Indie band turns itself into company instead of signing record deal - <AUTHOR> http://www.nme.com/news/various-artists/40832

<comment><USER2> I've quite literally done that before. It worked out OK, but there was never enough capital to market the band properly and we ended up with about 800 CDs that still sit in my friend's closet.

The good part about it is that each member gets an equity stake, and people who are not performers, but also help out the band (guy at merch table, managers, website guy, recording engineer, etc) can get equity stakes as well. That way, everyone is invested in making the best product possible, and sees a tangible return when things start selling.

The bad part was that it was hard to explain retained capital to a drummer. As soon as the band started to turn a profit, people wanted their money out of it. It was impossible to convince them that the money would be better spent marketing the band so that they could sell even more albums/t-shirts.

<comment><USER3> Interesting. I've been in a band before, but never tried to get signed or anything serious.

I'd guess, though, that labels have all sorts of resources to make bands popular that a band "startup" would have trouble tapping into. Do you think this is correct? Or is it just perceived...

<comment><USER2> There were some parts that were difficult, mostly finding vendors. It wasn't exactly easy to figure out who offered the best/cheapest shirts/stickers/cd pressing.

Other than that, if you hire an experienced PR person and booking agent, it is pretty much the same as a record label.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a fascinating action for both parties. Musicians decry the heavy hand and unending greed of most Record labels. Now the label has a vested interest but the band will act independently.

I don't think it's earth shattering in any way, and it's surely not the direction most bands should go as they aren't always the best at making their own decisions, and usually they just care about the music and not the business side of things. Sure a Manager can act as CEO but I still can't see it being a universal platform for bands in the future. What do you guys think?

It will be interesting to see how this band does!

</comment><comment><USER5> This is very common... at least with the people I know. As an example, one of my bands formed an LLC, raised $20k in "VC" and went on the road. Once we got a good enough following, our LLC put together a deal with a record company for distribution. Everyone was happy and we had a good run.

If I may add a nice rant, I hate it when people bitch about evil record labels. Seriously, if an artist gets screwed by a label, it is their fault for not taking the time to learn the business or finding someone who will learn.

<comment><USER6> I have to disagree. Labels are so omnipresent that until very recently, you couldn't get _any_ sales unless you were attached to a big record label. In many ways it was a 4-company monopoly.

Now things are easier for independent labels, but it's still very one-sided. The big names need to be attached to a big label, and that means they're going to have to get screwed.

<comment><USER5> I don't agree. We were able to get sales (including international sales) by being on a tiny label run out of a guy's 1 bedroom, ant infested apt in chicago in 1999.

I agree large labels make it possible to make a good living, but even back in the day it was possible to eek out a living by touring constantly and getting distribution from a one-man label.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love the idea, and I'm glad that Normative is getting some attention. They've got a great sense of what works and what doesn't with the Internet. Check out www.amodernpromise.com - it's one of the best CD sales pages I've ever seen.</comment>


Hard Truths and Happiness - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.exeter.ac.uk/stoicismtoday/2016/12/03/hard-truths-and-happiness-by-john-sellars/ <comment><USER2> > By thinking about death – even the seemingly unbearable death of one's own > child – within the much wider context of a series of natural and inevitable > processes of birth and decay that permeate all aspects of the cosmos, from > microbes to galaxies, we might be able to gain some consolation that this is > simply part of a much larger natural order of things.

This strikes me as a little bit similar to the comforting fiction that the article criticizes. Certainly disease/suffering/death are patterns, but patterns point to underlying mechanisms that can be understood and potentially controlled, not just accepted fatalistically as "the natural order of things".

<comment><USER3> The odds are exceedingly high that you will die. _Maybe_ we'll figure out some form of immortality, but it's overwhelmingly likely that we'll do no more than delay the inevitable. It is absolutely certain that you will experience disease and suffering.

The transhumanistic attitude of "let's look for solutions to death rather than accepting it" is a form of avoidant coping, little different to religious beliefs about the afterlife. _Maybe_ you'll live forever in the singularity, but you'll almost certainly suffer and die and rot. It's better to contemplate that probability now, rather than on your death bed.

<comment><USER4> If I can avoid suffering, dying and rotting until I'm on my deathbed sometime in the far future, then that sounds like a pretty good idea to me.

Better yet if I can delay it until a time of my own choosing rather than being yanked out of existence "when my time comes".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> " _In order to develop this further we might consider a popular critical image of Stoicism: a Stoic is someone who is powerless in the real world and so pretends that his or her happiness is something completely internal and within their own control. Got no money? Easy, just say that money is unnecessary for a good life and the problem is solved. According to a long line of modern critics of Stoicism from Hegel onwards, the Stoic is someone who lies themselves out of reality in order to feel happy in otherwise unpleasant circumstances. It is an example of what Nietzsche called a 'slave morality', ultimately grounded in powerlessness and an inability to face up to some hard truths about life._ "

1\. Well, Stoicism and its nigh identical twin Epicureanism _are_ a response to the fading of classical Greece post Alexander and in the face of the rise of Rome. The idea that they are powerless and "slave" philosophies is kinda true.

2\. The rest of the article does not dispute the first sentence; we all really are powerless in the face of death, etc., etc. The issue the article has is with the word "pretends".

</comment><comment><USER6> "Indeed, the ancient Stoics aimed at eudaimonia which is usually translated as 'happiness'."

I'm not sure that is an accurate translation, Aristotle said it is about "living well and faring well", it's more about a good life than a happy life.

<comment><USER7> > [...] it's more about a good life than a happy life.

I would argue that you cannot disaggregate the two. Only the person living a life can truly make a value judgement on it and if they value it as "good" they are quite literally saying they are happy.

Maybe we're getting caught up by different meanings of happiness. I'm working from happiness being a deep seated contentment (very much "living and faring well") rather than an active effervescent joy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you are interested in stoicism I highly recommend to read A Guide To The Good Life: The Ancient Art Of Stoic Joy by William B. Irvine. It is a really good starting point and gives a good overview.

</comment><comment><USER9> Confronting hard truths about the world we live in doesn't mean we have to cease to love or to be. Understanding that a child's death is possible doesn't make the child die. It's possible to know that and then to live more fully in the moment because of it.

<comment><USER10> I don't know what living more fully in the moment means, or maybe I'm just not good at it. Does it just mean to be unfettered by thoughts of what has been/could be? And the idea is that the thoughts themselves are a detriment to happiness? I can get that, I suppose, but I've never understood "time is short, so live in the moment" sort of thing. I and probably all people have experienced being engaged in something to the point where "intruding" thoughts can't enter...but I'm hesitant to think that more and more of that experience is the ultimate goal. But like I said, I could be thinking apples and oranges.

<comment><USER11> No one's really good at it. There's nothing wrong with thinking (or being thoughtful), but there's a difference between _choosing_ to think about something versus _reflexively_ judging, labelling, ruminating etc. Not being the master of your own thoughts, instead just being along for the ride.

To me, 'living in the moment' sounds awfully similar to the goal of Vipassana Buddhism: accurately perceiving reality (i.e. enlightenment). In that sense, 'living in the moment' is a passive rather than active act: experiencing your life without reflexively (often unconsciously) judging or labelling your experiences. Neither ruminating over the past nor obsessing over the future. Observing without judgement and thinking only when you choose to. A 'skillful' state of mind.

I doubt many, if any, of us are able to perceive things this way, without deliberate cultivation of a non-judgemental mind. I guess that's why the phrase is 'practice meditation'; it is literally 'practising' a specific way of perceiving the world (one that doesn't come naturally to us), just as you have to practice any other skill.

If this all sounds a bit strange, maybe even untrue, give this a try: go somewhere peaceful (a park, your backyard etc.) and just sit down somewhere and 'watch the world go by' for 5 minutes. Try to observe impartially, without labelling, judging or letting your thoughts drift to work, your social circle, what you're having for dinner etc. I suspect most of us (myself included) wouldn't make it past 20 seconds before some thought intruded. If you're a real masochist, try actually meditating for 5 minutes. It's _torture_.

If you try the above, I think you'll realise how little control you have over your own mind. I don't know much about stoicism, but maybe the stoics had a similar notion to the Buddhists. The word 'stoic' has modern connotations of _outward_ calm and impassivity, despite the boiling emotion within. That sounds exhausting, maybe even impossible. But perhaps the original idea was similar to Buddhist philosophy: to master your own thoughts, and outward composure (maybe even 'happiness') would simply be a side-effect.

<comment><USER12> You don't have to be so hard on yourself when "practising meditation" though. There's another piece on the front page of HN right now about using positive reinforcement to influence the behaviour of children. The secular Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (Jon Kabat Zinn) and Mindfulness Self Compassion (Kristen Neff) approaches both take a curious approach to mind wandering. In meditation, every time you notice the mind wandering is a learning experience. Then you go back to focus on the breath or whatever you are doing, and repeat again and again without self criticism. If meditation feels like torture my view is that you're doing it wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Am I a stoic?

As someone who doesn't experience much emotion (usually none) except for my own hubris or pride, I find I'm happier than most people. I also find I have bouts of negative emotions at times, but very few identifiable positive emotional experiences. The number of times I could identify my own "happiness" is about 12...and that's where my life experiences and lifestyle was in a condition I would aspire to for the commensurate time period.

> According to a long line of modern critics of Stoicism from Hegel onwards, > the Stoic is someone who lies themselves out of reality in order to feel > happy in otherwise unpleasant circumstances.

I am considered "different" in many respects, by everyone I spend time around. It doesn't seem to make me much less popular, but I am avoided or included in exchanges, based on this personality. I don't ignore emotion to avoid unpleasant circumstances (although it may be related to childhood experience/trauma at some point), I just don't have it. As per American Psycho, I'm just not there. When diagnosed with a life-threatening condition, I respond (because they want a reaction) - "Everyone dies". So it might seem like it's a coping mechanism when I'm really just trying to accommodate others. When my father gets cancer. I reassess if I want to spend time with him. Nope. Didn't before, don't now.

One day I'll be gone and the whole question becomes moot for me, so I never thought it had a name.

<comment><USER14> You sound like you may be a schizoid.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, that's more like me. tx

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I believe all emotions are instinct. Rallying against your emotions, trying to elicit one over another by simply attempting to force yourself to believe something is bound to fail, because instincts aren't logical.

You have accept you're an animal and your emotions, aka your instincts, guide you to propagate the human race in a way that worked ten thousands of years ago, but no longer works now.

One of the most powerful principles is that your instincts attempt to follow is to keep the same pattern of things that worked before.

Why are you attracted to someone who shares traits of your parents, even self- destructive ones? For that matter, why do you share these same psychological traits? Genes? Bah! It's because what happened, what you were exposed to, regardless of how painful it was, resulted in you being born. So instinctively, it's a good choice.

And to expand on that, this instinctive trait to emulate your parents were within your parents, so your parents did much to emulate their parents, and on and on. So the mere presence of this instinct in your lineage is very strong evidence that it helps keep your lineage alive.

You can see this pattern of behaviour by watching animals. In absence of other problems, they'll follow the same pattern day after day, they'll search the same areas for food, sleep in the same places they did before, etc. It's the safest thing to do, and it's very popular. If you catch a mouse and release it a mile from your home, it will find its way back to your very same property, regardless of better habitats that may exist along the way.

Any attempt to internally debate your desire to follow your instincts, is bound to fail. As soon as the argument seems settled in your favour, and you no longer think about it, you will find yourself creeping back to your own patterns.

So how do you combat this? The answer is continual exposure to alternative thinking patterns. You have to expose yourself over and over again to different thoughts and ideas from what you've been absorbing from your childhood, and never let up.

I'd recommend subliminal audio, which you can listen to while working or doing other things. It also is something you can continue to do for years without spending much effort. You can find a lot of it on youtube, search for "george hutton".

<comment><USER16> I'm with you on the role of emotions, and setting up alternative thinking patterns too. I'm using CBT to do that right now.

But I'm not sure about this subliminal messaging thing. Especially when George Hutton can claim... this product: [https://gumroad.com/l/iDowu](https://gumroad.com/l/iDowu)

I am however open to guided hypnosis, I'd like to try that one day.

<comment><USER15> I'm not trying to endorse the guy. I agree, a lot of the stuff is kind of wacky or downright weird. He has one on becoming a vampire, and another for becoming a god, for a couple of examples.

He has a lot of normal stuff, too, though, like [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8L6SBQ9Mqo&list=PLwNH29STmg...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8L6SBQ9Mqo&list=PLwNH29STmgkd3MSDm8KOZNyb3zlla8223&index=43) (for motivation) and [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEPzSDt8YbQ&list=PLwNH29STmg...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEPzSDt8YbQ&list=PLwNH29STmgkd3MSDm8KOZNyb3zlla8223&index=177) (for confidence). I downloaded a bunch of the audio from videos like these, using youtube-dl, and play them on shuffle. I found his audio to work for me, better than other subliminal stuff I tried.

He uses a combination of binaural beats + subliminals which may have something to do with it. Based on my results at least, I think this combination should be explored further.</comment></comment></comment>


Why I Sold My Startup to Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2011/07/why-i-sold-my-startup-sparkbuy-to-google/ <comment><USER2> Some people might take away from this the idea that you can just build a cool little prototype and Google will come along and snatch you up.

I'd bet this acquisition happened almost entirely due to relationships and salesmanship. Most hackers who don't already know the right people (e.g. former Googlers) would have no chance of pulling this kind of thing off.

Do not try this at home folks. The only real chance of an exit for most startups is one based on actual success in the marketplace.

<comment><USER3> What is true for getting acquired is about as true for acquiring customers. If people don't know about you or haven't heard of your product from other means, you have to break through a wall of indifference.

This is the real value of coverage in the industry press and why I think Steve Blank's fretting over people jockeying for TechCrunch articles, which I initially agreed with, is a little too idealized. Companies get a lot of mileage from being featured in startup industry press outlets. I know it doesn't get them many customers, but it puts them in position to get them. It really helps grow partnerships, boost stature at industry events and frankly increase interest in the founders' future endeavors.

<comment><USER2> Getting tech press works largely based on relationships. If you have those relationships then of course you should exploit them.

For everyone else the only safe bet is to follow Steve Martin's advice and "be so good they can't ignore you"

Reddit didn't get a TechCrunch article until they were acquired.

<comment><USER3> I hesitate to recommend the Steve Martin line to non-performers.

I've known several entrepreneurs who have sunk a year or years of their lives into codebases and eternally-half-built products instead of businesses. Including myself at 20! It's actually a common affliction among game developers looking to become entrepreneurs. They have an artistic vision, no concept of hustle, and just want to put their head down until they get something amazing. It's the artistic E-myth, _The Thief and the Cobbler_ syndrome.

It's an important message because a lot of people today are probably still in this mode of thinking. I really need to write a blog post about it.

<comment><USER2> If you define being "good" as having a quality product that's growing revenue/users successfully then the Steve Martin idea works perfectly.

Plenty of people have grown amazing businesses without being able to attract the attention of TechCrunch or Google's M&A guys.

<comment><USER3> Absolutely agree.

We're all passionate about great products here, right? And stories where great products win despite all odds are what I want to tell my kids at night.

But I'm going to be honest, given a lone founder, I'd prefer to invest in one with great connections and ability to excite people but who is a little clueless (though passionate) about the product. I know that's heresy, but hear me out here. Entrepreneurs almost by definition go into fields where there's a huge gap between how crummy things are and how much better they can be with a little work. And we know that a startup is not going to be as able to define a market as a huge company is. And it's actually better for them not to come in with a lot of assumptions about a fully-formed product that customers "must" love.

So it's honestly pretty important to get someone out there who is going to put the work into making those relationships and selling the product. I know people should rarely concern themselves with improving on their weaknesses, but I think this is one of the few counterexamples. Product and technology wonks really need to know they need to step up their bizdev game or have a co- founder who can do it to succeed as a startup.

To bring this back around to the topic at hand, learn from Dan! He was tireless in presenting Ontela to everyone who would listen to his pitch, and got really good at communicating the best message. And he got some good practice presenting to audiences at conferences before he went into startups (Dan, forgive me for this one):

[http://www.google.com/search?q=dan+shapiro+they+wanted+to+st...](http://www.google.com/search?q=dan+shapiro+they+wanted+to+stone+him)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _Most VCs don't care how long your company takes to show a return – they don't get to re-invest proceeds of their deals, so if you exit early, the money sits in a bank account earning interest for years instead of contributing to their returns._

Can anyone explain why this is the case?

<comment><USER5> Many VCs raise a fund, allocate it, then distribute the proceeds to the limited partners as the investments exit. That's why VCs are sometimes seen simultaneously sitting on several boards, looking for the last one or two investments, and raising the next fund.

<comment><AUTHOR> (OP here) I tried to explain this in my post here: [http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2010/08/vc-insanity- economics...](http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2010/08/vc-insanity-economics/) although rfrey's explanation is excellent and succinct.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Google essentially killed <http://www.sparkby.com> (Like it killed Gizmo5 in the past: <http://www.google.com/gizmo5/> \- initially it was "temporary", but then became permanent).

Why does Google do that? Why not allow it to grow and gradually integrate refined pieces of technology into larger project [Google Product Search]?

<comment><USER7> You know that "Call phone" link in your gmail, and when you answer a phone call inside your gmail, that's Gizmo5.

<comment><USER6> What's the replacement for SparkBuy?

I want to buy an inexpensive laptop with 80+ GB SSD and 4+ GB RAM. Where do I go to find that?

\---

Edit: thanks to sliverstorm for suggesting newegg.com It's seems to be a good replacement to SparkBuy (unlike Google Products Search).

NewEgg even looks somewhat similar to SpartBuy interface.

<comment><USER8> They're likely reviewing and QAing it and then going to integrate some form of it into Google Products/Google Shopper.

<comment><USER6> So when do you think Google Product Search team would deliver similar features?

I'd say in a couple of years.

And that would not really work as good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _While I'm not in the position of my good friend Rand, who's gone on the record saying that his life savings is $25,000, I was not previously wealthy_

I continue to be of mixed minds as to whether having personal wealth (or not) leads to a greater or lesser level of risk tolerance - and itchiness to exit.

Sure it's easy for those with a high net-wealth to take bigger risks but we see all the time those with nothing (or even less with nothing, ie college debt) take just a big risks because they have nothing to lose.

I wonder if willingness to take risk is essentially a bi-polar bell graph, which leaves something like $25k in the bank in that sticky middle... not enough money to risk it all but too still much to be lost.

<comment><USER10> I was really confused by the implication of this statement

is someone who has $25k in life savings "poor" or "wealthy"? I agree with you that its a sticky middle, but the post seemed to imply one or the other.

<comment><USER11> I think in Rand's case, it means "poor". He has tremendous value built up in his company, but nothing personally to show for it. He's still an unforseen string of bad luck or hospital stay from being completely broke (or worse). That's why some people mention it's okay for him to take some money off the table if he raises additional funding.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'd never heard of SparkBuy.com -- how did it get snatched up so quickly by Google? A precursory glance at it's stats shows it as being tagged only a handle of times on Delicious [1] and is ranked 200,000+ on Alexa [2].

[1]: [http://www.delicious.com/url/dd6d860947e61d97884bb3719377c7f...](http://www.delicious.com/url/dd6d860947e61d97884bb3719377c7f8) [2]: <http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/sparkbuy.com>

It's a great concept, and I think it could fit into Google Shopping quite well. If you haven't checked out Google Shopping, you should -- they do some interesting things by aggregating reviews, doing NLP, and extracting out key terms. An example would be showing you a TV and it's ratings/sentiment analysis for several attributes like "color", "design", and whatever else is relevant for the product. With a more clever UI, they could churn out some amazing product search. I sure wish I had their data.

Tangentially related, I've been working on a similar website in my spare time. If anybody could point me in the right direction in terms of a price comparison API, and/or how to sign up for decent affiliate programs, I'd be quite grateful. Also, Google, if you'd like to hand me the keys to your product database I'd be happy to make a much more useful UI for you.

<comment><USER12> Why the downvotes? Is it not legitimate to ask how a scarely-known website ended up being acquired in such a short time?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Congrats on building something people want AND exiting! Thanks for writing about your experience (this was the good kind of post mortem)

I think another consideration for a (good) founder is "what happens to my team". If I had spent 2-3y building a great team, and had normal startup equity distribution (founders had a lot relative to virtually all employees), there would be a bit of a disconnect in motivations.

Selling a company where you own 10-20% for $100mm is life changing, at least for me. Even if it means working for a really shitty acquirer (e.g. Yahoo) for 2 or even 4 years, that might be enough money to make it personally worthwhile. After all, you could kick back and emphasize "work/life balance", especially after years of startups -- maybe work on non-commercial side projects, maybe teach or take classes, do hobbies, etc., while working at a stable job. Then do your own awesome company, self funded (or VC financed on very favorable terms) in a few years.

However, for employees, it might only be $50-500k of equity payout. That still leaves an employee in the "must work for a living" category, and I personally would be a whole lot happier going to work every day for an awesome small team at an independent company, or for a great acquirer or a PE/fund style "hands off" acquirer (where the team/product stays intact), than to get a $50-100k bonus to go work for Yahoo for 2 years.

A lot of the entrepreneurs I respect the most, who have recently done M&A deals, explicitly valued "what happens to the employees and the company" pretty highly. A lot of them ended up selling to companies like Amazon which have kept operations intact at their acquisitions, vs. the Yahoo-style glue factory.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great point. I was including them in the first two points, but their welfare was a huge consideration and I should probably have called it out separately.

<comment><USER13> Also, do you have any thoughts on Seattle or other parts of WA/PNW vs SFBA? I love Seattle but am doing a startup down in SF for now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very good post. It is very easy for people who do not know you from Adam to sit tell you when/if/how you should exit.5 10,20,30 millions can make a huge difference. Always remember the most important person to make happy is yourself. No apologies needed.

</comment><comment><USER14> _health insurance reform is key to promoting entrepreneurialism and small businesses in this country!_

Agreed.

</comment><comment><USER6> Dan, how long do you have to work for Google?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not at all! I can leave any time I choose. But I'll be here for a good while - it's a great team doing cool stuff, I'm learning & making great connections, and it wouldn't be cool to ditch. There's obviously some economic incentives as well, but that's the lesser part of it at this point.

While I personally wouldn't mind sharing details, for obvious reasons, I can't.

<comment><USER6> Could you share one last detail: when would economic incentives irreversibly kick in?

I'm a little bit skeptical here, considering the following:

1) You are not working for Google founders directly. You are working for subordinates of subordinates (think bureaucracy).

2) You are not working for any of the best Google teams (Search, Ads, Gmail, Maps)

3) Your project is killed already without any working replacement.

\---

Edit - to all of you downvoters here: I consider the decision Dan made as quite reasonable.

He did a good job and got good reward for that.

He also shared his experience with all of us, which is very educational. I'd like to thank Dan for that.

Still, there is another side to that story which I think should be exposed too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So what's the word on continuity after being acquired by Google? The frickin site is down and no news on if or when it'll be up again.

<comment><USER3> I'm sure it's presumably the usual Google continuity scenario, as made famous by Writely, GrandCentral, JotSpot, and many others.

The site goes dark, there's a series of huge planning and strategy sessions, the project gets staffed up and there's a lot of back-end work done. Then, just about the time everyone forgets about the original company completely (not long in the startup world), Google announces a product that takes the original startup's product to a scope and scale well beyond the original. However, it may leave out features that made the product quirky or popular within certain niches. Then a bazillion people start using it and everyone takes it for granted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Congratulations Dan

</comment><comment><USER17> _I get to swing for the fences_

Ah, sports metaphors. I consider it to be lower on the language scale than excessive swearing, in terms of limited vocabulary. At least swearing can be used to humorous or vaguely poetic effect.

<comment><USER18> Why would you say that? Do believe yourself to be above sports or the people who enjoy sports?

If I were to fault that metaphor for anything it would be that it has become cliche at this point.

<comment><USER19> While I have nothing against sports metaphors myself, one drawback that I can see is that people unfamiliar with the particular sport might not be able to understand them. Indeed, I'll admit that I'm completely ignorant of baseball and do not know what "swinging for the fences" means. In fact, I only know that this was a baseball reference because of another comment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Call me cynical, but I think health care reforms will never happen because it gives big business an edge over the little guys.

<comment><USER21> It's not _that_ expensive to get group insurance for a startup with 6+ employees. Count me skeptical of the idea that health insurance reform will unlock a wave of entrepreneurial talent from people who previously couldn't figure out how to swing a few hundred dollars a month for personal health insurance.

<comment><USER22> Try to get -- or to _hold_ \-- such insurance with an older workforce, especially once someone is or has been seriously ill.

I'm not in that position, but a relative is -- minus the illness part, as far as i know. I think their rates went up over 20% last year. Although they are not a tech start up; rather, medical, and already established for some years.

My real concern is that people in the U.S. are, these days, paying "life" rates for what is essentially "term" insurance. Take an all too typical contemporary example. Someone has held one or several jobs that included health care insurance from the time they graduated, say two decades ago. During that time, they may well have paid significantly more in insurance premiums than they received in care -- as a statistical average, their demographic certainly did. (I don't care whether they employer paid some or all of the premiums; call it an indirect wage, if you will.)

Now entering the latter half of their forties, and at higher risk, they are sh-tcanned by their (latest) employer and face extended unemployment or a job that doesn't offer health care benefits.

If they were still in employer provided coverage, they'd still being paying in their X per employee per year (simplifying away the differences between diferent employer-provided plans). It might be time for the system to, on average, pay back some portion of all those accumulated premiums. Sort of a "whole life" insurance policy, from a health insurance perspective.

Instead, the "accrued benefit" (I know this is a crude analogy) has fled along with the job.

Aside from arguments about innovation and economic growth, the current health care insurance model in the U.S. is simply not coherent nor predictable with regard to providing coverage. For many, a third party -- one increasingly having wildly diverging interests -- is in control of their coverage.

Many people would be happy to pay into a pool at the kind of pricing the major employers receive. But as independents, they don't have that option.</comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft Office 2016 Review - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/22/9366013/microsoft-office-2016-review <comment><USER2> Seems like all of MS's dev effort has gone on cloud and mobile enablement rather than new features or major GUI changes in Office. Which I for one am happy about. They need to protect the value of the Office franchise by maintaining backward compatibility, so it's understandable.</comment>


Apple Releases iBeacon Specification - <AUTHOR> http://beekn.net/2014/02/apple-releases-ibeacon-specification/ <comment><USER2> We already know what Apple's iBeacon BLE advertising packet looks like without having to sign away your first-born to read the spec. Here it is:

      ff 4c 00 02 15  # Apple's fixed iBeacon advertising prefix
      <Your 16 byte iBeacon proximity uuid>
      00 00 # major
      00 00 # minor
      c5 # The 2's complement of the calibrated Tx Power

Anybody can build such a BLE device and market it as "Compatible with iPhone". The question is if Apple will try to to go full-asshole and claim copyright of that packet structure or something ridiculous like that.

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately it's likely they will go "full asshole" as Apple is a controlled ecosystem.

<comment><USER4> If you don't tell us why you think it would be in their interest to do so, your comment is meaningless.

<comment><USER3> "... as Apple is a controlled ecosystem."

<comment><USER4> What does that mean? Where is this idea defined? How do we know this? What are the alternatives?

<comment><USER3> Good questions. I'm sorry though I don't have time to reply in depth. The opposite of controlled is managed IMHO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wish the media would stop calling BLE "iBeacon". It's like the media started calling WiFi "Airport". First of all, it gives the mistaken impression that Apple invented or controls BLE which is am industry spec. Secondly, one would have to fear that sooner or later, some proprietary extension makes iBeacons incompatible with BLE to lock them in to Apple devices. This seems more likely if consumers are trained to look for "iBeacon compatible" rather than "BLE compatible"

<comment><USER6> I would suggest than that other industry participants need to come up with better popular names for technologies. Bluetooth is a total clusterfuck from that perspective.

FWIW I've never heard anybody use the term "Airport" when they meant "Wifi".

<comment><USER5> I didn't say people refer to Wifi as "Airport", I said calling BLE "iBeacon" is like calling Wifi "Airport". That is, calling an IEEE spec by a proprietary trademark.

Yes, BLE needs a better name. Still doesn't change the fact that the media almost completely ignore what iBeacon is. I see lots of articles that fail to even mention that it is BLE.

<comment><USER7> No one calls BLE "iBeacon". I challenge you to find a reference to an "iBeacon heart rate monitor" or "iBeacon smart watch"

iBeacon is just an application/profile/use for BLE, one of many.

As for AirPort vs. Wi-Fi, remember that Apple was the first to release consumer products with 802.11b (in July 1999), and there was no consumer- friendly brand name at the time (like what Wi-Fi became). 802.11b is not a consumer friendly name, so they used AirPort.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is iBeacon used for anything other than to push ads to your phone as soon as you enter a store?

<comment><USER9> With two or more beacons in range you can triangulate for an accuracy within centimeters. It's a key enabling technology for Augmented Reality. It's also how you're going to talk to ambient environmental controls and retrofit older buildings with situational awareness (thalience) that allows them to be responsive to the needs of humans passing through.

<comment><USER10> Do you have any examples of this? I was excited for this use but everything I can see suggests that it is highly inaccurate:

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20332856/triangulate- exa...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20332856/triangulate-example-for- ibeacons)

<comment><USER9> This is why it's bleeding edge technology. At the moment it's not very good; and it won't be for some time. To get to something useful will probably take multiple iterations.

This is why it's so exciting. If you can build something useful with the current generation of technology; it will get better.

<comment><USER10> But you said:

 _" With two or more beacons in range you can triangulate for an accuracy within centimeters."_

it appears that is objectively not true. In fact, the technology powering iBeacons does not seem to be capable of it. So, sure, in a few year's time, a beacon-like technology that may or may not be called iBeacons will allow for accurate positioning. So what?

<comment><USER9> I've seen a demo; it was finicky and had issues and didn't do orientation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A lot of players (including Apple now it seems) trying to make money on top of a standard. there is no IP to be traded in Bluetooth LE itself.

Device suppliers are trying to lock purchasers into particular brands.

Apple presumable are offering the facility of automatic recognition and filtering of specific devices to fire and pass data to iOS apps.

What we (as developers) need is an open standard for encryption and recognition so that we can work with multiple suppliers to meet the needs of our end users.

<comment><USER12> The way it has turned out is sort of the other way around. Nearly the entire press corps refers to BLE beacons as "iBeacons", so there is some value to hardware manufacturers in being able to market their product under that name.

<comment><USER13> It's unfortunate though because Samsung will obviously never market a feature of iBeacons.

<comment><USER14> Can't tell if you're ironic, but they've just patented their own version of that called Flybell

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I gave up trying to register as an iBeacon developer after Apple pushed me to a $49 Coface credit rating service.

You can't even SEE the specification without spending $49? Come on.

I'm _assuming_ the credit check is so that you can have the privilege of paying Apple a royalty for every device you stamp "iBeacon" on.

</comment><comment><USER13> If I'm understanding this correctly, it looks like a smart move by Apple that will suck for anyone who doesn't want an iDevice? Are they just trying to market BLE as iBeacon so consumers use it, even though it's clearly never going to be marketed under that name by any other OEM? They've essentially found a way to make companies pay to call their BLE iBeacon, paying for Apple to break the market and make everyone else think BLE is iOS only?

</comment><comment><USER16> What I find interesting is that there has been very little talk about privacy concerns over iBeacon.

I wonder why that's the case?

<comment><USER17> What are the privacy concerns? as far as i know, it's a broadcast-only mechanism - your device doesn't respond to a beacon, if you don't want to broadcast anything don't set up an iBeacon.

<comment> a-priori This is exactly it: a beacon just announces itself and provides its ID. It's up to an app on the _receiving_ device to listen for the beacons it cares about and react to them.

The beacon has no way of knowing which devices are listening or are in range of the beacon so there's no privacy issues I can think of.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Site is loading very slow for me, so here's the text: [http://pastebin.com/2WisUL8z](http://pastebin.com/2WisUL8z)

</comment><comment><USER19> This news sounds fake to me, based merely on a screenshot. This "iBeacon program" mention of this page is not new.

</comment><comment><USER20> Is this NFC for Apple?

</comment><comment><USER21> HOPEFULLY NFC beats this, but who knows.

<comment><USER4> NFC cannot do what iBeacons do, therefore it cannot _beat_ iBeacon whatever that would mean.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Still waiting for the superior iBacon.

<comment><USER23> I'm waiting for iFrancisBacon, the photo-sharing app that turns your selfies into wall-sized nightmarish canvases of melting paint and distorted limbs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Regardless of the fact that you, and I, realize that two separate teams are working on these things, it looks really bad (well, at least to me) to have your flagship OS vulnerable to an amazingly easy to exploit security hole for multiple days, widely and loudly publicized ...

And nothing comes out. Oh, except this, a specification for pushing ads on you based on your location.

<comment><USER24> Disagree - down vote? Give me a good reason why it's not bad PR to not hold off on posting about iBeacon and better ways to serve us ads while there's a glaring hole your only comment on is "coming soon..."

<comment><USER25> If you missed it there is OS X update. You also probably missed a good book, check out "Mystical man month" by Fred Brooks.

<comment><USER24> I'm aware there's an update, now. Who knew that earlier today?

You probably also missed the first sentence of my comment, "aware that there are multiple, different teams responsible for each", and that my commentary was on the PR perception of making your first announcement of the day "Hey, better ways to serve you ads", and specifically -not- "they could have pushed this out faster had they moved a documentation team to security".

<comment><USER4> Your comment that you're aware here are multiple teams involved _makes your own comment meaningless_.

Gotofail is not even close to _amazingly easy to exploit_ since it requires a MITM.

iBeacons are not a way to serve better ads, although if you are focused on ad serving, you might see them that way.

<comment><USER24> How difficult is this to follow?

Despite the fact that internally, there are different teams involved, it doesn't lessen the PR perception that your priorities are in the wrong place when there's radio silence on this critical security hole (and most reviews I've read seem to be of the opinion that this is a horrific hole), but yet you're putting out press releases on a feature that holds little value beyond advertising.

<comment><USER4> It's not hard to follow - it's just that your dressing up your own negative opinion under the guise of 'the PR perception'. There is no objective thing that can be called 'the PR perception'.

Also I see you have chosen to repeat the falsehood iBeacon holds little value beyond advertising. That's just a statement about your lack of understanding of potential of the technology, but you say it as if it reflects poorly on Apple instead of you.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


When You Startup with UX - <AUTHOR> http://uxmagazine.com/strategy/when-you-startup-with-ux

<comment><USER2> Great post. In our strategy, UX is the most important ingredient for success. We live by the broader term of UX. In sjobs words: "Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works."</comment>


Has the time come for a physics notation standard? - <AUTHOR> http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2015/01/your-g-is-my-e-has-time-come-for.html

<comment><USER2> I doubt it, to be honest. In my experience, universities are locally consistent: the E&M class isn't going to contradict quantum, at least by much. And once you're out of undergrad, it's pretty easy to figure out what's going on, given the context.

If we try to standardize, we'll end up with some awful compromise position that no one likes. For example, I still dislike the push for MKS units where CGS would work much better, such as E&M, plasma physics, and much of astrophysics.

</comment><comment><USER3> As an undergraduate I sit in classes being taught to use meaningful variables in code. Then I walk into one of the many math and physics lectures and wonder what meaningless single letter variables are we see scribbled on the whiteboard today.

This wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have a class with a different lecturer using different notation afterwards.

Should each lecturer introduce their notation the first time its used in class?

Why can't they just use use proper meaningful variable names?

<comment><USER2> If you have a seminar-like class with a different lecturer every week, then, yes, it's a problem if they can't get consistent notation. I'd hope that's rare in undergraduate courses, though.

And meaningful variable names would be absolutely horrible for anyone trying to calculate with them or visually comprehend them. Energy = lorentzFactor * restMass * speedOfLight^2? You'd be writing all day to get anything done, and it would be hard to see the forest for the trees.

See also the brevity of notation in J, q, and APL, and the "tacit" style of J and "point-free" style of Haskell.

<comment><USER4> Having seen "i" used for 3 different things on the same blackboard at the same time and 4 in a single lecture, A reasonable shorthand seems like a great idea. Limit things to 4 or 5 letters and spL, lorzF, Enrg, rtMa are all clear in context and hardly wasteful.

The other option is to use 3 symbol code for common notation which might take a little effort to standardize and memorize, but could probably cover all of science, math, and engineering.

<comment><USER5> It's also pretty difficult to google for things like 'η'. And how do you actually type a formula with an integral sign without knowing how to type ∫

Physics and math needs an alternate notation without all these 'greek' symbols which aren't on keyboards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Proper (?) writing style says the first time you introduce an acronym, such as the dreaded Three Letter Acronym (TLA), you write out the acronym the first time you use it and put the abbreviation in parentheses.

It makes sense to do this for notation in all fields where the reader might become confused. I'm not sure a standard is needed, maybe only a movement of reviewers rejecting papers containing the vagaries.

<comment><USER7> A table of symbols is extremely helpful. I hate reading a paper where the author defines things when they first appear. If you missed that bit, you have to spend minutes searching for it, and forget what you were thinking about. It's worse in a text book where you have to search many chapters to find where it was introduced. Complete waste of time.

I don't think there can be "palletes" to choose from, because interdisciplinary work will find there's no pallete that fits.

<comment><USER8> I am glad someone else feels the same way. I always make sure to have a huge table of symbol just after the index page. If I am writing a 100+ page thesis I want to make sure I can "call" one of the symbols to express my idea. The trick is to give nice easy to remember names to your variables and leave as many common variable letters like a,b,c,d,x,y,z to be used as local variables if needed.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Mac App to help design QR codes with custom graphics - <AUTHOR> http://www.ripeapps.com/index.php#qrreader

<comment><USER2> Your landing page is definitely attractive. The one addition I would suggest is a 30 to 90 second demo video under the "See It In Action" section. I think a video would really drive home the multiple ways this app could help someone.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! We really want to add some video, but we lot's of other things on the cue. How did you like the other apps?

<comment><USER2> I definitely understand that feeling. My thoughts about your other apps:

-Reminders: I can see why this one has so many great reviews. It looks like a very cool productivity tool, and one that I'll likely buy.

-Tymoot: I remember how motivated I was by "star charts" as a kid, so it's easy to see the utility of this one. Any plans to make an iPad version? I think it actually might be an even better fit for a larger device. Also, have you reached out to any parenting blogs about trying out your app?

-BoardBox: Not only is it awesome that there are 20 games in one app, but I absolutely love the design of the boards.

-Versatile: I would put this in the 2nd slot of your eventual video queue. Although just about everyone is familiar with this type of game, I think a video would really sell the features that make your version even better.

-Weblicious: This one looks quite cool and useful. The only issue is the reviews for the current version are a little lackluster. Any plans to release a new version?

-Notator: Another quality app. The one downside is you have to compete with free apps like PhotoPad.

It seems like a large percentage of companies with numerous apps end up sacrificing quality for quantity. However, the work Ripe Apps has put into every app really shows, so keep up the top notch work!

<comment><AUTHOR> I really appreciate the time you put into this, I will take your comments to the team!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Personally, I can't stand QR codes. They're annoying to scan and most don't even have value or take you anywhere worthwhile. So I ask, what's the real point?

<comment><USER4> Program's author here: the point of this app is to simplify the test and debug of the QR code itself. Although all reasonable people think they are pointless, countless graphic designers are forced to incorporate QR codes into their otherwise beautiful works. This app (and it's just an app, not an application) lets them quickly test variations.

<comment><USER3> OK fair enough. I suppose if QR codes must exist, then the lives of designers should be made less painful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> One of the reasons we made this was because i was tired of taking pictures of the screen with my phone to test the QR Code after adding custom graphics i.e.: <http://www.ripeapps.com/images/qr-right/qr-right-05.jpg>

<comment><USER5> Very cool App i will probably use on top of illustrator, just wish you had an editor on it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Who knows what the future holds, but i have to add that an editor is a whole new undertaking. And honestly, illustrator is a bit hard to take on for under 10 bucks a pop.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: ProximityHash – Geohashes in Proximity - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ashwin711/proximityhash <comment><USER2> Reminds me of [https://plus.codes](https://plus.codes) . Check it out on a phone to get the Plus Code for your current location. (The Google Plus Code fetching feature is awesome on Google Maps Beta on Android.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Are you familiar with the S2 library for mapping lat/lon into a 1d space? ([http://blog.christianperone.com/2015/08/googles-s2-geometry-...](http://blog.christianperone.com/2015/08/googles-s2-geometry- on-the-sphere-cells-and-hilbert-curve/)) any idea what the tradeoffs would be between this and S2?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, yes I am familiar with the s2 cell library. The whole intention was to bring in a similar feature for Geohash, which by default cover only rectangular regions. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm a bit confused about the "hash" part of this... wouldn't you want to be able to go back from the hashed string to the original location? I can't think of much of a use for only being able to test locations to see if they match a proximity hash.

Internally, the space-filling curves are super interesting. I highly recommend this writeup [1] on how they're used in things like planet-sized maps. I've heard rumors that Google adjusts the offset of their space-filling curves to minimize large discontinuities near land and push them over the ocean instead.

[1] - [http://blog.notdot.net/2009/11/Damn-Cool-Algorithms- Spatial-...](http://blog.notdot.net/2009/11/Damn-Cool-Algorithms-Spatial- indexing-with-Quadtrees-and-Hilbert-Curves)

<comment><AUTHOR> You can decode the hash back to the location coordinate. In fact if you look at the code, you'll see that the output is a set of points which are then geohash encoded in order to get the hashed value.

Would surely go through the blog mentioned. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > data size reduces considerably, thereby improving speed and performance.

By how much? Could you please give us an example?

Would something like Redis' GEOHASH command be any faster if it used ProximityHash?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not ProximityHash that does the optimization. There's an option to use Georaptor which does the optimization. Please have a look at GeoRaptor ([https://github.com/ashwin711/georaptor](https://github.com/ashwin711/georaptor)).

On your second question, it completely depends on the problem at hand. I have been using GEORADIUS on Redis for around a year now @ > 30k QPS. The case there is to find locations that are closest to our input. ProximityHash provides you all the geohashes in a circular area for which I haven't found a library yet. Most of them provide geohashes in a BoundingBox.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What's this for?

<comment><USER3> I haven't used this specific library, but it's common to want to convert lat/lon into a single dimension where sorting the hash gives nearby locations. This is helpful for lookups/indexing/caching geospatial data. This appears to solve some of those problems.

<comment><USER7> Correct. A common use case and straightforward example is reverse geocoding. Using this hash scheme, if your lat long lies in one of the hashed areas (using trivial bounding box computation to determine), there is a very small set of addresses needed to figure out which is the closest. A naive implementation using this indexing scheme might compute the distance to each lat/long in a geospatial database for everything in the indexed bounding box, then return the address with the shortest distance.

Spatial indexing is quite like regular database indexing. If the operation is clever enough to be inexpensive to compute an index with high levels of precision, you gain the advantage of spending less time in the indexing phase of your computation. This becomes relevant when you regularly want to spatially index the entire world, for example.

The only special thing I can see about this particular approach is that it's a circular index, which isn't a common way to approach spatial indexing. The more common approaches such as building R-Tree are rectangular which may not be applicable to all use-cases. Many spatial analyses use circular buffer on point approach (I see this a lot in health fields such as disease analysis), where this specialized approach might eliminate a post-processing step and net some performance gains for the end user.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This has existed for years:

[http://www.geodna.org/](http://www.geodna.org/)

Demo here: [http://www.geodna.org/docs/google- maps.html](http://www.geodna.org/docs/google-maps.html)

GeoHash is cool - but the hashes don't lend themselves well to stemming for use in text-based searching. This improves on that.

Full disclosure, I am responsible for GeoDNA.org

<comment><AUTHOR> > hashes don't lend themselves well to stemming for use in text-based > searching

I didn't get this completely. :)

This was something that hadn't been solved using geohashes. Intention was to just bring out 'geohash'y of solution to proximity search.</comment></comment>


A VC's take on Paying to Pitch - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/10/paying-to-pitch.html

<comment><USER2> The ability (and willingness) to pay to pitch to angel investors is a filter of a kind, but it's selecting for traits that you don't want in startup founders:

1) An inability to network and sell - if they can't get to see angel investors without ponying up cash, how on earth are they going to get customers?

2) A willingness to spend what is (at the time) a large portion of their capital on something that isn't necessary. By definition if you're looking for angel investment you aren't flush with cash and some of the amounts listed (up to 10K), are substantial amounts of money to waste.

3) An inability to understand the role of incentives in human behavior, specifically, if the angels they're pitching to are being paid then they're more likely to be interested in listening (and getting money for doing so) than actually investing.

Essentially these people are paying money to overcome their lack of entrepreneurial ability. Why any serious angel would view these as better candidates for investment is beyond me.

<comment><USER3> Because there are top-notch angels that get all the best deals with the best entrepreneurs. I guess there are plenty of other millionaires in the Valley looking for (reasonably) good investment in the tech field, but they can't write "Hackers and Painters", and they can't understand hackers that good because they made their fortune in a hedge fund. "Lack of entrepreneural ability" may actually turn to be a provincial naïvety (think of wannabe- entrepreneur from North Dakota who just came in Valley), and is not usually a sign of certain failure.

[EDIT] PG also has an essay on this somewhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I recently saw an angel investors club in Austin Tx give a talk. They require a fee of $500 to give a pitch, but the attitude of the angels was much more offensive to me than charging startups to pitch.

This is how they said it works: Every few months they hear 5-minute pitches from 40 or so companies, and narrow it down to 5 on a whim. Those 5 get to come back and give 1/2 hour pitches, and then they pick 1-2. They told us not to worry if we don't make the top 5 since they don't really think that hard about who should make the top 5 anyway.

What's funny is that their investment size is typically around $100k. If they make $500 each from 40 pitches, that's $20k, or 20% of their investment.

These guys were all the same kinds of guys who were bullies in high school, and this is just a way that they can keep bullying nerds. They're not really really trying to make tons of money off of these fees though. Keep in mind, in their world, everything costs a lot. It costs them $20k per year to join the country club, etc., so they just expect that people should always pay a lot of money to impress other people. Their angel investor club probably spends as much money on parties and other stupid shit as they do on actual investments.

Anyway, to me, the biggest turnoff was not the actual fee, but the whole process used by this particular angel organization.

<comment><USER5> If this is true, then you should really publicly out them. I don't get why on earth you would "protect the innocent". If we're all in this together, then we need to alert each other - as loudly as we can - when we see things that aren't right.

<comment><USER4> It was these guys: <http://www.centraltexasangelnetwork.com>

Their pdf says you get a 10 minute pitch, maybe that's right instead of the 5 minutes I rememembered: [http://www.centraltexasangelnetwork.com/Resources/CTAN_Fundi...](http://www.centraltexasangelnetwork.com/Resources/CTAN_Funding_Process.pdf)

<comment><USER6> We should go about this a bit more structural maybe, set up a website to rate vcs/angels ?

<comment><USER7> There's thefunded.com if you like your snark with a side order of nihilism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Indeed, it is a filter of sorts. It filters out the bad VCs and angels, those that wanted to make money OFF the startups in stead of together with.

<comment><USER8> (Also posted in another thread) This sounds a bit like the "Own your own business" scams. <http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4095></comment></comment>


Web Services in the Console - <AUTHOR> https://blog.forret.com/2020/06/06/web-services-on-the-command-line/ <comment><AUTHOR> a list of console-targeted web services, for location, weather, qrcode, bandwidth, file publish, exchange rates -- for use in the terminal or in a bash script</comment>


Tsinghua law professor who criticized Xi Jinping barred from leaving China - abc-xyz https://www.inkstonenews.com/politics/law-professor-xu-zhangrun-barred-leaving-china/article/3008103 <comment><AUTHOR> If you're unaware, he was was suspended from his position and banned from leaving because he questioned making Xi leader for life.

They are also scrubbing his name from the news and social media. Disappearing him is a very possible next step.

Edit:

dang I know you've said that vote/flag manipulation wasn't happening in the past when you've looked through the data.

But could you provide some insight on why this dropped from #1 to #26 in under a minute?

<comment><USER2> Dang has no interest in upsetting Chinese loyalists, so he'll never release the data behind his claims of "no voting manipulation".

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've NEVER seen a post make it to the top of HN front page and then drop so quickly. It's almost like there is a bot network that detected keywords that may be negative towards the Chinese government and downvoted on masse to bury the story

If the data is open, it would be very interesting to see who and how this is being downvoted.

<comment><USER4> I've anecdotally noticed the same thing, but I have also noticed moderators asking users to refrain from conspiracy comments like this.

I guess we have to trust that the administrators of this site, with full access to account and posting data, would notice if a concerted network of accounts was flagging certain submissions. I'd hope that their findings would be discussed publicly, but until then I don't think there's anything you or I can do to prove that this effect isn't due simply to many HN users disliking China politics stories.

<comment><USER3> I've met quite a few of the YC team before and I know they don't have a person with this sort of speciality. There is a reason the top fraud detection analysts get paid so much on ecommerce companies - you have to be good at data science, behavioral analytics, and know enough tech to be able to spot this sort of patterns.

I wish YC would have something similar to FOI, where people can publicly request for specific anonymized data. This way, we can a clearer idea of how various actors interact with a forum... in this case HN.

If I could get anonymized data, I'd 1) filter first for all posts with keyword "China" that have made it any given point to the HN front page over last 3 months 2) Categorize articles as "positive towards", "negative towards", and "neutral" in content and tone 3) view upvote/flag rate before reaching the front page vs post exposure on the front page. 4) Compare across the 3. If people simply don't like China articles, then the pattern should be uniform. If it's not the same pattern, then you have drill down to specifically where the downvotes are coming from and when they start. 5) Since you can only flag but not downvote stories, is there an automated surge of upvotes for all surrounding posts excluding the targeted "negative" post?

There's a lot to look at, but based on my anecdotal experience, over the last few months, negative Chinese articles are simply flagged/downvoted rapidly which contrasts to just a months earlier where there were robust discussions on each article. Real people predictably comment/interact consistently over time- that's proven. The fact that counter-posts to China-negative posts have largely disappeared suggests a large degree of coordination in the first place. Almost like rather than trying to win the argument online, the default is now to bury all negativity in the first place by promoting everything else on HN rapidly.

If this is the case, there should be patterns of suspicious accounts. Key questions to ask: how did these accounts that downvoted get to the 400? karma threshold to vote. Was it a bot net where they upvote each others random posts? Or is it a manual process like the paid online trolls where accounts are created and provide interactions to reach the threshold, and then kept on ice storage until needed to downvote/flag?

Just looking at the metadata and interaction patterns will give you a clear idea if this is typical post interaction behavior, or something more sinister.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >But online, Xu himself has been virtually erased.

>Searches for his name return no result on the Twitter-like Weibo. Any mention of him in the past year has been scrubbed from Baidu, a popular search engine.

The speed that they can digitally make someone's name unusable is pretty scary.

And this is just for being publicly critical.

<comment><USER6> Europe: "Citizens have the right to be forgotten."

China: "We can and will make you forgotten."

<comment><USER7> Well, the first is a needed thing (and can benefit the "little man/woman" too). The second is top down only.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Well, Xi stated explicitly that he demands absolute loyalty, being barred from leaving China is hardly news nowadays, but this certainly is a statement and warning made prior to the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests, in which universities palyed a seminal role.

A family in my small hometown had their 2 university sons vanished forever after that crackdown.

Leica recently had an ad on it. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWgLOSm1rQA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWgLOSm1rQA)

</comment><comment><USER9> Hi Inkstone, I once critized you because of your location.

You set me straight then and are proving it again that somehow, non-censored news is possible there.

I wish you the best of luck, I don't know if I would have as much balls as you guys.

I can't seem to find a rss feed somewhere ( on mobile...)? Is that possible?

Ps. Sorry for the previous comment a while ago.

PS2. Using cloudflare. Looks legit to hide the servers IP. ( Had to check the infrastructure used :p )

<comment><USER10> You should apologize to alanwong, he's been trying to promote Jack Ma's site very very hard:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=alanwong](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=alanwong)

[https://www.reddit.com/user/alanwong](https://www.reddit.com/user/alanwong)

<comment><USER11> Thanks but no need to apologize to me!

You realize I'm an editor of Inkstone, right? I've been sharing stuff I think would interest people here and on other sites. I hope you find it as interesting as I do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This story very quickly disappeared from the top of the HN front page.

A surge of down votes from bots or state actors? No idea, but it was very fast and that rings alarm bells.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm currently reading the Three Body Problem by the Chinese Science Fiction writer Liu Cixin.

It starts right in the middle of the cultural revolution and does not paint the party in a positive light. It'd be interesting to know why this wasn't censored.

I heard something about China being excellent at manufacturing, but having trouble with creating new industries and President Xi noticed that in the west those creating new industries often liked and were inspired by Scifi.

I wonder if this gives Chinese science fiction authors a free pass? It'd be interesting to hear the perspective from someone who knows more about the culture.

The beginning of the book touches explicitly on the removal of professors that disagree with the party.

<comment><USER8> The Cultural Revolution is a special one, in which the party itself is the "bigger" victim, so it's kinda okay to criticize it "the right way", many movies and dramas have been made about it.

<comment><USER13> How is the party itself the bigger victim? What does it mean to criticize it in the right way?

<comment><USER14> Cultural revolution was a political maneuver by Mao to suppress his competitors, he won that battle, but not the war. People he sidelined came back in power after he passed away, the biggest one being Deng Xiaoping.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> China is setting a dangerous precedent for humanity as a whole.

Not caring about what's happening in China is not caring about humanity at all.

Whats different from the attrocities committed by organised terror like ISIS when compared to the atrocities committed by Chinese government towards Tibetians, Muslims, Prisoners etc. ?

For all the boasting about Privacy, Humanity by Apple it gives away data to Chinese govt for someone to rot in their prison or worse death. So is the state of all other companies doing business with China.

Now that it's a super power, it's been flexing its power outside its borders. It aided in the genocide of Tamil population in Srilanka during final Elam war just to get to India at south. It has a military base in Myanmar & we all know what happened there.

Edit:Typo

<comment><USER16> This is the thing I worry about, technology is making it easier to speak up against the power but its also making much easier to quash any rebellion before it gathers steam. Autocratic empires like china are using technology quite efficiently to do this. God only helps us if an AGI or near AGI gets into the hand of a regime like this before anybody else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is alarming. I think these kind of one-off things can feel somewhat boring or unimportant if it were some very underdeveloped tiny country with a small population.

But we're talking about a country with 1.5B people and a very sophisticated technology sector, a powerful military and a modern economy starting to act like a dictatorship.

<comment><USER18> Starting ? China has always been a dictatorship. Now it's also a technologically driven one. Although you could say that materialistic ideologies have always been acutely aware of technical means. See Curzio Malaparte's _Technique Of Revolution_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Anyone have a copy of the text of the article? The page itself doesn't include the article and only shows empty gray bars to tease the reader. I'm unable to get the javascript to execute and fill it in no matter what browser I use.

<comment><USER20> Maybe try the AMP version? [https://amp.inkstonenews.com/politics/law- professor-xu-zhang...](https://amp.inkstonenews.com/politics/law-professor-xu- zhangrun-barred-leaving-china/article/3008103)

<comment><USER19> Thanks. That did it once I disabled CSS to clear their page blocking div. Here's a copy of the article text that doesn't require even that for anyone that is having trouble like I did: [https://write.as/uiejj79fq4vxv.md](https://write.as/uiejj79fq4vxv.md)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> i've spent nearly a decade in and around china (including some time at peking university which is down the road from tsinghua), for anyone trying to make sense of the contradictions that are china, i'd recommended picking up chan koonchung's (陈冠中) excellent novel the fat years (盛世 - 中国2013年).

although the way the novel wraps-up is a bit outlandish and disappointing... overall its does an excellent job of translating all the fascinating, bizarre, and creepy headlines we're constantly bombarded with these days into a plausible portrait of modern china (at least for me).

</comment><comment><USER22> As a thought experiment: what do you think the internet in the next 50 years will look like?

</comment><comment><USER23> It's interesting we are not getting any Xi loyalists posting here. Not even any trolls who try to divert the discussion with whataboutism. Maybe they have finally realized they are not going to be able to persuade the world that Xi is great, or at least not any worse than anyone else.

</comment><comment><USER24> this is truly an embarrassment

<comment><USER25> Unfortunately this reads like wishful thinking.

[EDIT:] I think there are ninja-edits here?

<comment><USER24> yes to be honest I should not post the original post, I still need go there for business trips, it's likely they can track me down and deny my visa if they want to, you don't know how powerful and bad they could be, it's lawless there when it comes to individuals. it's a shame, period.

<comment><USER26> Western countries have in fact denied visas to foreigners who publicly hold "inappropriate" views. Visiting a foreign country is considered a privilege not a right, so it's not something where there's much if any concern about supposed "rights".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> 1984!!!

<comment><USER28> If you continue to post unsubstantive comments to HN, we are going to have to ban you.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)</comment></comment>


Offer HN: Complete design with HTML/CSS for $999 - <AUTHOR>

Hi. I am a freelance web designer and developer. I am going to give one startup a completely custom design for their entire website/app for $999.
My portfolio is at madebyargon.com
Email me at email@example.com if you are interested. <comment><USER2> Clickable: <http://madebyargon.com/>

Wish I had $999 to spare on my pet project. Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Email me with details about your project. I'll try to help you out if possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Good. add few links of your work.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am working on building a new portfolio site, since this one is a bit out of date. Will launch next month hopefully.</comment></comment>


What Is the Point of the Female Orgasm? - <AUTHOR> http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-09/what-point-female-orgasm

<comment><AUTHOR> Doesn't relate to code really, but it break's the monotony a little...</comment>


New York Times Said to Seek Tech-Savvy CEO for Comeback - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-22/new-york-times-said-to-seek-tech-savvy-ceo-for-comeback.html <comment><USER2> Maybe they should have done this in 2001 when the classified market collapsed and newsprint prices skyrocketed?

Disclosure: I worked at a metro daily (the orange county register) as their first webmaster from 1994-2001.

I was there for the first collapse.

<comment><USER3> Yep, their stock price didn't crash with the dotcom bubble, they still had time to make adjustments without it being so dire. Their stock averaged about $35 / share, from mid 1997 to mid 2005. They had to take loans from Carlos Slim, and they could have just earlier issued stock with a $7 billion market cap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So are they going to sell t-shirts and create a pinterest board for articles?

</comment><comment><USER5> You really need a new tech-savvy CEO to tell you to not charge more for your digital edition per month than Hulu & Netflix combined.

"We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas."

</comment><comment><USER6> They're operating on the wrong premise.

The idea here is that their business got disrupted by the internet and therefore they need some sort of internet-wizard who can tell them all the things they need to do to reclaim their business. That world-view only works if you think that the internet is nothing more than magic.

The reason that newspapers are failing is that they had local monopolies, got soft and fat, and then got disintermediated in a hurry by the internet. Now, newspapers don't even have a good or correct idea of their own identity any longer. I'll give you a hint, a newspaper ain't about reprinting marmaduke, or the weather, or crossword puzzles, or classified ads, or even obituaries.

Someone recently brought up that great quote of George Orwell's "Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations."

I think there's a sound truth to that. But I think that's only half of journalism, the other half is research. Not just revealing what has been known by some and kept secret to others, but revealing what has been unknown to everyone. Investigative reporting need not necessarily have a "bad guy", as in Orwell's view.

But this is almost orthogonal to the current mission of most newspapers and the current educational foundation of most journalism graduates. "Journalism" the discipline today focuses on the form, the mechanism, and access, precisely those things which have become the most ubiquitous and fungible in the modern age. Journalism puts the cart before the horse, imagining that reporting is done by journalists with specializations. The way of the future, I believe, is the opposite, experts in a particular field with journalist specializations.

In the past there was much value around merely printing or re-printing a thing. It was like manufacturing. If you manufacture a widget it doesn't matter that a thousand other people are simultaneously manufacturing nearly identical widgets, in the end it's still a widget, and has some value. Today there is only a little value in making newspaper "widgets" (writing stories) because copying is so close to free as to make little difference. The world doesn't need a million stories all regurgitating the same wire reports to their local readership, everyone has access to the wire reports directly now.

The value is in original reporting and investigation. That's not something that an executive skilled in SEO and traffic monetization could necessarily help with. If anything they'd be more likely to drive your newspaper into being a tabloid than into becoming a robust source of original reporting.

But that is what I would do if I ran a newspaper. Fire all the regurgitators, keep all the people who will write the sort of stories that nobody else is writing and hire people who are experts in some field first and writers second.

<comment><USER3> It's even worse for the NY Times. They derived a huge amount of their business from national and international news (rather than just local / NY City). At the national & international level, there is obviously tremendous competition online.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is going to be consolidation in the newspaper industry, however I think certain newspapers like the NYT and the WSJ are best suited to navigate this. The NYT is a newspaper of record for all the reasons InclinedPlane stated makes good journalism; they are already incredible in that respect. Paywalls are the right strategy for them because they have a premium that people are willing to pay for, which has worked for the WSJ.

Claims that the newspaper industry is dead are likely from people who don't read any newspapers. The NYT is still the standard (WSJ and Financial Times among the financial press) for journalism and there will always be a market for that, despite the rise of blogs, citizen journalism, and cable news.

I'd also like to add that there is research that shows that the monopolies newspapers have/had is responsible for greater accuracy and less bias (and I would argue greater overall quality). Cable news is the best example of heavy competition being responsible for a decline in accuracy and quality. Fox and MSNBC cater to different ends of the political spectrum because it draws viewers in. CNN, who attempts to position themselves as straight news, has been caught holding the ratings bag because they have no niche (and they were at one point the top of their game during the 90s with their coverage of the Gulf War).

[http://www.economics.harvard.edu/files/faculty/56_marketforn...](http://www.economics.harvard.edu/files/faculty/56_marketfornews_090904.pdf) [http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/jesse.shapiro/research/jepme...](http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/jesse.shapiro/research/jepmedia.pdf)

<comment><USER8> I agree with much of what you said though I do think there are a small handful of sites and channels (such as PBS) which is interested in original journalism. Sites that concentrate on news regurgitation won't last in the long run because the quality is inferior.

The main issue for the NYT for me is the pricing model and a lack of creativity when it comes to their mobile applications.

The price for subscriptions (for Internet, phone and tablet) is three times higher than it should be. The goal of the NYT should be to get the paper in as many hands as possible and start from there. People will always pay for quality when it's reasonable.

Secondly, the mobile applications are seriously lacking in design and functionality. I'm willing to place good money that many of their paying customers in the future will be access their content from here instead of the site. If it was up to me, I would be looking for the next Mike McCue (Flipboard) or Mike Matas (Push Pop Press/Facebook) and put them completely in control of design.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why, so pinch can actively undermine yet another sucker who will soon accept an enormous golden parachute in lieu of suing?</comment>


Diamonds Are Bullshit - <AUTHOR> https://priceonomics.com/post/45768546804/diamonds-are-bullshit <comment><USER2> This article always rubbed me the wrong way as it's practically a condensed rewrite of _Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond?_ , published in _The Atlantic_ in 1982. Much of this article is just quotes from the original. It bothers that the _priceonomics.com_ author took someone else's work, repackaged it, and now people prefer reading & sharing the 'new' version rather than the long-form original.

<comment><USER3> Priceonomics is a YC company and I believe that posts by YC companies are highlighted to other YC founders, so that might be what leads to this article being upvoted on HN. I agree that it doesn't make much sense when this is essentially content marketing that repackages a single, superior, primary source.

Edit/Update: I was incorrect here. Please see children comments

<comment><USER4> That's fascinating, I had no idea HN did this to specific users. I'm still wondering what the site looks like for a moderator / admin compared to a regular user and what kind of pages they've got etc.

<comment><USER5> All that's highlighted for YC founders are the _nicknames_ of other founders. So we can see which posts and comments are from other YC founders, but there's no special annotation just for posts at YC-funded domains (in this case, there's nothing highlighted).

<comment><USER4> Fair and insightful I would say, when the parent comment mentioned it I figured it checked for the domain of a YC company or something, but this makes sense, as filtering for YC companies might just be a bit more work than it's worth considering you wont always be able to accurately mark every submission as relevant.

<comment><USER5> I believe the goal is explicitly _not_ to skew things towards YC companies. The one special bonus that YC companies get is the ability to post job openings. The two posts from YC founders on the front page now aren't about startups at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For those looking for a shiny gem that doesn't break the bank, check out Moissanite[1] jewelry. It's significantly cheaper, with a higher refractive index (Brilliance) [2].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moissanite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moissanite) [2] [http://diamondssuck.com/](http://diamondssuck.com/)

<comment><USER7> My wife loves her moissanite ring. We looked at diamonds last year for some jewelry and she said that she wanted more moissanite jewelry instead!

<comment><USER8> Cool! Check this out too (couldn't find the original link)

[https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/23/led-wedding- ring_n...](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/23/led-wedding- ring_n_3328292.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Full disclosure: my family is in the diamond business

There are a few points I'd like to address:

> Only by carefully restricting the supply has De Beers kept the price of a > diamond high.

This was the case a long time ago but not anymore. De beers seems to only have a 37% market share - not enough to control the market. [O]

> Diamonds, however, are not an investment. The market for them is neither > liquid nor are they fungible.

Not entirely true. Diamond prices fluctuate and have appreciated in value over time, you just have to be savvy about it like any other investment. It's unfortunate that the markup on lower quality diamonds is so high but its largely due to a lack of knowledge on the consumer side. AKA do your homework and buy/sell from a wholesaler like abemor.com (wink, wink)

> You might want one because it looks pretty or its status symbol to have a > "massive rock", but not because it will store value or appreciate in value.

You can say the same thing about art. Diamonds are collectors items.

To be continued...

[0] = [https://www.google.com/search?q=debeers+marketshare&ie=UTF-8...](https://www.google.com/search?q=debeers+marketshare&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en- us&client=safari)

<comment><AUTHOR> 37% is enough to control the market.

> Not entirely true. Diamond prices fluctuate and have appreciated in value > over time

Which wife wants to wear a used diamond? You probably are in first-hand sale and you don't resale. Diamond are like new cars; the moment you take it off the lot, it loses 40% of the value. You coudl truly bring it next day to same seller and he will offer you 30-45% less simply because "I have to be honest and tell new buyer its been worn before".

> You can say the same thing about art. Diamonds are collectors items.

No you cannot say the same, as Diamonds are not art. While each diamond is unique, their uniqueness does not add enough to value in order to justify holding it as a collector items. Their uniqueness is equal to each $1 dollar bill being unique because each have unique serial number.

Unless you keep very unique Diamond, majority of them will depreciate in value. Most art is unique from each other; I mean we just had few hundred millions bid on some popular paintings down at Rockefeller auctions; can you point me to any article when someone purchased diamond for X and sold it for Y, while Y > X ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am getting advertisements to buy a diamond ring in this article.

<comment><USER11> What are these "advertisements" of which you speak?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Diamonds are OK for jewelry. Moissanite is prettier (IMO) and cheaper.

Diamonds are great for tools (single-point diamond turning is /awesome/[1], diamond is a great abrasive for non-ferric materials, etc).

[1] [http://www.nanotechsys.com/wp- content/uploads/2010/08/Nanote...](http://www.nanotechsys.com/wp- content/uploads/2010/08/Nanotech-HDL2000_HDL2000-HD-Specification- Rev-0914.pdf) (check out the feedback resolution on the X & Y axes. Then check out the maximum deviation from straightness: 0.75um/350mm X, 1.0um/500mm Y!!!) It's a lathe that can produce optical components like mirrors and lenses with no further grinding or polishing operations!

</comment><comment><USER13> I agree wholeheartedly with this and the original article. I sold diamonds in college and really dislike the blood that goes into each and every one of them.

Knowing a few of the arguments that fine jewelers might make, could you help me address?

1\. You may pass the diamond to subsequent generation.

2\. You may insure the stone at a high value, similar to artwork.

3\. What other precious metals or otherwise might be considered to be used in a similar fashion? Gold/platinum is too heavy to adorn commonly as representative of wealth to our SOs.

4\. Would removing the "value" of diamonds make them appropriately used for their hardness? Watch faces, etc.

<comment><USER14> 1\. Manmade compressed and heated carbon is as passable to the next generation as the geologic kind. What is the issue here exactly? If anything its more awesome we can make our own and not rely on geological processes.

2\. Why do I need to insure carbon? Its... carbon, super abundant, element 6. Present after the first generation of stars exploded in the universe. Are you investing in diamonds? They almost never go up in price, try reselling one or look at resale value before you worry about insurance.

3\. What is the goal of this question? To show the Jones' that you have too much money and can pay the danegeld for authenticity? Before the 1940's diamonds weren't even a thing in marriage. If you could reproduce the Mona Lisa perfectly, would you pay N times as much for the original? Even if it was impossible to tell? Why is that so important?

4\. Diamonds are already used for industrial uses, their "rarity" (they're not rare) is all due to a cartel named de beers controlling supply. They're common as hell, as noted, they're just compressed and heated carbon. These industrial uses are why we have these manmade diamonds in the first place. They're better than the originals as they're more consistent without imperfections. Just like modern steel would produce a katana infinitely better than folded crappy steel that the originals were trying to overcome.

<comment><USER15> I was with you until the last point...

> _Just like modern steel would produce a katana infinitely better than folded > crappy steel that the originals were trying to overcome_

That's not an undisputed fact.

There has been a lot back and forth about the lost knowledge of previous generations and the romans supposedly used a superior cement which we can no longer replicate.

but to stay closer to your example: while the smelting of the metal has seen a lot of study, that doesn't mean that we're able to produce a superior katana.

You also need the smithing -- and need to figure out how the metal should be. That's of course possible, but hasn't really seen much study. So while we could theoretically produce an infinitely better katana -- thats not practical because of the money investment to figure out what that actually means.

Most enthusiast say that current katanas are at best on par with the old ones, often sub-par.

<comment><USER16> > the romans supposedly used a superior cement which we can no longer > replicate.

Could you recommend a related source I could read more about it from? It seems not that complicated to do a chemical analysis of the cement still existing in many Roman constructions.

<comment><USER15> it seems my information was outdated...

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17186124](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17186124)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I mean sure, you could buy something just as nice on ebay for 2$. but I imagine, your potential wife won't go for that.

When I proposed to my wife, she specifically requested the diamond cost a minimum of X dollars. I was unprepared and I didn't negotiate. I would imagine most potential wives also have a minimum threshold. It's basically, your down payment on a marriage.

<comment><AUTHOR> And you didn't withdraw your marriage proposal when she requested that? Darn, good luck man and I truly mean that!

<comment><USER16> It's easy to say for us, but imagine a young man in love, dreaming about this wonderful future, with any things already arranged, and happy that the lady would accept his proposal. Maybe he planned to spend $1500 and he hears $2000. Breaking up at this point (frankly, you couldn't be together after withdrawing your proposal) might seem like petty ("Isn't your love fake then? Come on, it's just $500!")

That said, I don't envy anyone being in such a situation. I see no easy way out.

<comment><AUTHOR> So what you further saying, for $500 less, she wouldn't accept his proposition. Only $500 ?

Good God!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's not an investment - at least not the pieces bought from De Beers.

Blue diamonds or rarity sold/bought at Sotheby's is. Stuff sold at retail after feeding long chain of middlemen at De Beers is not.

Premium price is attached to the rarity occurring in nature + expensive post processing process, not to the intrinsic quality that is impossible to reproduce, because it is.

</comment><comment><USER19> It's interesting how De Beers successfully transitioned the cultural demand for diamonds over to China.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-18/diamonds-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-18/diamonds- not-marriage-are-forever-for-china-s-millennials)

</comment><comment><USER20> Has there been any retaliation against lab grown diamonds? Seems like they're starting to become a popular alternative.

<comment><USER21> Yes, DeBeers built expensive machines to tell the difference and preserve their market. Oddly, the differences are that the synthetic ones are more pure. They also mark registration at the GIA and hide the records.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I think one day - when we will have dimanond extruded from thick air by nano- robots, this craze over what will be "brick" for future generations will be incredibble alien to future generations. DeBeers and the likes of them will be the tulip traders of todays tulip-mania.

</comment><comment><USER23> Doug Stanhope said it well here:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCP40OfIi20&t=25m13s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCP40OfIi20&t=25m13s)

</comment><comment><USER24> This is an article from 2013

</comment><comment><USER25> Just don't buy them, that's all.</comment>