Are my friends and family crazy? - <AUTHOR>

Hello, My name is Rob and I can't believe I'm writing this.
Here goes.
I have been on the sidelines reading Hacker News for 3 years now and too scared to ask any questions because I am just a regular Joe with no technical background....NONE! The Story; I have an idea for a online marketplace website. The user base I am catering to is huge. Hint: My users are a lot like me. We barely understand how a computer works. We can barely type. We don't Tweet. We do not have books with Faces on it. We do not use Pinterest, Instagram, Snapchat or any other social platforms. I know, how can we function on this planet without any of these things in our lives.
My users are smart, work hard and this country could not survive without them. They are the forgotten ones with all this high tech hoopla. I know the trendy word nowadays is it "disruptive"? The answer is yes.
I have presented my idea to friends and family and the general reaction is usually ..... holy crap! They joke with me and say the market is in the Godzillions. Are you hiring? Hahaha!
I am a family guy and I'm concerned.
I'm sure most of you all have heard or read about  the poor guy who pissed off his kids college fund on a pipe dream but I can't and won't let that happen to me. That's why I need your help.
So, my question to you is; How do I find the right person or company to help me build this thing?
For me it's all about trust.
Thank you for not laughing at me too hard and helping me chase "the dream". I look forward to your advise.
Thank you!
Rob <comment><USER2> _I 'm sure most of you all have heard or read about the poor guy who pissed off his kids college fund on a pipe dream but I can't and won't let that happen to me_

Good, don't do that. Web-based applications can be developed fairly inexpensively, especially if you were willing to learn to code yourself. Otherwise, try to spend other people's money (but with the caveat about being careful about how much equity you give up if you get this thing going and start raising money).

Another thing you have to consider... if you want this built, you have three realistic options:

1\. Learn to code, and do it yourself, at least through the initial stages.

2\. Subcontract the work to somebody on a pure "work for hire" basis

3\. Bring in a co-founder who receives a share of the equity in exchange for building the site.

In many ways, (3) above is the most attractive, but in this case, you face an interesting conundrum... you have an idea, but a potential co-founder is going to ask what else you can bring to the table? If you aren't going to code, what are you going to do? If _all_ you have is the idea, and the other person(s) have to do all the work, they are (rightly, IMO) going to want the lion's share of the equity. You, as the originator of the idea, may not be so comfortable with such an arrangement.

Given that, unless you have some money you are comfortable spending on option (2), I seriously recommend considering (1). It wouldn't be the first time a non-technical person learned to code and built their own prototype and then used _that_ to work their way forward... once you have a prototype, you're in strong shape to seek a co-founder or outside investment.

All of that said, if you want to subcontract the work out to somebody, feel free to shoot me an email. I might be able to help you find somebody.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your reply. Option 1. I have a full time job, I am limited in time to learn how to code. Option 2. I looked into websites like Elance and Odesk and not really sure who to trust based on some bad reviews. Option 3. I believe can build the website with funds I have. I prefer not to have a partner at this time. Been there before and I usually run circles around them. You did not mention hiring a web developer / company?

<comment><USER3> Option 2 is hard. It means you're in the role of engineering manager. Most people on oDesk/elance are individual engineers and the consulting shops on there are generally just loose associations of friends or crappy outsourcing firms.

I'd suggest finding a small, local consulting shop and asking them to build it for you as a work-for-hire giving you full copyright ownership. Full-time consulting orgs will have no interest in stealing your idea as it's their lifeblood to build out other people's ideas. Meet with the owners, see their offices, evaluate their past work, get a free consultation, and only pay what you can afford.

Finding a co-founder is also hard. I think it's the same success rate of starting a rock band. And I think it's more likely to have a bitter end where you're trying to divide a baby.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. Your suggeston of finding a "local" consulting shop is probably the direction I will take. Thank you for your input! .

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Look, Rob, I agree with the most important statement in business: Ideas are easy. It's the execution of ideas that's difficult. And nobody is going to do the execution for you. Sorry, but I think there will be no partner. You'll have to do everything: from running the server and hiring developers on Odesk, to marketing and social. People that have partners have done something before, and they have partners because these partners know that they are getting in bed with someone who has been tested before. Ideas are cheap, hence you will get no partners for now. Keep working on your idea, start implementing it, and then, and only then, you'll find the right person or company to help you build this thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. Point well taken.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> learning coding or outsourcing the dev work both seem like non-starters to me. It's not just about getting some prototype built and walking away with it to the market. Any first attempt will be half baked at best. How do you iterate after? how do even measure if whatever you built is even working? what is reasonable traction to be had?

taking a step back though, before plunging headlong into this journey, I would seriously consider all the steps between thinking about the prototype and the 'godzillions' to be had. Just like with almost every other startup, the initial reaction to your prototype/MVC is going to be that the market doesn't care (shocker!)..maybe you get lucky and get some traction. The data you get will be clear as mud. Would you persist and continue with iterations to uncover the real market fit?

also, it doesn't matter if you are tech savvy yourself. are you at least completely comfortable working with a strong tech person without letting them completely run the show? If you are unsure, I would recommend going to a few local tech conferences/meetups and get to know the people. Maybe you'll come away with an arrangement where someone talented is willing to work part time on your time for some equity.

take your time finding the right partnership arrangement; don't worry too much about the fact that you have this brilliant idea someone else will beat you to it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Ideas are easy. It's the execution of ideas that really separates the sheep from the goats. — Sue Grafton, author

<comment><AUTHOR> That's why I'm here. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hey Rob, distribution is key. Facebook, Pinterest & Instagram are some of the most engaging and sticky platforms out there. If your target market does not even use those, then what chance do you have of that market finding and using what you are planning on building?

<comment><AUTHOR> The user base (market)that I will be catering to uses websites like Google and Craiglist and other pay for ads type classified websites (even though Craiglist is free). Just because we do not use the websites I mentioned does not mean we do not use the internet. This market has 1000 times more buying power then the teenagers using Facebook and the like. I think that a lot of businesses think like sheep and just do what ever everybody else is doing and forget to think outside the box. Thank you for your reply!!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why not hire a cheap overseas developer to create v1? It will cost you a grand or two, but will allow you to test your idea for little capital. You can always rebuild v2 with a reputable dev shop or freelance team.

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe I have the funds to produce a quality product in V1. I would like to work with someone fairly local for some hand holding. Thanks!

<comment><USER8> I may have an idea for you. Shoot me an email, it's in my profile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> with marketplaces the website is the easy part. getting both sides of the transaction to the party is the hard part. how do people sell in this market now? why would they switch to you? how are you going to reach them? take ebay they spend millions on advertising on google. and everyone know who they are.

<comment><AUTHOR> I plan on building a brand / culture that appeals to my user base allowing them to "connect" with the website. I believe that I understand how the user base thinks, their likes and wants. Also, there are basically five large "pay for listings" type websites on the market now. They will switch to my site because all listings will be free and focused wholly on their market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't know what your idea is, but most people have objections that are simply not realistic. You cannot create a social network and hope to become a billionaire without knowing what people want/need or at least hitting a tangent. You maybe thinking of Zuckerberg, he hustled hard to get there, really. People simplify what he did, because they don't want to believe that success is either luck, vitamin C (connections) or hard work.

I'm soon available and want to work on some projects for fun anyway. Let's chat on [https://vline.com/](https://vline.com/) about the idea and vision, if you want.. I'll do it, if I believe in the idea, otherwise you can create a profile of what type of developer you need and what needs to be done and post it here or on some job board. (post your email or other contact info on your profile so that people can reach you)

Look, what people here are telling is almost completely true. You've heard that ideas are cheap and execution is hard or that ideas are pipedreams and don't mean anything without "proper execution". The essence of this is true, but there is a part to that picture that is missing. Insider knowledge and making the product so that it's effective and efficient at what it needs to do is what ideas can't offer. That is what you shouldn't share, except with those who you need to share it with.

Nobody will steal your ideas and become a billionaire with it without putting a lot of effort into it. And if they do that, it doesn't mean that they will be any successful by a long shot. That's because there is only so much that can be winners, the rest is doomed to work or to become "the losers" in this race. Someone needs to believe as much as you do into the idea to make it.</comment>


OpenBSD project in danger of shutting down due to shrinking funding - <AUTHOR> http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=138972987203440&w=2

<comment><USER2> "The OpenBSD project uses a lot of electricity for running the development and build machines. A number of logistical reasons prevents us from moving the machines to another location which might offer space/power for free, so let's not allow the conversation to go that way."

Well then, good luck with the money raise.

</comment><comment><USER3> That's a sad situation.

Theo's a real fucking asshole who deserves to get his teeth knocked in, but OpenBSD is a great project (and Canadian too!).

If I wasn't so broke I'd consider sending them a big fat cheque.

<comment><USER4> _Theo 's a real fucking asshole who deserves to get his teeth knocked in_

wait, what?

<comment><USER5> He's less than diplomatic. Precisely the kind of guy you want running a no- compromises high-security operating system project, in my book.

There's plenty of evidence on mailing lists. Take a look after you drop few bucks on their donations link.

<comment><USER4> Ah, thanks. Seems to go with the territory (other key data point: Linus)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not sure if it says more about OpenBSD or the HN community that this disappeared to obscurity fairly quickly. Theo's not doing the cause any favours in that thread.

Maybe some BSD consolidation wouldn't be such a bad thing after all these years

</comment><comment><USER7> I wonder to what degree this project's loss of popularity is due to its BDFL's abrasive and unfriendly personality. Of course other things like the increasing "good-enoughness" of Linux for similar tasks is important, but I can't help thinking that if they dedicated a bit more to promoting their project at least a few more people would consider running it.</comment>


Keita Takahashi (creator of Katamari) joins Glitch - <AUTHOR> http://glitch.com/blog/2011/07/08/keita-takahashi-joins-glitch/ <comment><USER2> Here is Takahashi's lecture at the Games Developers Conference in 2009:

<http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=22941>

He is stranger than you can possibly imagine. I haven't got sucked into Glitch enough to really say what it achieves, but adding Takahashi to their team is definitely in line with their aspirations. I'm excited to see what Glitch is like when it finally launches!

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, great win. Katamari Damacy has to be one of the greatest games of all time.</comment>


Social networking finds for the week - <AUTHOR> http://fvrit.com/archive/2008/02/29/social-networking-finds-for-the-week.aspx

<comment><USER2> Cool we're social site - who knew...</comment>


An Email Lesson for Startups: Resent vs. Re-sent - <AUTHOR> http://www.techurbia.com/2008/12/an-email-lesson-learned-resent-vs-re-sent.html

<comment><USER2> > Question: lol - I just looked at the email I sent you and realized that I > meant to write "re-sent" and yet I wrote "resent" lol.

> I read this email from you and I was like, "Wow - why is he talking about > resentment?"

what are you, 14?

</comment><comment><USER3> The way he wrote it, he indeed said he resented it.

I recommend everyone starts such sentences with, _I've_ instead of _I_. Any time you start a written sentence with _I've_ , it's clear you're describing something you just did, versus something you believe.

And finally, he also wrote the word "just" in the wrong spot. The best line would have been "I've re-sent the e-mail," instead of "I just resent it either way :)."

<comment><USER4> given the sentence structure, the smiley _& the extra email in my mailbox_, i think i would have picked up on it.

What I don't get is Ted being pissed. I can't really parse his message, but I just don't read anger.

<comment><USER3> You're arguing that the sentence contains enough information for the author's intended interpretation to be understood (which is true); in practice, however, customers expect developers who answer questions at small companies to be more knowledgeable than they are, and often take comments, advice, or instructions almost literally. Along similar lines, most customers of most software companies are not developers, and therefore are not used to reading text carefully, like we are.

Regarding the author thinking his customer was pissed, this helps prove my point that the author needs to work on his written communication skills. He not only fails to realize that he really did phrase his words incorrectly (instead of the customer misunderstanding the sentence), but also incorrectly misread the customer's reply as being "pissed."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> old: adding "in bed" to a fortune cookie fortune

new: adding "for startups" to titles submitted to HN

</comment><comment><USER6> I hoped this was a clever title for the fine line between resending an email that was ignored and getting resented for spamming. But... no :)</comment>


Show HN: Dynamic drawing application in Swift, inspired by Bret Victor talk - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/laszlokorte/reform-swift <comment><USER2> Very nice. Would be great to explore geometry problems.

Another approach towards the same goal is this [http://ravichugh.github.io/sketch-n- sketch/](http://ravichugh.github.io/sketch-n-sketch/)

</comment><comment><USER3> You might consider utilizing Geometric Algebra. A lot of geometry-related things are straightforward to express with it, and there's a nice C++ library that implements it.

<comment><USER4> Are you talking about Versor? It's what came up when I Googled it.

[http://versor.mat.ucsb.edu/](http://versor.mat.ucsb.edu/)

<comment><USER3> There's that one, and there's another one described here: [http://www.geometricalgebra.net/](http://www.geometricalgebra.net/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> There is also a Java implementation of the same project which is little ahead in terms of some some features (expression evaluation and exporting/importing images): [https://github.com/laszlokorte/reform- java](https://github.com/laszlokorte/reform-java)

</comment><comment><USER5> Are there any other projects similar to this?

(I'm working on something related but this came as a surprise: I've never even heard about this project even though a have been researching fanatically in this topic.)

<comment><USER6> I've done some (not quite similar) experiments: [https://vimeo.com/160730056](https://vimeo.com/160730056)

I wanted a quick way to edit code and see live results - to make it easier to explore/test new combinations.

<comment><AUTHOR> This one is pretty cool as well: [http://tobyschachman.com/Shadershop/](http://tobyschachman.com/Shadershop/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can't get this to build - XCode 7.3.1 - and there don't seem to be any requirements in the SETUP.md that I can see - anyone know what it takes to get this to build?

<comment><USER8> I can't tell for sure from that limited information, but the most recent commit has comment _" upgrade to xcode 8/swift 3"_. AFAIK, Xcode 7 doesn't do Swift 3.

<comment><USER9> This is in fact the issue.

<comment><USER7> Ah, thanks for spotting that. I'll hold off on checking into this project until I upgrade to XCode8 .. appreciate the effort!

<comment><AUTHOR> As kawera said you can either download the compiled version or checkout commit HEAD^5 (cc60e82c) which is compatible with XCode7

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So many cool projects have been borne out of the concepts in Bret's previous talks. I hope this trend continues.

</comment><comment><USER11> And now, you inspired me :)</comment>


Big Data will flood the planet in 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/node/21537922

<comment><USER2> TheEconomist>> Hadoop, a new type of database, can be used to sift through big data streams in real time.

HN>> Hadoop is not a new type of database, and it cannot be used to sift through big data streams in real time.

Related>> Why big data is better than small data : <http://www.quora.com/Why- the-current-obsession-with-big-data>

</comment><comment><USER3> _Most important, firms will discover that they can extract value from the data. A study by the McKinsey Global Institute, a think-tank, found that analysing health-care data could yield $300 billion-worth of savings in America alone._

I smell BS. Sounds like they're priming the pump for big consulting contracts.

<comment><USER4> I read the report. I think they had the big ideas right, but the quantification of the opportunity was a bit hand wavey.

The biggest chunk of that $300 billion was clinical operations, which they said would lead to a $165 Billion savings. They never explained HOW they came up with this $165 billion number, they just asserted it. This category would include things like an IBM Watson helping doctors to diagnose patients, or automated programs to help avoid adverse reactions when the doctor prescribes a drug that he shouldn't have.

As important as I think these technologies are, I highly doubt they'll be reducing healthcare expenditure in the U.S. by $165 billion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Source: EMC"

(EMC sells "Big Data" storage.)

<comment><USER6> My thoughts exactly. "Big Data" gets a lot of lip service from hardware and software vendors, but for the most part they are pushing solutions to problems that 99.9% of people do not have. Most shops can't even get a basic data warehouse and BI tool up and running AND have their customers/users be happy with the solution. The idea that those same teams now need to start using special tools to analyze their 'big data' and hire data engineers/data scientists to do it is absurd.

<comment><USER7> I agree completely. However, I also think that those shops that _do_ choose to parse and interpret massive amounts of data in new ways will have decisive advantages over those that don't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by "big data". I'm full of hope that they don't mean "big storage" or "big hard drives filled with big bytes".

The data by it self does not have any value. Maybe some need to store data just for legal purposes. If ever sued they can show the records. The value comes from summarizing the data into something that you can use it for making decisions. So my hope is that media are really saying: " _there will be a lot of data to analyze - start practicing now._ "

<comment><USER8> It seems to be a confusing comparison to Big Oil or Big Pharma etc.

In other words, it's a buzzphrase coined by people who appreciate catchiness over actual meaning: the people who are a few layers removed from making important decisions and have little else to do but talk incessantly about an obvious trend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Big Data, yes. Big Conclusions, no.</comment>


Ask HN: How to report coworkers who use WeChat to spy on my personal device? - <AUTHOR>

First, I was invited to a WeChat group and then a link containing a hidden spyware was sent. Personal (phone and live) conversations with my family were recorded and listened to for more than a month.
Frankly, I was too naive to trust the links sent in WeChat.
Still can't believe such acts can happen in a well-established tech company, which has always claimed user data privacy is its top priority. <comment><USER2> Sounds like a criminal offense, you should talk to the police.

</comment><comment><USER3> What country are you in?

Do you have names? Screenshots? Proof? Post it here.</comment>


The Types of Leaders Who Create Radical Change - <AUTHOR> https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/the-three-types-of-leaders-who-create-radical-change <comment><USER2> > Why did Occupy Wall Street subside in a matter of months, for instance, > while the American Civil Rights Movement thrived, resulting in the passage > of multiple laws?

This is probably the dumbest comparison we'll see out of HBR. It should be pretty clear that unavoidable discrimination and violence generation after generation is going to anger people and foster action way more than losing money.

And if you wanted to find examples in Occupy Wall Street, I'm sure there were people "agitating", "innovating", and "orchestrating". These are so squishy of terms as to be almost pointless.

<comment><USER3> Not to mention that the American Civil Rights Movement had relatively clear goals and a pretty singular focus: Ending explicit state-approved discrimination against black people.

The goals and focus of OWS weren't very clear (to me at least): Was it about ending corporate influence in politics? Was it about seeking consequences for what happened in 2008? Was it about wealth inequality? It kinda seemed to be about all of the above. How can you really rally anyone if it's not really clear what they're getting together for, other than some vague sense of being wronged?

Also, whereas the civil rights movement had measurable goals (repealing Jim Crow laws, for instance), it's hard to imagine how you measure "success" when your goal is something vague like removing corporate influence in politics.

<comment><USER4> As I recall it, OWS explicitly did not have goals as a group, this was something the common meeting (I don't recall the name) in each "camp" was supposed to work out consensually. The few (if any?) manifests that did end being adopted by this process were somewhere in the esoteric to pointless range, and by this time, the process had self selected OWS down to the members that explicitly enjoyed the process.

Bottom line, you're not going to get anything done if you don't have any objectives, and it's a lot harder to align large groups of people around specific objectives than it seems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Most change is generational. Went to my city council meeting last night because I wanted to make sure new housing was approved for. There were 300ish people there, probably an average of 60. Very few people under 40, maybe 10 most.

Changes happens when old people die, and new people take over who were shaped by different generational events.

It's frustrating in some ways, but really pleasing in others because change will come, even if it looks like it never is going to happen. It's a healthy tension between preservation and innovation. That being said, if you're in agitator who succeeds, you're most likely just in the right place at the right time...

<comment><USER6> Another viewpoint is that those people in 40s become more like the people in 60s when they themselves become get older.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Please edit title. Per HN rules it should be The Types of Leaders Who Create Radical Change.

<comment><USER8> Done, thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Sounds a little bit like: Leadership, Innovation, Marketing.

Yeah, it's good to have all of those three.

<comment><USER10> It's rare because when someone has one they tend to coast on it rather than investing in the others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> To be sure, there are plenty of those who criticize incessantly without offering real alternatives where alternatives would be needed, and certainly one can theorize, but what I find worrying about this article is how it seems to be worshiping at the altar of leadership and change (and effectiveness in bringing it about; even the name of the module is "Power and Influence in Society"), without evidencing the slightest concern over moral considerations. Does X need to be changed? If so, to what end and in what ways such that we are behaving morally?</comment>


DistroKid - Unlimited uploads to iTunes and more - <AUTHOR> http://www.distrokid.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> More background info on this: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6519175](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6519175)

The reason I'm posting this again is because the title of the original submission has now been changed to something that conveys very little information about the actual subject of the discussion - DistroKid.</comment>


Reading a book a week for your career - <AUTHOR> https://commoncog.com/blog/the-ultimate-guide-to-reading-a-book-a-week-for-your-career/ <comment><USER2> "Stop reading books you don't like."

This can be quite liberating. On the one hand it's tempting to work through a book you don't like but in the end this is often very exhausting.

I also used to look down on a lot of books but now I have no problem reading Stephen King. He is a damn good writer and fun to read.

<comment><USER3> I have never understood this attitude, honestly. Some of the most worthwhile things in life are _difficult_ , literature included. Discarding things because they don't immediately grab your attention seems like a side effect of our low-attention span age.

<comment><USER4> Rather than "difficulty", consider ROI and opportunity cost.

If it's difficult, but you're learning a new skill, expanding your perspective or capacity, or enjoying the challenge, by all means, keep going.

If you're not enjoying it, and the payoff is just having completed it, and you could do a lot more valuable/enjoyable stuff with that time, then stop reading Finnegan's Wake, for goodness sake.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I remember reading Fravia's essay about evaluating sources [0] (e.g. books) about 20 years ago and it was pretty good advice for me as a teenager. In my experience, being very picky about the choice of books pays off. There is no need to read 50 bad books per year if there are two excellent books you can spend a year with.

[0] [https://fravia.2113.ch/evaluate.htm](https://fravia.2113.ch/evaluate.htm)

<comment><USER6> And books are not all the same. No matter who you are, it's going to take you longer to read Ulysses than it will take you to read Hank the Cowdog.

<comment><USER7> And yet Hank the Cowdog might have a higher return on invested time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As an engineer, it's not as easy to get through technical books in such short amounts of time.

<comment><USER9> A book a month would be a more achievable goal, if still unreasonable if they're all technical books. You can't speed read technical books, specially if they're about new topics that require practical exercises.

Reading x books doesn't count as learning x topics.

<comment><USER10> I don't know if there are people who can learn complex topics by reading a book, but I certainly can't. Without any context, I can't keep enough of it in my head for long enough to build a mental model of the whole system. At best I'll come away with a vague familiarity with some of terminology. I have to actually implement parts of it to retain it.

<comment><USER11> Agree with this sentiment. With the exception of very specific topics that I've encountered in the wild but have no theoretical context on (e.g. Async JS), I have never been able to learn from a book. Tutorials/blog posts are great for this because you can stop and implement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I really don't get the goal of reading X books a year. The impact of reading comes from DOING THE THINGS that the books recommend to do. Often I'll speak to folks who call themselves "prolific readers", and it'll be obvious that they've retained a bit here or there-- but few are actually practicing those things!

Warren Buffet is cited as an example in this article. Sure he reads a lot, but most it consists of SEC filings and balance sheets. If you examine his quotes, you'll find he cites ONE book (the Intelligent Investor) over and over again. He read that one book, and LIVED it for decades. In my opinion, that's a much better goal than reading a book a week.

<comment><USER12> I care to disagree. I read for getting different perspective on life, having fun with ideas presented in a book. So I don't retain much and I don't care about "doing those things" because I am not going to be next Warren Buffet after reading his biography.

What reading does to my mind is that it shapes "personality". I am not going to live by the "How to win friends..." but what I got from it is to be more friendly and open to other people and to be more empathic. I think it kind of stayed with me even thou I read that book once and did not follow recommendations to live by it and challenge myself to do all stuff there is in that book.

Then if you read multiple books and see common ideas presented by many authors you kind of get really great insights that stay for longer than when you read one book. Because then you see that more than one person thinks that way.

<comment><USER13> I second this. Between fiction and non-fiction I read (or mostly listened to) 76 books last year and am currently in my 14th book this year.

I get contact to a lot of ideas from a lot of different points of view. I am literally bathing my brain in ideas from many different people. Especially when I am listening to fiction these ideas tend to mingle.

This year, as an additional step, I am playing with the ideas behind the so called 'Zettelkasten' to better structure the ideas I extract from the books. And to reach a higher level of retention.

Non the less I mostly listen to books to relax while commuting. So every idea I gain as additional knowledge is an extra win in my book.

<comment><USER14> > these ideas tend to mingle.

This is the value I look for too, being able to see references to ideas in other fields. But I don't know what it will be until I read and make the connection

See: Frequency illusion or Baader–Meinhof phenomenon

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's so hard to find quality books to read that weren't published decades or centuries ago.

<comment><USER16> I think that depends on what you're looking for. Technical books are always evolving. There's always new fiction. Self-improvement and business books, especially the best ones I find, are quite old.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm not sure I agree with the assertion that podcasts are a bad way to engage with ideas in the way that books allow you to. Of course many podcasts don't do this or even proclaim to, but my experience has been that certain interviewers/podcasters are really good at laying out ideas or worldviews that you can then evaluate yourself.

The one downside is that they generally take more time to go through and it's hard to know beforehand whether what you are going to listen to is worthwhile

<comment><USER18> Any recommendations on podcasts?

<comment><USER17> Conversations with Tyler is quite good - I don't agree with him on many things politically but he has a very idiosyncratic way of looking at things that has informed my own worldview

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I read 1 to 1.5 books a week. I have been reading for sometime now.My problem is that my friends don't read much.

Everyone wants to read but don't enjoy reading as much.

I have a hard time finding people with similar habits.

Most of my friends work on tech industry and is aware of benefits.

</comment><comment><USER20> A book a week...for my career...how many hours do you want me to freaking work? I already spend 40 at this desk, I'd like a life outside of work, please.

Bringing up people like Warren Buffet constantly as capitalist idols and role models is horrifically annoying, too. Nobody's going to become Warren Buffet by reading the same quantity of books as him.

<comment><USER17> I think the point is that reading more will improve you in many ways both in and outside of work. Of course if you have young children or ageing parents to take care of that's a different story but for most people the time spent looking at social media or playing games could be better spent reading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> A general rule of thumb: if a nonfiction book has been published in the past ±30 years, is about some vague new concept like "outliers" or "a Black Swan event", and is written by someone that hasn't spent decades working in their field: read the Wikipedia page or a summary instead. You'll save yourself hours and hours of time.

<comment><USER9> If you're interested in common reviews, despite all its shortcomings, GoodReads is still a place where honest reviews can be picked.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is it like to graduate from top CS school yet trapped in 9-5? - <AUTHOR>

Ladies and Gentlemen, What is it like to graduate from top CS schools ( think MIT, Stanford, Harvard, GTech, CMU, Berkley, Caltech or top 25 elite caliber schools etc etc ) and still being trapped in 9 -5 routine ?
Does any of you work in job where you know you are "one of the best" but still feel trapped in Corporate ? because
a. family reasons
b. personal reasons
c. visa ( big one ! )
I have two questions for you :
1. If you have already came out of trap how did you do it ?
2. Does any of feel trapped at current job but dont want to go entrepreneurship way rather find better job but still can't get enough response for any reason ?
Would love to hear your story.
TY and TC Mates. <comment><USER2> What's wrong with 9-5 did you imagine yourself like a rock star when graduating from CS?

</comment><comment><USER3> What makes you so special that you can't do a 40 hour work week.</comment>


Nokia 3310 hands-on - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/02/nokia-3310-hands-on-its-hard-not-to-like-this-modern-take-on-the-feature-phone/ <comment><USER2> This would be my "primary driver" had they implemented LTE, GPS, and no- nonsense USB tethering.

I don't need, nor want, anything else.

Also, get off my lawn.

</comment><comment><USER3> 3310 (the original) was my first mobile phone. It was OK. Flip phones were much nicer though, even the ones with the antenna sticking out - which, in fact, made them even cooler looking. I loved my Motorola-made one (not the RAZR; VA76R, was it?). It was perfect.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is really attractive, SD card, bluetooth, long battery life. But there is no GPS, so no maps. That's a lot to compromise.

Seems they really went all out in not making it a smart phone replacement.

</comment><comment><USER5> burner for border crossings.

Finally, a phone for older relatives that doesn't suck.

</comment><comment><USER6> What are the possibilities of application development in feature phones? Are we seeing the return of feature phones with possible voice functions in the very near future.

</comment><comment><USER7> Pretty cool! Be interesting to see how many of the internet "grumpy old men" complaining about modern smartphones buy them in first-world countries.

<comment><USER8> I really want to see them succeed, too. Considering that used Nokia 3310 and 3330 are still sold for around 50 Euro on Amazon or eBay here in Germany, it's fair to assume that there is a real market for new "dumbphones".

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If only it had a keyboard. I bet people just forgot about the pain of T9</comment>


CBS testing HTML5 for iPad - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/25/cbs-testing-html5-ipad-video-out-in-the-open

<comment><USER2> >> A bit more sleuthing reveals several "webkit" (the foundation of the iPad's and iPhone's mobile Safari browser) calls after peeling open the CSS

Now that I web-surf with Click-to-Flash installed, I am really struck by how many landing pages depend on Flash-based content all over them: from key corporate info to (of course) ads: a situation that I find most depressing.

Perhaps the iPad will provide the extra boost that HTML5 video has been needing?</comment>


'SolidSX is an application that gives insight in large software systems' - <AUTHOR> http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/project.cfm?id=713

<comment><AUTHOR> The parent link is to a data visualization blog entry, actual product page: [http://www.solidsourceit.com/products/SolidSX-source-code- de...](http://www.solidsourceit.com/products/SolidSX-source-code-dependency- analysis.html)</comment>


Never Be a Customer's Doormat - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/never-be-a-customers-doormat.html?cid=sf01001 <comment><USER2> Anecdotally, from the inside of some larger organizations I've never seen a request for such leeway from a smaller company used legitimately.

It has either been simple ego or a sort of test to gauge just how far the small company is willing to compromise itself.

 _> "The small company marshals all its resources to create a detailed proposal (requirements, SWOT, etc.) which, when completed, ends up as an RFP that goes out to a dozen vendors, or maybe just to threaten their existing vendor with some fake competition."_

Yep, this is Procurement 101. I've seen folks who are too lazy to bother doing a cursory search and replace to clean up the vendor name and logos.

<comment><USER3> I wonder if there is a way to create standard documents like PDFs and Powerpoints that phone home quietly so you know when the document has been altered for reuse as an RFP.

There should be some technological way to determine if your copyrighted work is being used honestly.

<comment><USER4> I think the point made above was that you shouldn't care if they use your proposal/design as an RFP because you ALREADY billed them for just the proposal/design.

When I worked as a consultant doing software customisations, they were always done in (at least) two statges. Proposal and design work was a separate contract from implementation. It was made clear to the client they could go elsewhere for implementation. They rarely did.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's a VERY fine line between helping a client through a bind, and being abused by an individual with a tight budget.

The former may stay with you for life. The latter will use you until you say no.

It is very rare that it's a large company who needs the largesse of a small entrepreneur to stay in business, though.

I see this in treatment of individuals as well as costs. Many clients assume they can bully and abuse consultants. "We're your biggest account, so please work the next few weekends and we'll help you get the next project." You can't earn a trusted relationship without a first project, and the slippery slope starts.

The key for any small business is actively screening your prospects. It's hard to turn away any business, but if you screen for "How is this person to do business with" it can save aggravation along the way.

<comment><USER6> In _some_ cases, standing up to client pressure and saying, "Sorry, but I don't work on weekends" can earn a client's respect.

<comment><USER5> True. And if you always roll over when you have explicitly said you won't, you'll lose respect. (Or lost appreciation for standing up)

The key is you have to deliver on what you say will. Then you can earn the respect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm using two ways to make my customers pay:

1st, I offer 2% sconto (discount/allowance), if they pay within 7 days. Customers who can count, and have no cash flow problem normally use this 2% discount.

2nd, I'm using a factoring bank, for those customers who payed late the first time. The bank will pay me immediate and has good attorneys to get the money from the bad customer. Factoring will charge a margin comparable to 3 month EURIBOR.

Normally a customer who has been contacted by my factoring bank phones back within a few days, claiming that they will pay next invoice immediate to get rid of the shame of a factoring bank registering a bill debt.

I'll then try the next (3rd) invoice in normal way. And if they dont use the discont and pay within 7 day, I'll stop doing business with them, regardless how much they beg me to complete the project.

My time is to valuable to fight bad customers.

See: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factoring_%28finance%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factoring_%28finance%29)

and: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discounts_and_allowances](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discounts_and_allowances)

<comment><USER8> Can you expand more on the factoring bank? Which bank are you using, and what's the process?

<comment><USER7> I'm using deutsche-factoring.de because its located in Bremen, my home town. A factoring bank buys the invoice, pays me immediate, and bills the customer. They will file a Schufa record. The schufa record will tell every bank and and everybody else who wants to know it, that the customer has the habit of paying late. Thats something no company wants on file.

This of course only works, if you have a real contract with the customer. So getting the paperwork right is always the zero step.

[http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schufa](http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schufa)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For long overdue accounts, here is a short sample email that I came across a while ago:

"A quick note to say that I am really disappointed that you have still not paid me the [..] that I'm owed for the work I did for you. In the grand scheme of things, it's not a lot of money, but actually I think that this is more a matter of respect.

I have always been there at the drop of a hat to sort out any problems you might have. I love working with you and have always taken our relationship as more than just client/supplier. But if I can't rely on you paying promptly or it takes several attempts and reminders to get my money, that's not good business.

I'm not saying that I don't want to work with you, I do. But if I don't receive what I am owed within the next couple of days, I will have to think twice about helping you in the future."

Never hesitate to ask what's rightfully yours.

<comment><USER10> I think this is a little silly, and an understanding of why will help you with your business, so here goes:

If the late payment decision comes from the project stakeholder, the person who deliberately engaged you, your contact at the client, then really your relationship is over when they decide to mess with you. Do a standard collections process with them, then terminate the relationship.

If the late payment decision comes from a procurements or payables department, as is often the case, then they don't care about any of the emotional appeals in your letter; in fact, they don't even care about threats of reduced availability or flexibility. People in those departments are compensated for deferring and reducing payments; they aren't measured by how well they maintain the actual customer relationship. Do a standard collections process with them.

You might consider informing your client contact of the dysfunctional payments department, but I haven't seen that produce reliable results (again: the incentives of the procurements or payables people aren't aligned with those of your client contact).

It's important to understand why you aren't getting paid. Here's another fun thing to know: like it or not, sometimes its your fault; if you're working with a company with a formal payments process and you don't follow that process to the 't', you're going to get paid late no matter what you tell them.

<comment><USER11> Yep - this is excellent advice.

Toyota (a company that generally has its act in order) once paid my consulting bill twice, and then next month paid late. Both times I brought it to their attention and it was rectified immediately. Both times the project stakeholder had no idea, he had just approved them. Left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.

Incentives are everything in economics.

<comment><USER8> Exactly. Happened with me too. Got paid twice. Told the project manager and he said he'll tell the Accounting department. A year later, and still nothing happened.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The thing I see is that the customers who are most likely to ask aggressively for things are the customers I want the least. It burns out your support resources, and running a support organization is /hard/ \- and it's really, really important.

Running a support organization is hard because people who have both social skills and technical skills are... well, they are very, very valuable, and quickly price themselves out of what you usually pay support. Most people focus on one or the other (the technical or the social) - so usually you end up hiring either socially optimized folk and try to automate (or teach) the technical side, or take the technically optimized, and try to put a level one 'shield'(of folks with social skills) in front of them)

You also get huge levels of burn-out in support. I think this gets worse the more you try to stick with policy (as opposed to "just help the customer") - at least for me, it's really rough when I'm supposed to just get the guy off the phone, rather than solve a problem. Even in the best of times, doing support is rough; everyone you encounter has a problem with your service. The phone support desks for larger services are usually places people go to become cynical.

My /goal/ (and I don't achieve this goal very often) is to go out of my way for customers who ask in a way that is easy for me to deal with on a logistical/emotional level (yeah, emotions are important here; I have... limited support resources) - and then to be more "well, this is policy" for the more aggressive, harder to deal with customers.

The hard part is that the customers who are best of all... those who don't ask for any extra attention at all, are the hardest to give something 'extra' to.

(now, I can identify about 10 ways that I'm failing those customers right now... I'm just saying, it's harder to know what people want when they are not aggressive about it... but those are the folks who burn the least customer service resources, both in the 'use' and 'burn out' senses.)

</comment><comment><USER13> Good advice. The only issue I have is in the first anecdote - absolving their debt based on a promise of future work? That's not letting a client push you around - that's being a downright idiot.

</comment><comment><USER14> I was working for a small (50-100 employees) manf firm. We out-sourced some difficult, technical work to a local specialist. We had tight unusual requirements, we weren't paying much, and we wanted a very tight delivery schedule.

The guy did wonders - worked really hard and delivered excellent product, on time.

He issued us with an invoice.

We didn't pay.

He followed up - asked why we hadn't paid.

We hadn't paid because his paperwork didn't conform to "what we needed" in some obscure bureaucratic way.

It took him a few weeks of back-and-forth to get his payment.

Needless to say, he declined all our other offers of work, and we got worse quality product, from less flexible suppliers, at greater cost in future.

Payment departments can harm your company.

</comment><comment> at-fates-hands When I worked for a wealthy business owner (he had one business and about 50 employees) he would always give me advice about dealing with larger companies. Here's some of the better stuff he shared:

1) Never back down to a larger company. As soon as you give in and give them a break, you're going to be a doormat. Always be the squeaky wheel.

2) Always get everything in writing. They offer you a verbal deal? Say not until we both sign it and its on paper. Both companies and sales people will always balk at having something you can show a judge in a small claims court if its just an empty promise. Then you have something to hold their feet to the fire if it doesn't work out.

3) Always, always, always be willing to walk away from a deal. It's a big account? You could save yourself hours of frustration and use that energy to find several smaller companies. Or you could fine another larger company who will treat you better. Nothing is worth being someone else's patsy, nothing.

<comment><USER15> > _" 2\. Always get everything in writing."_

I work at a mid-size software consultancy. In our region, the company's reputation is that of a trustworthy and flexible partner, with good engineers.

Our customers are mostly large companies (5k+ employees). It is not uncommon that, for a new project, we already start working for them before anything is on paper (more specifically, before an official purchase order was prepared by the customer). Middle management at the customers love this, because they usually hire consultants for urgent problems, but their internal bureaucracy prevents them from getting a purchase order out fast enough.

So, if your reputation is strong and customers _will_ want to get back to you, I believe that point 2 becomes less important.

I once asked one of our managers why he didn't immediately get a particular verbal agreement on paper. He said "we have to work on trust anyway. We really don't want to get caught in a lawsuit, since it'll cost us a lot of money and energy - if there's a lawsuit, we already lost. So, we simply only work for customers that we trust".

The only case that I know of where we didn't get paid was when a customer went bankrupt. No amount of paper would've saved us there.

<comment><USER16> That still probably requires some comparable power between companies.

I have a friend, that was hired by a large media company to do some 3D models that the media company was hired to create to Siemens.

He never bothered in making all the proper papers, and just worked away.

Now Siemens got the 3D work, and ran away with the money... And how you can sue Siemens? They are so huge that if you attempt that they will make you go bankrupt in lawyer costs only.

<comment><USER17> You might want to redact the company name from your comment in case any of their expensive lawyers notice it...

<comment><USER16> I know, but right now they have more issues (ie: it was found out they were bribing the governor of the state where I live to be allowed to build trains... this probably is one of the factors in their recent leadership change)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Twitter has made this a potential problem with _all_ customers, not just larger customers who want to throw their weight around. The threat (explicit or imagined) of a Twitter PR nightmare can get companies into the same position with customers, even "free" ones if a company does that sort of thing.

</comment><comment><USER19> So true. So very, very true.

I had an experience that went much further than the "pay us what you owe now or else" stage. At some point I want to write that up so that people can see how to pursue a debtor past that point and what pitfalls to look out for.

Funny thing is, word gets around real fast that you go after people who try to play you - and you get better customers because of it.

</comment><comment><USER16> My parents own a shop that sells nuts, bolts, clamps, and some other stuff for industrial fixation.

One of our clients is a huge company (it is a conglomerate, that in several areas it has the first place in market share), and it works by making a price contract with you, and while the contract is in force, you must sell for the price set on the contract start.

My mother got good in negotiating those contracts, and not allowing the client to push us around, and this resulted into a profitable relationship, but we know that this big client left several of our competitors utterly destroyed, it leaves a wake of company destruction...

It is because many companies, several bigger than my parents (my parents company have no employees, and sell small amounts of stuff used mostly for emergency repairs stock), believe they are too small, and that such big client is awesome and they must then take their first term of the contract at loss to attract the client...

The problem is that after the contract expire, the client just refuse to raise the contract much above inflation, thus if you accepted a past contract at loss, you have suddenly to play hardball to Chuck Norris level to get profitable again, since the person let themselves get pushed around in first place to get the client, they usually don't negotiate enough, and of course, get abused in the way that the client repeteadly orders lots of stuff from them until the losses are too big and they fail.

We learned better, we made clear to that conglomerate, that we won't sell at loss, we prefer to not sell at all, than selling at loss.

<comment><USER20> _we prefer to not sell at all, than selling at loss._

It's crazy that one has to actually put this down, but that's perfect sense. Selling nothing is more profitable than selling at a loss.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> sometimes losing a big client in such way may actually be a way to sell yourself. i.e., marketing yourself (or the company) as the hard-nosed professional whose pride is in the work but will not be pushed over.

Sometimes, such reputation does most of weeding-out of clients with the intention of empty promises. Setting your market value too high isn't recommendable, but setting it high is definitely important.

</comment><comment><USER22> I think the Ten Commandments should be read everytime the board of directors sit down! Before the Stanford MBA pontificates on how to screw the existing customer base?

</comment><comment><USER23> Reminds me of a speech by Mike Monteiro:

[http://vimeo.com/22053820](http://vimeo.com/22053820)

(Skip to 1 minute in to skip intro.)

To wit: "Fuck you. Pay me."

</comment><comment><USER24> Never be anyone's doormat! We have a word for that type of relationship: abusive.</comment>


India sexual harassment: American student shares horrific experiences - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/20/world/american-student-india-sexual-harassment-irpt/index.html <comment><USER2> You should heed to Powell's advice [http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Rape-fear-keeps- US-...](http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Rape-fear-keeps-US-students- out-of-India-Nancy-Powell/articleshow/26059607.cms)</comment>


How to Be Creative - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203370604577265632205015846.html <comment><USER2> "In the real world, these just people with ideas; They just like me and you when the smoke and camera disappear."</comment>


Gift Cards Are Worth Less Than You Think [data viz] - <AUTHOR> http://www.giftrocket.com/your-gift-card-worth

<comment><USER2> A gift card's value on the open market is not necessarily the same as its value as a _gift_.

We respond differently to cash than to gift cards. If I receive cash, I tend to treat it the same as all other money I receive. Mentally, it goes into my "income" pile and I'm just as conservative with it as I am with all of my other income.

On the other hand, if someone gave me, say, a Best Buy gift card, I _have_ to spend it at Best Buy. The giver is saying "I want you to have a fun electronic something, but I want you to pick which one." I'm going to use it to splurge on something I _want_ as opposed to something I _need_. (With that in mind, I find grocery store gift cards odd.)

It also wasn't obvious to me until the end that this was put together by people who have a product that compete with gift cards.

<comment><USER3> Grocery store giftcards aren't really for presents, they're more for situations like parents ensuring a college student is spending money on food.

<comment><USER4> Ah, college kids. Say... do they sell beer at that grocery store?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is this where I bitch about those "cash" gift Visa and Mastercards? (The ones that are essentially a prepaid credit card with a fixed balance.) I've received a couple of them and they're so bizarre to me. First of all, they apparently cost $3.95, which is a 15.8% fee on a $25 card. (You would think Visa and Mastercard would be so happy to have more cards out there causing 3% transaction fees to happen that they'd give the cards away at face value).

Then they're actually less practical than cash. You have to spend _exactly_ the card balance to use them effectively. So if I swipe it at Starbucks a few times until it's down to $1.49, the next transaction will simply be declined! I'd have to ask the barista ahead of time to split the transaction and charge exactly $1.49 to the card (so I have to mentally track the balance or call Visa/MC every time I use it). I'm guessing it's more likely that people reach the point where the card is declined and then throw it away, with Visa/MC pocketing the remains.

If you want to use it online, you have to go to the Visa/MC web site and register it (provide your personal details) so that the card is associated with billing details. Lovely side effect: they get your personal contact information to spam you with.

For the love of all that is rational, please don't give me these cards, I'd much rather have $28.95 cash than $25 + extra hassles. The best use of these cards I could come up with is converting them to a gift card at a particular store you actually like. Store gift cards have correct overflow semantics - the full balance of the card will be used and the register will ask you to come up with the difference.

<comment><AUTHOR> Amen!

There are a lot of niche use cases for them which most people don't see. For example, businesses use them to pay contractors when they owe more than a certain amount in order to avoid tax liability / paperwork.

We didn't pull much data on them, but I think you can buy them at a discount as well.

<comment><USER6> Hey Kapil, This is a tangent, but who designed your site? It's gorgeous.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the compliment. Mike Kus designed it, though things like this content piece we did ourselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The value I place on a gift card bought online has to be adjusted for trust and convenience.

If I'm buying an Amazon gift card online from Amazon, I will happily pay $100 to get a $100 gift card. If I'm buying an Amazon gift card from someone on ebay, of course I'm not going to pay $100 for it. Why would I when buying the same card from Amazon would be far more convenient and Amazon has proven itself far more trustworthy to me than any random ebayer?

However, this reduction in value due to a decrease in trust & convenience says nothing about the actual value of that gift card to me or the receiver. I'm simply trading some increased risk of being ripped off for some of the cash value of the card.

</comment><comment><USER8> Their data gathering and thesis are flawed. Online selling price has little to do with value. If people were selling cash online they would not get 100% of the value.

Gift cards sold online could have been bought with stolen credit cards (seriously, watch out!). The person selling the cards will take well below the value because they didn't pay anything. The person buying the card is assuming a huge risk, the card may be with nothing.

The true value of a gift card lies in the eyes of the receiver. And like any gift you have to know the person you are giving it to. A $400 gift card for Agent Provocateur is worth a lot to a girl who loves lingerie and appreciates $200 bras, but it's not worth much to someone who only likes functional cotton underwear. I like computers, but a $400 gift card to the Apple Store would be useless to me because I don't want to spend the extra $800 it would take to get a computer. Even a $10 Starbucks card is worth nothing to someone who only drinks Diet Coke, but worth a full $10 to someone who drinks Starbucks every day.

</comment><comment><USER9> I was intrigued -- until I tried to send one - and paypal auth page showed a higher amount than my gift card amount -- FAQ says $1 + 5%. Get real.

They're absolutely right: CASH gets you more!

<comment><AUTHOR> Like any other payments company, we face transaction fees.

We're pushing a bunch of changes tonight since we're migrating to a new payments system, but afterwards I'll pass you information that should let you purchase without fee.

Thanks for the feedback regardless.

Kapil

<comment><USER10> Don't most gift cards their money on the interest the money earns while the company holds it (iirc float)? and then on the unclaimed cards, if they're allowed to expire?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Who is going to be giving used gift cards this year?

But more seriously, someone needs to make a firefox plug-in or app that automatically searches for discounted gift cards when I happen to be browsing Amazon, etc..

And there needs to be a search engine for these gift cards, because I want to buy the 40% off Harbor Freight variety.

</comment><comment><USER12> What about Amazon? Seems to approach cash value. Can somebody explain what's happening here: [http://www.ebay.com/itm/Amazon-Gift-Card-50-Fifty-FREE- SHIPP...](http://www.ebay.com/itm/Amazon-Gift-Card-50-Fifty-FREE-SHIPPING-No- expiration-amazon- com-/290641980801?pt=US_Gift_Certificates&hash=item43ab9cad81)

<comment><USER13> I know a few cases where people have sold gift cards above market value. Mostly it's because the purchaser is unable to buy from the shop because of their location, credit card brand or other enforced block.

Many online games for instance block purchases from Israel due to the large amount of fraud. Israels will then purchase game cards on ebay (often above market value) from people who bought them in North America.

<comment><USER14> For similar reasons, I once paid a store in California $90 to open a box that you could buy in the store for $50 and read me 15 digits.

<comment><USER15> C'mon Uncle Patio, tell us what was in the box....

<comment><USER14> A bunch of stuff I didn't care about plus a CD key for WoW, on release day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I thought the uptake was going to be that the whole concept of a gift card is ludicrous. Instead I'm sold on using a _different_ kind of gift card.

Don't get me wrong -- I often prefer getting gift cards to getting something useless, but they just seem like a cover for not knowing me very well. I suppose they make sense when there's likely to be an asymmetry in charity. But if you're going to give cash, why give at all? What use is it to exchange $50 bills?

<comment><USER17> The best explanation I've ever heard for gift cards is that they force the recipient to spend money on "something fun" rather than being strictly practical. Some gift givers would rather know you went out for a nice meal or bought a new tie or something than that you used their gift to buy gas or everyday groceries. I'm not sure I agree with this sentiment, but I can see where it's coming from.

<comment><AUTHOR> The big thing that flies in the face of this is that people spend tons of money on gas, grocery, and Wal-Mart cards. Some of those might be for underbanked people, but many aren't. With Amazon, for example, I'd guess most people just instantly apply the credit to their account and don't think about it after that.

There's a thoughtfulness treat-yourself aspect to them, and there's a practical make-sure-this-can-be-used aspect. The data seemed to point that the practical aspect is missing, the gift cards are valued less in secondary markets than their more practical counterparts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> While I love the interactive infographic my favorite part of this is referring to Frederick's of Hollywood as a place "no one has heard of". My girlfriend sends me at least 4-5 links to items on that website every few weeks. Where can I get one of those gift cards for 50% off?!

</comment><comment><USER19> Big box stores give gift cards in return for falsely returned items (get a receipt, walk out with the same thing twice; this is why the guy at the door wants to mark your receipt with a market.)

So of COURSE people are willing to take a lower price for their $100 gift cards - they paid less than $100.

My theory is that the gift card economy is a shadow economy for people who need to use plastic for whatever reason but are unable to open accounts (lack of documentation I guess?)

<comment><USER19> Why the downvote? I should have said hypothesis instead of theory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> So, who wants to sell me a $100 Whole Foods gift card for $91?

<comment><USER21> I actually went looking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I really like the scatter plots. Are you using a plotting library to do it, or do you have your own code?

<comment><AUTHOR> We used Moocharts, but Jonathan, my cofounder had to modify some of the source to edit stuff that was hardcoded like axis titles and popup stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've found that prepaid credit cards work well as gift cards without the restrictions.

</comment><comment><USER24> So am I to understand that GiftRocket's whole business model is predicated on the belief that giving cash is rude?

<comment><USER25> Yup.

"GiftRocket combines the thoughtfulness of a gift certificate with the flexibility of cash."

Gift certificates are an $80B market in the United States, with a business model more or less based on the same belief.

<comment><USER26> I have a whole pile of certificates like that in my desk. I call them "checks".</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to know which TLDs are "safe"? - <AUTHOR> I've been looking to register a new domain and while all the good stuff is taken on the popular TLDs like .com and many others, there are a lot of great lesser-used TLDs that seem attractive, but I don't know how to gauge the safety/security/durability of these as I think I've read that there are different owners/systems for different TLDs (Google is often mentioned here as an "owner" of some that it uses for questionable purposes). Is there a way to get some accurate and easy-to-interpret info on if a TLD is "ok" (for lack of a better word) ?<p>I was burned years ago by an attractive TLD where its owners raised the yearly renewals to like $150 from the original $30 without anything I could do about it, so I had to either give it up (which I did) or just eat the fees. So I'd like to know which TLDs are also immune to that sort of thing. <comment><AUTHOR> I suppose I could just buy a TLD and register it for like a decade to avoid price hikes in the short term.

</comment><comment><USER2> I never renew domains. I just let them expire after a year and register a new one in its place. The web is ephemeral in nature anyway and that's why I do it. Then you have the ten-year time window limit to deal with, and who even knows if your registrar will be around by then.

</comment><comment><USER3> domain names are almost not immune to that sort of thing: price hikes. only way is to buy for 10years . and, in most cases, that hikes up the price for you on day one.

</comment><comment><USER4> I like .net, at least for my personal stuff.

</comment><comment><USER5> .eu

<comment><USER4> That's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure if it's available to people outside of the European Economic Area (EEA).</comment></comment>


SA-CORE-2014-005 - Drupal core - SQL injection - <AUTHOR> https://www.drupal.org/SA-CORE-2014-005

<comment><AUTHOR> Technical details can be found in this link: [https://www.sektioneins.de/en/advisories/advisory-012014-dru...](https://www.sektioneins.de/en/advisories/advisory-012014-drupal- pre-auth-sql-injection-vulnerability.html)

</comment><comment><USER2> asfdsa</comment>


Incrementing the Xcode Build Number – Like a Boss - <AUTHOR> https://elliot.land/incrementing-the-xcode-build-number <comment><USER2> IMHO, better approach is to set version string from git tag and build number from git commit count in master

</comment><comment><USER3> What about using Apple's Generic Versioning System? They even provide you with avgtool. There's also fastlane with some commands that use avgtool to bump your build and version numbers.

<comment><USER2> If you are using VCS then you need to save your bump each time, producing this infinite "Bump version" commits. They look not very nice in VCS log</comment></comment>


Ask HN: if you google 'bottle' what is your first search result? - <AUTHOR>

I wanted to google the Bottle Python framework and just typed 'bottle' and pressed return. At that very moment my brain thought: what do you think you are doing, you need to type 'bottle python' you idiot, you'll get all sort of useless links about bottles now. Well, lo and behold the first link was for the Python Bottle framework. Google freaking knows I am a Python hacker and shows me what I want. The search engine filter bubble is awesome. <comment><USER2> I get:

bottlepy.org

specialtybottle.com

wikipedia/bottle

I've never written a line of Python in my life.

This is a case where I don't think Google "knows" you, but that bottle is such a common simple term nobody is searching for it in the sense of a canister to hold their pop, but for the less common use as programming framework.

</comment><comment><USER3> # Wikipedia article # Python framework # Directory of bottle manufacturers in India

</comment><comment><USER4> 1.python framework 2.wikipedia article 3.some random site . I\m not python hacker

</comment><comment><USER5> Bottle PR company

Bottle PY

Wikipedia

</comment><comment><USER6> 1\. wikipedia. 2. wikipedia. 3. bottlepy.

</comment><comment><USER7> bottlepy specialybottle wiki</comment>