The growing list of U.S. government inquiries into Big Tech - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/the-growing-list-of-us-government-inquiries-into-big-tech-a67c870e-129f-4372-9397-4597e0c06ae9.html <comment><USER2> Are companies like Comcast or Verizon on this list? I honestly trust Google, Facebook, Apple and the like much more—I shutter to think of a world where big tech is neutralized while companies like Comcast control content production, distribution, etc.

<comment><USER3> I think I view it as these companies simply all being very untrustworthy but in very different ways. I don't trust Google or Facebook with private data. I don't trust Comcast or Verizon to have transparent billing that doesn't run up against the edge of fraud. That sort of thing.

<comment><USER4> Comcast has overlap with both since they thought it was acceptable to inject JavaScript into unencrypted HTTP responses.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15890551](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15890551)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For 4 of the largest companies in the world that have a global presence, that list doesn't seem that long?

</comment><comment><USER6> The timing is way too convenient. The current American government hates tech companies due to their generally left leaning ideologies: [https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2019/06/26/trump-says-big-tech- comp...](https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2019/06/26/trump-says-big-tech-companies- like-twitter-are-all-democrats-and-purposely-repressing-his- reach.html#aoh=15692943290759)

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-tech-factbox- id...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-tech-factbox- idUSKCN1UJ2OO)

</comment><comment><USER7> This is part of the trend of _hipster antitrust_ zealots who view antitrust law as a solution to much bigger problems of governance.

The dominant relationship between US tech firms and government is that they cooperate fully on surveillance of the American people.

<comment><USER7> See my tweet on the subject:

[https://twitter.com/startupjfox/status/1176306514577043458](https://twitter.com/startupjfox/status/1176306514577043458)

<comment><USER8> The HN hivemind leans very pro-regulation these days.

<comment><USER9> There's no hivemind here.

<comment><USER10> IMO, every site with upvotes and downvotes develops a hivemind. I've seen it happen on my own projects.

<comment><USER9> I see a hivemind as unthinking conformity. The way you avoid an unthinking hivemind is by harnessing the power of group dynamics to push against unthinking conformity such that refusal to be an unthinking conformist is the group norm.

I don't think unthinking conformity is the norm on HN. Thus, I don't think it has a hivemind.

Certainly, there are group norms of some sort here. There are always group norms.

But some group norms are healthier than others. In my opinion, those that push back against unthinking conformity are better than those that push towards it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Oh, I see why Jeff Bezos' washingtonpost ran their hit job [1] on Apple now. It seems Amazon basics is getting scrutiny while Apple has almost escaped unscathed. We all know the 30% haircut is ridiculous, but that's hardly the most anti-competitive thing Apple is known to do.

[1][https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/09/05/how- app...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/09/05/how-apple-uses- its-app-store-copy-best-ideas/)

<comment><USER3> What? How do you even get from this HN post to the WaPost article? It's not like anything on this list is news, the Washington Post didn't cause this to happen to Apple or anyone else. These issues have been covered by plenty of media outlets. The only novel thing about this whole post is simply that it's aggregating them all into a single place.

<comment><USER11> >the Washington Post didn't cause this to happen to Apple

What? How do you even arrive at that conclusion giving what I wrote? According to TFA,

"Apple is also part of the House Judiciary Committee's probe, which is looking into whether the cut that its App Store takes from software developers' revenue is anti-competitive."

That's it. That's all they're going at Apple for.

When this wapo hit piece was published last month ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20890717](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20890717)), I pointed out in comments that Amazon basics steals business from third party sellers on the amazon store, just as Apple steals business from third party developers on the app store.

Now I see why. Of course Bezos is going to publish articles pointing out that Apple is getting away with the same anti-competitive behavior Amazon is under investigation for: Stealing business from the third parties under them.

<comment><USER3> Maybe we simply misunderstood each other? Still I just don't need the WaPo thing. Bezos is notoriously hands off, and even if he isn't hands off behind the scenes, these issues with Apple are nothing that other media outlets haven't reported on, so it's hard to attribute WaPo's nearly identical reporting to bias. It comes off as a bit conspiracy theorist to attribute such hidden machinations absent any actual evidence.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are your favorite free web typefaces? - <AUTHOR>

Great type combinations are also appreciated. <comment><USER2> I'm very fond of Eben Sorkin's Merriweather & Merriweather Sans. The large x height make it a really nice and legible screen font.

Steve Matteson's Open Sans is another one that's become a bit of a go-to typeface for me.

Some others that I like [https://pinboard.in/u:adrianh/t:font+free+good](https://pinboard.in/u:adrianh/t:font+free+good)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the link.

I was actually building a blog some time ago. One of the fonts that stuck with me was Vollkorn. It's a heavy serif typeface. While good for headlines, I wanted it for body text. It works best in bigger sizes (20px +) and it was hard to find a pairing.

I also like Oswald for headline or big titles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I use Adobe Source Sans Pro on my company's website, and Google Open Sans is very popular too.

</comment><comment><USER5> Droid Sans and Open Sans are two of my favorites.</comment>


Ask HN: Excessive coding has left my right wrist and fingers twitching - <AUTHOR> My right fingers feel numb and stressed, my right wrist also twitches and makes my finger moves all on its own, it hurts to type now, what can I do to mitigate and handle this situation. I hope I don't have some nerve damage, a moment of rest from typing actually makes it bearable for a bit, then once I start using it the whole stuff becomes unbearable again. <comment><USER2> I used to have wrist pain and elbow pain. Here's some of the things I did that worked for me:

1\. I stopped using a laptop keyboard and switched to a regular one. I just put my Apple keyboard on top of the laptop keyboard. Worked fine. Although I might give the Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic Keyboard a try in the future.

2\. I also noticed that I pressed the keys too hard(sometimes the tips of my fingers would hurt), so I try to type more gently.

3\. I switched from my Magic Mouse to a Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic Mouse. For me taller/vertical mice are more comfortable to use.

4\. I added a foam wrist rest pad in front of my keyboard. One of these [http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51wmYdfwdpL.jpg](http://ecx.images- amazon.com/images/I/51wmYdfwdpL.jpg). Have a look at what your wrist are leaning against when you type and you can decide if you might need this or not.

5\. More breaks. There are Pomodoro apps and extensions that can take care of automating this. For example, 25 minutes work, 5 minutes break.

6\. Type less. I've seen a large number of people on YouTube type every letter when they code. Snippets, auto-complete can save you a lot of typing. You should only type a variable name entirely only once. After that, auto- complete.

7\. I left the most important part for the end. Start working out. I don't go to the gym, but I have a modular dumbbell at home which I use. Start small, with the basics. You really don't want to injure yourself.

</comment><comment><USER3> 1\. Consult a specialist.

2\. Frequently switch up your devices and how you use them - mouse in non- dominant hand, working standing vs sitting if possible, whenever you can use a touchscreen for the sake of variety, get a pen tablet to use instead of a mouse.

3\. Look up wrist stretches for RSI and develop the habit of taking breaks and doing these stretches routinely.

4\. Look up correct wrist positions for using a mouse and keyboard and make sure that you aren't completely wrecking your wrists when you have to use them.

5\. Consult a specialist.

</comment><comment><USER4> Note: I think I haven't experienced the level of severity you're experiencing but have experienced wrist/finger pains often with excess use of keyboard.

1\. Try this exercise: stretch straight both of your arms in front of you, make a fist with each and then move both first clockwise and then anti- clockwise, about20 times each. I've used this exercise when I've had pain in my wrists. Do it once daily (in morning) if it's helpful.

2\. Immediately you need to take a break of couple or so days at least without any keyboard activity and give rest to your wrists. Along with exercises like above.

3\. Use an external full-length keyboard. Place it on your thighs while working so the wrist rest on a soft area. Alternatively, you can put something soft on the table but your legs are available everywhere you go. Stop using laptop built-in keyboard.

</comment><comment><USER5> Are you doing any regular strength training?

I got RSI since I was 12 no joke. On and off until I was 30 something. I was doing physio, stretching, and tons of NSAIDS (bad news for my tummy over the long run). Not until I started doing pushups and squats and swinging around a kettle bell (very carefully) did I finally get a rest on the regular pain.

It's a journey. Lots of technical aspects. Since your a coder I hope you might cotton to it. Best of luck! You don't need to be in pain.

<comment><USER6> Pushups help me a lot. Even only 25 one-three times a day make a difference!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I had similar a number of years ago. Did 2 things:

1) left handed mouse. Found I needed to switch the buttons for my brain to work with it. Took a few days to get used to it. Now I can switch back and forth without effort.

2) Wrist support. My wrists were hurting too. So I used a bowling wrist support and that reduced the total motion at the wrist level.

</comment><comment><USER8> The advice in this thread is wonderful. An additional note: try and always wear long sleeves while typing. For me, this keeps my hands and wrists warmer promoting blood flow in my fingers. This may work for you.

</comment><comment><USER9> 1\. Posture.

plug a monitor and real keyboard into your laptop, get a real chair and desk. Correct your posture.

2\. Stop

Just stop for a few days and let things heal.

3\. Don't ask the internet for health advice

Talk to a doctor or physio before taking my advice

</comment><comment><USER10> How frequently and duration did you spent on coding? On which programming language?

In addition, standing and coding could help to relief your other part of your body.

<comment><AUTHOR> I code everyday for about 5 or so hours. I used to code 8 hours plus daily like a year ago.

Will try standing next time I am coding. Thanks

<comment><USER10> And some rubber or soft clothes support for your joints. On the other hands, I have consume some anti-ageing like NAD+ stuff to improve my health and protect my eye visions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Find the source of pressure on your median nerve, and mitigate it. Numbness and tingling are not good.

</comment><comment><USER12> The easiest solution that works for me is lifting heavy weight.

<comment><USER13> This is the cure. OP needs to squat/press/deadlift more than his body weight and I bet his pains end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> What keyboard are you primarily using to code?

<comment><AUTHOR> Normal laptop keyboards.

<comment><USER14> One suggestion I would have then is to absolutely stop using typical laptop keyboards for any long-duration coding sessions. They're truly horrific on ergonomics, they're plainly bad for hands and wrists.

Among ergonomic keyboards, my observation is that everyone finds a different comfort level with each. The key is to experiment a bit and find one that works well for you. I've been using variations of Microsoft's bulky ergo keyboards (presently called "Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000") for as long as I can remember and they've worked well for me. Other people don't get the same results though. They're bulky, like battleships; I'm in it for the comfort, the aesthetics don't matter in this case. In the last 15-20 years that I can recall using them, I've had zero wrist or finger problems from typing; approximately averaging five to six hours per day, every day. They're entirely ill-suited for mobility though.

One other thing. Everyone has their own preferences on this, I've found it works well for me though - I never free-float my arms / elbows while coding or typing in general. I always support my elbows via armrests on my chairs, taking a large amount of strain off the hands & wrists. I rest the padded lower area the hands (just above the wrist) on the keyboard's soft'ish padded area, which is just below the spacebar (any resting pressure goes to that padded area of the hand, not on the fingers or wrists; it keeps pressure off of the wrist nerves). As I type I also basically have very little wrist movement, which I think is important. Once the point of contact on my lower hands are resting on the keyboard pad (ready to type position), the hands are locked in more or less and wrist motion is kept to a minimum.

<comment><USER15> > They're entirely ill-suited for mobility though.

I am a happy owner of a Microsoft Sculpt keyboard and mouse, and it is quite mobile. It has a built-in wrist rest as well.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


He Talks in Maths: Why Geeks Love Radiohead - <AUTHOR> http://www.davidpcheng.com/post/20910078637/he-talks-in-maths-why-geeks-love-radiohead

<comment><USER2> I admit I'm a Radiohead fan.

But music theory isn't much rooted in math -- I mean, sure, there's a bit of math involved, there are composers (mostly within the last 60 years) who've decided to build lots of math into their music (but much of it is aggressively unlistenable, OR they did lots of extra work dressing up the mathematical stuff in "kind on the ear & brain" regular old music to make it sound nice...), and if you dig into the acoustics of music, or DSP, there's math there.

But music theory itself is mostly the somewhat-arbitrary documentation of what music is doing (not in mathematical terms), and sadly even the terms that involve numbers don't even do it consistently.

The easter eggs are cool -- but I wouldn't listen to the music regardless if I didn't like the melodies, orchestration, "feel" and so on in most of it. (Radiohead is quite melodic, on the whole).

<comment><USER3> I don't know if there is really any specific relationship between Radiohead and mathematics more than any other musician or composer, and I agree with you-- mathematics doesn't play into my feelings towards radiohead, they're a great band. But you point out "music theory isn't much rooted in math." I think the sentiment is true, music theory is generally taught and practiced without much thought to mathematics.

However, the fundamental concepts music theory are based on are all analogous to mathematical statements. You can see what I'm talking about here.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_and_mathematics#Frequency...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_and_mathematics#Frequency_and_harmony)

You'll notice that a fundamental frequency is picked, and we give names to several related frequencies (octave, third, fifth etc). All of these labels are analogous to various multiplications of the fundamental frequency. We learn to recognize some of the simpler relationships, as they are easily identifiable (different chords are an example of this).

Any one who can count can recognize a number on the number line and compare it to another number and tell if it's smaller or larger. Those who have begin to understand arithmetic can identify the difference between those numbers, and if they are multiples of each other. Advanced mathematicians can tell us about more complicated relationships.

In music we have tones that can be ordered, and musicians learn through experience to make these same judgments about tones without even knowing it. Any amateur musician can hear a pair of tones side by side and recognize which is higher or lower in pitch. The more advanced ear can identify notes that are the same or they can tell you a harmonic relationship between them. This is a different way of experiencing mathematical relationships within an ordered set.

At it's core, I think music theory is absolutely the study of finding which combinations of tones create the numerical relationships we find most appealing in sound.

<comment><USER2> This isn't much different from what I'm saying, I think -- you mention frequencies, which don't come up much in most study of music theory beyond more or less what you have in your comment.

Beyond that, well, I suppose you could say it's "math", but that's a bit like saying price comparing at the grocery store (calculate the per-kilo price!) is math -- it won't have math geeks drooling.

I can recognize intervals by ear, but it's just practice. You start out by "cheating" (twinkle twinkle starts with a leap of a perfect fifth, the NBC call sign with a major sixth, etc.), then you just learn it. I'll bet you could get the gist of it using the reference melodies pretty quickly.

You can refer to the relations using basic math terminology, or just the music theory technology, but regardless it doesn't feel like anything beyond elementary math -- it goes much quicker into psychology territory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> OK Computer came out at the peak of the electronica period, so the use of text to speech and dub production wasn't really novel. Plus the album was more about urban alienation rather than just technology. I don't think they appeal specifically to geeks though, they are widely critically acclaimed.

</comment><comment><USER5> I personally believe when an artist or group starts being taken seriously by the Jazz world, that's a sign that they're doing something right. Highly recommend Jonny Greenwood's recent other work: [http://www.npr.org/2012/03/04/147668709/first-listen- krzyszt...](http://www.npr.org/2012/03/04/147668709/first-listen-krzysztof- penderecki-and-jonny-greenwood)

<comment><USER6> See also Brad Mehldau's treatment of Radiohead: [http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=brad+mehldau+rad...](http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=brad+mehldau+radiohead)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Re: the reference to Fibonacci numbers. Five years ago I stumbled upon a video that connected Fibonacci to a song off of Tool's Lateralus album:

[http://www.ilamont.com/2007/09/tool-math-rock-and- fibonacci-...](http://www.ilamont.com/2007/09/tool-math-rock-and-fibonacci- sequence.html)

FWIW, Lateralus and 10,000 Days (also by Tool) are among the few rock albums I can listen to while working at night. It's very methodical. I love OK Computer (and Radiohead's "Airbag/How Am I Driving" EP, released around the same time) but it's hard for me to concentrate while listening to them -- too many hooks.

</comment><comment><USER8> Love Radiohead, they're an intellectual group. They're also competitive bridge players too, cool piece on them: [http://www.followmearound.com/presscuttings.php?year=1993...](http://www.followmearound.com/presscuttings.php?year=1993&cutting=15)

</comment><comment><USER9> Flip side of the proposition: many geeks __don't __love Radiohead. No disrespect those who do, because everyone certainly has their own set of tastes. But the statement is just as false as claiming that geeks love Bach (I do, but you may not).

<comment><USER10> I don't like radiohead hardly at all. I think, besides a few songs, they are boring. Same with My Bloody Valentine.

I do love math rock though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why Geeks Love Radiohead? because they're not very big music fans.

Radiohead has a song called "Palo Alto"? Well here's an album called Chip- Meditation by a group called Software: <http://www.discogs.com/viewimages?release=132407>

Radiohead uses a mathematical basis for composition? Try an album by Autechre and try and let your brain parse the mathematical precision and complexity of the music.

That's not to say that Radiohead aren't a decent pop group: they have proven that they are. I'm just sayin that based upon the points brought up by the author, Radiohead are pretty entry-level

<comment><USER12> I don't agree at all with this article, imo loving music has nothing to do with the things in the article.

But to claim Radiohead fans aren't big music fans is massively closed-minded. You might not like them, and that's fine. However, Radiohead are highly acclaimed by music lovers (OK computer topping _lots_ of respected 'best of the 90's' lists etc).

<comment><USER2> I got the impression that arrakeen is saying, _if_ the article were correct, then that would mean geeks don't know much music.

Because if they went searching for music that ticked off all of the boxes listed in the article, they'd fine other stuff that did it far more.

But the article isn't really on the mark (I don't think so either), so the conclusion about geeks doesn't hold water either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Radiohead is my favorite band, but it has nothing to do with math or pop geek references or their distribution methods.

They just make damn good music.

<comment><USER14> Same here. I would argue that most of their songs that I like have a certain melancholy to them. They invoke a mood that is like the feeling I get after reading the bipolar lisp programmer: <http://www.lambdassociates.org/blog/bipolar.htm>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> > OK Computer and In Rainbows are 10 years apart and are intended to be > listened together, a binary joke on the rest of us.

This is just a myth, and it's wrong. And none of these things have anything to do with why anyone likes Radiohead or not.

</comment><comment><USER10> Knuth has written (and talked) about interesting mathematical/algorithmic takes on music.</comment>


Ask HN: Have you started a company that has zero to do with software? - <AUTHOR>

I just discovered Shark Tank for the first time (I know I'm behind the times, but alas). I get really inspired/energized by the businesses people are out there working on - specifically, that the majority have nothing to do with software.<p>Assuming the majority of HN works in tech, have you started a business that wasn't within the software realm? What did you create? <comment><USER2> I didn't specifically but my father is an entrepreneur many times over. He's since moved into software. However, often times he has said he did better in non-software businesses.

The two that he did that were quite successful (which I worked at as a teenager) were a plastics manufacturing business and a series of hair salon's. Both were very successful, very lucrative, and very time and physically intensive. I guess most businesses are!

</comment><comment><USER3> In 2010 I started a vampire themed energy drink company. Before even having a product, I secured the interest of a Fortune 500 company with 800 retail stores nationwide. In short, based on my proposal alone, they requested "samples & costs". I scrambled to create a product from scratch and sent it off, and to my surprise they did a 5,000 unit test order, based on the success they did a first full order of 35k-40k units.

It was short lived (do to the nature of the vampire fad), but a learning experience that put me in touch with the likes of the original inventor of Jelly Belly, who not only gave me advice but was impressed with my sales numbers. Prior to that I had never had any experience in the beverage (or candy/confection as it was labeled) industry nor any real desire pushing me in that direction.

www.vblood.com

<comment><USER4> seems like something you could sell alot during holloween?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I used to rehab and build eco friendly homes. It was definitely a hustle and grit and grind type of business.

It was all about snowballing your bankroll into more and bigger projects. You find ways to turn $10k into $100k and then you get addicted to trying to literally flip that money many times over.

</comment><comment><USER6> This dude tells you exactly how he built a subscription box company to $100k in 6 months, $360k by year end: [http://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/2h1mlt/the_inn...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/2h1mlt/the_inner_workings_of_a_subscription_box_company). He isn't technical, and actually uses the YC company www.cratejoy.com for his ecommerce platform.

Inspirational. I recommend you find a concept that has reoccurring (high repeat) revenues, just because it's tough to have to keep getting new customers each day.

</comment><comment><USER7> I run Hacker Paradise, which organizes workaway trips for developers, designers, and entrepreneurs.

While many of our participants have software companies, we're really an operations company, kind of like a specialty tour operator. As opposed to working with software or hardware, we spend a lot of time scouting hotels, running events, and facilitating the community.

Happy to answer any questions about that. So far, we've been to Costa Rica, Thailand, and Vietnam, and this summer, we'll be in Estonia, Spain, and Germany.

<comment><USER5> Thats awesome! I've been to your site a few times but haven't been able to pull the trigger. I leave my full time, non dev job this summer to spend time reading, learning, and travelling. I'll def. look into Hacker Paradise. Germany sounds awesome!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I owned a few before getting into tech. I was a half owner of a limo business. I owned an auto repair shop. I also had a side gig with that doing fabrication for race cars. Later I started making metal furniture in partnership with the cabinet shop next to me. I also invested money I'm a friends motorcycle repair business but cashed out on that and my other businesses to get into the world of software. It was a lot of fun.

</comment><comment><USER9> Working with a guy on energy storage, first startup period...excited / nervous for all the usual reasons, but grateful that at the end of the day an actual physical product could ship to thousands of people.

</comment><comment><USER10> One of my friends works in software during the day and runs a Gaming store(mostly MtG) in the evening. She is successful enough at it that she just moved into a new location double the size.

</comment><comment><USER11> Last year I flew to Kenya for 6 months to help a friend of my partner start a furniture business.

</comment><comment><USER12> Not exactly... I toyed around with doing bicycle repair out of my home when I was a kid. I was pretty handy with BMX bikes, but I was honestly in over my head at the time when it came to road bikes or anything with a derailleur. Never made any money off of it, but I still like wrenching on my own bikes.

Later in life, after spending some time doing finish carpentry work (hanging doors, doing door trim, window trim, molding, shit like that), I got interested in hardwood flooring and considered starting a business to specialize in installing that stuff. But after chewing on the idea a while, I decided it would just be a distraction and forgot about it.

My dad, on the other hand, was a serial entrepreneur who ran all sorts of businesses throughout my childhood. Of hand, I can recall:

1\. Owning a pulpwood truck and chainsaws, and cutting down trees and hauling logs to the paper mill.

2\. Building and selling handmade crab-pots.

3\. Building docks and bulkheads.

4\. Owning a bulldozer, loader, dump-truck, etc., and doing land grading, lot clearing, driveways, etc.

5\. Shrimping and clamming and selling seafood to the local wholesale seafood house.

6\. Finishing cement pours - doing foundations, slabs, etc.

I probably missed a few, but he was always doing something. I think I picked up the whole entrepreneurial spirit thing from him, even though I'm not sure he even knows the word "entrepreneur". My dad is more "street smart" than "book smart" but he's done OK for himself.</comment>


API for secure data storage? - <AUTHOR>

Have a payments problem we're trying to solve, would love HN input!
Our platform needs to make several payments to suppliers each week, the problem is we don't want to store our suppliers bank details. Unfortunately the only payment method possible right now is  via a bank specific file (*.aba) and is manual, but to create that file we need to have stored our customers bank details...
Does anyone know of a platform which can store/retrieve customer sensitive data through an API so we can avoid storing it ourselves? <comment><USER2> What you're looking for is called an HSM.

<comment><USER3> Yes and if you wanted to write an API for such a thing it is pretty simple. The key is that you never allow retrieval of the data.

So your API has to support essentially two methods:

* Add banking details. * Make a charge.

You submit the details to get back a token such as "account-1", and use that token to make a charge. The actual banking details are never able to be retrieved from the device.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks guys, sounds promising, will look into it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Tokenization service like [http://www.auricsystems.com/products/auricvault- tokenization...](http://www.auricsystems.com/products/auricvault- tokenization/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, have dropped them an email to see if they can support what we're after. Appreciate it.</comment></comment>


Microsoft plan to split OS from shell takes shape - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-10-yields-more-secrets-microsoft-plan-to-split-os-from-shell-takes-shape/#comments-fc9984be-5a89-4ec6-a980-496937d746e4 <comment><USER2> Hasn't this always been the case already? Explorer.exe is just an executable. It has always been replaceable and therefore independently updateable.

<comment><USER3> Explorer.exe hasn't been "the shell" in a few versions of Windows now, and never as directly in any of the Windows NT family (XP+) like it was to Windows 95 [1]. For instance, the taskbar and start menu have moved into an application that Taskbar calls the "Windows Shell Experience Host".

But the big issue here is not just making the Shell replaceable, and not even just replaceable at runtime (switching/reconfiguring Shells on the fly; which was not something that was possible even in the Windows 95 INI days), but also presumably a lot more about the Windows build and deployment infrastructure. Up to this point the Shells are built together with the rest of Windows, baked into the Windows image, and deployed together as a single versioned unit (one build of Windows). Sure maybe it is just an "unsexy" "refactoring" of existing components to be more component like, and try to minimize coupling between specific versions of them, but my DevOps hat certainly thinks it sounds like a lot of work for a codebase as old and large as Windows.

[1] Windows 95 did use Explorer.exe for just about everything, and many people do remember that for compatibility reasons it supported changing the "Shell" EXE in an INI file, and you could change it into the Ghost of Windows 3.1 PROGMAN.EXE or some alternatives shells supported that. That INI has never been in the Windows NT side of the family (XP+).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Didn't Microsoft attempt to do this 10 years ago?

<comment><USER5> If you mean MinWin, they did not only attempt it, it powers Windows Core.</comment></comment>


Sony and GeoHot settle PS3 jailbreaking case  - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20052883-1.html?tag=cnetRiver

<comment><USER2> I'm curious how they settled. Once the details are shared, then the case's importance will be truly established. For now, we can't really assume which way it went: Geohot asked for a settlement instead of dealing with further litigation, or if SECA was the one that pulled the plug. I believe it will probably end up being the former, since SECA practically prints money and could have pursued this for years, but we'll just have to wait and see.

As for the result, the "permanent injunction" that the spokesman mentioned is what makes me think the settlement went in SECA's favor. But until somebody publishes what happened, I don't know. It could mean that jailbreaking other devices is legal, or it could mean that only mobile devices are legally allowed to be cracked open.

I hope it all ended up in the favor of the consumer, but from the wording of the article and its quoted statements, I don't think it did.</comment>


HIV infection returns in Mississippi girl thought cured - <AUTHOR> http://www.wfaa.com/news/health/HIV-infection-returns-in-Mississippi-girl-thought-cured-266664081.html

<comment><USER2> A dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8018383](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8018383).

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder if it's fair to question whether further treatment during that time could have aided in destroying the virus. It strikes me as a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario. If you do, it could be seen as overkill (and potentially harmful), and may not provide you critical data on what worked or didn't work; if you don't, you get questioned regarding if you could have done more, or if it would have made any difference.</comment>


NASA will send new lander to Titan - <AUTHOR> https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-selects-flying-mission-to-study-titan-for-origins-signs-of-life/ <comment><USER2> I guess its a big leap to go from computer simulation of IMU data, sensor and flight control algorithms for such an environment to the real world application but smarter minds than mine are working on it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I cannot stop to examine the Gravity Wells[1], again.

[1] [https://xkcd.com/681/](https://xkcd.com/681/)</comment>


Career Advice - <AUTHOR> http://ohohp.us/blog/

<comment><USER2> The truth is, nobody can tell you what your career path is. Make sure you will always have food on the table and the rent is paid. Beyond that, pursue whatever dreams you have. (Just always have a fallback position)

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess me trying to keep up on other languages is sort of a way for me to know that I'll still be valuable in the market later on, if the time comes.(hopefully)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What would you share with HN without risk of being downvoted? - <AUTHOR> What would you share with hacker news community that normally you're afraid of due to the "risk" of being downvoted?<p>All readers -- please make this thread DOWNVOTES-FREE :) <comment><USER2> Nothing that I don't already share: imaginary internet points can be useful feedback about how other people feel, but aren't something I'm afraid of losing.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have many unpopular opinions. It's probably most of them, really. So I typically just stick to the facts relevant to my own interests or move on to something else. Seems like that's getting harder to do here lately with all of the PC crap people keep upvoting.

</comment><comment><USER4> "Losing imaginary points on an internet forum" is just about the least consequential outcome of expressing opinions.

<comment><USER3> Here, downvoting is a means of censorship. It's not about the points but rather about being seen even when disagreed with.

<comment><USER4> There's a difference between 'being censored' and 'being shouted down'.

<comment><USER3> I'm not familiar with the latter phrase.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My opinions used to be unpopular and down voted often, but in the past half year or so, that's no longer the case.</comment>


Show HN: Ultimate Electronics – interactive textbook – circuit design and analysis - <AUTHOR> https://www.circuitlab.com/textbook/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN! I decided to release the first few chapters of an online, interactive electronics textbook I've been working on for the past several months.

It's interactive because every schematic in the book can be clicked to be open it in a new tab. Many / most have simulations attached. You can generally change/add/delete any component and re-run the simulation to see the effect.

So far this covers about half of a first-semester undergraduate electronics course.</comment>


Craigslist is down - <AUTHOR> http://www.isup.me/www.craigslist.com

<comment><USER2> Works for me. <http://isup.me> has something messed up.

<comment><USER3> isup is hosted with The Planet / Softlayer. My guess would be that Craigslist has blocked that whole netblock to stop scrapers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Um, Craigslist is a .org, not a .com.

</comment><comment><USER5> DOS attacks, maybe?

</comment><comment><USER6> I blame padmapper.

</comment><comment><USER7> err, no it's not. It pulls up just fine for me.</comment>


Researchers uncover privacy flaw in e-passports - <AUTHOR> https://wwwen.uni.lu/university/news/slideshow/researchers_uncover_privacy_flaw_in_e_passports <comment> java-man My bet this is by design.</comment>


Padrino 0.10.0 Released Rubinius support, speed and much more Check it out - <AUTHOR> http://www.padrinorb.com/blog/padrino-0-10-0-routing-upgrades-rbx-and-jruby-support-and-minor-breaking-changes

<comment><USER2> I find it surprising that Padrino hasn't gained more popularity. For me, it's perfect for the times when you need something more robust than Sinatra, but lighter than Rails. (& being Rack-based it's pretty easy to port a project to either platform if needed).

<comment><USER2> IMO impediments to Padrino's success:

\- Mediocre focus on documentation

\- "Marketing"/Evangelism of the project

\- Increased Modularity of Rails3

<comment><USER3> I would love to hear your take on how we can improve on the first 2 aspects. I am not too worried about Rails because I use Rails and I use Padrino but despite the increasing modularity, using Rack/Sinatra/Padrino is a qualitatively different development experience.

But in terms of the first 2. How can we improve our documentation, please let me know, we have a bunch of guides <http://www.padrinorb.com/guides> and decent (I hope) READMEs as well as a written and recorded blog tutorial screencast. Also Padrino is just Sinatra, so all the Sinatra docs here <http://www.sinatrarb.com/documentation> <http://sinatra-book.gittr.com/> work just as well.

How can we be more effective at evangelism?

<comment><USER4> I think you raised one of the primary issues in your response. "Padrino is Sinatra", meaning the documentation is split between Sinatra and Padrino. There isn't primary source for Padrino (similar to Rails Guides). Also Sinatra's documentation isn't fantastic either, I often find myself jumping between blog posts, sinatra's website, "the sinatra book" constantly.

Also Rails has a much more mature community with screen casts and blog posts being produced constantly. That is probably difficult to 'create' short of DHH style evangelism.

<comment><USER3> I agree with you that our documentation isn't as thorough as Rails guides but I would argue that the Padrino guides we do have and the blog tutorial + screencast are not a bad tool to get started. I recognize though that to get started with Padrino you do need to have some basic handle on Sinatra. I would love to improve the beginner's documentation even further and I hope that Sinatra's docs get better over time as well possibly with our help.

As Florian touches on, Padrino is fundamentally about embracing the power of modularity. Understanding Rack, Rack Middleware, Sinatra, Padrino and a suite of chosen tools does ultimately become necessary. However, like Sinatra you can also learn the basics within 15 minutes. I like to think that Sinatra/Padrino can grow with you as you need it.

If anyone reading this has any interest in helping us with documentation, please let us know. Especially if you are a beginner. We are a very open community and would love some help or even suggestions on how to make our framework more inviting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For many use cases, padrino frequently looks more and more like the "just right" solution. Great work and look forward to the 1.0 release! Prioritized routes are a very useful addition.

</comment><comment><USER6> I use Padrino exclusively now; it does everything I need while also being lightweight, fast, and modular.

Since I haven't played with Rails since 3 was in beta, I'm genuinely curious: from a purely technical standpoint, for what types of projects might Rails be a better choice than Padrino?

</comment><comment><USER7> Love it, congrats guys one more step to 1.0 and the real alternative to Rails! Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER8> Only few workds awesome! Fast, simple and riable! W00t

</comment><comment><USER9> Finally I can forgot RAILS! Finally!!! Rails is riduculous: assets pipeline a lot of new stuff but... performances? Why it is slower than Rails 2 ? What mean "merging rails and merb" ? Why on every update I need to rewrite my views because helpers changed like <%= form be <% form then <%= ??? Thanks community for give us a real and much valid choice, Padrino is thin and not slow and havy as Rails.

Thanks!</comment>


Unicorn Unix Magic Tricks - <AUTHOR> http://thorstenball.com/blog/2014/11/20/unicorn-unix-magic-tricks/ <comment><USER2> Wow! Well written and amazing inside inside Unicorn. Recently I was reading the internals too when doing worker prewarming. Check it out [https://github.com/3scale/unicorn-prewarm](https://github.com/3scale/unicorn- prewarm)

This got me thinking. Would it make sense to prewarm the app in the master? I think it is safer in the workers, but still.

</comment><comment><USER3> A similar overview. Might be interesting too [http://tomayko.com/writings/unicorn-is- unix](http://tomayko.com/writings/unicorn-is-unix)

</comment><comment> enahs-sf This is a great post with many informative asides about the in's and outs of Unix. As a guy who can't stop looking under the hood myself, I found this to be a very palatable introduction to a lot of things I previously found to be complex. Great stuff!

</comment><comment><USER4> Need a similar article about uWSGI. Way more interesting and complexity than Unicorn.

<comment><USER5> Double +1

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd be most interested in how all the non-async-signal-safe calls there must be after the forks are rationalized as safe in the unicorn implementation.

</comment><comment><USER7> Video link is dead... wish it wasn't

<comment><USER8> Thanks! I fixed the link.

<comment><USER7> Thank you for making the awesome content! Watching now :)

Confreaks is fast becoming one of my favorite sites now though they're a little ruby-heavy sometimes

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Isn't this magic master-worker architecture just what we called pre-forking with Apache in 1998?</comment>


Send to Dropbox: Email + Dropbox - <AUTHOR> https://sendtodropbox.com/

<comment><USER2> I've used this in the past but came away disappointed as it regularly breaks over attachment sizes. I was using it to store my website backups in dropbox. Instead of this, now I setup a simple python dropbox script on my webserver which allows me to do few good things: 1\. No connecting to third party apps. 2\. No need to go through email servers, I can directly store the backups to dropbox 3\. I still added an email addon layer on it for other usage where I send the files to my own mail server and the script then puts them into dropbox.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's an IFTTT recipe for this, which lets you use your own email address: <https://ifttt.com/recipes/39>

</comment><comment><USER4> Nice. I was thinking about trying to do something like this but with one small added feature. The ability to automatically share the file and inform a group of users that a new file has been shared.

If you could setup groups and then once the file is uploaded to dropbox notify the people that belong to the group (either have a separate address per group or perhaps parse the subject for which groups should be notified).

</comment><comment><USER5> The title is confusing because the dash can be interpreted as a minus sign.

<comment><USER6> Agreed. Perhaps a colon would have been more appropriate.

<comment><USER7> The HN title? It appears somebody changed it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> How is this better than going to dropbox.com and uploading the file?

<comment><USER9> Certain situations where uploading isnt ideal (on mobile, file is in an old email, etc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is there a similar recipe/app to send files to Google Drive?</comment>


The day the movies died - <AUTHOR> http://www.gq.com/entertainment/movies-and-tv/201102/the-day-the-movies-died-mark-harris

<comment><USER2> tldr (even though it is short, but i skimmed it) basically, everyone continues to wake up to the MPAA monopoly that exchanged an otherwise healthy market for a system that just took advantage of the lack of speed and ease in video distribution.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have one nit to pick.

 _The Town_ was not a good film. It was disjointed, overacted and carried about 10-20 minutes of fat. It was, in short, only greenlit because Ben Affleck was attached.</comment>


Stay Green with the Cloud (Infographic) - <AUTHOR> http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2011/11/cloud-infographic-the-green-cloud/

<comment><USER2> Seriously? Cloud operators are so desperate to attract customers they are playing the "green" card? Clouds are data centers. They heavily virtualize but no one else can? Show me you can secure my data, restore it quickly for me, migrate it to another operator quickly, track where my data are at rest and stop telling me nonsense.</comment>


Max Levchin to Leave Google As Slide Is Shut Down - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20110825/max-levchin-to-leave-google-as-slide-is-shut-down/?mod=tweet <comment><USER2> "After being acquired, Slide had operated as an independent unit out of Google's San Francisco office, maintaining existing apps like SuperPoke Pets and experimenting with new ones such as messaging app Disco and photo-sharing app Photovine, which was released only last week. The apps, none of which were extremely popular, will be sunsetted over the next few months."

If Google is going to "sunset" apps which are being judged as successful after only a couple of weeks, why bother with the bait and switch? Why don't they just tell everybody that they were acquired purely for talent, there wasn't really interest in certain developing products, and that here is your new "just as exciting and fun" project at Google? Seems like a waste of everyone's time, money, and trust to lead people along as if their idea in development actually mattered.

<comment><USER3> I think the article makes that pretty clear. They were not just acquired for the talent, but meant to run as an independent unit in Google, which they did for quite some time. But now the internal situation changed at Google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting, Google shutting down new services like photovine (just launched last week!) this fast. To me Slide seemed quite sucessfull in trying to get some startup speed back into google. Suprising move..

<comment><USER5> Seems like Google is becoming more risk averse focusing more on quarterly profits, which will make them more boring in the long run.

<comment><USER6> Larry Page has said something like "putting more wood behind fewer arrows." Which makes some sense when you see a list like this: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm not highly educated about this. But, it seems like they are assigning a lot of deep motives to people. Maybe he just didn't want to work for a big company any longer. He is obvious very entrepreneurial and vested in the startup community.

I don't like when articles assume so much about an individual's motivation.

<comment><USER8> Seems pretty clear he's leaving because Larry Page gave up on his creations. It's pretty simple to empathize with "this thing you worked hard on is great" followed by "never mind, we're going to kill it"

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This has been coming for a while. When they paid $200MM, that didn't make much sense to me.

I guess they are finally admitting it now.

<comment><USER10> Google pays 1-3M per engineer in all sorts of acqui-hires. This netted them ~100 engineers of the kind that Max can attract (i.e. top tier). It's a lot faster than acquiring 50 $2m companies that have 2 engineers each.

<comment><USER11> I think this approach makes sense only if the acquired engineers stay at Google (and are significantly more productive than the average talent Google can acquire through less expensive channels).

I suspect that many of the folks working for startups prefer being at small companies: if they wanted to work for Google they already would be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I loved Cringely's interview of him on Nerd TV in 2005: <http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8717497020389276502>

<comment><USER13> This quora answer also gives some info about his approaches on entrepreneurship:

[http://www.quora.com/Entrepreneurship/Among-Max-Levchins- les...](http://www.quora.com/Entrepreneurship/Among-Max-Levchins-lessons- learned-as-a-young-entrepreneur-which-are-the-greatest)

<comment><USER14> There's a good chapter about Max in _Founders At Work_ , too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Re: negative comments. You're assuming that the human capital, aka all the engineers, they acquired are going out the door too. Far from it.

</comment><comment><USER16> Many folks are viewing this from the wrong angle... This is a serial entrepreneur. Guys like this rarely stay at big companies.

Take this from the point of view of a potential entrepreneur - wouldn't it be great to have a guy that's done it twice be one of your angels?

Or let's say he starts another company - wouldn't that be a great one to work for?

</comment><comment><USER17> It's interesting how Slide and RockYou were kings of the hill in the MySpace era but then got their lunch eaten by Zynga when Facebook blew up. Goes to show, uh... something.

<comment><USER18> Goes to show that if you are sharecropping, you need keep your eyes open for the time to move to a new owner's land.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> $200MM is a lot of money. It seems rather unsavory and uncool that Google bailed out Levchin and their investors.

<comment><USER20> Why are you convinced that this was a "bail out"? Why is it unsavory if Google thought that the team and its expertise was worth $200M? Google clearly was trying to get into social at the time, and this team did have a lot of interesting ideas in that space. Plus it seems that most of them are sticking around.

You seem to be attaching a lot of motivation behind the acquisition that I haven't seen elsewhere.

<comment><USER19> What were some of their 'interesting' ideas? Are you familiar with Slide's history as a start-up? Nothing but hype. Always jumping from one bandwagon (widgets and ad networks) to the next using every anti-consumer trick in the book to generate traffic. No authenticity to any of their pursuits, just a means to sell 'users' to advertisers. Talent acquisitions don't go for $200MM.

<comment><USER21> I hate to agree with you. Slide was never original at all. However they do have some social networking and gaming experience. This is just like Zynga snapping development companies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> From the submission title, did anyone else think this was about slides in the Google offices?

</comment><comment><USER23> So, what are the chances he walked away with most of the money? From what I understand, these types of acquisitions usually require x years at the acquiring company before the buyout terms mature.</comment>


Astronomers discover 'impossibly massive' black hole LB-1 - <AUTHOR> https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3039790/chinese-astronomers-discover-impossibly-massive-black-hole-lb-1 <comment><USER2> From a previous post, the "impossibility" part is that it is impossible to form a black hole of this size after a supernova. It must be formed merging a few smaller black holes. So it's interesting, but the "impossibility" part is just linkbait.

<comment><USER3> I make it a habit to not read science-themed articles that contain the word or variants of the word "impossible" when describing something clearly observed.

The word "unexpectedly" or "surprisingly" is probably what they mean. But if the writer thinks the scientists believe their observations to be impossible, then they've written an article that isn't worth reading. The title already says it isn't so -- they couldn't have observed this in any way.

These types of headline make it sound like the scientists don't know what they're talking about. Since they obviously do know what they've observed, I'd rather read about it from a writer who doesn't speak of them as being so inept.

No wonder the Internet is littered with people who don't trust science. The headlines keep discounting new discoveries by blatantly calling them impossible.

I have the same beef with science writers who speak of "different solar systems." Our sun is Sol. Our planetary system is the _only_ Solar System. All those others are different star systems or different planetary systems that may or may not be Solar-like, and they are named after their own star... not after _ours_.</comment></comment>


Why Many On-Demand Platforms Fail - <AUTHOR> http://themacro.com/articles/2016/10/why-many-on-demand-platforms-fail/ <comment><USER2> On demand startups usually fail because customer acquisition cost is greater than lifetime value (CAC > LTV).

Retention is the most common driver. Even good virality can't overcome bad retention.

A rough advance estimate of retention is the "toothbrush test": do people use it as often as a toothbrush. Services used rarely are more likely to be forgotten by the next use. If they need to find you again on Google, your competitor can buy them with Adwords.

I saw a startup once for a mobile app to arrange funeral services. I had to chuckle because that may be the lowest possible score on the toothbrush test.

<comment><USER3> >> A rough advance estimate of retention is the "toothbrush test": do people use it as often as a toothbrush

Ugh - I have heard this before - its such an unhelpfully high level that it fails its purpose as target setting advice. Almost nothing is a "twice a day" service. Whether its Uber or Pizza, the vast majority of users do not use them twice a day despite their love and loyalty. For the few businesses that are e.g. FB, Slack etc. its because they are communication oriented rather than task oriented so they are more like monitoring a feed than using a tool.

Sure, its wise to be sceptical about services that are once per life "AirB&B for gravestones" or once per year "Uber for Christmas decorations" but your once per month billing/invoice system is likely to have high retention once you get customers locked in.

<comment><USER2> The toothbrush test isn't just retention, it's also about sales velocity. A product used monthly tends to have a slower sales velocity than a product used weekly. The pace of the decision cycle is related to frequency of use. For a monthly use product, the moment the customer learns about the product will be an average of 2 weeks from when she needs it. That's two weeks for her mind to get distracted with other things. It's easy for the evaluation to get pushed by one or more intervals, and even once the decision to purchase has been made, there might be a month delay before the close and that's a month in which urgency can fade and a chance for it to get set aside.

Note how sales velocity and retention are similar, can you retain customer interest long enough to close a sale?

There are successful occasional use products. It's not meant as a threshold or black and white test, its just one factor to consider when choosing which business to start.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The question is whether there are useful stops between Uber-like total control and a lead generation service.

Servicemaster operates in that space. Some workers are employees and others are franchisees who may have employees of their own. That works, and Servicemaster, after 85 years of operation, has a market cap of $4.5 billion. Not a get-rich-quick scheme, but a success. HomeJoy tried to compete with them, not too successfully.

Then there are the lead generation services. Plumbers have these; most of the ads in what's left of the Yellow Pages go to the same call center. They don't do much and they don't make much.

Operating somewhere between those points seems to be difficult. It's not clear yet if Uber makes it; they're still losing money, and eventually, the investment money stops flowing in and they have to cut costs. (Look at Twitter. Growth is not enough.)

<comment><USER5> The only way any of these business types work is via the greater fool approach. Uber is a great investment if you believe you can find a bigger fool to offload the company onto [1].

1\. I am talking about Uber's current business. If they can solve the automatous driving problem before they run out of cash (or fools) then they will be a good investment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think this is done poorly and misses the biggest issues on demand startups face.

The largest issue is failing to understand the difference between a commodity and a service, and how easy a substitute is to find.

Others vs uber(and uber like companies) are different

Uber solves an extremely hard problem that looks easy, it also has very few alternatives. The other services solve a problem that is less urgent, had many substitutes and is largely less valuable.

Uber provides transportation when and where it is needed. If you simply need (using the most well known detivative business) to borrow a skill saw from your neighbor for a tool sharing site you have many options. This project may be planned in advance, you may be able to purchase a used tool, and you may be able to borrow kne free.

The issue is how _variable_ a service is. Uber can generate transportation for where and when you need it. However it may appear that the commodity is transportation, but that is the variable. Finding a user and providing them transportation from an unknown location, to an unknown location, immeadiately is hard. A ride from Logan Airport to south station is much different than a rake/hammer.

Each ride has a large amount of logistical constraints. Out toolsharing example has to solve all the same problems _except_ a tool is always the same tool. A ride is never the same ride. It makes it much less valuable, and much easier to compete as there are often many substitutes and less expediency. Therefore coverage & on demand has a sup/demand musmatch, is prohibitively expensive and can only take a very small slice if value.

<comment><USER7> A tool is almost never the same tool. There's huge variance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a pretty naive look at how services in this space work from someone who wants to build one.

Uber is fundamentally unlike all of these other "Uber for X" startups. First of all, @paulsutter made a great point: the CAC is > LTV. How many times in your life are you ever going to have to hire a...home decorator or something? A painter? The reason why Geico advertisements are on all media literally all the time (they have like five completely different mascot strategies!) is because you almost never make a choice about car insurance, and when you do, they need to be top-of-mind. This is the same problem that affects a huge swathe of terrible startup ideas, not just on-demand services: the whole category of travel management, niche social networks, event-oriented tools, and yes, most "Uber for X" products. It works for Geico because the LTV of a Geico customer is high enough, because Warren Buffet is an amazing capital allocator and amazing at identifying and retaining operational talent, so Geico runs at roughly break-even on the insurance product, but frees up a large chunk of float for BH to deploy and earn high returns. That business requires doing like 10,000 impossible things right and they do it. An app that lets you summon a guy who trims trees to your house the one time you realize you need a tree trimmed has none of these qualities.

A lot of comments here are about how 'the jury is still out on Uber' because it loses money. But cabs don't lose money, collectively. Uber's aggressive money-weaponization growth strategy is certainly high-risk, but there have been tons of businesses that direct requests-for-transit-via-car to independent contractors and clip a fee: virtually every taxi dispatch company, say (contractor vs. employee depends heavily on the history and regulatory structure in a given market). The idea of having for-hire cars distributed through the city and used on an on-demand basis is also profitable for zillions of people. The idea of adding on an app that summons the cars more efficiently, handles payment, and clips a fee is not that hard to believe in.

OP frames the issue about the lack of variance in quality of an uber ride vs...what? Hiring a plumber? Do any of us have the ability to identify a quality plumbing job vs. not quality? I mean, the toilet flushes now, or it doesn't. I think this is _close_ to the issue, but the issue is more about 'what adds value': being close to me right now, and able to get to me immediately, on a pre-determined price schedule trumps everything in ride- hailing most of the time (sometimes you want a limo, or something special, and maybe you won't use Uber. Maybe you want to hire a driver for a month while you are in India. You probably won't use Uber. Different parts of the value equation are changing value). Most of these on-demand apps operate in markets that don't have this quality. Other things are important.

The post also goes into the 'Trust' question. This is a classic trap for technology entrepreneurs, right up there with 'building tools that makes it easier for non-technical people to build apps'. So many zillions of dollars and hours of smart-people-work have gone down the drain building web of trust, chain of trust, and other trust management products, and they basically don't work at all. What works is "Does this thing have a lot of five-out-of-five star ratings from real-seeming people compared to how many one-out-of-five- star ratings it has?"

This is essentially 'word of mouth' online. The ratio of 5:1 star ratings over a threshold. This is basically how all real-world functional trust systems work: ebay, amazon, yelp, etc. Yes they have enormous problems. Yes they are really stupid. Yes they can be gamed. Yes it weights all sorts of idiots equally. But guess what? It works well enough for most people to make purchase decisions. Every fancy smart thing we've ever come up with that's more sophisticated than this is basically useless (e.g. the global tls cert web of trust, the various pkis, every product that builds a FOAF trust web underneath arbitrary objects).

Afaik, on-demand 'uber for x' products work one of two ways, mainly: \- as a marketplace, where they fail because of all the normal chicken/egg problems, but basically because the ltv of a customer is very low and the cac is very high (once you run out of VC cash to subsidize the service to extremely low prices.) \- as an ONO service with employees, where the unit economics supposedly become good with crazy scale, but it's extremely difficult to get there again when you run out of subsidy cash . The classic example here is Kozmo. I'm sure Kozmo's model predicted that eventually, when a delivery person was delivering a candy bar to five people in the same building, the unit economics turn the corner, but it consumes insane volumes of cash to get there, if there's even a 'there' (I'm not aware of any company who has ever gotten to this point. It is possible that Postmates will be the first, if they survive).

Postmates is an interesting play because unlike most of these on-demand services, there's at least a world in which like you could _imagine_ if there was a small but positive way to get the unit economics to work, the LTV outstrips CAC because people need to order food and stuff all the time. Many times a day possibly. Even if Postmates made a penny/order on each active user, you could have a very high order volume over a very long time that would eventually get over the CAC cost. BUT the idea of the unit economics getting there is...hard to see. I have a friend who orders coffee from postmates _every morning_ instead of making it or going out. He just has a postmate drive up the hill to his house from starbucks. Starbucks! It's not even like a fancy coffee place. It's interesting to think about a world in which that postmate is running like, a hundred starbucks orders on an optimized loop, and they're still able to charge $5 or whatever for the delivery. That starts to look _possible_ but insane. As it is, it's twenty minutes up the hill, twenty minutes down, never mind the starbucks time.

The other world of on-demand stuff I think is interesting to think about is grocery delivery because I think grocery delivery is basically doing something different than what it thinks its doing: the on-demand delivery aspect of it is a vehicle for grocery price discrimination.

It's an old joke that rich people don't know how much food costs: George Bush Senior at the checkout counter, Lucille Bluth saying, "it's one banana, michael, what could it cost? Ten dollars?" That 30 rock episode where Jack Donaghy says something about the "grocery concierge" telling you a sack of potatoes is four hundred dollars.

But groceries remain an insanely low margin business. Grocery chains operate at around 2-3% margin. Independent grocery resellers in immigrant neighborhoods are even tighter. Costco's grocery business is run near break- even (they make money on the membership fees. This is also why, long run, Amazon's non-AWS business best comp is Costco.)

I've shopped for groceries on amazon pantry. Sometimes I'll type something in like "soy sauce" or "rice". Is that a good price? I sometimes literally don't know if its 2x the normal price or .5x. There are things I know the price of well: avocados, milk, liquor, coffee. But there are tons of things I don't know, and i've been buying these staples for years!

Grocery stores have very little power to raise prices, but if they could segment the market to provide a service like delivery to a price-insensitive consumer that allows them to charge 20-30% more for certain staples, the excess margin in the groceries completely dominates the cost of the delivery business.

This is the Instacart strategy. It's very interesting. A lot of the unit economics problems of these businesses go away if you just...make things expensive. What if coffee was $30? Sure, postmates would work fine, if anyone would pay. But groceries have larger tickets where a 20-30% increase in price might not be objected to by wealthier price-insensitive consumers. Instacart basically is selling coffee for $30.

I'm very curious to see if this works. I mean, it seems insane, but less insane than say HomeJoy, Rinse, Washio, Homee, Handy, the 'uber for kids', Lugg (this has gotta be the worst idea of the bunch), the one that parks your car, the one that washes your car, the one that fills your car up with gas, the (multiple!) ones for private jets, the massage one, etc.

<comment><USER9> >> This is a classic trap for technology entrepreneurs, right up there with 'building tools that makes it easier for non-technical people to build apps'.

Can you kindly expatiate on why building dev tools for non-technical people requires a web of trust?

For any given individual, evaluating whether such tools work for you should be a pretty quick exercise similar to test-driving a car. Why would you need a web of trust?

<comment><USER8> it doesn't. My point was only that lots of technology entrepreneurs view 'generalizable web of trust' as a good opportunity, when it is not, similarly to how they view 'tools to make it easier for non-technical people to build apps' as a good opportunity, when its not.

SOrry if that was confusing i was writing pretty stream-of-consciousness

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think a fundamental way to think about on demand is that the worker/service provider/driver is the real customer not the end user.

So, if you are uber and the only trust factors are solved by technology (i.e. where the driver is and how soon theyll get to you) it can create a new class of workers.

if you are in skilled home services, trust is built by the provider not the platform, so the only current value is lead generation for the worker...which doesnt require a platform.

The argument of this post is that there is an opportunity in home services for a platform to really cater to the service providers in a way that they always want to transact on the platform and thay they can use to manage and grow their steady customers...with on demand being the leadgen side of the platform.

</comment><comment><USER11> Most businesses that are one-off type businesses tend not to work well. Uber works well because you will use it often enough and is basically a similar model to other transportation services like Bus and Train transit.

A lot of businesses require subscription or other predictable recurring revenue to truly work. Even golf courses, bowling alleys, heating and air repair companies, bug terminators, advertising, etc. tend to rely on recurring revenue as the major source of revenue.

Even restaurants and bars rely on recurring revenue. You show me a restaurant or bar without regulars and I'll show you a restaurant or bar about to go out of business.

<comment><USER12> Catering, for restaurants, also. And Mother's Day.

For many venues, events: golf and bowling tournaments. I don't think that works for pest control though....

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder why a company like homejoy doesn't become a flat cost subscription platform where they offer scheduling, organizational, and billing tools for the particular on demand service.

<comment><USER5> Because you can't make any money this way.

Any service where the costs are dominated by labor and the enforcements of labor regulations is weak (i.e house cleaning services) is doomed from the start. The only question is why the "smartest guys in the room" missed this with homejoy.

<comment><USER14> What about The Maid International, Merry Maids and Molly Maid, all of which seems to have been operating for over 30 years?

<comment><USER15> From experience with some of these services, quality is wildly variable, and they cost two to three times more than more consistent local non franchise alternatives.

As a consumer, they suck bogwater.

<comment><USER5> I don't have your personal experience with any of these services, but it does provide a good explanation why even the franchise model has not taken much of the market. It really is a business area where anything beyond individuals working for themselves struggles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This matches part of the description of HomeJoy's failure[1]. Home service are relationship based so a middle man is only Uber-like for the first cleaning. After that the cut has to be smaller or the customer and pro will deal directly. Even that doesn't quite capture the additional complexity in matching pros with customers. The work is more qualitative and the pro needs jobs that are more similar in location, expectation and needed supplies. Homejoy was too much like uber to work.

Yes, they ran out of cash because CAC > LTV, but that's a bit like saying an AIDs patient died of the flu. There's an underlying cause.

[1] [https://backchannel.com/why-homejoy-failed- bb0ab39d901a](https://backchannel.com/why-homejoy-failed-bb0ab39d901a)

</comment><comment><USER17> I really liked the view of the article. However it's assuming one thing that's not true for every on-demand or p2p service marketplace: the service provider is a "pro".

I'm co-founder of a p2p marketplace for dog sitters and dog owners and most of our sitters are not "pros" (as in people who do it just for money and full time).

IMHO that's the basic difference between a truly sharing economy platform and just an "on-demand service".

These two kind of companies tend to fall under the same umbrella, often because the ones that are just on-demand services use the "sharing economy" label to protect themselves against regulators.

</comment><comment><USER18> The on demand platforms fail because these startups can not predict demand like Uber can. Uber has public data like concerts, sport events, rush hour, nightlife which are all pre-planned. Uber can then direct its drivers where the demand is.

On the other hand Uber for healthcare for example is impossible because you can't predict who will get sick when and where. It's impossible to know how many doctors you would need on a given day. So it's a lot of wasted money and doctor time.

</comment><comment><USER19> Can possibly add that these platforms fail because they're designed to be unprofitable. Their competitive advantage is that they don't need to make a profit, being supporter by venture capital. When that dries up, few seem able to re-wire their business logic, and re-model their organization to fit.

More than anything, what seems to be lacking is long-term vision for the platform as a business.

<comment><USER6> I believe this is a symptom or result. I think founders underestimate the complexity of services or over estimate value.

Finding a someone a place to stay in jakarta, indonesia is much different than a place to stay in Boston, London, ect. The person, service, lication and time are all variables. This is complex, hard and valuable. The same goes for uber/lyft. There is expediency and significant variables to account for as each pickup and drop off is dynamic so while it appears to be a commodity; it isnt.

To your point, some ideas sound great and get funding but are not complex, urgent nor particularly valuable. On demand "lunch" competes with either direct ordering, a local option or brown bagging it. Eat 24 provides a directory & information search engine not physical delivery(in most cases). So while it seems like they violate what I said, they dont have huge infa costs. Other "similar" providers will go get you the food and deliver it. A user is not willing to pay a huge premium for that in most cases, and the volume must be significant amd clustered. Eat24 takes a small percentage for a software solution, the other type needs a large percentage for a phys solution.

So they comvince vcs to back them until they get "big" which they wont and achieve economies of scale. However, they cant, because expenses scale pretty in line in those models</comment></comment>


Job Promotion is a Trap - <AUTHOR> https://sizovs.net/2019/01/13/job-promotion-is-a-trap/ <comment><USER3> Wait, what? Who is this even written for?

Jobs in other countries? Interview every 3 months? You'll have to move locations constantly if you keep doing the latter, because you're going to get known as the person who wastes everyone's time on interviews you likely aren't taking seriously. Also, word will get out and it's going to be obvious that you're not at your current job half the time because you're in interviews, doing tech challenges, etc.

Also, who even has time for this nonsense? I may have in my 20s, but the market was different then. Now I'm 40 and married with a small child. Pretty sure this isn't going to go over well, and doesn't fit for a whole slew of other folks who are even less privileged than I am with my legit career.

Some places are great for job security, but yes salary compression and lack of employer loyalty is a thing. Job jumping here and there is fine if it works for you and you're not burning bridges, and promotions work well for some and not others. Note that you can also change specialities (sideways move), and improve in your technical track OR go into management. You can also just sit at a Staff/Senior Staff/Senior Consultant type role for YEARS as a technical expert that continues to grow but doesn't manage people or projects and get FAT bonuses as long as you keep your basics relevant.

If I didn't better, I'd think this article was trolling, and not just the lunacy of someone who had a bad experience and lives in a bubble. Even then, I'm not sure anymore because it's too hard to tell in 2019.

<comment><USER4> _This is a real story (in Russian), that help you understand the problem better:_

Definitely trolling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Maybe you(writer of the blogpost) had a bad experience and decided to write about it, but in reality, that's not how entirely things work.

You are ignoring all the people that had a career and now are CEO of a Forbes 100. Everybody start somewhere and go somewhere. I had a bad experience getting promoted at a startup and have to report directly to a crazy CEO in a business running out of money, but that just made me even better. I've learned so much, after that "traumatic" experience, I went developer mode again and now I'm in a much better position than I've ever been -- but I saw how many of my peers would give up and make conclusions at the first time they have a bad emotional experience at work, even though that when they see around, they see people building great careers, but they all just think it is "ah, it is just ball licking, this person has no talent" and just keep taking orders as a soft. dev their whole lives.

I'm not saying that a developer should go to management or become an architect, but please don't limit yourself to some emotional response, but instead, achieve greatness. Don't become to attached to what happened to you, but instead, look around. Is that really true? With your reasoning, you would think that whoever is a CTO and is working for a company 10 years is a terrible and unemployable person, when I actually see the opposite. The more I move up, the more people send me more "rescue my team/company, I give you money" and also the more rare I become. I think this is similar for everybody.

BUT if you end up doing some custom code in PHP in a strange framework and become architect until your company closes and you are in a bad position, that is sort of on you, to accepting it, not questioning, proposing chances and not being able to position yourself in the job market well. Your company has their own interests and you should have yours.

<comment><USER6> > You are ignoring all the people that had a career and now are CEO of a > Forbes 100.

I think it's perfectly safe to ignore 100 people when giving general advice.

If you read financial advice you rarely see any attention paid to 100 lottery winners and if ever, it's in a form of firm statement: "You are not one of them."

<comment><USER5> You don't need to be the CEO, there is a lot of room for you there. You also don't need to go to a Forbes 100. It is just an example.

Just get a grip of your life and career and stop thinking that you can't be a forbes 100 CEO, as soon as you do it, you are really trimming down your chances, because there are definitely people that think they can, but they don't get it, but they will be definitely ahead of you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a relatively cynical point of view and seems to assume that nobody cares about your CV. I think the main point if I can find it is that promotions _can_ be simply a bargaining tool on the company's part and that it's your responsibility to make sure you're actually progressing in your own career, but treating all promotions as a trap seems a bit silly.

Doing interviews for practice is good advice if you're planning on looking for work in the near future but as someone who's happy with their job the idea of doing job interviews just for kicks is about the last thing I'd want to do with my free time.

<comment><USER8> I agree with what you say here. I would just like to address the point you make about interviews, after reading about this approach myself some years back.

Both my current and former gigs came from doing exactly this—going for interviews to keep fresh.

Just like the Office Space references in the article, for me "it's not because I'm lazy, it's because I just don't care". It wasn't like I needed the job, I was just seeing what other places were like, what other problems people had, what sort of questions I would get asked from place to place and what different people were looking for in someone of my position to solve those problems.

When inevitably asked "why do you want to work at X" If I liked what I saw I'd be straight up with a response along the lines of "well, I'm actually very happy where I am and not looking to move. But I am interested in seeing what kind of challenges you face and if my skillset and experience is mutually beneficial". Before hand, I would update my CV in a style to attract a conversation. Not a greatest hits of all my work and projects. That's how I _try_ to make it look different to others that I would see when on the hiring side of the table.

It's interesting that since doing interviews this way, (I start this process roughly after a couple of years in each place, probably every four to six months) each job has made me progressively happier and offered me more of what I'm looking for. Interesting work, renumeration, culture, autonomy and a better work/life balance.

Finally I should add that I live in the UK. And that my previous way of going about getting a new job were working until I felt burnt out, dejected or unfairly compensated. At which point, I would really want out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I personally find doing regular job interviews with no intention of taking the job as rude. You're wasting other people's time, as well as your own - don't do that.

Want to make sure that you grow as a developer? Do varied things; continuously build things that people want. Don't be content to stay in a box where it's comfortable - occasionally get out of your comfort box to try something new. You can do all of that at the same company, for many companies. And it's a much better use of your spare time to learn something new or build something "just for fun" or to contribute to an interesting OSS project than to attend interviews.

<comment><USER10> >>I personally find doing regular job interviews with no intention of taking the job as rude. You're wasting other people's time, as well as your own - don't do that.

I'm guessing. Someday, companies will filter out resumes which show too many job hops. And it makes sense too. People are hired to do do work. And no half decent project can be done in a mere few months(<1 - 2 yrs), given how much time it takes people to onboard to new projects, and other company processes/tools.

If you all you are doing is hop jobs every few months, then you are likely to leave in a few months if you are offered a position. Why should any one hire a person who is pretty much making it clear, they have no intention to work, wants to just spend all day preparing for the next interviews and leave in months.

You are better off hiring people who have more respect for work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> You've got a great career. You've successfully moved between several companies. You easily got a job when your last employer went bust. What can go wrong?

The revolution comes. You're stood up against a wall and shot. You've been living in a bubble.

What can you do? Ensure you're up to date with the latest revolutionary thinking and ideology.

You're high in the party hierarchy. You've successfully survived multiple purges and moved from department to department easily. What can go wrong?

The aliens arrive...

</comment><comment><USER12> Job promotion can be a trap, but the OP makes a poor case for it. I've seen this work out three ways.

First, I've seen people who were very happy and productive in pure hands-on roles promoted into positions with more and more of a focus on "leadership" where they seemed inept and unhappy.

Second, there can be an earnings trap. If the salary bands are close (some even overlap) and bonuses are large, a string of good reviews at the lower level can bring in more money than a string of ho-hum reviews at the higher one.

Third, being at a higher level will usually affect how you're interviewed and evaluated at your next job, and if you're "over level" that effect can be negative.

The result _can_ be that someone who has been over-promoted will fare poorly when they interview for their next job. The employer sees someone who is not particularly strong in their role, with reviews reflecting that, and who might lack enthusiasm. Then they look at the unpromoted person who has excellent reviews and plenty of enthusiasm. Seems like a good person to take a chance on, right? Oh, and BTW, they've been making more so let's make a higher offer.

The moral is: don't pursue promotions and titles for their own sake. Think about if you want the _job_ , including all of the parts that might actually be worse than what you already have, and not just the title. Remember, titles are free for the employer to give. Some will take advantage of their psychological/cultural importance to give titles _instead_ of anything meaningful, and that's when it's likely to be a trap.

</comment><comment><USER13> I had the impression a CIO was just a CTO of a non-IT company.

A SaaS company makes its money with IT, so the CTO knows IT.

A car company makes its money with cars, so the CTO is a car engineer, but they also need someone to manage the IT, so they have a CIO.

<comment><USER14> To me, the CIO is the person in charge of the IT infrastructure. That is, making sure computers are working, that the network and the servers are up, etc. It's a distraction for the CTO, so even in a SaaS business I'd expect to see someone owning infrastructure sooner or later.

<comment><USER15> A CIO is usually in charge of budget, strategy, planning, and execution of internal IT initiatives at a company. Priorities and projects, vendors, licensing, capex/opex, support and maintenance, etc.

A CTO is usually focused on delivering company value through technology. So in oil and gas this may be drilling tech and seismic imaging software, in retail it's the mobile app and the in store kiosks, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think there's an element of truth in this - you should fight to stay relevant and constantly measure yourself against where you want to go. However, I don't think tenure is something to avoid, and I certainly don't think interviewing three times a year for jobs you have no intention to take is a good spend of your time or the interviewer's.

If you're that concerned about saying relevant, you'd be far better served to keep up with industry trends and certifications/skill sets/training g/open source projects.

</comment><comment><USER17> My argument in reply is that arranging and participating in interviews is about as fun as remedial dentistry. It's as bad as online dating due to similar dynamics.

<comment><USER18> In analogy with the advice in the article, married people should regularly go on dates with other people, just to make sure that their value in the "relationship market" doesn't sink too low (and to avoid unpleasant rebound after a divorce, which is always a looming possibility).

It doesn't feel quite right, but I cannot entirely put my finger on why. I guess you could argue that employee-employer relation is like a relationship with a psychopath, so the above is in some way a "practical" advice. But then perhaps there is a lot more social issues going with that conclusion (companies are psychopaths) than just job promotion.

<comment><USER19> I think a better fitting analogy for relationships would be: Married people should ensure they have independent friendship circles, hobbies etc. to ensure they don't end up becoming too dependent on each other and unable to function separately.

I'm not sure how well this maps to the article but have heard this advice before. Of course, never having been married I can't speak of its efficacy.

<comment><USER18> What you mention seems more like (also common) advice to keep your skills sharp (for example, have a hobby project on Github in a different programming language) outside your professional job. It is a related but different advice than to go shopping around on job interviews.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > Seniority is the number of job opportunities you have, not your current job > title.

I'm still on the fence on how to feel about this quote, how does the rest feel about this?

<comment><USER21> It hits home for me but I'm probably the minority. I have a senior title but I'm a PeopleSoft developer which is kind of becoming an obsolete niche. I don't really have the skill set to interview for other senior software development positions.

<comment><USER22> Apply anyway, if you want to. Sure, you may get more rejections that way, but is that bad, other than being a little embarrassing? Also, assuming you're current job is fine, now is the time to actually be looking for the next thing when there's no pressure. You can bomb interviews and there's no financial stake in it for you. I would make a list of places I think make interesting products and give it shot. You may find that one place that says, "I like this person, and I think they're smart. I'll give them a shot.'

<comment><USER21> This really inspires me to get out of my comfort zone. You're absolutely right, I don't have anything to lose. Thanks for the advice, it made my day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > Seniority is the number of job opportunities you have, not your current job > title.

I like the thinking here but in a market with more open roles than qualified people, I'm not sure how valuable a measure it is.

I would also add that titles themselves are a trap. If your current title is Software Engineer, hiring companies may offer you a "Senior" title to tip the scales and get you into a job that is substantially the same as your current role.

Edit:typos

</comment><comment><USER24> "Job interviews help us grow professionally."

I disagree. In most places job interviews mainly test for your ability to pass job interviews. So if the job title you're going for is interviewee then maybe. But if you see yourself as a developer then interviewing is not going to improve your professional abilities.

<comment><USER25> Sure, but passing job interviews helps you grow professionally.

<comment><USER26> Passing job interview is a red herring because it teaches you that you said what people want to hear. It can be very different from being good at your work and a focus on it can create disfuncional professionals who know how to give the appearance of being good while being shit at what they do.

<comment><USER25> Not to sound excessively cynical, but that can help your career progression too.

<comment><USER26> For someone who likes to work at bullshit companies, absolutely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > Job interviews have nothing to do with job seeking. Job interviews help us > grow professionally.

I infer that this write isn't a native English speaker and I think I get what they're trying to say. But come on. Obviously they have _something_ to do with each other.

</comment><comment><USER28> There are 2 kinds of knowledge, e.g. "knowing python" and "knowing how we do things at company X". As you get more senior the second kind takes over - <USER2> it is worthless outside company X. Always keep the first kind of knowledge sharp.

<comment><USER29> No so true. The senior would ask know the answer to "python can be use in this way to solve x but here are the limitations of that solution, maybe we close those limitations with Ruby".

<comment><USER28> A true senior isn't even really thinking in terms of specific languages any more and if they were their knowledge is a decade old. They have been doing company-specific things for too long.

Haggling over language minutiae is the hallmark of a junior no matter how many years experience they have. Especially considering how very, very similar Python and Ruby are...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm not sure a job interview is necessarily a good indicator of a person's status/progress any more than a title. It can be just as human and subjective.

I would hope there are other ways to assess your gaps.

</comment><comment><USER31> Sounds like full on imposter syndrome. I feel like a little bit is healthy, but this is quite a lot.

</comment><comment><USER32> "Stop living in a bubble. Don't be afraid to attend job interviews. Job interviews have nothing to do with job seeking."

Huh? He is advocating to blatantly waste the time of employers? And presumably lie to them to get the interview?

I honestly don't know if this is the greatest troll, or worst article, that I've ever seen on HN.

</comment><comment><USER33> Having a job under Capitalism is a Trap.

<comment><USER34> And when Big Daddy Government keeps you on the dole, but eventually falls? Life is a Trap - we all die.

<comment><USER33> That's because capitalist will keep draining everything, whether it's deregulation, cutting budgets or "quantitative easing".

We are at an age where there's so much food and shelter surplus that we shoudn't waste timing writing code for a program that tries to sell crap to people.

Life can be so much better. We just have to follow what the French are doing right now. Upgrade the common sense of what should be basic human rights.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'm not sure if I'm morally OK with advising people to interview 3 times a year. It might be good advice for the interviewee, but it wastes a lot of the interviewer's time (and potentially money).

If I was interviewing a candidate, it would take probably two man-days total across all the interviewers, HR, etc. So maybe $1500 total plus disrupting everybody's schedules. Plus maybe another $1000 in travel expenses.

Asking 3 random companies to spend that every year just so I could feel good about my employability would make me a low-key sociopath.

<comment><USER36> As a person who interviews people.

^ 100% this, actually the cost is probably understated.

I spend 2-3hrs reviewing a candidate's CV/resume before giving the go-ahead to Recruitment to schedule an interview, then there's the interviews which are about an hour each.

Then there's the on-site, which is a stage you'd want to get to, even if you're interviewing to practice.

So, for 3 members of my team it's roughly 3hrs + recruiters time (scheduling consumes so much time) and they have to negotiate with central HQ what salary range we can offer a person for their experience/subjective "goodness".

All-in-all I can easily see it taking more than a week of person-power for a single candidate.

<comment><USER37> As a person who also interviews people, it should not take 2-3 hours to read a resume. If you're spending more than 30 minutes on it, I have no idea what you're reading.

Spending 3 man-weeks finding the right candidate is an easy win over spending 3 hours finding the wrong one and 12 weeks training, remedying bad behaviors, and building a case for termination.

<comment><USER36> Maybe I should clarify a few things because people seem to be confused why I would do this.

1) I'm not just reading your resume, I'm checking any links you've put out (so, checking GitHub contributions if that's listed). If you're credited in something then I'm going to check the team size you were in- basically I'm going to try my best to figure out what questions I would ask you in an interview. (IE; how do you prefer priorities to be raised, do you prefer to work alone or with heavy collaboration).

Generally I find it helpful to have targeted questions in meetings, because meetings are hugely expensive in terms of attention and time. And an interview is really just a meeting with an external person where the topic is the background and prowess of the external person.

2) 12 weeks in training is actually more like 6months in my current position. It's complicated.

3) I live/work in Sweden, probation is 6months, but termination after that is _basically_ impossible. We had someone who's job was basically not being done in any way- it took more than a year before we could terminate their employment. Which is quite expensive if you hire the wrong candidate. (In that case, we were lax in hiring because that particular position wasn't exactly senior, and due to that they were able to pass probation because they looked like they were learning)

Anyway, a cursory glance can be enough to say "yes I want to talk" but an in- depth review of a CV is something I consider to be mandatory before I actually hold the interview.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What's the real European growth rate? - <AUTHOR> http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2008/03/whats-the-real.html <comment> daniel-cussen Yeah.........but in Spain, you have a housing bubble that would make California look sane. When I went there, my relatives talked about 40 or 50 year mortgages, and even 100-year mortgages (Your son has to cosign in some cases). There was a huge swathe of nada between Seville and Madrid, and at one point in this swathe there were 90 cranes building 10-story buildings. Anecdotes don't make data, of course, but the data I've seen also says there's a bubble; not just in Spain, but in most of Western Europe. The only notable exception is Germany.

<comment><USER2> Isn't this evidence that Spain is growing very fast?</comment></comment>