Visa Buys Plaid - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/visa-nears-deal-to-buy-fintech-startup-plaid-11578948426 <comment><USER4> Looks like it's official: [https://blog.plaid.com/plaid-and- visa/](https://blog.plaid.com/plaid-and-visa/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Plaid is terrible! Both Wells Fargo and Bank of America support API integration, but Plaid chooses to screen-scrape and does not work if you have 2FA enabled. Also, you can't even manually enter your bank information. In other words, even if you pay dearly to Plaid, you may block many users who use some of the top banks in the States! There is a bunch of services I cannot use because they rely solely on Plaid, and I'm not willing to disable 2FA! Maybe being Visa, it will make the whole service more meaningful if Visa pushes banks to integrate, because it's 2020, and giving your password for your bank to a third party, when there are APIs and OAuth/OpenID protocols available for banks.

<comment><USER6> I work for a popular european competitor of Plaid, Tink ([https://tink.com](https://tink.com)). We don't do screen scraping, but use the banks' own APIs. These days we also ride on the european bank directive "PSD2" which gives us the right to aggregate financial data from financial providers such as banks. That means we aren't breaking an Terms of Services with banks!

...and yes, we support 2FA. ;)

<comment><USER7> Note that a SSL_ERROR_BAD_CERT_DOMAIN is shown when trying to access tink.com at the moment. Says the certificate is only valid for cloudfront.net.

Edit: the website itself also returns a 403.

<comment><USER6> Weird. Works for me now. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

<comment><USER8> Lancaster, England, Windows 10, Firefox, working perfectly for me as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Plaid's product is absolutely absurd. Yes, please train your users to type their username and passwords into third party sites because they're given a legitimate looking sign-in box. US Banking infrastructure is so hopelessly bad that this is hack of a business is considered legitimate fin-tech.

My wallet was stolen and before I realized it was gone and could cancel my CCs some dude made like six obviously fraudulent purchases. No Chip and Pin - <USER2> verification. US banking needs to be legislatively hard-reset.

<comment><USER10> Every time Plaid is mentioned on HN, people want to hate. My take is: don't use it if you're scared ?

A few of my friends were talking about Plaid the other day, and I told them I like the company/product, but "many people on HN hate it." They were perplexed and when I explained it was because you guys were nervous about entering your bank password into a third-party (yet reputable) company's interface (that's encrypted), they wrote it off as "being paranoid." Can't say I disagree...

<comment><USER11> Saying the company interface is encrypted so it's safe shows how effective this attack can be. One of the attacks would present you with a login box. You thin this is plaid and it is encrypted so it's safe so you enter your username/password. It turns out to be a different third party. Not to worry the hacker interface is encrypted as well. Another attack surface opened up involves data breaches at plaid where company employee dumps access to everyone.

It is probably the one thing you can do today that will at some point cause you lose money from your bank account.

It is not even paranoid. It's a bad idea to leave your bank access codes with someone else.

The less people understand how things work the more likely they are to trust it. This just opens up a new avenue for exploitation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Plaid is an incredible company and provides a valuable service to their tech partners. That said, their data collection practices are scary. They allow any developer using their software to swallow all of a users banking data - <USER3> would love to know how they police bad actors.

(Source: [https://plaid.com/legal/#privacy- statement](https://plaid.com/legal/#privacy-statement))

<comment><USER12> Here is pertinent verbiage from the Plaid Privacy Statement.

Information we collect from your financial accounts. The information we receive from the financial product and service providers that maintain your financial accounts varies depending on the specific Plaid services developers use to power their applications, as well as the information made available by those providers. But, in general, we collect the following types of identifiers, commercial information, and other personal information from your financial product and service providers:

Account information, including financial institution name, account name, account type, account ownership, branch number, IBAN, BIC, and account and routing number;

Information about an account balance, including current and available balance;

Information about credit accounts, including due dates, balances owed, payment amounts and dates, transaction history, credit limit, repayment status, and interest rate;

Information about loan accounts, including due dates, repayment status, balances, payment amounts and dates, interest rate, guarantor, loan type, payment plan, and terms;

Information about investment accounts, including transaction information, type of asset, identifying details about the asset, quantity, price, fees, and cost basis;

Identifiers and information about the account owner(s), including name, email address, phone number, date of birth, and address information;

Information about account transactions, including amount, date, payee, type, quantity, price, location, involved securities, and a description of the transaction; and

Professional information, including information about your employer, in limited cases where you've connected your payroll accounts.

The data collected from your financial accounts includes information from all your accounts (e.g., checking, savings, and credit card) accessible through a single set of account credentials.

<comment><USER13> I never used Plaid, but it reads like information used in typical bank application for credit. Why would anyone willingly share this much without get something major in return?

Does Plaid bank the underbanked? I am not sure what their appeal is.

<comment><USER14> Simple. Just imagine that everybody is incredibly stupid and wants to be robbed and have their identity stolen. That's the target market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Slightly off topic, but worth highlighting. Privacy virtual card use Plaid (well at least the last time I looked at it a few months back). The integration was extremely questionable. They were faking the bank's login page. So when you enter your credentials, it wasn't the actual banks page.

There was a github issue opened, and after several followed up complaints they blocked further commenting and the removed then ticket.

Subject of the ticket [plaid/link] privacy/security concerns (#68)

<comment><USER16> Collecting _actual_ banking credentials is how plaid works, quite literally. One needs to be clinically insane to give your bank login creds to a third party voluntarily!

I refuse to do business with any business that uses plaid and has no sane alternative to get bank account numbers (deposit two small amounts, three days later I tell you what they are)

First time i saw it, i assumed the website had been hacked. I was actually _more_ horrified when I found out that this was working as intended and some website wanted my bank _password_!

<comment><USER17> Indeed. Sharing your banking credentials with a third party almost certainly violates the terms of service you agreed on with your bank. If the third party has a security lapse and your bank account is drained, your bank might just claim that you authorized that transaction with your credentials, so it's a valid transaction and they won't shell out their own money to refund your loss.

If in doubt, you should check your bank's terms of service for online banking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Will be interesting to see the terms for the acquisition and see if Mary Meeker's last investment for KP was a winner or not!

I'm cautiously optimistic for a good outcome for the Plaid folks here: last round was two years ago for $250M. Could they have been suffering $10M/month losses and are running out of money? Could be.

No offense to Visa, but I don't think of them as the most innovative organization or one that is a sign of a "good outcome" for a company getting acquired. I can't think of a good exit to Visa, but I am open to being wrong on that one.

Disclosures: worked at Stripe; dealt altogether more than I would have liked with Visa. Have no knowledge of Plaid's particulars.

Edit: Visa and Mastercard were strategic investors in the C round. Curious what the competitive dynamics were that led to Visa grabbing the acquisition instead of MC. [https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/16/plaid-announces- strategic-...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/16/plaid-announces-strategic- investment-from-mastercard-and-visa/)

<comment><USER19> > No offense to Visa, but I don't think of them as the most innovative > organization

Visa is a $434B company. I guess "innovative" is subjective but their valuation trajectory has looked like a high growth tech co over the past 5 years.

<comment><USER18> That's fair. 3x valuation growth in the last 5 years is tech company level. More or less the same trajectory as GOOG and FB.

It's not Stripe or Airbnb level growth, however.

<comment><USER20> That's just a function of their size. I guarantee you that Stripe and Airbnb's growth rates will drop to these types of growth rates if they hit the 100B valuation. The truth is when you are so large, the opportunities for growth become smaller and smaller. It's much easier to grow at high percentages when you are small. Buffet talks about this a lot with Berkshire; he has said he could grow Berkshire at a much higher rate if the company was smaller. Now he has to pass on amazing investment opportunities that are too small for him.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> As a former Plaid employee with options that vested after I was shitcanned last year, this is some pretty welcome news.

<comment><USER22> I'm interviewing with them this week. Any advice/warnings I should know going in?

<comment><USER23> do you think it's worth it?

imo it's hard to shake how awkward it is when everyone around you is rich and you're being offered a regular salary that is now dictated by Visa HR

<comment><USER24> Also isn't there a chance you'll just get canned soon? The interview pipeline has existed separate from the acquisition efforts. Visa will have opinions on where they want to go from here.

<comment><USER25> I don't have data, just an anecdote.

I was hired by Sun. Just before my start date, Oracle announced they would be buying Sun. I was worried, but it turns out acquisitions are pretty slow processes. There was months of waiting for government approvals, then months more before the culture really started feeling like "Oracle" instead of "Sun."

In short, there's a decent chance that anyone applying now could be on payroll for months or years before Visa actually meaningfully changes anything about Plaid's workflow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I support this big time.

Plaid is a complete joke -- "give us your bank passwords and we'll validate your account". Banks are an even worse joke -- "20,000 logins today from one IP address, nope that's not a scam".

Plaid customers are the worst. Like Transferwise, you cannot setup a business account with them without giving Plaid your business banking passwords. What company treasurer would allow that?

Now that Visa is holding the bag this fixes two problems:

1\. For customers, there is less risk that Visa will steal all your money than some "fintech" startup 2\. For Plaid customers, they may realize Visa is buying this for the data and they may think of Visa as a competitor and not want to support them.

\---

Because "just give us your sudo password to install software" and "just give us your bank password" to send money is a thing... the obvious dumber people in the future will have to do "just sign this power of attorney to create an account with us."

<comment><USER26> do you really think a billion+ dollar company (Plaid) would "steal all your money"? That's a pretty silly statement. More realistic to think they have shitty security practices and could be hacked. FWIW, I worked at a large bank for over a decade and a fintech after that, the fintech had better security practices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> So, pertinent question. I want to move my account to a bank which gives me an API so I don't have to deal with Plaid or Mint. I.e. I want data privacy. I want to build a personal dashboard of where my money is going.

Any suggestions?

<comment><USER28> What about OCR'ing (or extracting from an electronic PDF) your bank statement each month and then parsing the data into your desired format? You could add tags, metadata, etc. as well.

I'm thinking of something where you download your statement (usually available in PDF form) and then drag it to a web interface where it then gets OCR'd and processed.

A bit more manual, but the upside is you're not leaking your creds and you should also have access to more data (banks have to provide statements and they usual provide them going back many years).

<comment><USER29> Every bank I use provides _some_ sort of structured data export (at the very least a csv, and in most cases a more finance-specific format (OFX, etc). I'm not talking "modern" banks here, either (Ironically, the most modern bank I use, Aspiration, only provides exports in a non-standard csv format)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Have to say I'm not a fan of Plaid at all.

Dark patterns galore. Absolutely no indication when you go through a Plaid flow that you're likely giving away much more than just the bare minimum account numbers to push money in/out of your bank account. Often, you're also giving away transaction data, identity, real-time balance, etc. There's no way to know prior to linking your account.

I had high hopes that would have made things more transparent given the new CCPA laws that went into effect on the 1st but have not seen anything change.

Edit: I think the 4D chess move here by Visa is the amount of data Plaid has. Bank transaction data from _all_ types of transactions, not just Visa ones, is massively valuable.

If people were concerned about Google acquiring Fitbit data I would be _incredibly_ concerned about Visa basically buying all financial transaction data...the FTC should really investigate the acquisition.

<comment><USER30> I have been interested in the idea of and open API for banking (one which supports Canadian banks would be preferable, as I am Canadian), and I have had a few ideas for application's to implement with Plaid. I keep reading feedback about Plaid on HN similar to yours though that make me less confident in the product.

<comment><USER31> Keep in mind every pull for transactions will cost money so you need to charge enough per month to cover those costs. It's closer to $1 than a penny like most APIs.

<comment><USER32> Yikes, $1 per transaction pull? Wonder if there's a way to only pull transactions when a charge for a specific vendor comes across.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Why is a duopoly like Visa/Mastercard allowed to make acquisitions in its own space?

<comment><USER34> It's not a duopoly? In the US, AMEX and Discover aren't _that_ difficult to use, and a fair amount of retailers accept in-house credit accounts and international creditors like JCB and UnionPay. Payment via debit networks is still very common, and low-tech forms of payment such as cash and checks are still acceptable in many use cases.

<comment><USER19> Amex and Discover are different as those are closed-network.

I think it's really hard to argue Visa/MC is not a duopoly. Unfortunately anti-trust enforcement in the US has been more political than anything.

<comment><USER35> I would say this is an example where a duopoly is useful for consumers. The duopoly allows consumers the ability to use a credit card pretty much anywhere they want in the US; This is pretty convenient if you use a credit card responsively. It is also a better solution than the old days where you would have store cards or a store account. (I am not saying the duopoly is great because these companies are a massive headache for businesses, and increase the cost of things)

<comment><USER36> >I would say this is an example where a duopoly is useful for consumers. The duopoly allows consumers the ability to use a credit card pretty much anywhere they want in the US

Going by that reasoning a monopoly would be even better, as the card would be accepted everywhere.

The consumer pays by lack of innovation and high scheme fees.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Plaid scrapes bank credentials to enable challengers vs banks. VISA seems to be officially taking a stand with fintechs and challengers. So a bank can no longer piss off VISA & refuse scraping.

But here's my bigger bet. Using this, VISA will launch a competitor to FICO.

<comment><USER38> It'll serve as a means for VISA to even more strategically target customers for its financial products/services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Plaid and the broader explosion of white-label fintech infrastructure is great. Ultimately, it increases the number of companies that can enter the space and provide more competitive loan management tools, decision engines, identity verification, credit, wealth management, and so on to consumers. License the most complex/costly infrastructure, and then progressively swap out those vendor provided capabilities with internal platforms as they scale up (e.g. Revolut).

There's still lots of problems to solve in the connectivity space that Plaid sits in, and the pursuit of some kind of unified open personal finance data standard isn't really on the table for those steering the big initiatives (e.g. FDX). This is mostly due to the variety of the data and number of players (tens of thousands of institutions). For more on that, this interview with Jeff Leathers, founder of Quovo, a similar company that was acquired by Plaid in 2019 is not a bad listen:

[https://medium.com/wharton-fintech/podcast-with-lowell- putna...](https://medium.com/wharton-fintech/podcast-with-lowell-putnam-co- founder-and-ceo-of-quovo-421954a8962d)

</comment><comment><USER40> Plaid is the scraping app US fintech startups had to use before [https://teller.io](https://teller.io) (which uses the bank's own native APIs and therefore goes down way less) launched there. Good timing for the Plaid exit. Teller will eat their lunch.

</comment><comment><USER41> Abstracting away from this specific case, it is IMO just another example of potential very significant and real risks of being reliant upon cloud or, more generally, technological platforms operated by potentially acquirable companies. While some acquired companies remain relatively independent and continue offering original products (in short-to-medium term), many don't [I have compiled a long list of case studies ...]. And if this (along with IT security) doesn't make most CTOs and/or CIOs to wake up in the middle of the night, then I don't know what does. Industry consolidation is IMO a pretty scary, but probably inevitable, trend. I think that the safest approach (sans some corner cases, e.g., a unique technology) is to build one company's technology platform on an "unacquirable" technology infrastructure (for the cloud, that would be AWS, Azure and, to somewhat lesser extent, GCP). Thoughts?

</comment><comment><USER42> Curious what happens to options that are yet to vest when a company gets acquired like this? I had a potential offer from them and I'll be losing some sleep tonight :(

<comment><USER43> There's some flexibility, but often the unvested options in the acquired company are converted into unvested options in the acquiring company on the same schedule.

<comment><USER44> > often the unvested options in the acquired company are converted into > unvested options in the acquiring company on the same schedule

Yup, and I'd clarify that the new options aren't 1:1, but calculated based on some price-per-share of the acquired company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> From the documents at: [https://investor.visa.com/events-calendar/Event- Details/2020...](https://investor.visa.com/events-calendar/Event- Details/2020/Visa-Inc-To-Acquire-Plaid/default.aspx)

Deal is

* $4.9B cash consideration

* $400m retention equity as VISA RSUs

</comment><comment><USER46> Congrats to Plaid!

Overall, I'm no fan to these scrapers. Apart from the army of engineers (internal cost) required to maintain them, on the outside they sell a promise that is putting user's privacy at risk. This is especially prevalent in the bookkeeping space.

Many "me too apps" stitch their services using Plaid to provide bookkeepers with bank feeds & statements for their clients.

Other's use Xero's HubDoc (which Xero paid 70m for few years back) which basically does the same thing; scraping financial statements from many online services using a combination of tools and humans. It's a goldmine for hackers; plain text logins are stored in their database to practically many online accounts owned by business owners.

Amazing to what degree people will go to to save few hours of labor each month.

</comment><comment><USER47> Visa's presentation on the acquisition:

[https://www.scribd.com/document/442819888/Visa-Inc-to- Acquir...](https://www.scribd.com/document/442819888/Visa-Inc-to-Acquire- Plaid-Presentation)

<comment><USER48> That's interesting... 200M accounts on Plaid.

You gotta figure that's near the top of the S-Curve, right? Very close to 100% of the TAM in the US, and I would imagine that global expansion is costly given banking regulations in different regions. Visa already has the reputation / relationships to push forward there.

Congrats to the team!

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Do the early employees get a huge payout on their options?

<comment><USER50> Even if they had really shitty agreements I bet they'll see something substantial. Reports are saying it was a 5.3 billion purchase price. That's a lot of money for 400 employees.

<comment><USER51> Having 400 employees doesn't say much about how equity is distributed, though. E.g., (made up numbers, I know nothing about Plaid's comp specifically) if an employee gets 1 basis point over 4 years, that's 0.01% * $5.3 billion / 4 = $132,500, which combined with a startup salary might land you at around Google L4.

<comment><USER52> Unless plaid's equity structure was very unusual, early employees (at least in engineering) certainly received much much more than 1 basis point.

<comment><USER51> Sure, but what's early? I don't think it's unheard of to get to O(1 basis point) at 100s of employees.

I've seen an offer at a ~50 person company for 1-2 basis points.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Really don't like Plaid because they normalize phising. Surprised they aren't being condoned for this.

<comment><USER33> I think you mean "condemned"? To condone is to (often implicitly) approve of something that is ethically or morally dubious.

<comment><USER53> Yes, I think condemned is probably a better word!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Guess they survived the 3.5 year security risk [0]...

>7 points by Rainymood on June 21, 2016 [-]

>I'm going to be really rude here (forgive me) but I feel like every time a security question comes up you dodge the question really hard.

>I want to know one thing: If I log into your service with my bank credentials. Do you store these as plaintext files (or "encrypted" files of which you have the encryption key)? Yes/No.

>Furthermore, congratulations! I've been trying to start something up like this in Europe but I feel like there are way more restrictions in Europe on banking data and this kind of third-party aggregation. Sorry for being so rude.

Here is some previous news on Plaid on HN.

* 2016-06-20 Fintech Firm Plaid Raises $44M (wsj.com)[1]

* 2018-12-11 Fintech startup Plaid raises $250M at a $2.65B valuation (techcrunch.com)[2]

* 2020-01-14 Visa Buys Plaid (wsj.com)

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11939103](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11939103)

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18654880](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18654880)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18654880](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18654880)

</comment><comment><USER47> Visa invested in their Series C[0], so it seems unusual that they'd also acquire the company (why not acquire it back then?). Any ideas why this might have happened? Past examples?

[0] [https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/plaid#section- fundin...](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/plaid#section-funding- rounds)

<comment><USER55> > so it seems unusual that they'd also acquire the company (why not acquire it > back then?)

Not unusual at all. Pretty typical for CVC in fact. Couple of factors:

1\. CVC (Corporate Venture Capital) typically tries to invest in similar markets of companies that either are competitive or pseduo-competitive (think of it as a hedge). For example, this would be like PayPal investing in Venmo.

2\. It's cheaper in the long run for a CVC to make 10 of these bets to find that one that doesn't kill their core business model (usually a cash cow). That's why you see Ford/GM putting money into self-driving car start-ups.

3\. They were probably not at the level of scale ready for Visa to take them on at the time of the Series C. This was basically a down-payment for their eventual acquisition. It basically "you're too risky for us to buy, so here's some money that we can write off if you end up failing, but if you do fail, we don't have to deal with all of the crap that goes with a failing bus unit (layoffs, compliance, etc).

<comment><USER47> Great points (as well as the other comments).

I'm curious to learn more about strategy here since Paul Graham says there probably aren't more Googles because companies are acquired too soon. Facebook is famous for the Yahoo! offer. Stripe would have been a great acquisition (if they would have accepted any).

[http://paulgraham.com/googles.html](http://paulgraham.com/googles.html)

[https://twitter.com/paulg/status/403183731449413632?s=20](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/403183731449413632?s=20)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Open Banking Standards in Commonwealth Countries will make the need for these scrapers redundant and limit the tools use to the US only.

Never been a fan of scrapers. Very unreliable and a big security hole especially when MFA is used.

I wonder if the tightening data privacy regulations (CCPA et al) forced them to sell or whether it was just a good sale opportunity.

</comment><comment><USER56> There is a service like this in Australia, POLi. It's used almost exclusively to facilitate EFT transactions to vendors that can't use the regular channels like PayPal, local Banks, or Mastercard/Visa. ie. Porno, gambling, bitcoins, drugs.

I learned about it by working in gambling. I cannot believe that people are OK with just giving their online banking details to a company. It's insane! but people are willing to use it because there is almost no other way of getting the product they want.

Take the legislative risk out of handling those types of transactions, and shit like this will disappear.

</comment><comment><USER57> Who uses Plaid for ACH verification must start to think on alternatives. Visa blocked PayPal to growth its ACH payments a few years ago.

</comment><comment><USER58> "but that ignores the path dependency of one market using cash until recently, and the other receiving unsolicited Bank Americards 51 years ago. Once a job is done — and credit cards do their jobs very well — it takes a 10x improvement to get users to switch, and, in a three-sided network, that 10x is 10^3."

</comment><comment><USER59> ACH services using any kind of API is and has been a pain today.... Im using intuit and they have no good API, it forces you to do a redirect similar to paypal. You basically have to write your own screen scrape tool to integrate with these people.

</comment><comment><USER60> Didn't know such a thing existed till now. They took the feature that mint and others built early on and turned it into a business. Awesome. Have no idea how good it is but a multibillion dollar exit is great.

<comment><USER61> Pretty sure Mint was built on Yodlee, a Plaid competitor

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> I'm wondering if this will make Plaid's pricing more or less opaque. Right now it's go build it and then negotiate a rate. I think they would get a lot more uptake if they had upfront pricing.

<comment><USER63> Nearly every large SaaS company has opaque pricing because price discrimination allows them to make far more money than they would if they had published prices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> The WSJ updated the article this links to with the transaction price, $5.3 billion, "Visa to Pay $5.3 Billion for Fintech Startup." Maybe the HN title for this item should be updated?

</comment><comment> e-clinton Plaid is trash. Doesn't work with 2FA and is super unreliable. It's crazy that a project with so many faults could be financially successful.

</comment><comment><USER65> Banking regulators should mandate open banking APIs and default-private, non- sellable transaction data. The fact that they don't means that they don't work for us, government has been turned into a tool to enable and encourage rent- seeking. The "deregulation" obsession in this country is turning us all into modern feudal serfs, we have no option but to toil in our Lords' properties without recourse.

</comment><comment><USER66> It would interesting to know if the employees saw any for that money.

</comment><comment><USER67> This is too bad if they sell this prematurely

<comment><USER68> 5.3 billion is not premature. That's a fucking jackpot for a company that only raised 350MM.

<comment><USER67> I wish them well - could they have grown to be much more?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Plaid?

Edit: I guess I'll look up their homepage, and try to scroll through the marketing speak to figure it out. Seems like it would be nice if someone in the know could just tell us.

</comment><comment><USER70> Congratulations to the Plaid team!

</comment><comment><USER71> Still waiting for the Zelle API.

</comment><comment><USER72> Please I wanna know how to work

</comment><comment><USER73> [http://archive.md/tQfZJ](http://archive.md/tQfZJ)

</comment><comment><USER72> I wanna know how to work

</comment><comment><USER74> So visa has been plaid?

</comment><comment> node-bayarea For $5.3 Billion!!!

</comment><comment><USER75> Heard they were offering .1 percent for senior software engineers 6 months ago. Congrats guys!

(source:[https://www.teamblind.com/post/Plaid-acquired-by-Visa- for-5B...](https://www.teamblind.com/post/Plaid-acquired-by-Visa- for-5B-wBKnUPrz))

</comment><comment><USER76> FFS...can anyone run a business these days without XYZ company getting acquired.

</comment><comment><USER77> At least we'll be able to say... They've gone into plaid!

<comment><USER78> When I was a kid, I always laughed at the "F*, even in the future nothing works" quote. Now that I am a software engineer, I just get sad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> i always hope that new exciting companies will work towards a sustainable business model that can exist without a buyout from some mega. i understand that its difficult to start a business, much less a sustainable one, but its sad to see such promising companies grow into a pitch instead of a business.

maybe its a good thing i didn't get hired for their SLC office, because i would have quit over this.

<comment><USER80> Out of curiousity, why would this acquisition be a reason to quit?

<comment><USER79> to me this move indicates weakness. its a fine exit for the early employees and the executive team, but there's no reason to sell if you have a solid business plan and a realistic vision for future profitability. maybe the only vision for the future they want to pursue involves some expensive investment or the business was built on massive debt that can only be paid of in this way.

i want to be a part of building something that can survive as an independent entity. selling is an admission that this is either not a goal or not possible given the current position of the company. both of these are against my ethics. why should i stay at a company that has openly admitted that they are incapable or unwilling to pursue independence?

<comment><USER81> At this point, what difference does it make? Visa can survive as an independent, profitable entity by your criteria.

> but there's no reason to sell if you have a solid business plan and a > realistic vision for future profitability.

They had 5.3 billion reasons to sell. With an acquisition offer that high, it's not about the company's ability to survive independently. It's about doing what's in the best financial interests of the company and employees.

> i want to be a part of building something that can survive as an independent > entity. selling is an admission that this is either not a goal or not > possible given the current position of the company. both of these are > against my ethics. why should i stay at a company that has openly admitted > that they are incapable or unwilling to pursue independence?

Your distinction is a bit arbitrary. Plaid wasn't a fully independent company after they took significant money. Take a look at their board of directors. Only 2 out of 5 board members were Plaid executives. They had already "sold" part of the company when you applied.

<comment><USER79> i didn't say "fully independent" i talked about a willingness to pursue independence. that's the difference that i care about. i value independence more than money. you do need a certain amount of money to be autonomous, but its about end goals. i don't agree with the end goal of "make the best business deals for the biggest amount of money". besides, long-term you make way more money if you are independent. i have respect for visa and i'd work there because they do value independence, but i wouldn't work for a subsidiary who couldn't hack it as a competitor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> Anyone know if this acquisition is a win for Plaid, or are they are just panicking before bank API middleware becomes commoditized (e.g. [http://paysli.com/](http://paysli.com/) offering free authentication)

</comment><comment><USER83> I see a lot of hate for Plaid here. I was my understanding that the only reason you would really ever use Plaid is because they were able give programmatic access to flat-rate fee ACH payments of basically any size. Obviously they were never something you could compare to Stripe. I wonder what's gonna happen with in the near future, especially considering Plaid was obviously stepping on the toes of the interchange-rates of the likes of Visa.

<comment><USER84> Plaid provides an api to access transaction history and verify bank account ownership.

They don't do ACH transfers.

<comment><USER83> [https://fin.plaid.com/articles/inside-ach-payments-with- stri...](https://fin.plaid.com/articles/inside-ach-payments-with-stripe-and- plaid/)

"""To get started with ACH payments, you need a system that can connect you (the originator of the ACH transaction) with an Originating Depository Financial Institution (ODFI). Additionally, that system should be able to give updates on the status of the payment and give the developer an interface to authenticate, verify, and charge the user on demand.

That's where Stripe comes in. In January, the payments infrastructure giant debuted support for ACH payments through its platform alongside a partnership with us here at Plaid. Now, Stripe users can authenticate their customers through Plaid (or, if they must, micro-deposits) and then charge them through ACH."""

Am I misunderstanding something?

EDIT:

Okay so maybe they weren't doing the transfers, but they were certainly facilitating them and adding to the adoption of more ACH based payments (which means less credit-card payments). Same conflict of interest applies. What does Visa care about bank account verifications?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Who is hiring interns? - <AUTHOR>

It has been a few months since one of these got attention. Let's try and preface each submission with city or country info, ie SF, NYC, Chicago, London, etc... Thanks, Brian Herman <comment><USER2> Chicago: Sandbox Industries hiring paid BizDev and Community Management interns for its incubator company DashMob (www.dashmob.com). Contact firstname.lastname@example.com.</comment>


U.S. Expats Can't Renounce Their Citizenship Fast Enough - <AUTHOR> https://www.yahoo.com/news/u-expats-t-renounce-citizenship-070007367.html <comment><USER2> There are plenty of people wanting to emigrate to the US legally, so it's a win-win for the country.</comment>


Book review: Introduction to Information Retrieval - <AUTHOR> http://glinden.blogspot.com/2009/02/book-review-introduction-to-information.html

<comment><USER2> I am taking a course that revolves around this book. Most of the material is freely available for anyone that is interested:

clgiles.ist.psu.edu/IST441/index.html

</comment><comment><USER3> Just in case you were contemplating getting Kinko's to print the PDFs rather than buying the book, it won't save you much money. It was $48 at Amazon, and the cheapest I could make it at Kinko's (online) was about $38.

<comment><USER4> You can always print it at home and have it bound at Kinko's... although that probably wouldn't save that much more. Used book stores are also a good option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looks like a great introduction. My copy of Modern Information Retrieval (1999) is starting to show its age as well and from glancing through the table of contents, as pointed out in Greg's post, this really seems to hit a lot of the recent trends in IR. Up to chapter 11 is kind of a review of traditional IR and then from chapter 11 on it has a pretty impressive chunk of IR from the last decade (which is often what's missing in introductory texts). Added to my Amazon wishlist. :-)</comment>


Element 14 Holding Orders Based On US Government Watch List - <AUTHOR> http://www.eevblog.com/2014/02/24/element-14-holding-orders-based-on-us-government-watch-list/ <comment><USER2> Of course they do, it's yet another chance to punish their customers.

I ordered from Newark/Element14 once, doing battle with and finally prevailing over their extremely clunky online system. It took several days for my $100 order to even ship, and it eventually showed up in two gigantic boxes (a few 4ft pieces of heat shrink tubing had obviously required their own 4ft long box). The packing materials and shipping must have totaled at least $100, to say nothing of the obviously manual labor.

I've no idea how they stay in business.

<comment><USER3> In the UK Farnell/Element14 are the best choice for components. My items always arrive next-day when ordered before 5pm and delivery is free (you have to spend at least £20 to pay by card).

The site is a lot more usable than RS-Online so I will often order from them though I have an RS trade-counter nearby. Mouser's and Digikey's sites are just as good (this is from a user perspective, from a designer's perspective they are pretty awful) but orders will ship from the US and take longer.

<comment><USER2> I guess that at least helps me understand why RPi went with them as a distributor, even though their business seems archaic on this side of the Atlantic.

I don't know what you mean by Digikey being awful from a designer's perspective - I've long considered their parametric search a bona fide design tool. So much so that I actively avoid designing in parts that Digikey doesn't stock.

<comment><USER3> Digikey's and Farnell's parametric search are the best from a user's perspective. All the sites are pretty terrible from a designer's perspective. I concluded this from working out how to generate HTTP requests for them for my pet project: [https://github.com/kasbah/1clickBOM](https://github.com/kasbah/1clickBOM)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> >>> (International customers have to fill out silly forms with US distributors and manufacturers saying we won't use the parts in nuclear weapons – seriously)

True. One of my first jobs was at a US electronics manufacturer / parts distributor. I remember we had to fill out paperwork for every export and all of our products (mainly smoke detectors) had to be classified as something to the effect of "parts that could be used to build a nuclear weapon". Ridiculous.

<comment><USER5> A lot of smoke detectors use the radioactive isotope americium-241 in an ionization process to detect smoke. Get enough smoke detectors, and you can have a good amount of radioactive material.

Read up on David Hahn, who hit the news in '94 for trying to build a breeder reactor in his back yard using sources scavenged from among other things, smoke detectors.

<comment><USER6> Thank you. It's depressing how quick people can be to dismiss something as stupid without considering how those rules came about in the first place.

<comment><USER7> And so what? some guy stabs someone with a screwdriver and the US regulate the export of them between Commonwealth countries, still without regulating the AK-47 in its own country? There is more regulation on CNC machining center than on firearms. It's stupid. The US doesn't refrain from sending hellfires missiles on weddings, which kills more surely than the once in a lifetime freak who assemble some mildly radioactive stuff in his backyard. If it's for the radiations, I see people playing with X-ray on youtube everywhere, there is 0% chance of chain reaction, nobody cares about chemical contamination in the US, so I don't know why they would freak about a mildly radioactive contamination in a foreign country either.

What I begin to see, is an entire world under occupation.

<comment><USER8> That's because an AK-47 is an AK-47: it's not a game-changer. But a CNC machining system that lets you build silent ship propellers can dramatically change the threats the world faces.

<comment><USER9> > But a CNC machining system that lets you build silent ship propellers can > dramatically change the threats the world faces.

Bullshit. (and yes I know about the Toshiba incident)

<comment><USER10> I didn't know about it, so I had to look it up

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiba- Kongsberg_scandal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiba-Kongsberg_scandal)

<comment><USER9> Thank you for elevating our level of discourse a bit :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The most impressive thing about this is that someone managed to successfully complete an order at Element14, where registration before ordering is compulsory (and can take up to a dozen attempts because the site throws random 500 errors almost everywhere), and where Visa cards are required to have start dates even though most of them don't, and where they don't answer your email telling them about the errors.

<comment><USER12> > registration before ordering is compulsory

It's mostly a B2B company, I think it's natural their website won't be optimised for other types of users. You can still add items to the basket and see total charges without being logged in.

> where Visa cards are required to have start dates even though most of them > don't

Are you sure? I guess it could be different on your local version of the website, but it's not the case on the UK one: [http://i.imgur.com/fcPF3Qv.png](http://i.imgur.com/fcPF3Qv.png)

<comment><USER11> Very sure, since I had to report this on Thursday last. Was just about to lob in a Raspberry Pi and show you, but the World's Lousiest Ecommerce Site bounced me out completely, sent me to cpcireland.farnell.com, logged me out and now wants me to reregister _there_ solely to show you a GIF. Sorry, but not worth it. You're just going to have to believe me.

<comment><USER13> I can confirm that Element 14 in the UK sucks.

I somehow managed to order a RPi from them a year ago without trouble but after taking more then 2 and a half weeks to even bother to ship it i just cancelled the damn thing and bought it off Amazon.

Luckily now i know of a lot more small and helpful websites that would ship stuff in a decent time frame.

Can't avoid using them for more specialized part unfortunately. Don't expect much from them though.

<comment><USER14> That's strange - their shipping is incredible in Australia - you order something before 6pm and it shows up by courier the next day if it's in stock (the website tells you how much of each part they have in each warehouse, and how long it would take to ship). That used to be for any price - but now you have to pay postage for orders under $50.

Before that, I once bought $15 of parts including a $6 micro controller, which was in stock in the US. I got everything else courier end the next day, and then the micro controller three days later.

You do pay for it though - you can get things half the price other places, but it's awesome for quick prototyping.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is actually great news. It has been impossible to find out whether you are on the US watch list. Now you have to do is get an Australian with your name to order something from Element 14 and now you know.

<comment><USER16> The whole list is freely available right here [http://www.treasury.gov/ofac/downloads/sdnlist.txt](http://www.treasury.gov/ofac/downloads/sdnlist.txt)

<comment><USER17> There is no "JONES" on that list.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I never would have imagined that an Australian ordering from a UK company would have to feel my pain, but welcome to the club.

My father has the exact same name as the blogger, which also makes up 2/3 of my own name. We've had similar orders from out of the country held up for weeks, been extremely slowed when trying to fly. It's not a very fun game.

</comment><comment><USER19> Damn, I'll have to eat my words...

In an earlier hn post, I actually suggested that if you use a name that's common enough, like David Fricken Jones, the US would never have the guts to flag it.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7240983](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7240983)

But here we are. David Jones... Not a lot of people affected by that, huh.

<comment><USER20> Between all the squabbling in this thread, your post shines through like a ray of sunlight. You don't see this type of thing often on the internet without it being faked. Life is good sometimes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Glad to see the EEVBlog here.. I have been learning a LOT from his videos. If you are at all interested in electronics I would highly recommend checking it out.

</comment><comment><USER22> Export restrictions have been in place for a very long time.

Another relatively well-known distributor that got bitten is McMaster-Carr, a mechanical parts supplier (with a very nice web design - [http://mcmaster.com/](http://mcmaster.com/)).

After shipping something to a location they shouldn't have, they were penalized in 2003 and they no longer ship outside the US. Which is a damn shame, because they have a great catalogue of stuff that's very easy to navigate.

<comment><USER23> They aren't exporting anything to this guy. He's an Australian picking up his order in person in Australia. US laws don't apply.

<comment><USER24> Except for the fact that our illustrious government here in Australia seems intent on becoming Little America. I'd assume that's why this dumb law is applied.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I laughed at this:

 _The "fix" is to move your name to the 2nd line so it doesn't get flagged_

</comment><comment><USER26> I hate to say it, but from an engineering/UX perspective, a secure and reliable federal identity API would make a lot of sense.

As long as they're going to have a blacklist like this, they may as well do it correctly. Names do not individually identify people and it's ridiculous that security-sensitive processes still use names as primary identifiers in this era.

You're also not actually losing any anonymity - an online order is already linked to a physical address and a credit card (which is in turn linked to a real identity). A central ID API only gets Big Brother-ish if its use is mandated for previously pseudonymous interactions (say, HN or Reddit comments).

</comment><comment><USER27> an obvious hacker question

What happens when you change your name to a dead terrorists name?

Is there no in government somewhat curious about all the holes in their watch list implementation..

<comment><USER28> Obvious USG answer: The same thing as happens if you have a living terrorist's name. The no-fly list includes dead terrorists in case terrorist identity thieves impersonate them; the Treasury OFAC SDN list (more relevant here, though I do not see David Jones on it) includes dead people because their money does not automatically disappear from their bank accounts and their Amazon Free Super Saver Shipping packages do not immediately disappear from the shipping company's horse-drawn wagons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> What happens if some one has name like John Doe ? This is the stupiest implementation of system ever. It needs an award. Seriously, very funny article.

</comment><comment><USER30> I had no idea grep was so effective in fighting terror.

<comment><USER31> You have that backwards, it _instills_ terror, how many engineers are out there saying "Oh crap, my name just won the latest watchlist round of regex golf!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I find it quite humorous that the governments that actually signed these deals are given a free pass, brilliant.

<comment><USER33> The U.S. waving around the biggest stick in human history has nothing at all to do with that, I'm sure.</comment></comment>


Former NiN Drummer Takes Album Promotion A Step Further - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2009/02/20/josh-freese-album-promotion/ <comment><USER2> Everything has a price. Which is why I think we tend to be friends with people around our income level. Can you imagine the awkwardness of 'I'll get this lunch' with a millionaire friend?

I have a couple friends who work in the world of donors and charitable giving. Want to be "Chair" of the big society event? Even though its not explicitly stated, that comes hand-in-hand with a sizable donation. 5 figures usually. Sometimes the New Money doesn't understand that protocol - Old Money knows the dance steps.

<comment><USER3> _Millionaire_ ain't what it used to be, and lunch is still lunch. I have rich friend and I have broke friends and we still buy each other lunch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Must find $20,000... must miniature golf with Maynard...

This is a really good idea I think, although he's probably getting ripped off on some of them. It's cool to see musicians looking "outside the box" for ways to cash in; ways that don't involve the RIAA.

<comment><USER5> How much would people be paying to spend the opening week of a tour with Metallica or their favorite band?

Gene Simmons says he can make a million dollars a night for doing a concert, but he could probably get another million for just letting some people hang out with him on tour, and I think everyone on the planet knows that Gene Simmons would do virtually anything for a penny.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was wondering when celebrities would start doing this. It seemed inevitable that celebrities eventually cash in on their immense social capitol.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm surprised how many of the replies here assume he's being serious!

</comment><comment><USER8> I thought NiNs drummer was a keyboard.

<comment><USER9> NIN in the studio is basically just Trent Reznor. Live it is a full band.

<comment><USER10> Also calling Josh Freese just "NIN's drummer" is not very accurate. Freese did play with them on occasion, including the recent amazing Lights in the Sky tour, he is still one of the most accomplished studio drummers in the business. The man is a drumming machine and is extremely famous in his own right. (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Freese>)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There's a fine line between clever promo and desperate.

<comment><USER12> He's actually pricing himself pretty low here. Can you imagine the publicity a band would get if they actually hired him to tour for 5 months?

<comment><USER13> I'd also imagine that if he really sells these deals he'll find it extremely fun. I mean, if these sales get completed he'll get to spend a few months doing a ton of crazy weird things.

<comment><USER9> I would be surprised if they don't sell. Some Disney fan will get the 10k package for dinner at Club 33. This package is cheaper than a membership there.

And the 20k and 75k packages come with members of Tool. Josh Freese may be very talented and almost-famous, but the members of Tool and very talented with some incredibly obsessive (and surely some rich) fans.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Is this the era of "Success by UX"? - <AUTHOR> http://www.andrewcross.ca/2012/02/14/is-this-the-beginning-of-the-success-by-ux-era/ <comment><USER2> Jared Spool's article "Market Maturity" [1] published in 1997 is a very good way to understand what kind of experience is required for success. He argues that success depends on market maturity which roughly follows four stages: 1. Basic deliverability war, 2. Feature parity war, 3. Productivity / "ease of use" then finally 4. Price war.

Stage 3 is generally where UX becomes a priority. For a consumer web product or startup this generally makes sense as a marker for market maturity as delivering technology and shipping features has become easy and cheap. Crafting UX is difficult but probably won't be for long. For example Twitter Bootstrap seems to be lowering the cost of boilerplate UI which in turn lowers the cost of UX in general.

[1] <http://www.uie.com/articles/market_maturity/>

<comment><AUTHOR> A very succinct way of putting it and I fully agree. What will be interesting to see is how these stages will change as the rate of tech innovation continues to speed up.

With new products coming out all the time, disruptive technologies may arrive so quickly that the price war stage is cut short. I think it will still exist, but just in a more truncated version.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> As a UX person, I have a little secret to tell you: if the product idea is really good, the UX part is _really easy_.

Hiring a UX person isn't going to make your product take off. It's not going to make your users love you. It can make it easier or harder for them to love you, but it's just a modifier.

Design is how it works. Your _idea_ is how it works.

Unfortunately, the idea, the technology, and the UX are all tightly intertwined. New technology lets you do things that were never possible before, enabling new ideas. New ideas need to be massaged through a few UX wash cycles before they come out looking the way they should. UX must live within the technical confines of what is possible.

You need all three. Companies fail because they don't care enough about one of them (or two of them). Traditionally, UX has been the most commonly neglected. That's starting to change - but that doesn't mean that UX is the source of success - it's 1/3 of the source of success.

</comment><comment><USER4> Great UX may make for a great tech story, but by itself it won't lead to huge traction. Great UX doesn't mean great marketing, and word of mouth. In the end, it comes down to providing something that taps into a need, and marketing. The UX part is what makes your product sticky, so people won't leave but it can't attract newcomers.

There are 2 sites that are hardly looked at in the tech space: CafeMom and SparkPeople. Take a look at them, and you can hardly say they have good UX - it's messy, and cluttered. Yet both have over 5 million uniques per month.

<comment><USER5> I would argue that amazing UX _IS_ amazing marketing, precisely because people want to tell other people how awesome the UX is. I have a handy example: the meteoric launch of Clear.

<comment><USER4> Is this really true except for products that have a strong techie following? For me, I can't think of any product I recommended to someone mostly because of the amazing UX.

I'm not discounting the importance of UX, but it's easy to fall into the trap of focusing too much on the UX, and not on producing something people want, and finding a way to reach those people in a profitable, scalable way.

<comment><USER6> Hey, have you been to this amazing new Thai restaurant?

Have you seen avatar in 3d yet?

Did you see the game last night? Lin was awesome! They play again tomorrow...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think we are past the point of disruption: a usable product is an absolute minimum now. Aarron Walter wrote an excellent book on designing for emotion, where he argues that usability is just like a commodity and low on the user- need pyramid. Higher up that pyramid is a product that has personality and invokes the right emotions. You can read an excerpt here: <http://www.alistapart.com/articles/personality-in-design/>

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm a product designer and love the thesis, but this article is seriously lacking in argument.

\- Many of the big "UX" benefits would not be possible without massive changes to entrenched business processes. e.g. Visual voicemail was something that AT&T needed to support. Likewise, unbundling all the "Crapware" is another area where Apple forced the carriers to change their business processes.

Apple had the ability to do this because of their momentum. In 2007, Apple had revolutionized the music industry, was on its way with TV and movies, and clearly someone at AT&T wanted some of that momentum or certainly didn't want Verizon to have it.

If anything, the launch of the first iPhone showed UX alone wasn't enough to dominate the market. The G1 iPhone sold well, but not to the scale it is now. Only after the price got chopped did people move to it en masse. Apple was able to do this by having the world's best operations team and forcing extra- subsidies from the carriers.

Now the UI did get people excited and you can't separate the success of Apple from the strength of their UI, but this article would make you think that the great UX was the primary reason Apple has succeeded.

Design is important, but Dribbble is full of beautiful app designs that sell 10 units a week, where as you will find many horribly designed, modern sites, that are dominating new markets.

<comment><USER9> Horribly designed sites can dominate old markets too. Amazon is the perfect example of why design doesn't matter. Likewise Craigslist and eBay... the list goes on and on. It's all about marketing and luck.

<comment><USER10> I read on HN once that for products that there's an inverse relationship in play here.

The more you need a product the less it's design matters. The less you need a product the more it's design matters.

This is why de-facto standard utilities like Amazon, Craigslist, eBay do not need to be "beautiful"

<comment><USER11> That only applies when there is no competition. Look at cars and firearms, for example. Pretty crucial items when they are needed but design is still at the forefront when it comes to making a choice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think that one important thing to keep in mind is that user experience is much _more_ than just the interface of the product.

Sometimes, a simple shift in metaphor i.e. Hipmunk's gantt chart is enough to substantially improve the UX, but sometimes it requires an entirely new product strategy to do something revolutionary. Consider Amazon Prime. Is the user interface particularly pretty? No, but the experience of using the service truly is revolutionary, and so far no other retailers can match it because the experience is only made possible by supply chain management and distribution that Amazon has in place.

The iPhone UX was revolutionary because it challenged the entire model of interaction between user and phone. The experience of using an iPhone is the sum total of an astounding number of innovations, only some of which have to do with the UI. Consider the hardware innovations from the glass screen to the proximity sensor, to the hi-res screen in the iPhone 4 that no one expected or anticipated. Then there is the ecosystem aspect, which required not only a fundamental re-thinking about how both users and developers would interact with technology, but also massive distribution which was already in place through iTunes. Of course, the multi-touch interface, and the laser focus on developing quality software for email, messaging, phone, and music, played a huge role in overall UX, but they would not have been possible without the other innovations.

I guess it really all just goes back to the fact that design is how it works, not how it looks, which requires a deep understanding of the problem and needs of the customer, not just the ability to arrange pixels in a pretty pattern on the screen.

<comment><USER13> What really improved the usability and experience for people was the hardware, to be exact the touch.

By removing the abstraction that normally exist from having to covert mouse movement with the hand to mouse movement on the screen, who ever invented that is the real hero.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I see the value of UX, and I haven't decided how important it is to me yet.

I _do_ feel like the conversations in tech circles seem to be overselling its benefits. I get skeptical when hearing bold, blanket assertions like "A UX person is one of the critical components of a startup today. You need a [hacker, hustler,UX person]".

I don't disagree that some startups need a UX person, but that flavor of claim strikes me as overreaching, and possibly just UX guys talking up their book. /not saying this is necessarily the case, but I can't tell that its not/

Specifically regarding the Hipmunk case, since its often cited as an example of how newcomers superior UX/UI can oust established players: Why are non- Hipmunk sites still in business, or even more, why are they still the dominant players in the market?

Its undeniable that there are examples of "bad UX companies" succeeding and "great UX companies" failing. What experiments can be/have been done to isolate the impact of just UX as a contributor for startup failure/success?

(I don't consider "split testing UX on a given site" sufficient. This generally finds local maxima and incremental improvements to the business. It generally makes you succeed more or less, but I want to hear about why the UX guy is a critical pillar to the existence of a company (and then, most companies))

</comment><comment><USER13> Lets not discuss UX as if it's some well defined term.

Hipmunk is an innovation in user interface design or information design, not something that sprung out of what is normally considered a UX process.

The user experience is everything from how it's designed, to how well it's programmed. It's everything and therefore it's nothing.

It's an industry term not a skill as such.

</comment><comment><USER9> Nope. It's the era of success by marketing and luck, as it always has been and always will be.

Engineering is, as usual, pretty much irrelevant to success. That includes UX.

<comment><USER15> This makes me wonder if there are any major products out there that succeed despite terribad UX. In my mind I have a bunch of enterprise-y web apps but none really stand out.

<comment><USER9> Amazon, eBay, Craigslist. Especially that last one.

<comment><USER16> I agree they lack the edge in UX, on the other hand they got the other 2/3 of the puzzle that ender7 talks about in his first comment.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Endurance Running Hypothesis - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endurance_running_hypothesis <comment><USER2> Yup - our ability to store large amounts of glycogen, sweat and long legs are very likely to be evolutionary traits that made it easier to hunt by chasing after animals without these traits and tiring them out to the point they cannot escape

<comment><USER3> _fwiw_ "We suggest that increases in eccrine function are not dependent upon increased physical activity or reduced body hair. Therefore, enhanced sweating capacity may have evolved in Australopithecus or even earlier hominins, driven largely by climate. The additional increase in modern human sweating capacity evolved later, concurrent with long distance walking and running." page 40

"The evolution of eccrine sweat glands in human and nonhuman primates"

[https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Andrew_Best4/publicatio...](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Andrew_Best4/publication/323399145_The_evolution_of_eccrine_sweat_glands_in_human_and_nonhuman_primates/links/5aa2cca2a6fdccd544b7555c/The- evolution-of-eccrine-sweat-glands-in-human-and-nonhuman-primates.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Also see the excellent This American Life podcast: Running After Antelope Stories of people engaged in a battle with nature — a battle they don't stand much chance of winning. Most of the show is Scott Carrier's story of trying for twelve years to chase down and catch an antelope by foot.

[https://www.thisamericanlife.org/80/running-after- antelope](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/80/running-after-antelope)

</comment><comment><USER5> An excellent book on this topic from about 10 years ago: Born to Run

<comment><USER6> I've inferred the entire contents of the book from the plethora of HN comments discussing it.

<comment><USER7> This was my opinion too until I read it. Definitely well worth a read if you're at all interested in running, fitness and human evolution. The autobiographical story parts are great reading, too.

<comment><USER8> I don't care at all for running (I'm a bike guy), but it's still a fun read.

<comment><USER7> It's a really fascinating story on top of all of the running stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Putting a link to the "Lykov Family" Wikipedia page in the middle of this article is just plain evil; I'm trying to get some work done here!

<comment><USER10> I was captured by the same thread; I was particularly looking forward for any material on how/if their language diverged from the general population's. Over this long span of time, even in such a small group, do they end up speaking a dialect?

Couldn't find material on that, still looking

<comment><USER11> The Lykov Family have been well-covered. VICE had a decent piece covering the sole remaining member: Agafia. Their speech did somewhat devolve, and children born out in the taiga had developed their own cooing pidgin that they spoke to each other, IIRC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> We also have hidden adaptations to water:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diving_reflex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diving_reflex)

There is actually a hypothesis related to this called the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis, but (IMHO) it seems to go too far.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquatic_ape_hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquatic_ape_hypothesis)

</comment><comment><USER13> This video of a San hunter chasing down a Kudu is pretty good:

[https://youtu.be/826HMLoiE_o](https://youtu.be/826HMLoiE_o)

<comment><USER14> I was lucky enough to spend time with the San people, and it was one of the most moving experiences of my life.

[http://theroadchoseme.com/the-juhoansi-living-san- museum](http://theroadchoseme.com/the-juhoansi-living-san-museum)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> _Hunters or Scavengers?_

"Rewards of Scavenging … I spent about seven months simulating passive scavenging by waiting until the carnivores had eaten their fill and moved off, and then documenting how much meat and marrow was left on carcasses. … An entire zebra carcass could yield almost 15 kilograms of meat in scraps of various sizes."

"Meat-Eating Among the Earliest Humans" Briana Pobiner, March-April 2016, Volume 104, Number 2, Page 110.

[https://www.americanscientist.org/article/meat-eating- among-...](https://www.americanscientist.org/article/meat-eating-among-the- earliest-humans)

</comment><comment><USER15> Oh God I should get back on running

<comment><USER16> Just Do It™

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> A few years ago some Kenyans chased down a couple cheetahs:

[https://www.bbc.com/news/world- africa-24953910](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-24953910)

</comment><comment><USER18> Running bellow 14 km/h is not running.

<comment><USER19> The fact you had to use the word 'running' to describe the thing you claim is 'not running' makes me skeptical about your claim.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> What about CMS (electrostimulation with electrodes), can it raise the energy level and such like raw exercising? I'm becoming very intrigued about CMS, as a 'low energy individual'.

<comment><USER21> Last time I researched the topic, the conclusion was the level of simulation was too low in comparison with a real exercise. It still has its use in physiotherapy and rehabilitation though.

My answer to low energy is coffee. Do stupid things faster (c)!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Made me think of the Tarahumara[0].

>> The Tarahumara word for themselves, Rarámuri, means "runners on foot" or "those who run fast" in their native tongue according to some early ethnographers like Norwegian Carl Lumholtz, though this interpretation has not been fully agreed upon. With widely dispersed settlements, these people developed a tradition of long-distance running up to 200 miles (320 km) in one session, over a period of two days through their homeland of rough canyon country, for inter-village communication, transportation, and hunting.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rar%C3%A1muri](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rar%C3%A1muri)

<comment><USER23> By "made you think" you mean it explicitly mentions them, along with many other examples. The link you provide is even in the OP.

<comment><USER22> Whoops, you caught me skimming a wikipedia article :)</comment></comment></comment>


Receive a push message once an HN post reaches 50, 100 or 250 upvotes - <AUTHOR> http://push.co/a/w4bcXKT0W

<comment><USER2> Another push notification app that I have to pay for? What was wrong with Pushover? What does Push.co offer me that will make me switch away from Pushover and switch over all my services?

<comment><USER3> Looks like they support oAuth to authorize an app to send you notifications instead of having to copy/paste/type a pin code into an app.

Seems much easier and user friendly if that is the case.

<comment><USER2> Easier when setting up via a website/frontend yes, but if I'm programming a script, I can just copy/paste the app token and user key and am done... Send a curl request and I have notifications straight away.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In case anyone is not aware of it, Jeff Miller has created twitter and RSS feeds which also provide the same info (albeit without push): [http://talkfast.org/2010/07/23/a-cure-for-hacker-news- overlo...](http://talkfast.org/2010/07/23/a-cure-for-hacker-news-overload/)

</comment><comment><USER5> The web site is unreadable on a Blackberry (not that that matters much).

What's wrong with just subscribing to the twitter feeds?

See @newsyc20, @newsyc50, @newsyc150.

See also: [http://talkfast.org/2010/07/23/a-cure-for-hacker-news- overlo...](http://talkfast.org/2010/07/23/a-cure-for-hacker-news-overload/)

<comment><USER6> _What 's wrong with just subscribing to the twitter feeds?_

Having to use Twitter?

<comment><USER5> Interesting. Do you have a reasoned argument not to use Twitter, or are you opposed on some other grounds? I follow feeds on twitter that provide me value, and it's a great resource, so I'd be interested to hear an opposing view.

<comment><USER6> Not really, I just dislike their attitude towards third-party clients and their all-seeing button smeared across the web. They're just another data silo on the web.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Also checkout www.hnalerts.com by @robfitz

It will sms/email you when a link of your website either has been submitted to HN or reaches the frontpage.

<comment><USER8> It's actually [http://hnalerts.com/](http://hnalerts.com/) (doesn't work with the www)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback and interesting discussion about being a .co member.

</comment><comment><USER9> Works only with iOS

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> btw I feel this post should at least get 50 upvotes to make sure I get a push notification about it. So please help me ;-)

</comment><comment><USER10> Is this a Colombian company?

Apparently, they're from Amsterdam. Now the "proud to be a co" bit just confuses me.

<comment><USER11> OT, but I've been seeing the "proud to be a co" thing on a lot of .co websites. I think I saw it on 500.co, last night. Seems like .co is trying to position itself as a premier, aspirational domain.

<comment><USER10> That's odd, why would the site owners care what .co is trying to do? I don't understand that banner at all...

<comment><USER12> It's possibly a banner ad in disguise, and the .co registry using this kind of promotion as a way to legitimize their ccTLD as a gTLD. Maybe the registry is providing some kind of sponsorship or kickback. I presume it's similar in nature to the sites that display the fact they're hosted by Rackspace that you see every now and again.

<comment><USER10> Looks like you're right, the .co registry is offering some perks if you buy a .co domain, so it might be linked to that:

[http://www.go.co/membership-perks/](http://www.go.co/membership-perks/)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Legal pot means big changes for state's drug-sniffing dogs - <AUTHOR> http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Legal-pot-means-big-changes-for-states-drug-sniffing-dogs-199043431.html

<comment><USER2> My father is currently a Police K9 trainer for a city Colorado. About 2 months ago they retired a dog and the new dog they received is the first in Northern Colorado which does not hit on cannabis, but does on all the other typical drugs.

When cannabis was legalized here, any previous dog which hit on cannabis could not longer be used by local and state police for drug searches due to anything found related to a dog that hit on cannabis is dismissible in court since it is no longer illegal.

</comment><comment><USER3> As a foreigner I find this state/federal distinction terribly confusing. So cannabis is illegal in the US under federal law, but not under state law in some states? Doesn't that mean it's still probable cause that someone is breaking the (federal) law, and therefore reasonable grounds to search someone?

<comment><USER2> >So cannabis is illegal in the US under federal law, but not under state law in some states? Correct.

It all depends on who is attempting the search.

City/County/State entities have their respective jurisdiction and all must comply with state law, and therefore some states no longer have reasonable grounds to search based purely on cannabis scent. It would be equivalent to police coming to your house and smelling alcohol on your breathe and attempting a search based purely on that.

Federal entities, such as DEA and Dept of Justice maintain federal jurisdiction and can come in and trump state law (by definition). The Dept of Justice (Eric Holder specifically I believe) recently came out saying they would not prosecute those who are obeying state law as long as they don't sell to minors and keep it away from federal buildings/schools ect.</comment></comment>


Minority Births Outnumbered Whites for the First Time - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-census-data-20120517,0,7475788.story

<comment><USER2> The lede paragraph says, "The United States has reached a historic tipping point -- with Latino, Asian, mixed race and African American births constituting a majority of births for the first time, theU.S. Census Bureau reported Thursday."

But in the everyday sense of "white," most Latino people are "white," because the definition of Hispanic/Latino ethnicity used by the federal government

<http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-04.pdf>

"Definition of Hispanic or Latino Origin Used in the 2010 Census

"'Hispanic or Latino' refers to a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race."

makes clear that a great variety of people of varying ancestry or "heritage" or "country of birth" can categorize themselves as Hispanic. Someone self- designating has the choice to indicate Hispanic ethnicity, by that definition, and to indicate white "race" after indicating Hispanic ethnicity.

A detailed FAQ on how United States designations of "race" and "ethnicity" interact with college and university admission policies in the United States

[http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college- admissions/13664...](http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college- admissions/1366406-race-college-admission-faq-discussion-10-a.html)

goes into much more detail on that controversial issue.

<comment><USER3> It seems pretty clear that they were using the economic/political privilege form of minority -- which includes most hispanic people except the very top echelon of mostly-Spanish people in Latin America.

The South American largely-Indian guy who came across the border and now works in a chicken processing plant in the Southeast or a farm in the West is not part of the traditional white European power structure in the US, which until now was a majority.

(I am pretty convinced racial issues in the US will be a lot less important over the next 30 years, and outright economic and social class will predominate. I have much more in common personally with an Indian IIT grad H1B in the Bay Area (or a startup founder) than I do with an nth-generation white guy from my hometown in Pennsylvania working at a Wawa.)</comment></comment>


How I Learned to Love Middle Managers - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/magazine/20080901/how-hard-could-it-be-how-i-learned-to-love-middle-managers.html

<comment><USER2> > Published September 2008

I'm still stuck in August :(

<comment><USER3> Welcome to magazine publishing. If the magazine comes out in August and gets an August date, come Septermber 1st no one buys it because it's an old issue. At least, that's what the publishers think.

<comment><USER4> The explanation I always heard was that the date was the pull date. So NewsWeek was always dated as the day the next issue would come out. For monthly magazines, it's the month that the next issue will come out in.

<comment><USER3> That makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I hate to throw Agile buzzwords around but:

The Scrum master's job is to remove obstacles from the team's path. There's no telling people what to do, just listening to them at regular team meeting and helping solve what ever problems they come up with.

The scrum master does not have to be a manager just a "person with influence".

So maybe Joel & Co. can implement regular team meeting where "people with influence" listen to complaints and then try to solve them. And solving problems may require nothing more then being comfortable chatting with Joel.

<comment><USER6> _The Scrum master's job is to remove obstacles from the team's path_

Meanwhile, the Dungeon master's job is to _insert_ obstacles in the team's path.

<comment><USER7> What do I have to roll to make my saving throw?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The same thing happened at McDonald's many years ago. You had 2 kinds of people in the building: 1 manager and 38 teenagers. We had to figure out how to get things done with or without the manager. The more knowledgeable (senior) employees gradually became de-facto supervisors. Eventually, the company gave them the title "swing manager" and a little raise for the job they were already doing.

I suspect Joel's new middle managers were already well positioned for their new jobs, probably doing them already. The recognition and extra $ are always a nice touch.

(Any resemblence between the way McDonald's is run today and when I was a teenager is purely coincidental.)

</comment><comment><USER9> Gosh. Trouble in paradise?</comment>


A word about _why, #whyday , and Hackety Hack - <AUTHOR> http://blog.steveklabnik.com/a-word-about-why-whyday-and-hackety-hack <comment><USER2> Hey, thanks for posting this.

I didn't put a link to the new release yet because I'm actually still throwing together the _massive_ update to the website and builds. Fela (the Ruby Summer of Code intern) was burning the midnight oil last night, we didn't finish the builds until this morning.

Expect more news later! As always, you can follow @hacketyhack on twitter to get the latest.

Happy Whyday everybody!

<comment><USER2> I've amended the blog post, the release is out. Get it from <http://hackety- hack.com>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Can someone give a quick backstory to this?

<comment><USER2> After _why disappeared, everyone decided to pick up his projects. I watched as people stood up left and right, saying "I'll take over hpricot," "I'll work on Shoes," "I've got Camping," and I thought, man, this would be a great time to step up and really give back. My only real open source contributions were my own projects, that nobody really uses. I could never seem to find anything useful to contribute elsewhere.

My favorite project of _why's was Hackety Hack. I _was_ that kid who learned to program with GW-BASIC when I was seven, and the world is totally different now. So I checked out who had stood up to work on Hackety... and nobody did.

As the day progressed, I expected someone to. It was _why's masterpiece, after all. Lots of the other libraries he wrote are part of Hackety. I didn't want the responsibility of taking charge of such a well-known project, since I'm just a nobody. I figured that someone better than me would step up, and then I could just help them.

But nobody did.

Finally, after lots of thinking about it, I gave a small little "I will." Bam. I'm in charge. Sweet! ...

Oh God, this is scary! This is a huge responsibility. What if I do poorly? Everybody on the internet will see. Can I really do this? I haven't even been coding in Ruby all that long!

Then, to complicate things, I had some personal stuff come up, and I couldn't really find the time in my schedule to actually write some code. There were also upstream issues; Hackety needed Shoes 3, which was in development still, and really unstable and an absolute motherfucker to compile. So I got frustrated when I even did try to work on it.

By Christmas last year, I had made some small modifications, and released it as 0.9, hoping to get some people interested to give me some support. But that didn't really happen. So, I trucked along, doing little bits here and there.

Finally, I had a serious breakthrough with my Shoes development. I got it to work with Snow Leopard. That's a whole other story. But the momentum and high off of doing that got me to put a bunch more work into Hackety, and I made some decent progress. Also, around this time, I got an email from Fela, who wanted to work on Ruby Summer of Code. And he wanted to do it with Hackety. Between he, myself, the Shoes team, and some of my friends, we've made really great strides with the project over the summer, and I couldn't be happier. 1.0-final should be out within a month, once we polish up some more things, and sort out a few issues. I still occasionally grapple with "not being _why", if that makes any sense. It's hard to be respectful of a legacy and yet make something your own at the same time.

That wasn't really quick, but there you go.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for picking it up and running with it, even when you hit some unexpected hurdles along the way. Sounds like you're doing a perfectly fine job of keeping the project alive.

And, BTW: "80% of success is showing up." - Woody Allen

<comment><USER2> Thank you. Someone just linked me to this video, I think the first few minutes describe perfectly how I feel right about now: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hidvElQ0xE>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Many thanks, steve.

<comment><USER2> Thanks. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's not clear to me yet if this is a "programming-pusher-for-non-programmers" or "helps-you-learn-ruby" app? Should I try it if I am interested in Ruby but am OK writing simple code?

Some background info: I am into finance and am comfortable with basic PHP, write lots of VBA macros and also code for a propriety software used by my employer (its very basic, something like C).

<comment><USER2> Hackety Hack may or may not be for you. It depends.

One of the core problems that the app solves is a toolchain problem. Instead of choosing between 1.8 or 1.9 or JRuby or Rubinius, and Textmate or vim or BBEdit or Eclipse, and then figuring out how to use them together, Hackety Hack lets you just install it and start coding. When you're teaching somebody from the ground up, they don't know _anything_, so it's best to give them something that's all wrapped up in one package.

However, all of the tutorials are just simply Ruby code, so it _will_ teach you Ruby... but you also might find that it moves more slowly than you'd like.

Really, I'd say give it a try, what's the worst that can happen? (I'm a bit biased, though...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Anyone heard from _why since?

<comment><USER8> I don't think so. As day pass, I'm losing hope we will ever see him again as _why. I think if he's still hacking, he's hacking under a new pseudonym.

<comment><USER9> I bet it's something like _because or _whynot</comment></comment></comment>


Drug addiction should be treated like a learning disorder – not a crime - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/05/drug-addiction-treatment-learning-disorders <comment><USER2> I don't believe that drug abuse is a result of not learning from punishment. Looking at it in that light seems counterproductive to me. I have made a lot of questionable choices with regards to drug use, and I have lived and been close friends with with addicts of all types. I've seen addictions to heroin, alcohol, benzodiazepines, and even weed, and one factor is always consistent. People who develope serious addictions are those that use drugs as a way to solve, or more often hide from, their problems. This may sound slightly cliched, but people who use drugs to enhance reality don't have the same problems as those that use them to avoid it. My personal litmus test is if you think Xanax is the greatest drug ever, you should avoid most drugs like the plague.

<comment><USER3> "but people who use drugs to enhance reality don't have the same problems as those that use them to avoid it"

In terms of lifestyles, professions, and passions I have a very horizontal range of friends/coworkers/acquaintances. I see the motives behind drug use as being very personal through observation and I understand the self derivative nature of addiction through my own experiences with a wide variety of substances.

For some people an escape (not necessarily a complete avoidance) from reality acts as a reality enhancement (novel antidepressants such as dissociatives similar to Ketamine and other NMDA agonists fall into this category). Its use offers a renewed perspective on life and can put issues into perspective as to how important those problems are or how simple it is to solve many of them.

There are also those that use drugs to enhance reality (mostly through the use of stimulants which promote a feeling of sober sobriety) and those users may fall into a dangerously addictive mindset best summarized as 'Reality without a drug to enhance it is a very dull and mundane mode of existence. When I use this substance my reality is enhanced and I become the best version of myself I can possibly be.' Those individuals are not operating under a need to solve a problem, they view the drug as a way to follow the mantra 'just be yourself' because the use of the drug lets them do that with a sense of weightlessness. The use becomes the path of least resistance towards an unequivocally enhanced reality.

Personally my first experience with any 'problem drug' belonged to the category of benzodiazepines and it was prescribed to me. The dissipation of anxiety from the point of view of a chronically anxious and nervous user turns the litmus "Xanax is the greatest drug ever" towards something akin to the discovery of 'the secret chord' in the song "Now I've heard there was a secret chord, That David played, and it pleased the Lord [..] It goes like this, The fourth, the fifth, The minor fall, the major lift. The baffled king composing Hallelujah." I never fell into a xanax addiction, I was happy with composing hallelujah, but I understand the sentiment behind its value to some users.

There are classes after classes of drugs with effects ranging beyond my own personal experiences. It comes down to what does the drug do, what conditions primed the user for abuse, and what conditions have arised from the use of the drug (if any) that are negatively affecting the user's life. There is no simple cure for addiction but there is a period of time where the addiction isn't about physical dependency on the drug and that is, in my opinion, the best place to search for when 'curing' and understanding addiction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is an okay article, but not a great one. I expected this to be the entirety of the first page, and 3 or 4 more pages to follow. Instead, I am left with a very simple question: what is the proposed treatment, if we conclude it is a learning disorder?</comment>


Voice recognition software vendor Nuance buys rival Swype - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/mobile-wireless/211341/voice-recognition-software-vendor-nuance-buys-rival-swype

<comment><USER2> Discussion at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3082196></comment>


SearchYC Firefox Search Extension - <AUTHOR> http://jetfar.com/search-yc-firefox-plugin/

<comment><USER2> searchyc.com already has a Firefox extension but you may have missed it because searchyc.com reached its transfer quota when it was announced. See <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=177628>

Also see <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=198537> for a demo of this forum with a working search box and see <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=197644> for the most recent dataset of posts.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmmm thanks.

I did search searchyc.com for a plugin, but I couldn't find any mention in the blog / about pages.

Oh well it only took 5 mins.

PS: I think this is one more vote for a resources wiki :)

<comment><USER3> Sorry, we were going to re-announce the plugin on the blog with our next set of features. But then we got busy, and it kept getting pushed back.

The plugin is available at <http://plugin.searchyc.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Sweet.

Thanks for Searchyc - it's great; very tidy. I hope it leads you on to greater things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> that's a pretty neat plugin, thanks! Mr.Cheng and Mr.Wang,Guess they are American Chinese</comment>


Ask YC: Help Me With A Math Problem - <AUTHOR>

I hate to admit it, but my math is a bit rusty. Can someone show me how to solve the following equation for x?<p>k = x/(ln x) <comment><USER2> I'm not a real math guy, but I believe you solve these with a technique called asymptotic iteration. So for sufficiently large k you can assign an initial guess at x (which I label x0). Then plug that into the original and repeat:

x = k * ln x

for large k (and x):

x0 = k

x1 = k * ln k (plugging in x0 in for x)

x2 = k * ln (k * ln k) (plugging in x1 for x, etc...)

x3 = k * ln (k * ln (k * ln k))

x4 = k * ln (k * ln (k * ln (k * ln k)))

x5 = k * ln (k * ln (k * ln (k * ln (k * ln k))))

As this technique is asymptotic you can determine the error as it decreases with each iteration (usually just denoted as a big O of some small function). I tried this with k = 30 and the values of x I calculated were: 30, 102.03, 138.75, 147.98, 149.91, 150.30 respectively. To double check... 150.30/ln(150.30) = 29.9845.

Hope this helps.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually that helps a lot. I was writing a basic Sieve of Eratosthenes to generate prime numbers, and was using that equation to estimate an upper bound on the size of the sieve array if looking for at least k primes.

Or more simply, if I wanted at least k primes, x would be a loose upper bound on the numbers I would have to look at.

So in short, approximation is good enough. I wrote the following to implement it:

      def approximate(k, times)
        return k if times < 1
        return k * Math.log(approximate(k, times - 1))
      end

For values of k I am looking at (1E4 up to 1E9), recursing 10 times approximated to within 0.01 of the actual value, which is definitely good enough for what I need.

Thanks everyone for your replies. I'd still be interested in an exact answer, but at least this solves today's problem.

<comment><USER2> I don't think there is an exact analytical solution. Of course if you're only interested in the first d decimal points you can just rearrange the terms so the piece you're inserting the recurrence in is less than 10^-d for very large k (around what you'll be using). IIRC this is also the only way to solve problems in form x*e^(x) = k. The rearrange of terms is trivial in that case. I think it might be harder in this case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't know of an analytical solution (I don't believe there is one -- if there is, please correct me). The solution depends on the value of k as follows:

For k<0, there is exactly one solution for x, 0<x<1.

For 0<=k<e, there is no solution

For k=e, we simply have x=e.

For k>e, there are two solutions for x. Plot x/ln(x) on a graph and use numerical methods to find them.

</comment><comment><USER4> Clearest way I see. Is to look at the equivalent form: x^k = e^x. Then aneesh's solutions seem obvious.

I don't believe there's an analytic solution either. Otherwise it'd be in my CRC as x/ln(x) crops up quite a bit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I got it to the x^k = e^x form, but that is where I got stuck. I was just hoping there was some trick to pull at that point that I couldn't remember, but extensive review of my logarithm/exponent rules was getting me nowhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambert's_W_function>

This seems related.

</comment><comment><USER6> now, i might be wrong, but i managed to simplify it down to:

x= exp(k/(k-1))

my math is definitely rusty. be kind. (and i don't have my calculator)

edit: as pointed out by the comments, i'm wrong.

<comment><USER2> Yes, this is not correct. This would would mean x asymptotically approaches e as k increases. However, if k = 30, x should be nearly 150. See my other post for more details.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What do you mean, solve it? There's nothing to solve for since we don't know whether k is a constant or what..

<comment><USER3> I would presume k is a constant.</comment></comment>