Ask HN: Anyone a social entrepreneur, i.e. placing social impact above profit? - <AUTHOR> For a few years now, there's been a rising tide of activism and talk of capitalism 2.0 -- is anyone actually riding this wave, or is it mostly talk?
If anyone is actively working on (or with) a social enterprise, or if you know of any, I'd really appreciate it if you can loop me in!
Thank you in advance! <comment><USER2> We started Mullvad VPN in 2009 for political reasons.

My cofounder Daniel and I viewed it as direct political action through entrepreneurship. In particular we wanted to protest Swedish surveillance legislation (FRA), which is partly why we chose a Swedish name for the service.

So far we have refused at least five serious offers of investment and acquisition, because we would rather retain control, even if that meant slow growth or obscurity.

As time went by the company grew and so did our capabilities to affect change. So far we have reinvested all profit in things we believe move the needle in the right direction. Some are direct donations, others are pure investments, others should probably be classified as "high-risk bets that might make things better, but not necessarily for us".

The fact that we retain 100% ownership in the company enables us to engage in strategic behavior that is unavailable to competitors who accept outside investment. All VCs have investment horizons. If we invited one onboard they would eventually want us to sell, or commit to handing out dividends.

We'd rather build some kind of institution. Even better if we can obsolete VPN services as a concept. Then we could move on to other problems. It's not like there's a shortage. We have explored the idea of moving our shares to a foundation. Unfortunately that is an action that can't be undone. It's kind of the point, but by retaining the shares we retain maximum strategic flexibility.

Edit: I don't identify as a social entrepreneur, but thought you might enjoy the story anyway, as we're also sort of optimizing for impact. Whatever that means.

<comment><USER3> Thank you for the story and insight, I find it mirrors a lot of Chamath Palihapitiya's perspective on capital being an instrument for change.

What are the hardest challenges you're facing lately in operating a privacy focused VPN service?

<comment><USER2> As for our current hardest challenge:

Good question. As an organization probably helping each other ensure we stay focused on what needs to be done and what is right for the organization, weighing Time/Cost/Quality, and so on.

I'm not saying we're bad at it, it's just that remaining vigilant on keeping the feedback-adaptation loop short seems key, regardless of layer on the reality stack so to speak. On that subject, check out complexity science if you want your mind blown on the extent of recurring themes in physics, chemistry, biology, economics, computer science, etc.

Personally I have definitely struggled with perfectionism in the past, and still do to some extent. This greatly impacted my productivity, and those around me. Thankfully we hired a great CEO four years ago and I've since focused mostly on strategy and research. I've also rectified my perfectionism issue a bit :)

This is what I've been doing for the past two years, and anticipate spending time on for another few: [https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2019/6/3/system- transparency-fut...](https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2019/6/3/system-transparency- future/)

<comment><USER4> Do you have any pointers for people who'd like to dig into complexity science?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I gave up using Federal Reserve Notes, on principal, and have dedicated my life to improving a small ranching community. By limiting my use of money to less than $100 a month (hopefully soon $0), I've had to build connections with human beings that would have not been possible otherwise.

It was really eye opening to realize that the universe wants to play and it will help me in the strangest ways.

I've set up a community computer lab entirely based on e-waste collected for free that has a print-shop, network, big screens, projectors, electronics lab, etc and organized a few hackathons to see what services we can offer to the community.

I'm spearheading reopening the local community center and are setting up a tool-library with donated tools. You'd be amazed how many people have workshops filled with tools they never use and will give to you if you ask nicely and with a purpose.

I've begun to map all the trees in town, set up a gleening team, and building out solar dehydrators. Gonna stock the local shop with dried fruit right next to the candy isle. Give the kids a choice.

I've got hundreds (soon thousands) of baby trees in my back yard and have been setting up a gene bank for grafting many varieties of fruit and nut trees. Grafted a couple hundred apple, pear, plum, and cherry trees this last spring. Propogating out all the materials we will need to turn this town into a veritable food forest. With patience you can create orchards without spending a single dollar.

We live in the most wasteful society that has ever existed. I'm exploring the hack of seeing how much of this "waste" can be turning into things that people would have had to spend dollars, which to me is adding fuel to the flame that is rapidly destroying everything of true value on this planet.

Mother Earth.

<comment><USER6> > I've set up a community computer lab entirely based on e-waste collected for > free that has a print-shop, network, big screens, projectors, electronics > lab, etc and organized a few hackathons to see what services we can offer to > the community.

This is brilliant, why don't community organizations spring up all over to do this?

<comment><USER7> I concur entirely, and I second this! This is brilliant!

Hey, if you don't mind my asking, where is this community computer lab located?

I wouldn't mind stopping by someday if I was in the area -- and I'm sure other HN readers who are local to you wouldn't mind stopping by either!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> 2016 - While working as an engineer at Google, I decided to start a free coding bootcamp on the side. I believed I could teach anyone how to become a software engineer so I made a public post asking if anyone is interested in learning how to code and about 30 people showed up at my house. While I was at work in Mountain View, 30 people strangers used my house as a coding bootcamp.

2017 - 30 students were hard to manage and students started leaving. It bothered me, so I quit my job at Google to focus on this full time. I reached out to the students who left to see what happened and one of the reasons was money. So for the students who are struggling financially, I started giving them 2k / mo stipend.

2018 - Paying 9 students 2k / month used up all of my savings so I had to look for a new job. Also started a non-profit to write off all my payments as donations. This helped alot because to keep paying the students I took out my 401k savings and the donations helped offset the tax penalty.

2019 - Students got jobs. Realized that I want to train students to become good solid engineers that I want to work with instead of gamifying the interview process. Instead of padding resume and LeetCode, our curriculum focuses on building good products with good tests and maintainable code.

2020 - Ran into financial trouble, had to let all the students go and gave them a 3 month notice.

Now I'm primarily lurking on the chatroom of our final product, helping and teaching students who are following my curriculum.

[https://c0d3.com](https://c0d3.com)

Next year I will get more RSUs and with that money I plan to kickoff a free code house, a safe environment for students to learn (much like 42) with free food and housing.

<comment><USER9> Please stop throwing good money after bad. You've proven that your approach doesn't work, stop it!

Go find yourself a more business-minded partner in this undertaking so that it can be financially sustainable.

Noble intentions are great but in the end you will be left with nothing and unable to help anybody.

<comment><USER8> > You've proven that your approach doesn't work, stop it!

I haven't proven anything yet and I have learned alot. You seem to have reached a conclusion though, care to share how?

<comment><USER10> You spent 4 years failing to find a sustainable, repeatable model with economics that work.

Right now it's a matter of when you burn out, not if.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I run a company that collects and delivers used furniture for charities in the UK ([https://boxmove.com](https://boxmove.com))

It's a social enterprise in the sense that we save charities a fortune on the way they currently operate, and we employ our staff on better salaries than they receive working in-house. The flip side is we expect a decent day's work from our teams. We are profitable, sustainable and no reliant on grants, funding, or anything else. That's good for everybody.

Those that join us from charities typically did 6-8 jobs a day. Our teams average 20. There is so much bullshit and incompetence in the charity sector that I would love to call out, but sadly that would damage our business. It is a frustrating sector to operate in - not least because we compete against 'serial social entrepreneurs' who receive a grant, take a nice salary for two years nibbling away at our client base, then shut down and move onto the next self-enriching project.

Not really sure why I answered this question but there you go!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the share, Alex! I found your frustration to be quite curious: why would calling out the bullshit and incompetence be damaging to your business?

I'd imagine that a huge part of your pitch is that you're MUCH more efficient and therefore you can save on costs if they outsource to your business.

<comment><USER12> OP runs a for-profit company with Non-profit customers. If they share a lot of stories about how inefficient the non-profits are, that could hurt those non- profits financially or just emotionally. Either of these would disincline the non-profit from continuing to be a customer of OP's moving company.

Everyone loves accountability until it's applied to them!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've been working for, running and volunteering for social enterprises for 12 years now.

I find that "social enterprise" as a term isn't really known by anyone outside of the social enterprise bubble, e.g. those running, funding or volunteering for a social enterprise.

The funding structures available to social enterprises seems to be an issue - you can be anything from a private limited company through to a registered charity or anything in between (and don't get me started on CICs...).

I know a fully for-profit company who claims they are a social enterprise just because their main client base is registered charities.

I also think that the B Corp movement ([https://bcorporation.net/](https://bcorporation.net/)) is building a much better brand than the social enterprise movement - and the whole process to becoming a registered B Corp is much more stringent than become a social enterprise, and has the added benefit of helping improve the social impact of organisations that apply to become B Corp registered.

I'm currently building a database of social good organisations in the UK and beyond here: [https://goodhere.org/](https://goodhere.org/)

Would love to see more projects and funders submitted. Email is in profile if you're interested in discussing more.

<comment><USER14> > I know a fully for-profit company who claims they are a social enterprise > just because their main client base is registered charities.

Cynical me thinks that for-profit companies primarily work to benefit their executives and shareholders. Non-profit companies primary work to benefit their executives alone. How is this better? My source is overhead conversations in bars in Seattle where I heard Gates Foundation executives bragging about how they were getting paid $300,000 a year to do absolutely nothing.

<comment><USER15> > where I heard Gates Foundation...

Oh, come on, that was one of the few places I semi-idealize as ethical and "clean".

Humans will be humans I guess...

<comment><USER16> I don't think this necessarily says anything to the contrary of that. If you are someone at Gates overseeing research grants etc, you probably have a PhD and I'm sure the Gates job is less stressful than doing your own research. I could very easily see how friends of mine would say such a position is "easy" compared to publishing yourself, being scooped, research failing, etc. Instead, you get paid well to help other people do the same. Nothing wrong with that - it's just perspective.

Granted, I didn't talk to this executive, but I feel somewhat comfortable hypothesizing this due to what I know of this area.

<comment><USER15> That sounds reasonable. Thanks for the perspective :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> bjelkeman-again I co-founded Akvo Foundation [1] in 2007. Akvo is a not-for-profit/not-for- loss [2] organisation that put together a combination of tools, services, local expertise and sector knowledge. We work mainly in management of water, sanitation and agriculture, even though organisations use our platform for all sorts of data. WWF are tracking turtles in Indonesia, SNV manages their massive biogas programmes, Sierra Leone quality test their drinking water etc. Lots of stories here [https://akvo.org/stories/](https://akvo.org/stories/)

We are 75 people in a bunch of countries, with HQ in The Netherlands. We have worked with two dozen governments, hundreds of organisations and companies, in over 70 countries in the last decade. We work hard at making all our tools and work open source or open content.

Working mainly in international development is not easy. The customer is mostly project based, so retention is hard. You have to sell into each new project. We have some of Europe's largest NGOs using the tools as corporate tools, but the technology use in many of these type of organisations, despite being heavily dependent on data, is patchy at best.

[1] [http://Akvo.org](http://Akvo.org)

[2] We charge money for our services and any positive results are reinvested in our tools, people and knowledge platform.

<comment><USER17> Why Netherlands for your HQ?

<comment><USER18> Looking at their "About us" page two of the cofounders have extremely Dutch names so it's probably just where they started out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I built a site (addictionlocker.com) which is a password manager that makes you donate to charity to get your passwords back.

I built it because everytime I try to lock myself out of twitter, et al, I just unlock whatever I set up because I know the password.

Originally, I was going to take a percentage of the profit; but now want to see all of it go to charity. What sucks is I think its a really solid idea; benefits everyone involved (reduces addictive screen time, gives money to givewell.org) but can't market it to save my life. I don't know if the concept is too esoteric, or everyone is ok with how much time they look at their phone, or my site just isn't good...

Please share if you find success...

<comment><USER20> I like this idea, but both credit card info and password is a big trust ask for what looks like a fairly random website.

<comment><USER19> Do you think it would help if it was open sourced?

Credit card info is handled by square who Iframes all user inputs so I can't see it.

Password to unlock the pw you need a key, nonce, encrypted message. My server only ever sees the nonce and message. The user only ever has all 3. Even the bookmarks you create use hash-bangs which don't go over the wire.

The hard part for me is conveying all of that without a wall o'text.

Maybe I can reach out to givewell, and get their thoughts. They'd bless it maybe?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I also run a company [1] that primarily recruits low-income Brazilians from remote locations and teach them how to code and create data-related products. The company itself is for profit in the long run, but the first priority is to make our members grow (financially and psychologically), then generate profit for the founders.

During the entire process we focus 40% of their time to study/learn about soft skills (become a better person/human), 20% for hard skills (become a better professional) and 30% for producing code and create products, we pay 100% for all the courses and books they use to lean.

Every quarter we review and increase their monthly income based solely on their level of soft skills, not hard skills. So if they become more organized, have better communication, etc. they earn more. People can start as low as R$ 500,00 per month and grow up to R$ 25,000,00 per month.

In the end, our goal is to make each of them more (or totally?) lucid/self- aware (in the context of psychology) and financially independent (more than R$ 1 million on their bank account) in the maximum period of 10 years [2].

We have been doing it for the past 5 years, fully remote, and it's currently very close to becoming a sustainable process, as some of our current members are very lucid/self-aware and getting close (2-3 years away) to become financially independent.

[1] - [https://www.simbioseventures.com/v/english/](https://www.simbioseventures.com/v/english/)

[2] - [https://www.simbioseventures.com/v/english/sobre-a- simbiose/...](https://www.simbioseventures.com/v/english/sobre-a- simbiose/compartilhamento-de-sucesso)

Edit: clarification.

<comment><USER22> It is worth noting that a lot of people feel that you hire people very cheap and work them to their bones with a promise of a high salary. Working on weekends and 12h a day seem to be incentivized.

Some discussion here: [https://github.com/frontendbr/vagas/issues/3084](https://github.com/frontendbr/vagas/issues/3084) and if you google for the python Brasil google groups there's a lot of bad reputation around the company.

<comment><USER23> Yes. This is true. There are some people with strong opinions about what we do, but the interesting part is that none of these people were part of our group before, they just criticize what they think we do, as they cannot criticize what we really do.

Anyway, we respect different opinions, but we are really focused on hearing the opinions of the people we already have inside our group, because they are the ones that truly understand what's going on.

<comment><USER22> The github issue I posted has comments from employee reviews on glassdoor.

That said I wish you the best! It is really cool that you think of your business the way you do. I just find it very important to show to the HN community how other people feel about your business as well.

<comment><USER23> Unfortunately Glassdoor is a place where any random person can comment things, not necessarily real ex-members.

Only a few of the reviews we have at Glassdoor are real, the rest comes from internet haters. Even so, if you look a the numbers, you will see that even people that criticize us, 74% recommend the company to a friend.

It's obvious that we have challenges, as any company, but apparently the benefits are higher than them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm working on a company to create a universal basic income utilizing technology instead of financial instruments. Doing that through building homes that run on renewable energy, grow their own food and are cheap to make.

The first prototype house should be done this year!

<comment><AUTHOR> This is amazing, I'd really love to learn more! Do you have any resources I can look into?

<comment><USER24> I don't have a website yet or anything so that I can solely focus on the building, but my email is in my profile.

Essentially, the prototype is a tiny house with greenhouse attachment. Looks like it will come in around ~$25k. The greenhouse is 95% automated using hydroponics and sensors for any adjustments to turn on ventilation, water alerts or ph alerts for making sure the nutrient solutions are where they need to be. We are currently experimenting with deepwater and nft hydroponic systems.

After the prototype, we are going to raise money to build the first neighborhood. Houses will be a bit bigger, ~1500 sq. ft. and be fairly modern style, potentially in Denver. Powered via Solar for now. And basically get 10 or so people to move in all with a skillset that could help push the technology and needle forward on how this could be implemented at a larger scale.

<comment><USER25> That's pretty good. From my experience just the greenhouse, foundation, growing apparatus, monitoring, growing supplies, and permitting would cost $25k. The labor costs and tiny house would easily put it over. I'd be curious in seeing the breakdown of costs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I work at a small cooperative. We do contact management for non-profits (from large professional associations to small activist groups). It's an area where Salesforce is present, but there is a huge potential for growth, especially outside the US (data sovereignty).

We're a small worker owned coop, meaning we are basically a few partners doing hosting and consulting for the CRM. The CRM is open source, and we are many companies and organizations working together. They have become a very big family (with the good and sometimes the bad).

I like being my own boss and getting to chose my projects, while getting to work with really nice people (whether the clients or colleagues). Of course, no illusions, at the end of the day, we have to get the job done, on budget etc. It's not all rainbows, but I like it. You might say it takes a certain personality to be able to collaborate with alot of people on the long term. We all have weird personality traits. It requires patience.

In the same day, I might work with folks in France who work with animal shelters, people in Turkey who work with oppressed teachers, and small activist groups in the US who hide migrants from ICE.

Money isn't the end goal, but we still have salaries in the higher average, in our area. CRM isn't super exciting tech, but it quickly provides value to users.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm one.

Through SEAL, we fund academic research and take on impact campaigns on specific environmental initiatives.

We just called on financial institutions to create an environmental charity rewards card (a portion of your credit card rewards go to charity, not airline miles):

[https://sealawards.com/eco-rewards/](https://sealawards.com/eco-rewards/)

The potential here is huge - could raise even more funding than Jeff Bezos $10 billion climate fund. And the consumer survey data (n - 3,000) is very encouraging.

Now the tough part is convincing them - if you want to help please visit [https://ecorewardscard.com/sign-up/](https://ecorewardscard.com/sign-up/)

My overall summary of social entrepreneurship: expensive (I subsidize this), hard....but really fun and rewarding.

<comment><USER28> Hi Matt, any chance we could talk? I run a business which helps developing country communities set up and manage green community "banks". This is in communities which are conventionally unbankable but can manage simple community funds. We build ecosystem restoration requirements into loan terms and it's looking like a successful approach to environmental management. We need to provide seed capital to community banks in order to get them going, and had been thinking about using the mechanism you are developing. Maybe we could partner? Here's a case study showing how it works. [http://greenfi.org/?page_id=627](http://greenfi.org/?page_id=627)

<comment><USER27> Matt AT sealawards dot com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> With the help of some friends, I started Sublime Fund ([https://sublimefund.org/](https://sublimefund.org/)). It lets people donate to multiple charities on a monthly basis from one place, while maintaining their privacy. Sublime Fund is itself a 501(c)(3), and we don't keep any cut of the donations for ourselves (though we do deduct the cost of payment processing and distribution).

A lot of the motivation for building it came from my own desire to use it, so I've tried to make it as user-friendly as possible. For example, there are no attempts to add friction to the process of stopping donations to a charity. I can do it in seconds.

I've let development stagnate because I started a new job last year, but it requires very little maintenance to keep going, and I plan on getting back into it soon to build out new features.

<comment><USER30> In light of how the previous Mozilla CEO was forced out over private contributions to non-profits, do you see Sublime becoming more relevant given the current trend of deplatforming? Do you implement any policies or information assurance protocols that would e.g. prevent differential analysis or deanonymization your contributors by reporters/media? I think people would be more than happy that you charge a small fee for your services if stronger guarantees of privacy can be assured.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I co-founded a company to make carbon removal accessible to everyone ([https://carbonremoved.com](https://carbonremoved.com))

Idea is to avoid the dubious carbon credit system and instead actually remove your historical footprint.

We've been iterating on different variations of the product for a year and registered a company (we're Swiss based) in April. So far we are responsible for the removal of 26tons of CO2 and with our customer base we're now removing over 10tons per month.

In the grand scheme of things, we know it's a small step but by supporting multiple carbon removal providers (Direct Air capture and storage; tree planting; enhanced weathring through olivine stones (coming soon); biochar (coming soon)) we're aiming to make carbon removal affordable while maximizing our environmental impact.

<comment><USER32> First of all congrats on building a business that focuses on tackling climate change as its probably the most pressing global issue of all right now. However I've been struggling with the ethics of carbon removal and carbon offsets a bit myself and would be really interested in your perspective. If the ethical goal is to have the lowest atmospheric CO2 concentration in let's say 2050, how do you justify funding carbon removal now at a time where the prevention of carbon creation is way cheaper per ton and thus allows people to have a higher impact regarding that goal for the same cost? Is it because you feel that with the right funding now carbon removal could eventually become much cheaper? I'm not trying to criticize you, I'm just really interested in the topic as something about carbon offsets always feels pretty sketchy and I'm always looking for ways to ethically invest or donate (I gave to an anti- deforestation initiative for some years and am financing crowdfunded loans for businesses to install solar panels in developing countries right now while also leading an ethically conscious lifestyle when it comes to travel, diet, activism and general consumption).

<comment><USER31> That's a great question so I hope I can provide a little insight to my thinking:

        * You are right, we do need to also focus on reducing emissions and carbon removal is by no means a replacement for reductions;
        * However even if we were to reduce to zero emissions tomorrow, there is still an excess of emissions already present in the atmosphere that needs to be addressed/removed.
        * Another large consideration for myself when thinking about this project was to support as many carbon removal projects as possible now, so they can be mature, cheaper and readily available as we also reduce.

It is my firm belief that carbon removal should and will replace the existing carbon credits based system. If I emit a ton of CO₂ then buy credits that have reduced (although this is a little ambiguous) someone elses emissions, my 1 ton still exists in the atmosphere.

Reducing my own footprint (so it becomes 0.5 tons) then actively removing that unavoidable footprint - or more if I would like to live carbon negative - means I can truly say I have no impact.

I hope this helps but please feel free to ask about anything else or email me directly: ewan (at) carbonremoved (dot com)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I am co-founder of Open Energy Labs ([https://openenergylabs.co/](https://openenergylabs.co/))

We teach young people in sub-Saharan Africa how to build off-grid renewable electricity supplies.

600 million people in SSA don't have access to electricity and one of the main barriers to expanding access is a lack of local technical skills.

We are supporting people to build those technical skills and drive access to electricity across the continent.

</comment><comment><USER34> Plug for Philly Yardens! My buddy Chris is killing it!

He's now on a mission to transform the landscape of the city and turn often neglected patches of grass into thriving microecosystems.

[https://yardens.life/](https://yardens.life/)

Been an incredibly positive response so far, if anyone is interested in starting something similar we've discussed open sourcing it so others can do in their own city.

<comment><USER35> I have always thought of a service like this one but it wouldn't be sustainable where I live due to lack of access to water if it grows. Centralized farming is arguably better suited given existing micro farms and outdated tooling.

But, this is a neat idea. I hope this grows big.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'm one of the co-founder of Digicoop, a worker cooperative based in France. We develop Kantree, a work management platform as SaaS or on-prem solution.

We are a small team, all employees are associates and we are remote first. New employees must become associate after 1 year.

The hardest part for us is funding as no investors are interested in worker coops.

We had quite a few hurdles on the way and the startup scene mostly rejects outliers like us as we have no true funding story to tell. But we really believe in this model and fight hard to keep going.

We have written about our company on kantree's blog if you want more details.

<comment> bjelkeman-again I always wanted to start a coop, but never found anyone who knew how. I am interested in your product and pinged you on your website.

<comment><USER37> Are you a developer? I'm also wanting to start a coop. Something with maybe our own SaaS that has MRR but also does agency work for companies. If you or anyone else seeing this wants to team up let me know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I donate the money I make from my side project apps to climate charities. The amount of money I was making was too small to motivate me for purely financial reasons, but as a means to help the environment it adds an additional source of motivation for me to iterate on them.

</comment><comment><USER39> Nanocents. Although not complete, it is an attempt to allow micro payments on the internet. It allows you to pay one cent on the internet fairly efficiently - most of the money ends up with the payee. This is not a single site payment thing, you can pay one cent (or more) at any site accepting nanocents.

While this may not seem especially important, it provides a way for responsible sites and services to avoid using AdSense and other intrusive systems that track user.

Tracking provides a way to target users with tailored information. This is the ultimate problem. If I can target you with one message and someone else with an opposing divisive message then I can disrupt social systems, including but not limited democracy itself.

Sole founder and developer desperately seeking help. If you are interested in helping or trying out micro payments go to [https://nanocents.com](https://nanocents.com) and watch the demo video or send email to

info at nanocents.com

edited for grammar

<comment> joe-collins The second coming of Project Xanadu.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Considering the economic fuck-house as a result of the pandemic , our company has shifted our focus from increasing MRR to helping out anyone and everyone who can benefit from our resume software.

Furthermore, I've started to familiarize myself with the Sustainable Development Goals outlined by the UN - specifically inclusive economic growth as so many people are the edge of economic ruin.

[https://rezi.io](https://rezi.io) \- we are just a simple resume software that many people love and trust

<comment><USER41> Hi Jacob,

A couple of questions.

1\. I could be mistaken on this, however, the resume template used by your service ("The Rezi Format") appears to be generated with LaTeX. Do you allow your users to download the tex source code?

2\. If your service does use LaTeX behind the scenes, where was the original tex source code for "The Rezi Format" template acquired?

3\. A resume will typically contain a lot of high value user data. What steps does your service take to keep this data secure from you, your employees, or any future buyers?

Thanks for taking the time to answer these questions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Apart from other founders chiming in here, there indeed are "impact tech" (buzzword warning) startup incubators and accelerators out there. [https://hatchcolab.ch](https://hatchcolab.ch), [https://opentech.fund](https://opentech.fund), [https://fongit.ch](https://fongit.ch), [https://nlnet.nl/foundation/](https://nlnet.nl/foundation/) are a few that come to mind.

Here's a blog post that lists some VCs actively investing in _impact tech_ : [https://medium.com/@IFI/the-what-why-who-and-how-of- impact-t...](https://medium.com/@IFI/the-what-why-who-and-how-of-impact-tech- vc-8d1ec5a36d75)

</comment><comment><USER43> I'm the co-founder of Oswald Labs ([https://oswaldlabs.com](https://oswaldlabs.com)), an accessibility technology company that builds products for people with disabilities.

For example, we built Augmenta11y, an AR reading app for children with dyslexia, that makes reading 20% faster for them. We even published a research paper in the IEEE about it: [https://oswaldlabs.com/research/publications/dyslexia- augmen...](https://oswaldlabs.com/research/publications/dyslexia-augmented- reality/).

Our business model is B2B SaaS for our web accessibility/customization plugin that adds features like dyslexia-friendly reading mode to websites. We charge a monthly fee for the plugin after a free plan for websites with less than 10k pageviews per month.

Not that it means much, but we were one of the youngest founders in the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia 2018 list as "Social Entrepreneurs", so you can find many other companies focused on impact there: [https://www.forbes.com/30-under-30/2020/social- entrepreneurs...](https://www.forbes.com/30-under-30/2020/social- entrepreneurs/).

</comment><comment><USER44> YC has a nonprofit programs :

List of the YC non-profits:

[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_VuERKGdeFU_VnsJpybvpwuF...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_VuERKGdeFU_VnsJpybvpwuFW6KSkQUFG4XV5rCB_us/edit)

see more:

[https://www.ycombinator.com/library/4k-what-y-combinator- loo...](https://www.ycombinator.com/library/4k-what-y-combinator-looks-for-in- nonprofits)

<comment><USER45> They do, but a lot of the social good companies are not actually non-profits but more like low-profit/high-impact, or B-corp style. In fact a few states have Benefit Corp/Social Purpose Company LLC-like structures.

So it puts you in a somewhat weird spot since you will never be potentially worth a billion dollars (which is the guideline for the for-profit track of YC) nor are you a pure non-profit.

It'd be cool if they added such a track or loosened the non-profit restrictions so it's not necessarily a 501c3 structure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I'm not a social entepreneur myself, but I work for a social enterprise that offers two products:

\- An app ([https://badges.giki.earth](https://badges.giki.earth)) that lets you scan barcodes for products in UK supermarkets and lets you see various badges we award: if it's organic, uses sustainable palm oil, vegan, and so on — to help people shop more ethically and sustainably.

\- A UK-based climate change lifestyle tracker / behaviour "nudge" website ([https://zero.giki.earth](https://zero.giki.earth)) - a "green FitBit for your lifestyle". You sign up, calculate your carbon footprint based on your lifestyle, and then commit to taking steps to reducing it. We also offer this to businesses and other organisations to encourage them to become more sustainable.

(Aside: Giki stands for "Get Informed, Know your Impact")

Any questions? I can be reached at the email in my profile or at email@example.com :-)

</comment><comment><USER47> I am Xavier, Mathematical Artist. And we are currently running a campaign called "Think OMNI" to introduce the entire US (for now) to a form of thinking that I call Omnidisciplinary Thinking. This form of thinking entails intuitively decomposing ideas into their root forms in order to efficiently use knowledge across, within, and between boundaries, disciplines, and industries. In essence, the boundaries that we put around our thoughts and ideas are useful tools yet we forget that such boundaries do not truly exist.

Think OMNI aims to show people how to use Omnidisciplinary Thinking pragmatically today! in order to provide solutions in three areas: personal, interpersonal, social.

 __Personal __: Powerfully reason by analogy to better understand the world and one's true capabilities

 __Interpersonal __: Engage with Root of discussions to better communicate with others, _especially_ when their views seem in opposition to one's own. By decomposing to the Root and reconstructing, we can avoid rhetorical blocks and have difficult conversations.

 __Social __: at this point, this is two-pronged. One is to show companies how to decompose talent because Keyword Bingo doesn't work when entire industries need to shift into others. Furthermore, training efforts need to build on whatever is already there with a person's skills rather than start from scratch.

At its most pragmatic, an Omnidisciplinary Thinker should be able to leverage every single piece of knowledge and experiences that one possesses to figure out how to meet basic needs in order to build Breathing Room to pursue other things. In general, it will allow for people to seamlessly blend insights across all disciplines. And the ultimate Omnidisciplinary minds will be able to powerfully and accurately draw insights from incredibly disparate subjects for pragmatic outcomes. (Imagine reasoning about medicine in terms of painting.)

Leading into the US election, the intent is that people of all social- political backgrounds, ages, etc. can use this to have the difficult discussions that we were not able to and still are not able to have with one another today. As a response to COVID, this tool must help employers and job seekers be more fluid with what a person's skills actually are and what a role entails. In the longer term, this is expected to be a powerful thought tool to be leveraged by people around the world.

I may be contacted at [email address redacted].

<comment><USER48> Just visited mathis.art. My apologies for the bluntness but the general impression it gives off is a project by an eco-centric person making bold claims about things. You speak a great sense of pragmatism but I don't see anything pragmatic about the campaign, both in your HN post and on the website. Also I don't see anything mathematical or remotely art.

Please don't get me wrong. What you are doing sounds interesting. Here is just my 2c and I hope you it find useful. Looking forwards to seeing your progress. You are in my watch list now =)

<comment><USER47> Thank you for the feedback. The post I made here is the focus for now. This was the site as it was a few years ago when I was experimenting with the idea and the question "Should an artist be egotistical?" After all, is such a site about exploring one's self? Regardless, the site is now about how we all can think moving forward, so it is no longer an individual expression of myself.

I am currently working on a complete redesign as we speak. The only reason I even mentioned it here was the timeliness of the General Post. The site as it is needs to at least have the information I posted here, which it does not. Please consider it _Under Construction_. It currently is not related to the campaign at all.

Also, a thought experiment for you to ponder: Must art leave an artifact? Who made that restriction? If an artifact and a conversation have the same effects on the world, is one more artful than the other? Is the creator/instigator of a response more worthy when there is a tangible thing?

These sorts of questions are not what "Think OMNI" is about, though. Think OMNI is about eating, raising a family, engaging with neighbors. Pondering art is for after Breathing Room has been developed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I've worked in technology my whole professional life, founded startup companies and most recently run a London based digital agency. About 3 years ago I started asking myself if this whole Internet project that I've been a part of for so long is a net positive or a net negative in terms of our quality of life. I didn't like the answers I was giving myself and so decided to devote my time to digital activism.

In 2018 I co-founded [https://YourDigitalRights.org](https://YourDigitalRights.org), a free and open source service which helps you regain control of your online privacy by instructing organizations to send you a copy of, or delete the personal information that they have on you. The service automates the process of filing data access and deletion (right to be forgotten) requests.

We have a few other projects in the pipeline. We're now in the process of registering as a charitable organization in the UK, although that has proven far more difficult then we expected (our initial application was rejected on the grounds that privacy is not a right and therefore if that's what we're promoting it is a political cause, which is not permitted for a charity).

I also moved with my family to the countryside in Italy where together with my wife and some friends we're starting an alternative school: [https://shadesofgreen.school/](https://shadesofgreen.school/)

Here's a recent interview I gave if you'd like to read more: [https://thriveglobal.com/stories/yoav- aviram/](https://thriveglobal.com/stories/yoav-aviram/)

Feel free to email me through the address at [https://YourDigitalRights.org](https://YourDigitalRights.org) if you'd like to chat.

</comment><comment><USER50> Hi! I'm a co-founder of Change [1]. CHANGE connects our network of today's most resonant nonprofits with brands to power donation rewards.

With consumer activism on the rise, our rewards system allows brands to be at the forefront of social responsibility while actively engaging the most coveted demographic. 59% of Change users consistently share branded content with their online following after redeeming their rewards. On average, every $6.67 in donated rewards results in one unique user sharing branded content on their Instagram story - $36 less than the average payment for nano influencers.

We quit our jobs 6 months ago during COVID-19 to start this. Check out our mobile app [2]. Change is looking to grow its network! If there are any nonprofits or brands you would like to see on Change, let us know! We would love to reach out or be introduced! Let me know if you are interested in learning more

[1] www.getchange.io [2] Mobile app: www.link.getchange.io/app

</comment><comment><USER51> I don't identify myself as a social entrepreneur but we built Cloudron around 2014 for personal reasons. When Google Reader shut down, we realized the importance of self-hosting and data ownership. Initially, we started writing our own apps but mid-way recognized that there is already a plethora of self- hostable (especially opensource) software out there. It's just that those apps are really hard to deploy. So, we now make a smart server platform that you can install on any cloud server or home server and you can easily install and maintain those apps.

Over time, we had to make many decisions around outside investment, salaries and target audience. We make choices based on whether it has social impact and whether our day to day work solves problems that we personally care about and for other privacy minded people like us. For example, we did not pursue outside investment (despite offers) and decided to retain 100% ownership of the company. We felt taking funding will make us focus on large enterprises and the product will take a different direction (k8s anyone?), quite far from any social impact. Investors, who we met, seemed to care more about 100x growth than our cause and some even laughed at the idea - "who wants to selfhost email?".

Same for salaries, we took a heavy pay cut for the initial 2-3 years just to to get product going along (and so many pivots). What kept us going is that we felt there is a social aspect to the product and if we don't do this nobody will. With a bit of luck, today we are profitable and can pay ourselves decent salary now (fwiw, I am based in bay area).

Just wanted to share our story, I don't know if it's relevant to what you are asking :) Ultimately, we want normal people and businesses to self-host and have complete control over their data (I wish we had the resources to make a hardware appliance that sits alongside the router). I understand I am not curing cancer or solving world hunger, but I want to do my bit moving the privacy needle :) !

<comment><USER35> I have used cloudrun before when I didn't have much technical knowledge.

It is awesome. You might also be interested in this comment: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24171800](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24171800)

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I created Treets ( [https://treets.org](https://treets.org) ), a basic shop that currently plants 5 trees in areas of need around the world for every item sold. The challenge was finding the right partners also focused on sustainability from the fabric to the continued maintenance and oversight of trees.

The issue I saw was many companies were claiming to be eco-conscious with planting trees but behind the scenes their product was harmful and their tree planting was merely donating ~$1 from $70+ items. Currently Treets continues to plant more trees than it costs to operate and I'll continue to run it so long as that holds true.

</comment><comment><USER53> Ecosia ([https://www.ecosia.org/](https://www.ecosia.org/)) is a search engine based in Germany which spends most of its profits in reforestation efforts by collaborating with local non-profit organizations. They also publish their monthly financial reports here: [https://blog.ecosia.org/ecosia-financial- reports-tree-planti...](https://blog.ecosia.org/ecosia-financial-reports-tree- planting-receipts/)

Disclaimer: Not related to them in any way but recently came to know about them when they hit the 100 million count of trees planted.

</comment><comment><USER54> I built the community at [https://collective.energy](https://collective.energy) to help environmental entrepreneurs have a platform to find an audience, get feedback, and collaborate!

<comment><USER55> It looks interesting - but...

The first thing i did was hit the search button to see if the site could help with my own projects - being asked to login when I tried was pretty jarring.

If I ran across this in the wild, that behavior would probably be enough to leave without bookmarking.

<comment><USER54> Hey HugeAcumen, that is great feedback. I've now changed the permissions to allow guests to be able to search. Check it out again and feel free to join us if you'd like :)

<comment><USER55> That's great, thanks :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> My YC-Alum cofounder and I just launched Smiiles.com to provide the highest quality masks to the homeless.

We started when a friend asked if we could help get masks to homeless in LA, and our friends from TOMs and Bombas inspired us to use the 1 for 1 model.

We are currently in a friends and family launch and in talks for retail distribution.

Our first goal is to provide 300,000 masks a month to LA county.

My HN friends can visit to order (3 packs = free shipping): Http://Smiiles.com/anthony

Also check us out on IG @givesmiiles

\- Partners include LA County Department of Health, Flowspace, Flexport and Webflow.

<comment><USER57> [The parser of HN does not like Http with a capital H. Edit your comment to change it to an h so it become clickable.]

<comment><USER56> Doh! I missed the edit deadline...

But here it is: [http://smiiles.com/anthony](http://smiiles.com/anthony)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Consider the social impact of the way digital marketing works today: it is completely based on surveillance. This creates mistrust and it is the reason conversion rates are so small. Makes people feel used.

Based on my research while doing my postgrad at Cambridge, I figured out a way to scale empathy: no need for personal data, no need for intrusive technologies, no need for excessive details.

Today we work on this social impact if you will: make people feel understood.

<comment><USER12> > my research while doing my postgrad at Cambridge, I figured out a way to > scale empathy: no need for personal data, no need for intrusive > technologies, no need for excessive details.

How??

<comment><USER58> My research was around "behavioural causality." The simple way to put it is: any human behaviour can be explained by a core motivation (4 of them) and driving emotion (8 of them). Just as all the music is made with just a handful of notes, the same way no matter how complex a behaviour, it's just a combination of these 2 factors. Of course it's a bit more complicated, but that's the gist of it.

Now, let's say you want to use this for advertising: if you know the equation behind the decision to adopt a product, then you can put in you ad the right copy (i.e. stimuli for the required emotion). People who are ready to switch will feel understood.

Happy to share more if it's relevant to you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Very related: _Founders Pledge_

Founders Pledge is a charitable initiative, where entrepreneurs make a commitment to donate at least 2% of their personal proceeds to charity when they sell their business. Inspired by effective altruism, the mission of Founders Pledge is to "empower entrepreneurs to do immense good"

[https://founderspledge.com/](https://founderspledge.com/)

</comment><comment><USER60> I'm trying to help people host their own websites instead of trusting their social data to big tech. It started as an open source blogging system, but I think it takes a hosted option to be sufficiently accessible. Still a very new project: [https://simpleblogs.org/](https://simpleblogs.org/)

<comment><USER35> Major problem is support and management. Hosting can be automated to a degree and has been by many projects. Some open source software charge one time setup fee for their automated DO/scaleway/cloud install button.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Social entrepreneur here. Background: [https://www.sunnyirrigation.com](https://www.sunnyirrigation.com)

I just feel the premise of the question begs a little bit of helpful correction. Social entrepreneurs don't _necessarily_ place social impact _above_ profit. (Rather the social impact is extraordinarily hard to quantify). But true that S-E's do weigh the value of social-impact vis-a-vis profit. I would argue though they do so mostly in their intentionality compared with the alternatives they could have otherwise embarked on when they decided to form a social impact venture in the first place.

I began writing on some of the philosophy speaking to the impact-profit distinction which is very often framed as a dichotomy. If there's interest I'll finish and post it.

</comment><comment><USER62> A company called xocial would fit the bill. They're a registered B-Corporation. From their FAQ:

xocial is a team of do-gooders (okay, okay, developers, strategists and investors) who want to use technology to make us better parents, friends, coworkers, bosses, businesses and citizens. Instead of measuring our popularity, xocial measures our positive social impact. The fact that we're measuring it means we can compete with each other to see who can do the most good—which is where our idea for competitive kindness came from.

[https://www.xocial.com/faqs](https://www.xocial.com/faqs) [https://app.xocial.com/](https://app.xocial.com/)

</comment><comment><USER63> One of the great joys of making a profit has been giving to causes and needs that tug on my heart strings. Please help me understand the logic of how operating a business at a loss (eschewing profits) has a greater impact than having money to put towards said impact.

Ex. Bill Gates

<comment><USER64> A 'not-for-profit' does not mean it doesn't make a profit. It means that profits generated are used to further the purpose of the organisation and not, for example, for shareholder enrichment. A loss-making organisation could only be sustainable if it was receiving grants or donations, in which case it is more likely to be a charity than NFP.

<comment><USER63> OP said "social entrepreneur" placing "social impact over profit".

That's not a charity it's a weak business.

<comment><USER64> Meaning that social impact is prioritised over profit. There's still no constraint on making profit, and there is the same potential to be financially successful.

Many, if not most, businesses aim to make profit regardless of their social impacts — they've probably never even thought about what they are. It's easy to say that employing people and giving them a salary is the most useful social impact a business can (or should) have, but when you factor in negative externalities that may not be true.

A social entrepreneur actively aims to make a positive social impact. It's not about it being a weak business or a charity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Seedspot based in Phoenix ([https://seedspot.org](https://seedspot.org)) is an incubator that helps a whole bunch of social ventures every year. The few demo days i attended had rather amazing ventures present.

</comment><comment><USER66> Habe a look at the World Summit Award (WSA) and its sister project the European Youth Award (EYA) - now known as WSA Young Innovators. There are a lot of cool projects going on!

* [https://wsa-global.org/](https://wsa-global.org/) * [https://eu-youthaward.org/](https://eu-youthaward.org/) * [https://wsa-global.org/wsa_categories/wsa-young-innovators/](https://wsa-global.org/wsa_categories/wsa-young-innovators/)

</comment><comment><USER67> The top level replies here are interesting, I think, for the HN crowd.

There's some great examples of social good - helping homelessness, poor countries, the starving, the environment etc.

I don't see anything though related to digital human rights and fixing the surveillence marketing & surveilance state activites that have overcome the web. As a tech crowd i find that very intriguing.

If anyone has examples of what they're doing in this space I'd like to hear it?

I'm thinking of things like Solid, Matrix, Sovrin, and so on... this area seems to be growing rapidly and it interests me alot

<comment><USER51> About digital rights and data ownership, I wrote about my company here - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24170790](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24170790)

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> I'm in the process of stringing together a gsuite type offering with open source packages like nextcloud and wildduck. The plan is to be a cooperative owned by its members (customers and employees), and to let them be the main arbiters of social ends. I'm expecting privacy and the environment to be key concerns from my research so far. Not currently open for signups while I get some design and marketing help from a freelancer and tune some of the account/identity handling.

</comment><comment><USER69> Yep, and loving every minute of it. I left a SWE career and am focused on growing ImpactUpgrade.com, where we solely serve nonprofits with all things digital and operations. We're primarily working with some larger organizations that tackle child sex trafficking. Hiring like hotcakes -- would love to chat with anyone interested in working with us.

Happy to dive into detail on the specifics, for profit for good vs nonprofit, the downsides of tech volunteering, etc.

</comment><comment><USER70> I'm working on a project called The People's Devs about doing pro bono dev work for social justice groups or organizations. Currently it's just me helping my art studio build an app to help artists and those struggling to get funding for housing and supplies. Haven't been sure how to scale and get more people, but I'm hoping it'll grow organically over time rather than chasing specific types of devs or organizations.

</comment><comment><USER71> I'm starting an open collaborative knowledge sharing platform for personalised learning that would be registered as a non profit if things go well. First release on the way: [https://sci-map.org/](https://sci-map.org/) From what I've seen there's really few social projects aiming for an exponential growth, startup style.

</comment><comment><USER72> I built givecrew, an app to donate with your friends as a team. The goal is to have a larger impact by grouping together your funds, donating together, and making a social long lasting experience.

[https://www.givecrew.org/](https://www.givecrew.org/)

</comment><comment><USER73> I develop opensource software, so people don't need to pay for software!

Wouldn't that be a nice world to live in?

</comment><comment><USER74> I co-founded Raisely, we're a social enterprise. Impact is baked into our constitution, we report on it before profit, we restrict who can use our SaaS and we're a bcorp. I wouldn't call it "riding a wave" or just "talk" - it's just genuine global citizenship.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've just checked your site out, I really like that you offer core services for free and then up-sell on marginal services!

I'm curious -- who do you report the impact to, and how?

Is there a framework in how you went about pricing to balance the profit- motive and the impact-motive?

<comment><USER74> There isn't much around to govern social enterprises, so we don't have much of a framework.

We report impact regularly internally (it's in dashboards the whole team has access to) and through the B-Corp certification we get assessed in detail every few years. Our staff hold us to account, more than our customers or the law.

For us we found a mechanism where benefit and profit are aligned, and I think most good social enterprises have done the same. That's to say that the more impact we have, the healthier we are on classic business metrics.

<comment><USER75> Can you tell me a little more about the mechanism you found? I'm understanding it as your staff holding to you account -- how do these conversations typically go?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> Literally doing capitalism 2.0. We make it easy to use your shareholder rights to push for change among the companies and funds you invest in.

For example: [https://www.yourstake.org/petition/disclose-corporate- politi...](https://www.yourstake.org/petition/disclose-corporate-political- activity/)

</comment><comment><USER77> Bill Gates and Elon Musk are two of the best examples of effective social entrepreneurship.

Bill Gates made the money and then spent it socially on vaccine research, reducing disease, improving education, etc.

Elon Musk's efforts are more directly social-entrepreneurial. He's helping to move the entire world away from gas powered vehicles (Tesla/Solar City), reducing urban congestion and improving rural life (SpaceX/Starlink), and trying to back up civilization on other planetary bodies (SpaceX).

I think the idea of "social entrepreneurship" is plagued by the problem of "serving two masters" when you really need focus to be successful.

Elon Musk clearly is clearly doing social entrepreneurship, but in practice that just means running successful (and relatively traditional) capitalist enterprises. Gates was even more conventional with his path. Both are doing a lot more good than most people who call themselves social entrepreneurs.

<comment><USER78> Would the founder of vegan restaurant be considered a social entrepreneur? As by growing their business, more people will consume non meat-based food, and in fine help reduce climate change.

Defining the boundaries of social entrepreneurship would require a whole separate thread.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> I used to work at [https://maishameds.org/](https://maishameds.org/) which is working on pharmaceutical distribution in East Africa.

</comment><comment><USER80> Your ask is pretty ambiguous. What specific questions do you have?

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, that's my bad. The thinking I had in mind when making the post is that entrepreneurship is difficult enough and the desire to make social impact introduces a sometimes competing demand.

I wanted to get some perspective on what this is like and if there were any role models out there to study as I am keen on going down this road!

<comment><USER74> I think it's certainly an extra thing to consider and just focusing on profit is maybe easier in the short term, but I think profit without purpose quickly leads a company directionless and staff demoralised.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> A few years ago, I gave up a "successful" career as a hat-wearer and started minimizing my upkeep time and spending.

I am now 3000+ commits into a project I enjoy writing.

</comment><comment><USER82> Yes, we work with farmers in India - we teach them organic and natural farming and we find ways to sell their produce to customers in the cities. www.unifield.in

<comment><USER35> That's neat. I don't have experience with farms/agriculture so pardon my ignorance.

Are there existing centralized communication systems to know which farmers are growing which crop in a state or country at what rate?

Centralized and vertical farming doesn't work with small farmers and there are too many of them but it's hard to get them to lease the land and start your own hub afaik.

With ground water depletion, lack of storage facilities, distribution channels, capital and good tooling. It's a hard problem.

Would it help/work to have a federal level planning system that farmers can use to decide which crops to grow and how. Get support through a hedge fund and be able to reuse tools.

<comment><USER82> We work with farmers in India. There is data on what is being grown in various areas but not fine grained enough or updated often enough for our purposes.

If you are in the US the reality of farming is very different there vs-a-vie the situation in India.

<comment><USER35> I live in India.

> There is data on what is being grown in various areas but not fine grained > enough or updated often enough for our purposes.

Right? Do you think farmers would self report that data in exchange of getting real time data from other farms? Would they care about recommendation on what to grow and pricing?

There are lot of groups for techies online and self reporting channels but I haven't found any good ones for farmers in india. Can you list them for me if you know about them?

I would love to talk more. Email is in the profile.

<comment><USER82> It would be very difficult to get farmers to self-report anything unless what they get in return is quite tangible. I am not familiar with any network/system that does this effectively in India and at scale.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> I've started giving cash to poor/needy within my vicinity; I believe it's the easiest/efficient way to help poor families;

</comment><comment><USER83> And yesterday I donated to [https://donate.wikimedia.org](https://donate.wikimedia.org)

</comment><comment><USER84> Loop you in for what purpose? Can you share more?

<comment><AUTHOR> The thinking I had in mind when making the post is that entrepreneurship is difficult enough and the desire to make social impact introduces a sometimes competing demand.

I wanted to get some perspective on what this is like and if there were any role models out there to study as I am keen on going down this road!

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> my friend started this initiative to help give back knowledge to community on specific categories like gardening, hiking etc He brings experts to give hour long interactive webinars, he has slapped together a quick wordpress site [https://enlightenedsapiens.com/](https://enlightenedsapiens.com/)

</comment><comment><USER86> I feel like you should first try to become self-sustainable just to be able to support your idea and team.

</comment><comment><USER87> I work over at the non-profit Internet Archive running their Open Library. There are a lot of people in the space, applying their entrepreneurial affinities towards public good. I spent ~5 years doing startups before joining the Internet Archive.

Been here for ~5 years.

There's pretty high leverage for impact. It's very fun and satisfying work. Big community of passionate, smart people who care.

This can be true... and at the same time, I'd say there hasn't been a day which has gone by where I haven't felt impostor syndrome as I'm forced to compare my work against the aggressive forward progress achieved by well funded and staffed for-profit organizations.

One of the reasons talent steers clear of non-profits is circumstantial. VCs (who have a vested interest in smart people starting companies or joining their portfolio companies) encourage smart people to do startups. Makes sense, not bad advice.

But this also results in a strange form of dissonance where I'm perfectly certain millions of people could do better work (better design, engineering, and PM'ing) than I'm doing, and yet in the past 5 years, no one has come along and done it.

I think it's in part this self fulfilling prophecy why more, talented people don't try the non-profit path. You likely won't earn stock and may not save up enough to buy an Bay Area house.

1\. The impact at non-profits can be extraordinarily high.

For years, I was the only PM / SWE / ops / dir of openlibrary.org responsible for ~3M+ patrons. We were enabling millions of meaningful book borrows for patrons and students. I've been able to independently drive large programs forward, shape partnerships, and am afforded a massive amount of trust and agency w/o having to escalate through a chain of 20 directors.

2\. Many non-profit orgs (Wikimedia, Internet Archive, Mozilla, EFF, et al) offer competitive salaries

(I guess SF is a magical place) I'm still able to earn (sans stock) w/ a competitive 6-figure salary.

3\. Non-profits can offer opportunities for self-directed personal growth

As someone who considers themselves an early stage "startup person", I've been able to (at my discretion) participate in community organization (50+ contributors), project planning & management, design, devops, software engineering, program creation, and partnerships (I've helped lead a design partnership with the Tradecrafted Group & Rutger's University). I've mentored 3 interns and have had ample opportunities to participate in public speaking.

4\. Flexibility

I work remotely with a diverse group of people from all over the world (Canada, New Zealand, Switzerland, Amsterdam, India, Italy, etc) :)

5\. The team & mission

The people I work with care so much.

Caveats: Non-profits are like startups in another way; I've found myself perpetually having to move quickly and balance time constraints (knowing even if I build something people love, the "rocket fuel" or funding is seldom available to scale up the team we need). This also means (at least for Internet Archive) it can be hard to specialize and I don't always get to build the sexiest solutions with the latest tech.

</comment><comment><USER88> You mean like Amazon that doesn't make a profit, and passes on their vast, amazing operational efficiency basically for free?

Or Walmart that makes very thin margins and uses their power to force profits out of the value chain (they sit down with suppliers and require them to reduce margin) and has a policy of keeping margins extremely low themselves, thereby creating massive surpluses and helping people with little financial means more than any other program?

People focus so much in 'profit' when that's usually a narrow slice of what's going on.

When people are paying you for stuff or services, most of what is happening is value creation of some kind.

If people are not willing to pay you, it might be a sign that what you are doing is not useful to them.

The amount of 'surplus' generated for the customer is usually not even measured, particularly for consumers (it's called 'consumer surplus' and it's their version of profit).

If you are creating a ton of consumer surplus, then worrying about your narrow slice of profit doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

If you're an NGO not creating a ton of consumer surplus then you are a _value destroyer_ not a _value creator_ and you're basically burning money, truly wasteful. (I'm not saying NGOs are that, but they can be).

There's no such thing as 'Capitalism 2.0' \- build a company, create surpluses, be a good actor, and take some margin as profit, or not, whatever you want, it's a side show.

</comment><comment><USER89> there is no capitalism x.y here nor social just "democratic"(?) politics. i.e. you harvest votes, you want as many as possible zombie voters or as many as possible from a specific proffesional/social branch or company (unions anyone?)

</comment><comment><USER90> I am walking the talk...

Google this: Welcome to XClave by Markus Allen

<comment><USER91> This appears to be a pyramid scheme...

</comment></comment><comment><USER92> You can ask literally anyone involved in the music industry...

</comment><comment><USER93> no

but if i'm going to start a business the best way to make an impact is to create a business model that can sustainably provide a true living wage plus benefits for all employees. that would be my "social impact".

</comment><comment><USER94> I am walking the talk - impact over profits.

Google this: Welcome to XClave by Markus Allen

</comment><comment> daniel-s The way that you know that you're making a social impact or benefiting society then you're making money. Social benefit and making profits are the same thing.

There are exceptions of course, like if you made money by cheating via violence or because you got the government to grant you special privileges. Otherwise, if you're playing by the rules then your profit is the only objective, rational way to reason about your social impact. The more profit you make, the greater that you know your impact has been.

<comment><USER95> I strongly disagree with your statement that profit is the only objectective, rational measure of social impact.

It would be great if the balance of human and environmental well-being produced by an organization could be captured as such, but I feel it is often much more complicated.

It is clear that a poor child has a lower ability to pay for goods and services than a rich child. Does this mean that goods and services sold to the rich one with a hefty profit margin are more "beneficial to society" than when sold to the poor one at cost?

<comment> daniel-s First, those are two different things. The first is a business selling a product for profit, the second is a charity: giving or subsidising food to a kid.

It's impossible to know how much benefit anyone gets from food. Maybe the rich kid barely notices the food because he lives in abundance, maybe it's his favourite food, maybe the poor kid is starving and desperate, maybe he's overweight and the food is doing him harm, maybe it's the rich kid's favourite food but his brain reacts less favourably to that than the other kid when eating his least favoured food.

The only thing that can be reasoned about any of the above was that rich kid's parents wanted to pay more money for the food than what the stuff going into it cost. The food producer created something more valuable than what he started with. That is the only conclusion that you can objectively reason about from the above.</comment></comment></comment>


"That may be good for the world, but it's not good for us" – Zuckerberg - <AUTHOR> https://diginomica.com/2018/12/06/that-may-be-good-for-the-world-but-its-not-good-for-us-zuckerberg-facebook-and-your-data/ <comment><USER2> I hate to sound like I'm defending Facebook, but this article is kinda bullshit. Both the title and the author's "My Take" bit selectively cherry- pick not a quote, but a few words of a quote, in a way that obscures what was actually said.

To their credit, the full quote is there in the article, but their "analysis" ignores it.

What was actually said:

(in the context of a discussion around reciprocity)

 _We're trying to enable people to share everything they want, and to do it on Facebook. Sometimes the best way to enable people to share something is to have a developer build a special purpose app or network for that type of content and to make that app social by having Facebook plug into it. However, that may be good for the world but it's not good for us unless people also share back to Facebook and that content increases the value of our network. So ultimately, I think the purpose of platform – even the read side – is to increase sharing back into Facebook._</comment>


Google Removes Twitter From "Real Time Search" And Replaces It With Google Plus - <AUTHOR> http://digitizor.com/2011/07/05/google-disables-realtime-search/

<comment><USER2> Ewww. The obnoxious, giant ad right in the sweet spot of this page made me decide not to link to this story. Saved to Instapaper.

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2727463>

</comment><comment><USER4> but search in public streams is still available for Google.

P.S. Google + Twitter search in parallel: <http://got.linkstore.ru>

</comment><comment><USER5> I love how they're handicapping one service at a time. And this is just in a week.</comment>


Raycaster in HTML5 / JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://www.dottech.nl/raycaster

<comment><USER3> My favourite javascript raycaster was P01's "Wolf5k" (<http://www.wolf5k.com/>) - a raycaster in 5k of Javascript: before there was any such thing as canvas! It worked using an obscure, two colour, but programable image format - .xbm files, now killed by the browsers, so it won't work anymore.

But there is a great article on the Opera Dev blog about how to build your own like the parent's: [http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/creating- pseudo-3d-games-...](http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/creating- pseudo-3d-games-with-html-5-can-1/) (in fact, looking at the code it seems like this post is just a re-write of the Opera code by Jacob Seidelin - <USER2> it might me a coincidence)

<comment><AUTHOR> If I get bored again, I will make a version without canvas using only <div> elements :)

Code was written from scratch, so any similarities with the code you are referring to are coincidental, although the technique I used is exactly the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There are also these old html5 2d canvas experiments: <http://www.benjoffe.com/code/>

Very similar to this one specifically: <http://www.benjoffe.com/code/demos/canvascape/textures>

<comment><USER5> Uses the same textures, but the second one you linked to seems to be much quicker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Pretty near. It keeps the CPU pegged at 100% with textures/lighting/shadows on my Macbook Air, and that drops to 90% when I disable all three. Although maybe not generally applicable to games, it'd be nice if this didn't redraw unless the actor moved.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just did a quick modification so that the screen is only redrawn if the actor has moved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Need some nazis to shoot.

</comment><comment><USER8> Well, it gets about one frame per second on a core2duo... that should be about one frame every five seconds on an iphone. Not that it isn't a nice piece of code, but I have to ask, would there be any more point to writing this in Javascript/HTML5 than there would be in a more appropriate tool for the job, if it weren't for this inane restriction against Flash on mobile devices? And is there any way that given the tools at hand, it could be written to run as smoothly as it would in Flash? To me this is just more proof that Steve Jobs was wrong -- if this were written in Flash it would get 60 fps on my box and at least 15 on a mobile. The more I see people trying to push the boundaries of Javascript with stuff like this, the more I have to laugh when I hear people tout HTML5 as the Flash-killer.

<comment><USER9> I'd blame the implementation, not the platform in this case though, seeing how others have linked much faster JS raycasters.

<comment><USER8> I have to agree. But I still think it's weird that we're giving up Flash, with the argument basically that 3D games aren't necessary in the browser, and then going back to the stone age to reproduce basic 1993-era functionality in Javascript of all things.

<comment><USER9> I think the general attitude is quite opposite. We're giving up Flash _because_ browser-based gaming actually seems a viable thing. And therefore community feels the need to take control of the platform away from singular corporation (Adobe) to somewhat neutral committee (WHATWG).

<comment><USER8> This doesn't really answer the question. In what way is it viable if it's currently a tiny fraction of the speed of what's easily attainable with a plugin, and shows little chance of improvement over the next five years?

<comment><USER9> Could you point some benchmark actually showing canvas performing at tiny fraction of Flash's speed? Considering that they both are ECMAScript-based and Firefox got even some code from Adobe for their JS engine, I'd imagine that the performance difference wouldn't be that great.

I found one (micro)benchmark[1], and in my quick unscientific tests, canvas- version performed quite well compared to Flash (70 FPS for canvas, and 40 FPS for Flash, Firefox 7 on Windows 7).

And I certainly believe that there is great chance of improvement, as the APIs an techniques are quite young yet. See Mozillas Azure project as an example: [http://blog.mozilla.com/joe/2011/04/26/introducing-the- azure...](http://blog.mozilla.com/joe/2011/04/26/introducing-the-azure- project/)

[1] <http://themaninblue.com/writing/perspective/2010/03/22/></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Rate Your Politicians and Compare Candidates - <AUTHOR> https://www.politicianreport.org <comment><USER2> 1\. What is the purpose of rating legislators? A minority necessarily opposes each legislator, since they voted against them. A Republican likely won't be happy with a Democrat, and vice-versa. Ratings don't track voting, do they? An example is Nancy Pelosi, where she is consistently elected with a large district majority yet her rating is low. But if ratings did track voting, they would just reflect the party majority of a district (a legislator from 90% Democrat district would have better rating than one from 60% Democrat district).

2\. How do you verify the rating is from someone in the correct district?

3\. What API are you using for data?

4\. You may already be aware, but zip codes don't map 1-to-1 with districts. IIRC about 10% of zip codes match more than one district, so a full street address is needed to match the correct district.

</comment><comment><USER3> The site is no longer active</comment>


Why use JavaScript rather than PHP on the server? - <AUTHOR> http://www.scriptol.com/javascript/javascript-vs-php.php

<comment><USER2> This is really the worst bit of writing I've ever seen reach the front page - in terms of factual content, technical insight and writing style.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for you advice. But could you elaborate about the technical insight? The author has also made Advanced Explorer, a JavaScript + Node.js version of a file manager previously written in Java, so he has some knowledge on the topic.

<comment><USER3> It would probably help if you had experience on both sides - as the comment suggests, the author doesn't seem to have much insight into how PHP works: "PHP also allows you to link libraries written in C, but we must recompile the interpreter with the appropriate options".

<comment><USER4> You mean like this?

[http://devzone.zend.com/1435/wrapping-c-classes-in-a-php- ext...](http://devzone.zend.com/1435/wrapping-c-classes-in-a-php-extension/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I want to cite a answer from Quora by Michael Hanson(<http://www.quora.com/Michael-Hanson>):

The use of client-side JavaScript is uncontroversial - most anybody who is targeting the web browser as their client platform will choose to use JavaScript to implement the client user interface and logic. Many client applications which required plugins or native code can now be implemented in JavaScript using advanced HTML5 features.

I presume your question is actually… why server-side JavaScript?

One language, one toolset

The use of a single platform on the client and server means that developer skills will transfer more easily from client to server work. This can lead to more consistent project quality and easier developer scheduling.

DOM and library portability

By using JavaScript everywhere, it is possible to have the same functions on both the client and server, and to run them "close to the data" to avoid unnecessary latency and bandwidth costs. Using libraries like jsdom, it is even possible to write DOM manipulation code on the server, so that more capable clients can render the UI on the client while backwards-compatibility (with IE6, for example) is maintained through server-side rendering.

Node.js and asynchronicity

The use of server-side JavaScript is still quite new, however, and the critical development there is node.js. By using node.js, developers can implement fast, JIT-compiled, garbage-collected server logic, with libraries that enforce asynchronicity. Asynchronous servers are (usually) able to deliver more application throughput than threaded servers on the same hardware, but asynchronous (or "event-based", or "non-blocking") server programming has traditionally been very difficult and error prone.

JavaScript, by the fact of being a highly dynamic functional language, tends to make writing event-based programs a bit simpler, or at least easier for the average programmer to comprehend.

For more background on event-based server programming, read up on Twisted and libevent, and read the classic papers "Threads: Threat or Menace?", "Why Threads Are a Bad Idea (For Most Purposes)", and "Threads Considered Harmful".

Source : [http://www.quora.com/Why-would-someone-want-to-build-an- enti...](http://www.quora.com/Why-would-someone-want-to-build-an-entire- application-using-only-JavaScript-client-and-server-side/answer/Michael- Hanson)

<comment><USER6> Threads are not a menace if implemented correctly. Note how almost every evented system is written in a language with horrible threads support, e.g. Python. Take a language like Go or Haskell, and threads become a highly performant (by virtue of transparently asynchronous I/O operations) means of writing code with many threads of control, and saves you from getting bundled up in callback spaghetti. (I love Twisted, but I really don't miss the callback spaghetti it inevitably causes. InlineCallbacks made it nicer, but it was still a pain.)

If you absolutely want to use JavaScript, then yes, you'll be writing event- driven code using a continuation passing style. JavaScript is probably one of the better languages for doing so, since the language is fundamentally single- threaded, and so virtually everything is asynchronous. The biggest argument for this is that you don't have to worry about synchronization. But please don't imply that event-driven programming is The One Way, or even the right way at all. If you want to scale, then you will eventually need to consider threading of some kind, whether it be the poor man's kind that Python and Node use, spawning multiple processes, or the good kind, fibers that automatically multiplex onto OS threads, as the Go and Haskell runtimes implement. Even the async poster-boy, nginx, does this via its workers.

<comment><USER7> While it's true that threads are ok if implemented correctly, one needs to be smart to correctly work with threads, and still any concurrent code will be ~10x more expensive to write and maintain.

In my perspective lack of threads is a blessing because it takes this complexity out of the equation.

On the other hand, working with async callbacks also takes training and more careful thought of the bindings and closures.

For me, after 6 months with node, I can say that I like it. It's superfast, ample modules to work with, and javascript is very convenient for working with data.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, like I said, running single-threaded, e.g. in Python with the GIL, or in JavaScript, saves you having to worry about synchronization. But that should be the only big argument for it, not performance and scalability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The argument about "same language on client and server" doesn't hold for me.

For one thing, client and server share only a small part of the overall functionality. Usually the database interfacing on the server and the user interfacing on the client will require substantially different code.

For another point, Python, Ruby and even PHP come with a lot of available packages and libraries. Node.js has lots of them too, but generally I prefer Django's API design to be more pleasant to work with than node.js

</comment><comment><USER9> I have been teaching myself programming and web development for a little less than 2 years now using only online resources. I have been learning and tinkering with many languages and frameworks including asp.net, rails, php, and flask. Each language/framework taught me something new and showed me the fundementals in a novel way which helped me reinforce them. But recently, I was becoming frustrated because after all this study, I still had little to show for my effort as far as shipping things. So I decided I would focus on making some simple apps that consume apis.

I have found node and the express framework specifically to be the only tools so far that don't overwhelm me and allows me just hack things together without having to google too much. JavaScripts pleasantly simple syntax, and expresses minimalism let me focus on the important parts of web development like how things fit together on a high level. Eventually, I will go back to learning Ruby and Rails, but for now I am happy to actually be working on things instead of just studying.

So, from my perspective, I like server-side js more than PHP and I think it will continue to grow and improve.

</comment><comment><USER10> The author is actually a Physicist who invented time machine in 2003.

</comment><comment><USER10> Please tell me it was written in 2002.

<comment><AUTHOR> According to Wikipedia, "Node.js was created by Ryan Dahl starting in 2009". Node is a part of the equation.

<comment><USER11> Also, the horrible image on the right with unreadable text has a copyright of 2013.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Node.js is too opinionated about how to do things that it could ever replace anything on the server-side of things, be it PHP, Python, Ruby, Lua, whatever. Their "event-driven, non-blocking I/O" experiment should be entirely optional, and for the afficionados only. Do you know of any other scripting engine that imposes that kind of experiments on its users? I would be entirely ok with replacing mod_php or su_php with mod_js or su_js, but I am really not interested in joining their callback hell.

<comment><AUTHOR> Each asynchronous function has its synchronous counterpart, so you may choose the best option, each has its advantages.

<comment><USER13> I'll add that Javascript programmers are more familiar with event-based programming; it's already how they work client-side.</comment></comment></comment>


Sam Altman (Y Combinator) on the Potential of AI - <AUTHOR> http://blog.samaltman.com/ai <comment><USER2> Andrew's comment was very eye opening for me as well.

Is it possible we as humans have a well performing optimized search/compute algorithm in our brains that we have not been able to discover and recreate in machines yet ? In essence are we just bio-robots and procreation is just a method to bootstrap the next iteration of the bio-machine ?

If you look at the Boston Dynamics quad-legged robot, it "almost" feels like a real dog. CPU instead of Brain. Wires instead of Blood. Steel frame vs bones. The major difference being it doesn't have a large data set of experiences to behave like a real dog. Behavior/Emotions can be bootstrapped and eventually collected as experiences to query for future reactions.</comment>


Embed individual Tweets on your blog - <AUTHOR> http://blog.apture.com/2009/08/how-to-embed-a-single-tweet-on-your-blog/

<comment><USER2> What is that horrid bar doing on the top of my browser window? I hate these things. They eat up vertical room, and the worst of them can't be dismissed.</comment>


Are Hackintosh Users More Passionate About the Mac Than Apple? - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/59x5dq/are-hackintosh-users-more-passionate-about-the-mac-than-apple <comment><USER2> Hackintosh users are rare and a special breed in my experience but one thing definitely ties them together - they definitely love Mac more than Mac loves them.

<comment><USER3> In my experience they were mostly devs and QA who wanted to do something on macOS/iOS but not bad enough to invest money into a new computer just for that. I'd call that 'need' not 'love'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm a Hackintosh user. I already owned a Macbook Pro and wanted a decently spec'ed desktop system for running macOS on, and wasn't too keen on paying though the nose for the non-modular non-upgradeable Mac Pro. I'm not sure what Apple was thinking when they made the Mac Pro. A desktop machine that looks like a trash can, with no drive bays or expansion slots? Doesn't sound very "pro" to me, and is also completely out of my budget range. The iMac has the same issue as the Mac Pro, and forces you to buy a monitor that you can't upgrade later.</comment>


Run Containers from Slack - <AUTHOR> https://cto.ai/ <comment><USER2> Why on earth would I want to develop from within slack?

What problem is this solving?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [https://cto.ai/docs/overview](https://cto.ai/docs/overview)</comment>


Justin Bieber, Venture Capitalist, has been investing since 2009 - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/oh-no-justin-bieber-is-on-the-cover-of-forbesfor-investing-in-startups-2012-5

<comment><USER2> His manager, Scott 'Scooter' Braun, is Universal Music's first entrepreneur in residence:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3979647>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm impressed by his business savvy considering his young age, but he owes at least part of his fame to technology and social media, due to his YouTube start. And he's very rich. That helps.

<comment><USER3> It's not his business savvy per se - its his savvy in ensuring he has sound advisors to encourage and assist in this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The Ashton Kutcher model. Good for him.</comment>


Gzip Compression Support for Amazon CloudFront - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-gzip-compression-support-for-amazon-cloudfront/ <comment><USER2> It's about damn time. This makes S3 actually useful when paired with cloudfront. Before, it was a sad joke of steps and workarounds you had to go through if you wanted to to host static assets from S3 and have them be compressed.</comment>


Child4Child – Beautiful WebGL app to raise your voice for children with cancer - <AUTHOR> https://www.child4child.com <comment><USER2> It's great to see initiatives like this one.</comment>


Rare half-male, half-female cardinal spotted in Pennsylvania - <AUTHOR> https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2019/01/half-male-half-female-cardinal-pennsylvania/ <comment><USER2> Catholics worldwide are confused by that headline.</comment>


SPONSORED: North Korea Is Asia's New Start-Up Hot Spot - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/15/sponsored-north-korea-is-asias-new-start-up-hot-spot/

<comment><USER2> Slightly amusing, but this parody of The Atlantic's sponsored Scientology debacle doesn't really add much to the conversation. The one thing it parodies correctly is "Hey look, we too can publish things that aren't up to our normal editorial standards!" However, this piece blatantly makes up facts (i.e. Instagram & Epicurious opening offices), whereas the Scientology piece was opinionated and disagreeable, but not factually wrong.

In fact, countries have a long history of advertising in magazines under sponsored content. Items like "Come visit XXX" are a staple amongst travel and lifestyle magazines, though such pieces are usually differentiated via different fonts and layouts.

If techcrunch had somethign to add, I wish they had actually argued their point instead of hopping on the "Look, Controversy! Let's ridicule it!" train.

</comment><comment><USER3> I haven't been following the news on the Atlantic's sponsored Scientology story, so I dont' know what the actual parody here is.

However, as a side note, I had a chance to visit North Korea in 2005 with a friend of mine, whose father was (and still is) running an orphanage there (my friend and I are both Koreans - South, but both have overseas citizenship).

(The city we stayed was not Pyoung Yang - the capital city of NK, but a much smaller & poorer place)

Seeing the state of the people was quite heart-breaking. Because of the shortage in electricity and water, the entire city was pitch black by 9pm.

As a programmer myself, the technological dark age that they are in is also a huge concern. At school, students most of the time either do not have computers or use a set of donated computers from foreign aids.

It would take a huge shift in almost all aspects of NK regime to make the Internet available to the people of NK. My heart aches.

</comment><comment><USER4> Is this a joke off of the Atlantic scientology thing?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5057819>

<comment><USER5> It can't be, no jokes are allowed on Hacker News.</comment></comment>


Portraits In Posthumanity - <AUTHOR> http://io9.com/5533867/portraits-in-posthumanity-steve-mann <comment><USER2> I always thought that a pair of video-glasses would be great for coding -- Any HNers here who've used a Heads-Up-Display? Do you think they're good enough for coding yet?</comment>


Google Chrome devices only 5 years of updates then EoL - <AUTHOR> https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/6220366 <comment><USER2> Says not sooner than 6.5 years in most cases or 5 years for some legacy. That's a decent I guess.</comment>