Daily, curated, remote jobs for people willing to work from anywhere - <AUTHOR> https://workremotely.io/ <comment><USER2> Not 100% sure this is a work from home-job:

[https://workremotely.io/details/127-remote-science- technolog...](https://workremotely.io/details/127-remote-science-technology- weapons-analyst-at-central-intelligence-agency-washington-dc)

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed! Thanks for spotting that, need to review my regex :) Will take it off asap</comment></comment>


The US Has Generated More Electricity from Renewables Than Coal - <AUTHOR> https://interestingengineering.com/the-us-has-generated-more-electricity-from-renewables-than-coal-for-the-first-time-ever <comment><USER2> ... _in the month of April 2019_ , and for the first month ever.</comment>


What I'd tell myself about startups if I could go back 5 years - <AUTHOR> http://www.talkingquickly.co.uk/2015/04/what-id-tell-myself-about-startups/ <comment><USER3> > A good developer can pick up any language or platform in a few weeks

Yes and no. There's a major difference between "picking up" and actually being good at something. If you have nobody on the team that is either already intimately familiar with the language/platform, or has experience with various languages/platforms, you're going to be spending a lot of time figuring out how to do stuff properly instead of just building stuff. And if you are a startup with a limited runway, that difference is crucial.

<comment><USER4> The famous Norvig piece "Teach Yourself Programming In Ten Years" touches on this:

> In 24 hours you might be able to learn some of the syntax of C++ (if you > already know another language), but you couldn't learn much about how to use > the language. In short, if you were, say, a Basic programmer, you could > learn to write programs in the style of Basic using C++ syntax, but you > couldn't learn what C++ is actually good (and bad) for. So what's the point? > Alan Perlis once said: "A language that doesn't affect the way you think > about programming, is not worth knowing". One possible point is that you > have to learn a tiny bit of C++ (or more likely, something like JavaScript > or Processing) because you need to interface with an existing tool to > accomplish a specific task. But then you're not learning how to program; > you're learning to accomplish that task.

<comment><USER5> >>you're learning to accomplish that task.

If you are learning anything other than that, you should be in academia not building real world applications. Out there in the industry you don't have 10 years to give towards a specific cause. Given the overall pace of our industry, the rate at which tools are changing, and age related discrimination.

In two ten year sprints you will be due for retirement.

<comment><USER6> No offense, but you are living in a kind of unfortunate corner of "industry".

Where I am sitting, you absolutely have 10 years (or more) to give toward a specific cause, and the path of the software developer is one of lifelong improvement.

Stuff like "the rate at which tools are changing" doesn't matter too much, because that stuff is just surface-level knowledge, not deep knowledge.

I am 43, and have much to do yet; if you are telling me I am due for retirement, I suggest you have a very warped view of the world.

<comment><USER7> This is why I got out of areas of webdev etc that don't value deeper knowledge. I can't say how much more satisfying it is to be learning stuff that is useful for 10 years instead of the webdev framework of the day/month/year.

<comment><USER8> webdev requires deep knowledge, it just may be a kind of knowledge you aren't interested in. Placing more value in your own pet interests is more than a little condescending.

<comment><USER9> Deep knowledge of what? The way different browsers render things?

All of the Web dev I've been involved in is pretty straight forward stuff to manage records in a database or make it easier to interact with the records on a browser.

The only thing remotely complex was 3d rendering. Perhaps I have a narrow view of what is considered web dev now.

<comment><USER10> "Webdev" is not fundamentally any different from any other kind of development that involves a client and server component. It just happens to be served in a web browser. You need the same underlying knowledge as for other (common) types of software development.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Going through this now after a few false starts. I initially picked a problem that everyone's been complaining about forever --HR/Recruiting/Resumes. Seems riped for solving but...

1) Getting engagement is tough in any idea. Extra tough here b/c writing/submitting resumes is not an everyday thing and really a pain point!

2) I knew very few people in the Recruiting industry (see #1) which made getting spun up that much harder.

3) While I agree HR/Recruiting has lots of problems, I really wasn't passionate about the space. What this means is that during the down times, and you'll have plenty of those when you think to yourself if all this work is really worth it, you really need to draw deep. And if you can't convince yourself to keep moving forward, it eventually spirals from there.

I'm now playing in the local space and much happier (even though getting engagement is still a b _tch!) :-)

_ I do have a question to the community

1) When is it time to "start the company"? (eg through IRS)

2) If you have an existing company entity (from another failed startup attempt) that didn't have a lot of entanglements, is it better to change the name of that company to your new startup (after passing #1 test) or better to shutdown and restart? Just trying to understand if there are any (longterm) downside to a simple rename.

<comment><USER12> [http://hired.com](http://hired.com) already does this, and they seem to be doing it pretty well. I don't want to dissuade you, as they have not upended the industry yet, but check them out.

<comment><USER11> Oh that's the other thing. There are lots of players in this space! But, that's not a bad thing... Someone just pointed me to nsphire (tinder for recruiting?) which seemed interesting too.

Here was what I was trying to do: [http://www.palere.com/blog](http://www.palere.com/blog)

I also tried to crowdsource the interview process...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Brilliant post. Most of these points hit home for me. One of the things I've been honing in on recently - which you do as well - is effectiveness. Brilliant developers who don't ship aren't effective. People who don't distill a product down to just what's necessary aren't effective. You hit on this concept - and many others - in a number of spots. Thanks for sharing.

<comment><USER14> I didn't really understand this one -- what does it mean to be a brilliant developer who doesn't ship?

<comment><USER15> This is closely related to the "Raw Technology Persona"[1]

A developer who can talk you through an entire stack and why specific tradeoffs were made on specific pieces of the architecture... yet hoards code on their box without committing, works on stuff without telling other people, and claims that things are progressed much further than they actually are. It's an ego and accountability problem.

Someone like this might prefer to refactor your entire stack multiple times, partly due to shiny-new-framework, and partly due to the lack of understanding that from a business perspective you often have to work with what you've got. I think it's less about perfectionism and more about inexperience with balancing business tradeoffs with technology.

There's a great series in Forbes specific to CTOs undergoing this "meltdown" [2]. In it, they mention a few warning signs including: never saying no, missing deadlines, low morale, and poor estimation of timelines.

[1] [http://www.citoresearch.com/it-management/why-cios-and- ctos-...](http://www.citoresearch.com/it-management/why-cios-and-ctos-suffer- raw-technology-persona)

[2] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/danwoods/2013/08/26/avoiding- a-c...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/danwoods/2013/08/26/avoiding-a-cto- meltdown-part-2-warning-signs/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> _The people who are really getting somewhere aren 't the people who are always out for drinks_

Too true.

As a side note, there are an awful lot of people who seem to go to a different startup event every night of the week, and then some hackathon over the weekend.

I generally find it's the other people who are getting stuff done.

<comment><USER17> I'm always up for a coffee though and I've found that to work well for most people.

Lots of people at evening startup events just want to have a drink after work. Get their card and pitch them on office hours.

<comment><USER16> _I 'm always up for a coffee though and I've found that to work well for most people._

Agreed. I can even be tempted by the occasional lunch as well!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Nice list! Good balance of humor and practicality. I especially enjoyed this one:

"If you end up pitching to someone over coffee, ask to hear their pitch afterwards."

A nice thought, as a lot of people view networking only through the lens of "what can I gain?"

<comment><USER19> Ironically. The best way to gain from networking is to forget about what you can gain and focus on the other persons interests.

Excellent point about an excellent list in an excellent post.

<comment><USER18> Excellent reply!

<comment><USER10> Chef Excellence would be proud.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "It's really easy to become hyper-critical and respond to every idea with "yeah but that won't work because of x". This is lazy, don't do it."

I'd say that while this is true, there's an important "other side" to this, that not everything is a world-changing, ground-shaking idea that's going to revolutionize the way the world works. Sometimes ideas are indeed stupid, and one of the things I don't love about HN is the echo chamber effect. If everyone is telling you how great things are, coupled with 17 ("Constantly exaggerating how well you're doing can be very tiring.") things can disconnect from reality quickly.

<comment><USER21> > _Sometimes ideas are indeed stupid, and one of the things I don 't love > about HN is the echo chamber effect._

However, Hacker News is one of the surprisingly few communities that will tell you if your idea is terrible, which is one of the reasons for the recent "gratuitous negativity" controversies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> _I 'd always rather work with someone who ships over someone who's technically brilliant_

Lets define what ships means then. Does that mean that they are just really good at debugging so that the limited features you do have don't break? Does it mean they know how to distill exactly the use cases needed so that you don't develop more than necessary?

I can think of many ways to ship something that is incomplete, but that doesn't mean it's worth anything so I am curious about this statement.

<comment><USER23> getting the product out is one of the hardest things for a early stage startup. people who can ship will increase the possibility of the product being released .

small example :

Business guy : guys we need to send a welcome email after a user registers.

coder1: adds code in the registration controller . ( 10 mins ) done.

coder2 : I think its better to use a event system to create an event for user registration and use a spool to send the email.

coder2's "idea" might be technically better than coder1's implementation but its waste as Coder2 doesn't actually take the initiative to code ..he knows just about everything in CS and for some reason prefers not to code . And still argues that coder1's solution is not correct.

<comment><USER24> _" coder1: adds code in the registration controller . ( 10 mins ) done."_

And once your code accumulates enough of these 10-minute hack jobs, it becomes incomprehensible and unmaintainable, and every little change will break something. At that point, progress grinds to a halt. You'll then need someone like coder2, who has a talent for system architecture, to refactor them back to a sane state again. (I've been both coder1 and coder2, under different circumstances.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > Linear growth can be worse than no growth.

This one is huge. I had a manger once who confused linear growth with vertical growth, and as a result our entire engineering staff was spread thin trying to make progress on a large variety of mediocre products.

<comment><USER26> Can you explain this in more detail? Why is linear growth worse than no growth?

<comment><USER27> Because it has a tendency to lull you into wasting time on a product that's not going to make any real money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> _People don 't steal ideas. Tell as many people as possible. Never ask someone to sign an NDA before hearing your idea, you'll instantly lose all credibility_

I find this hard to believe and can see why experienced people would keep startup ideas close to their chest.

<comment><USER29> Ideas are mostly worthless. It's the execution that is valuable. I mean I wouldn't share my idea with Rocket Internet, but you get my point.

<comment><USER30> Context: Rocket Internet is the name of the German company operated by the Samwer brothers, who have a reputation of cloning silicon valley's latest and greatest ideas for the German\EU market. Not technically doing anything illegal but certainly not held in the highest regard.

<comment><USER31> They clone successfully executed ideas, not any old idea someone has.

<comment><USER29> However they also consider their strength to be execution not innovation. That doesn't rule out ideas that seem like "obvious wins" but have yet to be tested.

Edit: Apparently in their mission statement they claim to only use proven ideas, but I still wouldn't do business with them regardless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> What a great list. My favourite:

> Facebook is the Facebook for X

The one point I would elaborate on is listening to customers. This deserves more attention because listening to what customers _say_ can be a disaster. People will tell you all sorts of things about what they think they want and need. A lot of the time they're wrong. This can be worse than just building things you want or think are important.

Listening to customers really means measuring what they respond to. Or, to put it another way, ignore what they say, see what they do.

<comment><USER33> Ditto. Every time I end up at a networking event, someone without fail always ends up pitching that they have either Facebook for X or Groupon for Y.

No matter how you approach it, feigning interest, dismissing them, or talking about your reserverations, they never seem to get it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> A lot of great items here, but number one resonates the most. One of the most common problems I've seen on any project I've ever worked on (my own side- projects included) is a difficulty in saying 'No' to things.

The list itself would benefit from the same advice -- cutting it down to half as many items would have upped the overall quality IMO.

</comment><comment><USER35> Great list that made me smile. My two favorites from it include:

\- Falling in love with a product (rather than the problem) is really dangerous

\- It's really hard to build a product if you don't have a big personal investment in the problem it solves

<comment><USER36> On the other hand, there are a lot of problems that are highly valuable because they _aren 't_ sexy and you _can 't_ fall in love with them.

<comment><USER37> Do you have an unlovable problem in mind? I guarantee I can recast it as the sexiest most important problem there is.

Edit: On second though, if you can show that there is big money in solving [unlovable problem], I wont have to recast it. 1000 bay entrepreneurs will be stumbling over one another to recast it on their "Join The Team" page.

<comment><USER38> Farming would have fallen into this category until recently.

Pitching anything farm tech / data related in the bay area between 1994 - <USER2> or so, would have mostly fallen on deaf ears.

Under no circumstances would you have run into a scenario of 1,000 bay area entrepreneurs stumbling over themselves to copy your farm tech startup ten years ago. You can be sure there are blind spots of opportunity today in the same way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> > Linear growth can be worse than no growth

Not sure I get this one right. For me, _some_ growth is better than nothing. If your growth is linear, it means that you have something like _n_ new users every week, which is probably because they found it through ads or something, but they don't recommend it to their friends - otherwise, you would have every week _n+k_ number_of_users[previous week]* and the growth would be exponential. I suppose that's why OP is saying this, but I think the real metric is not growth, but retention. Better to have a few users who stick with your product.

Is that what the OP means?

<comment><USER40> Yeah you're totally right, it's a huge over simplification. I was specifically thinking of the scenario where you add roughly the same number of users each period, where that number isn't really enough for it to be a viable business but because there are some users, it becomes really hard to say "this isn't working" and either radically change something or quit. Agree that retention is often a much better metric.

<comment> jim-greer Yes.

Kongregate always had decent-but-linear growth and very good retention (of registered users, not so good for guests). Worked for us: here's a graph of web sessions per day with the units taken off.

[http://i.imgur.com/715wGwX.png](http://i.imgur.com/715wGwX.png)

It flattened out as mobile took all the growth out of browser-based games. It took us a while to figure mobile out but now we're doing well as a publisher/marketer/funder of indie free-to-play games.

[https://www.appannie.com/apps/ios/publisher/kongregate/](https://www.appannie.com/apps/ios/publisher/kongregate/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Wow, I don't have anything useful to add, but I have to compliment the author. Every single one of these is spot on, and almost perfectly mirrors my experience. Great post.

</comment><comment><USER42> These are some great points, yet this one made me scratch my head:

> 44\. No-one has ever used a Bitcoin ATM for practical reasons

I've used one because it was more convenient and anonymous than giving a scan of my ID to an online exchange, or meeting a stranger in-person to do a trade.

<comment><USER43> There's one in San Francisco at 180 Montgomery. I've never used it.

[http://sfist.com/2014/09/15/sf_gets_its_first_bitcoin_atm_at...](http://sfist.com/2014/09/15/sf_gets_its_first_bitcoin_atm_at_fi.php)

<comment><USER44> It was moved from Workshop Cafe, it's now at 2415 Mission St. housed within "Nakamoto's", a Bitcoin-only store. They actually have two there now. [http://nakamotos.io/](http://nakamotos.io/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> > Tech news (and news is general) has a very low return on time invested. > Prefer books and conversations

So true. Should probably block HN.

<comment><USER46> Personally, I found that my ROI for time on HN is a decaying function.

During my first year here, it was extremely valuable. I've read about many things that I didn't it exists, read comments written by far more experienced people. However, a few years later, there is a lot of repetition and normally I stick to HN newsletters and filters by points.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> > 4\. Like it or not, most networking in London is focused around drinking. > Find a way to deal with that without having a constant hangover.

One of my classes at uni taught me that doing drugs (especially alcohol) is sometimes necessary for getting things done, but I still wish this wasn't the case.

<comment><USER48> I think Europe is more beer-centric than the US, but here you can always ask the bartender to put a lime in your club soda to make it look like a cocktail... Bartenders are usually pretty friendly to people that aren't actually drinking, whether you're the DD, recovering, or just don't want to actually drink.

<comment><USER49> This is my strategy at any networking event. Usually have one drink then switch to club soda and lime. While many others are pounding back drinks because "free bar", I'm slightly loose and able to hold intelligent conversations still.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> > It's really easy to become hyper-critical and respond to every idea with > "yeah but that won't work because of x". This is lazy, don't do it.

This should be one of the HN guidelines.

<comment><USER50> Good idea, I think that it already might be. They just had that highly commented post about avoiding "gratuitous negativity"

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I disagree with the generally accepted one- build something you want. This is a fine thing to do but the overwhelming majority of good software business ideas aren't for consumers or developers. The overwhelming majority of workers who have problems that could be fixed by software are not developers. Lots of opportunities out there...

<comment><USER46> You have a point :)

Building something you want usually means that you have a deeper understanding of the problem. Also, chances are, that you are familiar with the market, alternative tools, etc. Which is a must for creating a good product. Actually wanting to use it adds a little bit of passion which definitely counts in the early stage.

<comment><USER51> clearly there are advantages if such an opportunity presents itself. Of course if you are a programming by trade, chances are it will present to a lot of your peers as well

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Thanks for sharing! I learned too many of these the hard way... I think I could say that about most things I've learned though :)

</comment><comment><USER53> Advice is a good one on here. I would phrase as: "The vector sum of startup advice is 0 - choose carefully and quickly"

</comment><comment><USER54> Great piece of advice.

> 5\. The people who are really getting somewhere aren't the people who are > always out for drinks

I would add that networking is ok (specially with your customers). But being always networking with the entrepreneurs in your area won't drive you anywhere near success.

Someone once told me this advice that I try to remember myself every once and then:

"Less networking and more working"

Also, although the list of advices nails it at mirroring my own experience, I know that I would not follow most of them. For an unexperienced entrepreneur it's difficult to discern good from bad advice.

</comment><comment><USER55> Any first-person accounts to support "Linear growth can be worse than no growth"? Seems like something important, but not quite clear; a couple of real world examples would really help.

<comment><USER56> I guess the underlying message here is that a product can limp on with linear growth, sucking the team's time and energy that they could be investing elsewhere.

Conversely no growth is a clear call to action that the product sucks, and needs to be abandoned!

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Very interesting points. I agree with many of them as they reflect my own experiences.

Assuming you are the author :) Could you elaborate on 3 "Always refuse if someone asks you to sign an NDA before hearing their idea".

This is something I always find frustrating, but I usually end up signing the NDA as it seems irrelevant to me anyway. I'd be interested to know how people react when you tell them that you don't want to hear their idea. Do they change their attitude towards it, or you don't follow up?

<comment><USER40> Hey, author here. My logic is usually that an NDA is a restriction on me, so I won't usually sign one unless I'm getting something in return. E.g. I'm happy to sign one in the context of a piece of paid work.

Most people are quite receptive when I explain the above and that in practice I don't believe that ideas really get stolen. Well not (web/app)tech startup ideas anyway. I've never had what you'd call a "bad" reaction to it and in about 75% of cases, people have then gone on to explain their idea.

<comment><USER58> I just say I have a $2,000 NDA fee as it places liability on me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> > It's really easy to become hyper-critical and respond to every idea with > "yeah but that won't work because of x". This is lazy, don't do it.

I've a close friend who does this -- I wouldn't even call it being 'hyper- critical'; I call it snark. It's a really negative personality trait and one I take pains to avoid.

As Sam Altman said in his How To Start A Startup lectures: usually the best ideas are a little bit weird.

</comment><comment><USER60> There is a similar talk on this topic called "If Only I Knew This Shit In College" by Zach Holman.

You can watch it here: [http://developertalks.tumblr.com/post/115528336319/zach- holm...](http://developertalks.tumblr.com/post/115528336319/zach-holman-if- only-i-knew-this-shit-in-college)

</comment><comment> dj-wonk There are some gems in here, mixed with some highly-specific and perhaps contingent observations. I wish _everything_ on the web, especially this, could be split apart and commented on it a sane way.

<comment><USER61> A few years ago, I used Diigo [1], it's an extension that let you share a website and comment on it, anywhere. It's been a long time since I used it, I don't really if it's still active.

[1]: [https://www.diigo.com/](https://www.diigo.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> A bit uneven as a post. Some really, really great advice, some more questionable I find.

>The logo doesn't matter at the start, find a simple text based logo you can re-use for different projects

Not convinced. Your logo will follow you around for a long time, regardless of what you tell yourself. People will see it and associate you and your startup with it. Doing a large rebrand is difficult, costly and time-consuming.

<comment> at-fates-hands While on the flip side of that, investing a lot of time and money to get a logo done when there's a 50/50 chance the company might not make it another six months seems a waste of both.

This is the problem with startups, you just never know. Should I work on growing my brand and banking sales, or stop and spend a bunch of time deciding on a logo? The branding will come if the product and the business model are there. Also, some of the most famous brands have the simplest logos:

The Red Cross

Apple

Subway

Ralph Lauren

Zippo

Adidas

Nike

Google

Ikea

Dyson

Coca-Cola

Pixar

<comment><USER63> Agreed, but simple doesn't mean they didn't spend a lot of time/money on it. (NeXT paying Paul Rand $100K comes to mind.) Many logos are an evolution over years. [http://logos.wikia.com/wiki/Subway](http://logos.wikia.com/wiki/Subway) [http://logos.wikia.com/wiki/Adidas](http://logos.wikia.com/wiki/Adidas) [http://logos.wikia.com/wiki/Nintendo](http://logos.wikia.com/wiki/Nintendo)

Since we're talking about startups, can't forget Facebook's original name/logo: [http://logos.wikia.com/wiki/Facebook](http://logos.wikia.com/wiki/Facebook)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> A few years ago I took a run at this whole " startup " thing and I would not exactly call the endeavor a ragging success .

I sunk into this hole of building that it is time to come out of and your message from the future makes me feel a lot less crazy .

Thank you for the time you took to write it .

</comment><comment><USER65> Awesome writing style, and great examples of what it's like to build a startup in the trenches.

<comment><USER66> Yes, I thought the same. I enjoy pg's essays and, while not comparing both styles, it's refreshing to see a bullet-point blogpost with well thought content, unlike the usual "You won't believe these 10 tricks all successful startups have in common"

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> > The people who are really getting somewhere aren't the people who are always > out for drinks

I've found that true in a lot of contexts.

> Everyone has a hidden stash of domains they've never used

Very true for me. I have about 7 domains not being used.

</comment><comment><USER68> 64\. Read this again. (Until i < 10, so you don't hang in a loop)

<comment><USER69>
        while !comprehension

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> > 6\. Linear growth can be worse than no growth

Can you elaborate on this please?

<comment><USER71> I'm not the author, but I think it's related to the following point about failing fast. It's not a good situation to be pouring yourself into a business that just plods along, never really in danger of going bankrupt but also never in danger of great success. A clear failure would be preferable because it would be a lot easier to walk away, pivot, start over, etc.

<comment><USER72> Putting 40hrs/week into a stable, increasingly-profitable business is hardly a slow death, though.

<comment><USER71> Neither is putting in 40hrs/week at a stable job at BigCo

<comment><USER73> You missed the part about "increasingly profitable" which leverages each additional hour to generate more income (which no job will give you).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> > Think hard about a pivot which makes good business sense but leads to a > product you no longer care about

I was just about to do this... hmmm... maybe I need to think harder.

</comment><comment><USER75> Really great list. #61 can not be overemphasized and includes blogging. I got one of my blog posts in a phd thesis last year (tried so hard to hire that kid!).

</comment><comment><USER76> Regarding 46 I can't help to think "why don't you just learn to program and build it yourself?". Most ideas are simple CRUD apps anyway.

<comment><USER77> Because comparative advantage. Do what you are good at, and pay for what you are not good at. Spending time on learning has an opportunity cost. If your opportunity cost is low i.e.: your current income is low, then maybe learning to program is a good idea. But if you make 200$/hour, you are better off finding a technical cofounder or outsourcing it. besides, having a technical cofounder lets you focus on other areas of the business. At least this is how I see it. The Woz/Jobs tandem would be a paradigmatic example of this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> Its a very good list. Completely agree with 53 and 54. Thanks for sharing it. Sometime ago I listed out my experience here giis.co.in/do.html

</comment><comment><USER79> This is a great list, the only missing part here is: WHY? It would be nice to have a short description of the reason attached to each item.

</comment><comment><USER80> > Always refuse if someone asks you to sign an NDA before hearing their idea

I hear this a lot. What's the reasoning?

<comment><USER81> 1\. They are probably extremely selfish. 2\. If they think they need an NDA in a conversation, then they probably don't know how to think well enough to have an idea worth hearing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> Great post Ben, curious if you collected that list over time or just got on an inspired roll :)

</comment><comment><USER83> > 16\. I still don't know any real investors

What is this supposed to mean?

<comment><USER84> I read it as "don't spend your time trying to find / meet (real) investors", along the lines of #47 "You're probably either building or fund raising."

Also that meaningful investments don't necessarily come from traditional, real investors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> i think there's way too much group think in the Valley. it's carlota perez's overadaptation, overlearning the lessons of the recent past..

</comment><comment><USER86> > It's really easy to automatically dismiss everyone who starts a conversation > with "I'm looking for a technical co-founder". Doing this means you miss > talking to some interesting people. But be upfront that you're not that co- > founder so no-one feels like their time is wasted.

This is a good point. I suspect many people here have grown tired of hearing "dude I have this idea for an app..." I just graduated from college and many of my nontechnical friends who went into finance are realizing they hate it and want to get into tech startups. During college I was always busy so I shrugged off these conversations. Now I have time to listen, and it turns out, many of them actually do have good ideas and business models. They just don't know how to code them. But these are smart, well connected people who can raise money. Dismissing their ideas is foolish and could certainly be a waste.

I realized I can monetize all my friends asking me to help with apps. I have a team of programmers I've worked with overseas, and I know how to manage them to complete projects. I've started offering a service to my friends where I take them from idea to MVP (usually a basic CRUD web app). I translate ideas to technical requirements, write a spec, divide it into milestones, negotiate payment schedule, and manage the project to completion. I structure the price per milestone so that my team is rewarded for hitting deadlines, e.g. Milestone X (some subset of feature requirements) pays $1000 by 4/31, or $1500 by 4/24\. This has worked well for me in the past and is a good way to keep projects on schedule.

I just started doing this, and I've gotten a new lead or two each week so far. None have been serious enough about the idea yet to immediately execute, but I suspect with some pressure applied they will be ready.

I spoke to an alumnus from my school who graduated 3 years ago and did this in an official capacity. He started a "product development consultancy" wih a hybrid employee/outsource model, and tapped his alumni network for projects. His company completed 39 projects in its first year, all sourced from networking.

If you are an engineer also blessed with a strong network and interpersonal skills, I suggest you look into this as well. You don't need to code every app that someone wants help with. Often you can help give direction, or even charge for your services of managing an overseas team. People who leave finance are a good match because they can raise funds to the point that you can offer cheap, quality service from a friend, but also pay your developers way more than median salary in their country. I think of it like arbitraging my networks and skillsets.

Regardless of whether you do that, I definitely recommend putting an end to the habit of ignoring the app ideas of your friends.

</comment><comment><USER87> A lot of these 'problems' and 'lessons' seem to come as a byproduct of being a part of a 'scene' to do with startups, particularly uninspiring web and mobile startups. 'Uninspiring', to me, means people doing a startup for the sake of doing a startup, not because they're passionate about the problem, have found a good opportunity/market to exploit, etc.

One of the best pieces of advice I got was to not associated with losers. It's harsh, I know, but if you see people around you not being productive and successful, chances are you're in the wrong peer group. Better to have a smaller and higher quality social circle than to let your time be wasted by 'the scene'.

There's a good heuristic - anytime someone calls something a 'scene', it's time to leave. It means the people are interested more in the idea of what they're doing than the real thing.

<comment><USER88> It's also one of the hardest things to avoid - associating with losers. That is because the losers tend to look for company and make it easy to join their groups, while the achievers and doers jealously guard their time and acquaintances - which is why they are achievers and doers.

A neat way around this can be to start doing recreational activities that achievers do. Taking time to develop skills in whatever that is will help to make friendships and relationships that matter. This doesn't have to be as obvious as joining an expensive golf club - in fact, that club might be populated by losers in the 'golf scene' \- golf is horrendously time-soaking. It could be an early morning cycling group, could be anything. It's most likely not a pub-visiting binge drinking group.

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> Nothing in there about not giving up half a market salary for "options" on 0.001% of the company. Rule #1 in my book.

</comment><comment><USER90> This is a great article.

Here is my experience with startups:

-1 co-founder was a designer and after I finished the product (I'm a developer), took 6 months to make changes that could have taken a week or two. Without a boss telling him what to do, he had no motivation to finish anything in a timely fashion. This failed before it got off the ground, but I built lots of nice libraries that I still use today.

-1 co-founder (a developer) gave up after he had to work on the boring parts. A few years later I gave him another chance. We were going to start a consulting business together and I figured, because he already had clients, that things would be different from our previous experience. Well, he took me to his lawyer and wanted me to sign these completely 1-sided contracts where everything I built in my off-time was owned by both of us (he knows I had other companies). He also wouldn't take any risk and give me ownership in his current contracts, but I had to give up mine. Before I even had a chance to tell him no, he changed his mind once again and wanted to "wait a month". 3 months later, I politely told him I wasn't interested and he now works a 9-5.

-The last time in my poor decision making was partnering up with someone that had no tech (besides checking email, etc) or business experience. I was to do all of the development and I figured he could learn the business and marketing skills along the way. His job in the beginning was to do all of the content-creation (which is not easy).

Well, after alpha 1 I built the entire site and he created 5 articles (which was enough to get some people testing it). He was unwilling to learn anything about marketing (because I was better at it as he said) and wanted to farm out all of the content creation to other people (which is a good idea, but not at this stage in the business..especially when we are strapped for cash).

So now we are in a situation where he has nothing to do and my job is to: get customers, design the website, fix bugs, and make business decisions. I'm basically running the entire business myself and he, as an equal partner, is sitting around waiting for things to happen.

So what does he decide to do? Comes up with un-realistic ideas for future business plans that of course only involve things that I will be working on and not him (since he has no tech experience). I also had to fight against his ideas and continue to convince him that we shouldn't be working on the next "Facebook for X" and on the task at hand that had a real chance at making money. This involved hours and hours of phone calls and meetings that took me away from the site that was in alpha. That was another issue: nothing could be explained by email to him, only by phone or in-person.

Everything eventually fell apart and it was a very frustrating experience. He was also a good friend, which made it even more difficult.

I feel like some people like the idea of running a business, but have these un-realistic expectations when it actually comes down to doing the work. I've learned some hard lessons, but I think it will help me in the future when it comes time to find another co-founder.

<comment><USER91> Maybe try going it alone. I know it's counterintuitive but sometimes building something by yourself is the best way to find a co-founder who's actually any good. I never would have joined the current project I'm on (which is going really well) had the designer not come to me with these amazingly beautiful mocks. Before working on programming projects I had similar experience with music projects -- I'd be trying to put a band together to write songs. I learned that it's a lot easier to get people to work on your projects if you've already started them. Incidentally, it seems to be the same with investors, employees, whatever -- they have the pick of the litter and they'd rather not be first money in. Everyone wants to feel like they're getting a deal and everyone responds to FOMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER92> #18 ... hmm

</comment><comment><USER93> Too bad Clinkle didn't have this.

<comment><USER22> That's a blast from the past. Only 6 mentions of Clinkle on HN over the past 6 months. Seems like that failure got swept under the rug.

</comment></comment><comment><USER94> P(you create a successful company|you read this guys post) ~= 0

<comment><USER95> Please avoid gratuitous negativity.

[http://blog.ycombinator.com/new-hacker-news- guideline](http://blog.ycombinator.com/new-hacker-news-guideline)

<comment><USER94> It's not gratiutously negative - or even negative at all. It's a matter of fact. The advice in that column will not lead you to create a successful company, so take it with a healthy dose of humility and with a grain of salt.

Indeed, while your post can be considered harmful, mine cannot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER96> Great points! I added some of them to AgreeList [1].

For example on [2] you can see that Richard Branson also agrees on the advice "trust your gut".

[1] [http://www.agreelist.com/talkingquickly](http://www.agreelist.com/talkingquickly)

[2] [http://www.agreelist.com/s/listen-to-others-but-go-with- your...](http://www.agreelist.com/s/listen-to-others-but-go-with-your-gut- rx54xxorby6y)</comment>


Ask HN: YC Interview tomorrow. Help us improve our interview notes - <AUTHOR> Hey guys,
My company, Manypixels, is interviewing tomorrow at YC offices (link of my startup website in my bio)
We applied late and got the interview confirmation on Sunday and flew the very same day to San Francisco.
We prepared those interview notes in the last two days, what do you guys think? https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1iyv_sxpmdFg8EZV7vuRbvhcHltZj3cZ3iUukMTPPRhQ/ <comment><AUTHOR> Here are the interview notes:

[https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1iyv_sxpmdFg8EZV7vuRb...](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1iyv_sxpmdFg8EZV7vuRbvhcHltZj3cZ3iUukMTPPRhQ/)</comment>


How I Host My Hobby App for FREE with CDN, SSL, SQL, CI and Tracking - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/frontend-journeys/how-i-host-my-hobby-app-for-free-with-cdn-ssl-sql-ci-and-tracking-6033c275ad97 <comment><USER2> Thanks. That's useful information.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you know any good books on management? - <AUTHOR>

I've been working on my video game start-up company for a while now. Our team is a diverse group consisting of developers, artists, designers and an audio person. I have a background in software so I understand how to handle developers.<p>A concern of mine lately is that I realize I'm not leveraging my team member's full potential, particularly the non-programming roles.  Do you know of any books where I can gain some insight in management? <comment><USER2> Particularly for the non-programming roles, I recommend the One Minute Manager ([http://www.amazon.com/The-Minute-Manager-Kenneth- Blanchard/d...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Minute-Manager-Kenneth- Blanchard/dp/0688014291)). This was written long before agile became a "thing", but it was a way of managing effectively with very little effort. It's a bit dated (my copy had advice about briefly putting your hand on the employee's shoulder to let them know you really care about them. Do not do this!)

Aside from that, here was my experience with the book back in the 1980s: I was managing a small family entertainment center and I was working too hard and was on the verge of being fired. I was told to buy the book. When I got done with it, I applied what it said, I dramatically reworked procedures to be clearer and simpler and found myself with too much time on my hands and the center was much easier to run. I wound up going from being on the verge of getting fired to getting multiple promotions and transfers to better locations.

Some people don't like the book, claiming it's too simplistic, but it's short, and both easy to remember and apply.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your suggestion! It seems like there is no private messaging function and I couldn't find your email but I wanted to thank you for your help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I could not recommend Drive by Dan Pink[1] enough. It is not a book on management but is very insightful into what motivates people. I believe this is a great book for someone in a management position.

[1]: [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Drive-Surprising-Truth-About- Motivat...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Drive-Surprising-Truth-About- Motivates/dp/184767769X/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I greatly appreciate your suggestion! This looks great for being able to understand my team members better and allowing them to reach their full potential. A personal thank you from me for taking time to give me that suggestion.

<comment><USER4> you can also see his TED talk video: <http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html></comment></comment></comment>


'Reverse microwave oven' quickly cools drink cans - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/video_and_audio/headlines/51028494/ces-2020-juno-reverse-microwave-oven-cools-drinks-in-seconds <comment><USER2> Let's do the math:

Let's assume they use a can of soda of 350ml (12oz). In the video they say it's "almost too hot to touch", let's say 60°C (140°F) and it cools to refrigerator temperature, let's say 5°C (41°F), so it's a 55°C difference. We can assume a specific heat of 1cal/g°C and a density of 1g/ml (metric units are nice). So they have to extract 19250calories. (They need to extract some calories from the can, but let's assume it's a small number.)

The 19250 calories are 80500J. They extract them in 90 seconds in the video, so they have in average 895W.

They use between 100W and 200W of electricity, let's use 200W. So the efficiency is about 4.5. In a air conditioner the usual efficiency is between 10 and 20, but it's a big device with a noisy heat exchanger. In a Peltier device the efficiency is approximately .05. The efficiency changes a lot with the temperature difference in both cases.

So, it doesn't seam to be theoretically impossible, but it looks too good to be true. The only way I think this may work if it has a big chunk of ice inside as a heat sink, so it can cool a few cans in 90 seconds, but it needs like half an hour per can to regenerate the ice using a Peltier device.

> [...] _and it says fizzy drinks won 't spray in your face after a spin in > Juno._

Nah.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder what the difference between that and those rapid chillers is, e.g. [https://www.amazon.com/Cooper-Cooler-Beverage-Chiller- Silver...](https://www.amazon.com/Cooper-Cooler-Beverage-Chiller- Silver/dp/B0000U3CIW/)

<comment><USER4> They say that their prototype does not need an external source of cold and is purely electric, so I'm thinking it might be using something like the Peltier effect to generate cold. Apart from that they do look superficially similar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> So is it sonic, cryogenic or something else (either fraudulent or real)?</comment>


The $10 Echo - <AUTHOR> http://sammachin.com/the-10-echo/ <comment><USER2> Thanks for all the upvotes folks,

I should clarify that there is a bit of artistic license on the title calling this a $10 Echo, there are 2 caveats;

Its only about $10 the CHIP is a "$9 Computer" plus tax & shipping etc. and this hack then requires a speaker, microphone and a button, however you may well have these lying around of have another device like an old speakerphone or something that you could gut and put the CHIP into as a new brain.

The other point is that its not really a full Echo, the Echo is a hardware appliance that implements Far Field Voice Technology, Wake Word Detection, A High Quality Bluetooth Speaker, Support for various media service (Prime Music, Audible, Pandora etc) and finally the Alexa Voice Assistant. This hack is really just access to the Alexa Voice Assistant without the wake word or far field tech.

So its about 90% of the functionality for a much lower price. Personally I have an Echo in my dining room which is great when walking around the house but I built this to use on my desk when I want to trigger home automation features without shouting downstairs.

<comment><USER3> do you have the source for alexa in the browser on github ? that one was a very cool hack!

<comment><USER2> Yeah I just need to strip out the auth keys etc. and rebase it before i make it public. I'll try and get it posted this week sometime, check back on weds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> One of the more impressive things about the Echo is its far-field mic. I've used a lot of different voice recognition technologies, but Echo blows everything else away in terms of being able to speak in a normal voice _from the other side of the room_ and have it still understand you. The actual intelligence behind the service may be lacking (or at least behind some of the competition), but for a general-purpose home application, the mic (in my opinion) is a significant part of Echo's reliability and success.

<comment><USER5> In my limited experience using Echo at my parents house over the holidays I was distinctly not impressed by the Echo's abilities to understand voice from across the room. We often had to repeat ourselves, only louder and slower to get the Echo to understand us. We do not have strong accents.

<comment><USER6> Exact opposite for me, does a great job at recognizing speech but a horrible job providing answers to even simple questions.

<comment><USER7> > _a horrible job providing answers to even simple questions._

If you think of it as a device that performs specific actions (i.e., plays audio, gives a weather forecast, sets a timer, etc.) via an voice interface, rather than a general intelligence that can answer random questions, you're going to have a better time.

<comment><USER8> THIS. It baffles me how people expect devices such as the Echo to understand every nuance of human language, then get annoyed when it can't answer your overly-complex or vague question. Voice interfaces for me are always reduced to clearly enunciated and simple commands such as "set timer 10 minutes" or "play album Anjunadeep 4". You'll have a much better time than saying "alexaplaymesomealbumsbyaboveandbyond"

<comment><USER9> Well, in fairness, Google does a much better job than Alexa at 'doing what I want'

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is a pretty cool experiment. As someone that recently worked on an app that was doing speech to text in near and far field, calling this a $10 echo is like calling a Honda Civic a $15K Ferrari. I'd love to see the video of the author speaking to this microphone from 10' away, or even 5' away in a room with no padding.

The Echo's ability to do voice to text is like nothing that's ever come before it based on my experience building, and speaking with a consultant in the field that worked on the Echo team.

<comment><USER2> I totally agree, hence my comments about artistic license in the title! One of the issues right now is that people kinda assume that Echo and Alexa are the same thing hopefully as more 3rd party devices come to market using Alexa the difference will emerge. I'm thinking of doing a follow on post explaining the differences. Also there's not really a generic name for the type of appliance that the Echo is like smartphone, tablet, browser etc. I wonder if echo will become like hoover in years to come?

<comment><USER10> From your lips to Amazon's ears, they sure hope so :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm not comfortable with the idea of everyone having far-field microphones in their homes. Cell phone spying is bad enough. If these become widespread, then ten years from now instead of a political debate about call metadata it'll be a debate about _literally every word ever spoken_.

<comment><USER12> > I'm not comfortable with the idea of everyone having far-field microphones > in their homes.

That's the problem with progress and technology. It will happen regardless of how comfortable you are with it. In fact, if it helps those with power to maintain or extend their power it will happen. If it tends to limit their power it will be squashed and marginalized.

<comment><USER13> False. Technology can proceed with privacy in mind. The Echo didn't have to push things to the cloud. It was, however, constructed to do so both for Amazon's benefit (data) and the consumer's benefit (ease of setup and use).

The trend you cite will happen because of ignorance, not progress.

<comment><USER14> It adds convenience to most services to connect to the Internet, so most of the do by default. So long as the device is connected, state-sponsored actors will find ways to eavesdrop even if the device wasn't originally designed to send audio over the wire.

Citizenfour was eyeopening on this point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Any recommendations for microphones that are (a) high-quality, (b) cheap (under US$5.00), (c) small (under a cubic centimeter), and (d) with analog output (such as a 1/8-inch plug)?

Note that high-quality and cheap are not contradictory requirements. iPhones and other smartphones have extremely high-quality microphones (and they are _tiny_ ) and must certainly cost much less than $5 as a part, but they seem impossible to find. Every off-the-shelf mic under $5 that I've tried has been garbage in terms of sound quality, and even much more expensive ones have not been great.

Good mics certainly exist. Here's a compact analog microphone I own that has fantastic sound quality:

[http://www.amazon.com/Sony-Electret-Condenser-Microphone- ECM...](http://www.amazon.com/Sony-Electret-Condenser-Microphone- ECM-C115/dp/B00012FVRE)

But it's ridiculous that this microphone costs 6x as much as the CHIP and 10x as the RPi Zero. You can't build a product around the CHIP or the RPi if an essential part is that expensive.

<comment><USER16> This is my favorite cheap microphone. It does need to be fairly close, I'd say within 5 feet:

[http://www.amazon.com/Cyber-Acoustics-100Hz-Microphone- ACM-1...](http://www.amazon.com/Cyber-Acoustics-100Hz-Microphone- ACM-1B/dp/B0000511GQ/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1451871749&sr=8-4&keywords=cyber+acoustics+microphone)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> If the author of this is reading, it might help to make the first reference to "Alexa" be a hyperlink to "what the heck is Alexa". (I know I can google it, but...)

<comment><USER18> "Alexa" is the assistant-in-the-machine that comes on the Amazon Echo (just as an iPhone 6 comes with Siri). You activate the Echo by saying "Alexa". The author is probably guessing that in context, you'll make the connection between the title "The $10 Echo" and the Echo's hotword (Alexa).

I agree it'd be useful if there was a brief explanation at the beginning of the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Here's the service that this depends on: [https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa- vo...](https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-voice- service)

</comment><comment><USER20> If you want to try this in your browser, the guy who built this $10 device also used the same APIs to put Alexa/Echo in the browser.

[http://sammachin.com/hacks-and-projects/alexa-in-the- browser...](http://sammachin.com/hacks-and-projects/alexa-in-the-browser/)

</comment><comment><USER21> That's great from the price perspective - I still would not want another active listening device tied to a mega corp within my vicinity.

However, I would love to have an Echo like device which does the voice recognition/algo crunching/etc on premise, i.e. on a server/device I control.

Is there anything out which does this nicely?

<comment><USER22> > I still would not want another active listening device tied to a mega corp > within my vicinity.

I wish more people were like you and voiced their concerns about this ongoing problem around centralization of services. However...see [http://www.cultofmac.com/264381/hardware-siri-runs-puts- new-...](http://www.cultofmac.com/264381/hardware-siri-runs-puts-new-mac-pro- shame/):

> Over on Reddit, a post suggests that there are 3 main 'instances' (or server > farms) for Siri in the United States, and at least one for every other > country.

> This information allegedly comes — albeit second-hand — from Apple's lead > cloud architect, who says that every instance of Siri runs on 32 powerful HP > servers with a total of 1024 cores and 32 terrabytes of RAM apiece. That > certainly makes the new Mac Pro look long in the tooth.

> Specifically, each instance of Siri is made up of 4 HP c7k enclosures made > up of 8 HP server blades each, with memory upgrades to 1TB of RAM.

> According to the post, if one server dies, it's simply removed and another > one slapped in, with no downtime.

Granted, there are a lot of people yacking at Siri at a given time, but still. You probably need a fair amount of horsepower to pull this off.

<comment><USER23> Apple has also said that Siri gets 1 billion requests per week, so by those numbers each core can handle ~10k requests/week, using its share of 32GB of RAM. Doesn't seem that much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> According to Alexa Voice Service page ([https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa- vo...](https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-voice- service))

Amazon is starting a $100M fund for anyone building voice related services. This is very interesting. Has any company been funded via this fund?

<comment><USER20> The Alexa Fund page lists a sub-set of the companies that have received funding from the fund so far: [https://developer.amazon.com/appsandservices/solutions/alexa...](https://developer.amazon.com/appsandservices/solutions/alexa/alexa- fund)

<comment><USER25> So how does Amazon make money from Alexa running on non-Amazon devices? (Not obvious to me, sorry.)

<comment><USER26> It's going to evolve into a massive app ecosystem, surely with paid apps

<comment><USER27> It looks like you can use it for non-commercial purposes but I imagine that they'd make money a few ways: indirectly through publicity and familiarity (the more people are used to having it, the more might use Amazon's commercial version or just Amazon stuff in general), directly (through licensing it for commercial use), and via improvements they make to their service as a result of people using the free version for non-commercial applications (better voice training and interpretation).

That's just a guess but it's similar to what Google does with AOSP and Google Android.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Jasper [1]. Its a cool little but very well organized project that I put together this Christmas.

[1] [http://jasperproject.github.io/](http://jasperproject.github.io/)

<comment><USER29> You're surprised nobody has mentioned a project you organized less than 10 days ago?

<comment><USER28> No, I didn't organize it. The awesome people at Princeton did last year. Its really awesome. I just downloaded and made my own this Christmas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I love my echo (alexa), especially the convenience of "no button but wake word" when I have my hands full in the kitchen. That said, google voice is so much better at parsing my questions that I'd pay a bunch of money for another standalone device with wake word which would integrate with with google voice. Any chance of hacking that, or linking your device with both? (Ask Amazon / Ask Google)

<comment> squeaky-clean Google's question parsing is ridiculously good. You can also do neat things like say "When I get to work, remind me to email John" and you'll get a notification when you arrive. I don't have an Echo, but I imagine it can't do such contextual things.

You could get a dedicated Android phone/tablet, and leave it always plugged into a charger somewhere. I just tested it on my Phone (LG G3 Android 5.0.1), and I'm able to get my phone to respond to "Ok, Google" questions, even with the screen off.

Though the microphone probably won't be nearly as good as the Echo, and from the setup it seems like you have to train "Ok, Google" to respond to your voice, so I don't know if it will work with multiple users.

<comment><USER31> I love my Nest Thermostat, and I know they've got "Protect" as the smoke/CO detector. I'd LOVE if Google would release an "Assist" product that was the Echo form factor powered by Google's agent engine, and I could mount it on the ceiling in each of my rooms similar to how smoke detectors are (hard wired to mains with battery backup).

Too much to hope for I suspect.

<comment><USER9> That would be both awesome and terrifying.

I have an Echo and the mic array is fantastic. And the idea of having one in every room for localized interaction is great. But the idea of such a good mic in every room is scary if you consider bad and/or state actors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I've heard that the "$10" CHIP has a $20 "shipping" charge. Is that still the case?

<comment><USER33> I backed for just one board, and then they offered to let me add more without paying additional shipping, so I added a second, $18 for the CHIPs, $5ish to ship them. They are en route from China. To be fair, I only just succeeded in ordering a Pi Zero from Adafruit, $5 for the Pi, $4 shipping...

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Cool clock, Sam.

I have to be honest, I got an echo for Christmas (thanks Mom!), and while it's really cool, it has only served to highlight how much amazon prime music sucks. In fact, it has only served to highlight to me how disconnected cloud music services are.

Google music has just about _everything_ (now that it is connected to youtube), but amazon doesn't want to let its speakers play google music's music service because they want to sell you their own.

The future is a strange place right now.

</comment><comment><USER35> The $10 CHIP will be a $10 CHIP when and if it ships. Right now, it's a Kickstarter claiming they will ship the thing in June 2016.

<comment><USER2> Actually the kickstarter did ship hence why I had my hands on one (well two actually) to do this hack. I backed the kickstarter back in May 2015.

The June2016 date is for orders placed on their store today which I think is the earliest they currently expect to have filled all the current pre-orders and later stage kickstarter backers. IIRC they're currently producing 5000 units a month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is another thing that makes you wonder why companies expose APIs to their services that enablenothers to make competing services.

<comment><USER37> They can revoke your access at any time.

<comment><USER38> Reminds me of twitter awhile back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I thought it was about experimental startup providing echo service for $10/month subscription :)

</comment><comment><USER40> I'm being a pedant but doesn't an Echo have a mic built in? Buying an equivalent one would be ~£75 I think.

<comment><USER34> OP explained in a comment here that he was taking a bit of an artistic license calling this an echo.

Echo _also_ is a pretty nice wireless speaker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> compared with ok google and siri, echo is not much better (if not worse) in terms of intelligence. What made echo was the physical form factor.

Intelligence is hard to mimic, but physical form factor is not. All google or apple needs to do is come out with with a similar speaker/mic combo and it will totally blow echo out of the water.

<comment><USER42> I agree. I wish Google would build their own echo. The ability to do things like manage a calendar, text people, and all the other "Ok, Google" functions through an Echo-like device that also does what Amazon's Echo currently does would be fantastic. Alexa can't even tell me what is the stock price of Amazon and can't give me the current temperature without prattling off the entire weather update.

<comment><USER27> I guess they've just focused on getting the functionality available on devices you can already find (Android and iOS devices, TVs like the newer Sonys that run AndroidTV, etc). I see the appeal of a standalone device but I find that lots of times, the response may not translate well into audio-only so having a screen helps when you ask something and the best answer is a graph, text, or image.

Just a guess though. I'm surprised that wasn't included in that rather pricey wifi router they launched recently. It has a decent sized speaker in it but perhaps they decided not to enable it just yet. My guess is that they wanted to start selling the wifi routers but didn't think the voice stuff was up to snuff for a consumer application/selling point just yet.</comment></comment></comment>


Some Thoughts on Forth Vis-A-vis Oracle and Java SE - <AUTHOR> http://sam-falvo.github.io/2016/12/18/thoughts-on-forth <comment><USER2> Interesting perspective, and one I'm somewhat sympathetic to, particularly the anti vendorware argument.

But there is a wealth of options in the excluded middle such as non- proprietary languages (Rust, Python, etc.), Hypermedia APIs, community-run conferences, and so on.

For that matter, I'm rather surprised that the Unix CLI approach of "everything is a stream of text" doesn't get a mention.</comment>


Ask HN: Python or general programming horror stories? - <AUTHOR> I've recently started working on an open source python web framework having come from the frontend and previously other envs. I've fallen into the bowels of complex codebases that are hard to debug before, but this is a whole notha level of dependancy hell amonst other issues.<p>Do you have any horror stories of working for days or weeks just trying to get to a stable state of being able to write code productively? Terrible onboarding stories? I know you're our there. <comment><USER2> My first Python project I walked into was in Twisted and was a MySQL abstraction layer and written by a crazy smart pair of folks where one of them was the king of early (unneeded) abtractions. On top of that, the tech lead wanted it to be ran in a Vagrant instance where he had set up most of the requirements, but not all. I had never even used a VM at the time, let alone worked on a project that dealt with multiple DB backends. I was handed it and told nobody had time to help, figure it out. Two weeks later, and I finally got the unit tests to pass and for it to actually start up.

The next one was likely the worst I've worked on. Twisted again. A shortened link redirector. Like, should be simple. I had to change one variable for my fist task in the codebase. I had to get help. It was hidden up three parent classes and three mixins away. Also turned out the majority of unit tests never would actually run because they didn't wait for the deferred events to actually return. Tests passed because they were not given the time to actually run assertions. Good times. :)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is the story of every software system out there apart from "hello world" kind of projects.

<comment><USER4> Yes but it's much harder with non static languages. At least with static languages, the IDE can reason about dependencies, usage of types, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am intrigued, which library? Flask? Django? Surely not as the code is great and very easy to debug.

<comment><USER6> Zope/Plone? (Someone must still use those, right?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I tend to experience this every time I have to take over from an amateur who cannot be bothered to document their work.</comment>


Ask HN: Did you ever experienced a social networks break? - <AUTHOR> I realize of we are bounded to social networks, keeping always up to date to the last Instagram/Twitter/Facebook post. Looking for more likes, subscribers.
Even at work, it's difficult to get ride of it and it's affecting productivity.
I'd to try a month-free of social network (or just few weeks) to see how is life without it, it should be better I think so !
Did you already have a break in your online presence ? <comment><USER2> After measuring the (negative) impact of social networks on my productivity and how I interacted with them, I took radical steps to reduce their usage.

I do not believe that weeks long break are a good idea, but instead reduce their daily/weekly usage.

\- reduce their accessibility to not machinaly open them. for e.g do not have the application on your mobile (+ a great win against data harvesting) \- reduce the social networks number (I left Facebook because it didn't bring any value to me, but kept twitter)

</comment><comment><USER3> You are either creating or consuming content at a given time. Yes I have long breaks (I haven't used facebook in 10 months or so) I realize the negative impact on how the algorithms are designed to keep away things that you "dislike" and makes you thing that "everyone" thinks like you (to keep you engaged right?), the internet bubble so to say. Don't let these things take away your time. Just remember, things like that will most probably be there for a long time (if not always) but your time, health, and learning capacity are fading away as the clock ticks</comment>


Is 39 the New 28 at Google? - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/22/is-39-the-new-28-at-google/

<comment><USER2> Man, I was hoping the article would be about 39-year-olds being better than 28-year-olds at something. :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, was that boring and uninformative.

</comment><comment><USER4> Google: "Because these promotions [for special times] appear on our homepage for only a few days at a time, we don't consider them in our official homepage word count."

When I read this, the only thing on my mind was:

 _Why do people freaking care?_

<comment><AUTHOR> _Why do people freaking care?_

How many websites get NY Times coverage for adding 11 words to their homepage?

People care because of the significant weight this ostensibly small change carries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's some background history, but I don't recall the source.

Google used to receive anonymous e-mails containing nothing but a number. Eventually, they figured out what this hint meant. Google made a sparse homepage a part of their identity.

<comment><USER6> The story was in the privacy-link announcement. [http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/what-comes-next-in- th...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/what-comes-next-in-this- series-13-33-53.html)

<comment><USER5> Thanks! Nice find! I actually recalled this from reading about Google in some article four or five years ago, but it's nice to have a link to the information straight from the horse's mouth.</comment></comment></comment>


Your biggest problem right now is denial - <AUTHOR> https://firstname.lastname@example.com/opinion-your-biggest-problem-right-now-is-denial-30ec87b3505 <comment><USER2> Steve is a good writer, and at this point it's pretty clear everybody should stay the f __* home, so I 'm all for pieces that achieve that.

That being said, I do hate fear mongering, and insinuating that the situation in Italy is even worse than we may believe by a factor of 4 is a big stretch and unecessary.

Some facts from Italian government institutes:

[1] [https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/bollettino/Report-C...](https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/bollettino/Report- COVID-2019_20_marzo_eng.pdf)

\- median age of death is 80

\- 87% of deaths above 70

\- 99% of deaths with 1 co-morbidity, and 74% with at least 2.

[2] [http://www.salute.gov.it/portale/caldo/SISMG_sintesi_ULTIMO....](http://www.salute.gov.it/portale/caldo/SISMG_sintesi_ULTIMO.pdf)

\- deaths in March for above 65 year olds are still projecting lower than previous years

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a good rant. The anger is palpable and I dare say righteous. Good on you, Steve.

</comment><comment><USER4> No it isn't.

</comment><comment><USER5> I am the intended audience of this article; one of the people who the author urges should be shamed into changing my beliefs.

I didn't find the article compelling. I read the entire thing. I see the author as breathless and overdramatic, asserting beliefs as fact.

I believe that the virus is:

\- much less deadly (easily a tens of times less than the WHO number

\- much less contagious (a third of the "80% of the population" numbers floating around social media)

\- much more treatable clinically, pharmaceutically, herbally than is made out

\- nearly over (weeks from leveling out where I live)

I predict that the flu season with vaccines this year will be worse than corona virus with distancing measures.

<comment><USER6> The fatality rate is based off of having required facilities and equipment. With those run out the fatality rate will jump from .5% to 5%.

<comment><USER5> I don't think this is true.

The WHO published one number for case fatality rate. According to you, they should have published two (or more) numbers.

The reality of the situation is that epidemiologists use certain fixed constants to understand the virus as part of a very crude model. The WHO is and was providing a number for this model. In these models, the distinction you made is not captured whatsoever (thus "crude model").

The WHO got to its number based on averaging unreliable data. This has two problems. The first is garbage in, garbage out. The second is that this averaging is an unscientific method.

I get what you're trying to say though, and broadly agree. Epidemiology models, insisting on a single fatality number, are so crude they are nearly not useful for making predictions.</comment></comment></comment>


How to make multiple accounts on twitter with same email address? - <AUTHOR> http://savedelete.com/how-to-make-multiple-accounts-on-twitter-with-same-email-address.html <comment><USER2> Gmail also ignores a "+" in the email address and everything after it, so mail to email@example.com is received by email@example.com.

<comment><USER3> hi wgj .. really nice info .. from this u can create unlimited accounts in twitter :) with same email .... thnx</comment></comment>


Fabric is Joining Google - <AUTHOR> https://fabric.io/blog/fabric-joins-google <comment><USER2> FYI the new terms are previewed here: [https://fabric.io/terms- preview](https://fabric.io/terms-preview)

For users of Fabric/Crashlytics/Answers, is there a TLDR somewhere for the new terms? (specifically, the delta between their new terms preview and the old terms)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is actually a great news. One reason I never used Fabric was because it was tied to Twitter, which had very reputation for their interest not being aligned with developer ecosystem.

With Google, developers know exactly what they're getting into when they start using Fabric. If that's a good thing or not is subjective, but regardless it's a fantastic thing to have some sort of certainty.

</comment><comment><USER4> Congrats guys!

But "Thank you all for being a part of this adventure with us!"

Needs to go here:

[https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com](https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com)</comment>


Student-Loan Refinancing Boom Could Cost U.S. Taxpayers Billions - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-10/student-loan-refinancing-boom-could-cost-u-s-taxpayers-billions <comment><USER4> Isn't education something that US taxpayer should choose to pay for?

It doesn't seem right that the government is charging students - <USER2> \- un unfairly high rate of interest, one so high that commercial lenders can typically undercut the rate by a significant margin.

That's stealing from Peter to pay Paul.

The government should reconsider whether it's right to charge such a high amount to students remaining on the plan, that is, the students who don't qualify for refinancing. Isn't this just an exercise in taking money away from the poor?

<comment><USER5> Taxpayers haven't chosen to pay for unlimited, private post-secondary education. If they did, the loans wouldn't be necessary.

You could also fault the institutions for charging so much -- or fault the students for enrolling in programs they couldn't afford.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The government caused this mess in the first place by spurring the vast cost inflation in the system.

The solution, to both this scenario, and the broader issue, is simple:

1) Begin squeezing the cost of education back down, by no longer increasing the amount of money the government will guarantee on student loans, and then eventually reversing that and reducing the sum.

2) We'll abuse the dollar reserve standard for war, bank bailouts, homeowner bailouts, etc. We might as well abuse it for dirt cheap refinancing of student loans (while simultaneously capping and then reducing the central problem of the inflation from the govt guarantee). The government should reduce the cost of student loan interest to 2% fixed for everyone.

3) Begin implementing broader reforms that will affect the next generation of students, to put an end to the cost inflation and begin bending the cost back down to where it was equivalent in ~2000.

Politically it should be this simple as well, and unfortunately it's not. That's where the real problem rests.

<comment><USER7> The problem is that 2) is popular and (relatively) easy, but 1) is unpopular, regressive and difficult. So the most likely scenario is 2) is done without 1), making the problem you were trying to solve worse.

<comment><USER8> "But so and so state has three hot tubs dad, inexpensive college only has two..."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > The government will be left with a greater share of borrowers like Jennifer > Rejon. A 29-year-old single mother of a 10-year-old daughter, she has > $17,000 in federal loans. They helped pay for a medical-assistant degree > from Corinthian Colleges Inc., a for-profit chain of schools that filed for > bankruptcy in May. The U.S. Education Department this week said it may > forgive hundreds of millions of dollars in loans to Corinthian students.

Sounds like those students got scammed.

> Rejon wouldn't qualify for refinancing from private lenders because they > screen borrowers based on creditworthiness and university quality. The > government writes loans for any student who enrolls in an institution > eligible for federal aid.

Here's an idea, why not require stronger certification?

Seems like the article writer is blaming Jennifer for her inability to pay loans, instead of blaming the for-profit institution that fleeced her. Seriously?

<comment><USER10> Or how about blaming the government for just approving everyone?

Who else would give an 18yo with no assets, minimal skill, and no credit history an unsecured loan for 20k, 50k, or even 100k?

<comment><USER11> Does it really count as unsecured if it can't be discharged in bankruptcy?

<comment><USER12> Unsecured means there is no asset, such as a house, bank account backing up the loan. Unsecured does not mean forgivable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I must be missing something basic here: If someone refinances their student loan, that means they get a loan from someone and uses the proceeds from that loan to pay the federal government back the balance on their student loan, right? So they're saying that _people paying back their student loans will cost the paxpayers money_? That makes no sense -- me paying the loan back means the taxpayers are no longer at risk for the balance of my loan.

<comment><USER14> Again, worth noting: there is no risk to the taxpayers for the balance of your loan. You cannot discharge student loans through bankruptcy, and the government can garnish your wages, tax refunds, and social security to repay them.

<comment><USER15> The balance of the loan is different from what you (as a lender) have to put the loan on the books for. Even if there is no way to legally discharge it, if it's unlikely that the loan will be paid back (or part of it), you have to value it for the amount you expect to receive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Student loan interest rates were fixed at a relatively high level for a while: [http://www.finaid.org/loans/historicalrates.phtml](http://www.finaid.org/loans/historicalrates.phtml)

One of the people cited in the article had their rate go from 6.55% to 2.69%. For a social program designed to send kids to college the rates should never have been fixed so high for so many years.

The author faults CBO accounting for comparing student loans with low-risk treasury bonds, but these loans pay out much higher interest rates than treasuries. And there are special restrictions relating to how the debt cannot be discharged.

</comment><comment><USER17> 6.55% on a government provided student loan?!

I think I'm paying about 1.9% interest on my (Dutch) student loan. (I'm really in no hurry to repay.)

I can (sort of, though I disagree) understand not wanting to spend too much tax payer money on education, but this looks more like the government is actively trying to make a profit on the fact that people want an education.

<comment><USER18> IN the UK it is with inflation, so the % is almost nothing

<comment><USER19> currently

<comment><USER20> A few lucky UK students had a negative interest rate for a while.

[http://www.theguardian.com/money/2009/aug/31/student- loans-i...](http://www.theguardian.com/money/2009/aug/31/student-loans- interest-rate-rpi)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's not _costing_ tax payers, it's shrinking future gains on interest payments.

<comment><USER22> If the cost of defaults overtakes interest gains then yes, it _is_ costing taxpayers.

<comment><USER23> So the worst case scenario is that somebody gets (part of?) their education for free and the government pays the school its exorbitant rate.

Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe it will force "taxpayers" to investigate why school had such exorbitant rate in the first place. Maybe there is some restitution to be paid to taxpayers by the school and if they are not paid maybe the school should be excluded from getting taxpayer money in the future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Education _should_ cost tax payers in a society billions.

But, the money should go to, you know, education. (and not be seen as an unlimited tap of free money for university administrators to double tuition rates and ancillary fees every ten years.)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> So according to this article, we have the unintended consequences of ultra accommodative monetary policy (i.e. private lenders offering rock bottom refi rates) conspiring with both the VC world's enthusiasm for anything that even looks like P2P lending and billionaires' penchant for getting involved anywhere there's money to be made, to siphon off the best loans from the Department of Education's portfolio, leaving taxpayers with a book full of IBR enrollees and severely delinquent borrowers who aren't even thinking about making payments...

 _The government will be left with a greater share of borrowers like Jennifer Rejon. A 29-year-old single mother of a 10-year-old daughter, she has $17,000 in federal loans.

Under a federal program to help low-income borrowers, Rejon, who lives in Chicago and has struggled to find a job, isn't making payments. "I'm trying to at least get my life on track and be able to pay my bills," she said. "The loans are the last thing I'm thinking about."_

Take the above and throw in a few more $4 billion for-profit debt discharge fiascos and taxpayers could be in the red on the government's student loan portfolio before the mass debt cancellations even begin.

</comment><comment><USER25> Why is this a problem? Presumably when the private lender refinances the loan, they pay the balance to the government? So yeah the government is losing all these future interest payments but are they not getting the principle back today? Couldn't they use that principle to offset the risk of default from lower income people with student loans?

<comment><USER26> You answered your own question.

> Why is this a problem?

>So yeah the government is losing all these future interest payments

<comment><USER25> i guess I need to clarify a question first: when the private company refinances the loan, do they pay the government the current principle?

<comment><USER26> Yes - otherwise, they would have to pay interest on the loan while refinancing to a lower rate (they'd lose money).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > borrowers with successful careers subsidize the less fortunate, who are more > likely to default.

What does defaulting mean here? If you stop paying, in addition to ruining your credit as long as you don't pay, the government will hound you for the rest of your life and will garnish your wages and even your social security payments when you retire.

<comment><USER28> Not really. I don't know how many people are covered by Pay as you Earn, but under that program you never pay more than 10% of your disposable income.

<comment><USER29> As well, if having financial difficult, someone could request forbearance for up to 12 months and not have to make payments [0].

[0] [https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/repay-loans/deferment- forbearan...](https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/repay-loans/deferment- forbearance#what-is-forbearance)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Hmm. People are bringing up the nondischargeability in bankruptcy of the government loans. But if someone took out a refi from a private lender, would that new loan still be nondischargeable, or has it been "laundered"?

Charging people 6.55% when the federal funds rate is 0.12% is a vig that's verging on usury.

</comment><comment><USER31> Isn't this a case of the loans being mispriced? If the students attending for profit schools like Corinthian Colleges are getting lower interest rates because Kellogg MBAs are subsidizing their student loan interest rates, doesn't that mean more students will end up enrolling in those for profit schools? That encourages poorer students to make bad investments and forces them to go deeper into debt.

If the loans were more fairly priced and much higher interest rates were charged for the for profit colleges, wouldn't fewer people make those bad investments?

</comment><comment><USER32> > The loans -- can be variable and reset monthly, exposing borrowers to the > danger of a sharp spike if the economy shifts

Wait, what? Who would actually take that kind of risk? That does not sound prudent at all.

<comment><USER33> That's no different from the subprime mortgages, and we all know how it ended.

<comment><USER34> With virtually none of the bankers/financiers going to jail or paying in any meaningful way for their actions?

<comment><USER35> Cute, but not the point. It ended with lots of people losing homes and a massive disruption to the global economy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I hate the math level in articles like these. The only two ways to end an _X could cost Y..._ headline is _" Millions"_ or _" Billions"_.

That contains just about no information at all. Why not convey some information with phrases like _" 400 Billions"_ or _" up to 30 Billions per year"_?

</comment><comment><USER37> We need to do the math,

How many HS grads in US per year

Times 2 semesters full-time at $10,000

Hint, folks it under $1 Trillion and its even lower if take that money and invest it at US citizens birth as an education investment vehicle.

Actual numbers:

US HS Grads: 4 Million per year

so that is 40 Billion tuition payments or we can guarantee ed loan debt at $250 billion..

Which will you pay as US taxpayer?

</comment><comment><USER38> Translation: The bondholders must be paid. That's the most important thing. If the students can't pay, taxes must be raised so the taxpayer can pay.

</comment><comment><USER39> Or, you know, just allow people to default on loans.

<comment> norea-armozel That's not going to happen. A trillion dollars worth of debt being wiped away sounds good on paper, but I'm sure that would have some significant consequences for the national (and possibly world) economy.

<comment><USER40> Meanwhile, the national economy doesn't seem to have any problems with pouring 1.5 trillion in a fighter-jet (F-35).

<comment><USER34> A fighter-jet that no one wants as well... It's not even a jack of all trades/master of none type of deal. It literally sucks at all of the things it was built to do...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Sorry but I don't think that the level of usury the financial system is placing on the middle class through central planned interest rates which creates records amount of new debts are doing the middle and lower classes any good at all.

Come get some new credit here, more credit, more debt!

</comment><comment><USER42> student loans are corporate welfare for the banks: the government pays the interest while one is in school, and will pay off the loan if the student defaults.

It's crippling not just to the student but to the entire nation's economy that they're left with all that debt after leaving school - not after graduation, but after leaving school for any reason.

We would all be a lot better off were students given outright grants that they were not required to pay back.

<comment><USER43> It's certainly an option but someone has to pay for it. The "government" is the tax payer.

We could just do away with student loans all together. They've probably contributed to the cost of education far outpacing inflation. College prices would probably drop.

It's amazing that a great program that has helped millions of people, myself included, has turned into this "horrible" program that people hate.

<comment><USER44> >We could just do away with student loans all together. College prices would probably drop.

The issue that causing tuition to rise - the injection of "free" money - <USER3> still be there and would actually be worse because students would be even further removed from any kind of cost/benefit analysis of the school.

<comment><USER42> In California specifically, I'd like to see a ballot proposition which would set the UC Regents salary to one dollar per year.

Presently they can set their own salary; the governor and the legislature have no say, nor do the students. So they lead lavish lifestyles at the expense of students who are doing pretty good to live under highway overpasses.</comment></comment></comment></comment>