Signs A VC Is Just Not That Into You - <AUTHOR> http://blog.eladgil.com/2012/07/signs-vc-is-just-not-that-into-you.html

<comment><USER2> The article is good but I don't think it delves into the "middle ground" which is so common for startups. A very small percentage of companies elicit huge interest (i.e., fast action, term sheet quickly, etc.) A surprisingly small set of companies that meet with VCs elicit signals that are clear nos (e.g., not responding to emails and so on). These are usually ones where the idea is so dumb or the pitch is so bad, the VC questions the entrepreneur's capabilities. I'd say the vast majority of meetings turn into this netherland where the VC isn't sold on the idea but also isn't sold on NOT funding the idea. S/he either doesn't know the space well enough, isn't sure his/her partners would agree, doesn't have enough clout in the firm yet (see previous point), doesn't know the entrepreneur well enough to feel conviction, etc. So s/he doesn't say yes. But s/he doesn't say no yet either because s/he wants the optionality in case (a) another VC firm who is well respected or know the space decides to go after it (which creates the super-annoying lemming effect), (b) another partner and his/her firm gets "conviction" on the company independently, (c) s/he hears other good things about the entrepreneur, etc. I think for most entrepreneurs, this is the most annoying category to be in.

<comment><USER3> I'd be very careful with this attitude. What VCs are trying to do is retain the option of saying "yes", for _almost everybody_. They are happy to have your team spend time maintaining that option for them. If it costs them almost nothing, why wouldn't they?

The best rule of thumb here is "maybe means no".

<comment><USER4> What's a nice but clear way to end the conversation without damaging the relationship in case you want to pitch them for Series B?

<comment><USER5> They are offering it, the 'lack of response'. You can choose to drop people and then been strictly interpretive of their requests (or lack there of) for followup. So if you leave a meeting and there are no next steps, just stop talking. Later at your series B you can offer to bring them up to date on your current plans.

Understand that some (many?) VC's understand that saying "no" explicitly can hurt your prospects with other VCs (you will be asked to explain why that other VC said "No" which is impossible to do usually because you don't have the complete picture). So they let it drift quietly silent and understand when "you are really busy and might not get back to them for a while."

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. You can basically stop trying to prompt them to follow up with you (since they are non-responsive / won't suggest next steps typically in this scenario).

Another tough thing to balance is the flip of this - how to politely drop a VC you do not want to talk to further, who is interested in your company and knows you are fundraising...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> pg's take: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3550195>

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha. That is pretty good. There are some steps between "Hi" and "Here is a term sheet" but you can definitely tell if someone is very excited.

Unfortunately, it is harder to tell if someone is disinterested as VCs try hard to maintain or preserve relationships for the future, which makes them more cautious in just saying "no" outright. I think the good ones are pretty up front about not being interested early.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Are we really reduced to this...

Half of these could come straight out of Vogue, "How to tell if you're date liked you?"

</comment><comment><USER8> Is there a way to turn this around by gently prompting the VC to start playing the role of a truly interested investor? That is, challenge them to reverse some of these listed signals. If as a part of normal conversational cordiality, the VC plays along (to avoid sending a clearer no-interest signal), eventually they're hyp _mo_ tized into thinking they are interested?

For example:

"What are your suggested next steps?"

"When should our next in-person be?"

"Which more senior partner will be handling the next steps?"

"Why should I take money from your firm?"</comment>


Ask HN: What Social Hacks have you done in your life? - <AUTHOR>

If you have done anything that is unusual, unconventional, rule breaking in the real-world please share your story.
I read this article on FastCompany about Jerry Jao and want to know more about such social engineering stories from other entrepreneurs.
http://www.fastcompany.com/3006111/innovation-agents/confessions-conference-crasher <comment><USER2> It may not apply, if you were looking examples that included deception or are economic in nature. The following is my answer for the non-computer hack question from the YC application and in this instance I believe related to social engineering.

One day while in college I was walking across campus to get to class. As students do, in one direction students walk on the right-hand side of the sidewalk and in the opposite direction students walk to their right resulting in an efficient flow of foot traffic. On this day a rotating sprinkler was intermittently splashing the sidewalk causing a bottle neck on the sidewalk. To this day I have no idea why, but I stepped off the sidewalk. I saw the problem, the students had non-verbally adopted the etiquette of allowing 5-10 students walking in one direction to pass the sprinkler then stop, and allow an equal number of students to pass from the opposite direction. By this time I could tell I went from the observer to the observed, it felt like hundreds of students had their eyes on me wondering, "who is this maverick? What is this sidewalk etiquette anarchist up to?"

In the moment I fell to action. I walked up to the sprinkler from behind and moved it so it no longer splashed the sidewalks. Immediately, I received a standing ovation - granted the students who applauded me were already standing, but I could tell if they were sitting they would have stood up before making noise with their hands.

</comment><comment><USER3> I live in Edinburgh, where public transport consists of a wonderful bus service (and an upcoming tram line which has been a complete fiasco from start to finish).

Catching buses I've frequently noticed that other bus-drivers would hop on and off the bus, traveling for free, presumably on the way to stops to change drivers etc.

I figured if I dressed up as a bus-driver, in their simple uniform, I could hop-on and off buses for free. I didn't intend to defraud the company, but was curious to know if it was possible.

Short version: Free bus travel for a couple of days, providing I wore the maroon blazer, smart trousers, and carried a bag.

</comment><comment><USER4> Friend bought a bike. Store didn't deliver it even after a month (5 days delivery planned). Emailed the CEO of the store (one of the world's biggest) and made it his personal problem (social media fear). CEO made a thousand miles delivery in the same day.

</comment><comment><USER5> I have to say, I don't love that level of dishonesty. Last time I couldn't afford a conference I wanted to attend, I emailed the organizers and asked if they needed any volunteers. I got all the benefits Jerry did, from business connections to the VIP-only after party. Of course, it probably helps that I'm still a college student.

<comment><AUTHOR> well social engineering is by definition "dishonest". You are trying to find loopholes in the system to have your way. There are people who would not do such thing at any cost and there are people who would do it as long as it doesn't harm anyone. Entrepreneurs who belong to the later category can create more opportunities for themselves. It also shows how badly you want something. May be thats why Y Combinator also asks similar question in their application I believe. I am curious to find out what all those answers were.

<comment><USER5> Social engineering != dishonesty, in my opinion. Loopholes can be found and exploited in perfectly honest ways.

<comment><USER6> Most accounts of social engineering I've read are just someone lying about who they are to get in somewhere, or get someone's password. Are there interesting examples of social engineering that don't involve this?

<comment><AUTHOR> These are few mild versions of social engineering:

1\. Giving a compliment or a gift to someone can bring you favors.

2\. Wearing clothes such that it would imply (false) higher social status.

3\. Exhibiting confidence to make people think you are smart.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In college I was offered minimal financial aid even though my situation, when viewed from a rational lens, warranted it. After having every effort blocked by lower level staff in the office I wrote a snail mail letter to the president of the university, I was very polite, didn't ask for anything, but expressed my displeasure at the situation in a rational fashion. I received a response from his office asking permission to forward the letter to the head of financial aid...

That letter saved me >$75K :D

Edit : Come to think of it, most of my wins haven't been social engineering as much as persistence.

</comment><comment><USER8> I am on an Android and cannot copy and paste the link, so I haven't read it. FYI: I once used the term "social engineering" on hn to mean effectively arranging things socially. Uh, it bombed. I don't think the world is going to redefine it any time soon. It basically means "con artistry" at the moment, which is not what I do.

I had an amicable divorce, without lawyers. Not paying lawyers meant there was more pie to go around and helped both parties behave generously. I also have a compromised immune system. Staying healthy and off medication has a strong component of managing social stuff. For example, I generally do not shake hands. So finding ways to get people to accept my choices is a big part of staying well.</comment>


How to become a Bayesian (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://alexanderetz.com/2016/02/07/understanding-bayes-how-to-become-a-bayesian-in-eight-easy-steps/ <comment><USER2> For anyone who wants to dig a bit deeper: PRML by Bishop [0]. An amazing work as a general introduction to machine learning and Bayesian in general. MacKay's book [1] is a bit more opinionated regarding Bayesian methods. Even if you do not become purely Bayesian, it advances your understanding of to approach data quiet a bit compared to the generic "oh data, lets throw a NN at it".

[0] [https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/research/people/cmbishop/prm...](https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/research/people/cmbishop/prml-book/) [1] [http://www.inference.org.uk/mackay/itila/book.html](http://www.inference.org.uk/mackay/itila/book.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> About 40 years ago I was reading a business mathematics book and ran across a section that, as I recall, started out with a basic probabilities equation and derived the basic Bayesian equation in one step.

Am I remembering this right? If so could someone post it?

<comment><USER4> By definition: p(A|B) = p(A,B) / p(B) (1)

With the same definition, switching A and B roles, we have p(A, B) = p(B|A) p(A) (2)

Plug (2) into (1) and you have Bayes rule.

<comment><USER3> Thank you for the explanation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would really like to read the full paper for reason #3, but it's paywalled. The whole article feels like a big teaser with the real content locked away.

<comment><USER6> The TL;DR of the article provides two links to the preprint, and in fact there is a Springer version accessible without cost: [https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.3758/s13423-017-131...](https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.3758/s13423-017-1317-5.pdf)

Even less friction than Sci-Hub is the Unpaywall browser extension [http://unpaywall.org/products/extension](http://unpaywall.org/products/extension) which finds links to unpaywalled content matching paywalled journal articles.</comment></comment>


China accused of buying influence after Czech billionaire funds PR push - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/05/china-buying-influence-czech-republic-loan-company <comment><USER2> > The rapprochement – which also saw the purchase of a Czech brewery, > television station and Slavia Prague football club by a Chinese energy > company, CEFC

It is so convenient that ownership can change, while viewers think they're still watching the same, local station. There should be a periodic, mandatory disclaimer, informing viewers who the owners are, just like for medicine side- effects.</comment>


Artificial Intelligence's White Guy Problem - <AUTHOR> http://nytimes.com/2016/06/26/opinion/sunday/artificial-intelligences-white-guy-problem.html <comment><USER2> Dup</comment>


RIM's claim against kik - <AUTHOR> http://www.scribd.com/doc/44486617/RIM-Statement-of-Claim-Against-Kik

<comment><USER2> Should be an interesting battle if Kik survives the financial burden.

Basically, they allege that

\- Kik's CEO used inside knowledge of RIM's BBM platform to develop Kik

\- Kik infringes on a bunch of their patents

\- Kik has said bad things on their promotional material about RIM

\- Kik was illegally slurping and storing user address book data (even though the claim they were not)

I think the most interesting thing here is how they were accepted into App World without issue as were other similar applications with even more similar behavior to BBM than Kik has had to date. Also interesting is that RIM alleges that Kik will continue all of this infringing activity unless it is stopped by the courts even though there was no mention of a prior cease and desist.

Should be a good fight.

<comment><USER3> Engadget says they were accepted on the premise of developing a music sharing app.[1]

Canada has different rules about C&D for this kind of thing, so that bit isn't surprising.

[1] [http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/01/rim-sues-kik-in-canada- fo...](http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/01/rim-sues-kik-in-canada-for-patent- infringement/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _53\. As a result of the wrongful acts of the Defendant, as described herein, RIM has suffered and will continue to suffer serious and irreparable harm, as well as serious and substantial damages._

While I think it's fair that RIM protect its BBM patents, I think that Kik has brought more interest to BlackBerry than anything else in recent memory.

Most people I know are behind Kik, some going as far as to say that they won't ever purchase a RIM product (again). So in that sense, RIM's actions against Kik may bring themselves more harm in the end.

</comment><comment><USER5> Think the most interesting part is that the Founder of Kik worked at RIM for 3 Co-Op terms. And two of them were on the Blackbery Messenger Team.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, this reads to me more like an NDA-violation lawsuit than a patent lawsuit, despite the title.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Looks like these are the 3 patents in question:

[http://brevets-patents.ic.gc.ca/opic- cipo/cpd/eng/patent/235...](http://brevets-patents.ic.gc.ca/opic- cipo/cpd/eng/patent/2353161/summary.html?type=number_search)

[http://brevets-patents.ic.gc.ca/opic- cipo/cpd/eng/patent/248...](http://brevets-patents.ic.gc.ca/opic- cipo/cpd/eng/patent/2485791/summary.html?type=number_search)

[http://brevets-patents.ic.gc.ca/opic- cipo/cpd/eng/patent/247...](http://brevets-patents.ic.gc.ca/opic- cipo/cpd/eng/patent/2472474/summary.html?type=number_search)

</comment><comment><USER7> hmm didn't know the founder worked for RIM, this got a little interesting</comment>


Neo4django 0.1.5 release - <AUTHOR> http://mattluongo.com/post/neo4django-015-release

<comment><USER2> django and neo4j are two of my favorite things -- I really like gremlin and tinkerpop, I haven't been keeping up with them the last few months. I've also been meaning to check out <http://bulbflow.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Bulbflow does look pretty sweet, but from what I've seen solves the data lookup problem a little differently. I love that it's built on Rexter and aims to work across graph dbs.

I've kept actively developing neo4django because we need really extensive indexing and querying, and want to make it super easy for any Djangonaut to start playing with Neo4j in a familiar way :)</comment></comment>


Bullwhip effect - A behavior phenomenon - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullwhip_effect I think that's something that could happen here now because of the whole Erlang think.<p>I see people starting to up-vote everything else because they want to bury the Erlang story and so on, and so on... <comment><AUTHOR> I think that's something that could happen here now because of the whole Erlang thing.

I see people starting to up-vote everything else because they want to bury the Erlang story and so on, and so on...

btw. the beer distribution game mentioned at the end of the Wikipedia Article is very entertaining and educating...</comment>


Results of HN poll: Half think bootcamp grads as good as fresh CS Majors - <AUTHOR> http://blog.statwing.com/results-of-hn-poll-half-think-bootcamp-grads-as-good-as-fresh-cs-majors/

<comment><USER2> Sample size for each factor is too small to even hypothesize a conclusion for the data.</comment>


Ask HN: Review my app, Dayta. - <AUTHOR>

The newest update to my iPhone application, Dayta, just got approved by Apple. I'd love to know what you guys think about its current state, and what I could add next!
I really think it has a bright future.
You can visit the iTunes page for it here: http://daytaapp.com/go/ <comment><USER2> Are you aware of Daytum? It's a web app by Nicholas Feltron, the guy who does "personal annual reports", infographics about his life. <http://feltron.com/> <http://daytum.com/>

You might be interested in contacting him. At the very least, I thought you should know about the similarity in applications and names.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll contact him ASAP, thanks.

EDIT: contacted him. Hope he likes it :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Contacted him, he's now a user of my app!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here are some promo codes (US only, sorry!):

FLF9NYXYYPX6

X4HKFEH74XYK

J4RFW9PPF974

HY4NRN3EHA6K

7JYK6A4TTPFA

R94FNX47YEN9

R6PTHJEHHM69

PFWKPHWRX9LT

6XR63PL4FEWR

FR9N6E6NWKEP

<comment><USER3> anymore left? i've been looking for something like this for forever and would love to try it out!

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope, it's only $1.99 though :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was looking for an app in this category and had seen Dayta before but didn't buy it because it looks like it only tracks daily events? For some things that just doesn't make any sense - like, for example, going to the gym. I want to go 2-3times a _week_ not 1 or more times a _day_.

It doesn't seem possible to track events aggregated on a weekly basis?

<comment><AUTHOR> I go to the gym 3 times a week, and just input data on the days I go. It works fine for me, the graph doesn't look weird or anything. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've seen your app around at thought it looked interesting. A couple initial thoughts:

1\. A larger array of images to choose from. Since this can be ANY kind of measurement. I would even like to see user submittable icons/graphics and a hosted repository somewhere.

2\. Custom keyboards would be nice depending on the kind of units. The calculator style keypad is a good example.

I'll let you know more once I have a change to play with it throughout the week.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I did have a custom keyboard but with the new update it broke. However, I'm definitely looking out for another option. And yes, I'm looking into including many more images too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Clickable <http://daytaapp.com/go> <http://daytaapp.com/>

<comment><USER7> Apple let you review your own app eh? :) I would have thought they would have prevented that by now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> just for clarification, the data is emailed to me in a .csv based on how frequently i instruct it to?

<comment><AUTHOR> There are two options. You can choose to email yourself the .csv of a specific data log when you want (in the Data Options screen).

Or, you can specify a daily, weekly, monthly, or never export in the Settings panel. This will prompt you with an email when it's time (just hit send and you should be good to go). This export contains data from all of your logs.

<comment><USER8> awesome, thanks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Dayta seems to be incredibly buggy (or am I using it wrong?). Data points does not seem to get consolidated by day, sometimes data even gets stored on the next day.

<comment><AUTHOR> My bad, I've seen the bugs (had to do with consolidate by day's dealing with dates). It's been fixed in the update I'll submit to Apple in the coming days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If I had an iPhone I'd probably try this out. Looks cool.</comment>


Creating a site for geeks. I can use some feedback please. - <AUTHOR>

I'm working on a small project for a site called Geekerbox.com which is basically like pinterest, but for people that like to get their geek on. I know I'm not reinventing the wheel here or anything, I just want to create a different community for geeks to share and discover the things us geeks love such as new gadgets, games, comics, cool products and so on. I like the idea of visual bookmarking and that's why I thought a pinboard setup would be good for this. I was hoping to get your feedback because even though I might think it's a good idea, the rest of the world most likely don't. Can you please critique it or tell me the things you like or would like to see? What basic categories do you think I should add or remove? Any feedback will be much appreciated. (Note that the sites design is far from finished so don't mind the messy pages) I put a testing site up to play with as I work on the UI and such and it will eventually become the final project once I move it to a new server so disregard the foward to the subdomain it's located at. I plan on adding facebook and twitter login/share buttons, and a mobile friendly version of the site soon this week and a few other small tweaks. The idea of this site came from wanting to create a site similar to ThisIsWhyImBroke.com, thinkgeek.com, and ShutUpAndTakeMyMoney.com. Eventually I like to give product owners an option to sell their cool geeky products through Geekerbox, but that depends on if the site proves to gain interest or not.<p>http://geekerbox.com <comment><USER2> It's a neat idea; how do you propose to prevent the site from devolving into /r/AdviceAnimals? (Or do you?)

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think that will become an issue. Ideally I think once the site is done and starts getting populated with post it'll end up being more news about tech and gadgets along with cool new geeky products. Even if it turns out to be more geeky humor and memes, each member can choose what they like to follow and what shows up on their main feed once logged in

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Make it more mobile friendly.

<comment><AUTHOR> I will be doing a mobile version in a week or two once I get the main desktop UI finished</comment></comment>


HMV Twitter feed reveals "Live Firing" of 60 employees - <AUTHOR> http://www.gigwise.com/news/79239/hmv-twitter-feed-reveals-live-firing-of-60-employees

<comment><AUTHOR> Context:

HMV (a high street chain of record stores in the UK and Ireland) went into administration a few weeks ago, with most stores closing a few days later.

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21021073></comment>


Surprisingly Few NSA Workers Have Been Caught Spying on Their Exes - <AUTHOR> http://betabeat.com/2013/09/surprisingly-few-nsa-workers-have-been-caught-spying-on-their-exes-using-government-technology/

<comment><AUTHOR> According to a friend of mine that was in IT at DIA, staff in TS/SCI shops get caught surfing for porn from classified networks. (!!) This is a career-ender for the unfortunate caught individual, yet it happens regularly.</comment>


What Facebook Did to American Democracy - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/10/what-facebook-did/542502/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> > And why it was so hard to see it coming

Bullshit. It was easy to see coming. But we all wear self-serving blinders. Too many profit from the perverse incentives of an ad- and click-driven internet. Too many chase social cred by sharing or agreeing with posts that milk the confirmation bias of the bubble they are written by and for. Too few are willing to pay the costs of pursuing truth, of doing the right thing.</comment>


Thread Theory (2008) - <AUTHOR> http://www.rants.org/2008/03/06/thread_theory/

<comment><USER2> The title of the submission is misspelled; it should be "Thread Theory" according to the article.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks; changed.</comment></comment>


Treason charges against Russian cyber experts linked to 7-year-old accusations - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-cyber-insight-idUSKBN1650MA <comment><USER2> As Marcy Wheeler points out, this is something Bryan Krebs had suggested last month:

[https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/01/a-shakeup-in-russias- top...](https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/01/a-shakeup-in-russias-top- cybercrime-unit/)

[https://www.emptywheel.net/2017/02/26/reuters-confirms- krebs...](https://www.emptywheel.net/2017/02/26/reuters-confirms-krebs- supposition-on-russian-treason-charges/)

<comment><USER3> >My suspicion is that the King Servers connection identified other associations that were far more sensitive for Russia than just an old spam business grudge. And that's why Vrublevsky is finally getting his revenge

Hmm

I hope we can have an independent investigation about this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Now we know ~0.1% of the whole story.

</comment><comment><USER5> _December 's arrests came shortly after the United States accused Russia of trying to influence its presidential election through computer hacking, an accusation Moscow denies_

They're referring to the Clinton campaign leaks here, right? Not actual hacking of voting infrastructure, which is what it sounds like. Unless the story has moved on whilst I wasn't watching.

<comment><USER6> It has.

<comment><USER5> So can you show me evidence of this? Because a few of the obvious Google searches to try just throw up lots of western news stories saying that no such thing ever happened.

<comment><USER7> Via Krebs, they are suspected of being tied to these hacks:

[http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/politics/ct- illinoi...](http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/politics/ct-illinois- state-board-of-elections-hack-update-met-0830-20160829-story.html)

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national- security/fbi-i...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/fbi- is-investigating-foreign-hacks-of-state-election- systems/2016/08/29/6e758ff4-6e00-11e6-8365-b19e428a975e_story.html)

<comment><USER5> Those two stories both refer to incidents that have nothing to do with affecting election outcomes, and could have been done by anyone. There's a lot of insinuation that it's by generic "Russians" and there sure is a lot of online crime coming out of former Soviet states, but as the second article points out in the text, it can easily be criminals. This is especially the case because American personal details are so easily used for various forms of financial fraud.

But we're not talking about petty theft of SSNs which may or may not come from Russians here. We're talking about deliberate foreign intelligence operations against actual voting infrastructure. Which hasn't happened.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does anybody know if we can read the actual indictment somewhere?

<comment> purple-again Ask Putin how he feels about the "Freedom of Information Act" ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Redacted

<comment><USER10> I guess from this I can surmise the Chinese run a tighter ship. I've not heard of Chinese charged with treason for disclosing cyber espionage to US agents. Either that or they are as sloppy but the NYT doesn't follow those stories. Or Chinese authorities don't care about leaks from their experts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What so secret that guy could have disclosed? That Kaspersky writes the "ware?" and has more devs writing it than their poopy AV programs? That was hardly a secret for god knows how many years.</comment>


Home Brew Solar Powered UAV (Yes, it runs Linux!) - <AUTHOR> http://dementor.sfe.se/

<comment><AUTHOR> Just for clarification, this isn't my project, it's just something cool that I came across.

</comment><comment><USER2> Linux on embedded systems really isn't surprising anymore. It would be a bad idea to choose a system you couldn't tweak and optimize given the hardware constraints.</comment>


Adventures in Aeron Chair Arbitrage - <AUTHOR> http://blog.priceonomics.com/post/14876257862/adventures-in-aeron-chair-arbitrage <comment><USER2> Did you _really_ think arbitrage of used goods could be a business? I think the best thing these types of experiments do is expose pain points and inefficiencies that you _can_ make businesses out of.

When I was in my ramen phase of startup life (and newly married), I used to (among other things) buy clothes at local thrift stores and resell them on eBay for a decent margin. You quickly learn what brands/items sell and occasionally I'd hit gold and find a vintage Hawaiian shirt that fetches $200 (and cost $2).

In the end though, you realize it's just a way to make some extra money. It's not a "business" IMO–and definitely not a scalable business. But you learn what sucks (like dealing with shipping & getting photos from a camera to eBay pre-Smartphone) and realize other people also feel that pain. That's where your business is.

UPDATE: Downvotes, seriously? Read my reply down this thread. Some people on here are, frankly, ridiculous and have no clue how to engage in a meaningful discussion.

<comment><USER3> Exactly. It's a hobby, but while scaling it up is hard to do, it is not impossible. Two stories.

I wrote a program awhile back that would look for iPod Touches on my local Craigslist and would analyze the price for many different versions. If an individual iPod was available and was below mean price within a given time frame, I'd send the seller a note almost immediately. Then, if I purchased the item, I'd relist it at the mean price. Completely an arb play.

What I learned was that 1) iPods are easy to sell, 2) People who buy on craigslist are flaky and tend not to show up, 3) The time spent waiting around to meet people was obnoxious, and 4) Sometimes sellers see what you did with their item and send you angry emails.

I never made more than a few hundred bucks, but it was an interesting experiment nonetheless.

Second story: For years, my wife sold used books. She'd go to estate auctions and buy boxes and boxes of books. She'd go to library sales and buy hundreds of books. Then she'd sell them on the Amazon marketplace. She would walk into these places with a barcode scanner and would check their price and sales rankings on Amazon. If it was in a decent margin for her, she'd buy the item. This actually did scale, but she quit when it became less of a hobby side income and more like real work. She's a nurse by trade, and the book selling was never meant to be anything more than a hobby.

So, I guess what I'm trying to say is that arbitrage of used goods can be a business, but it depends heavily on the availability of the supply of used goods. Books worked for my wife because she could buy dozens of them at a time and ship dozens of them them all from the post office down the street as orders came in. For me, I was running around town picking up items and dropping them off.

<comment><USER4> Arbitrage is technically a set of simultaneous transactions where you buy and sell at the same time. Purchasing something and reselling it later for a higher price is not arbitrage.

It is usually used to describe a riskless transaction.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure I agree with the description of arbitrage as "riskless". The arbitrageur is accepting the risk that the arbitrage opportunity will go away in between the buy and the sell. This is true whether you're arbitraging salt via caravans across the Sahara or arbitraging currencies in millisecond trades.

<comment><USER6> It's the idea of simultaneous transactions that makes it riskless. Whether millisecond forex trades can be modeled as "simultaneous" is another question.

<comment><USER4> Yep. Also have counterparty risk. Just because you have a contract for a purchase and a sale doesn't guarantee that the transactions will go smoothly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As a fellow data scientist and former Craigslist/eBay item flipper and deal site (SlickDeals, FatWallet) hobbyist, my tidbit of experience and Sidebusiness 101: profit comes when sellers don't care to maximize due to circumstance.

Those circumstances include lack of product knowledge, urgency to move item, and value for their own time/convenience.

For the first problem, people have tackled it with eBay/Craigslist listing misspeller searches or just manually emailing for more info. I once bought a new sealed copy of a collector's game, Panzer Dragoon Saga (eBay price ~$500+ back then) for $20 from a seller who was liquidating an old stash of games and listed the item as "Panzer Dragoon Saturn" and couldn't get any hits.

The problem of illiquidity has some fun implications assuming you're willing to take some product risk. Back when I was in grad school in the Bay Area, I was flipping Fujiiryoki massage chairs (MSRP 5k, buying around 1-1.5k, flipping around 2.5-3k) and there are plenty more items out there. This requires either good product knowledge (tons of old Chinese people who I knew wanted these) or a data-driven way of identifying high-price-point items without much/any historical pricing data. This is a rather solvable problem that hasn't been tackled (that I know of) and can be a value point for your site I'd think.

As for buying liquid items low, subscribing to CL RSS feeds with the right search terms _can_ do the trick, though I neither confirm nor deny that I may have once written a CL page refresher to buy Burning Man tickets at cost (instead of from scalpers who were charging hundreds more). Back when I didn't really value my time, offering to pick up at a time of their location/convenience and pay cash.

Misc selling tips as an enthusiast: and legit work/school email or Googlestalk-able email establishes you as a "real" person. A phone number is almost a must-provide these days too. Pay low(er) and always in cash (or cert. check at bank) but assure the buyer that you'll be there and make the transaction convenient and easy.

It's an addictive hobby, I know... :/

<comment><USER7> Seems like I missed the edit deadline. More free advice: Most flippers derive market price by using pre-existing marketplaces data like eBay/Terapeak and Amazon new/used to figure out where the market roughly sits. These venues have strong incentives to regulate listings into consistent item buckets to make sure people can't (CL)SEO listings like CL spammers ("2011 Macbook Pro" vs "2006 Macbook Pro with Office 2011", or the giant paragraph of hot items in small text and white font to catch your search attention). Once you get that magical price point/band, you can pretty much go to town with some basic clustering analysis. [Disclaimer: worked on a few private, weekend projects in this specific niche.]

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _It's unlikely Priceonomics could build a massively successful business arbitraging used goods if we have to take possession of them._

Did you consider letting the buyers and sellers do the leg work?

Setup a distribution center. Sellers who want to offload stuff scan the items and their details to you and you give them instant, fair quotes. If they like your offer, they bring the items to your center, and you check to make sure everything is as it was stated.

You put the items, their details and their new prices (with your margin markup) online for buyers to peruse. If interested, they'll come by and pick up whatever they want.

Like an online pawn store w/ local centers, except there's no pawning, just selling & buying.

<comment><USER9> This sounds more or less like a consignment store and pretty much what the amazon marketplace does, but with the work done by a middle man instead. The question is, would people be willing to put up with the higher price or reduced profit required by adding a middleman, or would someone always undercut you because they were willing to go straight to the consumer? It reminds me of all those "ebay shops" that popped up 5 years ago and just as quickly disappeared, though this could be as much about ebay changing their focus as any business pressures, I don't know enough about it to say.

With a consignment store the model works because you are willing to take the reduced profit to not have to put in the actual leg work it would require. People are also willing to pay the slightly higher prices because consignment tends to be in things like clothes that are difficult to buy online.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I still dont get what priceonomics provides that craigslist or ebay doesnt.

Craigslist:

* Listings have "ASKING" prices and can easily negotiated down 5-20%. So even if you provide a historical information of "Asking Prices", its still not a 1-1 relationship to how much you expect to sell your item for or its "BUYING" price

* I do question the value of historical information on CL: Its never been available, therefore neither buyer nor seller expect it and their view of the marketplace is limited to the time they hit search. And it is this view that they will use to determine a good price for an item. When I need to buy something that I need NOW, I try to choose the nearest, cheapest item, satisfying my requirements that is CURRENTLY available. Historical information doesnt come into play.

Ebay:

* Since I already have access to historical information(completed items) and I can use it to figure out how much to sell my stuff for, I dont see what Priceonomics bring to the table here.

Again Im trying to figure out where you guys are going with this. From technology standpoint, all this content scraping, indexing and searching is interesting, but what problem are you solving and how do you plan to make money with it(short of arbitrage of aerons)

<comment><USER11> You sort of answered your own question -- in both examples you specifically pointed out work that you have to do in order to calculate a price -- you need to sift through Craigslist items, keep track of what you find, apply a calculation, and come up with an estimate. Same for eBay.

The work you're doing there takes time and has value, and Pricenomics is trying to capture that. I'm not intimately familiar with the company nor do I know if they'll figure out a viable business model, but I do see the intrinsic value in what they're proposing.

<comment><USER10> effort wise, it looks like search craigslist == search pricenomics, with craigslist being smart enough to limit my last search to the geographical area where I last searched, whereas pricenomics showed me the results around the country(with option to filter it down to location later).

All things being equal, the effort is the same in my opinion

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Right now eBay is already sitting on this data. In addition to the sale/non- sale price data, recently they've began to encourage (and sometimes force) you to very specifically categorize the item you are selling.

Combine with geolocation data for the buyer and the seller and they probably have a greater trove of data then you could get even with a biz dev deal with Craigslist -- main issue is that you have no idea whether an item in a given post was actually sold, and if so for how much.

I fear Priceconomics.com, as interesting as it is, will just work hard to prove a business model for this data that if successful will just be exploited by some engineers working at eBay who spin up a product to compete.

</comment><comment><USER13> One additional point not mentioned in the post (written by me). If you buy a used Aeron chair, it's very likely you can sell it for the same price a couple of years later. Essentially you can lease the chair for free.

<comment><USER14> This point also applies to the $1 chair.

<comment><USER15> The $1 chair is very unlikely to still be a chair in a couple of years if it is sat upon for ~4160 hours. Perhaps you could still sell it for $1 as firewood, though.

If you're happy with a "doordesk" and a metal or wooden folding chair, more power to you. I bought my own personal Aeron years ago, I've used it at multiple different companies and at home when I was freelancing. In the approximately 10 years I've been sitting very comfortably on that ~$800 chair I've gone through dozens of thousands of dollars of now obsolete computer equipment (desktops and laptops). From that perspective combined with the fact that the chair is still in very much like-new condition, even paying $800 for it was well worth it, IMO.

I'm also quite fond of the Ikea Galant height adjustable desk I also bought ~6 years ago, and that one doesn't have the premium price of the Aeron. I do like a good value... IME, the Aeron actually is a good value despite the high price.

<comment><USER14> Granted. There is completely a place for good tools that make you more efficient and work better/longer/etc.

My point was more that you could replace Aeron Chair with X (where X is anything that doesn't have a steep depreciation curve -- ie - something that's not a car or PC)

If you buy a used "X", it's very likely you can sell it for the same price a couple of years later. Essentially you can lease "X" for free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Any news from craigslist RE:bot policy update?

That low altitude you're flying at can only keep you off radar for so long and you're building your entire business on shaky ground.

<comment><USER17> Can't you just get everything through RSS feeds? I don't think Craigslist would be able to even tell if you were doing it that way.

<comment><USER7> You used to be able to easily scrape through CL RSS -> Yahoo! Pipes. Dunno if you're able to these days though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> You do realize that by having your buyer PayPal you the money you basically lost $50 on PayPal deposit transactions. I would have had him send me a corrected cheque instead.

</comment><comment><USER19> The variance you are exploiting in this arbitrage setup is a result of the inherent variance in information about the chairs, i.e. uncertainty. Since they are used, there is lemon's principle at work. You can argue that Aeron's don't really depreciate in quality that much though over time so that variance in unjustified and in fact there should be some exact market price (perhaps as a function of time used, or more simply just dependent whether its used or new). But the thing is, more likely than not, that variance IS justified. Some of the chairs may be less broken than others. Some of the sellers may be less dependable than others. You can of course condition on this stuff - pick the low price chairs and mark them up by being the most dependable supplier, vouch for the chairs, become an expert in the chairs and be better at out the lemon's, but those things all add cost, so NOT doing all that work is already priced into the market. But cool experiment nonetheless! I have also found that I can buy a used Aeron, use it for a few years, and sell it back for like the same price. Not really a quickly depreciating asset .... maybe better than the stock market the last few years ...

</comment><comment><USER20> I see two problems with estimating price off craigslist.

1\. List price is not the same as selling price 2\. The averaging is being moved by "accessory items" i.e. <http://priceonomics.com/computers/apple/macbook-air/> shows a lot of things that aren't MacBook Airs in the low price bracket. Maybe tossing out anything that is a few SD away from the average would fix that.

</comment><comment><USER21> there have been stories of people who scavenge for used/old/rare books and resell them for an exhorbitant mark up ([http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2010/10/confes...](http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2010/10/confessions_of_a_usedbook_salesman.html))

some arbitrage of used goods can be a business; but it ultimately depends on the effort required and sustainable the income generated.

<comment><USER22> Someone I know runs a very profitable business that is essentially a rare book finding/agency business.

They provide a 1800 phone number + internet site. People who are looking for an out-of-print book give them the details. They search for the book. When they find it, they add 20% the price, charge the buyer, purchase the book at the list price and have it shipped to the buyer, and keep the 20% without ever touching the book.

Essentially it's an agency business - I've often wondered why people don't find the books themselves, but it's a time/doing business internationally/inexperience type of thing. They would rather pay the extra 20% and have someone else deal with it.

The true value of the business in in the dealers database which allows them to find a book very quickly by drilling down into who is most likely to have a copy, plus they have an exclusive deal with point-of-sale booksellers, whereby anyone who wanders into a bookstore looking for an out-of-print book can be given somewhere to go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> My roommate in grad school did this. He'd buy toys on clearance from local toystores, and then sell them on EBay for twice the price. He wasn't selective at all w/ respect to the actual toy. Just looked for large markdowns.

He made decent money, but said that putting stuff in boxes and going to the post office was a hassle. He eventually stopped -- he was finishing med school at the time.

</comment><comment><USER24> It's worth noting that $300 for a day of manual work is considered a good salary in many parts of the country (and even in San Francisco).

<comment><USER25> $300 for three guys.

Once you factor in the girlfriend subsidy, they would have made better money with far less risk by getting shifts at local fast food restaurants.

<comment><USER26> He said they only worked for about 3 hours.

Even if you take out $75 for the GF subsidy (being generous and assuming she gets an equal share), each guy made $25/hour, cash (i.e. ~$30-$35/hour pre- tax), which is >3x what they'd get at a fast-food joint.

Now of course, one does need to take into account the fact that they're restricted in spending their loot on beer, which they are obligated to share. From a short-term economic standpoint this is probably a significant hit on their profits (i.e. unlikely that the three gentlemen will consume the majority of the beer). However, from a longer-term/more holistic view, purchasing beer for the group will surely lead to fun, team building, general goodwill, and so on, which is arguably more valuable than the $300 cash at this point in the startup's lifecycle.

tl;dr startups should use aeron-chair arbitrage to fund investment in beer, it's science.

<comment><USER27> Wouldn't the $25/hour still be taxable? (I understand that nobody pays taxes on small cash amounts, but if we're considering its viability as a business it seems unfair to compare one option with tax evasion and one without.)

<comment><USER26> Definitely true, but the tax evasion is made possible by the nature of the work (i.e. it's not an option at all in the fast food job)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> While making a sweeping statement about such business models not working, I guess the op failed to take notice of Gazelle.com, which has been in operation for 3 years now, has raised $46.4M in total with the last round being a series D of $22M. And guess what their business model is, arbitrage on used electronic products. So safe to say, such models can and do work.

I also believe that these models will increasingly become more mainstream, because they save people 'time', time which is increasingly becoming the most precious resource that we have. You save 2 hours of time for someone, and pay him $40-50 dollars less than craiglist or ebay, and I am sure you can find a large percentage of people for whom the opportunity cost of 1 hours is more than $20-25, and voila, you have customers.

</comment><comment><USER29> Maybe an interesting exercise, although the acquired "learning" of difficulty/challenges in shuttling large bulky items around without owning transportation...seems like maybe you should have seen that one coming?

</comment><comment><USER30> Great post. I think this is one of the fundamental lessons that all startups going through an incubator should learn: have a product, find a customer.

The most basic, lowest-common-denominator example of this is arbitrage. Buy one product for X and sell it for X + 10%. If you can't do that with one product successfully that you know there is already a market demand for (e.g. chairs) then how on earth are you going to do it for your startup?

<comment><USER31> _If you can't do that with one product successfully that you know there is already a market demand for (e.g. chairs) then how on earth are you going to do it for your startup?_

umm, by building something new, not reselling existing stuff?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> The most fun I've had doing this sort of thing is going to goodwill outlets (aka "the bins" ...of crap) and looking for stuff to flip. You pay by the pound, and the more you buy, the better the per pound rate. And your helping out goodwill with landfill costs. And your reusing something that would otherwise be trash. Everyone wins!

You would be astounded at what you can find there... things worth well over 100 dollars show up regularly.

</comment><comment><USER33> I can't tell if this is a joke or not? Some frail guys can't hack lugging chairs around so it's not a viable business model for anyone? This is a very viable business that you guys feel too entitled for.

Open your eyes and guess what a pawn shop, antique store, used office furniture dealer, or IT equipment reseller do. It's not far off from this, but they aren't bitching about it and plugging a silly website.

<comment><USER34> it doesn't scale as well in terms of profits versus man-hours as the business models they're used to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> How did this make it to the top of the page?

<comment><USER36> The abiding fascination of HN for Aeron chairs?

[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=aer...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=aeron&start=0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> You could combine priceonomics data + taskrabbit work force to scale the arbitrage business on high value items. ;)

</comment><comment><USER38> Are you scanning craig list manually?. If done with a crawler, how you mannage to keep your site unbanned?

</comment><comment><USER39> Just out of curiosity what language is priceonomics written in?

<comment><USER40> We use all kinds of cool tools (maybe we should put them all on the site somewhere?), but we use python mostly. We love python!</comment></comment>


Startup with no direction seeking for guidance - <AUTHOR>

This is my first time submitting to hacker news. I'm 21, turning 22 on June, and based on the Philippines. I have recently quit my job as a web developer last October 2012 to build my startup - Droolify, a content sharing service/catalog that lets people discover, share, and talk about "droolify-ing" things. I spent the last hellish 6 months building the web application, with no income, and my family stressing me up as they don't understand what I am doing to my life, and pushing me to get a job and be employed. Life is hard here.
I launched the site on April 10, 2013, rigged with Facebook's open graph so the site can get more exposure. I gained a couple of signups on the first week and about 5-8 active users daily. They were in my circle of friends, and some were friends of my friends. I thought that I would reach about 50-100 active users on its first two weeks, but my expectations were wrong. It kept on the ground with 0-2 active users.
I don't know if the idea was wrong. Right now I'm planning to rewrite the code from scratch ( Switch to a different web app framework to accomplish more features; Remove the responsive design; Add more features esp. realtime functionalities with nodejs; and so on... )
I don't want to lose hope and really seeking for guidance.
http://www.droolify.com <comment><USER2> At times, just coding might not be enough to get your startup at the expected presence.

In my opinion, what you need is to first gain some insights on

\- how to build online presence

\- User experience

Ex: By having a first look at your site, it is not directly visible what your site exactly does. Then I looked for About link (for which I had to scroll down to bottom right)

There's a lot of data available on the net which you can use to improve in these areas. I would suggest instead of recoding and loading the site with extra features, if you are satisfied with current functionality, then try to build online presence first.(You may start with getting more likes for your facebook page)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for this. I'll take a look at those areas. Though I'm wanting more functionalities, will it be okay if I gather likes for the facebook page even though the functionalities I wanted are not yet implemented? (e.g. first impression of the site's current functionalities can make a visitor like/dislike the site)

<comment><USER2> I think it would be okay to create a 'Site new version coming very soon' landing page and take the main site down as you work on it. But main and the most difficult target would be letting users know what your site exactly does, how easy it is, how different it is: all of them without showing the actual site! ( maybe some simple text on landing page, and mostly through well drafted text publicity on social networks ).

Show users before adding the functionality that they actually need it.( that it was inherent). If you are able to do this correctly, then you could get yourself a good fanbase.

Basically, I would suggest to improve on promotional strategies before starting coding again (after a landing page). And also keep a clear view on how are you going to generate income( if you want to call yourself a startup :) )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Sounds like a classic case-study for Lean Startup methodologies.

Why did you sink 6 months into this without knowing if people actually wanted it?

Stop coding. Now. Go out and talk to your potential customers. What problem are you solving? How are people solving it now?

Best of luck, and hopefully this can be salvaged, or else it is a learning experience for next time.

</comment><comment><USER4> Just switch to another idea. Implement it quickly. Observe the reactions and make a new plan. You need to iterate the ideas. Rewriting is a mistake. Of course you can implement it much better but the risk will be double next time. There are dozens of new ideas.

<comment><AUTHOR> So are you saying that the idea is a no-good? :( Could you elaborate why the risk will be doubled? Though I'm just planning on rewriting, my real problem is to build a user base and make the website known and used.

<comment><USER4> I'm not saying the idea is good or bad. I say, just move on. Don't repeat yourself. Do new things. Don't get stuck. Don't get upset. Move on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why would you rewrite from scratch? Sounds like you're just stalling from getting to the root issue.

Why not try some other marketing approaches?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reply. Well the main reason for the rewrite was that I wanted to switch to a different web application framework so I could accomplish features that I can't with the current framework I'm using. And also to clean up the code, and write more efficient unit tests. Though I'm just planning through it.

Yes, though I really don't have any idea how to REALLY market a website. The only idea I know of was spreading it through Facebook open graph, but it still wasn't enough. I'm thinking of ads, and more ads, but I don't have the money for it.

<comment><USER6> What framework are you using? What are the features you can't implement with it?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know if it would be ethical for me to tell of the framework I'm using. What I can say is that it's quite new and collaborators of it are small unlike that of Yii, Zend, and Symfony. (I'm using PHP) Unit testing, database ORM, model validation, etc. are hard to make use of on this framework I'm using, as these functionalities of it are lacking features

<comment><USER6> Well in any case I have a hard time imagining that the framework you're using is really the cause of your main problem, the lack of users.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, but I didn't say nor even think that it's the cause of my main problem.

<comment><USER5> You state : >I don't know if the idea was wrong.

And then you state that you're going to rewrite, implying as if the rewrite is going to help.

I'll save you the rewrite; it's not going to help your lack of users.

At the very least you have a marketing/lack of awareness problem, at most you have a shitty idea problem. None of which have anything to do with the technology stack you're using.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This seems like one of the many other sites out there like pinterest etc. What makes it different?

</comment><comment><USER8> It's less than a month old. Do you expect overnight success?

<comment><AUTHOR> How I wish it would have been! :) Thanks for this.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Freelancing starting out – any tips or tricks? - <AUTHOR> Thanks <comment><USER2> When I set up fairpixels.co, I launched www.logodust.com to share unused logos. Accidentally then (deliberately now), it became a powerful lead generator. Almost 2 year in, I now have a business that supports multiple people and we've expanded into new services, with the latest being www.fairpixels.pro (UI design service for software developers). And we're following the same framework to automate the qualification of leads. So let me break down the exact strategy that seems to work for us, to consistently attract high quality leads:

* 1. Productize your service: Create a clear proposition, and turn your service into a product-like-package. Have a clear deliverable, timeframe and price.

* 2. Then, create 'side projects'. These side projects should be super valuable to your specific target customer and 100% free.

* 3. Instead of marketing your main service, promote your side projects. These are free, frictionless tools that people gladly share. Driving traffic to these free side projects is a lot easier and the sharability is higher.

* 4. On these side project, upsell your productised service, driving a portion of the traffic to your main service.

Voila.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is assuming you are a web developer.

Make sure you have at least one website built up that represents a good example of your work.

Make sure you document everything you do. If you finish a project, take screenshots. Set up a portfolio online. Get a LinkedIn and update it often. That is a great place to show off everything if you don't have a website. Every job in which you receive a paycheck constitutes as working a job that you can list on your LinkedIn resume. Make sure you list out the details of what you did or do for the client. Don't go crazy, but list important keywords.

With LinkedIn, you should also connect to clients who are on there and get them to write you a RECOMMENDATION as soon as possible. ( [http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com/useful-feature- li...](http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com/useful-feature-linkedin- recommendations/) )

Specialize in customer care, service and support, which is something that many web developers lack and will make you in demand. A client wants to know they can pick up the phone or send an email and receive an answer within a few hours. They are panicking already about issues with website or whatever, and you are the person who can keep them having a peace of mind, and you can certainly charge for that. I usually come in when the web designer before me has disappeared without a trace or is hard to contact.

I was referred to a very popular client in my town. She runs a paint and wine business and her web developer before me, developed all custom software, which worked, but had so many problems, that I ended up charging her hundreds of dollars just to repair the damages. It began to get annoying and while the money was great, I hated that I had to charge her for someone else's mess. It also gets exhausting tracking down a few dozen PHP files and figuring out what is causing the problem. Touching someone else's code is never fun. I came to her with an ultimatum: I could keep charging her hundreds of dollars a month and she would keep losing money from paying me, or let me install a calendar system that will cost her a few thousand dollars to install, but save her more money in the long run, as I probably wouldn't have to charge her to keep putting band-aids on a wound. It has been installed for a year now and I can tell you, she has definitely saved thousands of dollars.

Sure, I'm out thousands of dollars because I'm not charging her to patch bugs, but I'm not annoyed anymore, because I installed quality software that actually works. She comes to me with new ideas for her website and that is where I continue to make money with her.. and the general maintenance fees. She is more likely to stick with me because she really is saving money and she knows it.

I would highly recommend that you get a business card. You can get a few hundred made for less than $20. Hand them out to your clients. Do a good job. It will likely be that your clients will refer you to their friends. You can give them a referral percentage on the first project you do for the new client or you can just thank them. Whichever you prefer is best. If you have clients who run a business with a physical location, ask them if you can drop off a few cards and leave them in the front of the store.

Note the local businesses in your area. "Ma and Pa" places or small businesses. Check to see if they have a website. If they don't, show them the website(s) you have already built and give them a good deal on building them a website. Don't undercharge, but don't overcharge, either. This is where you'll have to figure out what a good 6-10 pages cost ... or more specifically, what price would make you feel comfortable doing a website. If they do have a website, but you clearly see it can be improved, than ask them if they are satisfied with their website, or if they are looking for a new look.

Lastly, make sure you know how to write up an invoice. Keep ALL documents of everything you do. Keep it organized. Google Drive or OneDrive is a good place to store them so you never lose them.

I have been in the business of freelancing websites for almost a decade. My first website was for a non-profit organization so I did not charge them at all. My second website, I think I charged $250, and then $500, and my prices only went up as I gained more experience. The other reason they also went up: I have noticed a huge change in what clients are looking for nowadays. Years ago, you would build them a website. Make a few changes they wanted and be done with it. Nowadays, clients are more selective, more picky, and want more custom work. So by the time you get done, you were literally working for free for them with all the changes they want. Be fair in charging your clients. If they aren't a million dollar business, and even if they were, you aren't going to make a million dollars from that one business. So don't get greedy.

Most of my clients nowadays are also repeat business wanting newer websites, as they themselves are entrepreneurs, and I usually get new ones from word of mouth. I don't usually seek out new clients anymore. I'm actually looking to get out of this business soon.

Good luck. It's a fun business to be in but it can get tiring. As for competition... Craigslist is filled with people looking for websites. Local businesses are a great place to start. And most people don't want someone who is "remote" or "overseas". They want someone who is local, in the same timezone, and in their area.

<comment><USER4> Hey!

Would you mind reaching out to me offline? email@example.com</comment></comment>


Orchestra.io, PHP Platform, Enters Public Beta - <AUTHOR> http://blog.orchestra.io/post/4349232969/announcing-public-beta

<comment><USER2> It would be nice if anyone had an option for deploying with mercurial. Purely anecdotal of course, but most of my PHP chums run hg as well. I know there's hg-git but for all the hassle it took to set up, I may as well have just used git itself.

(Incidentally, I was quite interested in this originally, but while waiting for an invite I ended up bodging together something on Amazon myself. Amusingly enough, my invites for phpfog, orchestra and dotcloud all came within 2 days of deploying!)

<comment><USER3> We have support for mercurial that we are in the process of test at the moment. When it's available, we'll announce on our blog: <http://blog.orchestra.io/>

If you'd tweeted us, we would have bumped you up the list :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The site itself loads really slow. Makes a bad first impression for a platform service.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the feedback. There are definitely front end performance tweaks we could make to improve the load time of our marketing site. Right now, however, the platform itself is our main area of attention :)

<comment><USER5> The site is taking over 5 seconds to load, and the signup page is down. Don't make excuses, that's not acceptable. You have to understand that we don't judge your service by looking at the code you write, we judge it by any means we can, which unfortunately includes whether your own site is accessible, design (yes), writing (your writing has quite a few spelling mistakes in it, no biggie but it helps if it hasn't), what others write about it etc.. All thoroughly unfair. Don't take it bad, but that's the way it works.

Then, AFTER we sign up (if we ever do), we can judge it by how well it works.

Good luck!

<comment><USER3> Thanks Peter. I don't feel I was making excuses, but communicating our immediate priorities.

The signup page seems fine, would you mind checking it again? I take your point on first impressions etc., well made.

Would you mind telling me where you've seen spelling mistakes, I'll correct them.

Thanks :)

<comment><USER5> The docs have lots of spelling mistakes, can't find any now though, but I noticed about 3 while glancing through them earlier. The signup page is up now.

Also, and I understand it's not a priority, the docs are a little wordy.

For example: "you will need to make sure you comply with the following requirements". Why not write: "You'll need these:". Much friendlier.

Or "In order to deploy an application on the Orchestra platform, one is required to login at <https://my.orchestra.io/login>. Once you've logged in, click on the Deploy A New App from your Dashboard. You will be taken to the Deployment interface where a few new terms might appear strange to you. Allow us to describe the fields you will see:".

You can replace that entire paragraph with this sentence: "To deploy an application, login at <http://my.orchestra.io/login>, and click Deploy A New App."

Another one: "Memcached is an in-memory key-value store for small chunks of arbitrary data (strings, objects) from results of database calls, API calls, or page rendering. Memcached is trivial to use and a very important part of any serious platform infrastructure. We are currently on an addon that will enable application deployers and Orchestra users to use Memcached. We will keep you updated with our progress."

Instead write: "Memcached support is coming soon". That has the same amount of informational value and is easier to read.

Just nitpicking on the writing now :) It does sound like a great product.

<comment><USER3> Really appreciate the feedback on the documentation, Peter. Docs are a type of UI, I guess, and the same rules should apply.

Consider them a work-in-progress! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Well presented. It looks like it might hit the target audience very well, I'd say.</comment>


Using nvidia-docker based images with JARVICE - <AUTHOR> https://www.nimbix.net/blog/2016/10/04/using-nvidia-docker-based-images-with-jarvice/ <comment><USER2> This is an extension of the new PushToCompute capabilities which makes it the easiest platform to use with native GPUs.

The original PushToCompute tutorial is here: [https://www.nimbix.net/pushtocompute- tutorial/](https://www.nimbix.net/pushtocompute-tutorial/)</comment>


PostgreSQL Workload Analyzer - <AUTHOR> https://dalibo.github.io/powa/

<comment><USER2> Interesting.

pgBadger[0] log analyzer is from the same creator, and whilst not real-time, it provides great stats and breakdown with a nice web interface. I wonder why PoWa was split from it instead of integrating real-time stats into it...

[0][https://github.com/dalibo/pgbadger](https://github.com/dalibo/pgbadger)

<comment><AUTHOR> They take different approaches to collecting the information. To use pgBadger, you have to enable query logging. To use POWA, you have to enable pg_stat_statements. [0]. You can get more information from pg_stat_statements than the query logs, so you'd probably choose to use that unless it's not available (e.g. it's not enabled on RDS).

[0] [http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/pgstatstatemen...](http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/pgstatstatements.html)

<comment><USER3> I've used pgFouine (possibly the inspiration for pgBadger, given the name similarity?) to analyze posgres logs -- but it was the sort of thing where we'd enable detailed (esp. query-level) logging, capture a bunch of logs, then switch the logging back to "production mode" again and analyze the logs.

This seems targeted for constant use on production servers -- I'd love to see more info about what it costs to run (in RAM footprint, in performance, etc.). Next (as possible) would be a list of places that run it.

@sciurus, this isn't your project but you use it -- is that right?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not a user, just someone who's been looking at PostgreSQL monitoring tools lately and submitted this when I saw the release announcement. Since all my databases are on RDS, I can't use pg_stat_statements and tools like this that build on it. If anyone from AWS is reading this, let us enable that extension please!

Good question about performance, I've asked it at [https://github.com/dalibo/powa/issues/11](https://github.com/dalibo/powa/issues/11)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting. I've been monitoring my clusters with a custom Python script that grabs a lot of the data from the pg_stat_ tables, along with the current xlog location and table / database sizes, at regular intervals and saves it in a Graphite database, which I then examine with Graph Explorer [1] and the normal Graphite frontend.

This looks like it only operates at a statement level. I'm sure it'll be interesting though.

[1] [https://github.com/vimeo/graph-explorer](https://github.com/vimeo/graph- explorer)

<comment><USER5> Work on RedShift?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Another nifty tool by the same team, PgCluu, it is more geared to server statistics and PostgreSQL cluster statistics.

[https://github.com/darold/pgcluu](https://github.com/darold/pgcluu)

</comment><comment><USER7> Awesome timing! I'm deploying my app to a client today, and having real-time stats on the PostgreSQL database would be very helpful to keep an eye on things. I'll definitely be using this.

</comment><comment><USER8> If running PostgreSQL on RDS, does this provide additional value?

<comment><USER9> or just using munin?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does something like this exist for MySQL?

<comment><USER11> I work for VividCortex[0] and this looks similar to what we're doing for MySQL. It's not an open-source service but you may get some ideas of what can be done.

[0] [https://vividcortex.com/](https://vividcortex.com/)</comment></comment>


Negative Gross Margins - <AUTHOR> http://avc.com/2015/10/negative-gross-margins <comment><USER2> I enjoy the VC capital community subsidizing my life style, however its best not to think about the source of their funding when getting food delivered to your house from 10 miles away for 99c.</comment>


In this sports betting company, the winners are called 'problem customers' - <AUTHOR> https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-05/bet365-whistleblower-says-winners-given-delays/11768486 <comment><USER2> Of course businesses show unprofitable customers the door. For example, if you return too many products from Amazon, they will close your account [https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2018/05/23/a...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2018/05/23/amazon- bans-customers-who-return-too-many-orders/636089002/) .</comment>


An Australian language that doesn't have words for directions - <AUTHOR> http://blog.expectlabs.com/post/41953134422/how-language-shapes-reality-exploring-guugu-yimithirr

<comment><USER2> The title as it stands is poor: "An Australian language that doesn't have words for directions".

The thrust of the article is that the language of the Guugu Yimithirr people of north Queensland doesn't have egocentric directional references (left / right / relative to speaker) which is common to most of the (now largely extinct) languages of northern Australia, from the Pilbara through the Kimberleys, through Kakadu and on into Queensland (and may well be common to the bulk of Australian Aboriginal languages).

This isn't quite as noteworthy as the claims by Daniel Everett that the language of the Pirahã tribe in the Amazon Basin broke Chomsky's theory of universal grammar by lacking recursion.</comment>


Ask HN: Speaking of 2009, anyone remember Abuse (the game)? - <AUTHOR>

Didn't realize it was written in Lisp...  Still remember those days of playing it multiplayer on DOS machines.<p>You can get a recap and download it here apparently: http://abuse-game.com/ <comment><USER2> Sure, I remember it. You can also find it in the standard ubuntu repositories.

The tricks, that the game plays on you to frighten you, get rather predictable after a few levels.

Some year back I even hacked in the lisp parts of source.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, the multiplayer aspect was cool though. Pre-counterstrike, it was awesome!</comment></comment>


Cord-Cutting Is Gonna Suck in 2016 - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/12/cord-cutting-is-going-to-suck-in-2016/ <comment><USER2> Usenet is like $15 a month.</comment>


DNS Zombies (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://blog.apnic.net/2016/04/04/dns-zombies/ <comment><USER2> Would this have been as much of a problem if DNS were used for its original purpose -- mapping relatively long-lived hostnames to somewhat less long-lived IP addresses -- instead of the other way around?

Just as the inventors of zombifying pathogens in many stories didn't actually intend to cause the apocalypse, those who built these resolvers probably didn't anticipate that someone would create millions of single-use hostnames for tracking purposes.

Yes, tracking. The article also blames trackers for a percentage of zombie queries, but they themselves have been creating all these meaningless hostnames to collect information from unsuspecting users. It's the exact same technique that malicious trackers often use to evade blockers. I wouldn't mind if resolvers recognized them as abusive and NXDOMAIN'd them altogether.

<comment><USER3> That is not in fact the original purpose of DNS. Network addresses were generally persistent. But the mechanism for distributingthe IP-hostname mapping had become unmanageable:

       - Host name to address mappings were maintained by the Network
         Information Center (NIC) in a single file (HOSTS.TXT) which
         was FTPed by all hosts [RFC-952, RFC-953].  The total network
         bandwidth consumed in distributing a new version by this
         scheme is proportional to the square of the number of hosts in
         the network, and even when multiple levels of FTP are used,
         the outgoing FTP load on the NIC host is considerable.
         Explosive growth in the number of hosts didn't bode well for
         the future.

       - The network population was also changing in character.  The
         timeshared hosts that made up the original ARPANET were being
         replaced with local networks of workstations.  Local
         organizations were administering their own names and
         addresses, but had to wait for the NIC to change HOSTS.TXT to
         make changes visible to the Internet at large.  Organizations
         also wanted some local structure on the name space.

       - The applications on the Internet were getting more
         sophisticated and creating a need for general purpose name
         service.

[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1034](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1034)

A compilation of further specification documents is in the Wikipedia article: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Name_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Name_System)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Could it be some sort of feedback as a result of servers sending more than 1 udp packet to compensate for possible packet loss? Maybe there's a loop somewhere with severs ignoring or changing the request id, a sort of broadcast storm.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm curious to know if the situation has evolved since 2016 or is still the same.

<comment><USER6> I don't believe so. I wrote a browser plugin that would ping a time based DNS entry similar to what the article does in order to alarm if someone was inspecting my traffic and show from where. I have seen hits from Singapore and other locations. Sometimes it's a web filtering vendor or other security tools company-- days or weeks later. Sometimes I can't determine who the source is and avoid using that network in the future.

<comment><USER7> can you elaborate on your canary system? I speculate you would need to setup your own DNS. For correlating subsequent inspection, you would need to do some allocation of honeypot addresses in a ip(v6?) prefix and capture that traffic. Logging requests to unique subdomains on a webserver you control would be another quickly built and limited mechanism. Embedding prepared urls in Email comes to my mind as another method of counter reconnaissance on the whole network delivery path. Though you would want to inform the legitimate recipient. Thanks for the ideas.</comment></comment></comment>


National Park Week - <AUTHOR> http://www.nps.gov/npweek/ For all outdoor enthusiast starting today all National Parks are free for one week. Enjoy. <comment><USER2> This would be a good time to let you guys know that the company I work for is producing a Blu-ray about Glacier National Park. It's also Glacier's 100th anniversary as a national park.

Follow our progress: <http://theparksproject.org></comment>


New York state has 10 times the Covid-19 cases California has. Why? - <AUTHOR> https://www.sfchronicle.com/health/article/NY-has-10-times-the-coronavirus-cases-CA-has-Why-15154692.php <comment><USER2> NYC subway alone has almost 2 billion riders annually.

Small enclosed spaces where everyone has to breathe the same air, be packed in close to each other, and share handles to keep from falling over.

LA subway averages 100 million riders annually.

One can only imagine that this is likely a huge transmission factor.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's really a lot less complicated than the author makes it. NY is testing more than 3x the number of people with < 1/2 the population. On top of that, more than 50% of the cases are in one city, and iirc another 25% are in Westchester, the county next door to NYC. It's all concentrated in one incredibly dense part of the state.

NYC is almost twice as dense population-wise as SF. One day earlier of shelter in place helps I'm sure but the geography helps much more.

</comment><comment><USER4> Nobody knows the real number of infected people since to know that the whole population must be tested, so we can only guess. My guess is that the people in California have higher levels of Vitamin D which regulates the immune system and that there _appear_ to be less cases in California since there are fewer people with symptoms.

</comment><comment><USER5> In Hong Kong those living in high rise structures were catching corona virus from neighbors multiple stories up.

</comment><comment><USER6> Is CA testing for the virus as much as NY? California also has a very high homeless population that they have had a hard time dealing with, and I wonder if the homeless are being hospitalized and accounted for as much in CA as in NY.

<comment><AUTHOR> The article addresses testing:

 _New York is testing far more people — three times as many as California — and therefore identifying more cases..._

 _But testing alone doesn't explain why New York's case counts are so much higher than California's, or why the rate is spiraling up so fast on the East Coast. The death toll in New York was four times higher than California's — 210 deaths to 51, as of Tuesday evening. Deaths tend to be a much more reliable marker of the spread of the disease than cases because determining how someone died is not dependent on the availability of testing kits._

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Population density would seem to be the obvious culprit.</comment>


Ask HN: Recommendations to Learn C from a Ruby Programmer - <AUTHOR>

Hey all - I am going to be needing to program a lot in C in the near future, and am looking for some good recommendations to get me started from the basics of the language to how to program advanced topics in C. I've never really worked with a low-level language like C, mostly working with Ruby to develop scripts and web applications. I am now needing (and wanting) to learn C.
What are some good tutorials to start learning C? I would prefer ones freely available online right now to begin with so I can start programming in C right away. But, any book recommendations are also highly valuable. How did you (if you have) learn C to begin with? Are there any standard tutorials for C?
Any help would be incredible. Thanks! <comment><USER2> A couple of throughts from someone who recently moved from C (plain vanilla) to Ruby:

1] O'Reilly has a sale on C e-books on that expires today - have a look at them (<http://shop.oreilly.com/category/deals/c-owo.do?code=WKCPRG>)

2] Your biggest hurdles will be going from object coding to procedural coding, and going from dynamically typed to statically typed variables. Focus on these topics.

3] Once you have the basics of C, start focusing on dynamic memory usage (pointers, etc) as soon as possible. It's one of the most difficult topics (especially for someone that's only used managed languages), but also one of the most useful and powerful features in the language (and also the source of much pain if not done properly).

4] A possible way to start coding immediately, is programming C plugins for Ruby. MRI is very well suited to this, and will cover quite a bit of ground from points 2 and 3 above. There are heaps of tutorials available too.

5] As far as online tutorials go, there are many, and most tend to cover the same ground. Find one that you're comfortable with, and just do it. For the moment, focus on syntax and language elements, but DO NOT neglect to look into the fundamentals of how C actually works at compiler level at some point. It's an amazingly internally consistent design, and will make understanding and using some features a lot easier.

Good luck - hope this helps :)

</comment><comment><USER3> When I learned C it was in the air. Everyone around me was using C at my jobs.

I learned C by programming in C, talking to my neighbors, and obsessively reading comp.lang.c. That used to mean usenet, but these days most people will get to it via Google: groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c

The best thing you can do is work on some really hard shit for a long time with a smart set of colleagues.

My first book was K&R <glances up at bookshelf> but my favorite was Harbison and Steele <glances up at bookshelf>. These days probably one of the O'Reillys is good enough.

<http://www.faqs.org/faqs/C-faq/>

<http://c-faq.com/>

These days I don't think I could program my way out of a paperbag with C. But I did like it a lot back then.

</comment><comment><USER4> Try Zeds <http://c.learncodethehardway.org/book/>

</comment><comment><USER5> Objective C, C#, or C++? (I'm guessing Objective C ... Ios_)? C is a great language, especially coming from Ruby. It's more structured than Ruby, which is closer to Perl. C is more lenient than Java, but still a heck of a lot of fun.

<comment><USER6> It's pretty clear the OP is asking about learning C, not any of the higher level derivative languages you mentioned.

To the OP: while I sadly don't have any resources to recommend I do applaud you for tackling a lower level language like C, I think you'll get a lot out of it. Best of luck!

<comment><USER5> It's not clear - and many people who've used other languages simply call all derivations "C" - when they're clearly different. Also, if you're going to be a betting person.... is a Ruby person more likely to learn C or Objective C? Right. So I was in fair ground. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Heh ;)

For clarification, I was meaning pure C.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Look through the ruby source code.</comment>


Detroit firefighters rely on pop cans for alerts - <AUTHOR> http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/09/05/detroit-fire-houses-rely-on-pop-cans-doorbells-for-alerts/15160903/

<comment><USER2> Will somebody please bring the DFD some Raspberry Pi's and some Piezos and hook them up? Surely there are tons of local Open Source nerds that could offer some assistance to their dying city.

<comment><USER3> Also, cut the "dying city" line. Detroit's shrinking. Keep an eye on it, because "smaller" is all it needs to be to succeed.</comment></comment>


The one thing wrong with sites like Digg - <AUTHOR> http://onstartups.com/home/tabid/3339/bid/1393/The-One-Thing-Wrong-With-Social-Content-Sites-Like-Digg.aspx <comment><USER2> That's unfortunately not the only problem. Socially selected content sucks because it is being selected by an Average Joe, while actually what I, as an Average Joe need is a better content, provided (and selected/voted) by people better than me.

</comment><comment><USER3> The users.</comment>