Is it Immoral to Earn Attractive Profits from Poor Customers? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.paulpolak.com/?p=1380 <comment><USER2> In regards to the ethics of profiting from the poor, while everyone has their own definition, one if the biggest issues I could see is if one is trying to leverage the common lack of education to make people get into situations they don't understand or leverage their financial situation to offer them short- term solutions that ultimately have long-term harm.

It's also interesting to note that some cultures have codified protections against the poor from exploitation. For example, in ancient Israel according to the Bible, there were laws regarding excessive interest rates and a global debt-clearing every 50 years or so. Furthermore there were also some instructions that fallen unharvested crops be left ungathered for the poor to come and harvest themselves.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. I think the biggest problem with applying free-market ideals to these situations is that one party (the poor) is not in a position to act rationally, i.e. there is an element of coercion in their actions, due to hunger/sickness/etc.

<comment><USER4> Sorry but if you're hungry the rational thing to do is to acquire food. If you're sick the rational thing to do is to assess your options for immediate help. I use the word immediate here intentionally.

You're referring to difference in rationality but these are actually differences in time preference. A starving person prefers food NOW while someone who is well fed can wait a little longer and wait for a good deal to come by.

If you're on death's door, then long term financial planning is not a rational choice. Long term financial planning is probably the worst choice they can make as they'd be dead before any dividends are paid.

The poor are not coerced into buying food, they are making a choice and their choices meet an immediate need.

Recommending that people don't sell the poor food or that we never lend the poor money, what in immoral thing to say.

<comment><USER3> > Recommending that people don't sell the poor food or that we never lend the > poor money, what in immoral thing to say.

I never even came close to saying that...

All I was pointing out was that when one side of a transaction is coerced into doing something, then the assumptions of a free market have been broken. Maybe "rational" is the wrong way to describe it, but when it comes to dealing with the poor, there are definitely issues of this kind.

Anyway, thanks for the troll!

<comment><USER4> Low blow.

Recommending that I don't sell food to the poor for "profit" is the same difference. I have to feed my family too and without making a profit I have no time to spend feeding the poor, so I don't.

The assumption of the free market that you refer to is specifically: no coercion occurs (it's not "your" assumption I understand that, but it is the necessary prerequisite of a free market). If that specific condition is not met it's not a free market transaction. The free market is not some imaginary utopia, it's what happens when two non coerced people trade. If you add coercion, free market theories don't apply because there is no free market.

It's not a free market transaction if the poor are robbed. It's not a free market transaction if fraud occurs. To be a free market transaction both parties have to voluntarily execute the contract; most times a simple verbal one like I do when I hand over my money for groceries.

Being sick does not mean coercion occurs. It's unfortunate and it would be great if someone could help for free. But it's even better that there are trained professionals who can make a living helping the sick as they can refine their skill set over an entire lifetime. To do this however, they have to turn a profit otherwise the activity is unsustainable; they too need to feed their families and can't dedicate 100% of their time to helping others without charge. Again this assumes no coercion, which unfortunately these conditions do not exist in North America; government regulation in healthcare by its very definition means coercion of healthcare providers by the government, under penalty of force and arrest for non compliance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Easy solution: increase prices to avoid poor customers and the immorality of charging them what you want for something they want and seem to be willing to pay for.

Less snarky -- what's a profit? The opposite of a loss. States can run at a deficit (in fact it's apparently the ahem, "default", case), companies can't. You either have a deficit at the end of the year/month/week/day or a profit. Or in extremely statistically and mathematically unlikely cases, an actual zero (no profit / no loss). The whole "no-profit" thing has blown out of proportion. Overwhelmingly profits are a sign of providing great value while achieving attractive end-consumer prices ie. saving people money/time/trouble/hassle. Profits are the reward that is empirically overwhelming reinvested in the business, but feel free to donate it to charity or have it halved by your government to ease the immorality you have permitted yourself to indulge in.

</comment><comment><USER6> Interesting example:

In the UK, we're seeing a huge increase in the number of payday lenders, offering small loans for less than a month, for a fee of about 10% of the loan amount. Our financial regulations require all credit products to prominently state the effective APR, so most of these lenders are forced to advertise a rate of circa 3000%. This is obviously a shockingly high figure, so there has been some amount of campaigning to set a cap or outlaw payday lending altogether.

What has been fascinating is that many poverty campaign groups have opposed a ban, on the basis that it would be bad for the poor. A loan at 3000% APR may well be cheaper than going overdrawn for a day and incurring a £30 fee, or having their electricity disconnected for non-payment and having to pay for reconnection. Most payday lending customers have no other access to legitimate credit; Such high rates are the only way to lend to them and still make any sort of profit. A ban would probably be good news for illegal loan sharks, who would become the lender of last resort.

Idealism is all well and good, but the solutions that offer practical change here and now often feel deeply uncomfortable. Needle exchange and supervised injection services spring to mind - providing addicts with clean injecting equipment seems like a really shabby band-aid, but the only alternatives are unimaginably horrible.

<comment><USER7> I think it would be simpler to regulate ridiculous overdraft fees. Plenty of banks do just fine without charging them. There's no healthy reason for a bank to charge a very large overdraft fee or to charge an overdraft fee more often than once a month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This _might_ be an interesting subject worthy of a proper treatment. I was somewhat put off by the fact that there were giant tangentially-related pictures between every paragraph, though.

The answer is: "Depends". Though if your business model is immoral when applied to poor folks, it's _still_ immoral when applied to rich folks.

<comment><USER9> > Though if your business model is immoral when applied to poor folks, it's > still immoral when applied to rich folks.

The markup on drug store cotton balls is shockingly high, like 1000%. Nobody who buys cotton balls cares though, because the $2 per bag they end up costing is a very small fraction of their income.

But take that to a developing country, and that $2 is completely unaffordable. You would be forcing people in need of sterile cotton swabs to pay a day's or a week's earnings, when their manufacture costs a few pennies.

I don't think the former example is unethical (indeed, the cost of a bag of cotton balls (in America) is probably far below what the market could truly bear). That stupendously high markup is fine because it still keeps the final price easily affordable.

In the latter example, that same markup makes cotton balls all but impossible to buy, when even a "normal" retail mark up of 25% would have kept the price in the cents and therefore at least approachable. I'd call that unethical.

<comment><USER10> > In the latter example, that same markup makes cotton balls all but > impossible to buy, when even a "normal" retail mark up of 25% would have > kept the price in the cents and therefore at least approachable. I'd call > that unethical.

If setting prices too high is unethical, then is refusing to sell at all also unethical?

And if it is unethical, should it be _mandatory_ to sell _any_ good at a reasonable prices? Or only a class of goods deemed "essential"?

<comment><USER9> In my personal opinion? If you are they person/company able to provide a necessary good (a patented, life-saving medicine say), then you have a moral obligation to sell it.

Similarly, I believe it immoral to sell a necessary good at exorbitant prices, but fine to sell luxury goods at whatever price you like. Of course, the question follows: What counts as "necessary"? I don't have an easy answer for that one :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I strongly believe the revolution must be profitable. The OP says the same: profit is necessary to achieve scale and attract investment and competition to scale even faster.

If the poor are better off by generating you a profit that is wonderful. Do it.

</comment><comment><USER12> Wow. Nobody has mentioned that this argument is a strawman yet?

It is not profit itself that is usually attacked; rather, it is the exploitation of the poor (whether in terms of the environment or labor) in the name of profit. The first example I can think of is the oil companies in Nigeria who have left environmental disaster because it was more profitable to pay off the right people.

We can go round and round about sweatshops, but the immorality is the disconnect between those making the money and those supplying the labor. It is the conditions that trapped workers in a factory while it burned down that is immoral.

I don't remember people talking about making things poor people want at a profit as immoral, save malt liquor and pay day loans. (I should mention that it is the exploitation of the situation of the poor that is the problem, not the product itself. It's the poor person paying a quarter of the wages to keep current on the loan while the principal isn't touched that is the problem -- the cycle rather than the profit itself.)

</comment><comment><USER13> The simple argument made here: if helping the poor cannot be made profitable, it will never be done on a large scale. Therefore, the best (only?) way to help the poor on a large scale is to find a way to do it profitably.

(Of course, you also need to make sure that your profitable poverty-helping business cannot be co-opted by an even more profitable poverty-exploiting business.)

</comment><comment><USER4> "To the grumbler who complains about the unfairness of the market system only one piece of advice can be given: If you want to acquire wealth, then try to satisfy the public by offering them something that is cheaper or which they like better. Try to supersede Pinkapinka by mixing another beverage. Equality under the law gives you the power to challenge every millionaire. In a market not sabotaged by government-imposed restrictions it is exclusively your fault if you do not outstrip the chocolate king, the movie star and the boxing champion." - Ludwig von Mises, The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality

Giving the poor something better and cheaper cannot be immoral by any definition of the word. If you are charging "too much" then why can't a competitor come in and undercut your outrageously high prices?

</comment><comment><USER14> Anyone who answers yes, should really think about this.

Consider that you're going to meet a successful business man with billions of dollars. You represent to him the idea of helping the poor via technological advances that require money to implement. He seems interested, until you say that you want your ideas to be implemented by a non-profit organization. Then he loses his interest in your ideas. Wouldn't it be better for everyone involved to operate for profit, when the alternative is to let things be?

<comment><USER15> I disagree, the fact that there exist a particular scenario that does not lead to the optimal situation does not legitimate the fact that it's ok to profit from poor people in general.

<comment><USER14> I'll have to admit that that was a stupid example, but my point is still that entrepreneurial people are often profit driven, and when one takes this incentive away, they tend to direct their efforts towards more profitable things. So if we deny the possibility of profit from helping the poor, we are effectively denying them any/most advances made possible by entrepreneurial people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > the viewpoint I like best defines sin as the failure to reach your > potential.

Even if you do think morality is subjective, this is a remarkably poor standard. I know anyone reading this board is at least somewhat entrepreneurial, but elevating the acquisition of wealth and power to a virtue in its own right is completely backward.

Also, those who are the _most_ immoral are often those who have reached a very high potential of wealth and power.

</comment><comment><USER17> What's immoral is to abuse pricing leverage.

A proper exchange generates value. The value gets divided between the parties. Divided how? Usually the richer party makes an offer and the poorer party can take or leave it. Taking the lion's share of the value this way is immoral.

To be concrete, if a man is starving and has a mountain of gold, offering a scrap of stale bread for the entire mountain is immoral.

<comment><USER5> Absolutely not. Value is measured by both parties, among other factors, in terms of scarcity: in the default case, food is relatively abundant and gold is relatively scarce: hence the situation that a man with a mountain of gold is starving is typically extremely unlikely. Should the situation you describe ever realistically occur, then food must be so scarce that finally the old trite "you cannot eat gold" does indeed become true, and the offerer of a scrap of stale bread must in such a context and situation indeed be offering a tremendous sacrifice, which both seem to agree the gold is a cheap enough price to pay for.

How's that immoral in such an extreme food-deprived and relative gold-abundant environment you're describing? I'm assuming a mutually voluntary exchange of course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> If tons of poor people are willing to cough up cash for your product/service, that's a sign that whatever you're selling is incredibly useful to some extent, probably essential.

Only essentials make it into a 2 dollar daily budget.

</comment><comment><USER19> Before the housing meltdown, the #1 reason for bankruptcy was medical bills. Yet for some reason, there is no question that doctors profiting (and bankrupting!) their clients is "immoral". The usual defense is something like "they earned it".

</comment><comment><USER20> > There are at least 7 billion different perspectives on morality

... and only a few of them define it in terms of "sin".

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm not sure morality really cares about this, I've certainly never noticed society to have qualms about making shiny profits off the backs of poor people.

But it certainly doesn't feel ethical.

<comment><USER22> Why not? Earning money from poor people could be either ethical or unethical, there is no way to tell by only looking at the amount of money you're making and how poor the people are. The correct answer is that there isn't enough information to say.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Far from being immoral, it is REQUIRED for the benefit of the poor. 6 years ago, I left a 6-figure job in the states and spent a year living on $2 a day in India (I was an early employee at <http://kiva.org> trying to understand the plight of those we served)... It was hard as hell... but a lot of companies served those markets tremendously well and made a lot of money. I ended up writing business school cases about a couple of things I learned in that regard here are some briefs-

1) Mobile phones. Super cliche, but they use mobile phones in every aspect of their lives now, and it has made a tremendous difference. Something that used to require an hour bus ride to the nearest city and then waiting in line for an hour, ruining a days worth of work in the fields can now be accomplished in 5 minutes via SMS.

Airtel (one of the largest mobile providers in the world, one of the biggest companies in India) has made a tremendous amount of money by focusing not on ARPU (Avg. Revenue per user) like every other mobile company, but rather focusing on how much profit they can make per minute sold... they are happy to serve tons of farmers that only use their phone for 100 minutes a month (~$2 a month). If it was not profitable for Airtel, the poor would never have access to cellphones, something that has DRASTICALLY upgraded their lives. Nokia sells amazing phones tailored to that market for $20... they have radios, flashlights, and batteries that last a week (all crucial to rural India), and Nokia is able to maintain fantastic margins on those products. Airtel has an ARPU of $4 (contrast to US carriers ARPU of ~$55)... yet they have a $30Bn market cap

I actually co-wrote a case on this topic with professor CK Prahalad (the founder of base of the pyramid thought - you should read up on him. if this topic interests you at all read his books, particularly "the fortune at the base of the pyramid" <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._K._Prahalad>) If you're interested in reading my case (<http://www.globalens.com/casedetail.aspx?cid=1428834>) give me a shout.

2) Clean water. A lot of villages don't have it. There are both for-profit and non-profits trying to tackle this situation, but regardless they've found that the only way to scalably get clean water to the masses is to charge for it... to "profit on the backs of the poor" I co-wrote a case on that topic here: <http://www.globalens.com/casedetail.aspx?cid=1428987>

<comment><USER24> I think you're making a blanket assumption that all businesses that have poor people as customers benefit the poor. This isn't always the case. The thing is, it's not always the case for rich customers either. The simple fact may be that richer people are usually more educated and capable of determining whether or not they would be better off. So the question for me isn't whether it's OK for a business to be making money off of poor people. The question for me is whether poor people will be more negatively affected by immoral businesses. After we understand the question in that context, then we can clarify that yes, it's not right for these businesses to make money off of poor people.

I agree with you for the most part. But I don't think we should say it's REQUIRED. I think we should be careful about making such a blanket statement because such blanket statements make for easy cop-out justifications for bad and unethical business practices. We unfortunately usually don't figure out that someone's getting hurt until it's too late.

<comment><USER10> They benefit the poor customers in so far as the customers were in a voluntary transaction.

It's not up to anyone except the buyer to determine how much utility they gain from a given transaction.

An examples of what would make the transaction involuntary are blackmail, deceitful advertising, and chemical addiction on the part of the buyer.

\-----

Though.... whilst I don't believe this, a case could be made that it is unethical to _knowingly_ protect a monopoly, or run one over the long-term if your profits are maximized.

<comment><USER24> I'd have to disagree. Perceived vendor lock-in makes it very easy to manipulate customers into transactions that they'd not prefer, but to which they still agree because they don't see any other choice. Note that I say "perceived", because the vendor lock-in doesn't need to be real for this to happen. Of course, there are many cases where the vendor lock-in is real too. Subprime loans sounded like a great idea, but the homeowners never realized that they couldn't afford them. And then once they had them, they couldn't get out.

You may place all of this kind of stuff under deceitful advertising. But nobody is forcing customers to agree to transactions that are based on deceitful advertising. The transaction is completely voluntary, if perhaps misleading or fraudulent.

If 3rd parties could not determine how much utility was gained from a transaction, doesn't it follow that 3rd parties also cannot determine how much damage was done from a transaction, if the damage is not easily materially quantifiable? Because if so, that throws out the whole basis for legitimate class action lawsuits, etc, where judgments for punitive damages and the like are determined by people who were not involved in the transaction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Morality is what you should already feel it is. I.e if you have to ask, you will never know.

Or, perhaps, asking is the way that you show you already know it is wrong.

<comment><USER10> I don't know. I do tend to ask a lot of questions.

Is it immoral to cut in line?

is it immoral to cut in line if my need is greater than those ahead of me?

How about if the line isn't a physical one, but one enforced by society (e.g. seniority clauses, or rationing)?

Ethics---at least for me---must be an independently justifiable thing. To rely on feelings is problematic because feelings of guilt are dependent on your social upbringing.

During the slave days of America, there were slaves who thought it was immoral to run away from their masters because after all the master provided faithfully for them, didn't beat them unreasonably, and gave them the entirety of life they knew. Additionally, even if you didn't care about your master--- you should care about your family who you'd have to leave to escape into freedom.

We consider that example extreme only because our society has diverged so far from that point. In those times, it would be a perfectly reasonable argument and the guilt felt would be real.

<comment><USER25> "We consider that example extreme only because our society has diverged so far from that point. In those times, it would be a perfectly reasonable argument and the guilt felt would be real."

Which only proves that ethics are based on societal norms ("social upbringing").

If you think the norms are bad, try and change them, instead of seeking some mumbo-jumbo "independently justifiable morality", which doesn't even make sense (there is no method of independently justifying a moral position, nor would it convince everyone even if it did it exist. Even human life is not "independently justifiable" sacred. It's only as far as we believe in some (societal) norms).

The benefit of this (as opposed to the imaginary "independently justifiable" morals), is that our morals can be changed. This is after all what we call progress, in the societal and moral sense of the word.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If you have to ask, no.</comment>


TLS Post-Quantum Experiment - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-tls-post-quantum-experiment/ <comment><USER2> That article was way above my head. I just glossed over it and have no other takeaway other than: Why are people not scared shitless of quantum computers? Are they even aware of the implications for privacy that quantum computers have? I am aware that intelligence agencies will be the first to possess such a computer, but what happens when it gets in the hands of hackers and bad actors? You could cause some serious violations of privacy when the day comes when you can fit a quantum computer into a laptop form factor.

But then I guess, by then, we would have suitable algorithms which are resistant to a quantum attack, so it's only a matter of switching over to new cipher suites.

<comment><USER3> Quantum computers can factor numbers faster than traditional numbers, yes, but i don't think it's going to be a sudden jump from "impossible" to "now anyone can break any crypto".

On the other hand, switching crypto algorithms is relatively easy. Breaking crypto is something that's happened before. There's already a system in place for TLS for negotiating the best available crypto scheme, and people have already switched away from past, less secure algorithms before.

I think there are so many more problems to solve with building the quantum computers, compared to coming up with or implementing a new crypto scheme.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> i understood every word</comment>


Probability as Space - <AUTHOR> http://thebitfarm.blogspot.com/2009/01/probability-as-space.html

<comment><USER2> The real point of confusion is that people don't realize that BG/GB are two separate states. Like many of the recent blog articles, this one also doesn't clearly explain why you need to consider both BG and GB. Consider:

"A person has two kids, and his first-born is a boy. What is the probability the other is a boy?"

There are two possibilities, each equally likely -- (first-born, second-born): (B,B) and (B,G). Hence, 1/2.

"A person has two kids, and one is a boy. What is the probability the other is a boy?"

In other words: "The first-born is a boy AND/OR the second-born is a boy."

There are three possibilities, each equally likely -- (first-born, second- born): (B,B), (B,G), and (G,B). Hence, 1/3.

<comment><USER2> To be more clear: When hearing this problem, some people imagine -- (one-kid, other-kid): (B,G) and (B,B), hence 1/2.

Others imagine -- (first-born, second-born): (B,B), (B,G), (G,B), hence 1/3.

Someone needs to write a blog post explaining why the latter method is superior, not just a blog post that automatically enumerates the four states.

People need a REASON for not combining BG/GB, and considering the children as (first-born, second-born) provides much of that reason, since it is a logical way of ordering children. A (one-child, other-child) ordering appears a bit absurd, even to the layperson.

<comment><AUTHOR> The reason is that the two children are different dimensions in the probability space. Both (one-kid, other-kid), and (first-born, second-born) yield the same space, and both will give a 1/3 answer.

<comment><USER2> People interpret "one kid is a boy" as "first-born is a boy" in my example above (i.e. they selectively choose which kid is the "one kid" -- the one which is a boy), which yields 1/2.

People seem to be good at enumerating the "probability space" quite well. They just don't understand why the dimensions are what they are.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Sourced Fact – A wiki for facts proven with primary sources (alpha) - <AUTHOR> https://sourcedfact.com <comment><USER2> This seems like a particularly relevant application in these post-fact days. I know that there are issues with crowdsourcing the "truth", but given the difficulty of finding any single unbiased source of information, this may be the only way to go.

Other fact-checker services generally take the "position of authority" approach (which in and of itself isn't terrible, just limited in some ways). This app looks like it's striving to be more transparent about how consensus about the truthfulness of something was reached.</comment>


Goldman faces probe after entrepreneur slams Apple Card algorithm in tweets - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> The link is self-referencing, the article should be this one (Reurters):

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-goldman-sachs- probe/goldm...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-goldman-sachs- probe/goldman-faces-probe-after-entrepreneur-slams-apple-card-algorithm-in- tweets-idUSKBN1XK00L)

But the original source should be this one (Bloomberg):

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-09/viral- twe...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-09/viral-tweet-about- apple-card-leads-to-probe-into-goldman-sachs)</comment>


Show HN: How many days until? - <AUTHOR> https://days.to/ <comment><USER2> Kind of dropped the ball on the url. days.to is great, but days.to/until/christmas is kind of wonky. I'd remove the /until/ part so it's just days.to/christmas

<comment><USER3> Agreed, though interestingly, [http://days.to/christmas](http://days.to/christmas) does work.

There's also a /since/ for each one.

A simple fix, use days.to/next/christmas and days.to/last/christmas. Clean URLs, and they make grammatical sense.

<comment><USER4> Yes, you discovered quite a few of the "hidden" urls - also /when-is/.

Originally, the site had exactly as you described with a cleaner url, but SEO had different ideas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is one of those cool websites that when I open for the first time I usually say : "Oh that's awesome, I should bookmark it and use more often" and then after 1 hour It's totally forgotten until the next time I clean my bookmarks.

Anyway TV Shows episode calendar is really useful and I think it's a nice idea to have this information arranged in this way.

<comment><USER6> I've been using episode-alert.com for the past year to track TV shows. Really useful. It also sends you an email when a new episode is out.

<comment><USER7> Shout-out for sidereel.com

They send emails for new episodes, and also allow you to mark episodes as watched, which is great for working through archives.

I only wish they had something for movies as well.

<comment><USER8> maybe check out [https://trakt.tv/](https://trakt.tv/), I have been using it for more than 3 years and it's absolutely amazing. It even has multiple mobile apps, I personally use SeriesGuide on my android phone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wolfram Alpha has similar functionality (minus the home page)

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=days+until+doctor+stran...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=days+until+doctor+strange)

<comment><USER10> It would be cool if Wolfram Alpha had knowledge of TV show releases. I tried a few but no dice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Looks good, very clean and nice. You should add the ability to create your own custom events, for instance I'm taking a trip to California and Las Vegas next month that I'm looking forward to. It would be nice if I could add that event and maybe the site could be smart enough to pull a picture down when I type in California or Las Vegas. That would for me at least be enough to warrant a bookmark.

<comment><USER12> You may find the following useful for creating custom events with a countdown timer: [http://countdownmaker.com/](http://countdownmaker.com/)

For example: [http://countdownmaker.com/countdown/3vnlvm/](http://countdownmaker.com/countdown/3vnlvm/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Neat! Good form factor, as it lets me explore things I'd otherwise never think of (mostly, cultural events in other cultures), but... ...Doesn't have what I care about (festivals), does have what I really don't care about (sports). Can you add a filter so I can remove the latter? Not sure what you can do about the former - data sources / input is the hard part, I'm pretty sure :P

<comment><USER4> Yes, filtering will definitely be added soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I always use something like [https://days.to/since/new-years- day](https://days.to/since/new-years-day) to check when eggs are packaged. All eggs (in the USA at least) have a three digit code showing the date it was packaged on the end of the carton. Helps to see how old the eggs are at the market.

<comment><USER15> How is that better than checking the expiry/best before date? Or is that not available in the states? (Canadian)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> First thing I checked was days until Elon's Mars talk next Tuesday, since that's what I'm counting down to. So count one vote to add that event!

[http://www.spacex.com/mars](http://www.spacex.com/mars)

</comment><comment><USER17> Heh, I made something similar for a dashboard a while ago to show how many business days remain until a specified event, e.g.: [http://bizdaysuntil.herokuapp.com/?year=2016&month=12&day=25...](http://bizdaysuntil.herokuapp.com/?year=2016&month=12&day=25&what=Xmas+Launch&size=14&highlight=fefe55) Code: [https://github.com/opyate/daysuntil](https://github.com/opyate/daysuntil)

</comment><comment><USER18> Pretty nice. Just a few ideas:

* Is it necessary to go to a url when one clicks on an event? The amount of information displayed is tiny (date, event title, time until event) and it's a waste of screen space and time (now I have to go back to look at other things). It would be cool to show the information in a modal box and then continue to browse what's coming up.

* Okay, now I'm on days.to and I know that an event will take place in two months. Then what? I leave the site and in a few days, I forget about it. I think I stumbled upon an email feature but I couldn't find it again. It also has a calendar. Why? Would it be better to build on something a large number of people are _already_ using and trusting to manage their daily lives? Something like Google Calendar or Facebook Events. Maybe using their API to insert an event into the already existing calendar. Even if I leave days.to, I can still see the positive it brought to my life and I'm more likely to come back.

* Maybe topics. I push in some interests. With enough users, it might start detecting certain patterns and starts showing me upcoming events resulting from the interests of people who share some of my interests. If I like music and painting, and you like music and theatre, it might show me theatre events and show you painting events.

</comment><comment><USER19> Just a design tip: the red border that separates the full date from the days till countdown is completely unnecessary. Also, a bit bigger dark gradient behind it would be nice. Also, when hovering over the top menu the link goes dark enough to be hard to read, so perhaps not change the color on hover, but add a border underneath the link instead to hint that the link is being in fact hovered?

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the feedback. The latter is a bit of a CSS over-sight/"bug".. will fix.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> You should scrape a bit and populate this for TV shows. Neither "Rick and Morty" nor "Line of Duty" were there.

<comment><USER21> On that note, myepisodes.com is absolutely great for tracking and keeping up with your TV show episodes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thanks to whoever posted this, I'm the owner of the site.

Thanks for all the suggestions and feedback. Quite a lot of the feature suggestions made here, I am in the process of developing. The site was basically an MVP for a bigger app, which is why only a handful of events are in the events list.

Feel free to send any feedback via the site (feedback button in bottom right of site)

</comment><comment><USER22> Cool idea, I would love support for geolocated events. We have a set of country fairs in Connecticut that start in August and end in October. It would be a cool application for location

<comment><USER23> Gotta second the geolocated events, for most the fluff festival in Somerville MA isn't on their radar. For locals though, it's always on the back of our minds (this weekend by the way)

<comment><USER22> The challenge is how to get all this local knowledge into the system. This seems to be more specialized knowledge that perhaps even Google does not have easily organized.

How would you go about doing that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Been using this site before and the only thing which bothers me is the moving background color. While it is a nice addition on desktop, it makes my 2015 Macbook's fans blow after some seconds.

I would suggest looking for less computing intensive way to make the backgrounds work like they do now.

Either way, it's not a huge deal since I seldom watch the site for longer than those few seconds, but I have clicked the alternative links on Google a few times just to see if they would function any better.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the feedback. The blurry coloured backgrounds are just images (placeholder images really) but they transition in using CSS. This is a bit more obvious on the pages that have a "proper" background image.

I'll look at adding an option to allow users to disable the transitions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Couple of comments:

The URL days.to is cool, but from a comprehension point of view if the event is more than a month away, should start using weeks, then months, then years.

Filtering by locale would be helpful

There is lots of open source data on astrological events: eclipses, NASA satellite fly by's, etc.

Gamification. Allow users to submit photos for each event and allow all users to vote them up and down. Props for users with most or best photos.

Or allow users best place to be on that particular event. Again, allow users to vote best up or down.

</comment><comment><USER26> This looks like kind of a fun project, but Google already returns at least some of this information in their enhanced search results (ex: "When is Fathers Day").

<comment><USER27> But, you'd have to go do that search for Father's Day where this interface reminds you, like a Calendar, that something is coming up that maybe wasn't on your mind atm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> for linux there is gcal which to some extend offers this service for the commandline.

For instance:

gcal -N -q US_CA

tells you the days days left until each holiday in California, Usa.

</comment><comment><USER29> I always search on Google "days til {event or date}" and the first link is always this site. This site is a big time saver

</comment><comment><USER30> For this to be somewhat useful should have much more data about every country in the world. I don't really care about any of those dates... maybe us elections because it has an international relevance.

Or find a niche like mountain bike, and list all the mountainbiking events

</comment><comment><USER31> I am in the Southern hemisphere and found the seasonal countdowns irrelevant ([https://days.to/until/spring](https://days.to/until/spring)).

<comment><USER32> In their defence they do list the march equinox as well, for the internationally minded ([https://days.to/until/march- equinox](https://days.to/until/march-equinox)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I used this website _all_ summer. Summer is awful. I know thats a controversial stance, but I take it.

days.to/until/summer showed the days until summer ended. It was great!

Simple, to the point, beautiful.

<comment><USER34> I'm not trying to nitpick, exactly, but why wasn't it days.to/until/fall?

<comment><USER33> Well...

days.to/until/summer(is Over)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> So obviously this site is built 100% with SEO in mind. The domain name and the fact that each event is its own page with the most obvious searchable title.

Good job anyway! Looks really good.

<comment><USER36> Why is SEO'd site bad?

The things you listed (domain & titles) sum up to: "Created something and it's easy to find, with clear descriptions".

<comment><USER37> And how are people supposed to find it if it's not SEO-optimized? Only Hacker News folks in-the-know?

It seems like a really odd point to bring up.

<comment><USER38> I think most of the time it's because everyone has experienced getting low quality results from SEO optimized sites. It's getting to the point where one cannot shop or search for product recommendations on popular search engines because you'll get nothing but toptenreallyspecificproduct.com or absolutebestproduct.com.

Optimizing for search rankings doesn't say anything directly about any given site, but it's generally a signal for low quality content that would not rank highly without such optimizations.

<comment><USER39> The only time I use Google to find a product is when I know need something but don't know what it's called exactly. Otherwise I just go to the relevant e-commerce site to skip past all the BS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Functions well but its a bit difficult to absorb the information in the current layout. A tiny bit of space between events might be nice.

</comment><comment><USER41> The aesthetic would be awesome if it weren't for those giant ads on the side. It throws off my days-till-Halloween vibe.

</comment><comment><USER42> Love it. Althought I would prefer it be in a timeline fashion. It would make it more easy to skim with your eyes.

</comment><comment><USER43> Was disappointed to not see a days.to "Game of Thrones Season 7 premiere", so I requested adding it.

</comment><comment><USER44> Neat stuff. The USA total solar eclipse on August 21, 2017 should be added too, imho.

</comment><comment><USER45> Really cool. You may want to add southern hemisphere seasons to it too

</comment><comment><USER46> Searched for my football club 'Chelsea'. No Results found.

<comment><USER47> What were you expecting to come up?

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Why does it have Inauguration Day on both January 19 and 20?

<comment><USER47> Must be a bug or other error. US presidential terms end on January 20, so it definitely wouldn't be before then. According to Wikipedia inauguration is held on the 20, unless it's a Sunday in which case it's held the next day.

<comment><USER4> Yes, it was a timezone bug. The page was tracking January 20 (but at midnight in UTC timezone), so some people would see Jan 19, some Jan 20. It's now fixed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Nice work. What kind of ad revenue are you getting?

</comment><comment><USER50> Needs "Kiss a Ginger Day".

</comment><comment><USER51> Built With Django?

</comment><comment><USER52> oh good, only another 365 days until autumn.</comment>


Attention Executives: 73% of You Need to Fire Yourselves - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/30/attention-executives-73-of-you-need-to-fire-yourselves/ <comment><USER2> As far as I can tell, the 73% number comes from "Only 27% of those between the ages of 18-30 say Twitter is an important rapid-feedback tool for business."

So executives who don't think Twitter is the second coming should fire themselves. Thanks TechCrunch.

Sigh.

</comment><comment><USER3> _You may think we obsess about Twitter too much on TechCrunch, but clearly most business folks aren't getting the memo._

Obsessively repeating a message does not improve it. Look, it took me less than 140 characters to say this!</comment>


David Foster Wallace: "Are some things still worth dying for?" - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/11/just-asking/306288/

<comment><USER2> To call any death a price worth paying is widely seen as unempathetic. In a culture where empathy is deemed the core value -not quite a settled question in the US, but it has been known to sway elections from time to time- treating even a single death as too many is the natural result. That, in turn, leads us to today.</comment>


Update on Google's Secretive Startup Calico Labs - <AUTHOR> http://longevityfacts.com/update-googles-secretive-start-calico-labs/ <comment><USER2> Calico probably thinks of itself as the Manhattan Project. Organizationally, Calico seems to be built in the exact opposite way from the Manhattan Project.

Imagine you were building the first fission bomb, but doing it the Calico way (which is the way most science is done these days). You'd say: we need enormous progress in a wide variety of very distinct fields: nuclear physics, isotope chemistry, metallurgy, high-speed photography...

So you'd ask PIs in all these fields to send you grant proposals related to the problem of building an atom bomb. They would take their existing grant proposal template, rewrite it to talk about atom bombs, and send it in. You would send them money. They would deliver progress reports.

What would happen? Probably, you'd build an atom bomb. The first test would be in 1986, after 45 years and 500 billion dollars. It would cause major damage to three creosote plants and severely startle a jackrabbit.

Next, imagine Calico's funders said: we will take this same amount of money, and pour it into a single problem -- rejuvenating a dog. Much like Manhattan's single product deliverable.

Moreover, we will not hire existing players to repaper their existing lines of research. We will hire the best new PhDs and tell them to do whatever want to do, so long as it represents one piece of a reasonable strategy for, or step toward, an realistic engineering procedure for rejuvenating dogs. (Or at least mice, if long-lived animals are too hard a first step.)

In this kind of organization -- ie, a hierarchical company-shaped structure with a company-shaped goal, delivering a product -- the standards of relevance and collaboration will be much, much higher. Los Alamos hired the best people in the world, but no one took their existing research and tried to shoehorn it into the Manhattan Project.

No wonder our grandparents could get big things done, and we can't. We actually put a lot of money into science and technology, and the personnel are just as talented as ever. Every PI is an Oppenheimer. But there is no General Groves.

<comment><USER3> A little difference is that during the Manhattan project you had the Humanity greatest minds unemployed and relocating to the USA.

<comment><USER4> Another difference is that atomic fission is a dozen or two orders of magnitude simpler than biology.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If I was a company which had placed map()/reduce() at the core of my working logic, and I had emerging machine learning systems (hate the words, but lets go with it) which demonstrated algorithmic ability to tune and select patterns in "things" I would probably say pre- in-vivo drug analysis was a tractable problem: If protein folding is a "thing" then there are probably other "things" about drugs which are tractable to widespread, large scale compute farm logic, which is in the end, about map()/reduce() and the smarts.

In other words, what Calico is doing, is perhaps more 'boring' than people _want_ , but more applicable to what it _has_ -a (french metric) tonne of money, and specific computer science based smarts at scale.

</comment><comment><USER6> Why do they even bother putting this out? There is zero information content with respect to what they are actually doing. I still have no idea what they are doing.

</comment><comment><USER7> Is type 2 diabetes really a disease of aging? I don't know any older Americans that have developed type 2 diabetes.

I guess downvoting a question is cool now.

<comment><USER8> The literal name of the disease is "adult onset diabetes"

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This week in Hacker News, people in the tech industry are worried about age discrimination once they hit 40 or even 30. Here, Calico is working to extend life spans to a theoretical upper limit of 500.

Why would I want to live to be 500 if I'm going to have difficulty finding a job after 30 or 40? How the hell am I going to afford rent when I'm 200 and unemployable?

<comment><USER10> You are not the target market. The funders want to live forever, and they don't have to worry about money. You are just collateral benefit if this works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm not sure making people live much longer is important, or even desirable. We fall the earth up as it is.

</comment><comment><USER12> > Bell Labs researchers invented the laser, the transistor, the charge-coupled > device (CCD), information, the UNIX operating system, and the programming > languages C, and C++.

Bell Labs invented information?!?

<comment><USER13> "information theory"

A Mathematical Theory of Communication, Shannon, [http://math.harvard.edu/~ctm/home/text/others/shannon/entrop...](http://math.harvard.edu/~ctm/home/text/others/shannon/entropy/entropy.pdf)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: left the consulting company I started, what now? - <AUTHOR>

Two years ago I started a consulting company with a colleague. We initially focused on Java/Scala development for the enterprise and moved to infrastructure automation (CI, DevOps and so on). Business was good but not so great.
We did many mistakes, starting from working in two different countries and targeting Europe as our market.
Last Monday I have decided to pull the plug and sold my 50% share of the company to my colleague and decided to go back into freelance consulting, mainly for financial reasons (I live in a very expensive city, I have a family).
I already miss running my company and I want to start something new as soon as possible. Consulting is a bitch, especially in Europe and especially with this harsh economical situation. I'm looking into creating some product: I strongly believe that automation (DevOps but also software life cycle automation) has huge potential in the enterprise world. What do you guys think? How do you cope with the entrepreneur bug? <comment><USER3> What's your runway? Do you have money for 3 months? 6 months? 9 months?

If you have personal runway for 1 year (around 40-60k euros, I guess), you can start a product company.

If you have less, I recommend to look for a "special client". Some company that will pay you 20-50K euro for custom solution and allow you to retain full IP ownership. You can turn it into a general product after delivery to your initial client.

Good starting point: [http://earlydays.io/guide/](http://earlydays.io/guide/)

</comment><comment><USER4> > I already miss running my company

You are freelancing now. You are already running your own company.

You were doing consulting before, and now you are consulting in the same space. This is the same space your company was operating in but you left for financial reasons. Now you find consulting is a bitch, but apparently consulting was a bitch with the company you left.

It does sound like something needs to change.

I'm not sure anyone here can give you advice that you don't already know given you have been working in this space with your old company and now as a consultant. Maybe your partner was holding you back. Maybe you will find new inspiration by going solo. Maybe you need to move to a different area of consulting.

Products is probably a good direction to go. The big difference between products and consulting is that you can build a product and sell that product multiple times. With consulting you are limited to the time that you have in one day. If you max out your time and you still aren't where you want to be, then you have nowhere else to go but raise your rates or higher more people. If your customers will bolt when you raise your rates and you can't find more work for your new hires, then you are pretty much stuck. Maybe that was the problem with the old company?

<comment><AUTHOR> Freelancing in Europe is most of the time very similar to be a full time employee. You have to show up at your customer's premises and work for 8/9 hours with the other employees. No way to deal with more than one client at the time, unless you start working 16 hours a day - which I'm not afraid of - but it's not a sustainable model on the long run. So, no, I don't think that being a freelance is equivalent to running my own company.

We had multiple problems in my company. The main one, I think, was new clients acquisition. It is a very time consuming process that often results in lot of (paper) work and meetings and no contract signed. Another mistake, as I mentioned, was not focusing on one or two specific geographical markets. Flying people around Europe, paying them hotel/food and daily allowances it is costly and reduces the margins greatly. Not to mention the language problem: very often, if you want to work in Germany (just an example) you got to speak the language.

<comment><USER5> I switched to "5 hours sessions" per day and I'm focusing on 2 clients, so that I have time for my SaaS, for my family, and as well a bit of margin to handle emergencies.

(but I definitely agree that freelancing and running a SaaS or product- oriented company is absolutely not the same...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Which country are you located in? Why was targeting Europe as your market a mistake? What are you freelancing on? I'm a freelancer getting started in France after a few years of web dev experience and thinking of targeting the European startups so am really interested in your experience :-)

Personally after having been employed for many years and tried to build products full-time, I'm currently working on getting freelance clients and thinking of building a product later, to serve these same clients. That way you got plenty of validation for your product.

You could do the same: consult on devops for your niche, and later on or at the same time build a product out of the biggest pains you observed. Note: a product could be software but also an education product (ebook or course).

This would help with getting even more insight into the problems of your customers while buying you some time to build your software product(with the money earned from your education product) since it takes much more time to validate and build a business on.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi there, I'm currently located in Zurich, Switzerland.

Targeting Europe as a small consulting company is, IMO, a big mistake for the following reasons:

\- Language: even though I'm fluent in 3 languages and my biz partner in 2 other languages, still there are certain countries where speaking the local language makes all the difference in getting a contract. I'm thinking of Germany, France or Italy. Scandinavian countries are way more relaxed in that regards but it is still cumbersome sometime to attend meetings with older folks.

\- Hidden costs: when you start having clients all over Europe you need people to show up once in a while. So you hire these people (and you have to be sure they are happy to fly around Europe), pay them daily allowances, hotel, plane tickets, insurance. These costs, along with the Europe high labor cost, kind of shrink the margins.

\- Hard to get new clients: unless you are a very big consulting company, you need to convince your clients that you are not going to sit with them 5 days a week for, say, 6 months. This is often a show stopper because clients don't know you - they only know you are small - and simply don't trust you, at least at the beginning.

\- Big clients are slow: we tried to target large enterprises and this was another mistake. Large companies are very slow in deciding if they like you or not. The process to go from first contact to a signed contract can take over one year.

Feel free to drop me an email at luciano[ ]fiandes.io if you need more information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> (disclaimer: I run [https://www.wisecashhq.com](https://www.wisecashhq.com) \- cash flow forecasting tool)

I do not cope with that bug because it wouldn't go away - and product building is just so much fun :-) I agree that freelancing is hard, on the long run at least.

My current solution to this is to mix consulting and product building.

If you can project your cash flow, you can figure out how many days of consulting are required, and at which rate, to still keep one day or two to bootstrap your product.

Then you have to find clients that will accept to keep you around for a limited number of days per week, as well.

It usually comes with raising your rates too, because if you need to freelance full-time to support your family, then you won't be able to make spare time.

This is a topic I like to discuss a lot, so feel free to ping me anytime (firstname.lastname@example.com) if you want to exchange a bit!

<comment><AUTHOR> > Then you have to find clients that will accept to keep you around for a > limited number of days per week, as well.

This is the hardest bit, at least in Europe and according to my experience. Cheers for the link, I'll look into it.

<comment><USER5> The trick is to have enough "time-wealth" (eg: independence, in days) to be able to turn down contracts because they do not match what you want.

I'm doing this from Europe :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Get busy my friend. Start with a small project you can finish in a few days. Launch and give it a little marketing love. Rinse and repeat until you have some revenue streams coming in. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER8> _I strongly believe that automation (DevOps but also software life cycle automation) has huge potential in the enterprise world._

Can you be more specific on what you mean by automation?

<comment><AUTHOR> By automation I mean:

\- Server provisioning (Puppet, Chef, Pallet and so on)

\- Software life cycle automation (Continuous Integration and deployment, automated testing, scaling testing to virtualized environments, static code analysis)

\- Cloud-based automation - same as server provisioning but on the cloud and with different providers

Lots of enterprises don't invest much time and effort in automating their infrastructure. That leads to convoluted deployment procedures and horrible problems in production: I guess you guys know exactly what I'm talking about.

<comment><USER9> Were you able to do any consulting around continuos deployment - <USER2> etc. i'm curious to know if any of your existing client would buy a short workshop that covers topics such as automated provisioning, TDD ... etc. it could be a lean way to start building your frameworks , tailor specific things that create value for your client

<comment><USER10> You can always buy a software intended to provide some service. A good example is telecommunications - it's always needed and provides continuous cash flow. A good example is VoIP or SMS sending software. You can check such software here: [http://www.itstripe.com/smpp-server/](http://www.itstripe.com/smpp- server/)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Nokia's Flirtations Put the Fear of Google Into Microsoft - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703561604576150502994792270.html?mod=WSJ_business_LeftSecondHighlights <comment><USER2> From the arty: _During this time, the talks with Microsoft nearly broke down, according to a person familiar with the matter. The main issue: Nokia executives believed Microsoft was treating Nokia as it would any potential handset partner, while Nokia was making a "bet-the-company" decision on a software partner, this person said._

This makes sense to me, and what I would have expected to see from the deal is some real commitment preventing MS from screwing Nokia if they don't like the direction the cooperation is going. Nokia has bet the company on this deal, Microsoft could axe a loss-making division if they felt they had to cut costs.</comment>


Apple compares Epic Games to shoplifters in bizarre lawsuit response - <AUTHOR> https://www.androidauthority.com/apple-fortnite-lawsuit-response-1150401/ <comment><USER2> >If developers can avoid the digital checkout, it is the same as if a customer leaves an Apple retail store without paying for shoplifted product: Apple does not get paid.

Fair enough. Give us other ways to acquire software then.

<comment><USER3> >If developers can avoid the digital checkout, it is the same as if a customer leaves an Apple retail store without paying for shoplifted product: Apple does not get paid. Fair enough. Give us other ways to acquire software then.

No...it's the same as buying a product from a store that requires additional things.

If I buy say, a car, I don't need to buy replacement tires from the place I bought my car. I haven't shoplifted because I spent money on my car elsewhere.

If Apple doesn't like that they can't make more money off apps they carry in their store apart from the initial sale, maybe they should try banning IAP's and see how fast their ecosystem dries up.

It's just pure greed. 30% off the top, plus 30% off any money made off the app is bullshit.

<comment><USER2> I agree.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's like two kids fighting over Fortnite</comment>