How Gmail Happened (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://time.com/43263/gmail-10th-anniversary/ <comment><USER2> Let's not forget the Outlook web team who pretty much started the whole ajax/web2.0 thing in the first place with IXMLHttpRequest.

<comment><USER3> What was their initial impetus for this? I'm curious what functionality they were trying achieve.

<comment><USER4> Interactive web pages-exactly what it's used for in GMail. It was given the name XMLHttpRequest because it was a last-minute addition and the only way to get a feature into Internet Explorer that late in the product cycle was to make it XML-related. Which it obviously wasn't, but that was how to get it approved. Source: Was a Microsoft employee at the time, though not on the IE team.

<comment><USER5> I always wondered. What happened to the team behind start.com ? At the time I thought it could have been a golden brand and the realization was slick, I remember reading they had a lot of freedom to experiment.

<comment><USER4> Like Sidewalk, Mungo Park, and any number of initiatives it was managed into extinction by political ineptness.

<comment><USER6> I _still_ miss Sidewalk. For a lovely couple of years, you could rely on quality reviews of everything in your hometown.

<comment><USER4> It could have totally owned much of the space now occupied by Yelp and Craigslist. A true class act Bill pulled the plug on far too early. One of his most egregious mistakes IMHO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For all people involved in side projects, this quote is something to remember.

>"One of the lessons I learned from that was just in terms of my own psychology, that it was important that I always have a working product. The first thing I do on day one is build something useful, then just keep improving it."

</comment><comment><USER8> I was just reading something about all the defunct and abandoned google projects. So now "How Gmail Happened" reads to me like gmail too is done and gone, something that happened in the past but is no longer happening. I guess that day will come eventually. Maybe tomorrow? I never know what google is thinking when it comes to cancellations.

<comment><USER9> Gmail is likely there to stay. Nevertheless you should always use your own domain (is this still possible for free with Gmail?). I made the move and left Gmail for most things, except an Android account. Missing the most: Decent search

What is bad about Webmail in general: Webmail is not email. Public Wifi Spots, even Internet providers are more and more blocking ports.

<comment><USER10> I do not know if it is still the case, but I believe that you can still create a new GCE or GAE account in a custom domain which will create a new Google Apps organization for you. You will have _one_ free email account (and can set up _all_ other addresses to be redirected to it).

<comment><USER11> That Google Cloud thing for custom domain email is also closed.

<comment><USER10> Thanks for letting me know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7506270](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7506270)

<comment><USER13> The top comments on that thread discuss the importance of owning your email address by way of using a custom domain, so you can move to a new providers and not worry about losing contacts or missing emails. I fully agree with that.

Back in 2014, both Outlook and Gmail had free family plans with custom domain capability, but have since removed those options. Is there a good low-cost option for custom domain email in 2019? For people who use and rely on email a lot, Fastmail is definitely the best option, but it is too expensive for my use case. I would like to set up custom domains for my family (5-10 people in total) and I would like to know what is the cost-effective best practice to do so these days.

<comment><USER14> One option would be to set up a micro VM at AWS, or Digital Ocean, etc. to host your mail server, with something like Squirrel Mail. Then set up your gmail account to allow forwarding for your other email address ("send mail as" in Settings / Accounts and Import), so that outbound mail from your private server can be forwarded through Google's servers (so you don't get blocked by everyone else).

This way, if Google mail goes away, you can pick up another free email provider to relay mail through in the future (assuming everyone else also allows "send mail as").

<comment><USER15> Is this how your email workflow is setup?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> By staying in beta for 5 years

</comment><comment><USER17> The bigger question to me is why did everyone suddenly change to using their real names when gmail invites were no longer a thing and it opened up?

<comment><USER18> Can't speak for anyone else, but I remember trying to snag a funny or hard-to- get name during the invite period but they were all taken. For a short time I used my common "screen name" of the time but soon after switched to email@example.com.

I was in my mid-late 20's and If I'm being honest with myself, I think I looked at Gmail as the webmail provider that more "savvy" or professional people used. I wanted something I could use for both personal stuff and professional contacts so the old email@example.com wouldn't cut it.

Later on this would shift to using my own domain to express professionalism but I still have my first.last@gmail address as the account all of my friends and family use.</comment></comment>


35 Lessons in 35 Years - <AUTHOR> http://ryanfreitas.tumblr.com/post/968361763/35-lessons-in-35-years

<comment><USER2> I think the lessons on money are especially good. Even with debt <= my income / 10, I can't wait for it to be paid off. Even with leisure travel spending >= my income / 10, I've never regretted a penny of it.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's some good advice here. I'm particularly fond of these:

>Atheist or evangelical, the more you talk about how others should live, the less anyone will want to talk to you.

>Having a good tailor is important; talking too much about having one is a pretension.

I've had friends start too many conversations with me about all the things that are wrong with my life.

<comment><USER4> "Atheist or evangelical, the more you talk about how others should live, the less anyone will want to talk to you."

Actually, this isn't true. This is closer:

"Atheist or evangelical, the more you tell others how they should live, the less anyone will want to talk to you."

In fact, his whole list is a list of how people should live... But he's not chiding anyone for not doing it. In fact, let's take it a step further:

"The more you tell others than they are wrong, the less anyone will want to talk to you."

That's the meat of the problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> >Food is neither a fashion nor a way of life. Avoid eating meals with anyone who describes themselves as a "foodie".

Not all foodies are hipsters. Some foodies have a very healthy relationship with food that we could all learn from.

</comment><comment><USER6> :s /dogs/cats/g :-)

<comment><USER7> Is there such a thing as a "well-behaved cat"?

<comment><USER8> I'd define a "well-behaved dog" as "a dog that doesn't bother me all the time", in which case most cats are well-behaved.</comment></comment></comment>


Experiment with 100,000 gamers proves Einstein was wrong? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0085-3 <comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.sciencealert.com/gamers-massive-experiment- shows...](https://www.sciencealert.com/gamers-massive-experiment-shows- einstein-got-reality-wrong)

Can someone from this physics community please disentangle this claim, and explain exactly what Einstein was allegedly wrong about?

<comment><USER2> Einstein never liked some parts of Quantum Mechanics. A very short description of his idea is that every possible property of a particle that you may like to measure is defined but you don't know it, so it is called "hidden variables theory".

The problem is that in some experiments this idea doesn't give the correct result, so Einstein is wrong here. See the details in [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_paradox)

Everybody agree that it would be nice that the "hidden variables" theory where true, but everybody agree that sadly this theory is wrong.

There are plenty of experiments that prove that the hidden variables theory is wrong. The main idea is to measure some property of two particles far away, but you need some random generators to choose what to measure. The idea is to make the random election and the measure very close in time, so the particles can't communicate and agree about the results. So they must have agree about the results at the initial point and remember it in hidden variables.

Usualy random generator is a physical system. One of the loopholes is that perhaps the physical system of one of the random generators may somehow conspire with the physical system of the other random generator. They may send some signal to agree, "in three minutes we both will say 1" and so the particles may somehow know that the random generators will say 1 and agree only about the result for the measurement for 1. [The problem with the hidden variables theory appear when you have more than one option.]

This is ridiculously unexpected. If you put in each random generator a radioactive source, some electric noise, some lava lamp and/or other good random sources with some additional filtering to ensure that the random is good, there is absolutely no possibility that they conspire. But the alternative is that the hidden variables theory is false that is also not intuitive.

In this experiment they are using the input from humans instead of a "physical system" as the source of randomness, as if the humans were no physical system because they are magical and have "free will". The only way to one-up this is using unicorns because they are more magical and have more free will.

Seriously, there are no improvement over the previous work unless you think that humans are somehow magical. Moreover, even if humans have free will I don't see how they can ensure that the cell towers, the routers and all the internet connections don't conspire somehow to add delays to the signal and errors to make the random generator produce the result that is needed to agree with the quantum version and break the hidden variable theory. This is unrealistic and unexpected, but this is similar to the loopholes in more traditional physical system.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Who/what are you using for accounting and payroll? - <AUTHOR>

We're just a two-employee company, so probably don't need much, but I'm curious as to what other small startups are using post-funding. <comment><USER2> I don't own a start-up (my little software company is 21+ years old now), but I've had good luck with QuickBooks Online. Available anywhere you have a full browser (with weak iPhone/iPad mobile access), and has full payroll module (which I haven't tried). We do use the online payments module for all charging; works quite well, and with online bank accounts, it's easy to keep things in synch.

</comment><comment><USER3> QuickBooks for my accounting and PayChex for my corporate payroll.</comment>


Show HN: We pitch your project to 100 founders - <AUTHOR> https://launchpropeller.com/#/pitch <comment><USER2> Hi - I think it is a great idea.And I saw the list - it seems good value.

However, wanted to understand the real value. Would you be creating links, and this is useful for SEO? I am unable to understand the exact service.

I for an example work directly with entrepreneurs while interviewing them on my series - [https://womenhustlers.com](https://womenhustlers.com).

Do you think, a service like this could help me reach out to more people looking to build profitable businesses(like the one I publish)?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the interesting part is that I contact founders that recently launched a project. Maybe after the launch they get exposed to a lot of new pain points, for example now they have to write invoices or do customer relations management which they never did before. That might be a good opportunity to catch their attention.

It works like this: I have a list of places where startups get featured and I select the startups from those websites and contact them. Those are all projects that have recently launched.

Womenhustlers sounds like a good fit, other founders are a good target audience I guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is there a free tier? Without a free tier the post is more an ad than a ShowHN.

How did you get the list of the "50 recently launched projects"? Is it op-in or it is just spam? Or it is just the list of your previous 50 users?

<comment><USER4> Hi, I have a list of places where people post their startups and I select the startups from those websites and contact the founders. Here is the list if you are interested: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15dhXBP8MhN5bFYf0Yk3r...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15dhXBP8MhN5bFYf0Yk3rL9X3DIvlBA06iN9qb- cwUoQ/edit#gid=0)

<comment><USER3> Perhaps I'm misreading, but it is a very bad idea if someone else submit a ShowHN for you. People here expect the owner to answer questions and provide more information.</comment></comment></comment>


Your idea of an awesome Startup CEO is actually an HR Director - <AUTHOR> http://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/hr/features/1014920/hr-directors-what-makes-hr-leader <comment><USER2> Correction: our idea of an awesome Startup CEO is _far better_ than an HR director.

It's simply a subset of what a CEO needs to be. This is like saying "Your idea of an awesome human being is actually an Ameoba" because we both consume nutrients and move. That analogy also happens to elucidate my opinion of HR directors.

</comment><comment><USER3> The qualities described here are probably the qualities you'd find in anyone at the Director/CXO level, not just HR.</comment>


Janitor Monkey - Keeping the Cloud Tidy and Clean - <AUTHOR> http://techblog.netflix.com/2013/01/janitor-monkey-keeping-cloud-tidy-and.html <comment><USER2> This is very cool. Thanks for sharing, and thanks to Netflix for opening up resources like this.

Edit: If only Amazon would offer something similar...

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm slightly surprised they didn't use a "Trashcan" model where the data is moved elsewhere before being deleted, so in the event that a critical service is brought down by the deletion of a piece of data no one realized it needed, it can be restored.

Maybe they just assume any good service worth its salt must have proper (out- of-band) backups for that kind of event, since Janitor Monkey deletion is basically equivalent to any other kind of data loss.

<comment><USER4> This _is_ the same company that runs Chaos Monkey on their production setup.</comment></comment>


The Hole Argument - <AUTHOR> http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spacetime-holearg/

<comment><USER2> I never know: should we just click this link and "wait for it," or, will OP give us a bit of insight into the content's context?

<comment><USER3> So basically you want to know whether you're interested in something without actually bothering to understand it?

I'm increasingly frustrated with this mindset. Yes, you don't have the time to read everything. The answer to this, in my estimation, is gear your reading toward information sources with higher density of quality. If, instead, you only read things with titles that summarize the content for you, you're limiting yourself to ideas which can be summarized in a 5- to 20-word blurb. These ideas and simple, and consequently, _frequently wrong_. Reality is often complicated and it's not possible to dumb it down into a "1 weird metaphysical argument that will make your brain grow 10 inches"-style clickbait headline.

I do think it's a courtesy to the reader to provide keywords in a title that make it easy to reference and that create an effective vocabulary for talking about the topic (which this title does). I _don 't_ think that authors have any responsibility to dumb down their titles into summaries for those who can't be arsed to hear them out.

As an aside: generally stuff published on Stanford's website is written by top professionals in various fields, which makes it a high-density source of good information.

<comment><USER4> _> So basically you want to know whether you're interested in something without actually bothering to understand it? [...] I don't think that authors have any responsibility to dumb down their titles into summaries for those who can't be arsed to hear them out._

I may have misunderstood voidz's question but I don't think he's asking for a dumbed-down tldr or something to be spoonfed to him.

The keyword I read in his question was " _context_ ". In other words, was there another event or news article that prompted the OP to submit "Hole Argument" _and_ for multiple people to vote on it enough to have it show up on the HN front page?

For example, on the front page there's a post "Python is the new BASIC"... it's an old 2008 article... why is it there?!? I think many of us can guess that its submission was possibly triggered by the other article "Guido on Python" from EuroCon 2015". Reverse engineering the context is a little easier in that case.

The "Hole Argument" is interesting, but there are thousands of interesting physics articles... so maybe there's another trigger that prompted its submission. E.g. a recent discovery at Hadron Collider, or one of the authors recently passed away, etc.

Of course, the article's submission may be purely random in which case there is no context. The submitter (infinity) can clarify that for the voidz.

<comment><USER3> > I may have misunderstood voidz's question but I don't think he's asking for > a dumbed-down tldr or something to be spoonfed to him.

Okay, I'll just quote voidz's response to the same post you're responding to:

> Most of all, I wanted to kick off the discussion by asking if we should > guess what information the link would give us. From the title alone, I have > no idea. It's a play on words ("the hole / whole argument"), but beyond > that, i had no clue.

Can you think of a way to get "what information the link would give us" without it being a dumbed-down tldr?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Booth Babes Don't Wear Glasses - <AUTHOR> http://devcentral.f5.com/weblogs/macvittie/archive/2010/07/15/booth-babes-donrsquot-wear-glasses.aspx

<comment><USER2> When I first started going to computer trade shows (in the 1980s) the booth babes were strippers. That was, at least, an honest approach.

Personally, I like looking at attractive women, I guess I was wired that way, but I'd be happy to have no booth babes at these shows. They are an anachronism and can't provide any useful information (which as what I'm at the trade show for, in the first place).

And while we're on the topic of men reacting to attractive women. Can we please stop with the "men don't make passes at girls that wear glasses" and "gentleman prefer blondes" nonsense? The women that turn my head tend to be glasses wearing brunettes. People have different visions of what's attractive.

But I do agree that there are men (idiots) who can't see that there are intelligent women. But please, women, don't tar all men with that brush.

<comment><USER3> So is your suggestion, based on 30 year-old anecdotal evidence, that they are strippers now, too. If not, why do you think the current approach (using a non-stripper as a BB) is dishonest? Do you think all attractive females used in advertising should be strippers for it to be honest? Should Danica Patrick change her profession?

Sorry, maybe I come across too strong but the BB ~ stripper analogy just gets to me. You are doing the same sin that you are condemning, namely judging people by the cover.

<comment><USER4> Unless, you know, they actually were hired from the local strip club near the conference.

<comment><USER3> AFAIK, recently that was just one incident like that at OSCON. Do you have many more examples of BBS being hired from "strip clubs near the conference"? If so, I'll create another user and downvote myself.

<comment><USER5> I once worked for a place that just put an ad for female models on the local craigslist. I don't want to assume to much, but I'm pretty sure at least some of the models who showed up were used to being asked to do a lot more than stand in a booth for an hour.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not sure if I'm in the minority here but I always find the concept of booth babes awkward as hell. Just the idea of interacting with someone who's been paid to endure my company seems rather unpleasant.

<comment><USER2> I agree. In the early 1990s I was working at a company where I spent a lot of time on the road with sales guys. One time I had to take a customer to a strip club as part of landing a deal. Both the customer and the sales guy (who was going to expense the trip) were really happy to be there.

As part of being a team player, I had to have a lap dance. Sitting in a chair having a woman shove her breasts in my face after paying her was simply horrid. I remember feeling physically sick.

<comment><USER6> Urgh. That sounds rather awful.

Out of interest, why were the customer and sales guy so pleased to be there? Was there any rationalization going on[1], or did they just see tits and not think any further?

[1] ie "I think that one really liked me"

<comment><USER2> I don't know. Maybe the liked having boobs shoved in their faces. This was something that the customer specifically requested that we do for him, and he was well known in the place. So, I guess he liked it.

But, yes, I do recall some rationalization or at least attempts to 'connect' with the women.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This post is not actually about a "booth babe problem", it's making the point that they are a red herring in discussions about women and technology.

 _"It's about the reaction of men to a technically competent woman, no matter what she's wearing. It's the surprise and the shock in their expression and voice. It's about the assumption that no woman is technically competent – at a trade show or on a conference call. That's at the heart of this debate and others like it, and whether booth babes are present or not is unlikely to have an impact on those assumptions."_

<comment><USER8> The reason one has that reaction to a woman is the same reason a person look strangely at a rock he has fallen over when he realize it is a diamond:

Because it happens fucking far too seldom.

<comment><USER3> Really!? Then, you definitely have not been around (or maybe from outside the US where mileage may vary). Just go to any big tech company campus, e.g. Google, Apple, Microsoft, sit on a bench and observe. My guess is that 10-15% of any large company's tech-heavy departments (labs, etc.) are women. Now, _that_ is more probable than a diamond falling on your head.

<comment><USER9> In normal life I don't hang around on the campus of Google or Microsoft a lot. Of course people you meet there are likely to be more tech-savvy than the average population.

If you go to a diamond mine, odds of stumbling across a diamond are probably also slightly increased.

<comment><USER3> Hmm, I thought we were talking about technical conferences, not "normal life".

<comment><USER9> Sure, but people going there come from normal life, which might have shaped their expectations.

Anyway, I am not really interested in the subject, so I shouldn't have commented.

Edit: I am confused what the discussion is even about. Apparently those men were surprised. What is the point then of arguing that they should not have been surprised? Doesn't the fact that they were surprised kind of imply that they don't meet many tech-savvy women on average? What is there to discuss?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am surprised at rare occurrences, and will continue to be so.

The author is treated the way technical men have learned, through social pressure, to treat average women. The intersection of the sets of women who are technically competent, and _want_ to converse with me about technology is small. I've spent 22 years learning that the average woman will disdain me if I so much as open my mouth about some of my interests. I'm sorry, I can't magically intuit for which few it becomes prerequisite as a demonstration of respect.

<comment><USER11> This is key. The number of encounters with women where my technical aptitude was an uninteresting quirk outnumbers those where it was a conversation point by probably 100:1 if not more. With men, that ratio is far lower.

I think this whole situation is a very slowly unraveling catch-22 where women aren't interested in tech because they don't feel welcome, and they aren't welcomed because they aren't interested. These days, tech is so pervasive (even the girliest-of-girls probably has a very powerful computer in their purse by way of their phone), that I think it will work it's way loose over time.

It can't happen fast enough, IMO, it's hard enough already to find talented people, I'd like to see the pool doubled.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Last summer at OSCON Kirrily Robert gave a keynote which discussed gender and open source projects. The keynote itself was interesting (I only read about it from slides - didn't see it), and an O'Reilly Radar write-up about it led to a long and varied set of comments about "booth babes" and girls hired/invited to socialize at parties.

For anyone interested, here's some links:

[http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/07/oscon-standing-out-in- the-c...](http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/07/oscon-standing-out-in-the- crow.html)

[http://infotrope.net/blog/2009/07/25/standing-out-in-the- cro...](http://infotrope.net/blog/2009/07/25/standing-out-in-the-crowd-my- oscon-keynote/)</comment>


Show HN: Batch Watermark – watermark batches of photos - <AUTHOR> https://batchwatermark.com <comment><AUTHOR> This site is a spin-off from Bulk Resize Photos ([https://bulkresizephotos.com](https://bulkresizephotos.com)) which previously had a very limited watermarking capability. I surveyed users about why they wanted to watermark their photos and what types of watermarks they would like to use, and Batch Watermark is the initial result of what I learned. It certainly still has some rough edges and is still in the "if you aren't embarrassed, you launched too late" phase.</comment>


SICP Goodness – The Environment Model - <AUTHOR> https://www.lvguowei.me/post/sicp-goodness-environment-model/ <comment><USER2> I enjoyed this post - but I don't feel like it added much beyond SICP itself and also one of my favorite books, Design Concepts in Programming Languages (Turbak et al.)

</comment><comment><USER3> In our introductory CS course at UC Berkeley, CS61A (which is based on SICP but taught mainly in Python), we use [http://pythontutor.com](http://pythontutor.com) to visualize environment diagrams for our programs line-by-line.

<comment><USER4> If 61A taught me anything, SICP is bad introductory textbook for people who are not directly CS majors: it is not that accessible, and most people just want to learn Python.

I'm not saying SICP overall is a bad textbook; but it is something that can only be appreciated after realizing CS is not only tool for manipulating data.

<comment><USER5> I want to disagree with you, but you're basically right. The functional way of thinking is different enough it's an unnecessary complication for most non CS majors.

That said, you can teach very solid Computing Science using imperative languages. Algol is still used for research and publishing after all.

<comment><USER6> but at the birth of SICP, is there any suitable imperative language to do that?

If we exclude the part of functional language, SICP is a quite good advanced text for CS major.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Makes me think of the environment notation invented/used by Joseph Weizenbaum in the paper "The Funarg Problem Explained" in 1968 and which was used by our Professor Daniel Ribbens in 1998-99 in our Scheme classes. The notation was really useful to understand how closures worked relative to the environment of definition vs the environment of execution. That was really interesting stuff. He called it the "Weizenbaum notation" but I never found any reference of it, except its use in that paper.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's worth looking at operative lisps such as kernel or wat (I wrote a wat-pl to go with the original wat-js) to get a full understanding of how amazing this model is

<comment><USER9> What does "kernel" lisp refer to? Is it cl-jupyter, a kernel for Jupyter notebooks?

<comment><USER10> Probably this one: [https://web.cs.wpi.edu/~jshutt/kernel.html](https://web.cs.wpi.edu/~jshutt/kernel.html)</comment></comment></comment>


The U.S. Postal Service Nears Collapse  - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_23/b4231060885070.htm

<comment><USER2> The fascinating part of this article is the international policy comparisons: "Indeed, many other countries have figured out profitable ways to run a postal service. The U.S. could learn a lot from them."

And of course the economic problems of the organization are related to some familiar causes: "The USPS has historically placed the interests of its unions first. That hasn't changed."

<comment><USER3> Thankfully it seems like Donahoe, the Post Master General, understands that in order to fix part of the problem the USPS needs to move post offices into convenience stores and supermarkets where they can be staffed by non-union employees. Anyone who can operate a cash register could handle most consumer packages as well as an expensive postal service desk agent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The USPS has been running balanced for years until recently, which I find very impressive.

Judging by the amount of junk mail I find in my mailbox, they are charging too little.

<comment><USER3> The USPS is most likely charging a reasonable price to sustain current junk mail delivery rates. A price increase may cause more businesses to simply advertise online. Without any data, I would assume that the demand for the postal service by junk mailers is extremely elastic these days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Part of their problem is costs.

How do they have to pay $5.5 Billion for retiree health-care?

I've read that there is a problem with people retiring early there and then getting hired back by friends as contractors.</comment>


Show HN: Scalpel, electronic medical records designed for doctors - <AUTHOR> http://www.scalpel.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi I'm Tom, one of the founders of Scalpel. We started a medical clinic in South Carolina a few years ago and found that existing products did not meet the needs of solo practitioners. So we built these tools to automate the majority of our operations so we could be more efficient in delivering healthcare to our patients.

We decided to release our products publicly due to the outbreak of COVID-19, and will be offering our communications tool free to any doctors who want to coordinate between clinics during the pandemic.

If anyone has any questions I will be monitoring this thread and will be happy to answer as the day goes on.

</comment><comment><USER2> Why would you give your software the same name as an existing tool used by the target audience?

Imagine if someone created a new tool for programmers and called it 'Code Editor' or 'Compiler'.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very cool move. What does the communications tool specifically do?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a HIPAA compliant real time chat based on groups and threads. It's mostly used for internal communication within a practice or for referring patients, generating orders, or clarifying quick details between practices. We also use it for support within the application, so when there is an issue or feedback a member of our team is put in direct contact with the person that was affected.

We have some other cool features in the pipeline, but that's what we can do today.</comment></comment>


Launch HN: Cloosiv (YC S19) – Order ahead from local coffee shops - <AUTHOR> We're Tim and James and we're building Cloosiv (https://cloosiv.com), an order-ahead app for independent coffee shops.
We started working on this because we believe that coffee is the most overlooked sub-vertical in retail. Coffee is the most repeated purchase that Americans make every day, with over 220M cups purchased daily at coffee shops, cafes, bakeries and diners. Starbucks is the largest chain, but they only process 2.5% of those daily sales. It's the 50,000 independent merchants across the U.S. that sell the largest percentage. Starbucks' order-ahead app is actually the most-used mobile payment app in the US—more than Apple Pay and Google Pay. Their users know that they can use the same mobile app at any Starbucks location. But the rest of the market, the other 97.5%, haven't had a similar option. We're focused on providing that experience across independent coffee shops in the US.
We consider the two of us meeting as our luckiest milestone to date. James had set out to build his own development agency at the same time that Tim was looking for help building v1 of Cloosiv. We met on Upwork and quickly realized that our skillsets complimented each other. That contract was James' first and last while running his own agency.
Since our initial launch in 2018, we've processed over 35,000 orders for $250,000+ in revenue on behalf of our coffee shop partners, with orders and volume growing 40% monthly. Our network includes over 200 local coffee shops, with another 150+ locations currently onboarding. We've been able to win these early customers by building our product alongside them. In addition to gaining their trust, this process has resulted in features that set us apart from incumbent ordering options. For example, our merchants can log in from any device and make on-the-fly changes. If they've run out of almond milk, they can remove that option with a single click, so that customers can't order almond milk and be disappointed when they arrive.
We're sometimes asked: why is no one else doing this? There are many mobile ordering apps, but they've all but ignored the coffee market. This is probably because the average coffee receipt is so low in comparison to the merchants they typically support. Another reason is the level of specificity that's required to win the support of coffee merchants, who are keenly aware of customer expectation when serving time-sensitive, hot-temperature items like espresso. It turns out that a good app for ordering pizza is not the same thing as a good app for ordering coffee. We've been able to win coffee shops by remaining focused on their market and its specific needs. This is an opportunity to build the most-used mobile payment option for the most commonly purchased commodity in the country.
Most of our current locations skew towards the east coast, because we're based in Charlotte, NC and it's where we gained initial traction. Our priority right now is to increase our presence on the west coast. If you wish your local coffee shop had an order ahead option, we'd really appreciate if you shared Cloosiv with them. We're going to prioritize the most requested-by-HN shops for the next few weeks. You can submit a referral by clicking "Invite a Coffee Shop" on our website or in the app to get a $10 reward - mention Hacker News in the submission and we'll do everything we can to get them on board!
We'd also love to hear your ideas and feedback about anything and everything in this space! If you want to check out the app, download Cloosiv on your Apple or Android device and if there's a shop around you, enter promo code HN-2019 at checkout and get 50% off any item. Ok, that's all from us. Please share your thoughts and ask any questions you'd like. <comment><USER3> I am not your target market, but holy shit, that's one heck of a write-up. I couldn't have been more "meh" seeing the title, but you sold me on everything—the size of a market, the growth, how you're doing no one else is and why it's an awesome opportunity. An amazing pitch. I hope you well for success.

<comment><AUTHOR> Really appreciate the support!

<comment><USER4> > Starbucks is the largest chain, but they only process 2.5% of those daily > sales.

Seriously shocking.

<comment><AUTHOR> Same! I couldn't believe it either.

If you're interested, look into Luckin' Coffee too - their rise to power is remarkable.

<comment><USER4> I'm surprised they are so small. They feel like they are everywhere and doing a ton of volume. I always assumed they had 10%+ of global market share of coffee sales.

<comment><AUTHOR> When we started I thought the same thing, but quickly came back to earth when the data highlighted just how much coffee people drink in other places (think diners, bakeries, cafes, etc.). In fact, McDonalds is the #1 global chain for coffee sales, because if there's one thing that people love more than coffee - it's cheap coffee!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is exactly Ritual's (Toronto, Canada) schtick. Order ahead, start walking. Food will be ready when you arrive. There's no reason why you need to stick to coffee. I use Ritual to order from my favourite restaurant in the middle of a tourist attraction. The tourists wait 30+ minutes, and I can stroll up to the counter and grab my lunch and skip the line.

Ritual even tracks your location with GPS (if opt-in) and delays your order until the appropriate time.

The first time I used it, it was for a cappuccino. I walked into the store just as the barista was doing the art with the milk foam. 10/10 timing.

<comment><USER6> I believe Ritual actually currently operates in a number of US markets, like Chicago [https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/ritual-3](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/ritual-3)

<comment><USER7> It looks like NYC, SF, and Chicago are the big places on their maps. Those seem to be walking cities, though.

Not sure how their business would translate to the midwest, where many of the cities are driving cities.

<comment><USER8> Depending on the location, it should probably just tell you driving duration instead of walking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I appreciate the thorough write-up. Here are a few notes from a potential power user:

1) Your service is currently unusable for me because there are only two shops in SF both located in the Mission. As a general rule of thumb I have no interest traveling >= .25mi for coffee.

2) My average monthly spend is ~$150 of primarily take-out coffee split equally between SBux, Pete's, and other.

3) I'll never wait in a moderate or long line (>= 3 people)

4) I usually choose convenience over quality, for example I prefer Pete's coffee but the Starbuck's mobile app AND in-store pick-up process is so streamlined i'll often choose starbuck's (Pete's is catching up).

5) I'm increasingly using Postmates to pick-up coffee + breakfast at local places but not many storefronts list coffee on their mobile menu (even if they sell it).

6) I and many of my peers are trying to cut back on Coffee in lieu of lightly caffeinated teas and other drinks

7) I've yet to find a compelling rewards program that doesn't feel like a shitty mobile game on any of the ordering apps, they all seem to give extremely marginal benefits that masquerade as something significant and not worth my time - looking at you Starbucks app.

8) Though it looks a little raw your app sign-up process was really fluid

\---

I'm really interested in following the biz-dev process behind a small start-up (that doesn't take on egregious funding) doing the raw canvassing needed to hit critical mass adoption of store fronts. If you can share, what is your methodology to reaching out to mom and pop's at scale?

<comment><AUTHOR> Really appreciate this level of detail, all of this is really helpful.

In terms of biz-dev I'm happy to share, because it's been the definition of doing something that doesn't scale, but it's worked to this point. When we were getting started, our team + family and friends split up the task of pinning independent coffee shops on Google Maps, by using keyword searches like "local coffee," "espresso," etc. From there, we'd profile these locations by documenting their phone number and then searching the web for an e-mail address and (preferably) an owners name.

Once we had those email address, we'd setup sales campaigns to anywhere we had an e-mail address to - we still do this today.

In terms of our approach at scale, we're hyper-focused on partnerships and reputation. 1) partnering with company's like Square, Odeko and a number of roasters has allowed us to find customers in existing channels, avoiding the need to deploy a massive sales team (that requires egregious funding) to knock on doors 2) reputation is everything in coffee, and the more customers we add, the more referrals we get from existing locations.

Because we support a single vertical, having a few customers that love our product and are willing to voice that praise has gone a long way - our goal is to continue facilitating that level of enthusiasm, in order to grow.

<comment><USER9> My company does A LOT of coffee meetings and the actual ordering can be a bit awkward, usually someone senior pays and you get this sort of awkward exchange where the other person offers but then lets the first person pay anyways.

What about including it as a corporate benefit like Classpass where a company can pay for seats and then the seats can get coffee at various places as a benefit? Could definitely see it being a big hit and a much easier sales vertical because now you're pitching entire companies visiting a given shop instead of a single individual. I can dream :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that's a great idea. Not surprising, but our highest volume tends to be at locations in or directly around large corporate offices. That and hospitals.

We'll definitely look into this, I appreciate the suggestion!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This sounds like a great idea and looks like a cool app so far. A desktop web app version would be nice to have.

One curious question would be how do you scale business onboarding with so many different coffee shops with subtly different menus?

> We're sometimes asked: why is no one else doing this? There are many mobile > ordering apps, but they've all but ignored the coffee market.

There is also the Starbucks partnership with Uber Eats ("Starbucks Delivery") [1] in addition to the in-store pickup from the regular Starbucks app. What's your advantage if DoorDash enters or Uber Eats expands further into this market?

> You can submit a referral by clicking "Invite a Coffee Shop" on our website

I tried to submit a few referrals but didn't find this text anywhere to do it.

[1]: [https://delivery.starbucks.com/](https://delivery.starbucks.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you - and we definitely have a web app on the roadmap (ChowNow does this well).

We were able to solve the varying menus relatively quickly, because after building hundreds of them we realized how similar they were - just random variations of names, sizes, prices, etc. We built out a core menu with built- in descriptions for common items, and we just modify those based on what shops want.

In terms of incumbents, to be honest we haven't spent much time worrying about this. If they build something to compete, so be it. The only thing in our control is how we build the product and network at this point, so we're staying focused on that!

Sorry about the mixup, I had mistakenly changed the link the app was redirecting to, but it should be fixed now. Regardless, you can submit referrals here ([https://www.cloosiv.com/invite-a- brand](https://www.cloosiv.com/invite-a-brand))

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Aren't coffee shops just seeing this as yet another PoS or interface to manage? How are you making this easy to integrate into mom and pop shop processes?

Struggle to see how you can scale without nailing that!

<comment><AUTHOR> Really good point, scaling around existing tech has been a focus for us since day one. Of the 300+ shops that have committed to using Cloosiv, 90% of them are on Square. This makes the upfront work easier, because they can just run our merchant app in the background of their iPad.

As we scale, it'll be important for us to integrate directly into software like Square (which we're currently working on, we're partnered with them), so shops can just install the Cloosiv app from their terminal and have orders and reporting flow through the existing software in place.

<comment><USER11> Awesome, sounds promising then! Thanks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm always stoked to see scrappy, consumer-focused startups from N.C. on HN. There are dozens of us! I'm excited to see the scene grow.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you - the startup community in N.C. is small, but that also means it's supportive!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Square really tried to make this work with Square Order - for a while the explicit focus was on coffee. Unfortunately that wasn't successful in getting the usage numbers hoped for, and was eventually shut down. I hope you're able to make it work but this gives me a bit of deja vu.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep - they tried to build it twice I think. We were worried about that when we started, because we knew a partnership with them would be helpful. After working with them for a while now, I think it's clear they still believe in the opportunity.

In terms of why it didn't work out, I think there are two factors to consider:

1) it wasn't their flagship product 2) they had a capped market of support. In essence, they could only build a network of locations within their existing ecosystem, and despite that being large, it wouldn't be big enough to win the space.

I think a 3rd party is most likely to succeed here, because we can facilitate integrations with all of the POS providers, and build a really big network that way.

<comment><USER13> As someone who worked at Square, my impression at the time was that the problem was lower than expected engagement with the order functionality at existing locations, which made it hard to show the value proposition (I didn't work on Order but it was a small company). I'm not sure failing to be a flagship product caused the problem, Square has other products (e.g. Caviar, which people often don't know belongs to Square) that have succeeded. This despite Order having a decent UX and some interesting features like arrival prediction.

<comment><AUTHOR> Really great insight! Caviar is a good example of how a hybrid approach can work, especially to your point that most people don't recognize that Square owns it. Perhaps branding played into the decision, but they shut it down just after acquiring Caviar, which makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Congrats Tim & James on the Product Hunt launch today! This is a very powerful solution for independent coffee shops to access similar demand-side market effects to Starbucks - I could imagine you doing the same for the supply-side for them eventually too with increasing purchasing power on behalf of the independents.

I'd love to chat - I run a menu data company (Woflow) that could help you onboard these coffee shops quicker as well as add a lot of coffee shops on the west coast. We work with other YC companies too. will[at]woflow[dot]com

<comment><AUTHOR> Appreciate the support. We've definitely looked into the supply-side, and we actually partner with a company (odeko) that does a great job at this. Always open to improving our onboarding process, I'll check out what you're building!

<comment><USER14> Awesome, good luck with fielding questions and comments for the rest of today!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Perhaps OT but how did you arrive at

>over 220M cups purchased daily at coffee shops, cafes, bakeries and diners. Starbucks is the largest chain, but they only process 2.5% of those daily sales.

220M is quite a lot for a single day, representing about 1 cup per day for roughly 80-90% of adults in the US. I could believe this if the statistic were "brewed" and included coffee bought in bulk from supermarkets/other suppliers and brewed at home or the office. Even if this metric is using "cup" as a unit of volume and not a single sale (since a venti coffee at starbucks is many cups) it still seems very high to me.

I guess this question is at least somewhat relevant since it's how you're pitching your app to investors and represents the size of the addressable market.

One other question: how do you plan to address competition from non- specialized food-ordering apps? My understanding is that food delivery/takeout and other order-ahead services often include exclusivity deals, and I could see many cafes and diners opting to choose a non-optimized ordering experience that allows them to sell and deliver food over one that primarily focuses on coffee.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good questions all around! What's surprising is that the 220M figure only accounts for daily purchases. Americans actually drink over 400M cups of coffee every day. A cup is definitely an odd metric to measure by, it's just the simplest term to define a coffee or espresso-based drink.

To clarify, this is measuring the U.S.-only, the global market is obviously much larger. I know it may seem high, but it's a lot easier to put into perspective that the average American over 18 years old drinks 2 cups of coffee per day.

In terms of competition, because coffee is just now warming up to the concept of pick-up, and the majority of the order-ahead market is delivery-focused, we are at an advantage for optimizing that pick up experience and gaining traction from there. We partner with shops that offer every mobile ordering service, we partner with others that only want one - it'll certainly be something we keep an eye on as we grow.

<comment><USER15> Can you say where you got the figure though, like which source or report?

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, sorry about that. Yeah there are quite a few stats maintained on the ssca.org website. Harvard also maintains statistics about coffee consumption, and Huffington Post did a big expose on it, as well. There's also a lot of good information from the National Restaurant Association, Statista, Mordor Intelligence and Mintel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Looks like you got the Hug of Death already :(

Cached version: [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:g5z4hq...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:g5z4hq0G56sJ:https://www.cloosiv.com/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for letting us know - should be up again!

<comment><USER16> Still down for me

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I order 2 coffees about 3 times a week through chownow, which has partnered with a local "chain" that has about 6 locations.

My feedback to you is: if I had to download an app, I would not have bothered. A super functional mobile webapp is a must, especially for first-time use. Chownows mobile and desktop sites work great. OTOH, I feel like the dominos app burned me with advertisments so I uninstalled - I think you should be really weary of opt-out notifications.

I don't even really mind the chownow $0.50 upcharge, because I'm pretending that otherwise my local coffee company is getting the full value.

You have stiff competition. You sound super motivated and I wish you good luck. I have friends and family in Charlotte so I'd definitely try your platform given the opportunity :)

</comment><comment><USER18> I noticed a $0.40 service fee on each payment. I understand why you're doing this (fixed payment processor fee), but you could be a bit smarter about it.

For example, eat it on the first order to validate the payment method and reduce a bit of risk. Then on subsequent orders, don't bill the card immediately. Allow the customer some amount of credit based on e.g. how many previous orders they have paid for successfully and the age of their account.

Once you've reached your threshold for whatever amount the user is allowed to buy before you bill, you then bill the card and send a receipt with the orders you've just charged for.

This will take some work, but it will reduce the friction of users seeing that fee on checkout.

<comment><AUTHOR> Really great suggestion, definitely something we could do in the future. We just rolled that service fee out this week, so we're watching it closely. Right now, we offer 5 free purchases regardless of how the user pays, but something that's already clear is that we'll need to remove it from the stored balance reload.

As we add payment options like ACH, PayPal, etc. we'll have more wiggle room to adjust the fee based on the final payment method, and establishing a running total like you suggest could increase that variability even more.

<comment><USER18> If you want to push your app's wallet (for cash-flow, loyalty, interest margin), you could offer additional reward bonuses for larger reloads.

i.e. a $10 reload gets no bonus, but a $30+ reload gets an extra dollar in rewards.

Presumably you've already seen the CUPS coffee app, but check it out if you haven't. They're dead as a company now from what I can tell, but they had a very streamlined experience. They even tried a fixed price model where each vendor would receive a fixed payment for each cup users redeemed and users would subscribe to a plan with a certain number of cups a month.

<comment><AUTHOR> Completely agree - definitely a feature, we're building (Bird as a great UX for this, if you haven't seen it).

Also familiar with CUPS, subscription plans were/are such a gamble for shops, but I can see why it was tempting to try. I think they're still operating in some capacity, but they definitely have a limited consumer presence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think you're going to hit difficulties getting most local coffeeshops onboard. Unless there is a brand of local coffeeshop I am not familiar with, and it's probable that this in-between brand exists in cities without much space and more of a focus on pumping out volume, most local coffeeshops identify with the opposite of this ethos. They are focused on the experience of being in the coffeeshop and standing as a clear contrast to everything that chains like Starbucks and Dunkin offer. Namely an emphasis on quality and "realness".

I know many a coffeeshop owner whose immediate response to being pitched this would be "Starbucks already exists".

<comment><AUTHOR> Completely agree with a lot of your points, we run into coffee shops every day that are hesitant to offer something like this. That said, resigning themselves to the fact that a chain exists is a surefire way to go out of business. Most of the shops we speak with are actively looking for ways to maintain the quality you've noted, while simultaneously attracting more customers.

In terms of scale, we're asked about fragmentation a lot. Chains like Starbucks and Dunkin' will never use Cloosiv, but there's no reason to believe that as our network grows, that we can't support large regional chains (Joe Muggs, Dollop) and even national chains (Caribou, La Colombe, etc.).

For now, we're hyper-focused on building out that network, by adding any interested shop as quickly as possible. That may appear fragmented across the country, but as we increase our speed we'll be able hit a critical mass quickly.

<comment><USER19> I think your points of targetting large regional chains and not-Starbucks national chains are great. I think you may achieve more impactful market acquisition there.

> resigning themselves to the fact that a chain exists is a surefire way to go > out of business

Saying this to a local coffeeshop is a surefire way to get them to not only not listen to you, but to tell all their friends about how much you suck. This is absolutely wrong. This may work in selling to someone struggling, but the very fact that any other solidly-in-business coffeeshop exists proves your argument quite obviously incorrect.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that, I didn't do a great job of clarifying. What I meant to say is that we haven't encountered that type of pushback nearly as much as we anticipated. Owners tend to understand the concept and most are interested in improving their competitive advantage. The primary concerns we face are around fulfillment and customer expectation, but we'll likely continue to run into more shops that are simply uninterested in this sales channel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> At first I was holyshit not another toy-app startup, but the scientific method the founder used here is pretty mindblowing, we take coffee each day and never realise the economics and science behind it :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, appreciate it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Kind of surprised this is a thing: seems like showing up with a 5$ bill or credit card and getting coffee and change back (whether from a human or from a coffee vending machine) would be a fine process.

If one is a regular coffee drinker and finds that inefficient, buying a coffee machine for home/work seems like a better solution than attempting to "order ahead" and still having to physically get to the coffee shop.

Obviously this app might still have some marginal utility, maybe enough to be a viable business.

<comment><USER22> I'm a regular coffee drinker, so it makes no suggest I go home and make a coffee several times a day when I'm out maybe 30 miles from home. I think people who can make coffee at home aren't going to forget that just because this service is available.

The idea of ordering in advance then picking it up sounds fine to me for when I know - or suspect -there'll be a queue. Also, you'd be surprised how often I get asked my name when i'm ordering, but when the drink is ready they just shout out "grande latte" which is often what more than 1 person has ordered so it causes confusion/grabbiness. Ordering in advance would seem to make it more likely they'll put a name down, though I could be wrong.

My only problem with this service is that I already tried it (Costa do this in the UK) but they'll just chuck your coffee away (without a refund) if you don't get there within 15 minutes of ordering; it's likely I'll be using public transport to get around and you just can't rely on that so unless I order as I walk down the street - perhaps stopping, to be safe - I'm in danger of losing my money, and I'm better off just ordering when I get there.

Oh, and you need a web-page for this - I don't really install apps any more, as they're like web-pages I can't block the trackers/javascript etc of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Got a 404 when clicking invite a coffee shop in Android app

<comment><AUTHOR> Update: fixed - thank you!

Thanks for letting us know! You can refer a shop using this link - [https://www.cloosiv.com/invite-a-brand](https://www.cloosiv.com/invite-a- brand)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> > We're sometimes asked: why is no one else doing this?

[https://joe.coffee/](https://joe.coffee/)

[https://www.ritual.co/](https://www.ritual.co/)

If you live in the Seattle area, check out Joe. They cover most of the local independent chains and are expanding really quickly.

</comment><comment><USER25> Sorry if it's a detail not connected to you, but how easy is it to order a drink to be put in the customers reusable container?

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely important, thanks for asking. We haven't solved for this yet, a couple ideas weren't well received by owners. I think when we roll out a user profile option, we can start introducing some sort of tagging system to associate a number of different solutions for things like student/military discounts and reusable cups (i.e. pay on the app, get the drink when you arrive.

Another option that will roll out soon will be issuing a card that can be used in digital wallets like Apple/Google Pay. One of the best ways the delivery apps (DoorDash, Postmates, etc.) gained traction was not having to ask permission to list places like Starbucks on their app. They could get traction at a location and use it win sales with big brands. By releasing a card payment option, we'll be able to effectively do the same thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Oh man please take over for Gregory's Coffee in NYC. LevelUp is a pretty bad UX experience.

<comment><AUTHOR> We'd love to work with Gregory's! Feel free to tell them about Cloosiv and send a referral through.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> How it works for cafés? They must own an iPad / Computer, or you provide with the PoS?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question. Most of the shops we work with use a POS system on a tablet like an iPad, so they just use the Cloosiv Merchant app to field orders. If they don't have a tablet or phone we offer them a tablet they can use while they're accepting Cloosiv. In the future, it's our goal to complete integrations with the major POS providers so any shop can use the app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> How does this differ from offerings like ToastTab or other modern POS services?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question - we're actually focused on partnering with company's like Toast, Square, etc. Software like that is more robust than a single feature like order-ahead, they run the entire operation (point of sale, inventory, employee management, etc.). By partnering with them, we make it easier for shops to accept Cloosiv without needing additional hardware or software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Congrats on the launch. How can I see whether you are in my neighborhood without first installing the app, accepting the t&c's, creating an account (and in the process giving you my email address)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! It's not super obvious (working on a redesign), but you can tap on the "explore" button from the homepage to take a look at the app without creating an account.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Very interested in this. As a web developer and the owner of a coffee house, I have been planning to build something like this integrated with Square. This may save me time and money.

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad to hear it - feel free to shoot me a note with any questions - tpg (at) cloosiv dot com

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Cool. This is very similar to Ritual, but they do restaurants as well.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, I love Ritual for ordering - the bonus points system is great as it's real cash back - similar to the star quests on Starbucks app which get a little addictive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is great! I much prefer coffee from the local shop but my routine always seems to go back to Starbucks/Dunks because it's so much faster and easier to order ahead.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing, this is a sentiment shared by a lot of people. We used to do events at some of our early shops, and I lost count of how many customers said this to the owners of the shop, it really helps when they hear this from people they could sell more coffee to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> You got me at the title but I've not used the Starbucks app... Are what you are doing similar for the end user?

Any patent issues?

</comment><comment><USER34> Oh hey, I'm an engineer in Charlotte! Have you guys talked to Amelie's yet?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey - very cool!

We've made several attempts to work with them, but it hasn't panned out. Feel free to give them a nudge, and you should try out the app at any of the other shops in the area, it's our most dense region in terms of locations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> >We started working on this because we believe that coffee is the most overlooked sub-vertical in retail.

Do you have some data to back up this assertion? It feels like this quote came right out of "Silicon Valley."

Edited to add, And then the next question is, if it really is ignored, are you sure it isn't that the market has just decided that Starbucks and Dunkin have won?

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally fair. It's primarily because of how many cups of coffee are consumed every day, and how few of the existing mobile ordering apps have coffee shops as an option. The regularity of the purchase and the popularity of the Starbucks app both point to the opportunity for us.

<comment><USER7> I see it as you're selling to a shrinking market.

That, and the market has been moving towards delivery, think grub hub, Amazon. So why should I use your app when I can get my coffee delivered?

<comment><AUTHOR> We certainly keep an eye on delivery apps, but we didn't start gaining traction until we solved for customer expectation issues that owners were worried about. They're primarily concerned with making sure the latte you order is still hot when you get it, and as skeptical as they are about order ahead and pick up, they won't even consider delivery.

<comment><USER7> I appreciate this, I really do. But that is a problem that could be solved by just adding more Starbucks and Dunkins, who already have their own platform.

I travel a lot. And one of the unsung features of the Starbucks app, is that the density of stores and the app means I'm never more than 15 minutes away from a consistent coffee experience.

I also did exactly what you were doing back in 2012ish. We even had an app. I thought preordering was going to be the next awesome thing.

It turns out that not waiting 5 minutes for your order kinda leaves out the whole experience of talking to the barista, getting that smile at 6am when you're not feeling it yourself, and the personal experience of the hand crafted beverage. My barista knows my name and my order.

And you know how often I use the mobile ordering feature of the Starbucks app? Like 3 times, and only when the line was really long.

Now if you wanted to create a niche market of curated handcrafted delicious coffee from friendly independent baristas, that's an app I might be more inclined to use.

<comment><AUTHOR> I completely agree on density, it's the foundation of our pitch really - <USER2> more shops that are available on Cloosiv, the better the experience. It's exactly why Starbucks and Dunkin' have such high adoption on their apps.

I also like your example about the hand crafted experience, and I agree - in a lot of ways that's desired from the customers that seek out local shops.

That said, we've interviewed hundreds of people (customers, random strangers, etc.), and it's clear that they'd go to their local shop more often if this were an option. It doesn't mean that they'll use Cloosiv for every visit, but if we can be there when they don't have a lot of time, that's a win for the coffee shop and the customer.

<comment><USER7> Hey, so I wanted to do some digging and dig into some questions I had about this space. This is what I found.

[https://foodtruckempire.com/coffee/fail- rates/](https://foodtruckempire.com/coffee/fail-rates/)

These are the #1 and #2 reasons given in the survey that coffee shops fail out of a survey of 232 former coffee shop owners:

        Unprepared for business ownership – 128 responses
        No Distinct Brand / Experience – 94 responses

So it's clear to me that the "Independent Coffee" sub vertical is struggling. Further I'd worry that "Cloosiv" (and this would be true with "Grubhub") dilutes brands if they're not already strong. The distinct brand / experience goes away when every independent coffee shop has the same app for order ahead that the others do. Instead of the "Stomping Grounds" ordering experience, you get the Cloosiv ordering experience for "Stomping Grounds".

With GrubHub, your customer has no personal experience anymore with your store, employees, or brand. Instead, you get a GrubHub employee (hopefully not too grubby) and trust that your customer experience / brand is handled by the delivery person -- something which is completely out of your control.

So one way to think of this is that the independent coffee shop market is a scourge to investment opportunities and you should pivot off coffee shops ASAP.

Another way to think of this is that the independent coffee market is the right market, but the ordering ahead app is not the solution they need. They need strong branding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Super cool, can I ask what your tech stack is?</comment>


Ask HN: Want to help build PairRoulette, ChatRoulette for pair programming? - <AUTHOR>

Tell the site what you know, and what you want to pair on. You earn cred for helping others, and this moves up in the queue to get help from people who know how to do what you're trying to do.<p>Who wants to help me build this? <comment><USER2> That could be interesting. What if, instead of faces on the cams, it was your desktops. :P

Also, what's to stop them from just showing their junk like on Chatroulette?

<comment><USER3> "If Chatroulette used facebook connect, people would've kept their pants up" -Gary VaynerchukI guess that could solve it.

<comment><USER4> I tend to think people enjoy Chatroulette because of anonymousness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've written a very tiny amount of code around this, hosted here: <https://github.com/cap10morgan/pairon>

Right now it just uses the Github API to let you pair on a GH repo by putting /github/user/repo in the app's URL.

It's a Rails 3 app.

</comment><comment><USER5> have you considered a way to pay people to help you code and get paid for helping others?

Are you asking for feature recommendations or a partner/employee type help?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, optional bounties / payments would be good to build in. I'm looking for partners to help build it. They would obviously have a lot of say over features at that point. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Let's do this!

</comment><comment><USER7> Prepare for obfuscated-code penises.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> s/and this moves up/and this moves you up/</comment>


Building Standalone Python Applications with PyOxidizer - <AUTHOR> https://gregoryszorc.com/blog/2019/06/24/building-standalone-python-applications-with-pyoxidizer/ <comment><USER2> Obviously this has real advantages for making it easier for non-technical users to run Python applications, but I despair for the future of computing.

A desktop computer in 2025 is going to have 47 redundant installations of Chromium for various electron apps, 78 separate-but-basically-identical Python runtimes as every small utility packages the entire Python interpreter + stdlib, 200,000 redundant npm packages...

<comment><USER3> Disk is cheap, internet is pretty fast. I'd rather have the consistency of packaged software than deal with getting a bunch of libraries just right to save a little space.

<comment><USER4> > Disk is cheap, internet is pretty fast

Until it isn't [0]. I think it's fine to only develop/care for faster hardware but I'm not a fan of broad statement like this when it doesn't apply for so many people.

[0] [https://www.speedtest.net/global- index#mobile](https://www.speedtest.net/global-index#mobile)

<comment><USER3> There is a difference between catering to fast runtime internet vs fast install internet. I agree with you that we should optimize apps to be quick on slow internet, especially with so many mobile only users. But making an app that is large is a one time hit that isn't so bad, even on slow internet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Update 2: Gave up on MSYS2 and just used rustup. Managed to compile and run, but exit() doesn't work. Also I just realized the executable contains the compilation path, which leaks private information? Makes it hard to compile and redistribute stuff, but otherwise I'd be very excited about the project.

__________________________________________________

Update: Still can't get it to work. Also, the tool seems to download random third-party packages that aren't documented?

      > pyoxidizer run
      no existing PyOxidizer artifacts found
      processing config file pyoxidizer.toml
      resolving Python distribution...
      downloading https://github.com/indygreg/python-build-standalone/releases/download/{...}/cpython-{...}.tar.zst
      ...
      error[E0463]: can't find crate for `std`
        |
        = note: the `x86_64-pc-windows-msvc` target may not be installed

      error: aborting due to previous error

      For more information about this error, try `rustc --explain E0463`.
      error: Could not compile `rand_core`.
      error: cargo build failed

__________________________________________________

I ran 'cargo install pyoxidizer' and got

      cargo install pyoxidizer
          Updating registry `https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index`
      error: failed to parse manifest at `%USERPROFILE%\.cargo\registry\src\github.com-1ecc6299db9ec823\pyoxidizer-0.1.1\Cargo.toml`

      Caused by:
        editions are unstable

      Caused by:
        feature `edition` is required

      this Cargo does not support nightly features, but if you switch to nightly channel you can add `cargo-features = ["edition"]` to enable this feature

Not sure where to go next... I'm not a Rust programmer and frustratingly I never seem to get Rust programs working on the first try. Do I have to download another version of Rust now? Why can't Rust just install the package?

Edit: Would be nice if someone could also explain how this is a manifest _parsing_ error?

<comment><USER6> Sounds like you might be using an old version of the Rust toolchain, from before the edition feature was in the stable channel.

Try this:

      rustup update

And then try again

      cargo install pyoxidizer

Edit: That is, assuming you installed the Rust toolchain via [https://rustup.rs/](https://rustup.rs/), which you should -- the official package repos of most distros are sure to contain really old outdated versions of the Rust toolchain.

<comment><USER5> Huh I see. There's no rustup anywhere to be found. Rust just from MSYS2 in Oct. 2018, just 8 months ago. Updated it now and now it's installing fine, thanks. Here's what I had:

      $ pacboy -Qi rust:x
      Name            : mingw-w64-x86_64-rust
      Version         : 1.29.2-1
      Build Date      : Sun, Oct 28, 2018 9:43:06 PM
      ...

Now I have 1.35.0-1 which seems to be the most recent version (with rustup still nowhere to be found).

<comment><USER6> Yeah I realized after commenting that that you might not have installed it via rustup.rs. Glad to hear that you were able to get a new enough version after updating.

8 months might not seem like a long time but quite a few things have happened in that time, including some features having become stabilized. [https://github.com/rust- lang/rust/blob/master/RELEASES.md](https://github.com/rust- lang/rust/blob/master/RELEASES.md)

1.35.0 is the current stable Rust toolchain indeed.

<comment><USER5> Yup, updated my post. Would you know how to prevent Rust from embedding absolute file paths into the binary?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd be interested to learn what the motivation to create this was, when PyInstaller [1] already solves this (hard) problem in a fair way.

1: [https://www.pyinstaller.org](https://www.pyinstaller.org)

<comment><USER5> It probably requires unpacking files onto the disk every single time? At least that's what I remember of every tool I checked out a while ago.

<comment><USER7> I think PyInstaller does, yes, _if_ you use single file mode. The default mode simply uses an exploded directory. Not pretty, but really not a problem in practice.

<comment><USER5> How is this not a problem in practice? So much write I/O into a temp directory is slow and error-prone, and also you can't guarantee cleanup in case the process quits abnormally. And it's not like the average user will be fond of downloading and unzipping things manually. I know I absolutely loathe programs that self-extract files on a regular basis, and judging from the pains people went through to avoid it here I don't think I'm alone.

<comment><USER7> I meant the exploded directory is not a problem. And the answer to unzipping is an installer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Cool project!

The parts I don't like:

\+ Static linking

\+ No extension (shared library) support

\+ The module importers look over-engineered / too complicated

\+ Custom Python distributions

\+ Not sure what Rust gets you here, besides additional complexity

\+ No support for Python 2.7 (Python 3 drops support for Windows XP which is still a legit platform for many scenarios)

Many years ago, I solved similar problems (Windows-only at the time) with an approach that:

\+ Requires no static linking, absolutely no compilation of Python

\+ Supports packaging any pre-installed stock Python 2 distribution, no modifications except to fix bugs in the standard library

\+ Uses in-memory loading for _everything_ including Python extensions (shared libraries)

\+ Is based on top of a minimal C-bootstrapping layer that can be compiled once and reused

\+ Includes a better loader than the one in py2exe :-]

\+ Delivers an injectable DLL or executable with absolutely no dependencies except OS built-ins

\+ Works on every version of Windows from XP SP0 and beyond

The product is commercial (platform for modelling APT attacks and performing automated exfiltration pentests) but I did a presentation [1] which lays out the entire loader and the benefits of my approach in a way that is easy to independently re-engineer. I can see some benefits of static linking on Unix (even though I'd still avoid it there), but I'm convinced that it's absolutely the wrong thing to do for Windows.

[1] [https://downloads.immunityinc.com/infiltrate- archives/python...](https://downloads.immunityinc.com/infiltrate- archives/python_deflowered.pdf)

<comment><USER9> Why is "Static linking" bad? A majority of software engineers are shifting to statically linked to reduce runtime complexity.

Python 2.7 is also deprecated. New projects shouldn't really be supporting it going forward in my opinion. We're coming up on the 2020 complete end of life cycle.

<comment><USER8> It depends on the problem. Someone could say that static linking optimizes for runtime costs but for the problems that OP (and me) are trying to solve, I find that it increases runtime complexity since:

\+ It tightly couples independent subsystems together, you can no longer see them (e.g. update) in isolation. Some of those subsystems explode when statically linked due to second-order effects (e.g. memory management).

\+ Requires compilation.

\+ Licensing woes that do not apply with dynamic linking.

\+ Most important: Static linking reduces your runtime flexibility by being the opposite of late-binding and forces you to commit upfront. Many problems can be elegantly solved when one can take additional context into account (e.g. delay solving them until the 'how' becomes clear).

On top of that, static linking does not optimize for deployment costs, which can be substantial depending on the application and frequency of component changes.

For all these reasons, it should be avoided when possible. The counterpoint is that in practice, it takes a lot more effort to design a system that does not deploy static linking in order to solve the problems described by OP and me. Static linking is thus an easy and quick solution but it comes with many strings attached.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow, very cool. This sounds like a lot of existing projects but done in a much cleaner fashion.

If it was mentioned, I missed it, but I'm really curious to hear how things like cffi, etc. end up working. It may, with work, be possible to statically link CPython extensions, but cffi seems like a whole new packaging problem.

To avoid the X-Y problem, I'll state a high level goal. Let's say I want to release an application using PyQt. Can PyOxidizer handle this in any way today? In the future, does PyOxidizer plan on handling any more of the problem? Since existing Python packaging infrastructure doesn't attempt to answer problems like this, it'd be awesome to see new initiatives that do.

<comment><USER7> Re deploying PyQt apps: check out my [https://build- system.fman.io](https://build-system.fman.io). It solves the bejeezus out of this problem.

<comment><USER10> Ah, that I _have_ seen, thanks. I suppose that would be the end to end solution for this specific problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> """ Rust is the first programming language I've used where I feel like the language itself, the compiler, the tools around it (cargo, rustfmt, clippy, rustup, etc), and the community surrounding it all actually care about and assist me with writing high quality software. Nothing else I've used comes even close. """

I've been hearing nice words about Rust for a while now but it doesn't seem to catch up in popularity which I find weird.

<comment><AUTHOR> > it doesn't seem to catch up in popularity which I find weird.

What's your metric to say that ? After all, it's a system language, not a web one or scripting one, so it's not likely to go to the top trending stats very fast. Not to mention we had a stable version for only 4 years.

<comment><USER11> [https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/](https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/) currently Rust is 38th

<comment><AUTHOR> Seems fair to me, giving the nature of the language, the inertia of c/c++ and low level stuff, the learning curve of this domain, the popularity of web/scripting and the 4 years I mentioned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is PyOxidizer going to make it any harder to 'decompile' one of these Python executables? Of course, once you have the bytecode it's easy to recover the source code, but I wonder if something could be built into this tool to make it ever-so-slightly more difficult.

Nuitka has the potential to solve this issue, but it seems not ready yet.

Anyone know if/how Dropbox does it?

<comment><USER13> Dropbox uses a modified python interpreter

[https://github.com/anvilventures/lookinsidethebox](https://github.com/anvilventures/lookinsidethebox)

[https://anvilventures.com/blog/looking-inside-the- box.html](https://anvilventures.com/blog/looking-inside-the-box.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Can this crossbuild? I cannot produce windows exes with pyinstaller on my linux box; can i with pyoxidizer?

<comment><USER15> I've built windows exe files using pyinstaller on Linux using docker and wine. Someone else has helped automate this. Check out [https://github.com/cdrx/docker-pyinstaller](https://github.com/cdrx/docker- pyinstaller)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Oooh, this seems like exactly what I need. I hope it gains some traction. Trying it out right now for small util my wife needs that has to run on a machine she doesn't fully control.

</comment><comment><USER17> Was liking the project until I got to the gotcha: the incongruous decision of using rust (or any other programming language, for that matter).

Not only that will stifle any kind of community forming around the project (not impossible, but more difficult), but also because after that point the article became yet another mostly inaccurate proselytizing of "[x] language I use because [I like it, but I'll pretend there are sound technical reasons why it's better, even though every single one is contested]".

And I ended up closing the tab entirely after this sentence "in the same way that python is technically a C application", which pretty much encapsulates my previous paragraph.

I hope I'm wrong and the project takes off; python does need better packaging and distribution. But in the meantime, I'll keep looking into python-based solutions to the problem.

<comment><USER18> So, to be clear, you don't like it when projects choose to use their preferred language, and so you will search for a project which uses your preferred language?

<comment><USER17> If I'm solving a problem with Go, I will first look into solutions written in Go. If I'm solving a problem with Javascript, I'll first look into solutions written in JavaScript. If I'm solving a problem in Python, I'll first look into solutions written in Python. Etc, etc, etc.

If this project does prove to be better than something like PyInstaller, I will welcome it; I wouldn't go against the grain and would rather use a standard, de facto or official. In the meantime, I'd rather not leave an ecosystem just so I can develop _for_ that ecosystem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I love this project, it is much needed, and your documentation/writeups are outstanding. Thank you for your work.

</comment><comment><USER20> Very cool project! As a python developer, I completely share the concerns mentioned in this article. From my point of view, building a new project from scratch requires a certain "marketing approach". The idea of having "The PyOxidizer's functionality rolling up into official packaging tools like pip" seems to be key to massive adoption.

</comment><comment><USER21> Also see Facebook's XAR: [https://github.com/facebookincubator/xar](https://github.com/facebookincubator/xar)

<comment><AUTHOR> XAR is only for "Linux or macOS", with FUSE installed.

PyOxidizer offers a solution that:

\- works on Windows

\- can produce executable for Windows, Mac and Linux, but also potentially cross compile from any of those in the future

\- results in a stand alone executable, not some filesystem abstraction

\- as such, the target machine doesn't need to have anything installed

\- it also offers to embed Python into Rust projects, and Rust into Python projects

A better alternative would be the excellent nuitka (nuitka.net):

\- it compiles Python to C

\- it's very compatible, very reliable (I battle tested it)

\- works better than the alternatives like py2exe, cx_freeze, etc

\- does provide a standalone executable

\- more mature that both of these projects

But:

\- no cross compilation

\- no rust / python interoperability

\- more complicated to get working on windows

So I'm really excited for PyOxidizer. It may make the task of providing a stand alone executable even easier than with nuitka, and as a bonus, may build a bridge between the Python and Rust community, which really are meant to play together.

<comment><USER22> >cross compile from any of those in the future

that would be very helpful, I use Linux and to be able to provide executables for Windows/macOS would be nice</comment></comment></comment>


The Next Steve Jobs - <AUTHOR> http://paulgraham.com/ambitious.html <comment><USER2> This is "Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas" from March 2012.

Section 5 (of 7) is entitled "The Next Steve Jobs"</comment>


Elixir GenServer Explained to Redux Developers - <AUTHOR> https://marmelab.com/blog/2017/10/04/elixir-genserver-explained-to-redux-developers.html <comment><USER2> I like blog posts like this in theory (I too, learned Redux by making a mental mapping of MVC <-> Redux) but when it's all said and done, it truly breaks down quite rapidly. Honestly this could have been 'Elixir GenServer Explained to Javascript Developers' based on how unspecific to Redux most of the post is, and it would possibly more helpful.

<comment><AUTHOR> The main goal of this blog post is to promote Elixir language to web developers through the prism of a well known library. It talks about de Elixir actor model which is very close to the flux pattern used by Redux. It's not make sense to compare the actor model to JS which is a language and not a pattern.</comment></comment>


Xkcd on Steve Jobs - <AUTHOR> http://xkcd.com/961

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure many OS X users will enjoy that drawing much.

It's just too damn jarring to see that thing pop-up. Pretty much the only place I see it is plugging my iPhone 2g into my Mac / Xcode.</comment>


Cerebras Systems has raised $112M for chip focused on AI training - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/aarontilley/2017/08/31/ai-chip-cerebras-systems-investment/ <comment><USER2> Congrats. Interesting how this winner take all market will evolve.</comment>


Slack is Down - <AUTHOR> https://status.slack.com/? <comment><USER2> It's harder (but not impossible) to have complete service lossage like this in a federated protocol.

That's why you didn't hear about the great email collapse of 2006.

<comment><USER3> >That's why you didn't hear about the great email collapse of 2006.

Wait, is this a joke or was there really a great email collapse in 2006?

<comment><USER2> No, but Microsoft experienced one today. [http://www.theverge.com/2017/3/7/14841258/microsoft- account-...](http://www.theverge.com/2017/3/7/14841258/microsoft-account- outage-march-2017)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Slack is down, productivity goes up... after using it for a while I find it does communications within a team well but does almost nothing to increase collaboration, so I guess slack is in area which apps like Discord will disrupt.

<comment><USER5> I don't disagree with you, but in what way do you think Discord will "disrupt" Slack with regards to collaboration?

<comment><USER6> Discord's a compelling alternative, but it's just another flavour of same. If you want distributed you need something more like IRC or at least federated XMPP.

<comment><USER5> I don't think making it distributed solves the productivity problem, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seems to be up for me again. I wonder if 8 minutes of downtime is enough to warrant a post-mortem blog post.

<comment><USER8> Eh, I don't think a post-mortem is really necessary. They said it was a broken code change on the status page. If they wrote a post-mortem, it'd probably just say "A team member forgot to foobar the bazqux when deploying an update. We immediately followed our playbook for rolling back a failed deployment and restored service within 9 minutes."

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I stopped using Slack. It is a productivity drain.

<comment><USER10> Using MS Teams at the office and I couldn't agree more. It's useful about 30% of the time. The other 70% is sharing giphies and news links.

<comment><USER11> I wish they had an option to _only_ notify me of images and gifies. I have no idea what the other stuff is about..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> [https://status.slack.com/2017-03/c0923f37c54988ec](https://status.slack.com/2017-03/c0923f37c54988ec) \- basically just said that there was a broken code change which they reverted.

</comment><comment><USER12> >The status.slack.com was also overloaded during this time and it may have been inaccessible.

This is starting to become a common theme...</comment>


Qatar National Bank is allegedly hacked, data of 1200 entities leaked - <AUTHOR> http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/qatar-national-bank-allegedly-hacked-data-1200-entities-leaked-online-1642830110 <comment><USER2> Hope to see follow up to find if there are any leads / discoveries regarding the attackers. Curious if it's a nation-state or independent sector thing. Might never know, but I can certainly buy into the thought that this type of exposure is a weapon of sorts. Exposing monetary transactions isn't a new tactic but this is a modern arena for sure.</comment>


General problem solving strategies for programmers - <AUTHOR> http://einfall.wordpress.com/2008/01/28/general-problem-solving-strategies-for-programmers/

<comment><USER2> I'm sorry but a very small, light grey font on a black background is not something I'm interested in right now.</comment>


Is Xobni the next Google? - <AUTHOR> http://davidadewumi.com/2008/02/21/is-xobni-the-next-google/ Rebuttal? <comment><USER2> No:-)

Google is the starting point on the internet for many users, Xobni is not. And, in any case, it's not a fair comparison.

That said, Xobni is a _kick-ass_ product as a plugin for outlook and can be extended to the web ala plaxo and integrated as an overlay with any other social network.

In a more generic sense, the next google will probably not be the one everyone talks about, it would be the one people start using -- anyone remembers how people started switching from altavista to google?

<comment><AUTHOR> Xobni's at a natural disadvantage for now, because all of the so-called "early adopters" -- well many, not all -- don't use Outlook.

For those who do use it, they can imagine how easily it could become one of those apps everyone talks about when it releases its other products.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Loopt isn't in stealth mode. They just started out on a niche carrier.

<comment><USER4> They really need to integrate with AT&T/Verizon as soon as they can! Their service looks awesome, but... Exactly 0 of my 273 (thank you Facebook) college friends have Boost, Sprint or Nextel, and we're the kind of people who always want to know where everyone is "at" on the weekends.

<comment><USER5> Wicked sweet idea, why didn't I think of that?

<comment><USER6> wow, i have arrived.

<comment><USER4> Apparently. I was just stating my enthusiasm to see Loopt on AT&T/Verizon, not that it was some grand new idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> At least for me, Google _is_ the Google of personal information.

Xobni makes Outlook search less painful, but my Outlook only has my boring work emails. Gmail and Google Docs (and Facebook) is where I keep my personal information.

Also, don't forget that Google has desktop search, which goes even farther than Xobni in searching Outlook as well as all the documents on your hard drive.

</comment><comment><USER8> Hmm big words right now, being that most of my peers haven't even heard of Xobni. I doubt there will be the next "google" for some time...

</comment><comment><USER9> For the love of teh internets, will people stop constructing sentences that end in "the next Google?"

</comment><comment><USER10> Is previous the next next?

<comment><USER11> Only if its a circular linked list of two elements.

<comment><USER10> Touché

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Xobni is a product we need more than we think we do. i can't wait for the gmail plugin.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, cant wait for the gmail plug in here too, cos I stopped using outlook express when I quit my previous job, and now that have the xobni installable, i cant use it :(.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> no because i don't know how to pronounce 'xobni'

<comment><USER10> Zob-nee

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> No</comment>


Ask HN: Coding Projects for high school grad with Java knowledge? - <AUTHOR> A friend of mine asked me for some advice regarding her son, who recently graduated high school and will be going to a good university seeking to major in Computer Science. Her son has completed an AP Comp Sci course that focuses on Java programming. Unfortunately, the summer job that he had lined up fell through at the last minute. I figured that maybe he could use the time to get some skills that will help him look for an internship after the first year. I have provided him resources to learn git and unix. I am looking for ideas/resources for small coding projects that he can work on this summer, maybe even any open-source projects that are feasible for someone with some Java knowledge.<p>Any ideas will be welcome! <comment><USER2> I recommend they check out Apache Lucene as many of its core contributors have mentored college students during summer of code projects and the community is fairly stable and professional (last I checked.)

[https://lucene.apache.org/core/discussion.html](https://lucene.apache.org/core/discussion.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> My project has a need for a JOSM[1] plugin that - from the architecture/business logic point of view - should not be too difficult create. It should track the time the (human) editor spent working in the app.

In the simplest form, the timer would start upon launching JOSM and stop when the edits are saved to the OSM database. The recorded time should be sent using API to a remote "accounting" server.

The goal is time accounting and rewarding the JOSM users with a new type of "community currency"[2] for their contributions.

If interested, please use the contact info in [2].

[1] [https://josm.openstreetmap.de/](https://josm.openstreetmap.de/) [2] [https://merit.world/](https://merit.world/)</comment>


Largest currently living organism is a fungus - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=strange-but-true-largest-organism-is-fungus

<comment><AUTHOR> There is a fungus "out west that occupies some 2,384 acres (965 hectares) of soil in Oregon's Blue Mountains."</comment>


CDC: 'Nightmare bacteria' spreading - <AUTHOR> http://edition.cnn.com/2013/03/06/health/super-bug-bacteria-spreading/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

<comment><USER2> I dislike the sensationalism around NIGHTMARE SUERBUGS.

Here's a short segment from a recent BBC TV programme ('Defeating the Superbugs') showing bacteria evolving antibiotic resistance.

[http://v6.tinypic.com/player.swf?file=24goih4&s=6](http://v6.tinypic.com/player.swf?file=24goih4&s=6)

(YouTube's ContentID system discovers and blocks this clip.

A tray is divided into 9 sections. the end 2 sections are normal nutrient jelly. The next 2 inner sections are nutrient jelly with a normal dose of antibiotic. The next two inner sections have ten times that amount. The next two sections have 100 times the normal amount, and the final inner section has 1000 times the normal dose. (This final section has reached the solubility level of the antibiotic - they cannot dissolve any more into the jelly).

Then a drop of E.Coli is added to the end sections.

A time lapse camera shows the bacteria growing, and stopping at the barriers, and then overcoming the barriers.

After just two weeks bacteria is able to survive on the middle section; the section with 1000x the normal dose of antibiotic.

</comment><comment><USER3> The first claim in the article about the mortality rate (<= 50%) is sensationalist and deceptive. The mention towards the end, that the mortality rate approaches half _in patients with CRE bloodstream infections_ is more in line with the CDC press release the Wikipedia Article links to [http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2013/p0305_deadly_bacteria...](http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2013/p0305_deadly_bacteria.html) (I edited the Wikipedia page to reflect this same point.. journalists, crosscheck your sources)</comment>