Ask HN: What can I ask potential employers? - <AUTHOR> This question is specifically referring to startups, because startups generally have more risk involved.
I'm currently looking at job openings at startups. There's some that interest me, but I'm worried about some of the risk that comes with joining a startup.  That's not to say that I'm not willing to take on any risk, but I at least want to know what I'm getting in to before I bet me and my families financial well-being on it.
That said, I'm never sure what I'm allowed to ask startups. Given that I haven't been hired yet, I would think some startups would prefer not to give out too much information about business plans or traction statisics.
Am I allowed to ask questions like:
- How much runway do you have left? What's your plan for extending that runway? If you're planning on new investments, are you actively seeking that?
- Why do you think this product will succeed?
- What's the end game? Are you hoping for an acquisition, or an IPO, or a lifestyle business? Something in between? Are you close to achieving that goal?
- (assuming I've found something the startup is currently struggling with, like churn...  I mostly want to see that they're working towards smart solutions) What are you planning to do about your churn problem? <comment><USER2> You can ask any questions you want. If your interviewers are offended by questions, that's a bad sign, because smart questions are one of the few valuable social signals you can pick up in a conventional interview; teams that get pissy about questions are probably rejecting lots of good candidates.

The runways questions should get reasonably specific answers. You should be able to discuss runway in terms of headcount/months.

You can ask if they think their product will be successful, but that's kind of silly.

You can ask about endgame, but you're not going to get a straight answer. Your incentives are wildly out of alignment with management's, and almost always will remain so. You can ask leading questions about potential acquirers if you like. Note that bizdev discussions are virtually never transparent, reasonably so, so don't get upset if important details are omitted from the discussion.

</comment><comment><USER3> You can ask any questions you want. Potential employers are not obliged to answer, of course, and you may decide that their lack of answers is a reason to seek employment elsewhere. On the other hand, there may be cases where employers are not able to answer questions (e.g., due to confidential negotiations which are underway) so not getting an answer doesn't necessarily mean that they're trying to hide bad news from you.

Similarly, the questions you ask might lead them to decide not to hire you (e.g., if one of the questions is "how on earth do you expect to get people to pay for such a stupid product?").

<comment><USER4> Even if you ask the "stupid product" more tactfully. eg "I can't see a large market for this product."

<comment><USER5> No need for "I can't", even. They probably have solutions in mind (the target market may be bigger than you think, or has deeper pockets); you're asking to hear them. Put in a bit of thought before the interview, and charitably assume they've put in more. (If they haven't, that's a bad sign, of course.)

"Tell me more about your target market -- how many pro wedding planners are there out there who might be actively seeking out something like this? Are you also targeting self-planners?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You can certainly ask these questions. In fact, as a startup co-founder myself, I would find a prospective employee asking these questions to be a very good sign as it demonstrates that:

1) You understand what a startup is and how it works. Most people don't. It's easy to forget it when you've been in the startup world for a while but tech startups are a very strange type of business that most people simply don't understand. Angel / VC funding, valuation, runway and exits are completely foreign concepts to most people. If you demonstrate that you understand what a startup is and yet still want to work for one, then you're more likely to be the type of person who will stick around even when times are rough.

2) You're actually interested.

And if I was to apply for a job at a startup, I would expect the founders to be completely transparent about these things. Something's fishy if they try to change the subject.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think those are all perfectly fair questions however I would take the answers you get with a grain of salt. I wouldn't expect an employer to admit they're 6 weeks away from going under at a job interview.

Startups are risky and a lot of times you are convincing people (including yourself) that it is going to work. So startup employers kinda have to be optimistic and positive, otherwise everybody would be freaking out and fearing for their job.

Also - without having any idea what startup you are talking about - the odds are against you that the company will make it. That's just the reality of startup life.

<comment> alok-g Which is why one should ask in ways that are more likely to generate good answers for the question you actually have.

So "Why do you think this product will succeed?" may be posed as "What are the key risk factors involved (that I can help you with)?" The former is a question about their value proposition against the competition, and they would have articulated it often enough already to be convincing to you as well. The latter would open them up somewhat about the risk factors in their path of success.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think asking for a rough estimate of runway is totally reasonable. Just don't expect them to tell you how much cash they have on hand or to get an exact timeline. But expecting something like "one month," "six months but we are talking about ways to increase that," "one year," or ""one year+" seem like reasonable responses to me if they expect you to take a leap of faith joining them.

Are you seeking new investment is a reasonable question, but it could reasonably not be answered, I think.

Why you think the product will succeed is a question I can't imagine not asking.

What's the end game is a great question. If you are joining a startup, you need to know the end game so you can properly value your compensation.

If you know about a problem, you absolutely should ask how they plan to address it. Again, this could reasonably not be answered with too much detail on the startups end (you'll likely get the kind of answer a reporter would).

The answer or lack thereof are all very valuable pieces of information, and no company I would like to work for would hold me asking them against them (so long as I respect their wishes in terms of what is actually shared).

</comment><comment><USER9> All startups are:

1\. going to give you the same super optimistic answers about funding and runway because they usually start posting jobs when either they just got more funding or they are about get more funding and everything is wonderful according to them. They're not going to tell you "Dude, we're really screwed. We have about 3 months left! You still wanna job here?"

2\. some will not hire you just for asking because they prefer employees who can take the risk

To find out what their true health is, ask them:

1\. How many paying customers did you have last year?

2\. How many paying customers did you add this year?

3\. How many paying customers canceled, or what's your cancellation rate?

A good answer indicates healthy year-over-year growth with a low cancellation rate that speaks to good customer retention and customer satisfaction. Especially in a subscription business retaining customers is critical.

If the company has less than 20 people are the answer is "I don't know" or "0" or "1" or "We weren't in business last year" or "We don't charge any customers yet." then it's has approx 50:50 odds of surviving another year.

<comment><USER5> The closer you can get to talking about risk honestly, the better.

> 2\. some will not hire you just for asking because they prefer employees who > can take the risk

You can tell them the level of risk you can take. If you have a new baby and only 1 month of savings, maybe it's for the best they don't hire you if they're in a weak position.

On the other hand, if you're single and have a ton of savings from a successful exit, you may be ready for a hail mary job. Make sure they know you the risk isn't a concern for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> You can ask anything you want. Prefixing your questions with "I want to know what I'm getting into before I bet my family's well-being on it" is a great way to start.

When I was interviewing, I asked literally anything I wanted to know, and people in general responded really well. If something is confidential, they'll tell you, and you can try to refine the question to something they can tell you.

I brought a small notebook of questions to interviews and referred to it to make sure I didn't forget anything important. Nobody seemed to think this was weird.

Blog post I wrote about this: [http://jvns.ca/blog/2013/12/30/questions-im- asking-in-interv...](http://jvns.ca/blog/2013/12/30/questions-im-asking-in- interviews/)

<comment><USER11> Julia,

I compiled this gist from your blog post when you first posted it. Can you throw it up on your Github account if you have one? I don't want to take credit for your work, but I did think it would be awesome to make it a versioned doc that people could contribute to.

[https://gist.github.com/anonymous/be647549b757259e4732](https://gist.github.com/anonymous/be647549b757259e4732)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I recently had an interview with a pretty high-profile company and I asked them why they thought their product was better, or at least how it was different, than its primary competitor. The interviewer seemed pretty pissed that I asked that, and in my opinion the answer was essentially that "Our product has fewer features" (she said that it was simpler, which isn't really true).

<comment><USER13> Sounds like a shortcoming they're trying to rationalize away. Major warning sign, there.

<comment><USER12> Yeah I thought the same thing. Didn't get the job and then got a better one just a week later, so it worked out. I hope them the best, but they act like a startup even though they've been around for a long time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If I were hiring (I'm not), I would be delighted if you asked those questions. Other questions you should ask:

\- What are your sales goals? How do you intend to hit them?

\- Do you keep and maintain a cash flow statement? (Not having one, and not updating it regularly is a red flag - its job is to tell you when the money runs out)

\- Who is responsible for sales? Do they have the experience required? If not, what's the plan to make up for the shortfall?

\- Do you share your business goals with the entire company? How do you ensure that the entire team is aligned with those goals?

\- What are the biggest challenges you're struggling to overcome?

</comment><comment><USER15> Those seem like perfectly normal questions - in fact anyone who acted defensive toward those types of questions are likely less confident in the answers they would have to give.

</comment><comment><USER16> In my opinion, once equity is on the table then reluctance to answer any financial question is a bad sign. That's not to say that hesitation is a bad sign - a founder may not have thought it all through yet. But once it is put in terms of "I cannot evaluate your offer without knowing these things" then it is reasonable to expect forthright answers.

However, before there is an offer on the table, then this sort of question might be considered premature without the interviewer turning to the subject on their own which if they are pumped about the company they are likely to do anyway.

Realize that these questions can come across as mercenary. That is, if you are evaluating the job solely as an accountant then it would be prudent for an employer to assume that you will only stick until something better comes along. That's not always a good impression to leave at an interview.

Consider that the interviewer for a technical position may not really be focused on the business side. In a startup a technical interviewer who has detailed financial models in their forebrain may be a sign they are already looking at an exit rather than growth.

In the end, everything comes down to a matter of trust. You're betting the future on whether or not you can trust the company to take your interests into account.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER17> When I interviewed with an early-stage startup, I met with the CEO and interviewed him just as much as he interviewed me, and I asked questions like:

\- are you profitable?

\- if you had zero revenue starting today how long would you last?

\- have you ever missed payroll?

His candor in answering these questions was a big plus for my decision to join.

Note, these were asked near the END of the interview process, actually after they made me an offer. In general, after you get the written offer is a good time to ask any final hard questions to confirm whether you want to hitch yourself to their wagon for the next couple years.

You should be prepared for many of the questions you listed to be legitimately answered with "I don't know exactly what the future will hold". E.g. A business planning for a buyout might later realize they are better off on their own, so it's better for all if they hadn't told you one thing before and then changed course.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point on asking if they've ever missed payroll.. I got burned on a previous startup by that, and that would have been a HUGE red flag before I started there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Going with a startup means that they are going to ask you to dedicate much of not all of your life to them for a while. With that in mind, they need to be honest and frank with you. They need to trust you and you need to trust them.

Tough questions from them is expected. Tough questions for them is only fair given what they want from you. So, if they dodge them or you don't feel that they are telling you everything, don't take the job. If you can't trust them now, it'll be harder to trust them later.

Suggested questions:

1\. Why do you feel that this company with its product or service is better than what is out there? (They need to convince YOU).

2\. Where are your risks as a company? (Finance, competition etc)

3\. If your CEO spending time on running the company or raising funds? (You don't want both at the SAME time)

4\. How many employees did you have a year ago, six months ago and now? (Good growth means the right direction)

</comment><comment><USER19> Those are all good questions. (I have been asked all of them by people I've interviewed.)

Also, necessarily all the people interviewing you have already made the choice to leave whatever they were doing before and join the startup, you should ask them how they decided that was a good risk to take.

</comment><comment><USER20> By asking these questions you demonstrate you are interested in the job as an investor of your effort, not as someone seeking a paycheck. By all means ask these questions. By all means take the answers with a boatload of salt.

Now, they may not answer. They may not be able to answer. But what they do say and how they approach it will tell you a lot about whether they are looking for employees to help build the company or just to do work. And if they decide not to hire you because you asked the questions, you _really don 't want to work there anyway._

</comment><comment><USER21> Some more things you could ask in this article by Hacker School alumna Julia Evans [1] and this article on Runtime Era [2].

[1] [http://jvns.ca/blog/2013/12/30/questions-im-asking-in- interv...](http://jvns.ca/blog/2013/12/30/questions-im-asking-in-interviews/) [2] [http://www.runtime-era.com/2013/03/my-interview-questions- fo...](http://www.runtime-era.com/2013/03/my-interview-questions-for- potential.html)

</comment><comment><USER22> "do you plan to move the company to another city in the next 2 years?"

This happend to my girlfriend recently... She got her dreamjob, moved to the other side of the country, invested some money to get a nice flat and then after 4 weeks they told her: "btw, we are going to move to a town 100 km from here in 5 months". Since she got the job I also moved to this new town and now we both have to move again.

</comment><comment><USER23> A little off topic but my advice is to have any agreements be explicit and in writing. Probably obvious to some, but it's easy to get a good conversation going, just go with the flow, and not follow up afterwards with an explicit agreement around terms/expectations. In a startup this can be even more important because you may find out they don't have the resources to give you what you want.

</comment><comment><USER24> Ideally, you'd get to know one of the employees. Then ask away. Ideally you'd want one of the more employees more capable of cynicism (or realism, if you wish); statements like, "It's a really good environment!" are useless. You can ask what would happen if you perturb the system: "What if I do <something often interpreted as upsetting the chain of command>?"

If you know the industry, or can speak with a friend in it, that's good. Then you can predict much of what they do/think, and watch out for irrational/ignorant deviations.

Will they give you contact info of a normal employee, or leave you alone to speak with them? If they're really good, they'll do it without you needing to ask.

Bosses are professional liars. (This includes technically true statements designed to mislead. Whether they're even aware of it is not relevant.) Conditioned daily to say what maximizes their interests, or they fail. They are virtually the worst sources of direct info, unless they open up their books and emails to you (which they won't). They often don't even know some answers due to blindspots.

So when speaking with bosses, I try to observe "rationality" (which I agree is subjective). Charismatic talkiness is a flag; it may indicate ego. Evaluating it isn't easy; that practiced charisma may be useful for success, but it can also be a pain to work with.

One thing I care about is how much ability I'll have to help the company maximize its success. Part of that is knowing how many employees there currently are, and what kind of people they are, because their work is "legacy code" as far as I'm concerned. Do I have to deal with it? (Because usually it'll suck.)

But really, the high-risk sort of startups come with... well, inherent risk.

</comment><comment><USER8> One final note: The "no stupid questions" rule is still a good one. Employers should want to hire employees that want to know as much as possible about the business they are in. Even if the question seems unbelievably basic, not knowing the answer and making the wrong decision because of it is so much worse.

</comment><comment><USER25> You can ask anything you want. On the other hand, you should realize that your questions convey your state of mind, and anything you say can and will be used against you. But that's not necessarily a bad thing: apparently you have a family. If you have a lot of lifestyle questions, and they are a 7 day/week operation, both sides may decide it's not a good fit.

A good company will be delighted to hire an engineer (assuming you are an engineer) who asks intelligent questions about the business - it shows that you can go above and beyond doing "your job," and that you are aware that your technical work has a business outcome. You do not want to work for an employer who is threatened by your questions, or refuses to answer (most of) them.

</comment><comment><USER26> I have worked at a number of startups and I hire my teammates on occasions.

You actually need to ask intelligent questions that show that you have done your research thoroughly about the company.

Avoid \----- \- asking trivial questions that are already answerable through a simple look on their website or on Google

Do \-- \- ask about their competitors and how they differ from each other and where does the company come in the eco system

\- ask about founder/manager background to evaluate the team's chance for success base on the experience of founders team

\- look up info on google news about the company or the industry which the company is in. Think of questions to ask them by referencing the news

\- do ask for product roadmap and strategy. Ask hypothetical questions like given situation X and Y, how would the company handle it and why, etc.

Hope this helps

</comment><comment><USER27> They're all perfectly reasonable questions to ask.

</comment><comment><USER28> This is interesting to me because at some point this year, I will need to start doing straight hiring for my own early stage startup. And I can tell you right now that if you ask questions that express an understanding of how startups actually work and legitimate concern about the health of the business, I'm going to be _far more inclined_ to hire you. I'm looking for people who are not only technically sound, but are culturally prepared for working at an early stage startup.

I find myself doing informal, unannounced "technical interview" with just about every interesting techie I meet these days. Most simply aren't good enough to be interesting very long. :(

</comment><comment><USER29> "How much runway" is completely above-the-board. If they won't tell you, run.

"What's the end-game?" will probably give you the runaround -- it certainly has for me, with silly redirects like "we are more interested in building value for our customers" when it's obvious that management is always extremely concerned about the long-term plan, so this is interesting to write down and compare to what happens later to see what they say, but of no real use during your interview process.

</comment><comment><USER30> How many days of vacation did you personally take in the past year?

<comment><USER31> one day a coworker came over to my desk and said

"The guy I was interviewing just asked me what time I come into work in the morning! Can you believe the nerve? I don't think that's a good sign."

... and that's when I realized that we had some serious overworking-culture problems and I needed to get out of there.

<comment><USER32> Ha, thats one of the top questions I ask employers: What's the usual hours? Seriously, I'm not gonna work my ass 10-12 hours a day for any company unless there's a huge reward at the end - looking at you Facebook, post IPO, Speaking of which, I'd be pretty pissed if I was a FB employee seeing 16 billion being thrown at a handful of people, while I'm working my ass off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Those are all reasonable questions, IMO. When I think of the people I've worked with who successfully passed a company's interview process but turned out to be a short-lived employees or a poor fit for the organization, the situation could have been avoided if the employee had interviewed the employer more and understood what they were getting into better. Both parties need to do the research and ensure they want to work with the other party.

</comment><comment><USER34> Those questions are excellent.

Taking a job at an early stage startup is a lot like making an angel investment. Consequently, you need to think like an investor and ask tough questions. While you're asking the questions (hopefully you get to ask the founders), pay attention to both what they say and how they say it. If they're resistant, avoidant, or generally difficult to get answers out of, you should be very careful.

</comment><comment><USER35> These sound like very smart questions to ask. As you say, working for a startup is risky. They could go bankrupt and leave you with a few unpaid months of work. You want to be able to understand and manage the risk you're taking.

And if they don't want to answer these, particularly if they don't even want to share their basic business model, I'd be a bit wary of working there.

</comment><comment><USER36> Watch for signs in between the lines (answers), not for the answers themselves.

All answers will be optimistic and positive BS, but pay attention to subtle things, body language, eye contacts, hands gestures, finger movements, your own emotional feelings when communicating with these people, etc...

Some of these will be green signs, some are red.

Do not ignore little things - they are the ultimate answers.

</comment><comment><USER37> Ask your employers to tell you someone in his or her team that s/he enjoys working with and why. This will tell you if you will be fit well and valued in the team. Otherwise, you may feel isolated later, or you may join a team and realize that the popular ones are not doing anything but kissing managers' butt. It's a sad team!

</comment><comment><USER38> Too few candidates ask about the founding/management team IMO. Prior success is often an indicator of future success.

</comment><comment><USER39> "What has been your career path to this point?" \- tells you their professional history, their startup background, let's you know what their comfertable talking about wrt the end of their previous companies.

I also use this question for larger companies, to get a feel of the calibur of potential peers.

</comment><comment><USER40> Great topic, I think it's a smart idea to ask questions, especially if you're concerned about risk, but in my opinion, with a change in approach you can get a more effective answers.

Most of your questions should be directed at the CEO, or at the very least a co-founder. Depending on the size of the company, the people you're interviewing may not know about funding issues and exit strategies.

Asking about Runway is a good question. If you're worried about coming into work one day and finding the office closed, ask point blank about your concern. This is a good test question to see if the company believes in transparency.

You're right, the company may not want to go into too much details on it's traction and funding, but they should be comfortable talking openly about your concerns.

As to new funding, you should be able to find out their last funding round, either through Crunchbase, or from SEC Filings. Startups tend to fundraise in the late spring, and the late fall. Come thanksgiving, investors are hunkered down for the holidays, and summer vacations make it difficult to get people together. So if you're approaching a company during those times, you can assume their prepping for a funding push later.

Despite what others may say, the CEO is always fundraising. Perhaps not actively, but working towards their next round.

Ask about milestones towards their next raise. If their a consumer app, what are their MAU targets. If their SaaS business, what are their Churn and MRR numbers. What are some other milestones that they're pushing towards?

Questions about potential exits aren't that interesting, because it's easy to judge a business that is poised for IPO, and those that are ripe for acquisition.

If the business has taken institutional money, then there really is only two viable outcomes: Acquisition, or going Public. Investors won't invest in lifestyle businesses.

[Soapbox] Your family's financial well-being hopefully isn't tied to a stint at a startup. Perhaps I'm a bit old school, but I believe in some amount of financial planning--something like a rainy day fund that can keep you afloat for 3 months without income. [/Soapbox]

It's not just startups that are at risk for closing down. Irrational Games just closed shop and let go of all but 15 people, and that was despite releasing several AAAA blockbuster titles.

Losing your job at a startup isn't nearly as bad as you might think. There is a major shortfall in technical talent in most startup hubs, investors and founders are always looking for talent. After Zynga shut it's seattle offices down, a local VC here had an open house for the employees that were let go. So, if things go bad, many founders and investors will work to help secure you a position elsewhere. Plus, again, it's hard to hire people.

</comment><comment><USER41> You can and must ask those questions. If they find it rude or "forward", then that's a good sign that you should not join them.

Salary, title, equity, benefits and vacation time are best discussed (and negotiated) after an offer is in place. I _wish_ it were socially acceptable to discuss these earlier (it would save a lot of wasted time) but it's usually not. What the business is doing and how much runway it has, you should ask early. You have a right to know, and if they have a real business they believe in, they'll be excited to tell you.

<comment><USER42> At some point, you are interviewing them.

I've made a few mistakes in that direction. One memorable one is the startup where (a) I learned the phrase "train wreck", (b) witnessed a fight between VCs wherein various employees had to pick sides, (c) had to talk to a psychologist the company hired to find out "what was wrong in engineering" [ans: managers were morons], (d) had a meeting with Smokey Wallace -- an early Adobe heavy -- one fine Sunday morning to do a technical brief of what the company was about [ans: not much, could have been replaced with 2KSLOC of Perl], and (e) had the president of the company break down crying when I told him I was quitting.

Due diligence would have saved me from everything, but at east I got some interesting stories. I'll never get that ten months back, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I'm having trouble thinking of questions where the answers would have information content.

For example, you could ask whether your entire chain of command and half the team are planning on leaving within a year, but the answer you get won't have any information content. It will be about how everyone loves what they're doing and is fully committed to the mission.</comment>


Show HN: Bosnian census visualization - <AUTHOR> http://census-ba.statick.org <comment><AUTHOR> This was interesting and fun to make.

Since official statistics body in Bosnia and Herzegovina ([http://www.popis2013.ba/](http://www.popis2013.ba/)) wasn't able to create adequate visualization, although they provided a link on web page (which never worked).

They published census data 3 years after official census.

It was huge political thing here, and I created this simple visualization out of their xls spreadsheets in just few days.

I did it for free, while they took taxpayers money and did nothing, that was the fun part.</comment>


Ask HN: What is your method of submitting a project to Product Hunt - <AUTHOR> A while back i read a post on one of the startup/entrepreneur subreddits about a Product Hunt user looking for interesting startups to submit to the site.
I am spending my time reading about the Product Hunt submission process and i want to know what some of you have done. Did you climb the ranks of Product Hunt or is there a process to find other hunters looking for products to submit. Something like a pitch process, etc.
The product i am looking to submit is http://www.pokevs.com - It is a real time Pokemon Go location scanner. By selecting an area on the map and clicking the scan/radar button in the bottom center the server will search for the location of pokemon around that location and return results with a despawn timer, share button, and directions to location using google maps.
Are free to use web based services like this posted on Product Hunt? <comment><USER2> Yes, I've seen free to use web based services like this on Product Hunt. I've also seen many "products" on Product Hunt that are services that support/are supported by other services, like Whatsapp for the browser and 3rd party social networking tools, both of these types have even been in the top 10 for the day that are shown in the email newsletter.

I'm not familiar with the submission process, but have heard it helps if you're connected there already. But if your product is big/cool enough, other people will submit it, for instance a new car from Tesla or product from Apple are usually shown on Product Hunt.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER3> I think it might be tough to make this product perform well on Product Hunt. Not that there's anything wrong with it, just that when Pokémon Go was at the peak of its hype cycle several apps that are pretty much the same thing gained attention. I think you will have to focus on what you're doing that's new and different in contrast to those.</comment>


Effects of "The Work" meditation on symptoms and quality of life (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1550830714002067 <comment><USER2> > Participants (n = 197) enrolled in a nine-day training course ("The School > for The Work") and completed a set of self-administered measures on three > occasions: before the course (n = 197), after the course (n = 164), and six > months after course completion (n = 102).

I'm a big advocate for meditation but the study is skewed by survivor bias. Almost half of participants dropped off responding after 6 months.

<comment><USER3> Well it's only a small pilot.

I find the 'meditation' description a little odd applied to Byron Katie's work. It's really more like a highly commercialised self-enquiry method than meditation per se. Basically neo-advaita plus wads of cash with a little cultish bullying mixed in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Note: the article is from 2015.

"Like other psychological models, such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), "The Work" technique assumes that feelings (such as sadness, anger, and pain) emerge from an attachment to a stressful thought, which leads to behavior. This means that thought precedes feelings and behavior and should be focused on as the primal cause of stress and suffering. However, unlike cognitive restruc- turing that encourages an individual to use deliberative thinking to answer questions, "The Work" uses it only for asking questions and "relies on one's witnessing awareness to listen for a response to arise naturally from within.""

The "questions: (1) Is it true? (2) Can I absolutely know that it is true? (3) How do I react when I believe that thought? (4) Who would I be without the thought?""

<comment><USER5> The line of inquiry is not dissimilar to CBT, which instructs the practitioner to identify the negative belief that's troubling them, identify evidence for and against it, and finally consider whether alternative explanations may exist. Which is more or less what you're doing in The Work's first two questions, only more rigorous.

I don't think CBT has an analogue to The Work's latter two questions. I don't know whether these questions have additional value, but one advantage of The Work might be that you can just buy the book and practice it on your own. CBT seems to be hard to do alone due to a dearth of quality resources for self- study.

The Work was invented by a woman named Byron Katie who used to be a real estate agent and claims to have solved her own alcoholism and overeating with it. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byron_Katie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byron_Katie)

Notably CBT doesn't work for everybody (perhaps because if you can't convince yourself that your original negative belief was wrong, it's probably going to keep bothering you).

<comment><USER6> Short version: Last year, The Work as taught in Loving What Is by Byron Katie gave me perspective and tools that enabled me to function professionally and personally through/despite deep emotional pain/fear/grief--and be open and generous with the person close to me whose life choices were generating the pain while standing firm in my own choices. (Katie would say, I had thoughts about this person's life choices that generated the pain.)

I had already and pretty recently attended almost a full course of CBT skills classes (accompanying a person for whom they were prescribed), which I had found mostly to include codified, acronym-ized versions of techniques I had already been taught growing up or had independently discovered.

I thought the CBT stuff was pretty good, and it was helpful for the person I was accompanying, but it wasn't enough for me to deal with the pain last year.

Katie teaches that you don't have to convince yourself that your original belief was wrong. Often you do find that it's wrong, but often you just find that you're not sure. Once you've achieved some epistemic humility (I might not really _know_ this), the third and fourth questions give you a different perspective, looking at the consequences of holding on to this belief (which I just realized I'm not so sure about) and letting you imagine a world where you weren't being hurt by the belief. You don't try to convince yourself not to hold the belief: you just do The Work and let your mind do its thing.

She includes lots of example dialogs where she plows straight in to hard cases, too. It's worth a read, especially if there's anything you're having a hard time coping with.

<comment><USER7> Isn't that pretty much Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (which is often referred as part of CBT as the 'umbrella' concept above it)?

<comment><USER8> I find it reassuring that CBT, OP, and this thread agree. I find it reassuring that many times similar concepts were re discovered. For those who do too, I recommend the book Happiness Hypothesis, which delves into psychology, biology, evolution, anthropology, religion and tries to unify some themes. It does very well and backs with decades of studies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Elsevier presents an excerpted version of the paper without any obvious disclosure that it's an excerpt.

Except for "Pages 24-31", anyway.

So here: [https://sci- hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.explore.2014.10...](https://sci- hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.explore.2014.10.003)

</comment><comment><USER10> > "The Work" Foundation, a non-profit 501© organization, partially supported > this study.

</comment><comment><USER11> > The promising results of this pilot study warrant randomized clinical trials > to validate "The Work" meditation technique as an effective intervention for > improvement in psychological state and quality of life in the general > population.

Were RCTs ever done? I don't see anything in PubMed.

</comment><comment><USER12> The obvious next question for me is how does this particular meditation compare to other modes of meditation that are not all about poking at places in your brain that hurt.

<comment><USER13> Other modes as in what? Meditation is either a fully introspective exercise where you try to momentarily pause your mind monologue or thought threads, or an inquisitive exercise where you evaluate your feelings about situations (by using logic or by simply mindfully re-organizing thoughts.) Whether you can call these things meditation or not is another discussion.

The latter it's basically what behavioral therapy does and it's already established as the only efficient/semi-successful method to treat stress from past traumas and correct damaging behavior.

So if the question is if you can overcome traumas and fix behaviors by simply doing introspective meditation (seeking to cease thoughts), I would say no.

Your brain needs to actively revisit events and situations to readjust your perceptions about those events.

According to BJ Fogg you can only change habits either by having a near to death experience (the only cold turkey approach that works) or by taking very small steps to disrupt and modify those habits. In a similar sense thought patterns can only be modified by continuously revisiting and shifting your perspective on a particular matter.

This is easy to understand when you reflect on how particular opinions change as you grow older. It usually takes years of exposing yourself to different environments and information to change fundamental beliefs that are part of your upbringing. This is why childhood plays a crucial role in human development, since it's easier to create to acquire new beliefs and change behaviors in a young developing mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Buddhist's have had similar ideas/thoughts. Buddhism is ~2.5k years old.

<comment><USER14> From the paper - how many of you actually downloaded it to read it ?

"The Work" technique assumes that feelings (such as sadness, anger, and pain) emerge from an attachment to a stressful thought, which leads to behavior. This means that thought precedes feelings and behavior, and should be focused on as the primal cause of stress and suffering"

Anyone here familiar with buddhist meditation ? Vipassana specifically ? Isn't that what they talk about ?</comment></comment>


Startup Office Hours? - <AUTHOR> http://betashop.com/post/4611273735/startup-office-hours <comment><USER2> I think the best schedule would be a mix of enforced office hours (Monday through Wednesday, for example) combined with letting employees work from home (or coffee shops, etc.) for the rest of the week if they so choose.

The enforced office hours would keep the team close to each other and on the same page. The flex time would allow employees to work wherever and whenever they deem most efficient for themselves. Set goals on Wednesday, recap on Monday.

Results (not office/face time) should always be the final metric in judging employee performance.

</comment><comment><USER3> My view shifted from "work as hard as possible, as much as possible" to a much more relaxed approach when I realised two things:

1\. Working all the time is not sustainable. 2\. There's always more work, and getting it done sooner isn't as helpful as you think.

Nowadays, I'm a proponent of basically exactly what the linked post says.

<comment><AUTHOR> My personal schedule is like this these days.

Weekdays: Wake up. Quick run. 4 to 5 hours of WFH (work from home). Office from 11 to 6. Gym. Dinner. Unwind. 1-2 hours catch up on work. Read something non work related for 30 minutes in bed. Sleep. Rinse Repeat.

Weekends: 4 hours of work catchup each day on Saturday and Sunday.

<comment><USER4> That is around 75 hrs/week. Please tell me you work for yourself.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, we all work for someone. I work for our investors. But yes, I'm the founder of my company, so I work for myself and because I love what I do. Realistically I'd say I do about 80 hours per week. But when you love what you do it's not work.

<comment><USER4> Thanks. I hope you dont take my query the wrong way, I was just concerned that how well your efforts are tied with (potential) rewards. Good to know they are tied well enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One system I'd like to try is basically this:

Standard office hours are from noon to two, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. All meetings should be scheduled during those times. Other than that, people can work where and when they'd like.

This system has a lot of flexibility, encourages people to be in the office a few days a week, but doesn't force them to commute at the same time as the rest of the world.

</comment><comment><USER6> _I learned that she had a 2 hour commute to work every day, which was killing her … because the company had a formal no-work-from-home policy. Needless to say I created a new policy and she was granted work-from-home Wednesdays._

Why was the no-work-from-home policy ever created? Did employees just stay home and lie about their work?

I take the 37Signals-type approach on anything like this, don't create rules or policies until they solve a real problem (not just a hypothetical problem).

<comment><AUTHOR> Some cultures are more strict about office hours than others. In German culture it is normal to expect someone to be there on time and leave on time, and to never stray from the norm. I had to shake that up a bit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> A couple years when I moved back to freelancing, and working on my web apps, I instituted a pretty strict rule of ending at a normal time, and no working on weekends. It works most of the time :-) but has definitely kept me sane, and made the people around me calmer. It also forces me to take time to think, which I wasn't doing when I was just working all the time.

</comment><comment><USER8> Two thoughts here,

1/ Don't add process until it's necessary. Why have office hours, a vacation policy, or any rule that requires employees to expend mental capital on superfluous issues?

2/ If you're to the point when that process is necessary, you probably hired the wrong people (especially in a startup).

<comment><USER9> I don't agree so much with point 2, but I do think that it's smart to figure out what people actually need to be in the office for and plan around that, rather than assuming some kind of window. Maybe the lunch meeting at one startup is the 4pm at another.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> my personal philosophy is try to come in at least three to four days a week (say between 12-5), because it helps keep the team connected. other than that, work when you want, where you want, as long as the work gets done.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Curious to hear others' thoughts on this.

</comment><comment><USER11> My thoughts, based on a few startups I've observed among my friends: once a startup gets to 2-3 full-time founders, the probability that it will fail because people aren't working hard enough goes near zero. The company might fail for other reasons, but once you have 2 or 3 dedicated, full-time founders, "lack of effort" is not even on the list of the top 20 things that can kill it. Occasionally, an individual person might drop below acceptable effort levels-- that person usually leaves for a more stable job in a month or two. It just doesn't make sense to work for a startup if you're going to put in a half-hearted effort, so the less committed people usually leave before they become a problem.

What I said above is untrue for some 1-person startups that are effectively abandoned, and for startups where people stay in their day jobs and therefore really aren't able to contribute enough to get the thing off the ground. But when you have 2 to 4 people working full-time on a startup, there are still a lot of things that can kill it (bad product, poor team dynamics, bad investor relations, just plain bad luck) but a lack of aggregate effort is very, very low on the list.

What seems to be far more common are hours- or sacrifice-related squabbles, and these can utterly break a company. Let's say two founders are working 80 hours per week and one is working 50, but they're all about equally valuable and productive. What happens if, when it's time to split equity, the third founder gets a smaller share? Possible fight. Or worse yet, what if he ends up with lower status within the company and is treated more like an employee, because he didn't "pull enough weight"? This is where fatal fractures happen. Nothing goes wrong because there wasn't enough effort, and nobody put in such a low level of effort as to cause problems, but the perception of unequal sacrifice and dedication has spawned a very nasty conflict that is destined, at some point in the future, to create a fight that could damage (or ruin) the company.

People tend to think of rules surrounding office hours and vacation allotments as exploitative in nature. They can be, but they're also there, in an odd way, to protect people against certain kinds of social dysfunction. Working from home, for example, is great when you have a good working culture, because people can work more productively and are happier. If the environment's dysfunctional, to have people working from home is going to make it a lot worse, because of the distrust that it will breed. In a dysfunctional work environment, it becomes important (until you've made your exit) to be cautious and show up at "normal" times, because the perception of working hard becomes more important than actually working hard.</comment>


Ask HN: Would you like to see a book on Racket? - <AUTHOR>

If you have any interest in a book on the Racket programming language I'd greatly appreciate answers to this survey:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/MKQL3YX
Comments, via the survey or here, are also great. Thanks! <comment><USER2> I would. But I'd like it to be something more than introductory. So, say, at least half the code should include static type, there should be good coverage of readers, expanders, etc.

I think there's a gap for a good language that's both powerful and easy to use. Scala has screwed up with 2.8, being overly-complex, and Oracle (not Scala's fault, obviously). Meanwhile, Python is continuing to expand, but people become frustrated with its limitations. Racket could be the next step for such people, but they don't want an introduction - they want the real meat.

<comment><USER2> PS Datalog should be included too! :o)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Calling it "Racket" is just appealing to the cognizanti. Put "PLT Scheme" in the title and more might be interested.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. Doesn't seem I can edit the title now, unfortunately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I, definitely, will buy a book about how to write my own programming language in Rakcet.

I has been following Lisp In Small Pieces, but I will love to see something that teach to write different kind of languages like Forth, a OO system in Racket, compile to Javascript, ...

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER5> Racket is a great place to start with functional programming. We just spent one-third of the school year in AP Comp. Sci. playing around with it before starting JAVA. I'd definitely be interested in learning more.

</comment><comment><USER6> Yes. The only reason I chose Clojure over Racket was the increasing popularity of "Practical programming" books for Clojure. Let's see Practical Common Lisp in Racket?

</comment><comment><USER7> The book needs a section on the IDE & plugin system. And the logic programming stuff too. (you said you wanted suggestions)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, you said FRP and macros on Reddit! ;) IDE and plugin system would be new ground for me, but I know you've done quite a bit with them.

<comment><USER7> Caught out! I think you would agree there good reasons to use Racket.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> 19 upvotes but no comments?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think all the comments are going into the survey -- there are over 40 so far. I'll summarise snd post to HN when the survey finishes. Thanks to anyone reading this who took the time to answer and/or up-vote this submission!</comment></comment>


Microsoft Pushes IE8 With Ads That Are Actually Funny - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/article/167617/microsoft_pushes_ie8_with_ads_that_are_actually_funny.html

<comment><USER2> Interesting that they are doing these commercials for browsers when only 10% of the population or less could even tell you what is and or name one.

Hopefully they are teaching this in grade, middle & high schools! Though that is doubtful!

<comment><USER3> I have to ask for a data source on that 10%. thanks.

<comment><USER4> Actually, it's 8%.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=667909>

<comment><USER3> that article (as far as I read) didn't share how many people they interviewed etc... I would be hard pressed to find 82% of these 'non knowing' people. I think the answer might have to do with the question - I would ask 'What do you think a browser on a computer is or used for?'

Thanks for the information;

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have to disagree with the original article. They are not that funny. More like a "meh" kind of thing.

<comment><USER6> I agree that they are "meh" except for the last one:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-9Mjm-Hohc>

I would never have expected Microsoft to be the first browser vendor to admit that private browsing modes are for porn.</comment></comment>


SingleFile can now save a web page from the command line - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/SingleFile/blob/master/cli/README.MD <comment><USER2> As a web extension for Firefox or Chrome, I think this functionality is useful and an improvement over what the browsers provide out of the box. Bookmarked.

However, as a CLI tool, I don't see the usefulness of this over a standard CLI tool like curl or wget. Can someone explain to me the latter?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm the author. Note that it's more powerful than wget or curl since it embeds resources (CSS, images, fonts...) in the saved page. Actually, you can consider it as an alternative to wkhtmltopdf [1] more than curl or wget. Running it on command line can help people to automate things, or use it on server-side in a SaaS, for example.

[1] [https://wkhtmltopdf.org/](https://wkhtmltopdf.org/)</comment></comment>


NerdWallet just laid off over 40 people - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/20/nerdwallet-just-laid-off-over-40-people-including-its-vp-of-growth/ <comment><USER2> My corporate scumbag lingo is a bit rusty, can anyone help translate this ?

"Despite a record-breaking quarter, NerdWallet has decided to shift resources to align by consumer pain points, rather than by financial product families, and to consolidate multiple execution orgs under our CPO, Tapan Bhat," NerdWallet CEO Tim Chen told TechCrunch in an email."</comment>


Twitter Bootstrap v1 (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://bootstrapdocs.com/v1.0.0/docs/

<comment><AUTHOR> I find it interesting how it compare to the compare to the current bootstrap design, especially this example : [http://bootstrapdocs.com/v1.4.0/examples/container- app.html](http://bootstrapdocs.com/v1.4.0/examples/container-app.html)</comment>


Chattanooga to offer 10 gigabit internet service starting today - <AUTHOR> http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/local/story/2015/oct/15/chattanooga-becomes-first-10-gigabit-city-world/330691/ <comment><USER2> The article missed mentioning Minneapolis, which has been offering symmetric 10Gbps since December, 2014.

Residential 10Gbps costs $399/mo, but normal 1Gbps is quite affordable at $65/mo: [http://fiber.usinternet.com/plans-and-prices/plans-for- the-h...](http://fiber.usinternet.com/plans-and-prices/plans-for-the-home/)

<comment><USER3> Any idea how many people that covers? Looks like just a couple square miles of coverage (roughly eyebyalled). Is that mostly business or residential areas?

<comment><USER2> Almost entirely residential; the closest they get to downtown is still about a 10 minute walk. I'm terrible at ballparking these things, but an average block in that area probably has around 15 duplexes/triplexes and 3-4 low-rise apartment buildings with 12-36 units each...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Meanwhile in Australia: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeEAVj2Szbg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeEAVj2Szbg)

<comment><USER5> Was just about to say 'Meanwhile in Australia where I pay $79/month for 100GB of ~500kbps'. And I live in a relatively modern populated area, I shouldn't have to fight my neighbours for open ports!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Founder in Chattanooga (our company went through YC). Pretty impressive announcement by EPB today.

If anyone out there is being priced/ squeezed out of the Bay, or is interested in building a startup off the coasts - feel free to ping me.

There are a lot of exciting things happening here.

<comment><USER7> Thank you. Download is $300/ month. What's the upload speed cost ?

Edit: website says upload and download. Amazing. Tempted to rent or buy a little office space in Chattanooga.

<comment><USER3> Can you run commercial servers for that price or is that only for residential users?

<comment><USER8> EPB has different (more expensive) pricing for businesses. But it's still a whole lot cheaper and a whole lot faster than a DS3.

<comment><AUTHOR> We have a business with 100mbit for $57.99, but last time I got a quote for higher speeds it was around $99.99 for 175 mbit and $153.99 for 270 mbit. They also charge us 14.99 for a static IP address.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Being from Chattanooga, it is ironic to me that I moved to San Francisco for tech only to have slower internet here in SF than the small city in Tennessee that I left.

<comment><USER10> I know the feeling. It's hard to believe that my old college town of Starkville, Mississippi has gigabit fiber to the home and I don't here in metro Denver. :/

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's great to see Chattanooga retaking the lead for internet speeds in Tennessee. Hopefully that will spur increases throughout the rest of the state.

In Nashville, we've gone from zero to three companies (google, at&t, and comcast) announcing gigabit service in the last year. There's lots of exciting developments here, as captured in [http://southernalpha.com/commentary-why- nashville/](http://southernalpha.com/commentary-why-nashville/)

<comment><USER12> Knoxville is still a frustrating state of affairs. Comcast has really set it's place in stone throughout most of the city, with city representatives declaring they are not interested in developing municipal options and that comcast is fine.

Even more aggravating are all the billboards listing "Get Ready Knoxville! Fiber is HERE" ... at a 2 year contract $300/mo price and $1000 setup. Gee thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> For anyone with a 1 gigabit or faster connection, how has it noticeably changed your life? I have broadband, but I find it difficult to visualize what I would get out of a significantly faster connection.

<comment><USER14> I've got 1gig via hyperoptic in London.

Compared to the 80/20 VDSL I had before, browsing is pretty much the same. The difference between enabling and disabling adblock is far far greater than having 1gig.

Uploading files is generally a lot quicker.

However, most internet services can't handle it. I rarely get more than 1-2mbyte/sec to bitbucket or git for example, which is annoying since that can be painfully slow on large repos.

Even worse, hard drives struggle to keep up with high internet speeds. SSDs are fine, but considering how quickly you can fill even a large SSD you don't really want to be using them for giant file downloads which can take advantage of it.

Finally, WiFi really can't deliver 1gig or anything close to it. I often drop back to 2.4GHz WiFi in some areas of my apartment and that is by far the biggest drawback.

So really, you only get 1gig or anything close when you're on a very fast server or protocol, downloading to an SSD on ethernet.

<comment><USER15> My freshman year of college was at a university with 1gb fiber connections to the dorm rooms. Naturally, this meant there were DirectConnect servers all over campus with a variety of files.

Most servers had their motd set to "Please download media and watch locally," as there was enough bandwidth to direct-play video files over the network. Unfortunately, there was not enough hard drive bandwidth to service multiple requests for this simultaneously (this was before the SSD revolution).

Definitely a moment of "Hunh. Never expected to run into _that_ bottleneck."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Love the work Chattanooga is doing on this. In my area, you have to get a full leased line at prices that might net you new cars or houses if you ditched it. I've considered relocating there just for the Internet. At least have some servers over there with a thin client connected to them.

This mostly benefits datacenters. Many medium-to-large companies have central datacenters that their branches, offices, stores, etc connect to. The connections that big cost huge money in most places. Keeping that cost this far down is quite an incentive to be there.

Would also help people trying to seed torrents, boost Tor network, collaborate over high quality audio/video, and so on. Many uses. It will take time before people in the Tri-State Area realize that and start moving to these towns with their growth-focused startups.

</comment><comment><USER17> It's great that internet companies are pushing speeds up, but networking hardware to fully use 10G speeds isn't cheap. Unless I missed something, 10G ethernet NICs are $200+, and all the 10G routers are $1,000+ enterprise hardware.

On the other hand, if you find that 1gig is too slow and can afford a $300/month bill for something faster, you probably can afford the requisite hardware.

<comment><USER18> The hardware will get cheaper as more people will want it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Alternative link: [http://www.chattanoogan.com/2015/10/15/310477/Chattanooga- Im...](http://www.chattanoogan.com/2015/10/15/310477/Chattanooga-Implements- Worlds-First.aspx)</comment>


The editors I've been using – which one is your favorite? - <AUTHOR> http://robertnyman.com/2014/10/22/the-editors-ive-been-using-which-one-is-your-favorite/

<comment><USER2> I started with DreamWeaver 2 in 1998, switched to BBEdit within the first 6 months, switched to TextMate in 2006 and (finally) to Vim in 2010 after 10 months spent trying _every_ cross-platform editor available at the time.

Vim is awesome but I'm fairly certain I would have switched to Sublime Text if it had been available for Mac OS X at the time.

<comment><AUTHOR> I tried DreamWeaver a bit, but mostly stuck to HomeSite back then. BBEdit never managed to lure me in. And yeah, I think Sublime Text wasn't available when I switched to Vim from TextMate as well

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Vim (Iterm2) is my favorite. I use Atom for analyzing log files.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting! Personally I've used Vim for with large log files, since it has been a lot faster than Atom

<comment><USER3> I should have prefaced with smaller log files for Atom. What size files are you typically looking at in Vim?

<comment><AUTHOR> The files I had were about 30 MB</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Migrants have net positive impact on New Zealand - <AUTHOR> https://nzinitiative.org.nz/insights/reports/the-new-new-zealanders/ <comment><USER2> Very rose tinted view.

I don't know where people get this meme of "do the job native people don't want to do". If a chain store that sells asian food (say, St. Pierres Sushi) only seems to have Asians (a minority) working for them, what's the more likely scenario? That there are no non-Asians willing to serve food for minimum wage, or that the people hiring are showing overwhelming discrimination and choosing people who look like them?

Illegally underpaid work in the immigrant community is huge in NZ. I don't think I've ever heard of an Asian restaurant or supermarket that actually paid minimum wage. An Asian friend of mine actually once tried to report an employee for hiring people illegally and not paying minimum wage. They told her that they _needed the employers passport number_. Without that, they'd do nothing. What was my friend supposed to do, steal it!? Hiring people illegally is simply not enforced.

Discrimination against non-Asians is prevalent too - it's very normal to see "prefer Asian" written _in English_ on advertisements for flatmates, no one blinks an eye anymore. I distinctly recall trying to find a room, talking to a friendly guy who spoke fluent English with an NZ accent, and then having him ask me if I was Asian or not. Afterwards I got a gutless text with an excuse to save face.

I'll never forget the two days I attended Polyfest - a big 'multicultural' (ie, anything not European) event where school kids gave performances. I remember struggling to find a group of school kids walking around where the members had different skin colours. It was the exception rather than the rule. I was later informed by security guards that "the Samoans" had gotten into a fight with "the Indians". Wonderful.

The fact of the matter is where large enough groups of immigrants congregate there will be zero pressure for them to integrate. They will interact with their own, hire their own (ignoring local minimum wage laws), speak their own languages and live in their own bubbles. If that's what multiculturalism is - different groups of people with very little contact with each other sharing the same land - then count me (and my family) out of it.

PS: Also ignoring the practical matter that NZs population growth is developing-world high, primary fueled by high immigration. You might argue it's still a sparsely populated country, but the fact remains that once your skilled labour force is high-income, infrastructure simply cannot keep up with demand because it's too expensive. Not to mention the effect it has on house prices.

<comment><USER3> > The fact of the matter is where large enough groups of immigrants congregate > there will be zero pressure for them to integrate. They will interact with > their own, hire their own (ignoring local minimum wage laws), speak their > own languages and live in their own bubbles.

Why shouldn't free people in a free country be able to live that way if they want to (aside from ignoring minimum wage laws)?

After all, the whites in New Zealand have been living among themselves, interacting with their own, and speaking their own language since they got there. Did the Maori ever demand that the whites speak their language and live among them according to their customs?

<comment><USER4> > Why shouldn't free people in a free country be able to live that way if they > want to (aside from ignoring minimum wage laws)?

Why should free people in a free country allow people to immigrate to their own ghetto's?

<comment><USER3> > Why should free people in a free country allow people to immigrate to their > own ghetto's?

Because they do not, and should not, have a right to tell other people what neighborhoods they are allowed to live in.

<comment><USER4> But they have a right to not allow them in the country at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a New Zealander, born and raised in Auckland. Immigrants are bad for society. Auckland has massive segregation by race. There are large pockets of Indian and Chinese people who refuse to integrate into society. Refusing to learn English and creating places with their own language and being less welcome to outsiders.

In regards to housing pricing, the problem here isn't immigration. It's the retarded laws which allow foreigners to buy property and own land without ever having visited the country let alone living there to begin with.

I'm all for property to limited to permanent residents and citizens, and a cap on the number of properties purchased to prevent buying up many properties.

For what it's worth I left New Zealand 11 years ago. My family still lives there, I go back to visit every now and then, but I have no desire to ever move back. Auckland to me is a disgusting place.

I live in Singapore now.

<comment><USER6> > As a New Zealander, born and raised in Auckland. Immigrants are bad for > society ... There are large pockets of Indian and Chinese people who refuse > to integrate into society. Refusing to learn English ...

I'm just going quote the original article here: "Of those who do choose to move to New Zealand permanently, analysis of the New Zealand General Social Survey show immigrants integrate well. They are less likely to claim a benefit, more likely to be employed, and their children have better education outcomes than native born New Zealanders."

> I live in Singapore now.

This is rich. Singapore's official languages are Malay, Mandarin, Tamil, and English. The official national language is Malay. Let me take a wild guess ... as an immigrant to Singapore, you've been studiously learning Malay, Mandarin and Tamil, and you absolutely do not segregate into a clique of white anglophones in your social life. Good for you, model immigrant that you are. /s

<comment><USER2> _This is rich. Singapore 's official languages are Malay, Mandarin, Tamil, and English. The official national language is Malay. Let me take a wild guess ... as an immigrant to Singapore, you've been studiously learning Malay, Mandarin and Tamil, and you absolutely do not segregate into a clique of white anglophones in your social life. Good for you, model immigrant that you are. /s_

Your ignorance of Singapore is showing here. English is by far the most widely spoken language of that country. it's the language of the education system, of the government, road signs, etc. It's the most widely spoken language at home, and the lingua franca of the country. You might as well berate immigrants to New Zealand for not learning Maori or NZSL.

<comment><USER6> >Your ignorance of Singapore is showing here.

Thanks, but I have spent a great deal of time in Singapore and know perfectly well what language road signs are in.

> You might as well berate immigrants to New Zealand for not learning Maori or > NZSL.

You are comparing the importance of Malay and Mandarin in Singapore to _sign language_ ... I think perhaps it is your ignorance of Singapore's ethnic peoples that is showing here.

<comment><USER2> Singapore is a city state, and its main language is English. Not learning one of its secondary languages hardly equates to not integrating.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Formalizations of Gödel's Ontological Proof of God's Existence - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/FormalTheology/GoedelGod

<comment><AUTHOR> The paper with some explanation about the proof is here: [http://arxiv.org/pdf/1308.4526v4.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1308.4526v4.pdf)</comment>


The Real Live Search – Bing API experiment - <AUTHOR> http://www.istartedsomething.com/20090821/the-real-live-search-bing-api-experiment/ <comment><USER2> Ultra fast and impressive! Any plans to turn this into a plugin for jQuery?

<comment><USER3> But is it fast because Bing is hardly used?

<comment><USER4> Doesn't it have 9% market share? I don't know if I'd call that "hardly used".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice hack! I wonder how bing will treat you if it gets very popular though. Bookmarked and I'll be using it for a while.

</comment><comment><USER6> Nice. I wrote a similar thing last year, powered by my own engine:

<http://drupalmodules.com/module-finder></comment>


Launch HN: Muzmatch (YC S17) – A place where 400M single Muslims can meet - <AUTHOR> Hey HN!
Ryan and Shaz here. We're building muzmatch (https://muzmatch.com), an app that helps single Muslims meet their partner. We refer to ourselves as a dating app largely for SEO but the reality is our users don't tend to date, they marry!
Marriage is central to many Muslims' upbringings and ethnic, family, and religious pressures make it a difficult search. The casual Western apps don't cater for this market and the existing Islam-specific offerings are outdated, ineffective websites.
As a practising Muslim, Shaz experienced this problem firsthand. He quit a 10 year career in banking to write and release an MVP back in April '15. With promising traction, he found me (Ryan) on LinkedIn in the then New Year. It was clear it could be a massive opportunity but I believed it needed to broaden its appeal (then it was as an ultra serious marriage service) and modernise its branding/marketing to position it for the new generation: this seemed like a great challenge!
We've tried to build a product that feels fun and light but respects our demographic's culture and sensibilities, being halal is essential. Some unique features:
- Chaperones: In keeping with Islamic tradition, users can opt to have a "Wali" present in their conversations - Full privacy: Users can blur their photos and use a nickname to remain anonymous to friends and family - Fully verified: All manually approved, Selfie, GPS, and SMS verified users - Relevant: Profile information that matters to many in their search, like Islamic, sect, and ethnicity filters
We're now ~2 years in with 200,000 users and are thrilled to have helped over 6,000 find their partner.
We'd love to hear your feedback and answer any questions! <comment><USER3> My wife is a user of this app (she has used to to help her sisters look for husbands) and so far I think it's a good product. You were wise to include the wali/chaperone option because that is clearly a key feature for many sisters.

She always mentions how she's puzzled over the "Always pray / sometimes pray / never pray" options under religious practice. Can you explain your thought process in coming up with those options?

I want to say that I can see why your app would be a tremendous challenge from a product development standpoint. What you have as a user base in America are basically a mix of many different immigrant cultures that each have their own idea of Islamic traditional marriage customs - Somalian vs. Arab vs. Indopak vs. West African vs. Cham vs. vs. vs..., as well as clashes between youth & elder viewpoints, as well as a large indigenous (I use the term loosely - we're all immigrants to an extent) American Muslim population as well (something that foreigners usually are shocked to hear - Americans becoming Muslim?! What!!). Do your research well & don't give up

I ask Allah to guide you to a product that is beneficial for the Muslims - <USER2> also materially successful!

Edit: Also, my email address was used at one point as the "wali" contact but I stopped getting digest emails from the conversations inexplicably. You may need tighter QA around that pipeline

<comment><AUTHOR> Very happy to hear that and thank you

Absolutely it's a challenge and we're aiming to be as inclusive as possible

Interesting, if you email me (firstname.lastname@example.com) I can look into this further for you

Thanks again

<comment><USER3> Thanks. I think she's taking a break from the searching for now but I'll save your email address in case it happens again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Commenting on the wali/chaperone feature: I'm actually surprised that MuzMatch is the first network I've seen with support for unobtrusive third parties in conversations. I think there might be a general business opportunity there if they execute the limited dating application well. CCing/BCCing in a business setting is a limited communication management tool vulnerable to political distractions. Idling in chat is unproductive.

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally

Don't get me started on email..!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great market. You should look for some help with the copy writing. I had to read some sentences twice.

</comment><comment><USER6> Dating apps right now feel a little like pre-Facebook social networks. There is one for every niche.

I wonder why there isn't a platform for single people where dating companies are just apps on top of the platform. Seems like bad user experience that a user needs to maintain multiple accounts.

Don't get me wrong, I think this is a great idea but I think the really big company in this space will be a platform for single people.

<comment><USER7> You mean facebook?

<comment><USER8> Facebook doesn't have open APIs and blatantly opposes non-advertising extensions

<comment><USER6> Facebook login works fairly well to grab data once.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> How many marriages have happened through your app our of interest?

<comment><AUTHOR> We've had 600 confirmed weddings and 6,000 couples leave after finding each other within the app

We think the former is likely higher too as many choose to keep it private

<comment><USER10> So if people leave after finding each other but don't get married wouldn't that technically be dating?

<comment><AUTHOR> We see dating to be non-exclusive where as these 6,000 couples are in committed relationships

<comment><USER10> So if people use your app until they agree to be in an exclusive relationship aren't they "dating" until then?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The HN description says: "users can opt to have a "Wali" present in their conversations "

The site says: _Women_ can include a guardian in their conversation for extra peace of mind.

Which is correct?

<comment><AUTHOR> The chaperone feature is coming to both genders in the next major version. Historically it was just for women as we used to refer to it as a "Wali" which Islamically is only for this sex

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Can you explain, how you make money? In the play store there are some bad reviews about in-app purchases. What is your pricing and what do you price for? Thanks

<comment><AUTHOR> We monetised through a mix of In App Purchases for products like Extra Swipes (see more profiles daily) and Instant Match (guaranteed to be seen to a soecified user) as well as a Premium subscription offering that includes some supplemental features as well as bundles of the IAPs. People don't always like the realities of the app economy but in truth we didn't monetise anything that was previously free. The free product is still as functional as ever. We modify pricing from time to time, you can see these in-app and in-stores, thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This looks like a really good idea. I wonder if there is a wider opportunity beyond the Muslim-specific context for some kind of Anti-Tinder.

Out of curiosity, how does "all profiles being verified manually" scale?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you

It definitely keeps us busy 24/7 but we've built some internal tools to make this as quick and efficient as possible

We're definitely nearing the point of needing a dedicated Community Manager to take over this function

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Pretty cool guys. I can see from the play store comments that your users love the app. Best wishes.

Whats 'Halal, free, and fun'?

Whats you tech stack like?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

Halal being "ok" Islamically, free as the old competition are very expensive, and fun so the process sounds noncommittal (many are put off by fearing being rushed into something they're not necessarily ready for)

It's a LEMP stack heavily utilising Memcached for performance and XMPP for real time functionality

<comment><USER15> How have you initially launched it so hat it got traction? Sending mails to your friends? at an event? posting in FB group?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm annoyed that you came in, advertised your product, took up front page space, and didn't bother to answer any of the interesting questions. I feel as if you are taking from the community and not giving back.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry to hear that, I thought I chimed in on most topics! All hands on deck for demo day, having another read through now

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Your hero div has some weird overlap issues in smaller screen heights [http://imgur.com/a/yxyHr](http://imgur.com/a/yxyHr)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for bringing this to my attention, I never foresaw such a small vertical to horizontal ratio screen!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Nice service!

Is the "Wali" a human being? If yes, how will that scale?

<comment><USER19> It'll be a verified email address that the member selects, to whom the chat transcripts are sent. [1]

> How do I include a Wali or Guardian on muzmatch?

> We want muzmatch to be a Halal and safe place for all our members to find > their partner.

> Women can enter a Wali or Guardian's email address in Menu → Settings to > give them extra peace of mind.

> Once their email has been confirmed they'll receive weekly transcripts of > your Chats on muzmatch.

[1]: [https://muzmatch.com/faq/how-do-i-include-a-wali-or- guardian...](https://muzmatch.com/faq/how-do-i-include-a-wali-or-guardian-on- muzmatch)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I love seeing the FAQ being used! You can probably tell this is our own custom tool, we want to build more of a community around product Q&A and support in the future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Interesting that you seem to have gained traction even though your competition has been around for 10 years or more.

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! The older the company (typically) the harder and slower it is to innovate, we think they've completely missed to opportunities smartphone present.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> How does the Wali part work? do you employ conversation reviewers? Does one dater recruit an outside person?

</comment><comment><USER22> Who did your icon illustrations? They're great!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I do all of our design but I can't take credit for these other than some colouring and minor alterations, they're from a generic set I bought a while back

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> In terms of gender, I am fluid. Does muzmatch have plans to support additional gender options? The current format only allows "Male" or "Female".

<comment><USER24> Does the religion allow for this? Not sure that it does.

<comment><USER23> I don't think this is the place for a discussion on theology. Might I suggest a slightly different question: do gay and gender fluid Muslims exist? The answer is clearly yes. One need not go far to see stories of extremist groups throwing them off of buildings for being so.

So, this leads to my original question of whether the product will enable this. I'd hate (probably too strong of a word) to see a product get awesome HN coverage that actively works against ('discriminate') LGBTQX folks.

@abbasiddartha > beat me to it. I agree.

<comment><USER25> They are serving a narrow niche. I don't think you can term that discrimination.

Perhaps if You see a business opportunity you could create an app that serves the Muslim LGBTQX community?

<comment><USER23> If I create an app that delivers cup cakes and cakes to people having weddings - but only to people who have "straight" marriages, would this be a "narrow niche" and "business opportunity", or would I have the shit sued out of me?

<comment><USER25> I don't think that is a fair comparison.

A dating service serving a niche can help people pre-filter their matches. For example someone of higher education or earning might want to only find people of similar education. It would be discrimination to prevent people of lower education from purchasing from a cup cake delivery service. But not to filter them from a dating service.

As I understand it there are dating services that specialise in matching non straight couples. Is this discrimination against straight people?

<comment><USER23> You can have a dating app which uses filters and so forth to find your mate. RESTRICTING access (as opposed to a search filter) based on race, gender, etc. is pretty damn iffy. Especially when the app is owned by a company. Has this been tested in the courts yet? How is a digital "filter" (in the way that you are using the word) any different than a physical "filter" beginning at the entrance of my cake shop?

In any case, brod_ie has said "We're supportive of this and is definitely on our radar reply", so I'm sufficiently satisfied! ^.^

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > Chaperones: In keeping with Islamic tradition, users can opt to have a > "Wali" present in their conversations

Sounds like a pretty unique feature in the world of chat apps. Were there any technical difficulties in implementing that?

<comment><AUTHOR> Great question. Not particularly as the current Chaperone system works as an email digest of conversations sent to your confirmed guardian. In the future we want to explore adding full muzmatch account functionality here so the chaperone can sign into the native apps and view conversations in a more realtime manor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Would be interested in your relaunch 2015+ - how have it got traction? Was it rebranding? How have you got the initial traction? Sending emails to closed real world community? Postings on FB?

</comment><comment><USER27> Link for the lazy: [https://muzmatch.com](https://muzmatch.com)

<comment><USER28> Added above. Thanks!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Has anyone chosen ASP.NET MVC 2 over Rails for their web app - <AUTHOR>

ASP.NET MVC 2 just came out a few months back and Rails 3 is coming soon so I thought it would be a good time to revisit this topic.
I enjoy working in Rails, but I won't be doing the majority of the coding on our next web app.  Therefore, the enjoyment factor doesn't matter as much as the business aspect and particularly how long the code will last before having to go through a major revision.
Has anyone chosen to develop a web app in ASP.NET MVC 2 instead of Rails?  If so, do you feel it was the right decision after having gone through the process? <comment><USER2> I haven't developed a production app with MVC 2 yet but I've tested it for use in my organization and I've played around with RoR. Given that experience I'd put forth the following points...

Pros:

1\. Despite what RoR fans claim I think you can get things done faster in ASP.NET MVC 2 (if you use Visual Studio). All the usability enhancements combined with technology like WCF simply help you get things done faster (though there's a down side to this advantage in the cons)

2\. On the above note I still think C# is a vastly superior language especially now that it's essentially "borrowed" the best parts of Python

Cons:

1\. The main reason to go with a MVC framework is ease of testing and the RoR community is far more robust and hence offers far more testing options

2\. (Related to Pros #1) Using Microsoft technology like WCF creates performance woes. I would question using it on a really high performance site

3\. You really need to buy Microsoft servers. I haven't even tested MVC 2 on Mono but MVC 1 was spotty and not officially supported

4\. Support is minimal on the Internet. Again this boils down to there being far, far more Ruby developers (Let's face it ASP.NET MVC is a subset of the already smaller ASP.NET developer community)

I don't know if that helps but those are my initial thoughts.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here's a high-profile ASP.NET MVC site: <http://stackoverflow.com>

How about you ask them here: <http://meta.stackoverflow.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a Microsoft Case Study on the site here: [http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Windows- Server-2008-R2-...](http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Windows- Server-2008-R2-Standard/Stack-Overflow/Developers-See-Faster-Web-Coding- Better-Performance-with-Model-View-Controller/4000006676)

Based on timelines, it looks like they developed in the first version of MVC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> ASP.NET MVC skips the whole ORM part and let programmers deal with the issue however they like. I find this refreshing compared to Rails 2 which enforces ActiveRecord. I hear Rails 3 decouples ActiveRecord but I haven't seen it in action.

This is important if you have a plan to build front end to legacy database.

</comment><comment><USER5> I have worked in MVC 2 and while I feel it was the right decision based my skillset and the existing code base in the company, I envy the relative maturity and stability of the Rails framework. The fact that there is a "Rails Way" is good.

Personally it's usually other factors that make the decision for me.

</comment><comment><USER6> Question related to this topic: If one were to use ASP.NET MVC 2, would one have to use Microsoft's development tools and Microsoft's servers, or are there viable open source alternatives?

<comment><USER7> You don't have to use their dev tools but I am not sure why you would not want to. You get tons out of the box with Visual Studio Express...and its free. You are also free to use the command line to compile your apps, but again I am not sure why you would want to.

<comment><USER8> Without plugin support Visual Studio is good as dead to me. I have several plugins which I consider essential, and I wouldn't put up with developing with a purposely crippled tool.

<comment><USER9> Are you talking specifically about the Express editions? Visual Studio has had plugin support for awhile. Resharper comes to mind immediately, among others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I considered it, and although I love F# I still went with rails because of a lack of sass. I even considered porting sass to F# like nhaml.</comment>


Big Data Lambda Architecture - <AUTHOR> http://www.databasetube.com/database/big-data-lambda-architecture/ <comment><USER2> So, 'Big Data' has been simplified to 'Problems Solvable by MapReduce'? _sigh_.

Not every problem can be reduced into a completely cache-able batch job, trivially parallelizable across all of your data. 'Big Data' isn't about breaking up your batch processing into three layers, it's about being smart enough and knowledgeable enough in compsci, statistics, calculus, text processing, regexes, machine learning, business analysis, _et cetera_ , to design an effective system which harvests _useful_ insights from a large bank of atomic, messy, inconsistent data, with an appropriate level of availability and consistency.

The real work is not in using/configuring Hadoop—it's about figuring out what information would bring greater-than-marginal value to a business, and how to compute that efficiently from an existing corpus of data.

There's no silver bullet. Remember?

EDIT: I think the following is particularly disingenuous: "The lambda architecture solves the problem of computing arbitrary functions on arbitrary data in real time by decomposing the problem into three layers"

This is such a ridiculous promise, that it put me in a strongly skeptical mood for the rest of the article.

<comment><USER3> This is a lot of platitudes but doesn't provide any specific criticisms. Most problems are "Solvable by MapReduce" since map/reduce != Hadoop but is simply an abstraction for computing functions on data in general. The architecture outlined here is a pattern for a generalized system for computing functions on data in real time that has nice properties.

<comment><USER4> That it's an abstraction that can do anything isn't sufficient (and I'm not even convinced it's necessary): Turing machines can compute anything too, that doesn't mean they're practical.

<comment><USER3> Ok, more platitudes, still waiting for a specific criticism of this architecture and its claimed limitations.

I'll repeat myself: most big data problems fit into the mold of query = function(data), map reduce is a practical substrate for building algorithms to compute these functions, and this paper presents a practical architecture to implement these types of systems.

<comment><USER4> You made the argument that it was just platitudes and MapReduce is a sufficient model. I was specifically counter-arguing that point; that doesn't mean the claimed model is bad or that I have to reply to every single point in a single comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Some of you might have missed the perspective of the article's author (perhaps it isn't that clear); you might want to re-examine it from an implementer point of view. In other words, if you have a real-life big data problem (that would benefit from parallel processing via Hadoop) and you actually have to build the thing so that it would work and scale, the decomposition presented by the architecture would make the implementation a lot simpler. Architecting such systems isn't trivial, and this is a solid blue-print to start with. And it's really an architecture, not a model: It doesn't tell you how to formulate algorithms, it rather suggests how to build a complete system around them.

I have read the recent draft of the "Big Data" book by the author, which describes the architecture that the article discusses in better detail. Honestly, if you are a beginning practitioner in this field, you can't really go wrong by reading it.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm pretty bullish on the "speed layer" coming to dominate. I've done a fair bit of work with streaming algorithms [1] and they have advantages beyond just latency, reduced memory usage being the primary one. If you believe data is growing faster than computing power it seems that streaming algorithms must be the way forward.

Note that you can do a lot with streaming algorithms (it's not just counting). Also the reduced memory usage (orders of magnitude) makes the complexity of random writes not such a problem as you have less need to go outside a single machine.

[1] Slides on streaming algorithms: [http://noelwelsh.com/streaming- algorithms/2012/11/22/streami...](http://noelwelsh.com/streaming- algorithms/2012/11/22/streaming-algorithms-scala-exchange-edition/)

<comment><USER7> Nice slides. You should check out <https://github.com/twitter/algebird> \- we've implemented a number of streaming algorithms (HyperLogLog, Count Min Sketch, along with stuff like minhash and bloom filters) in Scala as Monoid typeclasses. Love to hear your thoughts or get your contributions.

<comment><USER6> Algebird looks great! Thanks for mentioning it.</comment></comment></comment>


Amazon Leverages Its Scale and Infrastructure Beyond Servers and Into Shipping - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/27/technology/27amazon.html?ex=1335326400&en=453a6952c4a17f37&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss <comment><USER2> Wow, way cool. Some friends ran a small business for years that could really have used this!</comment>