Intermittent Fasting Promotes White Adipose Browning by Shaping Gut Microbiota - <AUTHOR> http://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131(17)30504-1 <comment><USER2> Neat. I've been fasting for an average of 6 days at a time, once-a-month. It's hell for the first 3 days but it gets better.

Related but different, perhaps someone with a bio/med background knows: Regarding the metformin FDA Phase 4 clinical trial for life extension _and_ a conflicting recommendation from my PCP that metformin (1500 mg) has a significant risk of injury from acute hypoglycemia in those (like yours truly) _without_ type-2 diabetes but _being_ overweight (about 20%). I didn't see anything in the literature or box warnings about _common_ hypoglycemia risks, especially in good liver & kidney functional patients, and the body can regulate glucose with a panoply of pathways. Seems to me, metformin looks like it has massive potential to benefit many people to up-regulate healthy pathways, but only if doctors understood its limitations and capabilities in settings outside of diabetes. Or am I missing or wrong about something?

[https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02432287](https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02432287)

[https://www.webmd.com/drugs/2/drug-11285-7061/metformin- oral...](https://www.webmd.com/drugs/2/drug-11285-7061/metformin- oral/metformin-oral/details/list-sideeffects)

[https://www.drugs.com/sfx/metformin-side- effects.html](https://www.drugs.com/sfx/metformin-side-effects.html)

<comment><USER3> Out of curiousity, how did you choose your regimen? It does sound very hard to follow.

I fast every other day (the EODF method the paper studied). It's actually surprisingly easy and from what I can tell from the (no more than a dozen) sources I've read it's just as effective as longer-term fasts. I've been at it since July, with two weekly breaks basically. I was also overweight before starting. My BMI went from 26.3 to 24.2 since then, something I had been trying to achieve for at least a couple of years, with no success.

I'd also be interested to hear from someone with a medical or biological background. I'm particularly interested in the effects of fasting on blood pressure and kidneys. I have an older relative who is a kidney patient and overweight which probably contributes to their high blood pressure and it'd be great if I could recommend they follow my diet.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I was 28.5, currently 26.9 and aiming for 20.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here is some preliminary reading: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5274505](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5274505)

</comment><comment><USER5> ELIhuman?

<comment><USER6> Every-other-day fasting seems to convert "bad" white fat to "good" brown fat, but nobody really knew why. This study found that fasting causes the bacteria in your gut to produce certain molecules that might be responsible.

<comment><USER2> One can image both the supplement and medical industries will rush to deliver a pill or a "probiotic."

Also, it might be interesting if weight loss could also be partially achieved by fecal transplantation from known, extremely healthy individuals.</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook acquires link-sharing app Branch for $15 million - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/13/5303702/facebook-acquires-link-sharing-app-branch-for-15-million

<comment><USER2> This app never had any users outside the media bubble...seems like a soft landing acqui-hire.</comment>


Ask HN: Which is the most successful one-person business you heard of in 2019? - <AUTHOR> You can find a lot of articles about the most successful startups / companies in 2019 but these lack information of one-man companies, unless you started as a one person and now you have dozens of employees.<p>My candidate is my friend. He built mobile app that generates revenue around 30 - 50k $ per year. <comment><USER2> Ben Tossell of Makerpad. He made about $200k in the past year from a site that teaches others how to build interactive sites and apps without writing code.

Lynne Tye of Key Values. She made about $400k in 2019 from a site that connects software engineers with companies that that share their intangible values, e.g. diverse team, good for parents, fast or slow-paced, etc.

Robert James Gabriel of Helperbird. He struggled a lot with dyslexia growing up, and even had a teacher tell him he should give up and drop out of school. Luckily another teacher encouraged him to learn to code, and he's been quite prolific since. Helperbird is a browser extension that helps others with learning disabilities browse the web easier. Robert recently brought on a co- founder, but he'd grown the app to a "comfortable five figures a month" in revenue.

Plenty more on [https://www.IndieHackers.com](https://www.IndieHackers.com) sharing their stories via interviews and on the podcast, and also posting about hitting revenue goals and other milestones here: [https://www.indiehackers.com/milestones](https://www.indiehackers.com/milestones)

<comment><USER3> I'm still blown away that Key Values (as cool an idea as it is) manages to pull that kind of revenue. One thing I'd be curious to see is if the site actually can maintain revenue past year one?

<comment><USER4> Recruiting really, really pays.

<comment><USER3> So surely Key Values takes a share of recruiting fees, not just a fee to list on their platform? Idk, it seems like this site wouldn't help cut down on candidates that are completely not qualified to work at a given company, which to me seems like a much more daunting hiring challenge for small companies / startups.

<comment> Pete-Codes Their whole business model is not taking a cut AFAIK. If you listen to the indie hackers podcast that will help explain why :)

Imagine if you run a company and have to pay $30k to a recruiter to find someone. And then imagine paying a fraction of that to post all your jobs on Key Values.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm a one man show. I made a SaaS targeted towards a specific company. I did all the work up front, got them to trial it, and when they loved it they singed a contract for just over $100k/year.

I have a site with ads on it that makes ~$1500–2000/m in ad revenue.

I also do some hosting/maintenance for clients. 4 clients and it's about $1,000/m.

All in it's about $130k/year and it requires about 5 hours a week of my time. It has freed up the rest of my time to keep building similar projects that can both boost and diversify my MRR.

I'm very grateful that I'm able to work on projects I enjoy now, but more importantly it's given me time to spend with my family and be around for my kid.

<comment><USER6> Wow, those number sound so high for a third world country that I can't help thinking that if I were in your situation I would give half of that salary (5k monthly) to my brother and father so they wouldn't have to worry about money again. Congratulations for being in that situation!

<comment><USER7> Coming from scandinavian welfare state, it is really difficult for me to understand why someone would give to their relatives some of their income. Especially if you earn it by working, and the reasoning being so that they don't have to worry about money = have less pressure to work.

I don't want to judge anyone, just wanted to state that there is clearly quite a big cultural gap here. I don't know anyone around here who would do similar things.

<comment><USER8> > _it is really difficult for me to understand why someone would give to their > relatives some of their income._

This is an interesting mindset. I don't want to judge you either, but I never understood the value of keeping my money and collecting wealth. If I were struggling, I wouldn't go out of my way to help my family. But if I had extra income, I would help my family if they were in need.

<comment><USER9> He is from a country with a strong socialist welfare system, so when one is in need, the government is there to assist them and they don't need to feel like they are a burden on their family and friends.

<comment><USER8> Agreed, but this reminds me of the old joke about a bruised scout who comes limping to his friends. "What happened?", they ask. "I helped an old lady cross the street", says the scout. "But why are you so hurt?" "She didn't want to cross the street".

Obviously, if my family doesn't need help, I wouldn't try to give them money. But if they were in need, I wouldn't say that it's not my responsibility to help either. I think this is a simple judgement call. The efficiency of the Scandinavian welfare system is besides the point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If successful means total benefit delivered to shareholders, then I consider my one-man company to be very successful.

Used to be a corporate attorney grinding high billable hours at big firm. Quit to start a solo law practice serving clients working with my favorite thing, cryptocurrencies.

I made $100k working about 30 hours per week from home. Drop off and pick up kids from local school on cargo bike. Take them to the park after school a few days a week (babysitter gets them other days). Client list is kept short to manage stress and avoid need to hire employees.

<comment><USER11> I'm happy for your success, that sounds like a dream come true.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm running MinistryOfFlat.com and I have made 7 figures this year. No investors or co workers. No marketing beyond my 2k twitter followers and a website. Solve a very specific and hard problem and the right people will find you.

<comment><USER13> Just read through all your stuff, the UV unwrapper is very cool. Do most people use it with 3d paint tools? It seems the small disconnected bits would be hard to paint by hand.

some thoughts/questions:

\- Do you use a library for packing? This alone is a lot of work. Since you write in C, are you using boost polygon or CGAL for the computational geometry algorithms?

\- Have you thought about a data-driven approach? Unwrap and packing are geometric operations, but seam marking/segment classification may be amenable to an ML-based method (specifically the spectral graph CNN that came out recently). This seems like the largest hurdle to more "human-like" unwrapping but I'm only a hobbyist so this could be way off base.

I'm almost tempted to create a competing product, but alas I already have a startup in a different domain : ]

<comment><USER12> I don't use libs for anything. I write everything from scratch. Not having any dependencies is a huge win for many of my customers. You can find some of my source at gamepipeline.org

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> First that comes to mind is Joe Rogan. He started a podcast in 2009.

His SocialBlade profile says he makes between $16,500 - $264,000 a month from his youtube videos alone.

But the bulk of his downloads are going to be from his rss feed, where he has between 2m-20 million downloads per episode with about 4 ads baked into each episode. If he charged a (low) standard of $20 per 1,000 downloads for those ads, this means he makes at least $160,000 per episode. He does like 20 episodes a month. Some believe Joe may be the first podcaster to make a billion dollars. If he hasn't earned that already he will in the next few years.

Let me reiterate. Joe started his podcast himself. By himself. Like as in, he set up his Libsyn account, bought his own mic. Booked his own guests. Then published it all himself. Now he has very minimal help, like 1 or 2 people to help him. It's so insane.

Now you might say "that's not a one-person business". But in this gig economy, not many people are. There's always someone hiring a lawyer, or graphic designer, or podcast producer, to work freelancing gig by gig. So the single person business is usually getting help from others. But there are other podcasters who have also done it all themselves, and are raking it in too.

<comment><USER15> Pretty sure he was a celebrity before though, that kinda makes things easier than for the avg joe blow.

<comment><USER16> While true, not sure it's a material point in a discussion about who's the biggest outlier you can think of. Outliers get to be outliers because of non- standard factors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Sidekiq makes ~1M/year in gross revenue. I believe the only full-time employee is the founder, and it doesn't sound like there are any material recurring expenses:

[https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/016-mike-perham-of- side...](https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/016-mike-perham-of-sidekiq)

It's the most profitable one-man show I know of, although there's many that I've run into that ~500k, albeit with a much higher operational burden.

<comment><USER18> Mike created a quality product that was much better than the alternatives at the time. I remember working in a Rails shop and struggling with Resque.

<comment><USER17> Agreed. Sidekiq solves a real problem much better than the alternatives. As soon as your app starts to make real money it's worth paying for enterprise for the support + added features. I feel like there's got to be other businesses to be built by creating 'premium' open-source packages for common pain points in application development.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Evan You is making Vue.js financed by Patreon donations. Looks like about 19k/mo, which is 230k/y. Although there are most probably people who help him, he is doing it mostly on his own. And I suspect that Patreon is just one of his income sources. [https://www.patreon.com/evanyou](https://www.patreon.com/evanyou)

</comment><comment><USER20> I run a one-person company [1] whose tech makes reading on screen easier/faster/more accessible. The B2C tools (iOS app and browser plugin) bring in 5 figures, but in 2019 the IP licensing took off.

We have large educational clients that are integrating the tech because of its benefit for students (especially those with ADHD and dyslexia). IP licensing is great because it means I don't need to spend time building the integrations myself, and I don't have any costs attached to the licensing deals, so it's pretty much all profit. In 2020 the IP licensing will greatly exceed the B2C revenue, and we may even make the B2C tools free at that point.

1: www.beelinereader.com

<comment><USER21> Do you think it makes sense to sell instructional content under IP licensing for basic education institution? I have produced a lot of basic infosec awareness materials this year I could be revamping to make suitable for teachers and school administration. Payment would be done once a year, more or less aligned with a new pack release which would contain updates/new content.

<comment><USER20> Just to clarify, would you be selling to K12 or higher ed? This could wrap into a "media literacy" package, which is taught in K12.

My gut reaction is you would not want to position this as IP licensing if selling to schools. We do IP licensing to edtech/education companies, but our school offerings are all software/SaaS. I think schools would find the notion of IP licensing to be a mismatch, which would create friction even if the offering itself is a good fit.

<comment><USER21> Basic education, mainly. All levels except higher-Ed. Yes, the idea is to wrap it into digital literacy/citizenship modules that teachers could be using in their classes as complementary topics.

I'm struggling to find the right way to position this as a service in which the client/user can work, edit, deliver the content or part of it without having commercial ownership over it, e.g. cannot resell my content to 3rd parties.

<comment><USER20> Selling into education (especially K12) is tough, and many startups have died on that hill. The sales cycle is slow, budgets are limited (unless there's a specific line-item for what you're selling, which is possible since "digital/media literacy" is popular these days), and billing can be problematic.

If I were you, I'd find other companies that are already in the space, see what they offer and how they price/sell, and either mimic them or consider joining forces in some way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'd imagine that many users don't comment because they feel their salary mix is too sensitive.

I'm a mobile app dev consultant that also maintains a few node/docker appliances for industrial IOT clients.

I make enough to dedicate 10 hours a week (sometimes nights and weekends) to build and maintain an electron app that I sell for $50 a license. My software is beginning to compete with other software that costs $500 a license. I have a lot of room to grow, and it's super unsexy: label printers. I basically created the label design app I wish I had. You can check it out at [https://label.live](https://label.live).

<comment><USER23> Wish I'd discovered this back when I needed it, all label printing software is garbage but this looks perfect.

Just one issue - can't easily find the price of your app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I have so many ideas and the path to reaching customers just seems impossible. I am constantly saying to myself, who could be persuaded to PAY for this? And yet so many people here have successful products that I NEVER would have thought could work (a color gradient on text?!?!). I do not know how people reach actual revenue on their side projects.

<comment><USER25> I have a lot of ideas and the capability to build them all. I'm sure I'd be able to sell them as well. My problem is that I don't have time, because I'm the sole income earner for a family of four. I've tried to get numerous projects off the ground, but it always required giving up sleep and putting my day job under threat. I don't have runway because that money is earmarked (not by me) for a deposit on a house in one of the world's most expensive markets.

<comment><USER26> Get a slower-paced job? I'm assuming you're in the Bay Area by the mention to world's most expensive market - there's plenty of very high paying jobs here where you don't exactly have to worry much, and it isn't particularly hard to get them.

You can also go a very long way by using a small portion of your income to pay someone in a cheaper location to code for you. You can literally pay a full time engineer somewhere else if you stop eating lunch + one starbucks out every day, for instance!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I run a small MOOC helping country side municipalities/rural communities in Scandinavia with teaching their youth and young adults about IT, networking and cloud technologies. It started as a pilot project in a small municipality north of the arctic circle and I sold my first license in February. It then quickly gained attraction in similar types of municipalities when the results came in.

It was a lot of work in the beginning, but now I usually have a very nice schedule. Every week I spend around 4 hours researching different topics, 8 hours on updating or creating videos for the platform and 4-8 hours in video meetings with customers or regarding new business opportunities.

This year I made north of €150k (~$167604) and will double that before Q3. Seeing how things are going, most likely I will not be a one man show by the summer due to a need for account management and/or content creation, but it's doable.

<comment><USER28> Hey there, congrats! How to reach you ? I run a digital product consultancy in Paris and we help SMB's to increase performance on internal processes

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> My wife.

She runs her own web/digital marketing company and is the only full-time employee (which includes time for school pick-up/drop-off). She has a few freelancers for graphic design and content writing and I help out as I can while working a full-time corporate job.

Her company revenue is over 300k/year.

<comment><USER30> That is _awesome._ When did she start the company? What has her growth strategy been and how has she acquired new clients?

<comment><USER29> She's been running it for about 12 years, basically not long after the kids started at school. Growth has been organic, probably around 20% year on year at a guess.

For a long time new clients were mostly Google Ads/Remarketing, word-of-mouth and customer referrals and a few ongoing relationships with sales executives in traditional media like TV, radio, etc. Over time organic SEO has come into it as her ranking improved.

There's been minimal networking which is always a concern if online stops working. There's just not the time to be out at business chambers, BNIs, etc, look after kids and get work done. It's also a long term commitment.

<comment><USER30> I've got a business that my wife and I are launching, as well as a couple of other ventures queued up for 2020. All of them will rely on effective digital marketing. I'd love to visit with your wife, see if there is a fit. My email is chrisrikli at gmail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm a one man development and consulting shop and have been so for almost 12 years.

My 2018 gross revenue was $600K and 2019 gross revenue will be about $780K.

I'm an extremely efficient developer, a very good salesperson, and I'm an absolute fanatic about delivering high quality work _on time_.

I don't presume to have any special knowledge but would love to find a way to help other devs/tech people do what I've done.

<comment><USER32> I'm a solid full stack developer and I feel like I have the time flexibility and ability to start a side consulting business. Do you have any tips to get started? How would you go from 0 to your first client?

<comment><USER31> Absolutely

0\. Make sure your house is in financial order. If you are a habitual user of credit cards, have high monthly debt obligations, and no saving, before you even think about going out on your own, change that.

1\. Audit your ability to estimate time and hit deadlines. Most developers are rubbish at knowing how long a project will take, even a small one. Make sure you can hit a deadline. This is more important at the outset than your ability to estimate.

2\. Start thinking about yourself as a provider of solutions rather than as a developer. You happen to have the superpower of being able to create software, but that's just a tool. Real value is delivered by providing solutions to problems within a business.

I could write pages on each of these points, if you have further questions I'm happy to answer.

Getting your first client, a couple ideas: \- Talk to small marketing / ad agencies in your town that won't have internal developers, offering to put some technical muscle behind what they're doing for their clients. \- Look for people in your personal network that could benefit from your superpower. Offer to build tools to solve the issues they're dealing with.

These are super generic ideas, I can offer better and more targeted advice if I know a little more about you and your skillset. Hit me up at email@example.com.

<comment><USER32> Hey this is really amazing advice, thanks a ton for sharing! I'll definitely reach out with more questions! Especially the time estimation part. Even during my day job I find I tend to underestimate. Over estimating is probably more desirable in this line of work.

<comment><USER31> Yeah, time estimation is really tough. When I started I figured out I just needed to take my time estimate and double it. Then I got really analytical about it. Now I take my gut estimate and add 20%, but I've also gotten away from time-based billing into value-based estimating (that's a whole other very deep subject).

The "really analytical" phase wasn't too crazy by HN standards:

\- Break the complete project in Pivotal Tracker down to stories no larger than 8 points

\- Track the time spent on each story in Harvest

\- Use that data to figure out how much time a given point score equated to, along with variance.

\- Work to reduce the variance.

I should also say...I've been estimating software for, good god, I haven't done this math lately, 18 fucking years. Do anything repeatedly that long, your instincts become pretty solid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Pull Reminders. Launched in 2018, acquired by GitHub in June 2019. A very good product that does one specific task really really well. I assume it was acquired for at least a few hundred thousand, if not a few million.

</comment><comment><USER34> Sorry to hijack slightly, but figured it's related: I am trying to build a "lifestyle" side project into something profitable, as a goal to replace my job. I think I have a good product and niche.

What I want is some sort of mentor network. Someone who has already succeeded where I haven't, and that I can pester with questions, check I am on the right track, vent, etc, every now and then.

Does such a thing (or something like it) exist?

<comment><USER35> Drop me a message. I've started and run several ventures, a couple of which became more than lifestyle. Nothing is done alone though - there are always people who help you on your journey; employees, friends, mentors, family. Happy to point you in a direction

<comment><USER34> Great, thank you. PM'ed via LinkedIn.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I run SideProjectors, which generates some profit. But my reason for posting is for anyone who wants to take-over someone's side project, then have a look at some of the projects posted - [https://www.sideprojectors.com](https://www.sideprojectors.com) \- You don't need to start from zero. :)

<comment><USER37> Signing up to SideProjectors using Twitter requires permissions to follow, unfollow, tweet, update account info, read direct messages, etc. That's extremely scary.

<comment><USER36> Apologies - we only need to get user account info (to get the twitter username). Will go and remove those permissions now - we had this Twitter integration set up ~3 years ago and didn't review it - No excuses! :) Sorry for scaring you (and other users of course).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I'm a one-man army, too. I've built SaaSHub [https://www.saashub.com](https://www.saashub.com) & LibHunt. I left my job a few months ago and since then have focussed on developing and growing SaaSHub.

It's been growing steadily for the last 2-3 months. My expectations are that it will generate ~$2,500+ in January and $100k+ in 2020 given the current growth.

I have a massive list of ideas that I will work on next. Yet, I'd like to be fully sustainable (in an expensive city like Sydney) before jumping to the next project/idea.

<comment><USER39> How does SaaSHub generate revenue? I have neither seen any ads nor any payment possibilities.

<comment><USER38> There are some ads on internal pages only. Not too many.

Also, companies can pay for a featured listing [https://www.saashub.com/featured-products](https://www.saashub.com/featured- products)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Drew DeVault's SourceHut ([https://sr.ht](https://sr.ht)). It may not make as much revenue yet, but it provides value to the open-source community by developing a set of developer collaboration tools that actually improve on existing workflows and embody the Unix philosophy.

</comment><comment><USER41> Pierre Abel of L'Escapadou - educational iPad apps for pre-K to early elementary. I don't know his 2019 numbers but I suspect he did at least $350k this year, down from $600k+ a couple years ago. (Note that the revenue charts in his post don't included educational bulk sales which he says are 45% of his revenue.)

[https://medium.com/@PierreAbel/9-years-on-the-app- stores-b58...](https://medium.com/@PierreAbel/9-years-on-the-app- stores-b58dc858af88)

</comment><comment><USER42> Not a success story, but I've been building my venture for some time now and recently started making revenue.

We answer all legal questions in 42 minutes ([http://www.helplicit.com](http://www.helplicit.com)), and are now expanding that to other domains ([http://www.fortyq.com](http://www.fortyq.com))

The reason I'm writing here is because I'm constantly surprised by the relative ease with which one 'lands' a 100k per year contract, or accidentally makes an API that forks its way to glory. I'm fortunate to know some amazing founders, some of whom are raising millions in VC. Been in and out of accelerators myself. Yet no story I know starts or has ever been like that.

Imho, it is excruciatingly hard work to provide people value and get them to pay for it. Takes time, constant follow-ups, a strong value proposition..none of which gets built jlt.

I wouldn't be fooled by the end result of $ x M ARR. There is a lot going on behind the scenes, which rarely gets spoken of because it sounds just sounds rad to say that I had an idea and somebody just signed me a cheque. No matter the entity at the paying end, people are fundamentally programmed to be uneasy letting go of large sums of money. Takes a lot of convincing to get there.

Having said that, building is an addictive hellride and I wouldn't trade it for anything else :)

Happy to share more of the limited experience I have, feel free to PM. Cheers to building!

</comment><comment><USER43> I'm working on [https://remoteleaf.com](https://remoteleaf.com), at this point it's not a successful business. I'm in the process of appearing and talking about it in the 2020 version of this thread :)

</comment><comment><USER44> All these nummers and still, my dad is a vet and earned 300k € in his best month ( without much sleep).

Most of the even more successful ones don't even take that in per year.

And yes, he is a one man show, no tech involved. It was very eye opening to me, since my dad can't even boot a PC.

Competition is local though, it's 6-9 other local veterinarians. He seems to be the most successful one (= he is the one everyone sees passing by day and night in the car)

<comment><USER45> Yes that is impressive but the difference is your dad has to work for that money whereas with software once you achieve success in you do very little work relative for the amount of money you bring in.

<comment><USER44> And everyone is forgetting their unpaid hours they did for getting it off the ground.

You still need support for all of your users and actual sales. Which is also work.

Users can ask for a refund if your cloud goes down.

I would also rephrase "once you reach success" to "if you reach success"

The statement is also not valid for consultants, only for business owners with SAAS products/licenses.

TLDR; you're statement is largely false. Success != Luck

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> This was posted a while back about their tech stack but lots of good comments here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20985875](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20985875)

Also very similar post as this one, some good comments: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13167156](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13167156)

</comment><comment><USER47> A friend of mine runs a 1 person business. Well, technically, he does have an assistant who does his office admin and books.

My friend has steady gross revenues of $6M a year. When I first met him about 8 years ago he was 26 and living at home with his parents. He once remarked on how much he appreciated his mother still doing his laundry and cooking for him and his father.

I forgot to mention, he has extremely high gross margins and EBITDA. He does all the work himself other then that admin I mentioned already.

What is his business, you are probably wondering?

He owns internet domains. He flips them like real estate. He looks at Google trends, buys undervalued properties, develops their traffic via SEO, generates affiliate sales revenue, and if given the opportunity, then sells them at a much inflated value. He owns 1000s of domains and has built highly automated systems to efficiently manage them.

<comment><USER48> What sort of content is supplied by such web sites?

<comment><USER47> My understanding is he looks for phrases people are increasingly searching for such as "BHP Free Sippy Cup" and then buys a domain such as bhp-free-sippy- cups.com. On the site, he just displays affiliate links to various vendor product pages for that product, e.g. Amazon, etc.

The trick is understanding the trends and having the SEO skills to efficiently build the traffic. He can't put too much individual time into any one property because it will on average only generate a few hundred dollars a month in revenue.

If the trend becomes popular enough someone comes in and buys the domain for their real sippy cup business.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> 2 months ago [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21332072](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21332072)

8 months ago [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19701783](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19701783)

</comment><comment><USER50> Depends a lot on your definition of "successful" and "business".

Most very successful one person businesses I know of are specialty consulting businesses.

<comment><USER51> This is a very good point. The definition I would use is _not selling your time_ , where my income is not just a multiplier of the hours I put in, even if the multiplier is high.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I singlehandedly built a small business HR SaaS - [https://www.hrpartner.io](https://www.hrpartner.io) \- over the past few years and grown it to a stage that I can now take a salary from it after 3 years of living on savings. I DO have a co-founder now who joined in May of this year, so strictly speaking I am no longer a one person business, but I created all the 50,000+ lines of code (and 200+ database tables) of my system myself.

EDIT: It has actually been a bit of a family project, with my wife helping out with voice overs and my son helping out with video production etc.

<comment><USER34> Awesome. What were the big mistakes you made along the way?

<comment><USER52> Thanks. I guess the biggest mistake in the early days was doing 'scattergun marketing' and not focusing on where our users actually were. Once we narrowed down and marketed to HR managers and business owners via LinkedIn and Capterra etc., we saw great results.

Another mistake was probably not sticking to a marketing avenue long enough. We would sometimes change our website completely a couple of times a month, so we never really knew what was working or not as we didn't have enough quantitative data. Nowadays we just rarely make sweeping changes, but instead make small tweaks to our marketing and watch analytics for patterns.

I do blog about some of these learnings over at [https://devan.codes](https://devan.codes)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I heard that the site builtwith is still being run by the single founder, maybe he has recruited help by now, but if he still run it all alone then it is most successful one person business I have heard of in 2019.

<comment><USER38> Yes, I've heart it's a one-man army project. His/their office is based on the other side of the bridge where I live. One of my small goals for SaaSHub is to be as successful as BuiltWith :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I built a Product Management Interview training platform and earned about 50K total with 100K in the lifetime. Next step is to transition to online course and expected to make about $200k/year.

</comment><comment> Pete-Codes I believe Pieter Levels makes about $500k a year from Nomad List and Remote OK combined.

As Courtland said, Ben Tossell and Lynne Tye are going great!

I recently interviewed Belle who makes Exist app for iOS with her partner Josh. They make 10k a month and are ones to watch: [https://www.nocsdegree.com/self-taught-developer-talks- learn...](https://www.nocsdegree.com/self-taught-developer-talks-learning-to- code/)

</comment><comment><USER55> Jeff Meyerson at the SW Engineering Daily podcast. I'm not sure if he has any employees (maybe one part-time?), but the podcast pulls in $60k+/mo.

[https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/114-jeff-meyerson-of- so...](https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/114-jeff-meyerson-of-software- engineering-daily)

</comment><comment><USER56> I'm not sure how it's doing today but back in 2017 park.io was making over $1M/yr [1]. If I had to guess it's probably bigger today.

[1] [https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/034-mike-carson-of- park...](https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/034-mike-carson-of-park-io)

<comment><USER57> Hi - I added a partner in 2019 and we are doing even better now, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Browserless.io - wonderful profitable niche running headless browsers in the cloud. Not sure if still one person anymore.

</comment><comment><USER23> Way back when, Markus Frind was the first guy to make 1M / month off Adsense on the plenty of fish dating site. Which looked like absolute garbage but it was about the only free dating site at the time and it had grandpas, teenagers, crack whores and everything in between.

Eventually he employed his wife to do customer support and now it's been sold for millions and has hundreds of employees.

I used to do maintenance on a fairly popular dating site which was all horrible php spaghetti code, MD5 passwords ... the works. By the time I got to the office at 9AM they'd already received over 1000EUR in payments, every single day. They used really scummy techniques like fake profiles operated by off shore workers.

</comment><comment><USER59> I know a guy from our local industry who has a free cybercafe software. He's making about $500k/year for the past 20 years or so. It's a one man business.

[http://handycafe.com](http://handycafe.com)

<comment><USER34> How does it generate revenue?

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Pinboard

</comment><comment><USER61> I worked with an entrepreneur who runs an affiliate site that pulls in about $100k/month, has zero employees, and no office.

<comment><USER62> What kind of site is it? If it is a review site, does he use the products he reviews?

<comment><USER61> It's a software review site and yes, he does use the products he reviews.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> [https://carrd.co/](https://carrd.co/) by [https://twitter.com/ajlkn](https://twitter.com/ajlkn) \- great for building small/simple websites/landing pages - seems still growing since its premiere.

</comment><comment><USER64> Surely Ben Thompson (Stratechery[0]) must be one of the most profitable single person businesses / publishers around. One person, email distribution, multiple millions in revenue per year.

[0] [https://stratechery.com](https://stratechery.com)

<comment><USER65> I've always respected his work. But I don't subscribe to blogs, just see it pop up on HN frequently. I didn't realize he was monetizing it. I'm surprised he's doing so well with tbh but good for him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Not the "most successful", but notable nonetheless - [http://www.tinytouchtales.com/end-of- year-2019/](http://www.tinytouchtales.com/end-of-year-2019/)

That's the person behind Miracle Merchant and Card Crawl games.

</comment><comment><USER67> I'm a one-man army and my latest microstartup is [https://visalist.io](https://visalist.io)

Last month I earned around $7K and my estimate is I will cross $100K this year.

</comment><comment><USER68> You could try looking up Solo Founders on Indie Hackers.

[https://www.indiehackers.com](https://www.indiehackers.com)

</comment><comment><USER54> I run a one person company and made about 50K last year. This year, plan is to bring the courses online and generate about $100K in total.

</comment><comment><USER69> @robsun what kind of app your friend built?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's medical app. I don't want to provide more details as he is not aware I mentioned him ;).

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> The guy from builtwith.com

</comment><comment><USER71> i think coinmarketcap was solo or one person

<comment><USER72> Solo = 1 person

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> Can't reveal product without their permission.

But know of 1 person company that generates $500k revenue per year and gets its customers via SEO.

<comment><USER20> That's a lot of revenue! What's the cost structure? That can make all the difference in the world.</comment></comment>


List of Tools for Bootstrappers - <AUTHOR> https://logmyhours.com/blog/essential-tools-for-bootstrappers/ <comment><USER2> Blog posts, sign-up pages, and fundraisers can't be tried out, so they can't be Show HNs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Should I post it as a normal post then?

<comment><USER2> I am not sure, I think moderator should change your title. I copied this text from the rules page [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah. Good to know :). Cheers

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > Visual Studio Code – great for working with Ionic

You got that wrong, my friend. VS Code is not just for Ionic its an IDE and there are plugins for many frameworks/programming languages and even productivity.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've only used it for working with Ionic, so I can only give feedback on that. I updated the text to point that out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > ClubHouse – product management tool. Similar to Trello but so much better.

I can't bring myself to trust this opinion when an affiliate link is used.

<comment><USER5> There's a few affiliate links.

It looks like the author also added Blog Planner[1] to the list which they wrote, it uses the same GA account ID. You should really disclose these things. I don't have an issue with using affiliate links, but I think should clearly disclose them.

[1] [https://blog-planner.com/](https://blog-planner.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> There was only 2 affiliate links, the other was for rescue time, but I have removed them both.

Blog planner is just a small tool I made on the side. But yeah, I should point that out. Thanks for the feedback!

<comment><USER5> These kind of lists are really useful in helping you find tools you wouldn't normally come across and I'll definitely check out some of these links!

It's just better being upfront with any bias you may have.

<comment><AUTHOR> For sure! It's a great way to discover new tools.

Yeah good to know. I don't do a lot of writing, so always trying to improve. Cheers</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Chicago95 Linux Theme - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95 <comment><USER2> The GUI elements look right for the most part, but the font and spacing gives it away --- the way it's rendered just screams "Linux" to me, for some reason.

Here's a previous attempt at something similar, and once again the fonts produce a "something is off" feeling:

[https://kmandla.wordpress.com/projects/lookalike-windows- xp-...](https://kmandla.wordpress.com/projects/lookalike-windows-xp-classic/)

<comment><USER3> Honestly it might be a trivial thing to most people but I really do find the way Linux tends to render fonts to just be really telling and ugly, this has genuinely put me off using Linux more for development stuff as it's a big problem with VSCode in my experience

<comment><USER4> I use the go font[1] for VSCode on Ubuntu 18.04 and I find it to be pleasant.

1 = [https://blog.golang.org/go-fonts](https://blog.golang.org/go-fonts)

<comment><USER5> Took me while to find _just_ the TTFs...

Here if anyone else just wants the fonts: [https://go.googlesource.com/image/+/master/font/gofont/ttfs](https://go.googlesource.com/image/+/master/font/gofont/ttfs) /

Edit: They don't work with Windows. :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That looks beautiful. Why don't we make nice clean Uis that use space well anymore? Why is everything now light grey on dark grey, and 80% blank space?

<comment><USER7> Protip: Don't use GNOME :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I just set this up on LXDE (Lubuntu). It's great. I had to combine it with the Openbox theme 'Micro95' in order to get the correct title bars, though.

</comment><comment><USER9> (Can this really be MIT/GPL given the artwork..?)

<comment><USER10> That must really depend on the jurisdiction, no?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Brings back some horrific memories. I was scarred by the windows 95 experience, which is how I got started on linux.

</comment><comment><USER12> Cursed theme

</comment><comment><USER13> Why is this a thing? Serious question, not being snarky.

<comment><USER13> Why would someone want their modern computer to look as if they're on Windows 95? That's a reasonable question.

And F the elitist douche that thinks I'm not smart enough to read Hacker News, as if tech people are just sooo brilliant.

<comment><USER14> There's no need for a greater purpose or a deeper need or a technical goal.

Someone wanted it and decided to make it. That's all there is to it.</comment></comment></comment>


Chrome will stop displaying ads that are repeatedly flagged as disruptive - <AUTHOR> https://www.blog.google/products/chrome/browser-web-worth-protecting/ <comment><USER2> I wish Google would do something against the so called 'Rogue Redirect Ads' in their AdSense network. Ads that redirect the parent frame.

When I browse the web on my Android phone, I get redirected to spam every 10 pageviews or so. And no, it's not a problem of the phone. It's a known issue that ads can break out of their iframe:

[https://www.androidpolice.com/2017/11/08/heres-protect- rogue...](https://www.androidpolice.com/2017/11/08/heres-protect-rogue- redirect-ads-right-now-chrome/)

IMO Javascript should not be allowed in ads at all. Unless that gets implemented, I have the feeling that all blog posts about improving the user experience are just lip service.

<comment><USER3> If you're on Android I very highly recommend using Firefox with uBlock Origin.

<comment><USER4> Or Firefox Focus. It quickly became my default browser on Android, with the regular Firefox left for sites where I maintain a session.

<comment><USER3> Focus is probably the best option on iOS but I don't trust Mozilla to block tracking the way I want it done, I'm far more comfortable with uBlock Origin handling it. If I want the extra protection of deleting my cookies and history on exit I'd rather just start a private tab. Most of the time, I want to stay logged in on sites.

<comment><USER5> Why do you distrust Mozilla in this case?

<comment><USER6> For me it's not a matter of trust, it's just that there's no customizability to the ad-blocking on Focus, even at the level of choosing blocklists to subscribe to, or adding particular elements to be blocked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Apologies if the comparison offends anyone but every time I see PR (public relations) about ad-blocking by Google, I see them as a company like Goldman Sachs, who has taken positions on both sides of a bet, so to speak.

There is a glaring conflict of interest as others have pointed out; it cannot be ignored. Through strategic acquisitons such as Doubleclick, Google and its subsidiaries are the largest warehouse of advertising on the www. The company is the machine that keeps web advertising humming along.

Google wants to keep everyone happy. Users are fed up with advertising. For example, Google could offer a search engine free of _any_ ads, as they did in the early days.FN1 They have more than enough cash to do it. This would make users very happy. Google could try to support itself by selling something, besides advertising. But this will not happen. Why? (Rhetorical question. Not asking for an answer. We all know what it is.)

By creating a web-advertising juggernaut and collecting the _maximum allowable quantity_ information about users through every means legally possible, (far beyond merely search engine usage) Google has taken a position against users (the ones who dislike ads) as well as for them (as argued in myriad PR pieces).

Google is not curbing it own actions (as the #1 promoter of advertising on the www), instead it is taking aim at advertisers. Some of those could be existing or potential clients (which might seem intriguing).

But while its clients (be they advertisers, users or others) may experience "losses", like Goldman (or not; sorry, bad analogy!), Google always "wins".

Any PR piece proclaiming that Google is taking sides with users (for a "better web") ignores that _they also have taken sides with advertisers_. Google has big bets on advertising. As everyone knows, users do not contribute significant inputs to the Google balance sheet; advertisers do.

FN1 At that time one of the Google founders called out advertising as being something to avoid. Interestingly, there was no "disruptive" vs "non- disruptive" advertising distinction.

<comment><USER8> Google has also learned the lesson though that ads which produce a negative user impression aren't sustainable, and bad for both Google and advertisers. They have a vested long-term interest in making ads palatable and useful, or their cash cow goes away. Their incentives mesh with mine -- I would be less likely to demand ad blocker if ads weren't so disruptive.

<comment><USER9> > Their incentives mesh with mine

If that were the case Chrome's disruptive ad blocker would have been released shortly after the rise of flash ads

If that were the case I would be able to completely opt out of tracking and accept slightly less targeted ads

We could go on and on here. Suffice to say I _do not_ believe Google's incentives align with most on the web any more.

<comment><USER10> > If that were the case Chrome's disruptive ad blocker would have been > released shortly after the rise of flash ads

This seems like an odd argument. Are uBlock's incentives unaligned with yours because they didn't release their adblocker earlier? What does the timing of the release have to do with anything?

> If that were the case I would be able to completely opt out of tracking and > accept slightly less targeted ads

You can opt out of tracking and ad targeting [https://myaccount.google.com/u/1/privacy](https://myaccount.google.com/u/1/privacy)

<comment><USER9> > uBlock's incentives unaligned with yours because they didn't release their > adblocker earlier

Not really a fair comparison - uBlock aren't selling ads. Google are _and have been for a decade._ There have been many occasions that search has been compromised via advertising from the days of SERPs being mostly adsense mini sites years ago. The response to those also took years despite search being near ruined. Google could have done far more far sooner.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Meanwhile, Google still hasn't added a way disable auto-playing videos (regardless of whether a video is muted) in Chrome.

Safari has easy options to set both a default and per-site preferences ([https://support.apple.com/guide/safari/stop-autoplay- videos-...](https://support.apple.com/guide/safari/stop-autoplay-videos- ibrw29c6ecf8/mac)), including a "Never Auto-Play" choice. Despite years of user complaints and a fairly clear resolution to them, Chrome either watered- down their fix or solved the wrong problem entirely.

<comment><USER12> Chrome has that also.

Go to chrome://flags, search for Autoplay policy, and select Document user action is required.

Note that if you use the Imagus extension, this could block some videos/gifs/etc from playing when you hover over a link.

<comment><USER13> It doesn't always work. I have that flag enabled and still encounter videos that autoplay.

<comment><USER14> Note that Firefox' autoplay blocker breaks some video sites because the Javascript assumes the video is playing when it really isn't. However, with Firefox, videos never autoplay. Chrome's autoplay does not always work, but it doesn't seem to break sites.

I can't seem to find the issue, but in the Safari issue tracker, the point was made that given the way HTML5 video and APIs work, it is impossible to reliably prevent autoplay without breaking some sites. It seems that Firefox went for "reliably prevent autoplay" while Chrome went for "without breaking sites".

FWIW, I switched from Chrome to Firefox because of the autoplay issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Ug, I've been railing against this for a bit now. For anyone who is unclear what is happening, Chrome downloads a set of partial hashes for sites that are considered bad by this coalition. They don't provide the full list of sites (evil). Then if the site matches it, it phones home to get the full hash to see if it matches that. If it does, it applies the EasyList (non-cosmetic) ad block rules.

Problems:

* The list is totally opaque (I am wrong, see EDIT 2 below)

* They use the hard work of people like EasyList and subjectively apply it (though not that big of a deal, they do make it free/open for all uses after all)

* They build it into the browser instead of as an extension or working with the existing ad-block community

I urge everyone to keep with uBO and the like. How anyone can be for NN and then think a coalition can be an on-by-default gatekeeper of good or bad web items I'll never understand. At this point, I have a hard time separating browser from ISP wrt end user control and limited choice (especially for the masses who aren't familiar w/ these kinds of details).

EDIT: I should note that this is the same mechanism by which the safe browsing lists work that tell you a page may be bad. For consistency, I disagree with that too of course, but I find the motives and targets here to be much more sinister. I would also say switch to FF, but they also use the secret safe browsing lists, so they'll probably switch to this as well. I say find a Chromium/Gecko based browser w/ all the ancillary shit like this removed.

EDIT 2: There is a method of obtaining the entire list via the API, see comments below. I was wrong about the opacity and stand corrected. Still doesn't alleviate the concerns around gatekeeping. I wonder if Google would let me keep a running update of this list in GitHub so we can all watch changes and other things like adblockers could use it.

<comment><USER16> My problem is that Google was a founder of Better Ads and its designed to 1) protect their ad business, 2) stop people from wanting ad blockers, and 3) make the web nicer. Huge emphasis on #1.

Whenever you have the browser maker, and punitive actions controlled by the same party, and arbitrarily, its a recipe for disaster.

If Google really cared, they should spin Chrome off to a foundation, provide it a large amount of funding, and totally step aside.

Having the #1 web browser and the largest ad network, controlled by Google, even if you agree with what they are doing, is a recipe for disaster.

Google, of course, MUST protect its ad business, let's call his what it is.

<comment><USER17> So because of who they are Google should not be allowed to attempt to improve the quality of ads on the internet?

Why would Chrome being run a foundation that is funded overwhelmingly by Alphabet make a difference? Chromium is already public -- aren't there already forks that focus on privacy and ad blocking?

<comment><USER18> Google owns the DoubleClick platform - the largest ad server with the most sites and running the biggest ad exchange in the world. They approve, serve, and support all of the intrusive ad formats in the first place, even on their own websites.

This is absolutely not about quality but a political move to counteract ad blocking extensions and companies. While the intent seems noble, it's likely to cause no real improvements compared to better existing options like not serving these formats at all.

<comment><USER19> As long as websites display annoying ads, people will have the incentive to use ad-blockers, no matter how polished and non-intrusive DoubleClick ads be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> _" It's important to note that some sites affected by this change may also contain Google ads.

To us, your experience on the web is a higher priority than the money that these annoying ads may generate — even for us."_

Many of us are wired to see changes like this as a power grab camouflaged with flowery words, or possibly another step on the slippery slope to censorship and government control.

We've been trained that every corporate action is selfish, by definition against our interests.

But Google has demonstrated over the years that they're willing to sacrifice their short-term gains to maximize their long-term gains.

Since their long-term gains depend on a vibrant, open web, sometimes their long-term selfish actions are actually in our interest, too.

<comment><USER21> >To us, your experience on the web is a higher priority than the money that these annoying ads may generate — even for us."

That's begs the question - Why were those ads approved by Google in the first place? They were the source of the problem to begin with !! Also, before we rush to judgement, how much revenue were those ads generating for Google in the first place? I would respect them a bit more if they actually are taking a hit on this.

>But Google has demonstrated over the years that they're willing to sacrifice their short-term gains to maximize their long-term gains.

How have they demonstrated that? Could you elaborate?

<comment><USER20> >> But Google has demonstrated over the years that they're willing to sacrifice their short-term gains to maximize their long-term gains.

> How have they demonstrated that? Could you elaborate?

Before Google, web search results were rotten. Advertisers could push their sites onto the front page, and paid ads were indistinguishable from organic results.

Google's innovation was to deliver pure search results with the highest relevance, with zero influence from advertisers. Ads were separate and labeled as such.

By sacrificing near-term ad revenue, Google built trust with users, and won search in the long-term.

Other examples:

Google could have kept Android closed and charged for licenses. But by open- sourcing it and allowing competitors to use it, they sacrificed short-term license revenue to build a much larger ecosystem.

Google capitulated to government demands that they censor search results in China. But then they reversed course, exited mainland China, and sacrificed revenue from that massive market. Long-term, active censorship would damage Google's reputation.

<comment><USER22> >Advertisers could push their sites onto the front page, and paid ads were indistinguishable from organic results.

>Google's innovation was to deliver pure search results with the highest relevance, with zero influence from advertisers. Ads were separate and labeled as such.

Have you tried using Google without an adblocker recently?

If I search "buy a car" using Chrome on Android the entire screen of my phone is filled with ads that I need to scroll past to get to the "pure" search results. The only indication that they are ads is a tiny box 1/8 the size of a fingernail. The top result on the embedded Google maps box is also an ad.

<comment><USER20> You might want to get your phone checked for malware.

I search with Chrome on Android every day, with no ad blockers, and this never happens.

<comment><USER22> Here is my Google search experience: [https://my.mixtape.moe/gtfvnm.png](https://my.mixtape.moe/gtfvnm.png) [https://my.mixtape.moe/ybfhao.png](https://my.mixtape.moe/ybfhao.png)

Very polite of the malware to put a tiny ad tag on the ads it is managing to inject into a HSTS pinned website on a browser that doesn't allow any addons or extensions. I also like they way they perfect match Google's site design.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This sounds like a win/win policy.

1) Users that tolerate some ads no longer need to install an adblocker.

2) Legit advertisers don't get their ads blocked because fewer people use ad blockers

3) Crappy advertisers go out of business.

Now lets hope that GDPR manages to get rid of the ubiquitous tracking and the web might actually become a nicer place again!

<comment><USER24> Of course, ads with exploits and malware that inject into your computer can be invisible and hard to detect as "intrusive", which this doesn't seem to recognize or handle. I'll stick with ad-block.

<comment><USER17> This justification always reminds me of the advice to run SSH on a non- standard port.

Sure, I guess that makes you less of a target for bad actors, but if your browser can be compromised by simply visiting a website, that's a serious problem that's going to bite you whether you block ads or not.

<comment><USER25> What are you talking about?

You're saying that theoretically, because there may be worse exploits from advanced actors that can target you for visiting a website, you shouldn't worry about basic security and whitelisting?

Do you not lock your door at night, either, just because someone could smash through your windows?

<comment><USER26> The SSH on a nonstandard port thing... I do it so I know if I see a failed login attempt, it's someone who is trying a lot harder than the average attacker and something I should investigate more fully.

<comment><USER25> Correct, most people (including myself) use it more for filtering noise than increased security by obscurity.

Which makes it an even less effective analogy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's important to note that the "flagging" is not done by users, but by Google themselves. And they do this based on the Better Ads Standards. After the initial flagging, the site owners are notified, and have 30 days to fix it, until the ads on the site are blocked. They then of course can still fix it, and get the ads unblocked.

</comment><comment><USER28> I wonder if I can hire a botnet to flag my competition out of business.

<comment><USER29> I'll one-up you: can we crowdfund a botnet to flag _all ads, from everyone_?

<comment><USER30> That seems like the thing that (back in my day) 4chan would be 100% behind.

<comment><USER31> Look up adnauseum. They're still 100% behind that.

<comment><USER32> Even they still have exceptions turned on by default [0].

[0] [https://github.com/dhowe/AdNauseam/wiki/FAQ#what-is-the- effs...](https://github.com/dhowe/AdNauseam/wiki/FAQ#what-is-the-effs-do-not- track-standard-and-how-it-is-supported-in-adnauseam)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Let's talk about "acceptable ads". Do you think they exist?

I don't. I avoid ads for two reasons: first that they're fundamentally biased, manipulative information sources, second that they drain attention, screen space, battery life, etc. I'm much more worried about the first than the second, yet "acceptable ads" (partially) addresses the second without touching the first.

<comment><USER34> > I avoid ads for two reasons: first that they're fundamentally biased, > manipulative information sources, second that they drain attention, screen > space, battery life, etc.

Neither of these points need to be true. Consider if someone had a text ad which said "We made widgets. Click here to see our widgets". There's nothing manipulative about that, it need not use more than a small amount of network or CPU to deliver, and all but the most extreme members of the no logo camp would tend to agree that there's nothing manipulative about it.

<comment><USER33> Are you saying this as somebody who advertises, or who views ads?

<comment><USER34> As someone who doesn't like broad, sweeping statements which are incorrect.

For the record, I don't buy ads and I subscribe to sites like ArsTechnica.com which allow me to pay to disable ads.

<comment><USER33> I don't believe it's incorrect, but thanks for letting me know you do. Genuinely - like I said, I just want to talk about "acceptable ads".

<comment><USER34> Here's why I said it's incorrect:

> first that they're fundamentally biased, manipulative information sources

Is an NPR-style "this program is sponsored by <big company>" manipulative or biased? What about the Amazon ads you get on a Google search for most consumer products, where it's clear who paid for them, they make no claim that the product is the best product or that they have the lowest prices, only stating that you can buy one from them, etc.?

> second that they drain attention, screen space, battery life,

Do Google text ads really do any of those? What about a static JPEG?

Remember, I'm not saying that the state of online advertising isn't terrible but that it's not fundamentally so. The industry has raced to the bottom but it'd clear up in days if publishers stopped allowing offensive ads to run on their sites or Chrome started actively blocking them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Does this include something that flashes / moves (within its self-contained box) even though it doesn't take over the screen?

How is it that it's not outrageous to people that in the middle of a news article, a box with flashing colors and a picture of a woman in a bikini isn't something obviously extremely undesirable? The activity of reading requires concentration, if you're reading something that requires thought, that is. I'm baffled that our tolerance level for this didn't drop to the pitchfork level.

</comment><comment><USER36> I feel like they will get sued for that extremely quickly, considering their dominating position (Chrome) and being in the ad-serving business at the same time.

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5a/Br...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5a/Browser_usage_share%2C_2009%E2%80%932016%2C_StatCounter.svg/1200px- Browser_usage_share%2C_2009%E2%80%932016%2C_StatCounter.svg.png)

<comment><USER37> Generally American and European anti-trust law as currently interpreted only cares about harm to the consumer.

<comment><USER38> Less competition is generally harmful to the consumer.

<comment><USER39> conceptually. However, the metric we use to dictacte that conceptual argument is what screws us (Americans). We have chosen increase in price as the primary metric.

It becomes the responsibility of the accuser to prove and provide evidence of increased prices based on monopoly position. The Exponent podcast did a nice description of this last summer I believe (not sure what episode).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I would like to take a second off topic and point out that the design of their blog^1 is really atrocious for a number of reasons

\- Massive, truly gargantuan header and footer that steals 40-50% of usable screen space for.... white space

\- Terrible type selection that is kerned too closely and is too thin to comfortably read on a white background. Eye strain is SIGNIFICANT.

Like, come the heck on Google. You're trying to make the internet a better place. Maybe practice what you preach and follow Day 1, 101 course UX principles like "choose a type that is legible" and "don't use half of your article vertical space for pointless globs of white space in your header and footer"

1: [https://i.imgur.com/0mJjdMq.png](https://i.imgur.com/0mJjdMq.png)

</comment><comment><USER41> How about allowing us to install Adblock on Chrome for Android?

<comment><USER42> This is why I started using Firefox on Android. I need uBlock to browse the web safely.

<comment><USER43> Same for me. The nightly build is much faster than the current stable too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Just use Firefox with Adblock/Ublock/Noscript. Even better, turn off Javascript and you'll never see an ad again.

Unfortunately, there are too many devs who build their sites that completely get crippled if you by default don't allow Javascript.

Even if you enable it, the site may still be doomed, because it tries to load fonts, libraries, css and who-knows-what kind of s __* from external sites.

F __ __ _g newage apatheistic anarchist hippie devs. Don 't bundle in tons of dependencies to your freaking sites. If one of the dependencies goes down, so does your site. F_ __* you! And f __* those whorebag ads!

</comment><comment><USER45> I appreciate the step forward, but what I really want is for my browser to block:

* Battery-draining junk code

* Bandwidth-hogging videos and GIFs

* Spreading information about me cross-origin

I would take an annoying page-covering PNG that I can close, over a tiny banner doing animations in Javascript, an auto-play video, a huge GIF which is basically a video, or the countless trackers which build databases about every site I visit.

As such this change will not entice me to disable my ad blocker. Not even close.

<comment><USER46> Genuinely curious: How would you programmatically identify "battery-draining junk code"?

Also, what is your threshold for 'bandwidth-hogging' videos and GIFs? Do you trust content-lengths from the server?

<comment><USER45> I don't have a solution other than whitelisting or blacklisting, which is what I use the ad blockers for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I found immediately ironic that I was reading a post about how Google values the user so much that they built Chrome, a browser that gets out of your way and gives more of your screen over to the websites you are viewing but the site where this article is posted covers half my screen with site-navigation chrome that is 80% whitespace and that pops in and out semi-unpredictably. Sigh.

</comment><comment><USER48> If someone else said this already please forgive me. The worst ads are the one with a phony close X. You click it and you are driven to the webpage anyway. It seems to me you could test for this.

</comment><comment><USER49> When I'm trying to visit some page, and I get an unrelated spammy popover that is hard to get rid of... I've gathered cause I know how this stuff works that it's _probably_ from a misbehaving google ad, but I don't know how I'd identify that to flag it, or if I'd spend the time to do so. I usually just get out of there.

</comment><comment><USER16> It seems to me that it's irrelevant if you agree with Google's Ad Strategy or not. The problem is that Google gets to make the choices, they are now in a position to decide, via the proxy of Better Ads, whats allowed on the "Open Web". IMHO, this is just one more step in a less-open Internet.

</comment><comment><USER50> Be nice if Chrome offered, for a fee, a premium, ad-free experience, AND they shared the profits from that service with the visited web sites (in lieu of Ad placement revenue).

<comment><USER51> Sounds like you'd be interested in: [https://contributor.google.com/v/beta](https://contributor.google.com/v/beta)

<comment><USER50> Nice! (But not yet available in Canada).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I know that title isn't 100% right, but (a) the one on the blog is pretty much useless and (b) a more correct title would've been too long. Open to suggestions.

<comment><USER27> The title ("Chrome will stop displaying ads that are repeatedly flagged as disruptive") is wrong in a couple of ways.

According to the post:

"... Chrome will stop showing all ads on sites that repeatedly display these most disruptive ads after they've been flagged.

To determine which ads not to show, we're relying on the Better Ads Standards from the the Coalition for Better Ads, an industry group dedicated to improving the experience of the ads we see on the web. ..."

They are a bit vage in this post, but as we know from other posts and press briefings, this means:

The site owners will get a notice when Google has found that their site is displaying ads not compliant with the Better Ads Standards. When they don't fix this until after 30 days, all ads on the site are blocked, even those complying with the standards. The site owners can then of course still fix it, and get removed from the block list.

So the "flagging" is actually done by Google, and means the owners of the site get a notice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> We really, _really_ don't need Coalitions, Committees and other crap to tell us what ads are acceptable. This stuff is so straightforward that it's mind- boggling we are still debating it:

1\. Don't be annoying: NO sound, NO video, NO auto-anything, NO flashy animation, NO obnoxious bright colors. What is _so_ wrong with the discreet images and text that newspapers and magazines have used since forever?

2\. Don't disrespect me: NO treating my data plan as an infinite well for downloading crap, NO ad networks that can't be bothered to have proper security, NO obscenely-complex tracking scripts, and NO trickery to make me click (pop-anything, delayed loading, etc.).

</comment><comment><USER53> How about if Google stops taking ads for malware like MacKeeper on YouTube? Speaking to Google: you guys are OK with promoting malware in exchange for money?

</comment><comment><USER54> OK. Outbrain and Taboola are pretty disruptive to my sanity and peace of mind. I wonder if we can get them blocked.

<comment><USER55> I made a short blocklist (compatible with uBlock Origin and Ad Block Plus) that just blocks these crap ads served by Taboola, Outbrain, and the like:

[https://github.com/cpeterso/clickbait- blocklist/](https://github.com/cpeterso/clickbait-blocklist/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> > When we built Chrome, we wanted to create a way for people to interact with > the magic that is the web, without the browser getting in the way. We > created a browser that took up minimal space on your screen...

Only for websites clutter that free space with hideously large and empty headers and unmovable footers that cover a good 20% to 30% of vertical space that would be better spent on the actual content of the page. (If I want to navigate your site, give me link to your homepage, and I'll take it from there.) Oh, and lets not forget those social sharing icons, even for people who don't social network!

Let's rub salt into the wound:

> (These ads are) _designed to be disruptive and often stand in the way of > people using their browsers for their intended purpose—connecting them to > content and information._

</comment><comment><USER57> Just take a look at this ad on the Verge ([https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/5/16966530/intel-vaunt- smart...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/5/16966530/intel-vaunt-smart- glasses-announced-ar-video)). It takes 90% of the screen, and they wonder why people use ad blockers.

Screenshot: [https://ibb.co/f1eOGS](https://ibb.co/f1eOGS)

<comment><USER58> Do you have a screenshot? I don't feel like enabling JS for that site. Moreover, a screenshot would keep your argument understandable for readers who might encounter your comment in a year or later, when that site changed their layout or perhaps doesn't exist anymore.

<comment><USER57> Sure thing -> [https://ibb.co/f1eOGS](https://ibb.co/f1eOGS)

Huge ad with autoplay video.

<comment><USER58> Thanks! Now I understand what you mean.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I certainly like the idea of blocking these types of ads at first blush. I don't know much about the source of the "disruptive" label so that could be a bone of contention. I would assume there will be some UI element saying that Chrome blocked a "disruptive ad" similar to when it blocks popups but they didn't describe that in the post. Overall, I am optimistic.

<comment><USER51> Yeah, it'll be basically the same as pop-ups: [https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/chrome- adblocker](https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/chrome-adblocker)

And the standards for what is considered "disruptive" are here: [https://www.betterads.org/standards/](https://www.betterads.org/standards/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Yeah, hard to see how this could possibly go wrong.

</comment><comment><USER61> So..if we all flag every ad as disruptive will Chrome stop displaying all ads?

<comment><USER27> The "flagging" is done by Google, not users. And according to the post: "Chrome will stop showing all ads on sites that repeatedly display these most disruptive ads after they've been flagged."

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Or users could, you know, use an extension to block all of them. For their own security and peace of mind.

</comment><comment><USER63> There's no mention if you can disable this or opt out.

I'd rather them have a way for me to disable the floating videos usually on news sites.

<comment><USER51> You can disable it in content settings. It's a new permission, just like Notifications, JavaScript, and Sound. Basically you just have to turn on the "Allow sites to show Annoying Ads" permission.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> In the near future article on HN frontpage: "large Chinese bot network to notify Google of dangerous site to hire".

You want your competitor site to be down, our 100,000 strong unique IP addresses bot network will take 2 weeks to notify Google of a harmful website. Just give us an URL of your competitor and wire us $10,000 and watch them being wiped out of the net! Guaranteed!

</comment><comment><USER65> I use an ad blocker so I rarely see them. Does this mean my vote doesn't count?

</comment><comment><USER66> Would that include google ads? Because I personally find 99,% of ads to be disruptive

<comment><USER67> From the article:

"It's important to note that some sites affected by this change may also contain Google ads. To us, your experience on the web is a higher priority than the money that these annoying ads may generate—even for us."

<comment><USER68> For some reason I seriously doubt Google is going to take a hit on their #1 source of revenue so that users have a better 'experience'

<comment><USER17> People having a terrible experience with ads is what leads them to install an ad blocker, which is a much bigger risk to Google's ad business

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Any way to disable this? For instance if you're already using an adblocker.

</comment><comment><USER70> *) Google ads cannot be flagged as disruptive. Other conditions apply.

</comment><comment><USER71> about time!

</comment><comment><USER72> All ads are disruptive, as they are designed to draw your attention. If you can ignore an ad it did not serve the purpose it was created for. Does it mean Chrome blocks all ads now? Don't hold your breath.

<comment><USER73> One of the few exceptions that I can think of would be skymall. It is a magazine with only ads for overpriced useless stuff that you can read about (and maybe buy) while on a flight. I would normally read the entire magazine during the boring flight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> kind of funny that they are doing it on Feb,15th... the day after Valentine's Day in the US.

<comment><USER75> Why is the date relevant?

<comment><USER74> It's the day after Valentine's Day in the US... the most advertised, over- hyped, over-extended and shoved down your throat day of the year for us guys.

<comment><USER75> Never experienced this, sorry

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> "That's a nice website you have there. It would be a shame if you couldn't display ads."

How is this anything other than a hilariously transparent shake-down? An ad company that controls both ends of the ad pipeline (Chrome and Adsense) is "protecting" people not by blocking terrible ads, but by blocking all ads on sites it deems "disruptive."

<comment><USER77> A shakedown usually involves an opportunity to pay to avoid the consequences. At the very least, it certainly isn't "hilariously transparent".

<comment><USER76> I assume Google's customer support staff can contact the owners of blacklisted sites and sell them more Adsense inventory, or encourage them to stop doing business with competing ad vendors.

<comment><USER78> "Google's customer support" \- hehe, that's a good one..</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Great Data Flood Ahead - <AUTHOR> https://semiengineering.com/the-great-data-flood-ahead/ <comment><USER2> > While data in the cloud is heavily secured, data on the way to the cloud is > not.

This article is nonsense and completely pretends that TLS does not exist.

</comment><comment><USER3> The use of "flood" reminded me of a few years ago when I was researching the post-war information technology era. What struck me was how many papers used phrases like "flood" or "deluge" of data.

For examples:

> The problems of adequate storage, preservation and service for the > increasing flood of periodical literature coming into their collections are > of special urgency for librarians. Many studies have been made, all of which > view with deep concern the rapidly increasing rate of growth of American > libraries.' Such growth, if continued even at the present rate, will in a > short time result in collections of almost unmanageable proportions, both as > to physical size and servicing.

("The Use of High Reduction Microfilm in Libraries", J. Am. Doc. Summer 1950 - [https://search.proquest.com/openview/14f723869613e43376c4a76...](https://search.proquest.com/openview/14f723869613e43376c4a7646f583183/1?pq- origsite=gscholar&cbl=41135) ).

> With the advent of the IBM card programmed calculators, actual calculating > time on the data was materially diminished, leaving the problem of reading > and processing the data standing as a very real bottleneck. It therefore > became evident to responsible personnel concerned that a system would have > to be devised that would allow either automatic or semi-automatic processing > of much of the data incurred at the Air Force Flight Test Center if the > Center was to survive this deluge of data.

("A centralized data processing system", 1954, [https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1455227](https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1455227) )

Even "deluge of data" is still common, says [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22deluge+of+data%22&t=ffsb&ia=web](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22deluge+of+data%22&t=ffsb&ia=web) .

65 years later and the data waters keeps rising.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't see any need for action here. If Amazon runs out of storage space or bandwidth for keeping track of everyone's botnet kitchen appliance statuses, I don't think the connected world will grind to a halt. We will simply begin dropping said fridge temperature status updates on the floor in favor of more important things like bank transactions. 99% of data today is garbage from the microsecond it was created, and virtually all of it is garbage after a few months elapses.

That said, I am not against new iterations on the idea of the internet and how we move data from point A to point B. Enabling a vast 'ocean' of a trillion+ devices to send data easily to/from any node is a compelling problem (which we've arguably already solved). Trying to agonize over whether the data is important or not in some overarching manner is not a compelling problem. Data is very ad-hoc in nature. I don't see any other way about this if you want to maintain its utility to everyone. You don't apply QOS rules to payment processing networks in the same way you do the xbox live network. Both parties would argue their data is very important, but neither party cares at all about the other party's data requirements.

</comment><comment><USER5> The problem is that data is going to be walled off. There will be a lot but it will be siloed and inaccessible.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is a pretty vapid article. Surprised to see it on the front page.

</comment><comment><USER7> If the costs of storing data rise faster than data is generated, people will simply be more selective with what data is retained permanently.

Most data is junk anyway, and is only useful in the immediate or short-term. It's also somewhat pointless to debate without talking about a specific type of data. Some of it is highly compressible and is a non-issue.

</comment><comment><USER8> My summary of the article: Most data is or will soon be trash. Efforts should be made to get to that designation as fast as possible from the moment of data generation.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is an information-free article. There's been a flood of those popping up these days.</comment>