Software developers: How plans to automate coding could mean big changes ahead - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/software-developers-how-plans-to-automate-coding-could-mean-big-changes-ahead/ <comment><USER2> No doubt these innovations are impressive and will change software developers role. But I think the way to think about this is more like how ML replaced expert systems or ruby on rails helps you write less code using meta programming and code gen. It's one thing to generate code it's another thing to maintain it, test it, make tradeoffs, find product market fit, etc. which is the bulk of the job. But we do see innovations in each of those pieces so maybe it will come around sooner than we think and we'll all be no-code + zapier developers.

</comment><comment><USER3> There is still going to be a bridge to gap between what business people want and what the computer needs to do. Software developers will need to still bridge that gap.</comment>


Want to program something "real" where should i start? - <AUTHOR>

Okay so....
currently i have taken a few years of college level programming classes. But have never really learned how to make anything past CLI apps. I have looked into doing it but everything has always been so intimidating.
What i have done:
for school: java - 2 classes,  intro and data structures
c++ - wrote MPI sorting algorithms for a summer job c/asm - a few months experience in a computer architecture course. Processing - tinkered with this, only visual thing i've ever done.
python - self taught SML  and soon Racket - from Programming Languages course on coursera
So basically the only thing i've ever done that wasn't a CLI program was a bit of playing with Processing. I really did like how easy it was drawing shapes. And wrote a decent little shape drawing application in it.
But now i've tried learning kivy, but after the tutorial it's a bit over my head. Does anyone have any advice for transferring from academic programming ( algorithms and such) towards building real world applications? the language doesn't matter but i'd prefer something i know, and could potentially use for 2d games ( silly things like chess/poker). <comment><USER2> Nothing beats real-world experience. My advice, try to build an app that's relevant to your interests or goals. Automating things you'd normally do could be a good starting point. Think of a particular feature you've required in the past and build something that does it. If you're unsure of what to do, try cloning something that is open source. That way, you can consult, and learn from the original source as your develop your solution. Good luck.</comment>


Show HN: Dashing - A DIY Dashboard framework from Shopify - <AUTHOR> http://shopify.github.com/dashing

<comment><USER2> Shopify currently powers over 5 TVs around the office with this. It helps visualize key metrics such as customer counts, signups, shop sales, etc...

</comment><comment><USER3> This is really beautiful, and just what I need right now at my company. Well done, and thank you!

</comment><comment><USER4> Just mounted a TV on the wall at the office for a dashboard yesterday. Perfect timing!

<comment><USER2> Is it a Samsung smarttv by any chance?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is rad!</comment>


Show HN: A Non-trivial Open Source iPad App - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/samuraisam/readdit

<comment><USER2> Guess others here think it's not non-trivial...

<comment><USER3> Awesome design and App. Not a Trivial one at least for people like me...Good starter for beginners like me to experiment. Did u submit this app in Appstore??</comment></comment>


What Is Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA)? - <AUTHOR> http://developer.amd.com/resources/heterogeneous-computing/what-is-heterogeneous-system-architecture-hsa/ <comment><USER2> We're still waiting for the software side to shape up. Operating systems and legacy driver stacks are slow to change, and OpenCL's decline (due to Apple's disengagement) doesn't really help. There's stuff happening though, here's a recent article about GCC 6 & HSA now that drivers are starting to arrive in Linux: [https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=hsa- offl...](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=hsa-offloading- gcc6-hopes)

Real world GPGPU applications are currently almost exclusively on CUDA, and GPGPU programming language development seems stagnant. A return to the roots (=games & consoles) for GPUs?

</comment><comment><USER3> This needs a (2012) label. HSA already happened, it didn't live up to the hype.

<comment><USER4> It's worth mentioning that while HSA specifically may or may not have lived up to its "hype", it did succeed in being on of the first technologies (to my knowledge) to provide hardware support for cache-coherent memory between processing elements. This is an important concept to parallel computing because there is significant latency involved in transferring data between CPU and GPU RAM. HSA backs OpenCL 2.0's SVM (Shared Virtual Memory) and CUDA 6's Unified Memory with actual hardware, making these APIs more than convenient software abstractions.

Hardware unified memory opens up a whole new set of algorithms to GPU- parallelization by removing the memory transfer latency barrier.</comment></comment>


More on why Hugh MacLeod is giving up Twitter and Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://gapingvoid.com/2011/08/21/i%e2%80%99m-sick-to-death-of-hearing-the-phrase-driving-traffic-to-your-site/ <comment><USER2> Same reason Douglas Hofstadter doesn't read anything on the Internet, really.</comment>


Programmer Passion: An Enterprises Most Useful Yet Repressed Advantage - <AUTHOR> http://openmymind.net/2010/10/7/programmer-passion

<comment><USER2> Tremendously good quote:

 _If your existing, potentially expensive and off the shelf solution, was any good then you wouldn't need to mandate its use._

There have been discussions on HN of what characterizes (in a derogatory way) "enterprise software". The quoted sentence captures in a nutshell the discriminator between "good software" and "enterprise software".

FWIIW, I wrote down my thoughts on _why_ "enterprise software" sucks: [http://jerryjousting.blogspot.com/2010/09/three-ninety- perce...](http://jerryjousting.blogspot.com/2010/09/three-ninety-percents- open-source.html)

<comment><USER3> I personally think its a horrible quote and seems to rely on fundamentally not understanding enterprises in any meaningful way.

And its simply a cop-out to say that if what he suggests then hire better programmers (because practically, you probably already tried to hire the best programmers you could).

I love the "empowering dev" perspective, but with no data to back it up, and a very naive sounding post that didn't even, in passing, mention a couple of reasons why such mandates happen (and effictively exist at companies like Google and Facebook) it comes off as completely not credible.

<comment><USER2> I spent 24.8 years in a big company (sold three times "up the food chain" during that time - after the last sale, I made it a serious goal to not make it to my 25th anniversary). I've lived in an "enterprise" as it went from fairly entrepreneurial (founded by Bill Lear <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Lear>) to stifling (PCs weren't locked down, but having unauthorized software was grounds for firing... and getting software authorized was a like a byzantine quest for the Holy Grail).

 _And its simply a cop-out to say that if what he suggests then hire better programmers (because practically, you probably already tried to hire the best programmers you could)._

That is dead on in my experience, but from a different angle. The best programmers aren't interested in working for a locked down stifling enterprise - witness the exodus from Sun - so enterprises _cannot_ hire them. The enterprise I left lost a lot of good engineers over the past couple of years and have not had much success replacing them.

As companies morph into enterprises, the Japanese proverb comes into play: the nail that sticks out gets hammered down. <http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Japanese_proverbs> The result is they lose most of the above average people and only retain average and below average people. The result is their average is below average.

pg talks about this in _You weren't Meant to Have a Boss_ <http://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html> (skip forward to two paragraphs before the section "Programmers").

<comment><USER4> Bill Lear? Which company? You can't just throw out a name like that and not fill in some details.

<comment><USER2> My job history...

Background: Lear Developments created the Instrument Division in Grand Rapids, MI. Lear and Siegler merged, creating the LSi conglomerate.

The Instrument Division in GR spun off another division in Zeeland, MI that made the "Mailmobile", an automatic guided vehicle (AGV) that followed a phosphorescent "trail" on the floor. While I was in college I worked there and hired on full time after graduating.

While I was there, that division was sold to Bell & Howell, then Litton. There was a lull in business (layoffs, no interesting projects, y'know), so I quit and went to work at the mother division, which was still part of LSi. They had fun stuff to work on.

A couple of years after hiring on, LSi was bought by an investment company (Forestmann Little) and the Instrument Division was sold to Smiths Industries. It remained SI[1] for about 15 years. About three years ago, the avionics portion of Smiths was sold to GE.

Bill Lear was an entrepreneur, big time. Thinking back, while I signed on several years after Bill Lear was kicked out of LSi, the entrepreneurial spirit was still alive there. We were creating novel interesting products (e.g. the first solid state crash survivable flight data recorders). As time went on, the division became less entrepreneurial and more enterprisal (to coin a word ;-).

The Dilbert Moment[2] was when the VP of engineering called a meeting of all the engineering departments and told all of us that we weren't going to be writing software or designing hardware any more. Instead, we were going to be a Tier 1 Systems House.

[1] Side note, my buddies registered si.com, which Smiths ultimately sold to Sports Illustrated at a pretty nice profit. My buddies didn't even get a "thank you." :-/

[2] One of my favorite Dilbert comic strips:

1\. PHB, pointing to PPT slide: "We'll save money by outsourcing our I.T. function."

2\. PHB, pointing to PPT slide: "Then we'll save more money by replacing our outsourcing with fulltime employees!"

3\. Wally: "When it's time for us to panic, will there be a warning sound, or was that it?"

<comment><USER4> Sigh. Isn't this always the case. Good entrepreneurial spirit gets crushed as corporations grow. We need more Bill Lears and Burt Rutans in this world.

I chuckled out loud when I heard Tier 1 Systems House. Thanks for that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's somewhat of a chicken and egg problem: if you don't give programmers the ability to choose their tools, you can't hire top talent; if you can't hire top talent, you can't give programmers the ability to choose their tools. Recruiting is also a zero-sum game: if you don't hire the best, your competitors will. That means if technology is an enabling factor in what you do (it doesn't have to be your core competence), empowering programmers is a competitive advantage.

I was at CUFP (Commercial Users of Functional Programming) recently where I had a conversation with Yaron Minsky of Jane Street. He mentioned that due to their use of OCaml (and being one of the few places in their industry where software engineers are not treated as second class citizens) they have a much higher quality of not only hires but applicants. He mentioned a job listing on a caml mailing list yielding a fairly small number of resumes, but a much higher percentage of these resumes translated into phone screens, on-sites and finally hires. I am not sure I'm allowed to disclose the percentage, but it's a fairly incredible number compared to what I've seen elsewhere; even the people they passed on, were of high quality.

They are effectively choosing "the best of the best". If someone is willing to learn spend the time to learn a non-mainstream language (this used to be Ruby and Python in 2004, but now they're Haskell/OCaml/Scala, CL/Scheme/Clojure, Erlang; this may change again, I see at least one of Scala, Clojure or Erlang becoming mainstream) -- and I am talking about actually learn, beyond "fizz buzz" -- chances are they have the passion and the work ethic to be a good programmer.

Of course this isn't a bijective map: there are good programmers who aren't interested in non-mainstream languages (in many cases they have highly specific knowledge e.g., machine learning where the language used doesn't matter as much), but I've yet to see someone take the time to learn Haskell on their own (without being forced to do so for a university course) who wasn't a good programmer: they may not be best of the best or a good fit for every position, but they are certainly not the kind of person you're going to regret bringing on-site to interview.

<comment><USER6> >I see at least one of Scala, Clojure or Erlang becoming mainstream

I doubt that, if only because they are so foreign to most programmers.

That said I would love for a Lisp language to become mainstream again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Passion being the key to success is not limited to programming. If you love what you're doing you'll give it everything. This could be programming or carpentry.

If you are doing what you're doing just for the paycheck you'll do the bare minimum required to achieve your desired performance level (i.e. some may still work hard enough to get an Outstanding rating to get paid more $ but hate what they do).

This is the key thing I've learned to look for in hiring.

<comment><USER8> Success in the Enterprise is dictated by throughput and repeatability, not in coolness of the solution. It's unfortunate, but the nature of the beast. They want their batch reports run on time, every night, and come out 100% accurate.

That's not sexy, but it helps them make $. The end.

<comment><USER6> This is a common misconception: they make money until somebody else comes by and beat them with tech that outclass their own.

The issue isn't that using better tech is better, but that it is better for the job security just to go with whatever everybody else does - then if something goes wrong, you can't be singled out for blame.

<comment><USER9> I agree that it can be a competitive advantage but it is rarely because of the technology itself, it is because of the change in business it enables.

But there a lot of software used in an enterprise that is not a competitive advantage. You could argue that it could become an advantage but often the advantage would be marginal so you're better off working on where you can get significant gains or advantages. To see these opportunity, you need to know your business extremely well, you have to be passionate about the business too, not just technology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Don't mandate stacks, languages and frameworks.

I know someone who had to put his job on the line to get use of Spring vs heavyweight J2EE approved. Seriously. There are entrenched forces who will spread disinformation if it threatens their comfort zone. A corporate environment is one where J2EE is just another checkbox on the thousand-item RFP.

</comment><comment><USER11> Nice rant, but too bad that OP probably hasn't heard some of the more reasonable counter-arguments and understood their logic. Just a few "enterprise axioms":

      - Stuff must work consistently, regardless of who works there.
      - All data and programs must satisfy corporate audit requirements.
      - All data and programs must be backed up and restorable.
      - All technology must be supported, no matter what.

I've seen all kinds of creative solutions to enterprise problems that didn't satisfy these axioms. And you know what happens? Something goes wrong and no one knows what to do.

That server under Joe's desk with those cool spreadsheets just crashed and no one ever backed it up. The nifty little Ruby app that Sue put together; she's gone and no one else knows Ruby. The open source web server just crashed and no one is to blame because there is no vendor to blame. The nine new kinds of smart phones that different sales guys like but no one knows how to support.

It goes on and on. Creative people get creative. Cool solutions help. Until they don't help anymore. Because the costs suddenly outweigh the benefits.

And one more dirty little enterprise secret than many creative people overlook: you can solve most problems with many different tools. Sure the old tools may not be as fun, but they can still get the job done at a lower cost.

In an ideal world, we'd get to work will cool stuff AND help the enterprise at the same time. But if the trade-off is our intellectual gratification vs. the enterprise's profits, the enterprise will win every time; count on it.

<comment><USER8> If you are a passionate programmer that wants to work with new tools, sexy frameworks, and other passionate developers...

 _...you should NOT be working in the Enterprise._

Unfortunately, the nature of the Enterprise will kill much of that because of the 4 reasons laid out above.

<comment><USER12> Still, I wonder how much these limitations could be overcome by good management? Yes, I agree, most enterprises are sluggish and bureaucratic and, yes, there are too many meetings and everything gets decided in a committee and innovative ideas usually get killed by those who are protecting their territory - but isn't all that just a sign of bad management? Isn't it a sign of great management when large organizations mangage to operate as if they are smaller and more nimble than they really are?

When it comes to technology, for sure, innovation often gets killed by those whose job it is to support the infrastructure. But wouldn't good management find ways to lessen the stifling effects of legacy systems?

<comment><USER13> _> ... but isn't all that just a sign of bad management?_

Using the words of Tom DeMarco, it is first of all a problem with the company's culture and atmosphere.

Of course manager can setup structures that encourage or discourage bad behavior, but it's usually impossible for a single manager to change a whole company's culture. However, a good manager can (and should) try to make the best of the situation, that is, establish good communication with other managers and trying in establish a good atmosphere in her/his own division.

So maybe it's all in the hands of the founders and the first managers to establish a company structure that can both grow and stay healthy. It remains to be proven whether this is possible or not.

Currently, the only method known to be working it to just keep your company at medium size. Except for very few kinds of business, there's absolutely no need to grow beyond a certain size.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Efficient Startup Hypothesis - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@josh_nussbaum/efficient-startup-hypothesis-4e94effefc1a#.gg60zbkva <comment><USER2> I'm not sold on this, but the theory is interesting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't get me wrong, it definitely has its flaws and is by no means all encompassing as these things tend to happen in cycles regardless.</comment></comment>


Vacuous truth - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuous_truth

<comment><USER2> It remind me of this statement: X -> Y iff. ~(X & ~Y)

[http://tellerprimer.ucdavis.edu/pdf/1ch4.pdf](http://tellerprimer.ucdavis.edu/pdf/1ch4.pdf)</comment>


LeadGeni.us: User acquisition as a service - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mobileworks.com/leadgeni-dot-us-user-acquisition-as-a-service <comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys, co-founder of MobileWorks here. We were really inspired by the post from PG about acquiring users manually. We have done that before with the help of our crowd so it was a no-brainer to create this as a service. We have been testing this with a number of YC companies and the results have been phenomenal. We are happy to present it to the larger Hacker News community.

Happy to answer any questions.

<comment><USER2> This looks amazing, especially for the "anti-social programmer" types. Or people with no experience in this region of work (ie. me) could easily use the data to learn.

Is this service designed to be used from the very first, or only once the product has been rolling for a bit? Any experience with this?

Also was hoping for a profit based pricing model but can't complain there.

<comment><USER3> Thanks! Tech-savvy folks with great products and no salesforces have certainly been using us a lot, but we're also seeing more experienced and high-paid salespeople using us who just don't want to prospect on their own.

To answer the question: we'll certainly be able to help you from day one, but it's a good idea to do some basic market research first -- you'll be spending money on paid user acquisition before you're confident that people will actually buy what you're offering. However, we can definitely help you experiment with researching new segments and types of customers, and it compares favorably against other kinds of acquisition channels in an early stage (Adwords, for example!)

Where LeadGeni.us really shines is when you have a core group of users and you're ready to kick it up a notch and scale things out users -- we can get you conversations, but if your product is still nascent and changing, these may not be the users you want to talk with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Congrats!

This could be really big: one force that pressures B2B startups to get acquired is that huge companies have a big salesforce with existing customers. That makes it more efficient for multiple products to agglomerate into monoliths like IBM, EMC, or Oracle.

If LeadGeni.us is successful, then it would become something like a federation of enterprise startups that share lead lists. That would in turn lead to a more modular B2B ecosystem with lots of cooperating smaller companies, more competition, and better products for everybody.

<comment><USER5> Based on your comment, I'm going to assume you've never worked in B2B sales. "Lead Lists" are not something enterprises want to share - small or large.

<comment><USER6> Depends, you can try and find companies in different business sectors and fill in gaps for each (with permission of course). The company pays with their list (and a fee to you?) which another could use. As long as it doesn't affect their competitive advantage, it could be a freeish way to grow the list. Not every scenario but there could be a niche, especially if you were the middle man and masked where the data was from and where it was going.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> wc- I wish there was a smaller / one-time price option. I would love to contract out a very specific 'early adopters' type of search (person with x background in y local area so I can meet them in person), get maybe 10-25 leads, and then I can reach out to them and pitch my idea and get feedback on a MVP or whatever.

There is something to be said for doing this type of search for a potential market yourself, but if you are exploring multiple ideas at the same time it could be helpful.

<comment><USER3> You might consider looking at our earlier virtual assistant product, Premier ([https://premier.mobileworks.com](https://premier.mobileworks.com)), which has a few small-scale options available.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am wondering about your economics. Back of the envelope: 800 usd per month (min 80 hrs of work) translates into max 10 USD hourly revenue. Does not sound like much for "expert knowledge".

I suppose there are different approaches: are you using amazon mechanical Turk (there was a recent HN post on it a few days ago)? Or are you planning to use massive scale effects (as in: build up a contact database that you can reuse)?

Could you elaborate on that?

<comment><AUTHOR> We have our own trained crowd from all over the world of people doing different parts of sales automation. So while your lead generation could be done by someone in Philippines your outreach would be sent by someone in the United States. So overall it balances out. We are not based on Mechanical Turk but on MobileWorks which is the company behind the product.

Right now we don't share the lead data between companies because each client has it's own special need. If the leads overlap (which they might sometime) it lowers the effort because the sales people know where to look.

The big advantage we have is the lead list and emails pitches are custom made for each client so we have a much higher response and engagement rate.

<comment><USER8> The problem with the lower effort is that it doesn't really help you the way you're pricing your offering as you're effectively selling time. I understand its the easiest thing to price, but if you price on another metric that the customer cares about (i.e. number of leads or other metric that I care about), then you can take advantage of any efficiency and your economics make more sense. Granted, there isn't an obvious one, as the value of a lead is proportional to the value of the industry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've used this service it's immensely helpful. I used it during the customer research phase of our product and was impressed with the results.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a bunch. I am so glad you liked it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> We've been using another ex-YC company [http://hiplead.com/](http://hiplead.com/) which uses more algorithms and less outsourcing, and they've totally kicked ass for us-- that screenshot on their homepage is from us. I'm ex-google eng and know my way around AdWords, and hiplead clobbered it.

I'm curious if anybody's tried both?

<comment><USER11> I'm very curious now that I've seen that screenshot. Can you tell us roughly what the emails they sent where like? What kind of template, how much personalization, etc?

<comment><USER12> Hi, I'm a founder of Hiplead. To answer your question, personalization and tight targeting are our top priorities. Our platform allows us to generate emails from nearly any online source, so we can create campaigns first, then find leads fit the copy- - resulting in very high conversion rates. Leads come along with social data and we focus on leads that are in your networks first.

Shoot me an email at email@example.com or signup at hiplead.com and I'll gladly fill you in on the details.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Am I right in boiling this down to "outsourced BDRs", or is there more to it than that? Finding quality talent in that space is tough, so hats off to you for finding a good team and scaling up the business. My company (SalesLoft) makes tools for BDRs, so maybe we should talk about how you plan to keep scaling and if we can help in any way.

<comment><USER3> There's certainly more than that, but SDRs (as we call them) are a piece of it. Excellent -- let's chat further! Drop me a note directly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Did you use service to find users for your service?

Joking aside, including Craigslist in the list of places from which you pull your potential users doesn't sound professional to me, especially in a list with others like LinkedIn; It makes the service sound like a web crawler that hits into lots of noise while trying to classify users.

<comment><USER15> Haha, actually we do use our own service to find users. We eat our own dog food, yum...

That being said, we're pretty agnostic to the methods we use to source our leads. We find that different industries can have widely different lead generation methods that are most effective. The advantage to our service is that we can customize how we generate these leads. If Craigslist ends up being the best way, we'll use that, if it's a different method (LinkedIn for example) we'll use that method or any other method that works well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I love this.

So I guess the one thing I would ask is if you guys would be interested in doing a % of sales deal, for startups that can't afford those high fees.

I would think that you could make even more than what you charge on a % basis - if you are confident in the leads you produce.

Just a thought.

I would take you up on that offer if you had that - for sure.

<comment><USER5> Although this sounds like a decent idea, the challenge with it is that you're assuming a couple of things:

1) The start-up acquiring the lead list has the ability to progress the deals to closure.

2) The start-up acquiring the lead list is able to appropriately break-down their revenue in an easily audit-able/non-modifiable manner to demonstrate which $ came from the acquired lead list(s).

This type of thing may be an option for these guys going forward (once they figure out the kinks), but I think they're doing the right thing right now by charging up-front.

<comment><AUTHOR> Excellent points:

>1) The start-up acquiring the lead list has the ability to progress the deals to closure.

We help start-ups figure out a process for doing sales. Most start-ups have some idea of how they want to do their sales and we fine tune the process with them.

>2) The start-up acquiring the lead list is able to appropriately break-down their revenue in an easily audit-able/non-modifiable manner to demonstrate which $ came from the acquired lead list(s).

We also provide monthly reporting on the response rates and so on and it helps the start-ups to understand what their ROI on the process is. In general, the money we are charging is small enough that its always ROI positive.

<comment><USER5> Hey Prayag,

Wasn't implying that your service doesn't provide benefits. I actually believe the exact opposite to be true.

What I'm saying is that it doesn't make sense for you guys to do a revenue split based on how many of the leads closed since you would then be 100% reliant on the lead list purchaser's ability to close the deals (and track each dollar received from the leads).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Having used mobileworks in the past for similar work, I would not recommend them at all. My request was bounced around from worker to worker, nothing was accomplished and they stole my $50 dollars without offering anything in return.

<comment><USER3> Sorry you had a bad experience! We always cheerily offer refunds or set things right when things don't work. I'm happy to look into this myself -- feel free to get in touch with me directly if for some reason this didn't happen and we can figure out what went wrong.

<comment><USER17> I submitted a refund request and it was never honored. Just as the work I submitted to my virtual assistant was accepted but never completed.

I considered it a $50 experiment to see if this would work or not, but not receiving the refund when I asked for it leaves me inclined to warn others about the claims being made.

<comment><USER3> Get in touch with me and we'll get you sorted out! anand@mobileworks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm very worried this is just a "pivot" for MobileWorks to offer VAs at much higher prices. It sounds awfully like hiring overseas "talent" (cheap labor) to SPAM people into buying/trying/testing. They are actively emailing their database looking for people to actually do the service. [http://d.pr/i/qn17](http://d.pr/i/qn17) I highly doubt the interests of LeadGeni.us align with your company's interest. If you want to do things that do not scale fine. Just do it by yourself. Do not expect you can hire people to do it.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is not a "pivot". Our Premier service is still active and have bunch of happy satisfied users [https://premier.mobileworks.com](https://premier.mobileworks.com) . The VA service is little more expensive than leadgeni.us mostly because leadgeni.us is higher commitment service.

We do send out emails to our crowd and give them opportunities for longer work with us. We interview them, vet them and certify them in different skills. Some of them are lead generation, outreach and sales skills. We do this fairly regularly among other things to engage with our worker community and expand them.

I am curious why you thought that this means our interest are not aligned with our customers interests. We would not be in business let alone have that many satisfied customers if we were not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I was close to signing up, until I went to the about page; isn't this a pivot/spinoff from a VA service you guys launched several months ago. I tried that, and was not too impressed by the research. This seems like taking the VA system and just charging a lot more. I'm assuming that "Lead Geniuses" are non-usa based?

<comment><AUTHOR> We do have a VA service but with different crowd (these people are good at sales leads). The problem you didn't get good results was because general VAs aren't really an expert at sales leads and outreach. And that's the reason we have raised the prices because general VA prices won't work for sales and lead experts.

The LeadGeniuses are both US and non-US based. A general rule of thumb is that people who do outreach and interact with the client will have 1st language or bi-lingual proficiency in English, so a bunch of US based workers.

Why don't you send me an email at prayag [at] mobileworks [dot] com and I will be happy to explain more.

<comment><USER19> Sure. . . will send an email. But just a point of advice, even at $800 per month, that is quite an investment in faith when there are not any profiles of "lead geniuses." And as many folks who do sales, it generally takes a nuanced understanding of your industry to generate leads. Any lead that is easily attainable by any other competitor, is not too valuable.

It would be great to have real profiles of the teams/individuals who are the "lead geniuses." Or offer something like the first 10 leads are risk-free.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Like the idea, generally, but two questions:

1) For our company to make a decision it would be really important to roughly know the costs per lead upfront. Have you considered this kind of pricing and if yes: why did you decide against it?

2) do you have any special areas of expertise? A car dealer has different requirements than a biotech startup, so how do you cope with that?

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the great questions! The amount of time required per lead varies substantially between different client types, so giving a cost per lead isn't possible between different types of users. (We've also found that compared to, say, outsourcing shops, a cost per lead model encourages hastily researched leads).

In the first two weeks we return a firm cost per lead, and over the first month, a cost per user.

In general, we've found that B2B user sourcing is much, much easier than B2C, although LeadGeni.us has done the latter as well. The sources are easier to nail down and research, and it's easier to tell pre-contact whether they'll actually have a need for something.

<comment><USER20> B2B is a very general term. While some B2B companies sell their products and services broadly (Stripe and Zenefits are good examples of this), many others are vertically-focused.

I'd be curious to know if you have provided your service to vertically-focused companies and, if so, which verticals you have experience with.

<comment><USER3> Certainly. Finance, insurance, software development, and real estate have been four verticals that have been particularly common.

<comment><USER21> So - you can get leads for software development consultants? That could easily be worth $800/mo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Smart idea. I can say that the fully loaded cost of an online marketing manager (OMM) is somewhere between $5K-$8K a month.

We do a lot of BS like social media, but really we're measured on our ability to bring in trials and paid users.

If you can deliver more leads than the average OMM then you'll be delivering a ton of value and putting some OMMs out of work.

</comment><comment><USER23> You would probably want to know that when you Google "leadgenius" or "lead genius", your site does not show in the first 20 results (atleast). You may want to improve your SEO, if you want to be found. It took me a good ten minutes but not before reaching another similar site- leadsgenie.us

</comment><comment><USER24> Quick question: Do users/leads get shared among startups?

<comment><USER3> Nope, they don't -- users and leads are produced fresh for each client as a work-for-hire, and they're the property of the customer who purchases them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Scraping the internet for email addresses and sending unsolicited emails - isn't this the definition of spam?

</comment><comment><USER26> Congrats on the launch of LeadGeni.us guys! Looks great and is a awesome market fit. Best wishes moving forward!

<comment><USER3> Thanks a lot, Mark!

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I don't understand the plans.

The cheapest plan, for instance, is $800/mo for 20hr/week of lead research. Are these 20hr/week time that a real employee of LeadGenius is using to my services?

If that's the case, it translates to $1600/mo for 40hr/week -- a 20k salary for the employee?

<comment><USER28> Which could be a decent salary for an offshore virtual assistant with a focus on leads?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I asked this in the other Show HN thread. Specifically curious about what class of leads you are focused on -- Just B2B or can it work for say a $100 digital product? Any specific verticals being targeted?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think anandkurkarni answered it in the other thread but here is my take: We can do any type of leads as long as you have some idea of your lead segment. In general B2B leads work much better than B2C leads but a few of our clients have done B2C to kickstart their usage and it has worked well for them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I've used this service before and can say first hand that it is an amazing product. I think there is tremendous opportunity here in all industries.

</comment><comment><USER31> Congrats. Also cool that you give money back if they don't like the leads.

Question: do you consider an 'entry' plan as well (say 150 dollar)?

<comment><USER3> Nope -- the reason is that you can't realistically research much information or reach out to many users in $150 of time. Figuring out and deploying a strategy to find and acquire users takes human time - it's very different from just purchasing a list of leads!

<comment><USER23> Can you please elaborate on the money back guarantee?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> So you rebrand "outbound sales" as a "user acquisition service" and suddenly it's en vogue? Incredible.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can call it outbound sales as a service if you prefer but it's the same thing, we will help you run and scale your sales operation.

<comment><USER32> Great, while I am at it I will call "emailing people unsolicited" as "spam".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Have just subscribed to the plan.

Extremely interested in the service, really hope it works. Have no idea how, yet... but decided to jump in.

<comment><USER34> Let us know how it goes. I'm eager to be sold on this but am concerned over the pricing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> This looks great! I wish you the best with it.

</comment><comment><USER36> How is this different from simply running ad campaigns with lead gen companies?

</comment><comment><USER37> Looks pretty spammy to me.

</comment><comment><USER38> Any plans for an API? That would be super useful for our users to purchase leads from your service.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey there, we already have an API and we are testing it with a bunch of users. If you want access please email me at prayag [at] mobileworks [dot] com</comment></comment>


Classroom 7 Bootstraps Online Learning Site Using Cloudant NoSQL Service - <AUTHOR> https://cloudant.com/blog/classroom-7-bootstraps-online-learning-site-using-cloudant/

<comment><USER2> I'm pretty syched to see developers taking on the interface of offline and f2f courses.</comment>


Phonebloks: A modular phone you update a piece at a time - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57602510-1/phonebloks-a-modular-phone-you-update-a-piece-at-a-time/

<comment><USER2> Cool idea. Like a white box PC platform. Will it happen? Probably not. The iPhone took the world by storm by being a no-thought-required pretty machine, so this is almost the opposite. Would HN people love it? yes.

As a related aside, in contrast to iDevices, the Galaxy S3 is the closest thing to a fully user-servicable phone I've found on the market. (hopefully the S4 is the same). Once you've unglued the glass one time, you can easily replace internals like both cameras, all buttons, glass, speaker, digitizer, etc, as well as the back cover and battery as designed. The parts are dirt cheap on eBay. I don't even use a case - there's no need since you're not hauling around a $700 glass-like block that you will inevitably break.

</comment><comment><USER3> Earlier discussion: [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6372692](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6372692)

Discussion on reddit: [http://www.reddit.com/r/electronics/comments/1m4m0f/this_is_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/electronics/comments/1m4m0f/this_is_currently_on_the_front_page_a_good/)

This is not a good idea.

</comment><comment><USER4> Direct to Source: [http://phonebloks.com/](http://phonebloks.com/)</comment>


Investors Are Buying More of the U.S. Housing Market Than Ever Before - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/investors-are-buying-more-of-the-u-s-housing-market-than-ever-before-11561023120 <comment><USER2> Here's how you perpetrate a wealth transfer from average homeowners to the rich:

1\. Deregulate mortgage lending to cause a housing bubble.

2\. When it bursts, bail out the banks, and let people lose their homes, resulting in the homes being transferred to banks and landlords, causing more speculation and price increases.

3\. Meanwhile, make sure the proportion of economic growth going to workers is kept minimal, even as the stock market booms.

4\. Now, these workers not only have to sell their labor to the rich for paltry returns, have their retirement (if any) invested by the rich, borrow from the rich to go to college, but also rent from them in perpetuity.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRh0QiXyZSk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRh0QiXyZSk)</comment>


The Nanda Devi mystery – Plutonium lost on India's second highest mountain - <AUTHOR> http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/3QfYqLadggrbnrn41H0mAJ/The-Nanda-Devi-mystery.html

<comment><USER2> As for missing RTG's, it would not be at all surprising if they grew legs.

Maybe not the locals, but I would think most educated modern people, if they found the equipment, would have a large clue what was inside. There are not too many things you can put in a box on an isolated mountain top that would make it stay hot. It's not batteries, and it's not a engine.

In the late sixties, there were a dozen governments that would pay handsomely for such a box.

<comment><USER3> Yes, but how many people are well educated? The USSR made many similar devices, for powering lighthouses etc, and most of them are rusting away. A number of people have died after trying to steal the casing for scrap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> >Takeda quotes McCarthy: "I saw the sherpas fighting over who got to carry (the SNAP)," adding: "They had no idea of what it was. They'd put the thing in the middle of their tent and huddle around it. I guarantee none of them are alive now."

I wonder if they themselves knew about the risk involved.

<comment> Tuna-Fish If they fully knew the risks, they would have probably used the device to warm up themselves. The plutonium-238 used in the SNAP devices is notable for not having any significant decay modes other than alpha. So long as the device remains intact, a sheet of paper is sufficient for radiation shielding.

<comment><USER5> I've always read the outer layers of your skin are sufficient; just avoid ingestion or inhalation and you're fine.

This is a very sloppy and/or fear mongering article, e.g. when it talks about the device being 1/2 the size of the Hiroshima bomb, which was a uranium gun assembly design. It never points out you can't make this isotope of plutonium go boom, or the much fuzzier probability that a breach of the containment wouldn't likely cause a widespread contamination problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Reactor-grade plutonium in the headwaters of the Ganges, which supplies millions of people. Probably better if it was stolen than lost.

</comment><comment><USER7> THE REAL QUESTION OF DESIGN: How much WATTAGE/POWER would a 56kg package of Guru Rinpoche (made of plutonium) be able to generate?

any scientists care to comment?

<comment><USER8> Curiosity has a battery of 5 kg and it delivers 2 kW thermal and 125 W electric power.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> so- if the mountain wasn't magical before, it is now

</comment><comment><USER10> Did they find it?</comment>


Utilizing the CoderBits Api - <AUTHOR> http://blog.donovanglover.com/2013/01/coderbits-api/

<comment><USER2> This is a very thorough tutorial explaining the schema for the API as well as many ways to fully consume it.

</comment><comment><USER3> great stuff</comment>


Free Indie Hacker Newsletter- Top Products via PH, HN, Betalist, etc. - <AUTHOR> Hey HN! My co-founders and I just launched something new and shiny!
Product Club is a daily newsletter of the best 10 new products to help you start & grow your business (here: https://productclub.xyz/)
Hundreds of products launch every day on sites like Product Hunt & Hackers News. And, it's time-wasting and draining to keep up with the launches and to sort through them to figure out which are useful business tools. So, we've decided to do it for you, FOR FREE.
If you've been wanting to start your own business or grow your current one, this daily newsletter is a great way for you to stay current on the cutting edge of business tools and tech.
It's completely free + every day we share an exclusive deal of 50%+ discount from our favorite business products.
Also, if you want to stay updated on our new product launches, this is a great way to do it! <comment><USER2> Hmmm...I think maybe you should offer up a bit more info, I am very hesitant to give my email out to what seems to be nothing more than a bulk marketing scheme.</comment>


Whoa! Highest ever upvotes on Programming, Motherfuckers - <AUTHOR> http://news.ycombinator.com/over?points=500 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2355427<p>~800 upvotes by 5:37 PT Motherfuckers. <comment><USER2> Not ever, but in the recent past anyway. /best seems to go back a few days at most.</comment>


Google suddenly blocks paying developers from accessing AdWords API - <AUTHOR> http://groups.google.com/group/adwords-api/browse_thread/thread/dc957e898d7f2aa5?pli=1

<comment><AUTHOR> Google didn't feel the need to notify affected developers. On an SEO blog [1] a Google spokesman says that developers should re-apply and wait 5-6 weeks.

[1] [http://www.seroundtable.com/adwords-api-tokens- bug-14015.htm...](http://www.seroundtable.com/adwords-api-tokens- bug-14015.html)</comment>


Fitbit: Path to IPO [Infographic] – EquityZen - <AUTHOR> https://equityzen.com/blog/fitbit-path-to-ipo/?utm_source=hackernews&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=BlogPost <comment><USER2> Impressive, founders hold 10.9% each. ~600mm each at current valuation. Curious to see what it is in 6 months.</comment>


Why California Can't Be Home to the Hyperloop - <AUTHOR> http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/227807 <comment><USER2> I think the point is valid in a larger sense, when applied to the US. The US can't be home to the hyperloop.

The US political and regulatory system has become so corrupt and byzantine that we just can't do big projects here any more. Not of this scale. (Seeing other comment - the Bay Bridge is nothing like this scale, and the fact that's a $7billion project works against your point not in favor of it).

It isn't knee-jerk anti-unionism to discuss the union involvement either. It's not just that they'd want to unionize construction and operation, raising costs, but the unions who would feel threatened by this (airlines, rail) and other lobbying organizations, as well as the petrochemical industry would all gear up to delay, undermine and attack this project.

If the Hyperloop is ever made a reality it'll be elsewhere, most likely China. The ideas will flow freely in the US but the implementation will be elsewhere, somewhere they have the will and means to make it happen.

(To pre-empt the straw man that I'm saying the US is too corrupt but China might do it so I must be saying China is not corrupt - of course it is. Just a different type of corruption, one benefits the politically connected through inaction, the other through securing powerful monopolies and funneling state money to private projects like this.)

All that being said, I would love to be wrong about this.

</comment><comment><USER3> Texas would be an ideal place for this.

Seeing something like the Hyperloop built between Dallas and Houston (so much empty space between sides on I-45) or Houston and Austin would be amazing. The sheer number of pipefitters and folks that do orbital welding (learned in oil & gas work) would make finding people to do this a cinch.

Then again, look at how much bullshit Southwest Airlines went through with Love Field and DFW, and there is a good hint that something like this would be lobbied against by Greyhound, Southwest, and everybody else.

<comment><USER4> Ha - came here to say the same. You know where he should build it? Austin. Austin is IDEAL for him - he can build a small mockup, then build out to Dallas. The next station would then go to Houston - and he'd be able to have one "hub". Next up: New Orleans (500mi away). Then you've got all these other markets - Denver is 900mi away, Albuquerque is 700mi, Nashville is 850mi... If it's optimized at <1000mi, Austin is perfect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd say its far more likely that if building a hyperloop is ever executed, the USA will be the last place to get the thing. Honestly California can't pull itself together to do anything and I can't picture another state in the union that would unanimously approve funding what most politicians would see as an experimental hippy dippy sci fi solar monorail that isn't backed by oil lobbies or any unions. Elon Musk just gave China the transit system of the future, not us

</comment><comment><USER6> What a jackass. The whole Texas vs California regulatory environment is so tired. How the heck would this be "ideally a private project"? I could easily see politicians like Brown or Arnie getting behind something like this and it getting some real traction. We just spent $7b on the Bay Bridge so it's not like we can't get this scale of stuff done. The bulk of the land is already government owned/controlled (mainly I-5). This reads like it was written by Forbes...knee-jerk anti-California biz environment.

<comment><USER7> That sounds like a good point (I'm not from California so I can't judge), but the quality of your argument is significantly reduced by the initial ad hominem.</comment></comment>


Chemists Were Wrong About Splenda - <AUTHOR> http://acsh.org/news/2016/06/16/chemists-were-wrong-about-splenda/ <comment><USER3> Potentially interesting article that gives up half-way through at the most interesting part to digress into an anti-anti-synthetic chemical rant. Not that I'm against that, but I was really intrigued to learn why a chemical that has the properties of being reactive isn't reactive. The article just says that your body doesn't break it down. What does digestion have to do with it? If a molecule is reactive, then its reactive and should potentially react within the digestive system. So why doesn't it? That's the interesting bit that I was hoping to have answered and what the article seemed to be leading to until it stopped.

In other words, imagine an article about cyanide that spent half of its time explaining all the parts of cyanide that could potentially react with organic chemistry, and then abruptly ended with "and your body absorbs it through the digestive system, so that's why it's bad." Unsatisfying, right?

Also, why does the molecule look like insecticide or flame retardant? That isn't explained either. Does the fact that it has hotspots make it look like that? Or is there something more about its structure.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure. I'm not a chemist, so I went and looked up a table of bond energies to see whether chlorohydrocarbons should actually be more reactive than the corresponding hydrocarbons, and it seems like the answer is actually yes, because the bond-dissociation energy isn't determined purely in isolation; the rest of the molecule affects it. A Cl-CH₃ bond has an energy of 339 kJ/mol, while the H-CH₃ bond has an energy of 431 kJ/mol, and the outrageously stable F-CH₃ is 452 kJ/mol. In isolation, the C-Cl bond has an energy of some 397 kJ/mol, while C-H is only 337 kJ/mol.

I think typically the issue with reactive molecules is not that they react within the digestive system — if they're reactive enough to do that, then they may burn your mouth or even stomach, but they're unlikely to make it to your intestines without reacting with the rest of your food. The issue is typically that, if they get absorbed into your bloodstream, they can find their way to all parts of your body, and then wreak havoc on the one or a few particular molecules they react with. So apparently sucralose doesn't get absorbed into your bloodstream, and it's not _so_ reactive that you get chemical burns, so it's harmless. And it doesn't get absorbed because it doesn't react with sucrase (or invertase), maybe because the big chlorine atoms bumping around there result in steric hindrance that keeps it from binding to the enzyme properly.

As for insecticides and flame retardants, there is a large family of organochloride insecticides (including DDT), and organohalogens are common flame retardants, including the famous PCBs, but also things like HBCD. Both DDT and PCBs are notable not for being _reactive_ but for being _unreactive_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The site looks like it went down. Cache/mirror of the text: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:hmNYN92...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:hmNYN92_UesJ:acsh.org/news/2016/06/16/chemists- were-wrong-about-splenda/&num=1&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1&vwsrc=0)

</comment><comment><USER6> I know HN hate anecdotal stories, but here goes anyways. 6 months ago, despite my regular exercise routine, I was about 20 pounds over my college weight and prediabetic. Instead of following my doctor's recommendations and going on Metformin, I cut all nearly sugars out of my diet and replaced it with sucralose, fat, and fiber. Now, exactly 5 lbs sugar equivalent of sucralose later, and I'm back to my college weight.

While I hate the idea of artificial sweeteners, I hated the idea of a lifetime of medications and being overweight. Everyone's body is different, but for me they played a huge role in getting my health back.

<comment><USER3> > While I hate the idea of artificial sweeteners

Don't take this as a personal attack on your opinion, but I just don't understand this. The distinction that we make between artificial chemicals and natural chemicals seems to be whether it was invented by humans or invented by evolution. That's a fine distinction to make, but why are human invented chemicals seen as the _worse_ of the two? When evolution invents a chemical it's completely random and untested. When humans invent a chemical they vet it through rigorous study and testing. Given a random chemical from nature and a random chemical from human labs, I'll take my chances on humans.

Real-life examples of evolution engineering... heart conditions, dementia, HIV, anemia, etc. Anemia is a good example, because it makes humans immune to malaria. Just a few side effects though...

I feel like our track record is stellar compared to all the follies of evolution. So why are our chemicals viewed in such a negative light compared to these Loki designed chemicals? It's absurd.

Speaking specifically about sugar versus artificial sweeteners, all our studies to date have indicated that sugar is decidedly toxic at average consumption levels, whereas sucralose/aspartame is non-toxic. Again, it seems like nature designed a worse chemical than us.

<comment><USER7> I'm on the fence on this one. Here's the logic of the anti-artificial crowd, as best I can put it...

Humans have evolved alongside natural systems. And if humans have been eating something for a very long time, it's probably alright to eat. If a new sugar- like substance came into existence, it would probably come into existence as incremental changes to an existing system. Let's say that existing system was a staple food source for humans. Humans would gradually change as their food source changed, and adapt to it... Or, that food source would gradually become toxic to humans, and we would stop eating it.

Now, take human-invented stuff. You have a sudden new thing which hasn't had generations of humans munching on it. Some lab tests show that it's great. But who really knows? Biology is super complex. And lab tests often have questionable funding and incentives.

Consider the day that wonder-bread was introduced to the world. Old-school fermented sourdough bread had been eaten for a very long time by healthy humans. Wonder-bread had various chemicals tested in isolation which had proved to be positive for health (iron, calcium, etc). But now that enough time has passed, I don't think anyone looking back would suggest that wonder- bread is preferable to traditional sourdough fermentation.

Asbestos is another good example. We thought the stuff was just the best thing ever. Turns out, in the very long run, it's pretty bad news.

So, there's a certain logic to trusting evolved-systems over human-designed systems.

<comment><USER8> Soft white sandwich bread was an aspirational food. People didn't start eating it because they were excited about the health benefits of fortified flour, they started eating it because they had been taught to believe that white flour was a sign of wealth. The government decided to fortify flour because deficiency diseases are pretty stupid to put up with when you know how to prevent them. This happened quite some time after modern milling brought nutrition-less white flour to the masses.

And to be clear, at one point, refined flour was a sign of wealth and status: [http://contemporaryfoodlab.com/hungry-world/2015/09/white- is...](http://contemporaryfoodlab.com/hungry-world/2015/09/white-is-the- warmest-color-a-history-of-refined-flour/) .

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I remember learning about sucralose along with the rest of saccharides, in college biochem back in the 00's.

Even then it was taught that sucralose is a relatively inert compound that doesn't get taken up through the intestine, and doesn't pose a threat - <USER2> the prof did cite some study that sucralose accumulated in rat's liver if they ate huge quantities of it. I don't think chemists have been thinking sucralose is toxic for a while now.

I also remember that if anyone could figure out how to cheaply synthesize L-glucose, they will be _billionaires_.

<comment><USER10> > I don't think chemists have been thinking sucralose is toxic for a while > now.

Sucralose is, without any doubt, the most extensively studied artificial food additive of all time. I'm reticent about consuming food with artificial additives and preservatives, but I have absolutely no qualms whatsoever about ingesting sucralose. I have a huge bottle of liquid sucralose in my otherwise largely organic kitchen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's good to see that Splenda isn't the potential toxic substance we began to wonder it was, but I agree that it tastes icky.

That said, I wonder why Stevia isn't considered to sweeten drinks? It's very sweet, it's natural like sugar (meaning it's not synthetic or lab-grown), it also has zero calories, and it doesn't taste icky!

<comment><USER12> > it's natural like sugar,

Why is that relevant? That's orthogonal to whether it is healthy or unhealthy. There's no reason, based on that information, that I should expect it to be any more or less toxic than Splenda. I mean, the wrong 100% natural mushroom will kill you pretty dead.

<comment><USER13> Well that's not true. Saying it's natural suggests that we have atleast evolved with it in the environment, likely interacted with it at times and have developed biological means of interacting and dealing with it. If something is not natural (i.e. doesn't normally exist in nature), then we would not have developed a biological response to it yet, which means it frankly more dangerous because the body does not know how to deal with it.

<comment><USER14> I get your point, but as the above poster said, often the body's way of dealing with things is to suffer and/or die. So...how is having an existing way to "deal with it" terribly helpful?

(Not trolling, seeking honest clarification)

<comment><USER7> Yeah. I think the "natural" people aren't saying all natural things are better than all man-made things. e.g. Poison ivy tea isn't better for you than Pepsi.

But, looking at what generations of long-lived people tend to eat[1] _is_ probably a reasonable guide to nutrition and health. Manufactured/artificial stuff simply isn't on that list since that stuff hasn't been around long enough to be part of a multi-generational study.

[1] [https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_buettner_how_to_live_to_be_100...](https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_buettner_how_to_live_to_be_100?language=en)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Nice article and I like the matter-of-fact writing style.

Makes me want to study more chemistry. Any suggestions from this audience of how to get into it? Pick up a Chemistry 101 text book?

<comment><USER16> Zumdahl's _Chemistry_ and the _CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics_ were the mainstays of my high school and college chemistry education.

<comment><USER17> don't read the CRC Handbook, it's like the encyclopedia though: fun to flip through and you might actually refer to it occasionally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Note, the publisher of this article, the ACSH, is considered "industry- friendly" and their medical director had his license revoked for fraud.

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

</comment><comment><USER18> For anyone considering taking Splenda as a form of weight control: It's true that Splenda has 0 calories, but it also causes your body to develop greater cravings for sweet (sugary) food/drinks. In the long term, this can cause you to eat/drink in a more unhealthy manner, undoing all the caloric benefits you thought you were getting from Splenda.

[https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy- drinks/...](https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy- drinks/artificial-sweeteners/)

</comment><comment><USER19> ahem... just because sucralose is not super reactive does not mean that it is not harmful. some evidence suggests it can screw up your gut microbiome: [http://www.nature.com/news/sugar-substitutes-linked-to- obesi...](http://www.nature.com/news/sugar-substitutes-linked-to- obesity-1.15938)

</comment><comment><USER20> Too bad it tastes weird.

<comment><USER21> Have you tried aspartame? I've found that Coke Zero tastes much closer to real sugar than Diet Coke.

<comment><USER22> Diet Coke uses aspartame also.

I figured the difference between Coke Zero and Diet Coke was branding for people who don't want to drink something labeled as diet.

EDIT: I drink both regularly (including today), and I personally do not perceive difference in taste. YMMV.

<comment><USER23> Coke Light => Women

Coke Zero => Men

<comment><USER24> Not sure about the downvotes on this one. My recollection is that Coke Zero was introduced to compete with Pepsi Max, and that the primary reason was that men were reluctant to buy things marked as "Diet" (plus there was a long history of Diet Coke being marketed almost exclusively to women [eg [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6Sre- wpGHE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6Sre-wpGHE) ]).

Not saying any of this is a good thing... but it's a thing.

<comment><USER23> Thanks, that's the comment I wanted to write but I'm out of neurons right now...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Fantastic writing style. Modern, clever, pre-emptive. Hopefully even accurate. Loved this:

"Since the stuff is synthetic, it's guaranteed that Joe Mercola and the rest of the anti-chemical Internet dopes are going to try to scare you, and they'll probably succeed. I didn't even bother to look."

</comment><comment><USER26> I don't consume sucralose if I can avoid - not because I believe it's toxic, but because I've observed that my short-term memory is significantly deteriorated after consuming it.

It might be the placebo effect, but I'm fairly confident it's not. Placebo effect or not, it has a discernible impact on my cognitive ability, so I avoid it.

<comment><USER27> I get short-term headaches from aspartame myself.

I don't know exactly why - but I've read that drinking artificial sweeteners may trick the body into anticipating an energetic food causing it to release insulin. The resulting mild hypoglycemia causes headaches.</comment></comment>


There are No Small Changes  - <AUTHOR> http://contrast.ie/blog/there-are-no-small-changes/

<comment><USER2> Don't forget that you have to deal with existing messages, which may be longer than 140, and may be truncated in your new views/layouts, making history unpredictable.

Don't forget that you're going to want to add attribution to the SMS, so you really have less than 140 characters.

Oh, and don't forget that you are going to drastically decrease the value of a percentage of your reviews, which would have previously been long, detailed, and useful.

The complexity of any modern day advanced system makes even these tiny changes balloon. The worst part isn't even the expanded work, it's the inability to predict how long all the ripples will take to fix.

The subtle bugs that got introduced by a "tiny cosmetic change" are more easily fixed in a web environment, but become pretty devastating when you have a slower release cycle, or someone gating your releases (like Apple).

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm often a part of the design sessions at my work, and all the questions that look like so much in text are covered in an audio chat in 5-10 minutes, and for something like adding an error dialog and character counter, another half an hour turnaround from our designer for the graphics. I'd say any feature that takes less than an hour to design is a small change.

</comment><comment><USER4> I often hear programmers announce how they did something in minutes that would have taken me days. I'm going to keep this on hand to cheer me up on such occasions.

</comment><comment><USER5> Some changes are smaller than others ;-) but it takes familiarity with the system and wisdom to know the difference.

</comment><comment><USER6> On the message front, I have learned by now to always ask the client or marketing for the text up front. Why? Because it doesn't matter what you pick as the developer, they will want to tweak it because that's the only thing they have power over. Might as well get it over with first.

</comment><comment><USER7> Why should the SMS use case limit the general use case? If someone wants to submit a review by SMS (really?) then they can deal with being limited to 140 characters. Problem solved.</comment>


Amazon's 'ambassador' workers assure Twitter: we can go to the toilet any time - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/aug/23/amazon-fc-ambassadors-twitter-working-conditions <comment><USER2> Why would Amazon pay for PR to say something bad about themselves? Of course these sponsored tweets are going to contradict negative employee anecdotes. If anything, this shows Amazon is more prepared to pour money into shifting online sentiment than reviewing employee issues in their warehouses.</comment>


I wasn't getting hired as a Data Scientist. So I sought data on who is - <AUTHOR> https://www.kdnuggets.com/2019/09/getting-hired-data-scientist-sought-data.html <comment><USER2> This has been posted before, did he get a Data Scientist job, or is this a case of the band playing on as the Titanic sunk?</comment>


Incestuous kings may have built Ireland's Newgrange passage tomb - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/06/incestuous-kings-may-have-built-irelands-newgrange-passage-tomb/ <comment><USER2> Since they've found a lot of ancient DNA there are many more questions that they should be able to answer.

One is how closely related were these neolithic people to modern Irish people and/or ancient DNA from later Irish populations. There are intriguing parallels between the story told by the DNA and Irish mythology about the origins of the Irish people, but I'm not exactly sure what the best way to match them up is. Knowing to what extent the passage tomb builders contributed their DNA to later populations might shed more light on that question.

A second question is since these neolithic Irish kings shared two relatively uncommon cultural traits with the Egyptian Pharaoh's: first degree incest and a strong interest in monumental architecture, and since both groups were near contemporaries (on a multi-millenial timescale anyway) , it would be very interesting to know if the two were genetically related in any way.

<comment><USER3> > One is how closely related were these neolithic people to modern Irish > people

The article explains that these are related to the first farmers, who arrived (slowly) from roughly what's now Turkey, and mixed with local pre-farming people (who had been there a few millenia).

In northern Europe these people were all but completely replaced by the Indo- European arrivals, who (with various smaller-distance and smaller-number movements, like the Vikings) were the people living there until the 20th C.

<comment><USER2> If that's the case then they might correspond to the Tuatha De Danann of Irish mythology who were supposed to have been the first people to inhabit Ireland (I think the Irish have traditionally believed that these were indeed the mound builders).

What's confusing is that the article also says they probably arrived from Spain and/or France, which is where the Celtic (and hence Indo-European) Gaels are said to have arrived from much later. Perhaps both groups followed the same route to Ireland at different times ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Newgrange is super cool to visit. I remember when we went to Ireland on a castle stay vacation (also recommended) and on a lark decided to hit it up having never heard of it. Completely blown away. We ended up in a group with just me, my wife, and the guide and got a really wonderful in depth and personal experience. In my book much more interesting than Stonehenge.

I was also struck with how similar it appeared to large tombs in South Korea. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Tombs_of_the_Joseon_Dyna...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Tombs_of_the_Joseon_Dynasty)

<comment><USER5> Knowth, which is part of the same Brú na Bóinne complex, is more impressive in my opinion. The reconstruction of the front of newgrange is... questionable. Knowth also has a third of all the examples of megalithic artwork in western europe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I visited Newgrange on a whim several years ago while staying in Dublin. I liked it so much I stayed a few days and explored the surrounding areas. Newgrange is the largest but there are numerous smaller tombs in the area, including Knowth and Dowth.

If you are able definitely take more than a day and experience the area on a deeper level. It's one of the most peaceful places I have ever been.

</comment><comment><USER7> If you are interested in Newgrange, and ancient Irish history in general, the Mythical Ireland Facebook page is doing nightly video podcasts that may be of interest: [https://www.facebook.com/mythicalireland/videos/116891482346...](https://www.facebook.com/mythicalireland/videos/1168914823466810/)

It is run by Anthony Murphy who lives near Newgrange and is a real font of information on such matters.

</comment><comment><USER8> There's a celtic myth in Ireland that their ancestors came from Spain. This was so widely believed that at the time of the Elizabethan conquest of Ireland, Irish refugees were granted the right to settle in Spain because of their shared ancestry.

<comment><USER9> Turns out there's some truth to the story. The native Irish are genetically related to the Basques and people from the Galicia region in Spain.

[https://www.irishtimes.com/news/genetic-studies-show-our- clo...](https://www.irishtimes.com/news/genetic-studies-show-our-closest- relatives-are-found-in-galicia-and-the-basque-region-1.700877)

The story itself is mostly derived from the Book of Invasions (Lebor Gabála Érenn) and arrival of the Milesians who were Gaelic.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebor_Gab%C3%A1la_%C3%89renn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebor_Gab%C3%A1la_%C3%89renn)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is the _incestuous_ detail significant/material to the story or just eyecatching clickbait hooks?

<comment><USER11> The article covers DNA sequencing that proves that part of the myth. The cultural implications are also discussed.</comment></comment>


Spoof commits on GitHub. From Anyone - <AUTHOR> https://spoof.krypt.co <comment><USER2> Let's wait until these guys find out that I can even send email as Linus Torvalds!</comment>


DoubleTwist's iTunes Alternative (That Works With Android) Adds Podcast Support - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/10/doubletwist-podcasts-android/

<comment><USER2> As a DoubleTwist user, I have to say the product absolutely sucks. Updating a single album would resync tends of gigabytes of music to my Android device, the software provided no user feedback, and appeared crashed for a large portion of the time. I have no trouble in recommending people avoid DoubleTwist.

In the end, I found MissingSync for Mac -> Android syncronization and it works - not without it's quirks (mainly around compilation albums) but much better than DoubleTwist.</comment>


MIT D4M: Signal Processing on Databases - <AUTHOR> http://www.mit.edu/~kepner/D4M/ <comment><AUTHOR> Video Lectures: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNGKX-4PRsk&list=PLUl4u3cNGP...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNGKX-4PRsk&list=PLUl4u3cNGP62DPmPLrVyYfk3-Try_ftJJ)

Book: Graph Algorithms in the Language of Linear Algebra [http://epubs.siam.org/doi/book/10.1137/1.9780898719918](http://epubs.siam.org/doi/book/10.1137/1.9780898719918)</comment>