Private Git Version Control - <AUTHOR> http://gitgo.io/?ref=hacker

<comment><USER2> The pricing chart is really interesting.

Can't decide if it's cheaper than GitHub.

Pricing wise, you can't really beat BitBucket, but GitGo seems to have a really interesting approach to aesthetics.

<comment><USER3> Looks cheaper if you want to work with a few people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is something I've been hoping for someone to do - make git aesthetically beautiful and also a bit more intuitive for those untrained in git.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Jonalmeida.

We would love to quote you on that. :)

<comment><USER4> Go ahead! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> gitlab.com offers free git repositories too.</comment>


The 2017 Segment Open Fellows - <AUTHOR> https://segment.com/blog/segment-open-fellows-2017/?src=HN <comment><USER2> Hey HN! Fouad here from Segment. I'm really excited to announce the results of our first fellowship program.

If you're interested in applying next year, enter your email at [https://open.segment.com/fellowship](https://open.segment.com/fellowship) and we'll send you a reminder once applications are open. Questions/comments? Feel free to send over to email@example.com!

</comment><comment><USER3> uBlock Origin has prevented the following page from loading:

[https://open.segment.com/fellowship](https://open.segment.com/fellowship) Because of the following filter ||segment.com^

Found in: Peter Lowe's Ad and tracking server list</comment>