Free "Lisp Hackers" Ebook - <AUTHOR> http://lisp-univ-etc.blogspot.com/2013/06/free-lisp-hackers-ebook.html <comment><USER2> Hacker content on my hackernews? Yep, this is a pretty good book. I've only just started it but it is enjoyable if you are a Lisper or interested in how some Lispers tick.

</comment><comment><USER3> I bought this a few hours ago and I already finished it: a fun read. If you are a Common Lisp hacker (or used to be one) you will enjoy reading about 14 hackers, how they use Lisp, got started, etc. I just plugged this book and Leanpub on my blog. Off topic, but if you are starting a writing project, check out Leanpub (I am using them for 2 book projects right now).

<comment><USER4> What would you say about the book for those of us who have never touched Lisp, but perhaps have been interested in it for some time? (me)

<comment><USER3> I would instead recommend reading a Common Lisp tutorial, installing SBCL, and start playing. The book is fun, but it won't get you started coding Common Lisp.

<comment><USER5> Instead of SBCL, I recommend Clozure CL. Apparently, SBCL does not operate smoothly on all the platforms it supports.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Vladimir Sedach described dependency injection and test driven development as "idiotic things". Great to see outspoken opinions!

<comment><USER7> Test driven development is essential for writing reliable distributed systems programs. Robert Morris' 6.824 class is proof of this. There is a time and a place for every tool.

<comment><USER6> I don't really have an opinion either way, having never tried TDD, but I do write distributed systems and don't see why you can't use post-facto testing to get the same results. I am interested in your reasoning. (Re: Proof, [http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.824/schedule.html](http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.824/schedule.html) doesn't feature the word 'test' which though circumstantial sort of downplays the weight of an inextricable link such as that you are supposing.)

<comment><USER7> Download the labs. Don't look at or run the tests.

Carefully implement each lab based on its description alone. Implement until you're certain you've done it correctly.

Run the tests. Discover that your implementation is far from flawless.

<comment><USER6> It sounds like the non-test specification is simply poor, and the tests elucidate parts of the specification that are unclear. This doesn't seem relevant to the original question of the claimed requisite-level efficacy of TDD in designing distributed systems.

<comment><USER7> Actually, the specifications are quite clear. The subject matter is just difficult to implement correctly. I encourage you to try it. It's a lot of fun.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Balance - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/on-startups/b32ea66714fc Three things I do to combat stress & promote a balanced life as an entrepreneur. Including why life is stupid, why I don't use treadmills, & how to double down on inspiration. <comment><USER2> This reads like lightweight stoicism to me and that's a good thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey thanks!</comment></comment>


How to Succeed in Business by Really, Really Trying - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/05/how-to-succeed-in-business-by-really-really-trying/257042/

<comment><USER2> His opening two caveats are a useful antidote to autobiographies marketed as treasure maps.

       First, even though every guy who has done a successful start-up somehow feels
       he's therefore become the philosopher-king of business, all experience is
       bounded. Further, there are companies that exist to sell products at a profit,
       and companies that exist to sell equity to investors. I only know about
       the former. The latter tend to flourish in the later stages of a bubble,
       and rely on a totally different set of skills related to promotions,
       networking and PR.

       Second, even within the universe of relevant companies, all "rules for success"
       are either obvious or incomplete.  In other words, there are no rules for
       success. If there were, lots more people would do successful start-ups.</comment>


Steve Jobs' impact on the tech community cannot be understated [pic] - <AUTHOR> http://zamfi.net/blog/steve-jobs-legacy

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, obviously meant "cannot be overstated". Sigh. Not thinking too straight!</comment>


Windows 10's Torrent-U-Like updates slurp your precious bandwidth - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/31/windows_10_torrent_updates/

<comment><USER2> Sneaky and resulted in me not wanting to touch this OS with a 10 foot pole. Companies are getting away with way too much these days just because they can.

</comment><comment><USER3> Already being discussed at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9982917](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9982917)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. It seems that same stuff can have so many different headlines that it's hard to find if something has already been discussed.</comment></comment>


YouTube Strategy: Adding Jitter Isn't A Bug  - <AUTHOR> http://highscalability.com/blog/2012/4/17/youtube-strategy-adding-jitter-isnt-a-bug.html

<comment><USER2> I worked on a project that implemented a task queue using a database table. Workers would SELECT FOR UPDATE a couple of rows, mark themselves as owners, commit the change, and then do the work outside of the transaction.

The workers were configured to fetch new tasks every 30 seconds. With 10 workers you'd expect tasks to get fetched from the queue every 3 seconds, but that is not what we were seeing. The tasks were only getting picked up on 30 second boundaries. What was going on?

It turns out that the tasks were piling up. As soon as one task tried to update at the same time as another it would get blocked on the database lock. Its own transaction would then run really quickly following the first transaction. However, since these two tasks were run in immediate succession, now they were synced for life. They both slept for exactly 30 seconds, the first one wakes up a few tens of milliseconds earlier and grabs the lock, the second one wakes up and blocks on the lock, and this happens in perpetuity. Eventually, due to small randomness, all tasks entered lockstep and would be a small thundering herd against the database.

This was noticed by a developer and fixed by introducing a small jitter in the sleep time. After the push our tasks were picked up in three seconds and our end-to-end workflow time got substantially shorter.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure I like overloading the term jitter in this context. The title made me assume they meant packet jitter, aka the standard deviation around packet delivery times, which video is sensitive to when not taken into account. This is a similar concept around cache and resource access times, but a desirable property rather than a something to deal with or eliminate.

<comment><USER4> Heh. I've been immersed in video coding for the past few weeks, so not only was I shocked and intrigued at the title, but it took me a few passes to realize what was actually being said. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> So the idea that Jurassic Park would have hired a Chaotician to do systems analysis was completely realistic. Except, in this real world example turbulence is introduced to _maintain_ stability. Fascinating.

<comment><USER6> Read about Spread Spectrum <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spread_spectrum>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why rely on jitter to fix bottlenecks? Why not sample the bottleneck and do an action based on feedback? e.g. update:

      if (resource_busy)
        retry when resource free

where retry is a random time based upon statistics of past usage. I don't like arbitrary random solutions when measurement will work much better.

<comment><USER8> Uh, your solution is to retry after random delay? That's jitter.

<comment><USER6> Retry after random delay <> jitter. Jitter is the deviation of a signal from its reference source. Retrying after a random delay is standard collision avoidance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_sense_multiple_access_w...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_sense_multiple_access_with_collision_detection)

</comment><comment><USER9> here they talk about random jitter (when it is a result) of approaching a Gaussian distribution. I bet the random jitter they are injecting for time delay in the article is not Gaussian, but flat.

<http://www.tititudorancea.org/z/jitter.htm></comment>


Ray Tracing in Nim - <AUTHOR> https://nim-lang.org/blog/2020/06/30/ray-tracing-in-nim.html <comment><AUTHOR> Author here,

This is a guest blog post on exploring Nim features:

\- Speed

\- Correctness via modelling physics units, tracing side-effects and mutability

\- C/C++ interop

and how they can be applied to a domain with a critical need for all 3.</comment>


Soylent Taste Test - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/video/technology/personaltech/100000002907606/soylent-taste-test.html <comment><USER2> I don't understand why Soylent receives the press it does, meal-replacement shakes have been on the market for quite a long time. The entire phenomenon seems to just be a marketing gimmick around some misguided notion of it "replacing food".

<comment><USER3> Meal replacement shakes are expensive, inefficient, and unhealthy compared to Soylent.

They usually ship with the liquid/water mixed in, and the cost/kcal is substantially higher, with the carbohydrate concentrations much, much higher.

<comment><USER4> Do you have a source or proof for these points? Last I checked a serving of Ensure was a good bit cheaper than Soylent.

Shipping with the liquid/water mixed can often be a convenience, and at least Ensure also offers it's product in a powdered form: [http://ensure.com/products/ensure-powder](http://ensure.com/products/ensure- powder)

<comment><USER5> The cost of a serving of Soylent varies based on the amount you've ordered. The cheapest it goes for is ~$3.04 per serving - $255 for a monthly shipment of 28 days worth.

The 'buy online' link from the Ensure page you posted lists their powdered product at $65 per 6 pack of 14oz cans. The serving size is 57g, so there are about 7 servings per can; a serving costs about $1.55.

Each Ensure serving is 250 calories, with 9g protein, 9g fat, 34g carbs (13g sugar, 0g fiber) and between 10 and 60% of all the major vitamins and minerals (most seem to be 25%).

Each non-vegan Soylent serving is 670 calories, with 38g protein, 24g fat, 84g carbs (2g sugar, 9g fiber) and between 33 and 57% of all the major vitamins and minerals (most are 33%). The vegans do their own thing with an oil additive (Soylent ships a fish oil/canola blend) so the published nutritional information is not accurate for vegans.

So without actually doing all the arithmetic, I would say that I would probably need 2.5-ish Ensure servings for every 1 Soylent serving to equalize calories. I would be getting more vitamins out of Ensure, but also more sugar - most of the carbs - and no fiber at all. The price would be close but Ensure would be more expensive.

[http://abbottstore.com/adult-nutrition/ensure-powder- vanilla...](http://abbottstore.com/adult-nutrition/ensure-powder- vanilla-14-oz-container-case-of-6-00750#.UnqVXxCE7To)

[http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0421/5993/t/4/assets/Comple...](http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0421/5993/t/4/assets/Complete- Soylent-Nutrition-Facts.pdf?29423)

<comment><USER6> As I was informed on another Soylent thread, you need to compare Ensure Complete with Soylent. Ensure Complete is a MRE, Ensure (the standard product line) is not.

<comment><USER5> Thanks, I didn't see that. Upvoted. I also didn't see the 'subscribe and save' link for 10% off; the prices above are not fair to regular Ensure, which is basically at price parity with Soylent.

Ensure Complete is more expensive than Soylent and, while much more complete than regular Ensure, is still arguably less complete than Soylent. I think the only things it has going for it are taste (presumably), availability and an established brand name.

[http://abbottstore.com/adult-nutrition/ensure-complete- milk-...](http://abbottstore.com/adult-nutrition/ensure-complete-milk- chocolate-8-fl-oz-bottle-case-of-16-62758)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wouldn't mind a product that can replace food, if it's cheaper, more convenient, provides all necessary nutrition and eliminates the feeling of hunger.

However the biggest issue I have with Soylent is that I cannot trust it. It hasn't been tested long term and it doesn't sound like it's being developed by people who know what they are doing.

Also let's stop pretending it's something new, stuff like Plumpy'nut have existed for a while, used in developing nations for malnutrition treatment. I bet it would be as effective as Soylent as a food replacement for a few months. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plumpy%27nut](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plumpy%27nut)

<comment><USER8> > However the biggest issue I have with Soylent is that I cannot trust it. It > hasn't been tested long term and it doesn't sound like it's being developed > by people who know what they are doing.

Totally valid point, but look at the alternatives for people without the time and money to buy nice ingredients and cook for themselves. I used to eat fast food nearly every day out of convenience and because I didn't know how to eat better. Frozen dinners are no better.

It's not that I think food executives don't know what they are doing. In fact, I believe they are knowingly lowering the nutritional quality of affordable food.

So while they might not have experience in the food industry, at least the soylent folks are focusing on the nutrition of their customers as opposed to pure profit.

<comment><USER7> Not sure if you can compare fast food to Soylent, because there are many different types of fast food and not all of fast food is bad for you. Fast food can also contain vegetables, live cultures, and various assortment of ingredients which are good for you. Overindulgence of anything is bad, fast food just makes it easier because it's easy to get, generally tastes good and is packed with a ton of calories. If you ate fast food very carefully, then you'd probably be okay.

Furthermore, there probably isn't a simple shortcut to nutrition. If you want to be healthy you need to be involved in what you eat.

I'm sure the driving force for Soylent is profit as well, otherwise they would have done years of testing and scientific studies, before releasing a mix of chemicals as a solution to food. I suspect they'll get sued down the road, there is no way to predict what long term effects this will have when someone decides to use it for years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like what Chris Dixon had to say on Twitter: "NY Times has a wine critic review Soylent. Reminiscent of the time they had a literary critic review Twitter."

[https://twitter.com/cdixon/status/472159432332148736](https://twitter.com/cdixon/status/472159432332148736)

</comment><comment><USER10> "The modern man does what he can so that he doesn't have to walk, doesn't have to lift heavy things, doesn't have to sweat, doesn't have to meet others in person, doesn't have to take responsibility, doesn't have to love, doesn't have to hate, doesn't have to care, doesn't have to cook and even doesn't have to eat! So in the end he doesn't have anything! He has no life left as it all has been artificially removed from him so that he could just do nothing, accomplish nothing, think nothing, be nothing and live not and be comfortably nothing. Comfort is death. Life is a struggle. Life is a messy, unsanitary and trigger tripping struggle."

<comment><USER11> I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Should humanity forsake all modern conveniences and return to the bush?

<comment><USER12> Hey, some people _want_ take the elevator to the gym and work out on a stairmaster...or put their bike on their car to drive to the place where they can ride their bike...away from all the other cars...=D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sometimes i have a hard time telling if the hostility towards Soylent is just normal HN flare, or something meaningful.

Sometimes i think people assume we're going to force Soylent on them o_O

<comment><USER14> Sadly, it's not just HN. The negative reactions to this stuff range from the misinformed to the head-scratching to the downright idiotic.

Check the comments section on the recent NYT or Ars Technica articles - it's much of the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> People interested in Soylent may be interested in the whole food alternatives, MealSquares and Ambronite.

<comment><USER13> I was not aware of those, thanks for the links!

I'll be curious at how much Ambronite ends up costing

<comment><USER15> Ambornite is currently $32 a day IIRC. MealSquares are aiming for $12. Compared to $9.6x for Soylent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The sommelier guy would get the top comment on HN every time

</comment><comment><USER17> My biggest gripe, which has me real close to complaining to the times about it, is he didn't even talk about any of the other avenues of flavoring the product that the owners advertise themselves. Never once mentioned adding chocolate, or vanilla, or peanut butter. You can add anything you want. It helps, isn't great, but it makes it much better. Also he didn't mention if he left it in the fridge for a few hours to let it settle. Which you're supposed to do in order to let the rice protein mix well. All of which the owners mention, but no actual facts are in the article. It felt like he wanted to complain.

<comment><USER12> These are good points for discussion. But the counter-arguments is that they add cost, complexity, and time.

I can readily buy 2000 calories of food that are shelf-stable for under the $9/day price of solent. That are equal in weight (500g), hit a target of 15% protein, are compact in volume... and far more palatable for long durations.

Soylent has going for it that its easy 1-step and always predictable with minimal preperation and packaging. Once I start having to mix or pre-soak, Soylent has no apparent advantage to the system I just highlighted above.

It basically becomes _assemblage_ if not outright cooking. And the need for something like a fridge? Again I think it is capital intensive and sort of against yhe minimalist ethos/usp of soylent.

<comment><USER18> I wish I could prepare, cook, eat, and clean a meal in the time it takes to create a shake, drink it, and wash out the cup.

Do tell, what's your secret?

<comment><USER12> This explains the math. 140 cal/28g. Prep time <5min.

[http://andrewskurka.com/adventures/alaska-yukon- expedition/f...](http://andrewskurka.com/adventures/alaska-yukon- expedition/food-nutrition/)

Also, on general Considerations in Food Items:

[http://andrewskurka.com/2010/the-5000-calories-per-day- wilde...](http://andrewskurka.com/2010/the-5000-calories-per-day-wilderness- diet/)

A worked example in more detail (see "Daily Rations"):

[http://andrewskurka.com/2012/food-planning-for-multi-day- hik...](http://andrewskurka.com/2012/food-planning-for-multi-day-hikes-and- thru-hikes/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> YouTube link for mobile users: [http://youtu.be/HRDcdaQMRDc](http://youtu.be/HRDcdaQMRDc)

</comment><comment><USER10> There was a big debate on HN about the accompanying article yesterday: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7814005](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7814005)

</comment><comment><USER20> Spoiler alert: it doesn't taste like much.

As for the rest, it's the usual Soylent article being rehashed. If you're looking for a bland, cheap alternative to journalism, this is for you.

</comment><comment><USER21> From my prospective Soylent does not taste like anything because it has never been shipped to me after receiving one notice of delay after another. I bought a week supply on Kickstarter nothing ever arrived after what seems to be a close to a year. They have missed multiple delivery time frames. I have since bought some competing products (Phood) while I waited and still wait.

</comment><comment><USER22> I've been wondering what it tastes like. Glad to hear other people describe it!

</comment><comment><USER23> Personally, I'm looking forward to Soylent being available at grocery stores...</comment>


Show HN: Generating GraphQL servers for Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/vektah/gqlgen <comment><USER2> Not to derail the discussion, but I just got started using GraphQL myself. I've been using Apollo and just started looking at Graphcool. I was wondering if anyone knows of an offline first solution for GraphQL on mobile (ios and android, native or nativescript compatible)?

I was hoping to use Apollo on all platforms but it seems I would need to use a custom solution for mobile while on web there's some choices (for offline first): [https://github.com/apollographql/apollo-cache- asyncstorage/i...](https://github.com/apollographql/apollo-cache- asyncstorage/issues/6)

Currently I'm planning to go with couchdb/couchbase-lite for mobile but I would prefer a graphql solution. I'm also investigating AWS AppSync which appears to have offline support, but I haven't read that deeply into it yet: [https://aws.amazon.com/appsync/](https://aws.amazon.com/appsync/)

<comment><USER3> Hi faizshah. I created RxDB ( [https://github.com/pubkey/rxdb](https://github.com/pubkey/rxdb) ), an offline-first-database (javascript) which works for your requirements, but only with the couchdb-stack.

I did many attempts to create a graphQL-plugin which streams graphql-data into an the offline-first store. But this is not completely solvable because of the lacking graphQL-streaming-capabilities. The thing is, when the users goes offline for an hour an then online again, there is no way to get the changes of the last hour out of graphQL which means the user then would either have missing updates or has to redownload the full state again. The current streaming-api of graphQL requires a stable connection and is so not useable for offline-first.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the info and the reply, this seems like a great solution for me for nativescript and I like the docs and feature set. But it's a little heavyweight for web, is there a lite version or a way to create a custom build?

<comment><USER3> Yes there is an option to do custom builds. [https://pubkey.github.io/rxdb/custom- build.html](https://pubkey.github.io/rxdb/custom-build.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I feel that, in typed languages, the only GraphQL oriented code you should be writing is the schemas and the resolvers. Manually implementing the models in your language's type system seems unnecessary and is a recipe for mistakes and drift between the schemas and those types.

<comment> a-saleh I think I would rather write types and derive schemas. Not sure if it were possible to derive resolvers?

<comment><USER4> There's a good argument that GraphQL can become the single SDL you use to define the API of many services written in many different languages. In this sense, it makes sense to write GraphQL and generate the language constructs; kind of an "outside->in" approach. If you're codegening your API from language constructs, the API will inevitably begin to use patterns that make sense in your language, not patterns that are universal to GraphQL or your entire system.

That being said, I don't agree with it. I'm not a fan of GraphQL for inter- service communication; it makes sense at the internet API boundary, but once you're inside your service mesh I prefer something simpler and easier to test, like gRPC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is super cool. It looks very similar to graphql-binding [https://github.com/graphql-binding/graphql- binding](https://github.com/graphql-binding/graphql-binding)

GraphQL Bindings are generated from a GraphQL schema and provides static typing in various languages. Right now code-gen for typescript is supported. Scroll down a bit on [https://www.prismagraphql.com/](https://www.prismagraphql.com/) for a short video demonstrating how this works in practice.

I'm very happy that more projects are exploring code-gen for GraphQL.

</comment><comment><USER6> Background: I've been using Typescript + graphql-yoga/apollo-server/express + Prisma to create a GraphQL server. I'm not familiar with golang.

I found this interesting. So just to check my understanding, does this auto generate the routing for the incoming GraphQL queries and mutations? Then you implement the resolvers / db components?

<comment><USER6> I'm also interested in hearing your thoughts on the maturity of the golang GraphQL ecosystem?

I've mostly been looking at the JS space and there's a lot of tooling. Having said that my experience has been that it's easy to write a simple GraphQL server but it gets complicated fast. I've been using Prisma which does a lot of the heavy lifting for you. It's relatively new so does come with trade- offs.

<comment><USER7> Check out [https://dgraph.io/](https://dgraph.io/) . I haven't had the chance to use it yet, but I have been following its development for a while. Definitely worth looking into.

<comment><USER6> Looks interesting. Shame the syntax is GraphQL-like but not pure GraphQL.

<comment><USER6> Looks like GraphQL compatibility is on the roadmap for 2018

[https://github.com/dgraph-io/dgraph/issues/1966](https://github.com/dgraph- io/dgraph/issues/1966)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is it production ready?</comment>


How changing my name to "Spider Mann" ruined my life - <AUTHOR> http://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-2461-my-new-legal-name-spider-mann.-yes-i-have-some-regrets.html <comment><USER2> > _" Online registrations are canceled within minutes, tables at restaurants > are canceled and given to others (makes surprise dates for partners a > hassle), and renting a car is even worse," Mann says. One time, "I reserved > and rented a car through Enterprise online. Confirmation email and > everything in hand. I thought going through Costco Travel would eliminate > the usual rigmarole, but I was wrong. A few days before [my trip], I called > Enterprise to verify the reservation. The woman on the other side was nice > about it, but those familiar words stating that they had canceled the > reservation because they thought it was a joke came."_

Nice, he got the human-equivalent of "Null", the magic name that breaks certain reservation systems.

<comment><USER3> Off the top of my head, I can't think of any language where "null" == null

<comment> maze-le I can think of a badly designed database interface. All SQL databases handle NULL as a special value, that cannot be compared by equality. But if you want compare the return value of a sql prompt in some language you can make a fallacy like:

        sqlstring = "SELECT 1 = NULL;"
        returnValue = callDB(sqlstring)

        if returnValue == "NULL"
          // here you go...
        end

A solution would be to let the database handle NULL-values:

        sqlstring = "SELECT 1 IS NULL;"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > _" I truly believe that a name is an identity ... I am strong in my feeling > that this is the name that fits me and that embodies the type of person I > am."_

A guy who can't admit when me made an error or stupid impulse decision?

A person who thinks two words (name, surname) define them, instead of their actions and achievements?

Something that anybody can get with $100 dollars and an application is clearly not what "embodies the type of person" they are.

<comment><USER5> I agree, if you change your name to Spider Man or I.C. Weiner you kind of had it coming. But on the other hand there are people born named Harry Poter long before Harry Poter was even written and face similar problems.

<comment><USER6> The difference is a real-sounding name like Harry Potter (or Michael Bolton: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_BaMx_n2_hM](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_BaMx_n2_hM)) attracts comments rather than suspicion.

<comment><USER5> [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1221925/The-real- lif...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1221925/The-real-life-Harry- Potter-reveals-sharing-wizards-life-misery.html)

It's daily-mail, so take it with a bit of salt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This guy probably has it worse: [http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=5](http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=5)

...or him: [http://mw.eco.br/ig/prof/ReinhardtAdolfoFuck.htm](http://mw.eco.br/ig/prof/ReinhardtAdolfoFuck.htm)

<comment><USER8> My teacher is called Mrs Willy. Just change your name.

<comment><USER9> Ages ago I had a teacher in 7th grade named "Mr Bonar". I have to think that if that's your name, "junior high teacher" is the worst job you can pick.

<comment><USER10> There is a school teacher in Wisconsin whose birth name is Marijuana Pepsi. She has a rather interesting story: [http://archive.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/40874017.html/](http://archive.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/40874017.html/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> He suggests the name change caused the deterioration. Since we know correlation is not causation, I propose a more likely situation:

that one thing caused both: a personality that would choose to go through the effort of changing his name to a cartoon super hero.

<comment><USER12> If you read the article, the author cites quite a few very believable effects of having such an outlandish name. While I don't doubt that having such an eccentric combination of puckishness and impulsivity _would_ cause problems professionally and personally, those are not the problems directly addressed in the piece.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What would ever make someone think that wasn't a horrible idea in the first place?

</comment><comment><USER14> There's a guy in Leeds who changed his name to Megatron, I didn't believe my friend when he told me but it's true [https://scontent- lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/fr/cp0/e15/q65...](https://scontent- lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/fr/cp0/e15/q65/424255_3426822074804_1638995115_n.jpg)

¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

</comment><comment><USER15> Isn't he lucky? He has an ultrafilter for people who have certain hangups... Which is most people, but those that remain must be valuable.

<comment><USER16> You can use this as a justification for any avoidable stupid personal decision, like poor fashion or failure to bathe. I don't see why judging someone for doing something dumb is a "hangup", or why missing obvious clues to someone's personality makes them "valuable".

<comment><USER15> because it seems like the 'deeper' problems he seems to be facing are rather quotidian (not being properly valued by management? not being taken seriously by a romantic partner?) Hell, some of us should be so lucky as to get a job or a romantic partner in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why don't we drop names entirely? I think UUIDs are much better for identification purposes.

<comment><USER18> > Why don't we drop names entirely? I think UUIDs are much better for > identification purposes.

Then, with only a little snark meant, why did you choose 'ShabbosGoy' rather than a UUID as your HN identifier?

<comment><USER19> HN limits usernames to 15 characters, so a UUID won't fit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Spidey sense didn't detect these problems then?

</comment><comment><USER21> Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

</comment><comment><USER22> A dude I used to work with changed his name to "Nobody In Particular." It was hilarious. Reminded me of the movie "My Name is Nobody. I didn't believe the rumors at first until I saw his paycheck come through the mail line.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This was on Eric Goldman's blog and I thought it nicely illustrated the notion of different contexts. Here is this guy who thinks "Wouldn't it be cool to have a name like Spider Mann?" and went ahead and changed his name.

</comment><comment><USER23> I think any changes to the name your mum and dad gave you are suspicious. The only world this is okay in is celebrity world, authors don't take on the identity of their pen name as celebrities do.

The blogger Perez Hilton gets on fine doing the celebrity gossip stuff he does. I doubt he would get a regular job with the name. So maybe Spider Mann has got it wrong, if he went full celebrity all would be okay.

</comment><comment><USER24> Some people get face tattoos.

</comment><comment><USER25> Why not just change your surname too?</comment>


The Great Dolphin Dilemma - <AUTHOR> https://www.hakaimagazine.com/features/the-great-dolphin-dilemma/ <comment><USER2> In sum, with the new drones and machines and the public increasily frowning upon the idea of captive dolphins, neither trained belugas, orcas or dolphins are seen as a much desirable project as before.

Russians "lost" some of their animals in april, and Americans could be in the way to do the same. Is a matter of time to be closed and replaced by robots. Of course nobody would want to admit if/that the technology is ready yet, for strategic reasons.

Cetaceans are very expensive and high maintenance animals.

<comment><USER3> > Cetaceans are very expensive and high maintenance animals.

Sure, but how is that a disadvantage compared to robots? They work much better than robots do (more functionality) and they're much lower maintenance than the robots are. Throwing fish into water is as easy as maintenance gets.

All of the problems with using whales are that we don't yet have them trained. That's an enormous R&D cost... which is a problem that also applies to robots.</comment></comment>


Show HN: ReactHN, a Hacker News Progressive Web App That Works Offline - <AUTHOR> https://react-hn.appspot.com <comment><AUTHOR> Source code: [https://github.com/insin/react- hn](https://github.com/insin/react-hn)

</comment><comment><USER2> Looks good ! However, you could implement infinite scrolling, which is the most lacking feature on HN.

</comment><comment><USER3> I get "502 Bad Gateway" after a long wait. An AppEngine issue?

</comment><comment><USER4> I love the comment consolidation feature like Reddit

</comment><comment><USER5> How to hack website school?</comment>


Heroku: Announcing PG Backups - <AUTHOR> http://blog.heroku.com/archives/2010/11/16/pgbackups/ <comment><USER2> Did anyone else immediately think "I can download a backup of Paul Graham? AWESOME!"?</comment>


I come to bury IAmCarbonatedMilk.com, not to praise it (2002) - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/2002/08/03/deleteddomains/

<comment><USER2> Some of these may be remnants of Google's old SEO policies which, from what I remember, weighted TLD names pretty heavily.

<comment><USER3> This article was written in 2002. SEO wasn't much of a thing then.

<comment><USER4> I remember quite clearly, it was a big thing then. If anything, bigger than now (in that small changes to one's own content, and small manipulations around linking, could have big effects on the major search engines). Back then, SEO was about careful manipulation of <meta> tags, keywords, tricks like filling your page with white text on a white background so the search engine would see it but not users, etc.

I'm not sure what SEO is about now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> i dunno i have some domains just because they look cool. not to make money or a point, in fact, nobody sees/know them except myself.

<comment><USER6> Yeah I registered butt.institute a few months ago and I'm still chuckling over it.

<comment><USER7> poop.bike is quite a colourful domain

<comment><USER8> Sometimes I wonder, would it be worth moving to Bermuda so that I could own poop.bm

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Whoever registered "Art-Art-Art-Art-Art-Art-Art-Art-NFL-Art-Art-Art-Art-Art- Art-Art.com" must have been really confident in the rhythm of how that sounded.

<comment><USER10> No match for "ART-ART-ART-ART-ART-ART-ART-ART-NFL-ART-ART-ART-ART-ART-ART- ART.COM". >>> Last update of whois database: Sun, 05 Oct 2014 08:32:08 GMT <<<

Looks like the exciting opportunity arose again!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Since when is cricket is lesser known sport?

<comment><USER12> Cricket isn't very well known in the northwestern hemisphere.</comment></comment>


Helvetica (the film) - <AUTHOR> http://www.presentationzen.com/presentationzen/2008/01/helvetica.html

<comment><USER2> This was showing at the Roxie in San Francisco for a couple weeks. When I went, the place was totally packed. For a few minutes after the movie ended, all you could see in the world was typefaces.

</comment><comment><USER3> A lot of the soundtrack is by this group: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Ten_Eleven>

If you like them, email me and we can discuss files. Really, anyone here that likes music, email me, I've got a great collection.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> If you are interested, this is the film URL: <http://www.helveticafilm.com/>

</comment><comment><USER4> I really like Helvetica. It's clean and simple. What more do you need?

I should also note that I am a fan of Myraid Pro.

</comment><comment><USER5> tip: if you have Netflix, I'm pretty sure it's available as a Watch Now. I've been planning to watch this for a while now, just never take the time to boot into Windows (Flix needs to hurry up with their *nix support!)</comment>


Soylent News is Live - <AUTHOR> http://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=14/02/17/0148235

<comment><USER2> Interesting, excellent work guys. I smell a low uid rush...

</comment><comment><USER3> Congratulations, guys. Unicode support yay!!

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes keep it up this is a necessary thing.</comment>


Git Ransom Campaign Incident Report–Atlassian Bitbucket, GitHub, Gitlab - <AUTHOR> https://github.blog/2019-05-14-git-ransom-campaign-incident-report/ <comment><USER2> I guess the code can be recovered, but what about leaks? How would a company affected try to protect itself from a complete leak of it's code, which could be very dangerous also for the users?</comment>


Is Googlebot trying to index my FTP? - <AUTHOR> http://pastebin.com/QM3YhCCb

<comment><USER2> It is possible; the IP address only is not a sure indication of the origin.

Google does indeed indexes public ftpd. No problem here.</comment>


The unstructured billion rupees firms of India - <AUTHOR> http://uncannydesign.wordpress.com/2012/07/08/the-unstructured-billion-rupees-companies-in-india/

<comment><USER2> I can unequivocally state that the conclusion you reach for many corporations or companies in India may be true. But not for these two. The first company is a family/friend owned company of the Karunannidhi empire, often called the first family of Tamil Nadu. The second is owned by a very famous and politically connected man in Tamil Nadu, and now in New Delhi. In India, Bharti Airtel, Reliance, Bajaj and these are among the many companies that are strictly profitable because of state capitalism, or as is more commonly known: Crony Capitalism. I am not going to write an entire political discourse here, and of course, just because they got the permits does not mean they would do extremely well; but it is a significant hurdle. For a restaurant to operate in any city of any state in India, you need 180 licenses, with 105 of them renewed on a yearly basis. Do you know how many bribes that entails? For an FM radio station to operate, as a public welfare concern, you MUST pay 65% of your operating profit BEFORE tax to the government for the 'privilege'. These crony capitalists pay over some money to the politicians, but these extreme barriers to competitive entry in many fields allow them to rake in the profits. Rahul Bajaj is one: any traveler to India must have seen ubiquity in the autorickshaw. Ask the owners of Piaggio how quickly they were decimated when trying to introduce a bigger and better auto, by the so-called authorities, simply by having to get a bunch of licenses and also not being allowed to compete in key markets because of union rules. The only area in India where you can run an honest company without having to fork over bribes incessantly is the internet.

<comment><USER3> I completely agree.

Just to add to your last statement about internet companies being relatively bribe free, I've heard pieces (rumours) from well places influential people in the government that this is changing fast too.

Allegedly, the recent court cases against Google and Facebook asking them to block content was an attempt to get them to fork over some money.

Also, the recent banning of websites of companies like dailymotion and vimeo was our not so clean judicial system at work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > cleanliness, serving speed and courteous behavior.

The author's definition of courtesy is very different from mine. When I am dining out, here are my expectations:

1\. Let me settle down. Do not shove the menu in my face as soon as I put my behind on the chair.

2\. Do not hover around my table after you have handed me the menu. It's not rocket science to watch from a distance and see if I am ready to place an order.

3\. Bring food in proper order. Do I need to tell you that you don't bring the soup, appetizer, main course and dessert all at once?

4\. In between the meal, if you feel the need to interrupt me to ask "do you need something else", do not just barge in. Wait for a pause in conversation, and approach from where I can see you coming. If I am in midst of the conversation, and you teleport behind me, and all of a sudden I hear "do you need something else", that's bad customer service.

These aren't the things you can expect from Sarvana Bhavan. My experience is you get in, there is a huge crowd most of the times, you try to get the attention of a roaming wait staff to get a seat, the seating is too compact and all expectations of reasonable privacy are null and void, the wait staff will hand you the menu as soon as you sit down and many a times just wait there while you go through the menu. Most of the times, you get your appetizers and main course together(speedy service, eh). Once you are done with the meal, the check magically appears - the restaurant is eager to get rid of you.

Bottomline - visit if you are hungry and looking for someplace to stuff something in your face and get out, or you have heard a lot about the place and want to try it. Any other expectations won't be met.

Disclaimer: I was in Chennai for 4 years, and left about 5 years back. Things might have changed since I left, though I won't bet on it.

<comment><USER5> The staff at the NYC location of Saravana Bhavan is also not particularly friendly or accommodating. The food is decent but the poor service has kept me from returning.

<comment><USER6> And you are not the target customer (neither am I). They know who their repeat customer is and serve that segment well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very well said. They customers they serve are retained and expanded. The idea of restaurants in India is very different from the ones in US or rest of the world. Hence, there may be quite a disparity in the idealogy and system of business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If india had complete structure then it would not recieve or indeed need aid from other countries. It would also be hard to bribe anybody as it would be very hard to hide said bribes.

That all said it gets down to the old issues - does it work then why change it. If you have a process that works then however unstructured it is nomatter how you define structure it stilll works. Could it work better, maybe, maybe not.

Also saying something is unstructured is a viewpoint maybe not shared by those in such a company. For them that would be the normal way of doing business so for some it may be unstructured and for others closer to home it is the culture.

If every country looked at a problem the same, it would be rather boring though peacful. One mans idea of structure is another mans idea of extra uneeded overheads and work.

Bottom line if there happy or in business fiscaly sound then nomatter how they work, if there happy then so be it.

</comment><comment> guard-of-terra Any country have quite a few supermarket and fast food chains. And they never seem to be the topic on hacker news. I think it ought to be that way unless the businesses in question do something extraordinarily innovative.

Or else, we're headed towards calling some random car wash a start-up.

<comment><USER8> If there's an important lesson from that car wash/fast food chain/whatever that can be applied to start-ups, then I'd encourage posting about it here.

<comment> guard-of-terra I miss on the important lessons. Those two chains grew because they cared about their customers above all else, we are told. But what about thousands of chains all over the world that grow despite having no special focus on the customer? Save marketing pitches.

What makes these two chains stand out? Do they, really? How would one prove their success isn't random or fueled by some other factor?

<comment><AUTHOR> The reason they stand out most is their consistency over the decade. The consistency they have as they expand. India is a lot different scenario than the rest of the world. Tackling innovation alone won't get you far. There are so many factors starting from purchase of license, regular bribing the police, rogues etc etc. Besides, this is a story of an uneducated person raising this big a company. Gathering customers without use of a computer or internet. I believe this is an important lesson for all startups for this reason. It shows going beating the usual, taking the untrodden path can take you miles.

<comment> guard-of-terra Most of those points stand for other fast food or supermarket chains as well. And the cases of single place becoming a chain usually feature owner without a formal business education.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This story has an underlying theme shared by another story here on HN a few days ago about a mobile app that reached a million users in a year without any viral marketing (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4205571>). And that underlying similarity is this - a relentless focus on customers can make up for low marketing spend.

<comment><AUTHOR> @ raheemm : Very true, lots of businesses in south india do work on that basis. Word of mouth. No online presence, or social media presence, yet they gather millions of customers. reply

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This article is devoid of any content except mentioning 2 companies which are "successful".

Why is this article on the front page of HN?

These are privately owned companies. The author does not even quote sources for the billion rupee "turnover".

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey senthil, I think you are missing out an important point here. It is not abt two successful companies, it is about how they got successful and their success is an outlier,by not following the usual path. And how the current so called corporate structure need not necessarily guaranty success. It is abt how, sans marketing, they have managed to gather million customer base.

<comment><USER10> Are you sure these companies have no structure? Where did the size estimate even come from?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> FYI: One Billion Rupees is $18 Million Dollars.

Edited to include source: [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+billion+rupees+to+dol...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+billion+rupees+to+dollars)</comment>


Global Outage of AWS CloudFront CDN on Nov 26 2014 - <AUTHOR> http://www.turbobytes.com/blog/cloudfront-cdn-global-outage/

<comment><USER2> It's the second time in less than a week that AWS have failed to update their status page during service disruption and then filed it under 'increased error rates'.

Don't get me wrong, I love AWS and use it every day, but it's a little insulting to pretend that things haven't gone wrong when they quite obviously have.

I know Amazon aren't the most transparent company in the world but why even bother having a status page if everyone has to turn to twitter to validate the outage?

Last night while sitting around waiting for cloudfront to come back so I could get on with my work I turned to HN to give me a bit of reading material. My word, sooooo many of the articles linked to on the front page were missing their static assets because of the AWS outage. Would be really interesting to know what percentage of the internet was affected.

<comment><USER3> Are there independent services that monitor a range of hosting providers, cdn, etc. and keep a history that can be used for reference? I'm thinking someone like pingdom could do this.

<comment><USER4> [https://cloudharmony.com/](https://cloudharmony.com/) does to some extent, though it's not exactly what your talking about

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm really freaking tired of the AWS Status page using the green "info" marker for major outages.

</comment><comment><USER6> bottom line: always CNAME your asset domain.

<comment><USER7> Totally. We were able to side step the CDN in less than a minute. +1

<comment><USER8> That helps! I guess it assumes your origin servers have the capacity to serve the traffic. Or did you switch CDNs? Just curious as there are services like Cedexis (or TurboBytes; the author of the article) for load balancing CDNs

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is incredibly upsetting. Amazon publishing false status reports for public consumption is directly equivalent to libeling every single customer they have, simultaneously.

I was trying to register a new domain during this outage. When my registrar's site wasn't loading correctly, I dug around and discovered they use AWS. I then checked Amazon's AWS status page to see if they were the culprit.

Nothing but green icons across the board.

Amazon having the audacity to tell such a gargantuan lie seemed inconceivable, so I was absolutely convinced that the problem was the registrar's fault. I decided the registrar must have become shoddy at some point without me noticing, and so I made a "to-do" note for myself to switch to another registrar this weekend.

If I hadn't happened to stumble across this HN submission, the registrar I use would have lost a long-time customer due to Amazon publishing a maliciously false status page for AWS.

</comment><comment><USER10> Is there some way to do a fallback if the DNS server is down?

Also if my host is down can I "quickly" try another host? I know that it's possible in my own app, but can I tell a browser to do it, as a web publisher?</comment>


Freeism - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/wealth-a-new-era-of-economics-ce8acd785441 <comment><USER2> The whole point of the article is to ditch capitalism and socialism and replace it by an algorith.

A decentralized algorithm and here the questions begin: who writes, maintains and ensures that the algorithms "are fair", it's another form of socialism but replaced by a new almighty entity (the algorithm).

Who defines what is fair and what is not. Why does the author believe that the free decision between two parties is worse than between two parties there is a third party, intermediary, and this will always be fair?

The best future it will be freedom.</comment>


Show HN: Z-Machine in PostScript - <AUTHOR> http://zzo38computer.org/zmachine/interp/zmachine.ps# <comment><AUTHOR> If you have comments/questions/complaints, you can write here but you can also follow-up to article <email@example.com> on Usenet. (You could also find some questions that some people have already asked.)</comment>


Lidar sensors are about to become a mainstream car feature - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/01/lidar-sensors-are-about-to-become-a-mainstream-car-feature/ <comment><USER2> Lidar becomes much less effective within rain/snow conditions, because it causes the infrared time-of-flight sensors to not be able to see past the weather conditions. An example video by Waymo[0] shows a silhouette of oncoming cars, but I don't believe lidar alone would be able to provide a quick enough detection mechanism. Comma.ai by George Hotz[1] was started to create a relatively inexpensive OTS solution that's vendor independent and crowdsource video to aid in development and training of self-driving algorithms.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNUHjb5fbqs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNUHjb5fbqs) [1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3XHXL9rzQM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3XHXL9rzQM)

</comment><comment><USER3> They aren't going mainstream if you believe Elon Musk and George Hotz. If both the price and size of the sensors drops 95%, then maybe.</comment>


IPhone 5 replica released in China; looks promisingly real  - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcgerms.com/iphone-5-replica-released-in-china-looks-promisingly-real/

<comment><USER2> China is after all China</comment>


PG on nonprofits/Darfur - <AUTHOR> http://www.paulgraham.com/darfur.html

<comment><USER2> This is from a couple years ago. It didn't work out very well. The local government officials wouldn't let them build anything. The technology is cool though; literally.

<comment><USER3> Any idea why the government officials stop them from building anything?

<comment><USER2> I get the impression that in a corrupt country like that, government officials say no to everything by default, in order to make you bribe them to say yes.

<comment><USER4> And no bribe was offered? Undertaking a project in an area like that without being willing either to shoot or to bribe government officials strikes me as naive.

<comment><USER5> It's also illegal for a US, Canadian or European company to offer bribes to government officials abroad.

A recent crackdown cost Siemens $1.6 billion, as bribes were apart of their standard system of doing business. [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/business/worldbusiness/21s...](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/business/worldbusiness/21siemens.html)

<comment><USER4> It occurs to me that it would be a fascinating test case if a charity like this one were to be tried for bribery and plead self-defense.

<comment><USER6> "plead self-defense" to whom? To the govt that you didn't grease correctly? To the govt in your home country that thinks that bribing other govts is wrong?

Note that "self-defense" typically is to prevent grave bodily harm or death and is usually reserved for immediate threats. Not being able to build houses for some poor wretch who will probably live at least a few weeks without the house doesn't qualify.

<comment><USER4> To the home government. And while self-defense typically connotes imminent grave bodily harm, it is also typically plead only when one is accused of inflicting the same. In a country with rule of law, in non-imminent situations one is expected to seek the help of authorities rather than take matters into his own hands. But when that expectation is clearly unrealistic, then you have an interesting case.

<comment><USER6> > In a country with rule of law, in non-imminent situations one is expected to > seek the help of authorities rather than take matters into his own hands. > But when that expectation is clearly unrealistic, then you have an > interesting case.

No, you don't. The home govt has decided that bribery is wrong. It's well aware that banning bribery will mean that some poor wretch won't get a house and believes that that's an acceptable price to pay for the benefits of banning bribery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'll make a plug for these guys:

<http://www.inveneo.org/>

I met the founder last year at an event in SF. They've created an impressive solar-powered computer for the developing world. They seem to embody the best of both high-tech entrepreneurship and nonprofit altruism. They would appreciate your donations.

</comment><comment><USER8> What about a non-profit which works like a VC? Plug:

<http://www.acumenfund.org/>

(only "like a VC" by the same loose metaphor)

</comment><comment><USER9> Best site I know to look for effective nonprofits: <http://givewell.net/>.

They have a good blog as well (I would especially recommend their take on program expenses vs. total expenses: <http://blog.givewell.net/?cat=6>).

<comment><USER10> God no, they are the slimiest bunch of scammers: <http://mssv.net/wiki/index.php/Givewell>

      1) A so-called "charity" engages in shady, dishonest marketing online

      2) It's soaking up a huge amount of money as salary, while not doing anything itself,
         rather it's trying to act as a "charity middle man"

      3) They promote transparency and accountability in philanthropy without
         bothering to practice what they preach.

      4) Hedge fund wankers continuing to act in a greed-is-good manner despite entering
         a philanthropic endeavor, and weakening trust in non-profits indirectly (by being
         shady themselves) and directly (by bashing other charities anonymously in order to
         promote themselves).

<comment><USER9> 1) I agree that they made some online comments while hiding their identity. On the other hand they apologized in a way that makes me believe that they will not do it again (check their blog or the mp3s of the board meeting following the incident).

2) They are totally transparent about their salaries which are obviously only a fraction of what they earned while working for hedge fonds (around 60,000 for NYC isn't that much, is it?). Since they are trying to allocate donation money to the ngos which are most efficient, they are actually doing a very important job. Having worked in development aid myself I can assure you that the output (saved lives... )per $ varies probably even more than if you compare programmers in a tech company. Just giving everyone the same amount although one is ten time as productive doesn't seem like a good idea.

3) I haven't heared about any ngo as transparent as GiveWell (providing the records of their board meetings as an mp3 is just one example, check out their website for more).

4) Just because they have worked for a hedge fund in the past means that they are up to no good? Don't get the argument.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Architecture For Humanity are doing very interesting work in the area of applying alt (and mainstream) design solutions for people in need, worldwide: <http://architectureforhumanity.org/>

</comment><comment><USER12> that donation page is abysmal...honestly if I just found that page using Google, I'd think it was a scam site.

It looks like the site hasn't been updated since 2001

</comment><comment><USER13> This type of habitat should also be implemented in developed countries.

<comment><USER2> It is. When Kate renovated my house in California she built a retaining wall out of it. That could be a good way for this technology to get a foot in the door in the US.

Another option that might work even better in the US is straw bale adobe:

<http://www.buildingwithawareness.com/house1.html>

I believe the reason Kate & Co. went with Eco-Domes for Darfur was that they couldn't count on finding anything there except dirt. But there is lots of straw in the US.

<comment><USER14> However, straw burns- and mildews, rather easily. I'm sure they have ways to minimize the negative consequences of this, but I think the dirt houses may be easier?

What do they use for roofing on the Eco-Domes?

<comment><USER15> Actually, straw bales burn very poorly. When locked away behind a layer of stucco, even more poorly.

Ditto for mildew.

The earthquake resistance, pest resistance, and insulating qualities of straw bale construction are mind-blowing.

<comment><USER14> Okay, I can agree with a tightly bailed bail of hay not burning (as long as it stays tight) but mildew? I've seen a lot of mildewed hay in my life. Living in a farming community, I know the importance of keeping your hay dry. Of course, I'm not totally familiar with the construction techniques- if you have any links you'd recommend, I'd be willing to read up on it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Inside Canadian cyber-security agency's 'target the world' strategy - <AUTHOR> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/the-landmark-file-inside-canadian-cyber-security-agencys-target-the-world-strategy/article20179786/

<comment><USER2> > The Canadian agency boasts that its analysts took less than five minutes to > identify "vulnerable" devices in the targeted network.

Curious, I wonder if the vulnerabilities are just there because bad software, or if the CSE has 0 days against those devices..

<comment><USER3> I think it's safe to assume that any government-backed cyber security agency will have a cache of 0 days lying around for use in offensive operations.</comment></comment>


Why The Y Combinator Model Does Not Work In India - <AUTHOR> http://frontiernxt.com/why-the-y-combinator-model-does-not-work-in-india

<comment><USER2> _Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, "This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!"_

\- Douglas Adams -

YC is an evolved system. It's probably better suited for Silicon Valley in 2011 than New York 1997 or Curitiba in 2025. That shouldn't be a surprise.

That doesn't mean that Curitiba in 2025 is or is not a good place and time for a YC-like creature to exist. Certain types of people, investors, exits, consumers... make it a good place for certain types of founders abc to receive xyz in exchange for 123. India is very different and obviously the local version at its best would need some adaptations. Who knows what those are.

India's opportunities are lots of programmers. Talent available at very low costs. BTW, a local hirer would be able to get much better work for his $25 per hour than a New Yorker can get via elance. A 10 person team could potentially have a burn rate under that of a two person team in California. They have under-served markets. Ballooning markets and they are potentially better placed to understand under-served ballooning markets elsewhere.

Anyway, the two conditions that supposedly don't exist in India either do or don't actually need to exist in India depending on how you interpret them. I'm nowhere near an expert and they seem silly to me. (1)Big exits are international. Maybe Facebook would be more open to buying promising small team for $2.5m locally but once you get to $250m you're not going to be off the radar anywhere. (2) Why does the market need to be able to support 2-3 large players in _every_ market. That's not a requisite. It needs to be able to support players in some markets. Luckily some (many) markets are international and can be accessed from anywhere. And India is a large market for plenty of things.

<comment><USER3> Nice! Continuing on the same thread; India is a huge market for Infrastructure and Manufacturing right now(Power plants, roads, rail, clothing etc), so people are putting their money and their brains into those markets, rather than working on a world changing technology. That money is easier to get than the world changing technology money.

<comment><USER2> I wouldn't say those things aren't part of or can't include world changing technology.

<comment><USER4> This. India doesn't need a tech based YC, thats why tech startups can't gain as much traction here. The issues we face were the ones faced by other nations a while ago - building infrastructure, and improving governance.

<comment><USER2> Nations face multiple issues at once. Almost all large countries need infrastructure, health, science, tech, manufacturing, etc. etc. to thrive economically.

India needs a little more infrastructure in its diet. That doesn't mean it stops needing the other stuff.

Anyway all this "India needs x" is not the useful way of looking at things. Think "Can x succeed in India? How?"

<comment><USER4> I never said that India doesn't face multiple issues, if that was suggested from my comment, it was misleading and I apologize.

That said over here, the risks to failure are higher for startups due to having to overcome the lack of infrastructure - which means more support work is required for each hour of work spent on the actual product. Just getting a good internet connection, or even electricity, can be hugely difficult, adding to the chores which an entrepreneur will get out of his way, before he can focus on his product. This is one of the reasons, India has far more successful service companies than product companies.

To me this means that a product/service has to have a much higher chance of succeeding (risk reduction) or higher pay off when it takes off, to make seed funding viable in the first place.

If infrastructure is built though, then costs are lowered, and risk/cost of failure goes down. Especially risk brought on by external factors not related to the team, market, service or product.

Please note: I am not saying that failure doesn't hurt in San Francisco or America. I am saying that in comparison, you would rather fail in the states, than you would in India.

<comment><USER2> I think its just your style of writing. Also I think you are writing from a political perspective rather than an entrepreneurial one. Nothing wrong with that. Most people here are neither Indian politicians or entrepreneurs, it's just that this forum is biased to one perspective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The market is not limited to India. The market is global. There is no reason why Indian startups cannot have global clients and be acquired by a non-Indian company. Sure the legal costs will be slightly higher during the exit, but thats not a deterrent.

The problem of why ycombinator model has not worked in India is the same as why other ycombinator copycats in other parts of the world have failed too. (Besides TechStars, I can't think of very many successful ycombinators in other parts of the world - including Canada and Europe and Australia.)

The reason is: these copy cats have not cracked the code of attracting and accepting awesome startups. The success of ycombinator is mainly based on the success of its startup selection.

You need someone like Paul Graham to attract a lot of startups. You then need to be good at filtering out and select only the startups that show promise. And you then need to help these startups with huge demo days.

Who else has managed to crack this? No one. If you see the Indian and other ycombinator copy cats, you will still see such a high degree of crappy startup acceptance rate. Fix that, and you will have a successful ycombinator copy cat.

Because the market is global.

<comment><USER6> _The market is global_

Excellent point, and the one I came here to make. I think you're off, though, on the reason YC companies are so successful.

It's not the quality of the startups or the quality of the talent. It's the connections and exposure that YC comes with that gives them such a huge advantage.

Imagine if your little one-man company could land itself on TechCrunch whenever you wanted. If you had reporters at Inc. magazine using you as examples in articles related to your industry (or writing articles about your industry specifically so they could drop your name). If you could call in favors from pretty much _anybody_ in the tech world.

That would be pretty cool. Way cooler than $30k (plus 150k), and certainly worth 6% of your thing. At this point, YC companies are successful because YC companies are successful. It's so self-reinforcing it's essentially a tautology.

<comment><USER7> PG has repeatedly said that connections and exposure are NOT the biggest advantage. It _is_ the talent that matters, AND the fact that YC can provide extremely relevant and detailed guidance on all aspects of startupping.

<http://ycombinator.com/atyc.html>

<comment><USER6> Do you believe that though?

Talent happens everywhere, and the knowledge and advice that they give is freely available to anybody with access to Google. So why, given two teams with equal talent and equal guidance, would the YC company do so much better in the general case?

If you look at the link you referenced, you'll notice that every single one of them is about connecting YC startups with important people (including VCs, the YC team, other YC companies, angels, tech press, and Silicon Valley as a whole).

It's a good thing, by the way.

<comment><USER7> I definitely believe it.

 _The knowledge and advice that they give is freely available to anybody with access to Google_

Definitely not. They're not giving general advice -- that's already been given in the form of PG's essays, etc.

They give detailed, _specific_ information for each company. From what I understand, it includes everything from tactical information on exactly when to launch or what features to cut, to longer term product and UI design to long-term strategic advice for the company. Also, they have expertise in everything from team dynamics to product development to knowledge of the press and funding, etc. With hundreds of companies as YC alums, the YC folks have an unrivaled amount of experience -- whatever your situation, they've probably seen something like it and can give you great advice.

I think there are very few other advisors who could give really good advice on all these fronts.

 _If you look at the link you referenced, you'll notice that every single one of them is about connecting YC startups with important people_

What? Maybe half of it is, but did you miss the whole "office hours" section?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _The main problem is that the Indian market for digital goods and services is tiny. In a non-existent market, neither product finesse nor pricing can make much of a difference._

Yeah, and you know what? McDonalds doesn't try to sell Big Macs to Indians either. They sell them Chicken Majaraca Macs.

So there's not a market for software for rich lazy people like there is in the U.S. It's not like there's not _money_ in India. The marketing channels are different. The payment channels are different. Peoples' needs are different.

Maybe Y Combinator (incubator for rich people problems) won't specifically work. But Y Combinator (funding model for lean, adaptive startups) surely would. I think the problem is that the OP isn't thinking adaptively enough.

<comment><USER9> YCombinator works in very mature and evolved market/ecosystem where efficiency and filtering provides a major advantage as there is an oversupply of decent concepts. Thus the money invested itself is only a relatively minor factor, compared o the speed up that YC brings to both companies and investors.

India is not that evolved and there is a shortage of good ideas. Even when you get good ideas you may not have a market to sell it to, thus making it necessary that you have more than a YC-level round to get it going.

The McDonalds comparison is valid only to an extent. They did not launch in India with funding the size of YC round, which is my point in the previous paragraph - it needs a lot of money, you will often be opening up markets on your own and that is not cheap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The issue with Indian tech startups is the they are mostly knock offs of already successful US based companies. i.e yelp knockoffs, ebay knockoffs etc.

Indians are more focused on making the quick buck, rather than working on a product for the long haul, and actually developing something new, unique and innovative. Unless this mentality changes, there will not be a market for YC type shops in India.

Disclaimer: Born and raised in Calcutta, but in the valley now.

<comment><USER10> India has a huge untapped market so there's definitely a place for Indian knockoffs of ebay/amazon/groupon etc. Nothing wrong in it.

Almost all Chinese web startups which are making huge IPO exits these days are direct ripoffs of successful American web companies.

<comment><USER3> I agree that there is nothing wrong in it. However the Indian market and Chinese market are different in this regard. For example there is no need for an Indian language based search(since most people use English), there is no need for an Indian facebook(since people are allowed to use facebook). My point is that in a lot of cases, the US based product just works out of the box for the Indian market, whereas that's not the case in the Chinese market(due to language, culture etc.), so there is much less upside in an Indian knockoff than a Chinese one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As a 5th generation Indian ex-pat, I can say that that when I first landed in India, I was _appalled_ . There are so many factors holding this country back, it's not even funny. A lot of it has to do with mentality, corruption, illiteracy and a general sense of lethargy which pervades existence here.

Once I went into the city (Pune) and was informed that nothing (given, in a certain area) would be open until 11am. Every day. How can you expect markets to grow in such an environment? India really needs to catch a wake up and start implementing viable infrastructure and services. Until that happens, I don't see how people would have a use for technology (X) when they don't have access to the basics.

<comment><USER12> a question..

Is there a national sense in individuals in India that if it was communicated to them that its their family-cultural duty to empower business without corruption that one would make progress in this?

The obstacle seems to be cultural dynamics, Or am I miss-understanding the situation?

<comment><USER3> 42% of the worlds poor live in India. There is very cheap labour, and extreme social inequality.

To give you an idea, a primary school teacher in an average school makes about $200-$300/month. With this type of pay scale for most _middle class professions_ , there will be corruption. A traffic cop can make 3 months salary by pulling over a few guys speeding in their BMW's and taking a bribe from them, so why won't he, especially since the current system supports it.

Also, our judicial system in India is broken; it takes years(5-10) for any court case to get resolved, which is another problem since the corrupt don't get prosecuted in a timely manner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This assumes that for an Indian startup, the domain of potential users, investors and acquiring companies is limited to India. This is not true for most promising startups in India, especially web-based ones. The only pre- requisite for a YC-type model is a pool of talented potential founders, and that seems to be pretty big in India.

<comment><USER9> I'm the author of that post, can't recollect many exits from web-based companies in India to companies from outside in India. You could, I guess, point at sosasta.com (acquired by Groupon), but the deal flow certainly is not there.

<comment><USER14> Whats the fuss about exits? Why not focus on revenues? Do Redbus, Cleartrip and Flipkart need to be sold before they're worth doing?

<comment><USER15> they do need to be sold before they are worth investing in as an institutional investor

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> One more point - In India, a startup has HIGHER risk associated with and higher opportunity costs. A failed startup means - "oh you were such a smart kid, see, you wasted your time! why didnt you do TCS or Wipro?"

I work at a startup, but since its not famous in the country, when I mention it to some of my in-law's friends, I can actually see their face drop "she married him? why?". I'm fortunate to have supportive/unconcerned friends, but feedback like that can be hugely discouraging in a society where people are not highly individualistic.

On top of that, your chances of getting a job elsewhere are drastically reduced if your startup gig doesn't pan out. "where did you work?" leads to an answer that most HR departments wouldn't really care about. This makes the opportunity cost of losing a normal job higher,especially if you could make it to a brand name firm.

I'd argue that in India, you need to become an entrepreneur later (perhaps at 40-50), when you have connections, and a larger network to fall back on to make things happen.

To give you an idea of what its like to be in one of the better cities in the country, NYT had a great article. It really helps to show at what stage India is currently mired in, and the issues aside from your product you have to deal with. [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/09/world/asia/09gurgaon.html?...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/09/world/asia/09gurgaon.html?_r=1&scp=5&sq=india&st=cse)

A lot of these issues you will face in India, need larger firms to help you solve them.

</comment><comment><USER16> Well, I remember that when pg et al started YC, there was a general sentiment that the Y Combinator model cannot work in the US either.

Hell, as late as 2010, a friend of mine who is a VC partner said that "YC has lots of nice names in its portfolio, but it is unclear whether it is going to succeed financially". And about 6 months later, his VC started a YC-inspired fund.

</comment><comment><USER10> The title should be _Why the Y Combinator model doesn't work in India YET_.

The Silicon Valley has a classic chicken-egg situation where companies are chasing investors and investors chasing companies. Both are equally responsible for the valley's ecosystem and it took it a great deal of time and struggle to become what it is today.

Whining every other day that _"OMG my country is so not valley, nothing will work here, we're screwed big time"_ helps no one. Be ready to take big risks. Be ready to grab every little opportunity. There's no reason why every emerging economy can't have its own Silicon Valley in the near future.

<comment><USER9> Quite presumptuous is it not to say that nobody is grabbing every little opportunity here? I quit a well-paying job during the downturn to explore this side of life, so, yes, risks are being taken, but that is not my point.

I'm not saying we are screwed big time, if that is how the post appears to you, I need to apologize for the way that I put it across. My intention is this - what we are doing now is not working, let us try something different as the potential is certainly there.

<comment><USER10> Apologies if I sounded rude. It's just that there has been increasing number of blog posts lately by Indian entrepreneurs comparing India with Silicon Valley and expressing overt pessimism. No offence was directed at you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The problems described (mainly, VC's to support exiting companies from incubators and large customer base willing to spend money on new stuff) here are true to varying degrees for all countries other than the US, I think, i.e. it's not unique to India. The produce a chicken and egg problem, since in the US many startup are fed by rich, knowledgeable people from earlier successful start ups.

One way out is for the rich expatriates in the US to invest back in their countries, which is happening for India and China.

</comment><comment><USER18> I think the problem is also with the lack of US style Universities. Most of the good quality successes from the US come from Stanford, Harvard and the likes. It is this entrepreneurial and enlightened culture that YC taps into to get quality of startup it has along with the exits. YC is only the finishing school for such startups considering their strict selection norms.

The problem is also proportional to how many new technologies are coming out of India. How many companies / hackers are hosting open source projects on Github, Google Code etc.

I think the problem is not with the market. Its that the culture is not sufficiently mature. When you build products for India, you tap the whole developing world market - Asia (other than Japan / China), Africa and South America. English is a barrier but so is the lack of good solutions.

</comment><comment><USER19> India follows the "Sheep Herd" mentality. The whole country's economy is based on people getting into "Profitable" domains mostly following the success of a pioneer in the field. The most recent example of this ideology is the "Business Process Outsourcing" industry. New BPO units are propping up here and there at a dime a dozen leading to a quality deterioration in the final deliverable. This process will continue till a saturation level is reached and then they will wait till another "Killer" domain picks up momentum. Till then India will be in a so called "Calm Period" where nothing great and major takes place.

</comment><comment><USER20> Its a lot of fun and provides intellectual satisfaction to make theories on why something would not work. You can make a convincing argument for the statement "Why Startups does not not work in India". or better yet, You can write a series on "Why X does not work in India" - replace X with anything that was/is successful in US, (Obama, Microsoft, Google, Skype)

</comment><comment><USER21> Another problem is lack of angels who can feed off from seed funds like YC. There's a gap. The startups who come out of seed funds are not yet there to qualify for VC funding.

</comment><comment><USER22> Shouldn't the title be , 'Why The Y Combinator Model Will Not Work in India'?

</comment><comment><USER23> Does anybody else get a redirect loop?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> very interested to see PG's comment over this.

<comment><USER24> Hasn't YCs withdrawal from Boston shown PG thinks it can't work as well outside the valley, much less in another country?

<comment><USER25> I remember PG writing that YC withdrew from Boston because he thought Mountain View was a better place to raise his family. He wrote Mountain View was also a better place to have startups, but that wasn't an important concern.

<comment><USER26> There's an interview in which PG say that if YC had stayed in Boston, then some other firm would have become the YC of Silicon Valley, but PG wanted YC to be the YC of Silicon Valley.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Memo to Stripe: Winning the hearts of Valley startups is not winning payments - <AUTHOR> http://pando.com/2014/01/24/memo-to-stripe-winning-the-hearts-of-valley-startups-is-not-winning-payments/ <comment><USER2> Stripe cofounder here. Needless to say, this article contains many factual inaccuracies.

More broadly, articles like this are part of why we didn't announce our previous financings. If you don't also announce metrics, it's easy to write articles like this.

<comment><USER3> Hey Patrick, we'd be happy to include any numbers that you share publicly. We gave you that opportunity yesterday, but you declined. You guys have been fundraising and having M&A talks over the last 6+ mo, meaning your numbers are "out there." I find it hard to believe that everyone we spoke to is grossly inaccurate in the exact same ballpark. I'm happy to concede that the figures may be outdated, and we acknowledged that in the article. But we also compared you guys against competitors' metrics from the same period. Our goal is to be fair and accurate. The more you share, obviously, the better.

<comment><USER4> >I'm happy to concede that the figures may be outdated

"Share your metrics or we are going to assume and publish your company as being today where it was many months ago" is pretty shady journalism.

>We gave you that opportunity yesterday

How generous of you.

<comment><USER5> No, they make it extremely clear that the numbers are old in the article, and then give a pretty generous extrapolated figure.

<comment><USER4> "Extremly clear" would have been to mention the time-period in the title. And "pretty generous" according to who? you?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Three things:

1) There are almost certainly a lot of inaccuracies in here. I saw a few on a quick skim of the article.

2) Exponential growth is a hard thing for most people to wrap their minds around. The best tech investors--many of which invested in this round-- understand it. Most bloggers do not. The former camp has a better track record on valuing companies like these, although of course a lot of investments don't work out. But I would much prefer to give money to the investors in this round to invest for me than the writers of this article.

3) It's easier to spew hate than it is to build value. While bloggers write stuff like this, companies can just ignore it and laugh about it over drinks in a few years.

<comment><USER7> Basically your comment boils down to "I skimmed the article and it seemed hateful and inaccurate". And then something strange about spotting exponential growth being left to the big boys.

On the contrary, I read the entire article and found it useful. The author admits that getting accurate numbers on Stripe isn't possible at this point. I wish Stripe all the best, but it still has a tough road ahead.

<comment><USER8> Sam knows Stripe's numbers. So the fact that he was able to see inaccuracies immediately is more meaningful than the fact that you read the entire article and found it useful.

<comment><USER7> I clicked on his profile before replying just to make sure I wasn't countering someone in the know. I made the wrong assumption.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This article seems very dismissive of Stripe even though it claims to be fair to them.

"But that was before 2011: When PayPal realized it was hated and named a new president in David Marcus who dramatically changed the culture "

Really, is this true ? The above statement seems to claim that Paypal is _not that_ hated anymore. Current paypal users who have been long term users, I wonder what they have to say.

"The reason PayPal held its ground for so long despite its poor reputation is because it had the most consumer account data and the most name recognition."

Umm, I would say No. The reason was "monopoly" and companies like Stripe have been a major reason that the monopoly has dwindled.

"PayPal had become the big, ugly monster, screwing up transactions left and right with a mix of poor technology and bad customer service. Merchant accounts were frozen haphazardly, and the company often took its sweet time unfreezing them. PayPal was so widely loathed among developers, founders, and customers that even with its advantages of scale, ubiquity, and familiarity, companies were eager to try something else."

Is this all really in past tense ?

<comment><USER10> > Current paypal users who have been long term users, I wonder what they have > to say.

I opened my PayPal account in July of 2000 and they were my primary processor for 11 of the 13+ years since. They've never given me a reason to hate them, or even dislike them. None of the "horror stories" I've read about others seemed irrational once all the facts were on the table. I never understood the integration gripes either, particularly before all the newer offerings came about (express checkout, paypal pro, etc). It was always just pasting in a payment button, defining a notification URL, and an IPN script comprised of 20 lines of code in any language -- it's just POSTing back the same POST you received.

<comment><USER11> I tried them in the early 2010s. My biggest gripes:

* Hard-to-find, outdated, labyrinthine documentation.

* Confusing web front end.

* Flakey login. I had trouble accessing my account more than I should have.

* Flakey POSTing back to my server. Notifications came through late or not at all.

All of that together was a deal killer for me.

Granted, a few years have passed. So perhaps these issues have been corrected. But it would be hard to persuade me to use PayPal again.

<comment><USER12> >> Hard-to-find, outdated, labyrinthine documentation

You should check the current documentation, up there since 2012: [https://developer.paypal.com/](https://developer.paypal.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Bit of a tangent: my first "traditional" merchant account provider processed 6 times PayPal's volume last year ($1.2 trillion), and charges as little as 0.09%+$0.30 for debit cards versus the 2.9%+$0.30 flat rate all these 3rd party processors start at. Why do so many startups write off going straight to an ISO/MSP? Or do they, but Stripe/Braintree make better offers? They don't all have BS fees, and flat markups over interchange are becoming the norm for pricing. Popular payment gateways like Authorize.net have drop-in libraries for just about any language or shopping cart you can imagine.

<comment><USER13> How much do they charge you for credit cards? Do they add a % for AMEX, Discover + "unqualified" transactions? What about monthly fees?

<comment><USER10> The same as debit: interchange plus 0.04%+$0.10. Even though I sell mostly B2B, Visa debit cards make up over 25% of my transactions, all at 0.05% interchange. Interchange on CNP credit ranges from 1.6% to 2.8%, but most cards are closer to the low end.

There are no extra fees for Amex/Discover, and "unqualified transactions" (which is nothing but commercial purchasing cards sent to the gateway without line-item info) are <5% of volume over the past 12 months.

The MAP charges $15/mo in fixed monthly fees, which includes paying for a 3rd- party for PCIDSS compliance (the SAQ and quarterly scans). The payment gateway costs an extra $20/month I think. Regardless, the savings on transaction fees pays for them immediately.

<comment><USER13> Mind if I ask what is your recent total rate for Credit Cards (interchange plus 0.04%+$0.10.)?

You must being doing a ton of volume to get this rate.

<comment><USER10> No, they gave me that rate when I was doing just a few thousand a month in volume, before I launched my current SAAS business and switched off PayPal subscriptions. I'm getting that through Vantage now. I used to use FDIS, which initially gave me similar rates, but they had a habit of adding new fees every month which is why I switched to a processor that does interchange-plus instead of a rate table.

[http://www.vantagecard.com/](http://www.vantagecard.com/)

I happen to have this picture I took for someone else that didn't believe me a few months back. This was the rate sheet in the paper application I signed to open the account.

[http://i.imgur.com/Od6510E.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/Od6510E.jpg)

<comment><USER14> Do you think there is a value to the somewhat ubiquitous use of paypal in the consumer online space in that many customers have paypal accounts? In the sense that it is a bit more frictionless? I can see how a B2B market might be different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't care if they win or not as long as they are sustainable and stay awesome.

I'll use them for my stuff and my business and others can use whatever they want.

I literally wouldn't use PayPal if they paid _me_ to use them (in fact I would pay for and setup a merchant account with online payments processing long before I would touch PayPal).

</comment><comment><USER16> Given that Stripe is about to process payments for Twitter, I wouldn't be tremendously worried.

As a side note - Braintree was around before Stripe. Remember that. It's not Apples to Apples on their size, it's about growth, and as PG has publicly shared several times, Stripe is growing at a ridiculous rate. [https://twitter.com/paulg/status/403183731449413632/photo/1](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/403183731449413632/photo/1)

<comment><USER3> Agreed that Braintree had a head start and that's not to be overlooked. Also, landing Twitter would be a big coup, and potentially lucrative depending on what kind of commerce they enable. But I'd dispute the claim that they're growing at a ridiculous rate. Everything we've heard puts it close to 50%/yr, which is not great given their size and valuation. Braintree was above 100% last year, Square grew 200%, and even PayPal grew 30%.

<comment><USER16> I believe PG indicated they're growing 10% month over month recently, maybe more. I didn't find that exact Tweet, but relevant - [https://twitter.com/paulg/status/403183731449413632/photo/1](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/403183731449413632/photo/1)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This article is awful.

One of its inaccuracies:

>Young founders in their early 20s take on the online payments sector with nothing more than a YC pedigree to their name.

Patrick actually co-founded Auctomatic in the beginning of 2007. It sold about a year later for $5 million.

[http://www.crunchbase.com/company/auctomatic](http://www.crunchbase.com/company/auctomatic)

[http://techcrunch.com/2008/03/26/communicate-acquires-y- comb...](http://techcrunch.com/2008/03/26/communicate-acquires-y-combinator- startup-auctomatic-unveils-new-business-strategy/)

</comment><comment><USER18> _Stripe is a transaction-based business with a clear model — and one not growing particularly rapidly if it took two years to get to just $1.5 billion in annual payments volume our sources report as of six months ago._

Another way to interpret this story is that in just two years, they grew to process $1.5 billion. Braintree is processing $12 billion after having been around for an additional four years.

I didn't see any analysis of the components of that $12 billion, either. What if Uber comprises 30% of their volume? Then perhaps they aren't as valuable as it seems. After all, if Uber decides to switch processors, then Braintree is fucked. It seems having a wider base of customers is usually advantageous and less risky when compared to relying on a few whales.

</comment><comment><USER19> "It's literally inconceivable that someone starting a company would choose to use Braintree or PayPal," Rabois says. "Stripe has become the monopoly for new startups."

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. Really.

Braintree and Venmo are services that he could not even _conceive_ of a startup using? I suspect that they might have like.. um.. facts that might dispute that worldview.

<comment><USER20> I didn't get it either. I'm actually considering Braintree for accepting payments because their price is lower.</comment></comment>


Comet ISON live blog - <AUTHOR> http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2013/comet-ison-live-blog.html

<comment><AUTHOR> From SOHO [http://220.127.116.11/data/LATEST/current_c3small.gif](http://126.96.36.199/data/LATEST/current_c3small.gif)</comment>