Rocket woman: How to cook curry and get a spacecraft into Mars orbit - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-45374442 <comment><USER3> Dynamics are definitely changing in India, now more women finish school & college and are becoming contributors in household income. This although is happening in major cities and metros but in rural area women are still not able to receive good education, along with this there are also several cultural challenges which are involved as well. But stories like this definitely share a hope and optimism.

<comment><USER4> hmmmm.... not so true... My grand mother worked in a school... my mother worked in an university... even my wife and sister work.. I know so many women who work. All these women are not from a big city. so, let us not stereotype it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> First parsed this headline as cooking a curry powerful enough to send a spacecraft into a Mars orbit, haha! "Wow, that's a strong curry, what do you spice with?" "... Hydrazine."

</comment><comment><USER6> Related:

Why women in Stem may be better off working in India and Latin America: [https://www.theguardian.com/guardian- professional/2015/jun/2...](https://www.theguardian.com/guardian- professional/2015/jun/24/why-women-in-stem-may-be-better-off-working-in-india- and-latin-america#img-1)

What India Can Teach Silicon Valley About Its Gender Problem: [https://www.wired.com/2014/08/silicon-valley- sexism/](https://www.wired.com/2014/08/silicon-valley-sexism/)

India and Italy have the highest percentage of female developers: [https://blog.hackerrank.com/which-countries-have-the-most- sk...](https://blog.hackerrank.com/which-countries-have-the-most-skilled- female-developers/)

<comment><USER7> I work in the Indian tech industry (a large service based company in the past and some small-ish startups), so perhaps I can share some insights on this topic.

The reason for the somewhat balanced gender ratio here is much more mundane than what these articles would make you believe.

In India, engineering is one of the "default" career paths for most poor/middle class families children for leading a stable life. It's pretty depressing honestly, children spend the first 20-22 years of their life being a book-worm and they get to choose from a set of "acceptable" careers (Engineering, Medicine, Business). Any unorthodox career paths are out of question unless you are the rebellious kind.

What effect does this have on the workforce? You get people (both men and women) who are barely interested in what they do. Programming/Computers doesn't mean anything to them, it's just a day job which helps them provide for themselves. This is the main differentiation between the US/European workforce and ours. It's not that women here enter the CS industry in greater numbers because of their own interest in the field, it's just that _nobody_ gives a shit about it so the ratio is equal. This is the case with the service based companies which comprise a huge portion of the workforce. The number of women in startups (which people join on their own volition) is comparable to the US counterparts. The current company where I work, out of ~60 engineers, 4 are women.

In US/Europe, you have greater freedom and choice when you consider your career, which you generally choose based on your own interests. IMO, inculcating tech/computers as a hobby at a young age in girls and dispelling the fact that it's only for "nerds" will do a lot more to equal the numbers than any affirmative action hiring ever will.

<comment><USER8> Is it possible to earn enough in an acceptable career to then later pursue what one would like to?

<comment><USER9> Is it possible to earn enough in the unacceptable careers?

Engineering, medicine, business covers most choices that pay well, and there is demand. Business in particular is a catch-all which will let you get into any industry that pays well.

Of course there are niches outside of them that need a few smart educated people, but they are niches that can only take support a few people and get saturated easily. We have "starving artist" as an expression in English for a reason: there are a lot of great artists that will never really earn enough for more than the cheapest food and shelter with nothing else left over. (there is nothing wrong with such a lifestyle if you are not in my family - <USER2> you are in my family we want better for you, and in particular the grandchildren which your life will not support)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A nice similar piece earlier published on backchannel [https://www.buzzfeed.com/ipsitaagarwal/the-women-who-took- us...](https://www.buzzfeed.com/ipsitaagarwal/the-women-who-took-us-to-mars)

"An image of the scientists celebrating in the mission control room went viral. Girls in India and beyond gained new heroes: the kind that wear sarees and tie flowers in their hair and send rockets into space."

looked hard to find this one since backchannel moved back to wired and I didn't have free articles to read. Irony!

Edit: source on BuzzFeed took me to wired right link [https://www.wired.com/2017/03/these-scientists-sent-a- rocket...](https://www.wired.com/2017/03/these-scientists-sent-a-rocket-to- mars-for-less-than-it-cost-to-make-the-martian/)

</comment><comment><USER11> It's inappropriate, but all I can think of is the Ginger Rodgers, Fred Astaire comment: [http://www.reelclassics.com/Actresses/Ginger/ginger- article2...](http://www.reelclassics.com/Actresses/Ginger/ginger-article2.htm)

</comment><comment><USER12> This old soviet cartoon about exploitation of woman still stays relevant:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkdhJWyzFR8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkdhJWyzFR8)

</comment><comment><USER13> There's an excellent podcast by Kalki - [https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06jv110](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06jv110). The only part that irked me was how Kalki mispronounced the lady's name. I would hope that there would be _some_ basic research to get the name of the protagonist right.

</comment><comment><USER14> wow what a champ. love her!

</comment><comment><USER15> for a moment I was lost thinking abt curry .... Nicely done ^_^

</comment><comment><USER16> I'd think an engineer and surgeon could hire a housemaid to help out with the cooking. In the USA, it'd be a household income of > $600k.

I saw a documentary a few years ago. The woman cooked breakfast, then after the husband left, immediately started lunch. Brought lunch to the husband in a stacked lunch-pail, them immediately started with dinner.

They cooked all day; crazy. Of course Indian food takes a long time to make well. I don't know how they do it in restaurants. It takes me three hours.

<comment><USER17> In the USA, parents don't typically arrange an adult daughter's marriage without asking her what she thinks either. (She also was living with extended family, a thing Americans tend to not do either. In America, we default to the nuclear family. When it began with saying she was cooking for 8 people, I assumed she had many children. Not so.)

Also, she liked to cook and if you are a woman and have a career, doing things like cooking is a way to bond with family. If you hire a cook, a maid and a nanny, you spend vastly less time with your children.

I was a full time mom for years. I can't imagine having kids and then just hiring other people to do everything for them. If you want nothing to do with your kids, I feel like you shouldn't intentionally have kids. (Though, unlike some people, I realize that not all children are planned. So sometimes people are just coping as best they can with what life handed them.)

<comment><USER6> >In the USA, parents don't typically arrange an adult daughter's marriage without asking her what she thinks either.

Same in India also. Arranged marriage doesn't mean forced marriage. It's unfortunate people have this perception. Even in arranged marriage, men and women agree for marriage only if they are ok.

<comment><USER9> At least the ones I have talked to understand that you don't refuse. It might be possible, but it isn't done.

Of course India is a big country with a lot of people. Their culture is not completely shared. To state anything in absolute terms is probably wrong.

<comment><USER18> Everything you say about India is true, and its opposite.

For the record, i can safely say that arranged marriages without the couple even meeting were common in my parents generation upto the 60s, became unusual in my generation (I don't know of any case in my family) around the 80s/90s and now would be unimaginable in my children's generation. This is a mostly (but not completely) urban middle class experience, spanning a very large family in north and west of India.

Things are different in the North vs the South, rural vs urban, poor and rich, different religions probably and so on. We are probably the most heterogenous society on earth, so this is not surprising.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is this headline subtly sexist..?

<comment><USER20> The subject matter is about a woman managing a high intensity career and taking care of a large family, so perhaps not. It's worth thinking about though.</comment></comment>


Auti-sim lets you experience the horror of sensory overload - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/03/auti-sim-lets-you-experience-the-horror-of-sensory-overload/

<comment><USER2> Very thought-provoking. Helps to set speaker volume to a comfortable level at the start then leave it there as you explore (it quickly becomes uncomfortable). This comment on the article (from a person with clinical autism) sums it up well: "It's not that life looks like this, it's that life _feels like this_."</comment>


SleepBus – nightly non-stop trips between LA and SF - <AUTHOR> http://www.sleepbus.co/ <comment><USER2> Given how many accidents we see with drowsy Megabus, Greyhound, and semi- trailer drivers swerving around in traffic and plowing into other vehicles we really should ask: _is this a good idea_?

Do we have a guarantee that SleepBus drivers are fully rested for an overnight shift?

</comment><comment><USER3> The obvious status quo is purchasing a redeye flight. The Bay Area is remarkably well served by 3 international airports and LAX is enormous. Seems to me that there will be lots of overnight flights at competitive rates to compete against.

The other issue is cost. Each bus you purchase is a huge investment and presumably unusable during the day for other operations.

The economics seem slim at a high startup cost. I'd be interested in seeing how VCs react to this idea.

<comment> david-given The UK has a few sleeper trains, where you get a proper (if small) cabin with a proper bed etc. They run from London to some of the major cities; I'm particularly fond of the London-to-Inverness sleeper (the buffet car does a killer haggis).

Cost wise, it's considerably more expensive than an Easyjet cattle-car class flight.

But the big benefit is that it takes no working-day wall clock time. I can leave the office in London after work, comfortably reach Euston where I board the train and settle down in the buffer car with a drink and wifi; then I arrive at Inverness at about 0700 the next morning, refreshed having slept well. All the travel happens while I'm asleep.

Conversely, flying Easyjet takes waking time. I have to leave the office in the middle of the day, get to the airport, wait, check in, wait, board, fly, and arrive at my destination still during waking hours --- it eats most of an entire day.

I can't tell how this bus would compare against an overnight red-eye flight, because we don't have those (the UK's not big enough!). But I imagine that having a bunk would mean that I could actually sleep on one of these buses, unlike the fake sleep you get on planes. I'd definitely consider this, even if it was more expensive than the plane.

<comment><USER4> very well said--"no wall clock time" as you put it. I've done the Euston/Kings Cross -> Inverness and E/KC -> Ft William many times and i loved it. Inverness has an airport and it's only an up-and-down flight, but what an ass ache to travel to gatwick to catch this flight rather than a 15-minute tube ride to the train station.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great idea... but its success depends on the cost. The homepage points to Wix's Facebook, Twitter, Google+.

</comment><comment><USER6> My wife has tried many times to book, is there any transparency around when trips are actually made/one's ability to book?

</comment><comment><USER7> This is a great idea, isn't this fairly common in Mexico?

<comment><USER8> It's common in a lot of countries. I took one in Vietnam and it looks like this (a bit denser than these buses, I believe)

[http://www.sapavietnam-tours.com/image/sleeper-bus-sapa- viet...](http://www.sapavietnam-tours.com/image/sleeper-bus-sapa-vietnam8.JPG)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> [http://www.mercurynews.com/bay-area- news/ci_24429126/homeles...](http://www.mercurynews.com/bay-area- news/ci_24429126/homeless-turn-overnight-bus-route-into-hotel-22)</comment>


Ask HN: What do you use to manage your product's documentation? - <AUTHOR>

Are there any good CMS's for documentation?
How do you keep track of slightly different versions of a text that are served in different places? (eg. I might want to tailor the wording or add a few paragraphs in the Setup Guide to be a bit less terse but still use the same code snippets.)
Or just what do you use to manage your product's documentation?
(I'm not interested in "projects" that might just have a file somewhere on Github but products, with sites dedicated to selling them, with setup guides, api references, tutorials, etc.) <comment><USER2> I think you're going to need to be a little more clear in your question. Do you mean a CMS with version control over content and attachments?</comment>


Sales results from getting 3M views on YouTube - <AUTHOR> https://www.candyjapan.com/behind-the-scenes/sales-results-from-getting-3-million-views-on-youtube <comment><USER2> Perhaps of some relevance - we routinely order boxes of Japanese candy/munchies off eBay for our kids and their friends. They also make for excellent birthday presents.

40 USD gets you a _shoebox_ of stuff with the same day dispatch and 2 day air delivery to EU. It's a lot of items and we have leftovers for weeks. It also tends to take the novelty edge off for a while, so boxes this big can't be a monthly thing.

For this to work as a monthly subscription, the package size needs to be much smaller, which is what CandyJapan seems to be offering, but then they want 29 USD per month and that's just way too much.

From where I'm sitting, their problem is that it's expensive and it is a subscription. This limits their their target audience to true Japanese candy conneseurs willing to pay twice the market rate for... what exactly?

That's not even getting into the existence of local Japanese (and Chinese!) shops that carry similar inventory, and where 20-30 USD will easily cover a month worth of supply of weird stuff.

<comment><USER3> I don't think the target audience is true Japanese candy connoisseurs; if anything, it's the opposite.

Many people are interested in trying out Japanese candy, the issue arises in knowing where to order from and what to order. Getting a subscription service to CandyJapan offloads the choosing to a credible service.

In addition to that, there's also the appeal of the surprise. Of course, this is of no benefit to you - you're simply buying this for other people. For people ordering this for themselves, however, it's kind of like being gifted something every month, an always welcome surprise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I smile every time I see something from Candy Japan... not because I love candy from Japan, but because it's a start up that has been ticking along for so long - showing up here from time to time - that I feel like I'm a stow-away on their many-year journey!

<comment><USER5> Is it really a 'startup', or just a 'small business'?

<comment><USER6> It has an actual business model so it's probabliy a small business.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Heads up this is from 2015. Not sure if reflective of what would happen today, if there is any difference in viewership.

<comment><USER8> It's exactly the same today.

Here is a blog post from Candy Japan from 2 days ago, about experimenting with youtube giveaways: [http://www.candyjapan.com/youtube-marketing-horror- story](http://www.candyjapan.com/youtube-marketing-horror-story)

0 sales.

<comment><USER9> > Each only averaged 166 views, for a grand total of 2826 views.

Given it would be close to impossible to notice a lift from that viewership, I'd suggest this 'test' failed more from being too small.

Edit: removed redundant word.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looking forward to the next post: "Sales results from getting onto front page of HN"

</comment><comment><USER11> There's a somewhat similar dessert box company making 150k/month after a year with a nice writeup: [https://www.starterstory.com/dessert- boxes](https://www.starterstory.com/dessert-boxes)

It seems like instagram influencers and facebook ads are working out better for them.

(Candy Japan is making 10x less in comparison: [https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/candy- japan-81315f627...](https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/candy- japan-81315f627b))

</comment><comment><USER12> Two things:

1) No direct link means no one is actually googling for your page. People are lazy. Without a direct link, they won't go out of their way to google your website.

2) If you're able to retarget the video, this is how I would use it: Retarget anyone who watched the entire video with more YouTube Ads, Google Display network ads, etc... Send it to an optimized landing page that sells an ENTRY LEVEL box (like $9/month) and upsells to a much bigger subscription "Candy fiend" or some such for like $49/month. If people don't buy that, DOWNsell to a $19/month subscription.

In general people underestimate the value of BIG, BRIGHT COLORED buttons, mobile optimized landing pages with the buttons above the fold, upsells, downsells, "Squeeze pages" (enter your e-mail, get free stuff) so you can do e-mail marketing, etc...

Marketing is not a hit and run. Once in a great while you might post 1 thing in 1 place and it will magically make tons of money, but that isn't the norm. Most of the time Marketing is a tedious, boring thing that involves lots of micro-optimization, setting up retargeting, e-mail marketing, making more endless content to drive organic traffic, etc etc...

</comment><comment><USER13> I think the problem is more about the product market fit than youtube as a sales channel.

I think your product is more aimed at an audience of geek-adult otaku than a market of children interested in reviews of candy (so ordinary products that you can buy at the supermarket).

In my opinion a strategy that would bring results is to do cross-marketing with similar niche sectors (manga lovers, otaku geek, japan lovers, animé fans, etc.). In my experience the japan culture lover is willing to spend constantly in this type of products.

An idea could be to diversify the product (eg including Japanese magazines, gadgets, or other). So make more expensive packages and cheaper packages for different market segments.

Sorry for my english :)

</comment><comment><USER14> Why was there no direct link?

</comment><comment><USER15> Is there any actual information on how much money the video made? It doesn't really say much.

<comment><USER16> That's the point. They had no noticeable sales as a result of the video.

I wonder if having a direct link would have helped. Odd the video creator didn't do that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The video doesn't load for me.

Is this some geoblocking nonsense, or has it just been forgotten?

<comment><USER18> Did you get something like this?

[https://screenshotscdn.firefoxusercontent.com/images/4421736...](https://screenshotscdn.firefoxusercontent.com/images/4421736c-d504-4b7d-9947-008ffad06fe7.png)

Here's the video link I used [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSCgXVkYQcA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSCgXVkYQcA)

<comment><USER17> Yes. Fairly non-descript error!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> [https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/20/google-doctor- fork/](https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/20/google-doctor-fork/)

</comment><comment><USER20> This website is absolute horrible on Chrome/iPhone. It's jumping wierdly when scrolling and cutting up the content. I gave up trying to read it.

</comment><comment><USER21> TLDR: barely any increase in sales/revenue after a really popular YouTube channel did a video on them. Possible causes include having no direct clickable link or the channels' viewers don't quite monetize well (or maybe this is endemic of YouTube)

</comment><comment><USER22> So much money does that make?</comment>


Fight Fake News Images with Copy-Move Forgery Detection - <AUTHOR> https://blog.filestack.com/api/copy-move-forgery-detection/ <comment><USER2> Nice to see a Go implementation of this. I did the same back in 2008 in C: [http://blog.jgc.org/2008/02/tonight-im-going-to-write- myself...](http://blog.jgc.org/2008/02/tonight-im-going-to-write-myself- aston.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Can this technology be used to detect stop the fake news epidemic that we have right now?

<comment><AUTHOR> This can help fight one aspect of fake news. Unfortunately I think this is a back and forth game. We stop one avenue and they just find another. The technology here is specific to identifying images that have been edited in an effort to make them fit the narrative (so to speak). I'd love to see (and look forward to seeing) some of the ML work that's being done continue to be used in other cases to help stop fake news.</comment></comment>


Writing an Interpreter in Go: The Paperback Edition - <AUTHOR> https://thorstenball.com/blog/2017/02/22/writing-an-interpreter-in-go-the-paperback-edition/ <comment><USER2> I bought this book and I've been using it - but I'm writing the interpreter in Rust instead of Go. I really like it, and I think Go is actually a cool language for this due to its simplicity. I had very little Go experience but the language is drop dead boring, incredibly easy to pick up.

I'd recommend it.

<comment><USER3> Funny, I did the exact same thing!

Tried to push learning Rust via the Go examples. It has been a great exercise, but highlighted the pain of dealing with various string representations in Rust.

<comment><USER2> I'm used to it I guess. Got &'a str all over my code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Are createspace books still of a noticeably lesser quality printing than non- print-on-demand books? I saw a few a while (a few years?) ago, and the quality offended me, so I wrote off createspace. I'd be interested to learn that's not the case anymore.

(Just to preemptively clarify: The bad quality I mentioned was most noticeable when compared to a non-POD book. On its own, it looks OK-ish and you might not think anything of it, but when you look at it next to another book you can tell.)

The book itself seems pretty neat though! I'm a PDFs for tech books kind of guy, personally.

<comment><USER5> I used CreateSpace for a hardback book seven years ago (LaTeX → PDF), and it came out very, very nice. Absolutely no complaints.

Was your experience with their paperbacks or hardbacks?

<comment><USER4> Given that it was a few years ago, I can't be certain, but I'm pretty sure I only saw paperbacks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is really awesome. What I love especially is that the source code is syntax highlighted, I really wish I could have gotten that for my book.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't really think about this that much before, it was more like "yeah, full colors, sure, why not?". Holding the proof copy in my hands I realized what a nice touch it was and that I haven't seen this in other programming books. Of course, the full colors come with a cost, but once I saw it, I couldn't go back to black/white :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I will be getting one, because I loved the book so very much. It helped me tremendously when I was implementing my own little language.

<comment><AUTHOR> It makes me really happy to read that. Not because you want to buy two editions, but because you apparently enjoyed the book a lot :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Purchased an ebook copy (jfltech), while I will likely use Nim for my future toy language, this will help me immensely.

</comment><comment><USER9> Monkey is such a nice language, clean and syntactically lovable. I wonder if the same theory can be applied to make a space indented language like python or nim, I'd like to make one.

<comment><USER10> Yes, it can. Space indenting is just a small change to the lexer (or overall parser).

Whether those see "\t" or "{" or "begin" it's not really different, it will be the same "BLOCK_STARTS" kind of token.

<comment><USER11> I don't think that's true - \t happens at the beginning of every line in a block, often more than once, whereas BLOCK_STARTS and BLOCK_ENDS tokens are pretty easy to track with a stack or whathaveyou.

<comment><USER10> Of course you'll check the context too. But the same is also true for "{" occurs in many places with different meaning -- in struts, inside text strings, in interfaces (in Go), etc.

Besides it's not the \t that you need to find as a marker for e.g. scope start. Python has "def xxx():" for example, so you see that and you know you're in a function declaration scope, same way function (xxx) { in C works.

After you see that you only need to keep track of \t or " " in the beginning of lines (before any other character) to know whether you're still in the same scope or not. That's why you can't just have arbitrary whitespace count in Python lines, but you need to maintain the same "indent" in the same scope.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It is becoming quite popular (or maybe it was always the case?) that someone learning some topic and at the same time writing a book about it. Interesting how it affects the quality of the content (versus books authored by persons with expertise in given topics).

<comment> happy-go-lucky My belief is that writing about a topic that one is trying to come to grips with helps ensure they achieve the best possible learning outcomes.

<comment><USER12> The best learning outcomes for the author I believe. But I'm more interested in the prospective reader's PoV.

<comment><AUTHOR> I recently read a comment (I think it might have been on HN, but I can't find it) that said something like this: if you recently learned/mastered a topic, you're in a far better position to teach that topic than an expert, who's so deep into it, that they can't understand the beginners.

I wish I could find the source for this, because it was much better put, but that comment contains the gist of my motivation behind writing the book.

<comment><USER13> The great benefit of experts over I-just-learned-this authors is that experts know how design x or feature y relates to other designs and features not implemented in the given project.

In other words, they know a lot more context and can tell whether something that appears totally normal in the project is actually done in an unusual way that has limitations, etc.

<comment><USER14> That is what is well-done in the Haskell book imho, the combination of someone just learning everything and an experienced programmer

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I didn't see it anywhere, but does the print version come with the PDF version too?

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here. Sadly, I can't offer digital+print bundles. I sell the digital version through Gumroad and the paperback through createspace, so I don't have to worry about printing/shipping. That makes it very easy for me to sell a paperback version, but also that much harder to offer discounts or bundles or anything, if you already purchased the eBook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm definitely buying this. Still working my way through the PDF version, and it's just so well-written and helpful!

</comment><comment><USER17> Anyone can share what sort of interpreter this is? Is it a walking-AST kind of thing, or something more advanced?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a AST walking interpreter, completely built from scratch, including the lexer, the parser, the AST and, of course, the walking/evaluation step.

<comment><USER17> Cool, asking because the level _past_ the AST walking is where I'm at personally in my learnings. I feel most treatments stop at the AST interpreter step, which is what most people see in school already. I wish there was equally good treatment for everything that comes after that. Type systems, bytecode generation, JIT, optimization phases, etc.

<comment><USER18> Lisp in Small Pieces is pretty good for that.

<comment><USER17> Cool I'll check it out!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Ordered my copy. :)

</comment><comment><USER20> I think I might be buying this, seems like a good book! Have never heard of it before.

</comment><comment><USER21> Just got the paperback version - excited to dig into this. Signed up to the mailing list as well. Is there a central place for errata, or will that only be made available as updates to the pdf version?

</comment><comment><USER22> Does anyone have some resources or examples of writing a Scheme in Go?

<comment><USER23> I have been writing one available at [https://github.com/archevel/ghoul](https://github.com/archevel/ghoul) it is not finished in any way shape or form. I'm currently rewriting the evaluator to do tail call optimization in my spare time and when that's done I'll work on handling macros.

If you want a more complete one you could check out zygomys [https://github.com/glycerine/zygomys](https://github.com/glycerine/zygomys)

<comment><USER22> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I will definitely be grabbing a copy of this and going through it, thanks!.

Anyone have recommendations for a book or tutorial for creating a REST API with Go?

<comment><USER25> This book is a pretty good tutorial on getting web service with rest up and running. [https://www.manning.com/books/go-web- programming](https://www.manning.com/books/go-web-programming)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> A printed Go book with full-color syntax highlighting? Heresy!

Ordered the non dead tree version as the sample chapter is of great quality.

</comment><comment><USER27> So what was the source format? Markdown?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. 5-6 markdown files, converted to epub, mobi, pdf and html with pandoc. I know there are better workflows, especially in regards to embedding code (my approach was simple copy and paste), but if there's one recommendation I can make it's this one: check out pandoc. It's an amazing tool.

<comment><USER27> Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Very timely! I'm in the early stages of writing a custom interpreter in Go, so this is perfect for me.

</comment><comment><USER29> Is the complete version on Github somewhere? (I just want to skim through the source code.)

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't uploaded the code to Github myself, but as of v1.3 of the book the code is MIT licensed. That means there are a lot of implementations floating around, either copied straight from the book or adapter to another language. Here's the repo of a reader who followed the book closely in Go: [https://github.com/RyanBrushett/interpreter](https://github.com/RyanBrushett/interpreter)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I wish I would've waited to buy that, print would've been much better!

<comment><USER31> Really? I find ebooks side by side a terminal a much more efficient way of going through a text like this

<comment><USER30> I agree, but sometimes it's nice to unplug and just look through books.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Interesting. I would like to purchase the PDF version.

Is there a PROMO CODE available?

</comment><comment><USER33> I bought the PDF. Looks great so far!

</comment><comment><USER34> Well, if there's anything that might lure me back to Go, it's an escape hatch into another language. :b

</comment><comment><USER35> I like that Monkey language.

</comment><comment><USER36> I've been recently writing a web app in Go - I like the libraries and the tools - but when pausing to write a test script in python I immediately realized Go can't be the right tool for regular CRUD websites. Python is a joy, I love dynamic patterns when writing code. Dicts and strings! It flows...

So, yay escape hatches!

At some point it was going to be a pattern (Java + jruby/ola bini's language)...</comment>


Ask HN: What would life be like as an Android Developer? - <AUTHOR>

I did some casual development on the iPhone about a year ago but got frustrated figuring out all of the certificate stuff to test my app, and then waiting 4 months to get my app denied.<p>I'm thinking about getting an android phone and making some apps mostly for fun, maybe someday for profit. Is the experience a lot better?  What should I know before taking the plunge? <comment><USER2> The experiences are comparable.

First, I'll address your concerns about code signing:

Android doesn't require you to go through quite the same certificate/provisioning profile insanity, but you will have to sign your applications before distributing them in the Android Market.

See here: [http://developer.android.com/guide/publishing/app- signing.ht...](http://developer.android.com/guide/publishing/app-signing.html)

To develop on a device, it's brain-dead simple. Just plug in the device, install the driver (or config udev on Linux), and go!

Details here: <http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/device.html>

The one case where you need to get anything 'approved' is if you're going to use Google Maps. There's a quick automated process where you submit your development key in return for a maps API key.

See here: <http://code.google.com/android/maps-api-signup.html>

Regarding development itself:

In terms of learning the development APIs and how everything fits together, I contend that Android is going to be tougher to learn at first, because you'll have to figure out fundamentals like Activity lifecycle, Intents, etc.

However, after you've gotten past the initial hurdles, I find that Android development (at least for the most part) feels more predictable and logically- designed than iPhone development.

In my experience, Android also has some better libraries out of the box. For example, doing basic REST calls, JSON, and SQLite are all in the standard library. On iPhone, you're best off using 3rd party libraries for each of those.

But there's always two sides to the coin. I find that iPhone is less structured, which can be good, depending on your tastes. I also feel that iPhone gives you a better-looking, better-feeling application with less effort (prettier default buttons, colors, animations, and there's always Interface Builder if you need it). If you're a game dev, also, iPhone tends to run faster and can utilize C libraries more readily than Android, whose ability to run C code relies on NDK/JNI, which can be a PITA.

To wrap things up, don't expect an entirely new process when you switch over to Android. If you didn't have the patience to stick it out on iPhone, don't think that Android will be the magic bullet that makes things easy. However, you'll be able to develop applications using the tools you like (not wedded to XCode), under the OS you like (Win/Linux/OS X), and best of all: no approval process to publish your applications. I've found that it takes minutes, as opposed to the App Store's days/weeks, for Android applications to arrive in the market.

I hope that helped.

P.S. I recommend The Busy Coder's Guide to Android. There's plenty of examples to get you started.

<comment><USER3> I, too recommend the books by Mark Murphy. You can get the uptodate PDFs/mobi/epub versions at commonsware.com.

Real books on Android (or any other fast moving technology) tend to be outdated when they reach the bookstore. For the price of one book you get three (the fourth about the ndk is due late april) with a one year update. Mark does more than one update in a year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hope you're in the United States or some other country that Google decided to support. I don't mean to sound bitter, but I'm in Israel and it's seems that even with a decent size Google presence here, Israeli Android devs can not sell apps on the Google Marketplace. I found this out AFTER I paid the signup fee. That was about 9 months ago, and Google still hasn't responded to my emails requesting a solution. So, you should basically check, and double check that your country is supported if you want to sell apps and get paid.

<comment><USER5> Hire a proxy in a valid country to sell them.

For instance, I'd happily sell your apps for you on the marketplace after licencing them from you (I run a US based iPhone and Android* development shop[see my profile for contact info])

*Still only 2 projects deep into android.

<comment><USER4> That sounds like an interesting option but I just think we shouldn't have to do that.

<comment><USER5> I agree, you shouldn't have to, but there are what we think the world should be and the facts on the ground. For whatever reason, Google doesn't care to expand their checkout regime

<comment><USER4> Exactly, thank you, that's important for people to know if they are planning to start developing for the Android platform and expect to get paid (directly). Too bad I figured it out AFTER paying the registration fee.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I started writing android apps four months ago. My co-worker started developing iPhone apps two months ago. We have similar levels of "Arrrgh, this is so broken" conversations--but about entirely different things. The android emulator is way slower, but running on a real device is quick and easy. Android has way better support for libraries--you cut and paste far less code. The APIs are saner, in general. Error handling is simpler, and you don't have to allocate as much by hand. Also, the store is a dream. We went from zero to installed via the market in ten minutes.

On the other hand, Android is Java--and all the horror that entails. There are also fewer people developing for android. The source is open, though--you can git clone the official apps and refer to them, which is invaluable. The docs are okay, but a lot of android plumbing is really complicated. Rightly so, when you realize what the platform accomplishes, but it takes longer to spin up.

Overall, I like it.

</comment><comment><USER7> In my experience it's really tough to make an Android app look good. I started building an Android app, but got frustrated trying to muck with XML, never getting anything to layout how I wanted it to. I decided to give Cocoa Touch a try and found that the built in libraries take care of just about everything you need. I probably just didn't give it enough time though. I do plan on revisiting though.

Objective C is a _giant_ pain in the ass, though. Just adding a property to a class means adding four lines between 2 files. I can't even imagine how people coped before 3.0.

<comment><USER8> I agree about Object-C being a pain, disagree about making Android apps look good.

Perhaps it's a trade off. The iPhone has Interface Builder, we get the shitty eclipse builder (plus the ability to use straight xml, or do it all programmatically).

We get to use Java, but we have to use eclipse. the iphone has to use objective c, but they get xcode.

<comment><USER3> I disagree about Objective-C being a pain. When I was doing osx development. Desktop and iPhone, I liked it.

You do not have to use Eclipse at all! I use maven and the community edition of IntelliJ IDEA. But I could also use Netbeans. Or a simple text editor. For the GUI you can use DroidDraw.

And you do not have to use Java. You can use Scala. Although I would recommend using Java until you are familiar with the APIs and concepts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've found the Android API itself to be about on par with Cocoa Touch; some things are easier and some things are harder, but it seems to balance out. A major advantage for Android is that it uses Java instead of Objective C, giving you real memory management, no header files, and generally better built-in libraries. Also you don't have to muck with certificates nearly as much; apps can deploy to your phone immediately, and you just pay Google $25 (one time, as opposed to $99/year for Apple) and use a self-signed certificate to put it on the Android Market. And your app shows up on the market a few minutes after you upload it, and won't get pulled unless it's malicious.

For fun, Android easily wins IMO. For profit it's less clear; there are certainly more iPhone users, but it may be easier for a quality Android app to stand out. My paid Android app is earning around $10/day (before Google's cut), which from what I hear is on par with typical iPhone apps.

<comment><USER10> I'd love a link to your app, if you're comfortable sharing.

<comment><USER9> I like my pseudo-anonymity here, so I'll respectfully decline.

<comment><USER10> That's more than valid. Thanks for the response. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sounds like someone is speaking without experience here. I signed up as an app developer for the iPhone, got approved in 3 days. I wrote a new app in 4 days (a decent rss reader that pulls feeds from facebook) and the app was accepted in less than 2 days. Figuring out the certificate stuff was not hard as long as you know how to RTFM. I mean seriously, how about give it a shot before complaining on hacker news?

</comment><comment><USER5> The audio and video is a alot harder. The Layout issues without an interface builder type tool are rough.

It's possible, for sure, and you can get up on the store in minutes.

If you've never done eclipse, I don't recommend starting now. Develop without it. Learn how to use ADB from the command line.

<comment><USER2> It's not perfect, but if you're learning Android UI, check out <http://droiddraw.org/>. It's a WYSIWYG interface editor, like Interface Builder. It's not pretty, but I found it to be a good way to understand the fundamentals.

<comment><USER5> I honestly plan on seeing if CS5 can create anything serviceable as a UI for business apps. I can honestly see adobe going on the warpath there after this bullshit and now they have all the iPhone platform compatibility guys with nothing to do.

If that fails, droiddraw looks like a possibility. I just tried it out. Would need to test it further, but has promise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've only done basic experimentation, but it's not bad at all. You can even download the Android SDK and try developing apps and running them in an Android emulator before committing to a phone.

</comment><comment><USER12> It is just as frustrating as most other frameworks. Find someone to commiserate with before you jump in.

</comment><comment><USER13> Be careful with the type of app you want to make. For example, we're trying to port our iPhone dual-thumb shooter and we've run into touch-recognition problems on the Nexus One and Droid.

Nexus One doesn't handle multitouch correctly: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsSUqkh8pcI>

Droid doesn't register a tap if one finger is already touching.

</comment><comment><USER14> I doubt the experience is better than iPhone development from a tools perspective. I often feel like I'm participating in a Google Labs experiment. If you can deal with some rough edges and lack of direct developer support, you will be okay.

Developing games seems to be relatively difficult. Java has GC issues and the NDK APIs don't support most application UI features.

</comment><comment><USER15> Ask tocomment: try it and let us know!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Any advice on the best phone to get? Droid or nexus maybe? Does it matter for development?

Do i need a developer phone?

<comment><USER5> Actually it matters a whole hell of a lot.

There is a dev phone you can buy once you create a market account. It appears to be an HTC phone similar to the T-Mobile myTouch. It may be the best longterm solution as you can update the OS with Google Images.

The issue with android is that there are 4 separate versions of it in the wild: 1.5, 1.6, 2.0, and 2.1. If you want your app to have the widest penetration, you need to target 1.5 or 1.6

The moto cliq (one of the the T-Mobile phones) are stuck at 1.5 and haven't been updated to 1.6 or 2.0 yet. The G1 will likely never be able to update to 2.x (too small of on board flash space on the phone).

I've settled on a myTouch from t-mobile as my dev platform as it has 1.6 on it (which was required to run Appcelerator's Titanium). It may get returned for a cliq if they release an upgrade or any 2.x phone that comes out this month while I'm in the 30 day return period which all cells have in the US when bought without contract subsidy, or perhaps even the dev phone.

The Droid has a 2.x series android release on it.

Do not ask the people in the store, they're clueless about what version is on a particular phone. You can see it in the about menu on many of the phones if you dig in the floor models.

The android phones are _not_ user updateable a la the iPhone. They image gets updated over the cellular network semi-randomly.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Android_devices>

can be very helpful in picking a phone.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm sounds like I should get the dev phone then.

Could I have a dev phone and a personal phone and swa the sims between them as needed?

Or would the dev phone work fine as a personal phone?

<comment><USER3> The dev phones are fine unless you want to install "copy-protected" apps. They do not appear in the market if you use a dev-phone. At least not for the ADP1. The reason is that you can easily gain root access and copy "protected" apps off the phone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > What should I know before taking the plunge?

Along with the SDK, use the Eclipse plugin.

<comment><USER5> I can't disagree more. Eclipse is probably not worth picking up if you're not already a user.

<comment><USER17> What tools would you recommend?

<comment><USER18> It's just programming. Use whatever you normally use for that task.

<comment><USER19> The SDK cames with a suite of command line tools that are far more easy to understand then the eclipse crud.

help > install. Really?

<comment><USER5> > The SDK cames with a suite of command line tools that are far more easy to > understand then the eclipse crud.

I very much agree with this statement. Here are some resources:

[http://benlynn.blogspot.com/2009/01/developing-android- witho...](http://benlynn.blogspot.com/2009/01/developing-android-without- eclipse-or.html)

<http://java.dzone.com/articles/google-android-tutorial>

[http://blogs.nitobi.com/joe/2010/03/26/android-without- eclip...](http://blogs.nitobi.com/joe/2010/03/26/android-without-eclips/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> One word: Virtualization.

<comment><USER20> That probably says a lot to someone who understands the implications in this context, but many of us don't.

So, could you expand on that please?</comment></comment>


Gmail gets unlimited - <AUTHOR> http://forgetbox-for-gmail.com

<comment><USER2> This is a technical site. If you write a blog post about HOW "forgetbox" works the people will be more interested.

For example: What is the tech stack? Problems with multiplatform support? Gmail integration? Internationalization/Localization? Does is work behind firewalls? What does "It works even without Internet" means? How do you handle folders? Links? Desktop.ini files?</comment>


China - The Mother Of All Grey Swans - <AUTHOR> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6010227/Webshare/China%20Japan%20Presentation%20v3%20-%20By%20Vitaliy%20Katsenelson.pdf

<comment><USER2> (disclaimer: I am Chinese; living in Beijing). Since this presentation made it to the front page of HN, I was curious to take a look. I rarely found similar presentations (by consulting/investment firms) having a clarifying effect on my thinking. They show an impressive array of facts and arguments, but often after reading it I fail to be able to summarize the main ideas in a couple of sentences (the way I often can, say, after reading a paul graham essay).

to begin with, why "grey swan"? no doubt, it's a reference to Taleb's book. but what exactly do they mean? that what's happening in China is not completely foreseeable, but more foreseeable than the blackest of black swans?

let's simplify things -- if we define growth as growth in wealth, and examine if the chinese are able to pull off creating something like 10% more wealth every year than we did last year. there are two variables to this: how many people are working this year than last, and how productive are they.

I don't have time to research on this, but I am guessing workforce size reduction if it happens is going to be more than offset by China simply copying mature technologies from the West and increase the productivity of its people, as it has been doing. the wild card is projects like centrally planned bridge to no where, which looks productive but doesn't actually create things people want, i.e. wealth. But China has always (i.e. last 60 years) been a centrally planned economy, assuming the leadership doesn't all of a sudden get a lot more stupid, and given that the portion of the economy that's centrally planned is shrinking every year, I think one can even make an argument of putting on a few basis points of growth simply from the gov't playing a smaller role in the economy than before. (now of course the big stimulus package might completely skew the balance for these couple of years, but it's temporary noise that probably wouldn't reverse the trend.)

and argument of how big a village needs to be before it can be called a town is irrelevant.

<comment><USER3> "and argument of how big a village needs to be before it can be called a town is irrelevant."

No it's not when the argument for continued economic growth is that that growth will be driven by further urbanization. If the country is _already_ much more urbanized than is held, it becomes relevant.

(I'm not saying this argument is true or not, I don't know; someone about brought up a good point of much smaller plot sizes in rural areas. Either way, it's valid to question the assumptions of the mainstream claims that China's growth will continue as it has in the past).

"and given that the portion of the economy that's centrally planned is shrinking every year, I think one can even make an argument of putting on a few basis points of growth simply from the gov't playing a smaller role in the economy than before."

That's not what I understand from observers and commentators. What I hear/read, _guo jin, min tui_ (the state advances, the private sector retreats) is the current trend, and Chinese central leaderships wants to weather the crisis with _more_ central control (as they need to, in order to be able to direct banks to loan out money, set growth targets for SOE's etc.) I'm interested to hear about your point of view as a local though, do you feel the grip of the state on the economic is loosening?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Many of these arguments strike me as particularly weak, none more so than slide 36, where he claims that China's urbanisation rate is being understated because they have a much higher population density threshold for what qualifies as a "city". He seems unaware that average farm size in China is absolutely tiny compared to America --- I've seen figures as low as 0.04 hectares (400 m2!) for Guangdong [1], which is how the province as a whole manages to achieve an Israeli-level population density of 486 persons/km2. For the whole of China, something like 0.2 hectares seems more reasonable.

But even then, if you take the definition he suggests for a "city" (400 persons/km2), every single farming village in China would qualify. _That's_ why China has a much higher population density threshold for defining urban counties.

[1] e.g. [http://www.agecon.ucdavis.edu/extension/update/articles/v9n1...](http://www.agecon.ucdavis.edu/extension/update/articles/v9n1_4.pdf) <http://econpapers.repec.org/paper/agsaaea05/19565.htm>

<comment><USER5> This is the same guy making the same arguments as he's made on several occasions. See here - the same mall example, same ghost city example, same starbucks example. He's like a stuck record.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1199422>

<comment><USER3> Well here's a respectable (Western) (I don't imply that 'Western' mean 'respectable', just giving details) professor at Tsinghua, who regularly appears on CCTV on economic issues, who's been making the same claims for a while now, albeit in less dramatic terms: <http://chovanec.wordpress.com/> ..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _Not a touchy-feely democracy, it can build bridges, highways, skyscrapers a lot faster with less paperwork and fewer property rights considerations._

I have been visiting China frequently in the past years. Economic aspects aside, I still find the functional high-speed trains and rise of stunning skyscrapers simply fascinating. Perhaps the engineer in me admires it.

Here in Palo Alto, it took the bickering of multiple committees 6 years to decide what to build on a dilapidated, abandoned parking lot. And in the downtown, it has taken nearly 4 years to build a short structure that now also sits empty. And high-speed rail? Forget about it.

<comment><USER7> There used to be a bar street I frequented here in Beijing. It was kind of a sketchy place, but popular among college students and young adults. Then the Olympics came around and the gov't decided they needed to gentrify the area. The police raided the bars, killed a bunch of drug dealers and made other undesirables disappear. Then the bar street was totally bulldozed and within a year or so a luxury outdoor mall was built on top of the bulldozed area. A thriving Apple store and Starbucks now sit smack in the middle of the place.

Within a couple of years the old sleazy alleyways were transformed into something that could easily compete with the Stanford shopping mall.

<comment><USER3> That's basically how Pudong in Shanghai was build. Over 20 years they turned a backward nick in the river from slums into China's jewel for displaying to the world. One day the bulldozers showed up, leveled the area and started building. It's efficient, yes. There's more to a society than 'efficiency' though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think the best way to play the China bubble is to go after luxury retailers in the country. For example, I found one company that you can short which basically imports Swiss watches that they then try to resell. Property brokers like E-House might be good shorts too, although they have secular growth since they are taking out mom & pop operators.

I used to think that using Australia as a proxy, such as the AUD or some of the commodity miners would work as a means of shorting China but I'm less enthusiastic now. While there may not be demand for some of the luxury developments, there is probably adequate demand for lower level buildings.

I imagine that the state owned enterprises would shift their construction projects from luxury developments to critical/needed buildings and infrastructure, potentially keeping commodity demand stable.

</comment><comment><USER9> USA grew prosperously for the past 100 years on the back of consumer demand of a mere 200-300 million people. I still fail to see why China cannot do the same with a population of 1200 million.

Yes, there will probably be a recession or even a depression here and there, but in only a few decades time China will be much richer. The article is only a short term view, it doesn't address what China will become in 10, 20, 30 years time.

There is of course the one child policy that might negatively affect China's economy in the future. China's government is no democracy, and I don't see any reason why it wouldn't simply kill the law when it becomes advantageous to do so. After all, growth at any cost!

EDIT: Would like explanation of downvotes.

<comment><USER10> Compare Canada's population to Indonesia's. Now compare their standards of living.

High population does not imply or cause high wealth.

<comment><USER9> Correct, I did not say that high population causes high wealth.

What is behind my reasoning is that the lower the standard of living, the more opportunity for economic growth. China's living standard is very low, compared to the US, therefore over the next few decades, because per capita it will still not be as wealthy as the US, it will continue to grow and become much richer than it currently is.

A quick google search reveals that this is indeed true for Canada and Indonesia. Indonesia GDP growth, ~2-3% per annum. [http://www.tradingeconomics.com/Economics/GDP- Growth.aspx?Sy...](http://www.tradingeconomics.com/Economics/GDP- Growth.aspx?Symbol=IDR) Canada GDP growth, ~0-2% per annum. [http://www.tradingeconomics.com/Economics/GDP- Growth.aspx?Sy...](http://www.tradingeconomics.com/Economics/GDP- Growth.aspx?Symbol=CAD)

Moreover, many say (including the author of the article), that because China's growth for the past 30 years has relied on exports and now that developed consumer countries like the US, Canada and Japan can no longer consume as much, China's growth opportunities become further restricted.

I do not believe this is the case and here is what I was really trying to say in my previous comment. China has 1200 million people and I believe that over the next few decades China will be able to grow, _precisely_ because its consumer demand will grow, too. After all, US did it with only 200-300 million people, why can China not do it, too?

The fact that its government maybe inefficient is only a small effect on the scale of growth we are talking about. From wikipedia, China gdp per capita is ~6600 and US's is ~46000. Even if an inefficient government like China's reduces the potential productivity of the average citizen by three or four or even five times, China still has a lot of room to grow.

For more information, look at the Solow-Swan Model. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exogenous_growth_model>

EDIT: The article talks about previous bubbles like Japan's. Yes, Japan was a bubble, but China isn't; At least not yet. I believe Japan's economic growth stalled because it's GDP per capital _caught up_ with the most industrialised countries. This has not happened in China, yet, and when it does, my prediction will be fulfilled.

Converging economies leading to equality, all powered by the capitalist machine that is the global economy.</comment></comment></comment>


Just got 80,000 visits... Now surprise me! - <AUTHOR> http://www.kreci.net/blogging/just-got-80000-visits-now-surprise-me/

<comment><AUTHOR> Comments if any welcome and very desired... =)</comment>


Ask HN: Can you score blogs by truthfulness? - <AUTHOR>

I'm wondering if there's a way to find blogs according to a custom search algorithm.
I know Reddit and HN rank posts by votes. But choosing stories that way suffers from side effects like:
(1) a story being popular because it's so new
(2) a story being liked by a lot of people because of the way it's written
(3) a story that is surprisingly eye opening says something people are not willing to believe, so they don't upvote it
(4) something being incorrect.
I'd prefer to read stories ranked by other measures. The most important one for me being: whether what they say is true.
Is there an algorithm, tool or service that scores stories by truthfulness?
edit: changed truthiness to truthfulness <comment><USER2> I've been thinking about this a lot with respect to user generated content and although this is somewhat tangential, it appears that people provide the most positive feedback for the version of truth that most resembles their own version, not some third party, objective viewer.

I had originally thought this was a modern phenomenon, but it turns out it's been going on for a long time.

Take for example Dürer's Rhinoceros: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%BCrer's_Rhinoceros](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%BCrer's_Rhinoceros)

His depiction is armor clad and has an extra horn, it looks fanciful, and yet, another artist, Hans Burgkmair, produced a depiction that is basically true to life, yet Dürer's print became famous and duplicated widely, and only one of Burgkmair's prints is extant.

Slightly more anecdotal, for a while my dad collected maps and I bought him an original from the 1700s that depicted California as an island, despite being well mapped since the 16th century. It was something of a fanciful myth and people preferred the "island" maps to display in their homes, while real navigators had accurate maps.

Anyways, what I'm trying to get at is, if you want to measure truthiness, you should do it relative to the observer, with some awareness that it's flexible, assuming you are thinking of this as a way to match content to people. If you just want some certificate of truth, because of the reasons above, it probably won't take hold with the general population (they will dismiss it for not agreeing with their beliefs)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a really interesting problem. I work for a media organization and we make our money by printing advertiser-friendly versions of stories. This primarily involves framing political or economic risks as "opportunities", omitting damaging facts/analyses, and exclusively quoting wealthy/powerful people.

Most media companies do some version of this, with newspapers having among the best reputations for getting at the truth, and advertorial supplements the worst. Still, one key factor that I believe affects the "truth" of an article is the revenue stream of the writer/publisher. If you want objective analysis of anything, you probably have to stop reading newspapers/magazines run on an advertising model, or at least be very, very selective.

There are a number of factors in play that can help determine the "truthfulness" of an article: objective facts, sources, expertise cited, existence of debate in the field being covered, etc... etc. As an editor, I think you are trying to find an automated solution to an intrinsically human problem, but maybe I'm just threatened because you're trying to outsource my job to a machine. Ultimately, I think learning how to read deeply is something that can be taught, but not set to an algorithm. At least, this appeals to my desire for job security.

<comment><USER4> >This primarily involves framing political or economic risks as "opportunities", omitting damaging facts/analyses, and exclusively quoting wealthy/powerful people.

This seems a bit disingenuous and sleazy, depending on who exactly is consuming this content.

<comment><USER3> Indeed.

The company makes money from advertising, so advertisers are its most important readers. This is true, to a greater or lesser extent, for any media that sells ad space. Some organizations maintain "Chinese walls" between the ad side and the editorial side, but these are businesses and they ultimately have to answer to their bottom lines. That's true for Fox News, the Washington Post, or a Financial Times supplement – they are all chasing money with their brand and curating content that conforms to the expectations advertisers have of said brand. Rolling Stone is an 'edgy' magazine, so they publish articles that critique America's rapacious capitalism, but they still run full-page adverts for Apple products.

So, speaking as an editor, I believe it is possible to address some of the questions about truth above with an algorithm, but not all. There isn't a substitute for reading with a skeptical eye, doing one's own research, balancing views from experts, and filtering that against the influence money has on the source's position. A computer could make some of that easier, but if someone offers me a digital product that helps me verify the truth of articles I read, for the low, low cost of only $2/month, I'm still going to doubt the veracity of what I'm getting.

I heard a story once that sort of speaks to the issues you describe. A group of American journalists went visited Moscow in the late 80s to visit the former Soviet counterparts. They discussed life in each others' countries and shared perspectives on working conditions in their trade. One American asked, "What was it like, being directed by the communists as to what you could and could not print?"

A Russian journalist responded, "Much the same as being directed by capitalists."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You want to rank by truthfulness and not truthiness. :)

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

</comment><comment><USER6> Collectively agreeing on what is "true" is not an easy problem. The crowdsourced fact-checking of Wikipedia is probably what is the closest to what you are looking for.

</comment><comment><USER7> If you provide me the function that takes a chunk of text and returns its truth value, I'll happily finish the aggregation service for you.

As a free bonus, I'll also filter comments for you.

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't think it can be done. Every group has a group think. Facts that fall outside some scope of their collective experience/understanding of the world, get dismissed as tall tales.</comment>


Whaaat? Send video reply as a comment? - <AUTHOR> https://lonely.dev/video/hTKYpNbkkgMJiM7s01naShGpzrRfgc4CKxjgQXPlbKMQ <comment><USER2> I would like to see the ideal use case, and the worst-case-scenario of using this tool.

I would recommend options below each comment/video: thumbs up (with number), thumbs down (with number), and report comment/video link or icon (with reason why options or comment area).

Edit: added an option

<comment><AUTHOR> Right, I already have the comment voting in mind, and I will add that feature soon! Also, thanks for bringing up the reporting option, by having that our community could help together on doing the moderating. Such a good suggestion! Thanks a lot!

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> It is unclear what the goal of this project is.

-Are you planning on open sourcing it for any website?

-Could this be a browser add-on that enables this in any comment section?

-Are you planning on partnering with Disqus or other similar offering to release this or sell?

-Is this only for your website?

-Is this a service you will be offering at a price in the future? If so, why not have an email signup to be notified?

-Are there other use cases for this functionality other than websites?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, it's only for my community lonely.dev. No plan to modularize it to sell, it is just a fancy tool to serve our community better so that people can send more personalized responses, and have more human interactions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Moderating this would be hell. :)

I'm fairly certain that youtube had this feature at some point. [https://www.522productions.com/discontinued-youtube-ends- vid...](https://www.522productions.com/discontinued-youtube-ends-video- response-option-and-why-you-should-care)

<comment><AUTHOR> Someone tweeted me that we are not the number one

Our community has some bars in order to submit new videos or send video replies. Right now most of our members are with high fidelity. But you are right, as time goes, and community becomes bigger, we do need to spend time on moderating. I will put it on my top list!!! Thanks!

<comment><USER2> Some of the moderating could be solved by providing the "report video/comment" option.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are totally right, will have that soon!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Be a rebel, not a sheep: How to start a startup - <AUTHOR> http://thechocolatelabapps.com/be-a-rebel-not-a-sheep-how-to-start-a-startup/

<comment><USER2> Looks pretty scammy to me...no links to actual apps produced as far as I can see.

Update: via the "press" link you get to articles that show apps. Mostly free, low single digit total reviews...low ratings.

</comment><comment><USER3> The tips tl;dr:

Know good people Don't waste resoureces

Plus interstitial ads? really?

</comment><comment><USER4> also sounds like development was outsourced. How exactly do you do $400 worth of development.

some good advice otherwise</comment>


Hypercritical - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/staff/fatbits/2009/05/hypercritical.ars

<comment><USER2> I found this article deeply significant and easy to identify with. I was particularly struck by the example of Steve Jobs, but don't know enough to tell if it's an accurate characterization of the man or not. It would be nice to hear about this from other HN readers, as it would any insights on how to leverage this particular skillset. I dry up and wither on my own, but am very good at refining something by gradually eliminating its flaws in pursuit of a collective win.

The author's experience of being told by all and sundry that he was terribly creative while being acutely aware of the flaws in his own work ring very true for me. Indeed, this particular combination can be quite oppressive as people form extremely unrealistic expectations and then express inordinate disappointment when they go unmet...and meantime, one's real skill (which is diagnostic and often therapeutic) is widely regarded as a form of negativity - in extreme form, this manifests as anti-science claims founded on the idea that doctors have a vested interest in keeping people sick, or the like.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd like to see someone clearly articulate the difference between critical analysis of something and just plain bitching about it. Unfortunately the internet I have here is permeated by the latter and contains very little of the former.

For me, I think the difference is that good criticism acknowledges that every decision is a compromise, and of course every time you compromise you're giving up something in order to gain something else.

<comment><USER4> In "The Intellectual Situation" front-matter of Issue #6 of _n+1_ magazine about our "Book Review Nation" the following statement was written about the modern literature critic:

"...what separates us from, say, Edmund Wilson? It is not taste; it is not even erudition. The profounder difference is the ability to place the products of literary work into a system of belief that appeals to something outside the literary work and the literary culture that produced it. This--not the status of the outlets for reviews, not their forum in newsprint or online--is what marks distinction in reviewing."

I think there is a general truth in this statement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The ability to immediately see what's wrong with things can be useful, but can also be dangerous. It's the stuff that obsessions are made of, if left unchecked.

Where computers are concerned, I agree that people have a tendency to ignore the flaws. And I guess that's because they find computers enough of a nuisance already, if they started paying attention to what's wrong with them, they would find that they cause more problems than they solve.

I have submitted countless bug reports, often in the first few days of usage. And I have stopped using some software for the sole reason that their creators didn't pay enough attention to fixing bugs.

I can certainly identify with the author's premise. But I think this is more that just seeing what's wrong with stuff: it's more about knowing that perfection can't be reached, but not because we didn't point out what needs to be done to reach it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Perhaps competition is good because it is a framework for criticism what tends to encourage continued effort and refinement, rather than discourage it.

</comment><comment><USER7> I know it's cliche by now, and definitely a minor nitpick, but mentioning iTunes as the result of a perfectionist super-critic sounds like madness to anyone who isn't on a Mac. I would argue the Windows-port is the worst (yet successful) software ever engineered, and the only reason I have it, is because I need it for my iPhone (which I agree is a fine product).

That said, the general idea conveyed trough the article is interesting. So far people has accepted computers and programs as is with a "That's just how computers work" defeatist mentality, but that seems to be changing rapidly these days.</comment>


24 Days of GHC Extensions: Welcome - <AUTHOR> https://ocharles.org.uk/blog/posts/2014-12-01-24-days-of-ghc-extensions.html

<comment><USER2> I love Oliver's posts every year. His 2013 series got me into Haskell. I'd forgotten about this series until I saw it on my rss feed this morning. Very excited.</comment>


Organ Trail - <AUTHOR> https://devpost.com/software/organ-trail <comment><USER2> For those who come straight to the comments, this is about an Etherium dApp for tracking and tracing organ transplants, not the game parodying _Oregon Trail_.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't know, maybe don't use a pun to name something so serious. I wouldn't trust it if I actually needed an organ.

<comment><USER4> Pretty sure this is just a hackathon project.

Maybe I'm just not thinking big enough or whatever, but timely delivery of donated organs seems like exactly the kind of problem well suited to a fully accountable specialized courier working for a centralized medical authority. What benefit is gained by the trustless/distributed nature of blockchain here? Are there significant populations of donated organs which are lost due to logistical screwups? Does an analysis of the incidents where that has happened show that the root causes would have been fixed by using this approach instead?

<comment><USER5> Anonymous organ purchases?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I once worked on an application to register donor and organ characteristics during transplantation (to speed up match of finding a receiving patient).

Weirdest testing phase ever, being in the OR, seeing a surgeon remove a heart from a donor and putting it a coolbox...</comment>


Workflow After the Pandemic - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@spandanpradhan/workflow-after-the-pandemic-8bb9e3e1825a <comment><AUTHOR> An Outlook on Workflow after the pandemic : Covid-19</comment>


Ask HN: Where do you get your SSL certificates? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I recently got one from [https://www.gogetssl.com](https://www.gogetssl.com)

</comment><comment><USER3> For business I use VerySign.com yet as mentioned in the previous comment Gogetssl.com is a good option.

<comment><USER4> did you mean verisign.com?</comment></comment>


No, You Can't Manufacture That Like Apple Does - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@bolt/no-you-cant-manufacture-that-like-apple-does-93bea02a3bbf <comment><USER3> It's pretty much the same in software too. I often get requests for functionality and when I say "no, we can't do that", I get "Why not? Amazon does it".

Hrmm... Amazon has dozens of people working and supporting just that one feature. You're trying to engage me to do an entire project. On a fixed budget. With a fixed time frame. And you've changed your mind 3 times in the last 3 weeks on key points.

Of course, yes, there are amazing things you can do with software that weren't remotely feasible even just 5 years ago. But there's always a moving target - the market leaders (Apple, Google, Amazon, etc) are constantly pushing the boundaries of what's considered 'normal', and most people have _0_ idea of the real cost and effort involved in having the functionality come across as polished and error free as the big boys.

<comment><USER4> > Of course, yes, there are amazing things you can do with software that > weren't remotely feasible even just 5 years ago

Can you provide an example to back up your claim?

<comment><USER5> Software defined radio[1]

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software- defined_radio](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software-defined_radio)

<comment><USER6> Bad example; SDR existed in prototype form as early as the 80s, and the USRP has been commercially available since 2005.

<comment><USER7> Yes, but today you can order a USB SDR radio for under $10 and you have a crapton of FOSS software to use with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Forget fancy techniques, just scale alone is enough to shock you when looking into manufacturing. We got quotes from various providers at $4-$12/part. Meanwhile, in grocery stores, department stores, even dollar stores we would see similar products (using the same materials) being _sold_ for $1-2.

The difference is mostly related to the number of parts being ordered. For a startup, ordering 100,000+ parts just to get pricing reasonable is a no-go unless you (or your backers) take a major risk.

Makes you feel like getting off the ground is almost impossible, when you can't even get your wholesale cost below the retail cost of similar products.

<comment><USER9> It's important to note that 20 years ago the surprising thing would be the surprise that you express here:

"The difference is mostly related to the number of parts being ordered. For a startup, ordering 100,000+ parts just to get pricing reasonable is a no-go unless you (or your backers) take a major risk. Makes you feel like getting off the ground is almost impossible, when you can't even get your wholesale cost below the retail cost of similar products."

We just had 150 years where this was so normal that most people didn't think much of it, and very few people ever thought about starting their own business, exactly because it was understood that you could not compete with the economies of scale enjoyed by John Davison Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie and Andrew W. Mellon.

What's interesting is that this attitude has recently been changing. The economist Larry Summers has made this point about WhatsApp, using WhatsApp as an example of the falling need for capital:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/larry-summers-on- whatsapp-201...](http://www.businessinsider.com/larry-summers-on- whatsapp-2014-2)

"Ponder for example that the leading technological companies of this age, I think for example of Apple and Google, find themselves swimming in cash and facing the challenge of what to do with a very large cash hoard. Ponder the fact that WhatsApp has a greater market value than Sony with next to no capital investment required to achieve it. Ponder the fact that it used to require tens of millions of dollars to start a significant new venture. Significance new ventures today are seeded with hundreds of thousands of dollars in the information technology era. All of this means reduced demand for investment with consequences for the flow of - with consequences for equilibrium levels of interest rates."

He suggests a negative consequence, that it is difficult to get real interest rates above 0% in a world where people can start a business with little capital, and he suggests that this might contribute to secular stagnation.

Of course, things don't need to be as grim as he suggests. Ideally, the low costs would lead to a flood of research, but that hasn't happened so far, in part because VCs are scornful of what they refer to as "science projects" and the financial community continues to look for returns within 10 years, which is almost certainly the wrong timeframe for 0% interest rates (the low rate suggests a low discount rate which suggests that investors should think long term).

<comment><USER10> The surprise is a consequence of the "software is eating the world" mentality. Software is a very unusual kind of business, in that it effectively costs as much to make and distribute one copy of a software product as it does a million, or a billion. (Even more so today than 20 years ago, now that even marginal costs like boxes and plastic disks have fallen away.)

The problem is that people are increasingly applying software-business logic to businesses that aren't software businesses, where it falls down horribly because suddenly costs scale with output and economies of scale are a real and powerful thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The main point is that manufacturing, especially high-volume, consumer, apple- quality products, is very hard and requires serious expertise. Such startups should bring in such mechanical & production engineering expertise, because the hardware becomes as important as the software & electronics.

The irony is that many software startup wizards brush off mechanical design the same way that naive managers treat software development. "It's just a [box/case/app/website], how hard can it be?"

<comment><USER12> You have summarized the perfect take-away from this article. Disclosure for bias: I am the 4th generation of an American manufacturer, that has survived for 100 years in New York City.

Of the hundreds of retail startups I have seen that are going to contract manufacturers, none have had a manufacturing expert or even one with any experience. In fact, it's severely undervalued with respect to importance. If they do have someone from manufacturing, they probably aren't being paid relative to their market scarcity.

The best manufacturers also design what they make, their own product, and do not make for others.

Apple has manufacturing experts and manufactures themselves, hence they control what they make. <startup-person class="random inexperienced" /> does not, so they cannot have their quality level, by definition. Hence, they pay more because they didn't capture the margin, and because they have to get in line to pay a contractor who knows how. But they cannot bring a serious order unless they are funded by deep pockets.

Here in America, we have lost most of our manufacturers, leaving three generations missing manufacturing experts. This is a no-brainer, obvious to all. However, the connection is rarely made that we have lost our manufacturing capability because /it is difficult/. It's so difficult it had to go to a highly efficient country with cut-throat competition, abundant labor supply, and abundant poverty. The perfect conditions for plunging down manufacturing costs.

Manufacturing is quite different from "making." We are having a resurgence of interest in making in this country, which is exceptional. Arduino is amazing! It manufactures for the people, not for other companies, reducing cost and providing access. Making doesn't scale without manufacturing expertise. I hope manufacturing is part of the renaissance as it grows.

<comment><USER13> > Of the thousands of retail startups have seen that are going to contract > manufacturers, none have had a manufacturing expert or even one with any > experience.

Wouldn't that be why they are trying to contract manufacturers?

<comment><USER12> Not at all. Manufacturers constantly contract to other manufacturers. Hence terms like OEM. If you haven't been involved in some part of the chain at some point, it's non-straightforward to learn the ropes. Certainly possible, of course; the stats are not encouraging though.

Basically I was trying to say, it really helps to have someone with some manufacturing experience in-house if your startup involves it, even if you're not the actual manufacturer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Thanks to follow-up research after reading this article I now know what an ejector pin mark is, and now that I know I see them everywhere! Gah!

<comment><USER15> I didn't understand even after minutes of googling. Can you summarize it?

<comment><USER16> This is what I got from my googling:

Plastic parts are often made by pouring hot plastic into a mold. When the plastic is done drying, often a robotic arm or crane needs to pull it off to bring the plastic to the next stage of the manufacturing process. But it's hard to get the plastic off the surface once it's dried; it needs to be "popped" off of it. So manufacturers build ejector pins into the mold. When the plastic is done drying, the pins pop up and push the plastic off the mold, into the crane or whatever will take it to the next part of the operation.

<comment><USER17> And when the pins hit the plastic part to pop it off, they often leave small, circular marks on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The more you know this sort of thing the harder it becomes to believe that Apple makes the same things everyone else does but with fancy marketing.

<comment><USER19> Their attention to detail in casings is the same as the very high end hi-fi, jewelery, or sports-car industries. Nobody else in computing seems to come close.

In terms of electronic components however, you can nearly always get more bang for your buck, the exception sometimes being the screens.

<comment><USER20> That might be true of computers, but how true is it of mobile devices? A handheld mobile device isn't even conceptually a single computer; it's a small network of computers.

<comment><USER19> I think it still is true in mobile, but in mobile the general computing components just need to be good enough not to lag, build quality and interface elements are the things to buy on with laptops, tablets and mobiles.

Doesn't matter if you have a powerful gizmo if the hinges are broken and it overheats, however with PC's you can buy a high-end motherboard and find a power supply in a skip and just nail them to the wall if you like. Build quality is far more optional.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> $12 for a box at scale, well damn!

Use 100% recycled cardboard and print the box in a single color water based bio-degradable ink.

Then claim you do this to save the environment, win-win ;).

<comment><USER22> Packaging is a product to be designed unto itself, especially as what you're usually ultimately selling is an experience. I think I've seen people rave about packaging I've designed as much as the products. And just like the product itself, manufacturing experience helps you hit a better price/performance note, all the way down to making boxes that fit in a certain USPS weight class which you can slap a mailing label on.

<comment><USER23> I find packaging to be a very mixed bag, emotionally speaking.

While I like the higher-end treatment from Apple and similar companies, I can't help but think of the waste involved in producing that fancy box that I'm just going to throw away in a few days.

And Apple doesn't need the fancy packaging to sell to me - I'd but their stuff regardless. I wonder if they could/would consider generic cardboard for online orders, and save the fancy stuff for retail?

<comment><USER22> They do that for refurbs. It's just another design challenge. For a great experience, you don't need to spend a lot of money on packaging - just have an element of surprise and thoughtfulness. That can be done in cardboard and smart graphic design, or even off-the-shelf packaging used in a different context (see: T-shirt in a can).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Not mentioned is the challenge of managing a good CM in China or Malaysia. If you're small you get what everyone else does, at higher prices. If you're huge you can groom your CM and make sure you get what nobody else does, at a lower cost. Of course sooner or later the manufacturing knowledge leaks out so it's a rat race even for someone like Apple.

</comment><comment> at-fates-hands When did Apple go from manufacturing ordinary hardware to making that leap where they had the financial resources to truly make something incredibly unique and beautiful? Was it one product one year, or did happen over a span of years where they had smaller increments of change?

I'm curious to know how a company can get to a point and say, "Ok, we can do something really cool, on a massive scale and make it successful." Is a slower transition, or more of an abrupt change that takes place?

<comment><USER25> It was definitely a gradual thing. As early as the "Snow White" design language introduced in 1984, Apple was pushing the limits of conventional computer manufacturing techniques. And they didn't go from beige boxes to unibody aluminum slabs in one step.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is why -- for example -- Flextronics opened their Lab IX [1] in SV last year. In cases where hardware ideas are good ones, it makes a lot of sense for the guys with the manufacturing expertise to get in the loop early on. They can incubate, invest, and indulge in some of the wild stuff innovators want but can only be executed with $mm of equipment.

[1] [http://www.labix.io/](http://www.labix.io/)

</comment><comment><USER27> There are so many acronyms in this article that aren't defined. Maybe I'm not the intended audience for this article, but it's pretty hard to understand when you don't know what CM, CNC, or BOM mean. Is it really so hard to use the <abbr> tag?

<comment><USER28> CM = Contract Manufacturer CNC = Computer Numerical Control (an automated mill) BOM = Bill of Materials (a parts list)

It is jargon, but it's jargon that someone who would be concerned about "not showing ejector pin marks" would probably know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Article does not mention capacitive touch screens. Apple basically build its own factories (and subsequently entire industry) to manufacture for iphone 1.

<comment><USER30> > Apple basically build its own factories (and subsequently entire industry) > to manufacture for iphone 1.

Are there any articles or book sections about this? Seems very interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> but apple is not the only large luxury goods manufacturer, right? how does louis vuitton do their thing? or leica? or rolex? if anything, aren't lv and rolex the orginals at mass producing/marketing luxury goods?

separately, i imagine not just leica, but the entire optics industry has answered the question of precision/quality at scale before?

and finally, there're more , right? like mercedes-benz, bmw, lexus, porsche, medical instruments, the aerospace industry... don't all of them have to solve 'quality at scale' problems?

and at smaller scales..parker pens? zippo lighters? swiss army knives?

and then..something like [http://www.muji.us/store/](http://www.muji.us/store/) could be good enough as far as the perception of quality goes?

<comment><USER32> I think the idea is that most of those companies are large (compared to a 10 person startup) and have manufacturing expertise, which most start-ups may not have.

Even companies like Parker Pens are part of large companies -- (e.g. Parker is part of Newell Rubbermaid with 19,000 employees and almost $6 billion in revenue).

<comment><USER31> actually parker was founded in 1888 and was independent until 1993 when gillette bought it. i imagine they didn't need gillette's help to scale their manufacturing..

i think there're plenty of small firms, from furniture makers to knive makers to bicycle makers to audio equipment makers, that do quality at low volumes. i'd imagine a startup is exactly that - low volume. and they could probably figure out how to scale when they need to? its a good problem to have, right?

i'm thinking of a car analogy.. its like.. i can't imagine that porsche, when they first launched the 911, were thinking about how to make 100000 of them a year.. or for that matter, a more recent example like koenigsegg or even tesla..they didn't exactly start with a 100000/year plant either..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Then how did Nest do it?

<comment><USER34> They hired the brilliant Bould[0] design for ID and partnered with a Tier-1 Taiwanese ODM for manufacturing[1]. This takes a bit of money, connections and being able to demonstrate you will have volume.

What the article doesn't mention is that you can manufacture in Apple's wake. After Apple started purchasing 4" touch panels and LCD displays for iPhones, and then larger displays for the iPad, the capacity increased and prices went down. Same with all the CNC machines purchased for the iPhone 4 frame - <USER2> are no longer being used to manufacture Apple devices, but they are being used to manufacture other devices.

Second part is that modern manufacturing tech means you can have lean hardware startups. As much as cheap hosting, software as a service, etc. have made software app development cheaper manufacturing tech has made hardware manufacturing cheaper. You can now get rolling with complete custom hardware in thousands of units (as opposed to millions) with 6-figures in capital.

The key is knowing one of the small number of people who understand design, materials, the capabilities at the ODM's, the right people at these companies, supply chain etc. and have them design the product to fit the current manufacturing capacity without requiring customization. It is easy to hire an industrial designer sitting ten thousand kilometers away from Shenzhen who can CAD something nice, but knowing that manufacturing that fancy designed device would cost extra millions in tooling and setup is where the real skill is. Good ID people can design great products and in a way where they can be manufactured easily and with a smaller investment. If you don't have one of these people on your team, your either going to get something that is _very_ ordinary looking (think Chinese knockoff) or you'll attempt something ambitious, run out of money and fail.

What Nest did is use clever ID to create a product that looked unique without over-stretching the manufacturing requirements. They didn't go anywhere near the scale Apple does.

[0] [http://www.bould.com/](http://www.bould.com/)

[1] not certain which, but it is 3-4 possible companies.

<comment><USER35> I'm skeptical that Apple did anything to the price of CNC machining.

<comment><USER36> I'd like to see some evidence that they have sunsetted any of their CNC capacity, as well. They're still making the iPhone 5s, and as far as I'm aware aren't the new iPhones, as well as the iPad and Mac lines, all still using CNC milled enclosures? I think all that's been phased out is the diamond-chamfered edges.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Aren't turbine blades also grown from crystal before machining? Even Apple doesn't do that...

</comment><comment><USER38> This article actually misses some key points while it is telling the truth.

Most of the things mentioned in the article is correct BUT,

If you are going to make a product and you think that your product is going to be as revolutionary as Apple was at the beginning, then don't worry. You will be good to go.

If you can provide a unique, mind blowing product just like Apple Lisa in 1983, you can sell it for really unrealistic prizes.

Apple Lisa was sold for US$ 9,995 at the time it was released. You could buy a new house around $86000.

So the question is not how expensive is going to be, the real question is,

Is your product mind blowing?

<comment><USER39> Wasn't Lisa a flop?

<comment><USER40> No.

Perhaps financially, accountants weren't able to attribute black pennies to it.

But spiritually it was a big success. Everybody wanted one. And it was the roots of the Macintosh.

If Apple didn't do the Lisa, I cannot see what else they could have done at that time, and still become the biggest company of the world 30 years later. Without it, they would probably have disappeared long ago as so many people predicted.

<comment><USER41> They buried almost the entire production run in Utah, didn't they?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Seriously? Most founders' ideas hinge on their hardware product looking sleek? This is progress?

</comment><comment><USER43> Surprising statement that the box might be the most expensive single element of the iPhone.

<comment><USER44> I don't see that anywhere. Closest thing I could find is:

> 4-color, double-walled, matte boxes + HD foam inserts > I know you're going > to do this anyways, but be aware that these kind of boxes will literally be > the most expensive line item on your BOM. It's not unusual for them to cost > upwards of $12/unit at scale. And then they get thrown away.

...which is talking about _your_ costs, not Apple's.

Please correct me if I've missed something.

<comment><USER45> Iphone BOM can here: [http://cdn.ihs.com/Technology/SharePointImages/PublishingIma...](http://cdn.ihs.com/Technology/SharePointImages/PublishingImages/Press%20Releases/2012-09-25_iPhone5.jpg)

$12 is a lot of money for a box, and would be one of the most expensive things you buy, unless you want the latest communications chipset or next years display technology. I guess apple do. But it's still a lot of money for a box. News to me.

<comment><USER46> The double-wall material seems to be the primary driver of that price, and also not necessary for most products.

I've designed and purchased a lot of retail boxes for my needs. If you can get away with a heavy-duty paperboard (which will suit most non-luxury products), the combination of full-color box and custom foam can be had as low as $5/unit, or less, in quantities starting at 500 units. Once you start getting into custom multi-wall product, you're often having to pay die costs which greatly drive up the per-unit price.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Build a Facebook lite for such and such...</comment>