Learn to read the source, Luke - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/04/learn-to-read-the-source-luke.html <comment><USER2> I find it a bit ironic that Jeff Atwood is advocating reading the source when he's built his company on top of a closed-source stack. Can he read the source of ASP.Net when he encounters an issue with the web frontend? Can he debug into MSSQL Server when he has an issue with database performance?

Jeff can talk about the importance of having source available, but his actions speak louder than his words. He's built a very successful startup on top of a closed-source stack. Having the source isn't as important as it seems, then.

<comment><USER3> _Can he read the source of ASP.Net when he encounters an issue with the web frontend?_

Yes. Recently they even went a step beyond the traditional "shared source" thing by releasing it under the Apache 2.0 license.

<http://aspnetwebstack.codeplex.com/>

Less so with MSSQL. But it's less of an issue there, because MSSQL provides a very good view of what's going on under the hood to begin with, and Microsoft has done an extremely good job of documenting the whole thing.

<comment><USER4> Having worked on the MSSQL source code -- even if you could see it it would not help. It's a incredibly complicated monolith with a lot of historical baggage. Not kind to fresh eyes. Remember that SQL Server was originally Sybase SQL Server.

<comment><USER5> That apocryphal last comment is irrelevant though as the code bases entire split many, many, versions ago. (pre 7.0)

<comment><USER6> And if memory serves it's been through at least one, possibly two ground up rewrites since then.

<comment><USER7> It's been through massive rewrites, but they didn't throw away the code and start from scratch. They took five years (between SQL 2000 and SQL 2005) and completely revamped the offering. Looking at SQL 2012, it's really quite impressive how far they've come along, albeit in 12 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Atwood wrote: "The idea that you'd settle down in a deep leather chair with your smoking jacket and a snifter of brandy for a fine evening of reading through someone else's code is absurd."

Not so absurd, really. Reading well-written source code is a great way to learn the finer points of the art of programming; it's not just for fixing bugs. In fact, entire books have been published that consist of annotated source code, the most famous probably being Lions' Commentary on Unix and Knuth's "TeX: The Program".

<comment><USER9> Entire books have been published that consist of annotated source code, the least famous probably being Lions' Commentary on Unix and Knuth's "TeX: The Program", since they are pretty much the only widely distributed books consisting primarily of annotated source.

<comment><USER10> How can they be the least famous if they are the only ones?

<comment><USER11> If they're the only ones, then they're the least famous and the most famous at the same time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12>
      Nobody reads other people's code for fun.

Not true for me. I /love/ reading code from great engineers. I've learned a lot doing so.

<comment><USER13> Yeah I think he's really off-base there, and the rest of the paragraph is wrong too: "The idea that you'd settle down in a deep leather chair with your smoking jacket and a snifter of brandy for a fine evening of reading through someone else's code is absurd."

Absurd? It's basically what I did recently with ClojureScript One, replacing brandy with beer and deep leather chair with kitchen table and chair. I found it very enjoyable and enlightening. And I'm not trying to brag, I really don't think this is a mark of anything special.

IIRC publishing and highlighting code that was interesting to read was one of the goals that Peter Seibel wanted to tackle with Code Quarterly (which didn't pan out, but still, he didn't think it was an absurd suggestion). I also seem to recall reading code being something a lot of the people interviewed in Coders At Work described as being valuable. And one of the stock questions Seibel asked everyone in that book was if they had tried literate programming ("a la Knuth"), which is really just a way to make large pieces of code easier to be read by someone else. All's to say, absurd it clearly is not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Something he misses is that _good_ documentation isn't just an English translation of what the source code does, it's also a contract that describes what the source code _may_ or _may not_ do now and _in the future_.

If "the source code is the ultimate truth", then your source code is indelible ---you can never change your implementation because you've given users freedom to depend upon the behaviour produced by any line of it. If you don't want people depending on implementation details, then you _need_ documentation to hide those away.

<comment><USER15> Again go to the source... design by contract is a way to embed and execute the contracts in the source code is a great way to increase code quality. Take a look at the Eiffel programming language is impressive what having contracts in the code gives you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This post seems to take the attitude that "documentation will always suck, so just go right to the source". I think this attitude can impede software projects with changing code (that is, all of them).

The problem is that the source can only tell you what a program does, not what it is _supposed_ to do. If you don't know what it is supposed to do, it can be difficult for consumers of the code to know whether some behavior is is intended or a side-effect of the current implementation. Likewise, code maintainers can be prevented from changing the implementation when they don't know if consumers are relying on undocumented behavior. It's more difficult to file bugs against undocumented code; how do you know it's a bug if you don't know what the code is supposed to do?

In brief, good documentation and good code are a virtuous cycle. Reading the source is often necessary but it should be viewed as a failure of documentation.

</comment><comment><USER17> Sigh. This is a rather myopic view of documentation.

Of course the source code is the ultimate arbiter of truth. But having a few roadmaps to that source code is _incredibly_ valuable. And as long as the underlying code does "what it says on the box", there's no reason to read the code.

Reading your stack's source should be a last recourse, not the default mode of operation. (Yes, I do read source code of my stack. Plenty of it. Which is why I appreciate any occasion where I don't have to.)

And when I see his "brilliant HN post" mention that suggests that "sometimes, you recompile your compiler", I'd like to smack some sense into people. You really don't. I've been working on low-level software for a _loooong_ time, and I find about one compiler bug a year. I even do have a bit of a background in compiler writing. And yet, the sane choice is to write a small repro case, file it with the maintainers, and write your code to work around that bug, at least in most cases.

<comment><USER18> I didn't read source as the "default mode of operation", but rather a necessary fallback that you 1) shouldn't shy away from and 2) you should demand lest you be unable to access the ultimate truth of what you're building on top of.

I definitely see a hallmark of experienced/skilled coders as not being afraid to follow the trail of code farther than I sometimes have patience for.

<comment><USER17> It's a very thin line to walk. I know I've spent days reading Linux or Mach sources when I could just have coded around the issue, and I wouldn't list that as something that makes me a skilled coder. It just means for me sometimes shiny outweighs expedient ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Reading the source gives you the confidence to tackle bigger projects. Once you realize what a complete and utter hack job most of the projects you use are it gives you the confidence to just build your own hackjob, or take their project and fix it.

For me the biggest one was an FTP library, all it did was figure out when the server stopped sending data for a particular command and then run a Regex over it, populate an array of objects and return them.

Unread source is like a David Copperfield trick, it's magic, once you read the source and know how it's done the magic is lost and you understand what is really going on behind the hand waving.

</comment><comment><USER20> this is a good skill to have. however, there are a lot of problems / domains where reading the source isn't enough. debug the operation of compiler logic, for example. what's really important is to know how the algorithm has been implemented and how the algorithm, as implemented, is interacting with your current problem / use case.

if understanding the algorithm involves boning up on two semesters of type theory or graduate-level courses in algorithms, number theory and abstract algebra, as debugging problems in modern databases, compilers and high- performance integer libraries would, then having the source code is probably not going to help you as much as you think it would...

<comment><USER21> Long term, I think having a solid grounding in (to continue your example) real world compiler infrastructure and the ability to fix bugs in your tool chain is going to "help" you an awful lot more than getting whatever instantaneous problem you have fixed.

I mean, sure: for everyone there are some problems that are so obscure as to be near-impossible. But if you go through life always deferring those solutions (by calling tech support, or giving up, or playing voodoo games until the problem goes away), that set of problems will never shrink. You'll end your career, broadly, just as incompetently as you started it.

If, on the other hand, you make a practice of always digging for bugs, even across library boundaries into "other people's" code, you'll find over time that things like compiler bugs stop looking so scary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> In my view, documentation -- not just any documentation, but correct, complete documentation -- is at least as important as code. I don't release any of my own personal projects for general consumption until the documentation is done.

Not having good documentation demonstrates a lack of respect for the user's time. To be a successful project, people of varying skill levels should be able to use it.

In order to compete successfully with closed-source Unix variants, GNU had to have as good documentation as its competitors and the result was excellent documentation (even if Info files were a bit baroque). The result was comprehensive and useful manuals for GNU projects such as GCC, Bash, Emacs and so forth. It's a real shame developers today haven't followed in their footsteps.

</comment><comment><USER23> Serious question for Jeff - If I gave you a 500,000 line app (any language) with zero documentation and asked you to start adding features and fixing bugs, you'd be cool with that because you had "the source"?

Also, how did you get so far in your career as an MS developer with such limited access to source code?

<comment><USER24> _Serious question for Jeff - If I gave you a 500,000 line app (any language) with zero documentation and asked you to start adding features and fixing bugs, you'd be cool with that because you had "the source"?_

I'm not Jeff - but that situation has occurred multiple times in my career. Along with the more problematic one of there being documentation, and there being serious discrepancies between the docs and the code.

I like to have both by preference, but if I had to pick one I'd pick the source. I can figure out what it does from the code. I can't figure out the bugs from the docs.

Both of these situations outnumber the times I've had large code bases with good accurate documentation.

 _Also, how did you get so far in your career as an MS developer with such limited access to source code?_

I'm not an MS developer, but from those I know there seems to have been pretty wide access to lots of source for some years now - you just can't fix and re- distribute it :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I absolutely agree with Jeff. Often times I catch myself choosing open source over better features so that I can fix the damn thing on my own if it goes wrong.

</comment><comment><USER26> I really like reading source code, that's why I put together some advise how to do it: [http://himmele.blogspot.de/2012/01/how-do-you-read-source- co...](http://himmele.blogspot.de/2012/01/how-do-you-read-source-code.html)

From reading source code both for fun and for purpose e.g. like the Android, Minix, QNX, Linux and NetBSD, network protocol stacks, filesystems, web frameworks, CouchDB etc. I got a lot of insights into interesting software technologies and architecture patterns. Good software engineers and architects should be good and fast at reading code.

</comment><comment><USER27> Anyone thought they were pretty good at reading source until they encountered a Spring application context spread over multiple XML files.

<comment><USER28> We had 2 tier application - Rich client in Qt3 based framework and PL/SQL for "servre side".

We moved to J2EE using EJB3, Hibernate, Eclipse RCP. Our application was meant to be 3-tier, but actually it's more like 10-tier. We have hibernate mappings, java model, xml files specyfing possible queries and reports, java EJB3 beans wrapping these xml files, java classes for DTO, xml files specyfing possible views and editors in RCP, and xml files specyfing how to map from query to view or editor. And java classes for custom code in views/editors.

When I want to see what database column is shown in view, I need to start with view class, and descend all those layers down to hibernate mapping.

In our previous qt framework we had one xml file per client view, specyfing columns/sorts/filters/etc just for this view. Our consultants understood these files and changed them when they needed to. Now they would need to understand all those layers.

Now I think more than 2 layers in application is antipattern.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Brandon Bloom here. Glad you liked my post, Jeff!

Shameless plug: My startup, <http://www.thinkfuse.com> is hiring developers who already know how to read the source! Email me at firstname.lastname@example.com if you're in Seattle and looking to join a bunch of great developers who know how to build cool stuff and have a fun time.

</comment><comment><USER30> With great power comes great responsibility. Sure, read the source. But don't think that because you followed some internal code path and figured out that it's "safe" to pass `null` to a function that it will _always_ be safe. If the docs for a project don't say it's safe, ask them to clarify.

</comment><comment><USER31> _> >"That project is too big, I'll never find it!" or "I'm not smart enough to understand it"_

That rings so true here. When I started Python web development, I needed to understand some concept related to middleware and handlers (somewhat foreign coming from PHP). My first thought was to look for blog posts explaining how it works in Django, but that wasn't satisfactory. I took a chance and dove into the Django source code— going against the voice in my head telling me, "You'll never understand it!"— and found myself learning so much. It was great!

In software development, we're taught to abstract everything and only think of the smallest problem, but this sometimes forces us to think of libraries as magic. This was a problem for me as a beginner, but it's been getting better as I've progressed.

</comment><comment><USER32> Depending on the problem, there might be other tools that lie between 'source code' and 'documentation' on the readability-versus-accuracy scale.

I'm specifically thinking of strace, which I've used to diagnose problems that I was having with apache and chromium, among others. I don't think I would have got anywhere from reading the source. lsof is another, though I can't offhand think what I've used it for.

If you do find yourself in the source code, being willing to play around with it is invaluable for working out what's going on. If nothing else, you can insert a printf to confirm that you're looking in the right place.

</comment><comment><USER33> > That's why, when it comes to code, all the documentation probably sucks. And > because writing for people is way harder than writing for machines, the > documentation will continue to suck for the forseeable future.

I don't think it sucks because it's harder to write. I think it sucks because it's not strictly necessary to document your code in order to compile/ship it, and it's easy to justify putting it off. Poorly documented code is a form of technical debt, a compromise between getting it done _right_ and getting it done _right now_.

</comment><comment><USER34> Some environments make it easier to browse the source than others. See for example the way you would figure out how to customize indentation in Emacs, by asking Emacs for the source code to the command that is run when you press TAB: <http://david.rothlis.net/emacs/customize_c.html#style>

(Note that the above refers to browsing the source of Emacs itself, not using Emacs to browse any arbitrary source -- unfortunately the tools for that are still very primitive).

</comment><comment><USER35> There's something to be said for a language that's written in itself. Been picking up Clojure over the weekend; just for fun I clicked "go to definition" on defn and there[1] I was looking at the source, all Clojure. Not that I think I'd be spending a lot of time looking for bugs in defn, but it's a neat feeling to be able to go under the hood like that.

[1] [https://github.com/clojure/clojure/blob/master/src/clj/cloju...](https://github.com/clojure/clojure/blob/master/src/clj/clojure/core.clj#L272)

<comment><USER36> FYI, it's not actually all Clojure; stuff like the parser and the core data types are still written in Java. (Of course, it's still open-source.)

[https://github.com/clojure/clojure/tree/master/src/jvm/cloju...](https://github.com/clojure/clojure/tree/master/src/jvm/clojure/lang)

I think translating the rest is a slow ongoing project (as performance, etc. gets up to par.)

<comment><USER35> Aware of that; still feels like you can get pretty deep in the language without hitting the java. It's still IMHO worlds away from always seeing C (vs. the language you're actually working in at the moment) whenever you open up the source

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Note that this applies to hiring. A candidate who can write FizzBuzz given a spec but can't derive a spec given FizzBuzz is not a programmer. Do not hire them.

</comment><comment><USER38> Basically bollocks. Be kind to your users. Provide complete trivial working examples for everything whenever possible.

</comment><comment><USER39> At first I thought it was going to be about this hilarious response from Jon Corbet, to a newbie asking about kernel development: <https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/4/15/114>

</comment><comment> one-man-bucket One of the main reasons I hang out on programming help channels on IRC is to hone my skills in reading other peoples' messy code when helping them solve a problem. Plus, there's the bonus good feeling from helping people :)

</comment><comment><USER40> My only problem with reading source code of larger projects is architecture. It can be quite difficult sometimes to understand the architecture of some of the larger projects in order to actually read the source.

</comment><comment><USER41> He should get into ruby. 99% of the time all you get is an uncommented generated API doc that is more confusing then helpful, the only choice you HAVE is to "read the source"

</comment><comment><USER42> Someone requested a shirt:

[http://www.zazzle.com/read_the_source_tshirt-235957482677132...](http://www.zazzle.com/read_the_source_tshirt-235957482677132269)

<comment><USER42> Sorry, link got hosed.

[http://www.zazzle.com/read_the_source_tshirt-235248361224605...](http://www.zazzle.com/read_the_source_tshirt-235248361224605555)

This one should do the trick.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> "The transformative power of "source always included" in JavaScript is a major reason..."

Unless it's minified, in which case you might as well be running cat on a binary.

</comment><comment><USER44> Next time my boss razzes me for not writing documentation about something, I am going to point him to this article :)

Seriously though, the article does seem to belittle documentation. Documentation gives an API context, it is often invaluable. Even if you have the source with some comments, this often does not give a clear picture right away.

</comment><comment><USER45> Maybe I'm unique, but this is regularly my MO in my own work or projects. Feel like a bug in django, or an edge case isn't documented, I do two things: ask if anyone knows off the top of their head in an IRC channel and then go and read the source while I wait to see if anyone has any sagely advice.

Sure beats trying to post an unformatable block of text into an MSDN forum and then well, nothing happens after that.

I also agree with the other comment here's implication, reading source code from others is a great way to get insight on how to use APIs, how to write idiomatic code and ways to avoid pitfalls.</comment>


Scroll Clock - <AUTHOR> http://toki-woki.net/p/scroll-clock/

<comment><USER2> The idea is fascinating, and the code is well designed. However, I don't find this scroll clock to be nearly as attractive as the words only clock that was posted on here about a month ago.

Browser version:

<http://www.andreehansson.se/code/wo-clock.html>

For Mac OS X Dashboard:

[http://experimentgarden.blogspot.com/2009/10/dashboard- text-...](http://experimentgarden.blogspot.com/2009/10/dashboard-text-clock- widget-for-mac-os.html)

<comment><USER3> You may also like: [http://www.instructables.com/id/The-Word-Clock-Arduino- versi...](http://www.instructables.com/id/The-Word-Clock-Arduino-version/)

<comment><USER2> Yes, I remember that version. Too bad I have neither an Arduino controller nor the time to mess around with a project like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Amazing. Source: <http://toki-woki.net/p/scroll-clock/script.js>

<comment><USER5> Also uses mootools:

<http://mootools.net/>

<comment><USER6> Mootools is very nice, not least because of the quality of their documentation. In my experience it's cross browser support is great too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's just so fun to watch the time tick.

</comment><comment><USER8> Some people have a lot of time on their hands! Seriously though, this is classic. The source looks nice, and OO as well. Nice job Quentin!

<comment><USER9> I find that many programmers tend to use OO in javascript for everything they do, even when there is no call for neither inheritance nor multiple instances.

<comment><USER10> Prototypal inheritance in JavaScript is Object-Oriented, it's just not classical.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm a little upset that there aren't little scroll bar colons separating the hours/minutes/seconds.</comment>


Reddit: Pokemon Go blocked in india - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemongo/comments/4u0ywu/blocked_in_india/ <comment> Talha-Ansari Yeah in many cities of India it shows plain green lands nothing else, Pokemon Go working fine last night but it starts getting this problem from today!</comment>


Don't abbreviate 2020. It's for your own good - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/04/us/dont-abbreviate-2020-date-fraud-trnd/index.html <comment> 08-15 [PSA] There is _one_ standard date format.

It is called ISO 8601 and looks like 2020-01-04. Use it. It's very good. If you write 4.1.2020 or 1/4/2020, you're wrong. Those are both bad, as are many others.

<comment><USER2> No there isn't and no it doesn't. ISO 8601 looks like all kinds of things.

\- 2020-W01

\- 2020-004

\- --01-04

are all valid ISO 8601 dates. The spec is huge and not freely available (75 pages, costs around 200usd [2]).

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601) [2] [https://www.iso.org/standard/70908.html](https://www.iso.org/standard/70908.html)

<comment><USER3> 75 pages on how to format a date. I am _shocked_ it doesn't see more use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I always write the abbreviated month and full year unless I'm explicitly instructed to otherwise. Basically, I do this on all documents:

4 Jan 2020

It's short and clear. I guess I should start putting a zero in front, but that's far less of a concern than modifying the year or the month (e.g. 1 -> 4 or 7, 3 -> 8 or 9). I try to do as much digitally as possible, which eliminates most of those types of attacks.</comment>


Welcome to Swift - <AUTHOR> https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/referencelibrary/GettingStarted/LandingPage/index.html

<comment><USER2> Buried as dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7835099](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7835099). (The idea is to have one discussion per major announcement on the front page.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this garbage collected? I assume so, but it doesn't explicitly say so.

<comment><USER4> "Swift pairs increased type safety with type inference, restricts direct access to pointers, and automatically manages memory—making it easy to create secure, stable software."

So... something under the hood for sure.

edit: Users ARC for sure: [https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/documenta...](https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/documentation/Swift/Conceptual/Swift_Programming_Language/AutomaticReferenceCounting.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40014097-CH20-XID_50)</comment></comment>


Interview with Kohsuke Kawaguchi, creator of Jenkins - <AUTHOR> http://architects.dzone.com/articles/kohsuke-kawaguchi-interview

<comment><USER2> In response to Dzone's inquiries, Kohsuke shares his insights on the direction of Jenkins... What are some of the major changes that have come to Jenkins in the past year? What areas of development tooling has Jenkins expanded into other than being just a build tool and CI tool? What are some insights you can share about using Jenkins in the cloud? What are top 5 plugins that you wish users knew about? And more...</comment>


Blacksheep answer to Firesheep - <AUTHOR> http://zscaler.com/blacksheep.html <comment><USER2> I'd like to see an iOS app to do this check.</comment>


Google expected to unify chat under the name Babble - <AUTHOR> http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/google-expected-to-unify-chat-under-the-name-babble-20130318/ <comment><AUTHOR> Unifying the various communication channels would be a good thing, and very much in line with how Google has centralized identity and notifications behind G+.

However, this part didn't sound so promising:

 _Google's recent decision to block non-native XMPP requests is the first step towards building their own closed communications platform._

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately, XMPP not a very good protocol. By virtue of its insane complexity, no client seems to quite interoperate with any other in anything beyond the most basic features. Essential features that I have never managed to get working properly over XMPP include:

* holding conversations with people who have intermittent network connections (mobile phone users)

* sending/receiving files

* multi user chat

Ideal scenario would be that Google will solve these problems and release their new protocol with open specifications.

<comment><USER3> > * holding conversations with people who have intermittent network > connections (mobile phone users)

I didn't really try that, but it is usually the responsibility of the remote user's server to check whether the user is online. Shouldn't be a problem.

> * sending/receiving files

Works perfectly fine.

> * multi user chat

Works even finer than fine.

What clients and servers did you use?

<comment><USER2> Offline messaging is a problem in the sense that you would expect to be able to hold a reliable conversation with someone who is intermittently available rather than getting errors about the other person being unavailable, or messages being lost in the aether. If the person is actually offline, you should be able to rely on the other server to actually deliver the message when they get back. I don't think XMPP has very good systems for ensuring reliable message receipt at the protocol level. There are, I understand, draft standards (XEP-0198, XEP-0013) that would improve things but nothing implements it (at least consistently).

File transfer: Clients I've used are Adium, Pidgin and Google Talk. What normally happens with file transfers is that either the person at the other end doesn't know I've tried to send a file, or if they do know, they click accept and the file never transfers, or if the file does transfer, my client somehow doesn't realise and the file transfer stays active forever. Usually there'll be a double-NAT in the way. The only time it does mostly work is GTalk to GTalk.

Multi user chat: Is very confusing to set up, and while it is possible to get it working, in practise I've found nobody can figure out how to use it. It's sort of like the complexity of email multiplied by the complexity of IRC. This is unlike other chat protocols/clients where it's just a matter of inviting someone to your conversation.

This isn't even getting into the other issues with the protocol, such as voice/video/sip/o-o-b stuff, the general efficiency of the protocol and it's applicability to mobile users (It's not great). I have set up corporate XMPP servers (ejabberd/openfire) before and am very aware of the difficulties of trying to get things to all work together. In the end people just end up opting for something [awful] like Microsoft Lync instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Jabber/XMPP and CalDAV support are two of the best things that Google has going for it. If support for both of those are going away, that is not a good sign.

<comment><USER5> I agree that interoperability with open standards is very important, but your first statement is beyond hyperbolic. Do you really think support for XMPP and CalDAV are the company's most valuable assets?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I can only assume that Babble is a code name, Google Babble would be a horrible brand name. It looks off, it sounds off and it has negative connotations.

<comment><USER7> GChat is already a well known brand name that most people view positively, hopefully they continue using that name.

<comment><USER8> Well, it's called Google Talk and you got it wrong, so it might not be that well known.

<comment><USER9> It's called Talk when it's standalone and Chat when it's in the Gmail web interface.

EDIT: I was being presumptuous about presumption, so, presumptive comment removed. Presume.

<comment><USER10> I wanted to prove you wrong so I went to Google.com/talk but sure enough, you were correct. Even the title of the html document[1][2] says <title>Google Chat - Chat with family and friends</title>

I was not trying to be presumptuous. I really believed you were wrong. GChat just sounds wrong to me. However, something sounding wrong to me has never stopped it from being true.

[1]: <https://www.google.com/talk/>

[2]: <http://i.imgur.com/ceHnRcA.png>

<comment><USER8> That's odd, see [http://www.betabeat.com/2012/02/10/google-says-gchat-is- not-...](http://www.betabeat.com/2012/02/10/google-says-gchat-is-not-a-word/)

Apparently Google endorses Google Talk and resists the GTalk name. I guess it's easier to be found when your page title is Google Chat even when the service is called Google Talk (did you notice Google Chat is not anywhere but the page title?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There is nothing wrong with XMPP, but it is an instant messaging and presence protocol. Google started adding point to point video and audio calls which is a hack that doesn't work well when you want to incorporate video/audio conference, route calls to the PSTN (E.164) dialing, provide calling features (transfer, call forwarding, call waiting, find me / follow me). That is why there is SIP. Google has acquired SIP providers and I understand that their Hangouts backend supports SIP, so I do think they were going to introduce this capability to their environment, but I hope that they are going to stick to an industry standard here as it allows people to choose the endpoint that best meets their need. Time will tell...

</comment><comment><USER12> Don't be surprised if Google Talk goes away. What's it to them if they can't sell you ads while you chat?

<comment><USER13> They can't? MSN Messenger was doing that...

<comment><USER12> Ah, I didn't know that MSN did that.

But the point I was trying to make is that if they say not enough people are using it that means it's not financially viable to keep operating (see: Google Reader).

<comment><USER13> > Ah, I didn't know that MSN did that.

Yeah. And then MSFT shuttered it for Skype a little bit ago.

Ads: not actually a magical miracle money tube.

<comment><USER12> Ads are the core of Google's business.

<comment><USER13> Yes, I'm aware.

That doesn't mean "put ads in product" automagically converts to "sustainable profit/loss".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm all for Google fixing their mess of communications platforms, but by attempting to consolidate those into a proprietary solution, I fear they've doomed it to the same fate as Google Wave.

If they were to at least include support for XMPP clients, they would be golden; however, the opposite appears to be true.

<comment><USER15> After they captured a good chunk of the RSS eyeballs, then pissed off the users, I'm wary of anything Google does. I'm going to have to spend a significant amount of time decoupling myself from their existing services.

<comment><USER16> Yea, I think that sentiment is being felt by quite a few. I'm in the process of doing a little spring cleaning myself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> While I hope they aim a little lower this time and work out the UI first, it'd be a true shame if they didn't attempt some resurrection of the agent/plugin interaction they attempted with Wave.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm not looking forward to the day I have to open up gmail to chat with people. Using Adium to collect all of my chat under one place is absolutely essential to my daily workflow.

</comment><comment><USER19> I think this may have less to do with the fulfillment of a long term Google+ type social strategy and more of a reaction to the explosive growth of communication apps like WhatsApp, Wechat, and Line. These apps have grown to critical mass and can use their positions to grow into full blow threats to anyone with significant market share in social.

</comment><comment><USER20> isn't there already a chat client called babble? I remember reading some paper about it's adoption/usage at IBM years ago.

<comment><USER21> Yes, there is. Link: [http://domino.research.ibm.com/comm/wwwr_thinkresearch.nsf/p...](http://domino.research.ibm.com/comm/wwwr_thinkresearch.nsf/pages/babble498.html)

Not entirely related to Google's idea, but not completely unrelated either.

<comment><USER20> Yeah, here's another CSCW '99 <http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1242013>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Now _that_ wouldn't hurt my girlfriend's startup brand name... <http://www.babbleplanet.com>

</comment><comment><USER23> This might be a great way to bring more users to Google Plus, and Google's IM stuff in general.

</comment><comment><USER24> I wonder if they plan on unifying SMS and Talk with this platform.</comment>


Delete Your Email Rules - <AUTHOR> http://collectiveidea.com/blog/archives/2012/06/04/delete-your-email-rules/

<comment><USER2> I think he's doing it wrong. Why go through the effort of unsubscribing when you can just create a filter in a few seconds that deletes the message for you? Almost all my filters result in the deletion of email, not filing it away.

<comment><USER3> "the effort of unsubscribing"?

I don't understand why you would ever waste your computer's cycles on receiving and deleting a pointless email...

<comment><USER2> I don't. I happen to waste google's cycles. Good point though, I'd forgotten what it was like to use a desktop email client.</comment></comment></comment>


Announcing Browserling: Interactive cross-browser testing in your browser - <AUTHOR> http://catonmat.net/blog/launching-browserling

<comment><USER2> I got to use it. It's basic for now but shows a lot of promise. A number of factors that you'd need to add for me to even consider using it:

\- Bigger browser window

\- More responsive UI. It shows a message saying a plugin was not run (flash) but it took forever to be able to click the X on the message to hide it and it locked up the browser (not my browser but the browser in the browser.)

\- There was a lot of waiting in the queue and it suggested paid plan... but no paid plan available.

\- I was able to access other parts of the machine, including the printing and devices section (usually visible when you right click the computer icon and click properties. You might want to lock down the machine a bit more.

I'm guessing you're aware of most of these.

The only other thing I'll say is that how are you dealing with the Windows licensing? You probably don't want to ignore dealing with that if you haven't yet as it could be painful in the future.

Overall, very interesting technology. Kudos!

<comment><USER3> I got to use it too. For IE6, the website failed to download any images. For the other browsers the images came in fine.

To the creators of browserling, please don't take these negatives as criticism. It's a great idea and very ambitious, I am excited to use this site!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was using <http://spoon.net> for a while. As far as I can tell they are basically a further developed version of this.

Unforutantely it looks as though Microsoft was none-too-pleased with their inclusion of Internet Explorer as one of the virtualized browsers and has forced them to shut it down. Hopefully you can elude the same fate...

Also, while I'm typically ok with the cartoonish trend of most startups these days, I'd have to say browserling might have gone a bit overboard with the whole thing. I know your only in beta and I'd have to assume things will change as you continue to develop.

Best of luck to you guys!

</comment><comment><USER5> This is a very innovative project and I hope you pursue it regardless of yc funding or not. There's lots of Windows apps that would be useful to run in a browser :)

</comment><comment><USER6> I love the queuing graphics! Nice work on that.

<comment><USER7> This marks the first time I have ever enjoyed being in a queue.

<comment><USER8> This marks the first time I have ever been represented as a purple robot. The person in front of me was a dinosaur, so I think it's only fair that they got to go first.

<comment><USER9> I was a purple robot too. I wonder if you're always a purple robot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Haven't been able to test it yet, but this looks quite interesting!

The toolbar is prefixed "<http://> \-- is there support for https? If not, is that on the roadmap?

<comment><AUTHOR> There will be. There could be right now, we just haven't added it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think this could be successful because it lets people interact live with elements on the page. This is one thing that Adobe BrowserLab fails to do (<http://forums.adobe.com/thread/725431?tstart=0> for example).

You may not want to answer this, but how will this service scale? Booting an individual VM for each user seems incredibly resource intensive.

(disclaimer: I interned on BrowserLab)

</comment><comment><USER12> I just tried this, but didn't even get to use it.

I entered the URL for a site I'm building, wanting to see if IE9 was going to screw me up (I'm still on WinXP), and I was sent to a queue.

My only real complaint about the queue is that you give absolutely no indication of how long the expected wait time will be. This would be reasonable, except for the countdown clock, which simply read 00:00 the whole time I was waiting.

When I got out of the queue, the countdown clock set itself to 01:30 (quick question: why the leading zero on the minute portion if it's only going to be a single digit value? Is it aesthetics? I actually liked it but I was just wondering...). Unfortunately, for the first 10-15 seconds or so, I was just faced with a blank screen, save for the border around what I assume _should be_ my browserling. After waiting for these 10-15 seconds, I was told that my time was up. The countdown was still running down while this message was shown.

Going back to the queue, I'm assuming that the 1:30 I saw counting down on the other page is a standard time limit for a free user, so why can't you give me a reasonable estimate based on something like (users-in-queue * 90seconds) / number-of-available-machines-or-vms-or-whatever?

<comment><USER13> I ended up on a "Loading" page during the whole 90 seconds and then was told that my time up.

<comment><USER14> Sorry about that! When the API servers go down (these interface with our windows servers) it tells everybody in the queue "time's up" instead of a more informative message since we're using connection drops as a poor way of passing along the session expiry event.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Worked perfectly for me. Great job James & Peteris

</comment><comment><USER16> Tried it out for IE6 and when the window loaded, someone else's site was up and I was unable to do anything while the counter ticked down. A bit concerning from a privacy standpoint. Maybe the machine fell over?

<comment><USER17> Something similar occurred once for me as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> All I've got was "loading", some cmd.exe window (it did not react to any input) and then timeout.

<http://i53.tinypic.com/6z3qyp.jpg>

</comment><comment><USER19> Does the queue update while you're sitting on the queue page? I was at #2 the whole time, and then it gave me a "time's up" message.

<comment><AUTHOR> Everything crashed at one point so we had to restart everything. Everyone lost their queue. :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Great idea. I see this as a benefit for developers who do not have access to their own pc. Or to clients and/or qa who need to do a quick check.

Otherwise, developers can do everything that Browserling does and more with a combination of Virtual Machines, Multiple IEs, and Internet Explorer Collection, etc. Having developer tools is the key.

</comment><comment><USER21> This could be super helpful. I don't think anyone here doesn't feel the pain of cross browser testing.

I think that the queue is an interesting concept. I understand that you have to tier your system, but it made me bounce, and not want to go back. If you keep it, find a way to make it clear and seamless.

</comment><comment><USER22> I get an error message (from the actual app, <http://browserling.com/>) - "No API resources availble for null group" (seems to be no matter which Browser/Version or URL I choose).

I'm using Chrome, as requested.

</comment><comment><USER23> Interesting technology. I feel it creates more opportunity like your favorite IDE configured with SCM (say github) available right on your browser. Code as you go. No more setting / configuring the IDE more than once.

Now i goto grok the stack vm code. ;-)

</comment><comment><USER3> Great idea and I look forward to using this.

There appears to be several issues to work out. I've not been able to get a page rendered. I get "Nexus is down. Try again shortly." "No API for group null" and "You are not signed in!" when I am signed in.

</comment><comment><USER24> There might be a privacy issue here. I seem to have gotten the page another user requested, and not the one I typed in: <http://imgur.com/QB6Yc.png>

<comment><USER25> I got somebody else's page when I tried to view HN, along with a dialog box that said IETester has stopped working.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I tried to go to google.com but it showed me ebay... Switching browsers or going to a different site didn't update anything.

Its a neat idea though!

</comment><comment><USER27> I got "No API resources availble for null group". (available is misspelled btw) I'd love to try this if you get it working.

</comment><comment><USER28> IE 5.5 uses IETester. I don't see the advantage of this service if it uses IETester, since I can use this tool myself.

</comment><comment><USER29> I typed in a URL, selected IE 6, clicked Go, but nothing happened. Did it submit the request? Did I go into a queue?

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm willing to bet that if you'd pitched them with your online education video site you'd have got a interview :-)

</comment><comment><USER31> Cool! However, I'm seeing an error: "No API resources available for null group".

</comment><comment><USER32> There are other websites doing that since ages. What's the difference here ?

<comment><USER33> What sites?

<comment><USER32> <http://browsershots.org/>

first one when I search for "browsers screenshots"

EDIT : I can't get it to work neither on Firefox nor on Chrome. But I believe the difference is that we can click and use javascript on Ycombinator's version ? That can be usefull to test IE on a website's javascript. Eventhough using a framework like jquery should let us stop worring about that right ?

<comment><USER34> As far as I can tell this uses StackVM to run multiple browsers in a VM in your browser, so it's a bit more than screenshots or testing javascript.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> erratic layout: <http://stashbox.org/1034016/ssr.png> Chrome 8.0.552.210

</comment><comment><USER36> Are you guys using Socket.io under the hood?

<comment><USER37> I know this. They use dnode (<https://github.com/substack/dnode>) for most of their inter-process/inter-browser communication, which uses socket.io for the web action.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> funny enough it doesn't work in IE 8 - enter a url - hit button nothing... gives me a console js error of some sort

</comment><comment><USER39> shows ebay.com all the time, nevertheless of what i've entered

</comment><comment><USER40> if it's in beta, why are you already asking for money?

<comment><USER41> the asking for money bit is also in beta...

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Unfortunately 2 session timeouts, one missing route error, and now my seconds are ticking down while a rather bashful robot tells me my site is loading.

Good idea though - if you can get the pricing model to a point where it's appealing to my infrequent but bursty usage (and you make it reliable), I'd definitely be interested.</comment>


Simulating Natural Selection - Primer - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZGbIKd0XrM <comment><USER2> Code for the video: [https://github.com/Helpsypoo/primer](https://github.com/Helpsypoo/primer)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> 3Blue1Brown for population dynamics</comment>


How Old Are Successful Tech Entrepreneurs? (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/younger-older-tech-entrepreneurs <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17405997](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17405997)

</comment><comment><USER3> As someone who is nearing 40 and worked in many different areas of software (including at 3 startups), with about 10 failed "micro startups" (i.e. hobby projects) under my belt, I can confidently say that I still have not nearly figured everything out. But at least I am not quite as dumb as I once was. :)

<comment><USER4> After mastering a few skills, I can tell when I've mastered something when I hit that point where I feel like the more I learn, the less I know.

There's a Zen saying for that (I know via Shunryo Suzuki)... Before you start zen, mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers. But once you learn some zen, mountains are no longer mountains, and rivers are no longer rivers. When you master zen, mountains are just mountains and rivers are just rivers again.

<comment><USER5> This is the process of deconstruction taking place. It's the act of internalizing the awareness of all of the moving parts of a dynamic, interactive process in motion. To understand with intuition, just as much as with observation, equalizing the cognitive substance of each with the other.

A sometimes often related example is that of a bicycle. To look at a bicycle as a complete object, its integrity as a whole, represents a conceptual recognition of the noun it is known by. It is a mineral, a thing, a bicycle.

To disassemble the bicycle to pieces, strewn across the concrete floor of a garage, is to render it unto its parts, and destroys the recognition of the original object. To scoop up all of those parts in a bag or bin, is to obscure the bicycle as we once knew it.

The process of disassembly is a complex task, and so too, the act of reassembly. But to reassemble the bicycle, is to understand it more completely. To be able to repair one bike (or mountain, or river), or duplicate parts and fabricate many bicycles (mountain ranges, tributaries), from scratch, represents a greater power and command of the recognizable object.

So now we have passed through all three stations. Discovery (learning to recognize a distinct phenomenon), disassembly (rendering the recognizable complex whole as the sum of its atomic pieces by destroying its recognizability), mastery (the ability to utilize an inventory of elements as a part listing, and create distinct recognizable things from them).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This article does not surprise me. Survivorship bias feeds the narrative that all breakaway successful companies are founded by 19-year-olds from Harvard - and it's true that many have been. But the truth is young people found a lot of horrible companies and a great deal of capital goes down the toilet in the process.

My own startup experience over 20 years has taught me that there is a great deal of life and business wisdom to be gained between age 20 and 40. I'm less likely to make a wild-ass bet - one that is highly likely to fail, but might just succeed wildly - and more likely to make a very calculated bet that has a higher likelihood of pretty decent success. And because I'm already "old", the clock is ticking, so I'm going to be more serious about getting results.

When I was young, I didn't care whether my business succeeded, because I had all the time in the world. Now, it matters.

</comment><comment><USER7> At least part of this is due to just simple statistics, right? A 40 year old has likely started more companies than a 25 year old, because they've had more time.

I'd like to see more data comparing the success of a startup with the Nth attempt that it represents for an entrepreneur. For example, is it better for someone to try to start a bunch of little companies and hope one takes off, or to work on one company for a long time? Etc.

<comment><USER8> No, it isn't. And I've said this before, a 45 year old has a grip on life that an early 20 something can't even conceive of, especially if they've just lived a fairly easy life sailing through school and college thus far.

A 45 year old has a better idea of how life can be improved in ways that matter, and has the connections and skills to capitalize on it. Sorry kids, the big dogs will eat your lunch.

<comment><USER9> I'm 43 for whatever that matters. I think the experience and gravity a 45 year old brings vs a 25 year old is incredibly valuable. That said, at this point in life I am no longer willing to give all my life to work. I have a family. I realize how previously brief life is (ah mid age) and want to savor enjoying it. I work hard but with definite limits. A 25 year old has no such burdens. So there is a balance.

<comment><USER10> Honest points, though of course doesn't apply to all.

Of course, some people burn out, or were never focused enough on work to end up knowing much more about work at 45 than they did at 25.

Others at 45 are as sharp and energetic about work as they ever were, and constantly learning, with the added benefit of much more experience than they had at 25.

Some people in early 20s start families, or would prefer to spend all their time traveling and rock climbing.

Some people in 40s live to work, for the craft and/or bigger goals for the world, and, even if they were financially independent already, would be doing much the same work, even without being paid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> When PG was first promoting having very young people do startups, IIRC, the rationale included things like fewer obligations, more time to spend grinding crazy long hours, willingness to live&work crammed into an apartment with a few other people working crazy long hours.

Maybe it also included the perceived possible narrow opportunity window for early dotcom funding, during the initial gold rush (which would be part of the rationale for PG once encouraging interrupting college to do a startup). You had to be there to appreciate how much of a race it was -- anyone who could type the most rudimentary HTML could get funded or get hired by a startup. There was much more "visionary" posturing than technical competence, and a lot of displays of funding wealth (e.g., lavish offices and launch parties). You didn't need to be good; you needed to grind hours, and/or strut confidently. Teens/20yos were perfect for both. PG's version was more merit-oriented and modest, with no Herman Miller furniture, but still with emphasis on grinding huge hours.

Later, other people played up myths about the youngest having all the ideas and insight and vision and brains. IME, these people were usually trying to sell something, or to get cheap labor. It was often not that different from a TV commercial for a canned beverage, coddling and suggesting an attractive lifestyle and identity, to get a targeted demographic to buy what you're selling. And of course we want to believe we're special, we're getting external validation, and we don't know what we don't yet know, so this meme has traction.

<comment><USER11> The story we hear the most is of young CEOs. We don't hear about the 100x failures of those who try the same. PG supports youth doing it because cost of family/personal obligation is lower, which is true, but at the same time, at the time he was talking about low capital software startups, the kind he was interested in when YC started. But the flip side of the coin, is having 20 years of experience and domain knowledge, and a rolodex of potential customers (and relationships) to milk with an idea you know will solve a need. It could be a capital intensive endevor, and not a unicorn, but still good. We don't hear a lot about those as celebrated stories in the media.

<comment><USER10> When learning from a successful young CEO icon, we need a healthy balance of humility and skepticism, so that we benefit from the good stuff (e.g., sincere bits they learned by virtue of their unusual experiences and access), but so that we aren't taking investment advice from a lottery winner. Nor do we want to be buying nutritional supplements ("vision", "smarts") pitched by a fitness influencer who actually used steroids ("family money/connections", "terrific luck", "backstabbing").

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "The researchers find that, contrary to popular thinking, the best entrepreneurs tend to be middle-aged. Among the very fastest-growing new tech companies, the average founder was 45 at the time of founding. Furthermore, a given 50-year-old entrepreneur is nearly twice as likely to have a runaway success as a 30-year-old."

If you are a VC who would you rather be negotiating with? Why?

</comment><comment><USER13> I'd be careful drawing conclusions about tech entrepreneurship from this study. If you look at the actual paper (I somehow couldnt find a link to the paper in the summary article... its here [0]), the authors used growth in jobs as their metric for success. Employment growth is a very imperfect surrogate for startup success. The paper says they also looked at sales growth and IPO / M&A exits, but they dont show this data. Not sure how theyd get sales growth data for all these companies in the first place. I wonder why they didnt publish the analysis of age and sales growth, IPO and M&A exits? Maybe i missed it?

Using employment growth as the success metric is biased towards high growth labor-intensive companies (like specialty manufacturing firms), and against high growth labor efficient companies (like tech and biotech).

The summary article linked here is pretty intellectually dishonest imo, the tagline being "a definitive new study dispels the myth of the silicon valley wunderkind". If they published data on age and sales growth, exit, or returns, maybe they could say this is "definitive". I dont see how a study measuring startup success based on job growth can be definitive. There are other studies showing young founders do better, though they have their limitations as well. The truth is probably that you can succeed as a founder at any age

I started looking at this study bc I was trying to find data on age bias in biotech, which is the opposite of in tech. In biotech startups, the conventional wisdom is that only experienced founders can succeed. But the data does not support that. More $10B+ biotech companies have been started by under 40 CEOs than over 40 CEOs, but most CEOs who get funded today are over 40 (or even 50). This doesnt mean young foudners are better in biotech, just that a bias towards "experience" is not supported by data [1]

[0] [https://www.ipr.northwestern.edu/publications/docs/workingpa...](https://www.ipr.northwestern.edu/publications/docs/workingpapers/2018/wp-18-11.pdf)

[1] [https://www.baybridgebio.com/blog/young_founders_1.html](https://www.baybridgebio.com/blog/young_founders_1.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> A lot of this depends on how you define "success". By my own definition, my first successful venture happened when I was 25 years old, but it was a rather painful process largely due to my inexperience in business specifically and my inexperience in life generally.

I've had a couple of successful ventures since then, in my 30s and 40s, and each time it has been easier because I've learned a lot, in both business and life, since then.

</comment><comment><USER15> We should be honest about ageism and what it really is, a yearning for the innocent and spirited world of youth. We look at the young as a foreign land, one that we have visited and (often) fondly remember. We believe that their foreignness makes them immune to our conventions and imbues them with new perspective. We chase after what we have come to see as exotic and tell ourselves that the young will do the impossible simply because they aren't familiar enough with the customs of our land to know that it isn't possible.

And sometimes that's true. Except when it's not. But, for the true believers, the stories of the many don't get in the way of the exotic few.

It reminds me of the trope, Born Sexy Yesterday, where a (typically male) protagonist encounters an alien or displaced being who is highly attractive and yet extremely naive (i.e. born yesterday). The protagonist is uplifted by them and they serve as their introduction to the world. More often than not, it goes even further. The protagonist _is_ the character's world. Their reference point for the rest of humanity and they view the mundane protagonist as profound as they don't know any better, transforming them both in the process.

I believe youth plays the same role. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's what we want from the young. To be uplifted, seen as profound and transformed. We want to shape the young so that we can be shaped by them in turn.

Someone old can see through this desire even if they see us profound. They have bitten the forbidden fruit of experience and simply know too much to be awed by our mundane inanities. And so we shun them. Because they have better boundaries and are mirrors that remind us of just how mortal we are.

If the young are foreign strangers visiting our strange land, the old are our neighbors whom we've come to despise. We try to get away from them even though we are them. We all grow old. And yet we all despise ourselves for doing it.

Humans are a schizophrenic lot.

<comment><USER16> This hasn't been my experience at all as a young person. Really the old/young paradigm is a shallow mask of personality traits and their relative development.

As a young person I've encountered older individuals with the motive to

\- Shape me into their image (duplicating the ego)

\- Threatened by my existence (ego in survival mode)

\- Oppress my voice and project what they think I should be (super-ego acting like a child)

\- Attempt to take advantage of my 'youthful ignorance' (ego with neutral/evil alignment)

\- Interact with me like an individual and genuinely place interest in the mutual growth (self)

I highly value people I run across who fit that last motive.

<comment><USER17> "Oppress my voice and project what they think I should be (super-ego acting like a child)"

I'm in my 40s and am managing a team of developers in their 20s. What may sound like oppression many times is a desire to not go down a path to failure that I can see from a mile away, but someone with less experience may not even understand.

My way isn't always correct either. If you can back something up with great supporting evidence, you win. I find that many people now don't feel they need to back anything up with evidence and any sort of criticism is seen as oppression.

"Interact with me like an individual and genuinely place interest in the mutual growth"

I feel like if you don't run into someone who fits this motive, you won't even listen to what they have to say because you feel like you are being oppressed.

"Threatened by my existence (ego in survival mode)"

You can thank companies that fire the people with experience and hire the youthful and cheap for this.

<comment><USER18> Thinking about myself when I was that age, the biggest problem is that they don't know what they don't know. (myself included) And I'm still there, there's a ton I still don't know but looking back, it was egregious.

There is _no_ substitute for experience. That said, it's important to have employees of all ages. I just hope people can find a place to work that emphasizes building good teams instead of cost minimization because it's good to have a balance.

<comment><USER14> > That said, it's important to have employees of all ages.

Yes, I agree wholeheartedly.

Experience is essential, as you point out. Experience is what lets you know well in advance what is likely to work and what isn't, what the most fruitful and harmful approaches are, and so forth.

Inexperience has its virtues as well. Experience (particularly recognizing and avoiding errors before they're made) is not 100% effective, and can sometimes make you discount an innovative approach that is valuable. Inexperienced people, by virtue of a lack of preconceptions, can sometimes come up with obviously impossible or impractical solutions that, in the end, aren't either of those things.

If a workforce has a diverse set of people, including diversity of experience, that makes the workforce stronger.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > successfully "exited" the market, either by getting acquired by another > company or going public in an IPO

> ...twice as likely to have a one-in-1,000 fastest-growing company

Is fastest-growing or an IPO necessarily a good measure of success for a startup? For one, it excludes successful lifestyle businesses.

<comment><USER20> Actually defining what "success" _is_ should be the first step...

What is "sucess" in the general sense ?

I'm quite happy and successful, but I'm not an entrepreneur, nor do I want my revenues to rise exponentially. I'm sure for other people "success" is measured in the amount of money they get, but that seems really reductive.

<comment><USER14> Yes, this is exactly why I get a little nervous when the topic of "success" comes about. More often than not, "success" is used as a synonym for "wealth". Particularly in a study, where you really want to have something objectively measurable.

Personally, I define "success" as "achieving your goals". For some, that may be to maximize wealth. For others, it may be to live a certain sort of life, or to have personal satisfaction, and so forth. There are probably as many definitions of "success" as there are people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Age is just a number that happens to correlate with obligations, health, energy, ambition, etc. But whether these are weak or strong correlations, what truly matters isn't a number, but what kind of person you are.

As far as I know, YC doesn't see any significant correlation between age and success, most likely because their criteria for acceptance focuses on real character traits rather than proxies like age. Using age to judge anyone — whether young or old — is just lazy thinking.

Having said that, at the extremes of age, it makes sense to be lazy in a virtuous way. A four-year-old would make a poor CEO. So would a 110-year-old. There is a spectrum where you can make assumptions based on age. Where does one draw the line in making assumptions based on age? 15? 20? 60? 80?

YC has already identified for us what matters when it comes to startup success: a team of insanely determined founders who have the right mix of intelligence and boldness. Age, given those qualities, is irrelevant.

<comment><USER14> > what truly matters isn't a number, but what kind of person you are.

I'm actually not entirely sure what you mean by this, so my comment here may be agreeing with you.

I don't think that "age is just a number". Age inevitably brings experience. The older you are, the more situations you have encountered and the more experience you have gained. I think discounting that is a mistake.

However, it's not like there's a linear or directly comparable relationship here. People are different. One 50 year old can have a very different amount of experience (or, more accurately, has learned more from their experience) than another, and I have met 20-somethings that have learned more from life than most middle-aged people.

That said, if you look at a person in their 20s and compare with the same person in their 50s, the 50-year-old version is most likely wiser and more knowledgeable than the 20-year-old version.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Link to the study: [https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3158929](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3158929)

</comment><comment><USER23> explanations for success are post-hoc and wrong. otherwise we would build it into machines and scale.

</comment><comment><USER24> Not clear to me if they're 45 when it's founded or when it becomes successful. Sounds like it's the latter.

<comment><USER25> _Among the very fastest-growing new tech companies, the average founder was 45 at the time of founding._

It says "at the time of founding"

<comment><USER24> I will chalk it up to my allergies.</comment></comment></comment>


The Pentagon's hand-me-downs helped militarize police - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/the-pentagons-hand-me-down-helped-militarize-police-heres-how/ <comment><USER2> It's been going on for years

[https://www.kpbs.org/news/2014/sep/10/san-diego-unified- new-...](https://www.kpbs.org/news/2014/sep/10/san-diego-unified-new-mrap-not- tank/)

[https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-schools- weapons-20...](https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-schools- weapons-20140917-story.html)

The above aren't municipal police departments, they're _school_ police.

<comment><USER3> I am having trouble conceiving any situation at a school that would necesitate a vehicle like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Also, when we push back on police having abused this equipment, the populace (at least part of it) will welcome actual military on our streets with open arms.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think American's must ask: Why do the police continue to be over funded, in a time when our healthcare system is one of the worst among developed nations? How is it that thousands of police in riot gear and PPE materialized out of thin air, when our nurses and doctors struggled to find even basic protective gear?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> > A year after Ferguson, then president Barack Obama signed an executive order > that prohibited state and local law enforcement from receiving certain types > of property, like grenade launchers and weaponized aircraft, under the 1033 > program, but these restrictions were short-lived: Trump lifted them in 2017.</comment>


Salesforce.com builds another bridge to Google's cloud - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2008/12/07/salesforcecom-builds-another-bridge-to-googles-cloud/

<comment><AUTHOR> My understanding was that SF already had a fairly strong datacenter backend. Or is that not the case?

By doing this wont they be restricted to what the GAE can functionally provide like: \- Python only support (with Java and Rails coming soon), \- other technical limits

or is that a "small" cost to pay for the kind of scalability they cannot provide themselves any time soon?</comment>


How Homelessness Looks in the Tech Boom - <AUTHOR> https://newrepublic.com/article/124476/dispossessed-land-dreams?src=longreads <comment><USER2> Well, the problem will sooner or later rectify itself - even if you have an entire city filled with rich people, someone has to do the "lower paid" work. Like, working in supermarkets, hauling trash, doing construction works, teaching the kids... and when these people are priced out of an area, it's hard (or next to impossible) to get them to return without cheap housing.

Because if these people disappear, then the foundation for the rich people to live also disappears.

<comment><USER3> Actually i'm not so sure that happens by itself. Housing is governed by public policy. It's not like affordable housing couldn't be built in the bay area for physical reasons. It's just not possible under current zoning and political arrangements.

If the political will were there; we could drop a pair of Hong Kong style residential apartment towers every couple of miles all the way around the bay for less than will be spent on road construction in that area over the next decade.

But the political will for that sort of thing is literally inconceivable to anyone who lives there. Why is that?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Most successful SaaS pricing structure you've found? - <AUTHOR> Details like how much more revenue a product can bring by charging 99cents instead of $1 fascinate me,and I'm curious to see how that translates to the SaaS world. Thanks! <comment><USER2> Generally:

\- 79$ (solve a business problem and its worth it. There's no difference between 29 or 39 or 79 for a business user with a credit card.)

\- $399 (basically max to buy without approval if you're a manager, anything below 500$.)

\- enterprise (aka call us, you'll need approval for this internally.) You could add a 799 plan here, or a 1999 plan, etc.

You want to stay away from 9$ and such unless you're selling to consumers, not businesses, in very high quantities (eg. you're netflix).

<comment><USER3> Nice and concise answer! Just wondering if you can give some reasoning behind this?

e.g. if approval is usually needed for purchases over $500, wouldn't they have to ask for approval if they're making a purchase that's essentially going to cost $4,788 out of the annual budget (if it's a $399/mo SaaS web app)?

<comment><USER2> No, it's 500$ "at the time" approval. (Companies are simple-minded.) If I am a manager and my credit card gets charged 399$ each month, that registers as 12 separate purchases in pretty much everyone's rulebook.

The way it works is this: as a larger company, you want your people to be able to get their work done, that includes making purchases. You also want to set some rules around larger purchases (multiple 1000s of dollars), else people will end up throwing money away. So you set a fairly arbitrary rule that says "a manager of level X can spend up to level Y without approvals".

That's how you keep your business running but are fiscally responsible.

As a SaaS selling to businesses, you create TRUE business value (let's say you make my operation better someway, or save us time), and I pay you.

As a manager, the difference between 50$ and 500$ is invisible to me. With just 10 people reporting to me, I am likely spending 200, 300K/month (salaries, overhead, business costs, ...). The only thing I care about is not having to deal with the purchasing department or legal, because I know that will suddenly turn this quick and easy purchase of business value into a month-long process and it will cost me more time than I get value out of it. (aka it's no longer worth it).

And finally, now that you are charging $79 or $399, you can spend a significant amount of money (let's say 3 times monthly cost) on customer acquisition and create a proper business.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My lesson is that you need to A/B test everything, since the thing that works is never what you think will work.

For example, this terrible wall-of-text absolutely destroyed a pretty 37 Signals-esque 3-column pricing chart in A/B testing:

[https://www.s3stat.com/Pricing.aspx](https://www.s3stat.com/Pricing.aspx)

I didn't believe it, so I tweaked it and ran the test again. Exactly the same result. So those paragraphs stay, with the same unordered order, goofy typography and everything else. Nobody touch anything! It's perfectly balanced at its local maxima.

<comment><USER5> How much of a difference does the A/B test show for two very different pricing pages?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> In the B2B space, it really bothers me when pricing is listed for a service where the expectation is to be a long-term customer, but pricing is listed per month. It's doubly aggravating when the price isn't rounded to the nearest $10 (e.g. don't price the iPhone SE as $399 b/c that's $400). Cloudflare, while far from the only perpetrator, is the my most recent experience with this crap. If I'm evaluating CDNs, it's not like I want to switch such a service monthly.

I have to believe we are all trying to please the bean-counters w/in our own orgs, but it is almost insulting.

<comment><USER7> Prices ending in 9 are mostly a psychological play on buyers. Coupled with the fact that most of us read from left to right, we're more likely to believe $399 to be much less than $400. Something like a Jedi mind trick if you will.

As for monthly pricing, I'd say it's more to make buyers perceive affordability and deemphasize the much larger annual price even if annual contracts are available. Whether it works better, I'm not too sure.

<comment><USER8> >Prices ending in 9 are mostly a psychological play on buyers.

Right, always thought so. Find it a bit irritating, in fact.

Though, to be fair, I don't think that all of the people/companies who sell products, and use prices ending in 9, do it for that reason.

Pretty sure many of them just use it out of habit / conditioning, due to seeing that kind of pricing everywhere they look. E.g. Recently saw, on a blog I read often, another regular reader commenting that they would buy some product or service if it was available for $99.

Did a double take for a minute - why would anyone deliberately say 99 when 100 (a round figure) is the more obvious choice? Then realized it must be for the reason I surmised above.</comment></comment></comment>


XKCD Inspired Secure Memorable Password Generator  - <AUTHOR> https://www.xkpasswd.net/c/index.cgi

<comment><USER2> This is very cool, maybe I can stop memorizing random strings of characters now -_-.</comment>


How I Started My Own *Profitable* Online School - <AUTHOR> http://www.flatplanetmedia.com/how-i-started-my-own-profitable-online-school.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Several students have said that the member area layout reminds them of Lynda.com (which I had actually never seen prior to building the site). Whatdya think?

</comment><comment><USER2> [http://www.copyblogger.com/imfsp/](http://www.copyblogger.com/imfsp/)</comment>


Increase Revenue with Friendly Credit Card Errors - <AUTHOR> http://blog.milkshakeshop.com/post/Increase-Revenue-with-Friendly-Credit-Card-Errors.aspx

<comment><USER2> Personal anecdote: I was booking a room with Delta Hotels recently, and it declined my card repeated saying that my expiry date was wrong (it wasn't).

At some point I figured that my booking date was _after_ the expiry date, which makes some sense that they would not accept it. Clearly they had the code logic to check for this, but they couldn't get the error message to tell me this?

Instead they threw me the old "your expiry date is invalid!" message.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't get how so many otherwise smart startups neglect to have a big fat link to their company website on their blog.

<comment><USER4> Yes, especially with a logo and tagline at the top.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A good tip to improve around the margins, but fixing your main product/service needs to come first before you devote time to details like this. This tip will increase your revenue 5% once; an improved product might increase it 5% per month.

In other words: prioritize.

<comment><USER6> This seems like a great thing to prioritize. It's easy and it affects people who have already decided to pay. It seems ridiculous to lose a customer who _wants_ to give you money. The return on investment is probably far greater than usability fixes earlier in the customer acquisition pipeline.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. Never ever lose customers who are trying to throw money at you. Not only will you lose that one sale where they get the errors, they'll probably never return.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> All I saw initially was the red input box. I initially skipped completely over the error message, thinking it was an ad. Only after being thoroughly confused for a minute did I notice it.

<comment><USER4> Good point, but this is something that would appear either on a refresh or with a little Ajax, which would make it stand out to people using it.</comment></comment>


Google Releases Dagger 2: Even Better Java Dependency Injection - <AUTHOR> https://google.github.io/dagger/

<comment><USER2> Does this build upon [http://square.github.io/dagger/](http://square.github.io/dagger/)?

<comment><USER3> Yes, it builds upon it. It's a fork with some pretty large incompatible changes, based upon this proposal: [https://github.com/square/dagger/issues/366](https://github.com/square/dagger/issues/366)

The documentation seems to still be in-flux, but there's some information about migration here: [https://google.github.io/dagger/dagger-1-migration.html](https://google.github.io/dagger/dagger-1-migration.html)</comment></comment>


Solar sends energy prices below zero in middle of day - <AUTHOR> http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/solar-sends-energy-prices-below-zero-in-middle-of-day-63767 <comment><USER3> This was just a brief price spike into negative territory for one 5-minute period. It just means that some plants are slow to shut down. Within 10 minutes, enough generation had shut down to bring the price back into positive territory. It's unusual to see this in the daytime, but it's not that unusual late at night. Areas with a lot of hydro power often get into this situation when there's extra water to be let out of dams. It's often easier to keep the generators running than to bypass them and shut them down, only to have to do a restart in an hour or two. The same is true of some nuclear plants.

One of the big issues in the power business is "ramp rate", or how fast a generating station can change its output. Gas turbines have very fast ramp rates; coal-fired plants vary, and some hydro plants are slow. Wind turbines have to feather and brake to a stop. Solar can be turned off quite fast if needed, because a solar cell is a voltage source and is unbothered by lack of load.

Read "PJM 101" for an introduction to how generation management works for the biggest grid in the US, the US east coast: "[http://pjm.com/Globals/Training/Courses/ol- pjm-101.aspx"](http://pjm.com/Globals/Training/Courses/ol-pjm-101.aspx"). Load changes by about 3x during a 24 hour period, and huge plants start up and shut down every day to follow the load. So this is all routine. You can watch the PJM power grid operate at "[https://edata.pjm.com/eData/index.html"](https://edata.pjm.com/eData/index.html"), which gives you a huge Flash-based dashboard intended that will make little sense until you've read PJM 101. PJM has a power glut at some times of the day right now. Their active messages include "PJM is issuing a Minimum Generation Advisory for the valley periods 10/04/2014 through 10/06/2014 . This advisory is being issued to provide advanced warning that due to mild weather and light loads, PJM may be entering into Min Gen Alerts and possibly Min Gen Actions during these periods."

In other words, a price spike into negative territory for a few minutes is a normal operational event.

<comment><USER4> But that may just be a sign of things to come. [http://energytransition.de/2014/05/german-power-prices- negat...](http://energytransition.de/2014/05/german-power-prices-negative- over-weekend/) shows that Germany had negative prices for an entire afternoon in May.

<comment><USER3> That was a wind power problem. They had a really good day for wind on a low load day. With solar, you get peak generation and peak air conditioning load around the same time. With wind, it's totally random. Wind power over the PJM or CAISO regions varies as much as 4:1 over a day, completely unrelated to load.

There are wind enthusiasts who claim that if you average wind over a large enough area, it's more constant. Experience does not bear this out. CAISO covers all of California and part of Nevada. PJM covers Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia. Both see 4:1 wind variation over a day. Maybe over an entire continent, the variance might reduce, but not over any practical grid area.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This kind of thing is actually a real problem from a grid stability point of view. The unpredictability of wind and solar and the lack of a way to store their output effectively make dealing with these intermittent renewables challenging (and a thorn in the side) for grid management. Due to the way electricity dispatch markets often work ([http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=7590](http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=7590)), base-load style power plants (e.g. coal, nuclear, etc.) end up not being able to run or even paying to run. This becomes a strong disincentive for the construction and operation of these plants that are vital for steady, dependable electricity supply. The market structure in addition to the regulatory environment in the U.S. (e.g. requiring utilities to purchase all provided wind energy at higher than natural market price) are both part of the problem. Cheap natural gas also hasn't helped. The Vermont Yankee nuclear plant closed due to energy prices being too cheap ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermont_Yankee_Nuclear_Power_P...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermont_Yankee_Nuclear_Power_Plant#2013)).

[edit] grammar and paste fixes

<comment><USER6> It's also a long term capital investment problem. Power generation is hugely capital intensive, and there are disincentives for investing in such a volatile market.

However, the demand is nowhere near as volatile as the supply can be, and you can't keep power as inventory, so it's anyones guess how this all plays out. Certainly we can't become reliant on solar/wind supply as this would be disastrous.

One thing is for sure, we need to level the playing field and remove all subsidies and regulations so that cost effective power can be reliably created. I fear the direction we are going right now is in the complete opposite of how things should be going.

<comment><USER7> >Power generation is hugely capital intensive, and there are disincentives for investing in such a volatile market.

Only nuclear power is outrageously capital intensive. Solar and wind are much, much less capital intensive.

>Certainly we can't become reliant on solar/wind supply as this would be disastrous.

Oh yea, running fully on renewable energy would be _terrible_ :/

<comment><AUTHOR> > Only nuclear power is outrageously capital intensive. Solar and wind are > much, much less capital intensive.

The way to look at capital in this respect is to look at $/W of installed power. So even if in absolute numbers you don't require a huge amount of $ to put a solar plant into production versus putting a (small) nuclear plant into production the capital costs are still considerable when you compare apples with apples. Also, nuclear scales better in this respect than solar. So capital costs are not per-se the best way to compare solar, wind and nuclear.

Endless volumes have been written about this, one of the biggest benefits in my opinion is that solar and wind put fewer apples into many more baskets which should - if properly implemented, which currently they are not - <USER2> theory result in a more resilient power infrastructure.

<comment><USER7> >So even if in absolute numbers you don't require a huge amount of $ to put a solar plant into production

This is exactly what not being capital intensive means. You can start small and scale up. By contrast, you cannot build a small nuclear power plant and scale up to a larger one. You build a large, expensive source of power or you build nothing at all.

>Also, nuclear scales better in this respect than solar.

Nuclear is good for generating baseload but it cannot be scaled up or down easily, it is VERY capital intensive, it comes with significant risks (placed squarely on the public's shoulders) and is not significantly cheaper as a source of energy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The problem with wholesale prices driving towards zero is how do you recover costs associated with security of supply. It's great that solar makes wholesale prices zero throughout the day. But if generators can't recover the cost of their investments, then they'll eventually decommission those plants.

There are different types of power plants such as Peaker Plants ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peaking_power_plant](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peaking_power_plant)) that can start quickly (within minutes) to provide security of supply against renewables. However, they are quite a bit more expensive to operate, which means wholesale prices will need to increase in order to make money with them.

Source - I work for one of New Zealand's largest electricity generators.

<comment><USER7> >The problem with wholesale prices driving towards zero is how do you recover costs associated with security of supply. It's great that solar makes wholesale prices zero throughout the day. But if generators can't recover the cost of their investments, then they'll eventually decommission those plants.

Well, if that's a coal burning plant then that's good news.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> When prices dip below $0 the electricity generators have to pay to put power on the grid.

Many choose to just put their generators on standby mode to avoid these costs or "maintain output by offering to pay wholesale buyers to take their electricity"[0]

As more wind and solar comes online these events will occur more often and for longer periods. "Old" operators are less willing to ramp up and down production as these negative pricing scenarios increase from 5 minutes per day to 60 minutes to 240 minutes.

As the costs to develop solar decrease and as economies of scale increase, the acceleration of this effect will only increase.

This is great for renewables and for storage companies who are willing to play this game. As solar becomes cheaper (say sub $2/watt) operators will be more willing to pay out during increasingly longer negative pricing scenarios (and internalizing it into their operating budget).

These storage companies will be buying kWh at -$0.02 and then selling them back to the grid at $0.05/kWh at night undercutting fossil fuel operators (accelerating the process even more) and bringing in the equivalent of $0.07/kWh.

As the cost of solar goes from $3/watt to $2/w to $1/w the price storage companies will be "buying" their electricity will only get better and profits only increase.

I personally think that we will be plugging our houses into our battery packed cars at night to keep the lights on and get paid to take kWh off the grid during peak hours.

[0] [http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=6730](http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=6730) (as @rwcarlsen pointed out)

</comment><comment><USER10> Alt headline: coal plants don't have operating flexibility to reduce output, driving prices negative momentarily.

<comment><USER11> Alt headline: Solar generation has no operating flexibility, thus solar generators must pay to shut down load following capacity, driving prices negative momentarily.

<comment><USER12> Err... You are quite wrong. Solar generation has all the operating flexibility of the world. As they are voltage generators they can be disconected from the charge with zero consecuences for the generator, contrary to coal generators.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Now just imagine if everyone had a huge battery rack, solar panels, and API access to that pricing information. Add full ability to feed back in at cost and that is the sound of utility companies shuddering...

<comment><USER14> Current battery racks sound not so good for the environment (unless we actually start recycling this waste). Still waiting on those liquid energy storage batteries:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_battery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_battery) [https://www.google.com/search?q=liquid+metal+battery](https://www.google.com/search?q=liquid+metal+battery) (coudn't find a good single link to refer to.)

However they are bit tricky to deploy at home :(

<comment><USER7> >Current battery racks sound not so good for the environment (unless we actually start recycling this waste)

Why wouldn't we?

<comment><USER14> Usually cost, also people often need to pay to get them recycled this often causes problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> And this is where I shall set up my bitcoin operation...

<comment><USER16> You, the consumer, do not benefit from negative pricing of wholesale electricity. Especially not when it's a small spike on one particularly favourable day :)

<comment><USER17> Some of us do. In Chicago you can opt-in to real time electricity pricing. The price is computed hourly based on the average of the 5-minute wholesale price.

Sometimes when the peakers are running and/or a high usage factory goes offline overnight, the price can go negative. Here's an example:

[https://rrtp.comed.com/live- prices/?date=20141001](https://rrtp.comed.com/live-prices/?date=20141001)

(In actuality the price has to go _really_ negative before consumers actually pay negative prices due to the utility's delivery charges and etc, but you get the idea).

<comment><USER18> Am I missing something or is that unbelievably cheap electricity? What is the actual billable cost per kWh?

<comment><USER17> For ComEd, delivery and taxes etc come to about 8.5c/kWh over the electricity price. Non real-time customers pay about 13c/kWh out the door.

But yeah, our electricity is a little cheaper here compared to the coasts. Lots of nuclear power and many connections to other grids.

[http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm...](http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_5_6_a)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Does this mean that solar generates power when no one is willing to pay for it?

I can't figure out these charts... probably because I am too stupid.

I can't wrap my head around the consequences of having a power supply that doesn't follow demand.

<comment><USER19> Power supply already doesn't follow demand. Large scale power plants (coal, nuclear, even gas to some extent) run at a very steady output. It's a big system to get started & stopped, you need to get every part of the system to the proper temperature for quality steam, there are a bunch of lossy startup processes, etc. You can't just throttle them up and down at will. The timeline is longer than a day for most of them.

Because of that they sell electricity at a discount at night. Large industrial users will schedule their entire operations around this. For example ski mountains do their snowmaking at night because the power is the greatest expense (even more than labor) and the discount is enormous. I also believe that aluminum and steel foundries do some form of this.

The renewables change this dynamic a bit, but there are many loads that can be time shifted. I could imagine an electric car connected to the internet and plugged in all night at home and all day at work could optimize its charging cycle to match the lowest energy prices of the day. Of course this requires major changes to metering and billing, but there is no technical reason why it couldn't happen, it is all a business and infrastructure problem.

<comment><USER20> _...ski mountains do their snowmaking at night because the power is the greatest expense..._

Well, also, it's usually colder at night, which also helps the snowmaking. b^)

<comment><USER21> And their paying users are more likely to be on the slopes in the daytime. Snow guns are loud and unpleasant to be around.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Most Startups Fail at Acquiring New Customers (and how you can ... - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/saarsaar/why-most-startups-fail-at-acquiring-new-customers-and-how-you-can-succeed <comment><USER2> Also saw this on LinkedIn. Very insightful.</comment>