Why Software Development Methodologies Suck - <AUTHOR> http://java.dzone.com/articles/jez-humble-why-software <comment><USER2> Managers and methodology pundits are focused on a dogmatic application of their particular religion regardless of whether it makes sense for the actual application. I have never seen a specific methodology work in reality when it was followed to the letter - people just don't work like that.

This is a very big reason why I doubt the effectiveness of creating a class of "managers" who's skill set is "managing". How can a graduated MBA lead a software development team without knowing the business or the domain?

Management, to me, is a skill that is learned through experience, not taught in a classroom. And it is in the classroom's where dogmatic methodologies are most prominent.

<comment><USER3> In other words: like most dogmatic religionists, they're in search of a way to live without thinking.

"How can a graduated MBA lead a software development team without knowing the business or the domain?"

The MBA is the American capitalist equivalent of the Soviet apparatchik.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The methodologies don't, "suck," and the author points out in eir conclusion that not having any methodology is bad.

It's the organization part that's important. Methodologies will work differently depending on the make up of the team. The important part is discussing what works and eliminating what doesn't. Only then can you flush out the gremlins of the mind and focus on the work.

That being said -- too much methodology is a gremlin of another kind. There needs to be enough process and practice to ensure everyone understands what needs to be done and how to consistently go about it. My favorite motivator is responsibility. Let the team members in the trenches make the decisions and make them own the consequences of their decisions. Winning feels so much better that way compared to being led by a dogmatic agile-XP-scrum-master.

<comment><USER5> I think (and have argued: <http://xrl.us/bmeqcm>) that the problem with most development teams - Agile or not - is that the people who are on point to make the deadlines (the Project Manager and/or Product Owner) usually don't have the agency to increase resources or move deadlines - they normally just have the ability to bully programmers and decrease software quality (pressure on tests and documentation)

<comment><USER6> Let me just say this flat out: if the product manager can't change scope and deadlines, then they are not doing anything I recognize as Agile. Fixed scope/fixed date approaches are the exact opposite of what every Agile pioneer had in mind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've read a lot of software engineering research[1], because I'm interested in being as productive as possible, but SE research reminds me of a lot of empirical economics from the 70s. People were (and still are) trying to figure out what can be done for developing countries. Back then, researchers more much more likely to try to figure out what methods were the absolute best, period. Now, people are much more likely to acknowledge that there's path dependence, and that something that works in one context may be completely useless in another context.

It's rare to see serious empirical work in SE that's up the same standards as empirical work in modern economics (either an RCT, or a good pseudo-experiment from a clever instrumental variable), and when you do, there's little to no discussion of how generalizable the work is. There's often a paragraph about how the study may not generalize, which seems to be enough to satisfy peer reviewers, but isn't nearly enough to figure out if the methodology under test has any applicability whatsoever to your setting.

[1] if you're curious, and want to look up what's in vougue, the premier SE conferences are ICSE and FSE

</comment><comment><USER8> I always thought methodologies suck because of their lack of evolution. They're too rigid in a fluid world. They stay the same for years while the world around them is constantly changing. They attempt to take one idea, one theme, one solution and apply it to every problem rather than looking at everything on a case by case basis.

Humans don't like thinking, it's expensive, it requires time and effort. So people like to think once, find an answer, copy and paste that answer over and over, and never think again.

It's the ultimate human mistake, trying to use simple dumbed down solutions to complex problems. The same goes for liberal/conservative/christian/muslim/jewish/athiest/republican/democrat/libertarian ideologies. Any time you group a series of solutions together into an idea, party, or organization you've given them planned obsolescence.

</comment><comment><USER9> I found the following to be the main point of the article:

</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>====

You might think that puts us in an impossible position when it comes to deciding how to run teams. But consider why software development is not a regular environment, and why it is so hard to run experiments, to acquire skills, and to measure which practices and decisions lead to success, and which to failure. The root cause in all these cases – the reason the environment is not regular – is that the feedback loop between making a change and understanding the result of that change is too long. The word "change" here should be understood very generally to mean change in requirements, change in methodology, change in development practices, change in business plan, or code or configuration change.

There are many benefits to reducing cycle time – it's one of the most important principles that emerges when we apply Lean Thinking to software development. Short cycle times are certainly essential for creating great products: as Bret Victor says in his mind-blowing video Inventing on Principle, "so much of creation is discovery, and you can't discover anything if you can't see what you're doing."

But for me this is the clincher: It's virtually impossible for us to practice continuous improvement, to learn how to get better as teams or as individuals, and to acquire the skills that enable the successful creation of great products and services – unless we focus on getting that feedback loop as short as possible so we can actually detect correlations, and discern cause and effect.

</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>====

Jez seems to believe that Development Methodologies suck when they reach the point of __getting in the way of developers creating things __and when you have long cycle times before you can see the fruits of your labor, wonderful ideas are potentially lost. One of the important aspects of Continuous Delivery is to reduce that feedback loop as much as possible - people start to do amazing things and create wonderful ideas with immediate results to the changes they are making.

</comment><comment><USER10> One of the reasons I think we don't have a clear understanding of methodology effectiveness is that there's too many other variables. For example you could take the same team, completing the same project and have them work under different methodologies in order to see which one was the fastest, best quality, etc. but even that isn't possible since the team would be better the second time around. Also what works for one team may not work for another due to personalities, work culture, etc. different projects may be better suited to a different approach. We tend to want to find the one true methodology, but I don't think it exists.

I tend to think that just using any methodology at all will tend to give better results because it means the team is at least attempting to manage the process. It usually means that at least somebody on the team cares about keeping some kind of organization. Even if it's a loose version of a methodology. Having no methodology at all can work too, but tends to rely on heroics and can be more stressful for everyone - especially the other people in the company who need to plan their work around the development schedule.</comment>


Ask HN: Why don't more laptops have 3G/4G? - <AUTHOR>

I'm quite tired of carrying dongles, and even phone based hotspots. Chrome books have cellular data plans, but they aren't good enough yet for programming and design.
I wonder why MacBook Air's don't have a 3G or 4G card inbuilt ala the iPad where I can choose to get a cellular connection when I want.
Wondering if someone has some insight on why this is not in the interest of companies, or hard to do, or some other reason. <comment><USER2> Aside from Apple, every laptop maker is competing on price. 4G radios add $50 or more to the cost of the device. The only way they would include one is with incentives from a network that would include some offer with the laptop. None of the networks are offering laptop manufacturers such incentive right now, so they don't build them.

Why are cell companies not offering incentives to produce laptops with cell radios? Because they are just barely keeping up with current demand. Only major metro areas have 4G coverage, and each tower can only handle a couple dozen active data connections before saturating its uplink. Older 3G towers that haven't been upgraded can still have only 50MBPS links, which means they're very limited in how many clients they can serve at once. Retrofitting the old equipment and building new towers takes time; they have to manage demand so that it doesn't outstrip supply, which is why we've seen lower data caps and higher prices as LTE is rolled out, instead of higher caps and lower prices.

</comment><comment><USER3> Apple had a prototype where they experimented on this idea with the older Macbook Pro (pre-unibody) so this was quite a few years back. See: [http://www.macrumors.com/2011/08/14/photos-of-a-prototype- ma...](http://www.macrumors.com/2011/08/14/photos-of-a-prototype-macbook-pro- with-integrated-3g-cellular-data/)

It was posted on eBay and eventually pulled because of Apple. You can google for more info. As to why it never became a thing? I suspect (read: guessing) that it has to do with a few things:

1\. Network speeds have trouble supporting tablets and smartphones as it is

2\. Not everyone wants this

3\. City wide initiatives to bring wifi have been ongoing

None of those are really valid enough to excuse why no one else have done it. But then again, its not like no one has. Some netbooks and some models of laptops out there do have built in network cards (I know some sony models do). Just not sure there is a huge market demand to cost ratio for this.

I for one wish there was such an option as well, one that can also translate to a hotspot but I'd imagine we're going to wait a bit longer before that happens.

</comment><comment><USER4> I got a 3G radio with my last Thinkpad (1.5 years ago) and have barely used it. It seemed like a great feature, but because WiFi is almost ubiquitous (and when not, it's easy enough to create a hotspot on my phone), I haven't been willing to commit the extra $10/month and get an extra SIM to share my phone's data plan on another device.

</comment><comment><USER5> Verizon offers a little device called a "Jetpack" that is essentially a battery-powered router that is eligible for 4G service from Verizon. You simply carry it with you and it acts as a hotspot for up to 5 devices, including laptops.

The only downside is that the largest data plan offers only 10gb of bandwith for $80/mn.</comment>


Yaybahar [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aY6TxC1ojA <comment><USER2> Here's a TEDx video featuring the instrument with a better close-up view:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBnsqzbHbgU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBnsqzbHbgU)

In Turkish (inventor is from Turkey), "yay" means both spring (like elastic metal) and bow, the instrument uses both. And "bahar" means spring (like a season). Funny name.

Edit

Description found on Vimeo: Yaybahar is an electric-free, totally acoustic instrument designed by Gorkem Sen. The vibrations from the strings are transmitted via the coiled springs to the frame drums. These vibrations are turned into sound by the membranes which echo back and forth on the coiled springs. This results in an unique listening experience with an hypnotic surround sound.

<comment><USER3> "yay bahar" means "this spring" in hindi/urdu ("bahar" being of Persian origin). I'm not sure if "yay" also has Persian origins.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yaybahar reminded me of my own experiments: When i scratch stuff (like balloons etc) i am able to perceive electronic-like sounds and create bass lines for my music classes by recording them.

It's weird how the electronic is the new natural, in that, we recognize natural sounds as imitations of electronic ones.

</comment><comment><USER5> I was curious instantly whether or not the acoustics carried as well in open spaces. Here's a video of the instrument being played on the beach. Seems that it does.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_LW- eUYt7Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_LW-eUYt7Y)</comment>


Ask HN: Learning C++ with a C Background - <AUTHOR> Hi fellow HN'ers,
As a long-time C on Linux developer, and someone who has some experience with languages such as Go and Python, I'm looking to finally learn C++ as I've ended realizing that I am skipping a huge amount of systems-level development opportunities (networking, embedded, compilers...) due to not learning C++.
I'm looking for resources that don't start from zero given my background, but without teaching some sort of "C"ified C++ warts and anti-patterns.
As someone who learns more by quickly jumping from theory to practice then back to theory, rather than studying a 1400 pages book, resources with focus on practical problems/projects would be very appreciated.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Even if it is a bit dated, Accelerated C++ book is a great resource for c programmers.

</comment><comment><USER3> I might try Stroustrup's "Tour of C++".

</comment><comment><USER4> Have you checked out Derek Banas on YouTube? He has a series on C++.

High paced video tutorials which cover most of the language.

</comment><comment><USER5> Watch all the cppconn videos

</comment><comment><USER6> I know this is annoying but I would invite you to check out Rust. It's a much more productive language.</comment>


How to cost account HPC compute hours? - <AUTHOR>

I was recently granted some hours at a high performance computing facility. I have asked for a cost accounting, but since I'm a federal employee, there is no cost. I'm trying to figure out how to calculate the value of this resource. I'm not sure EC2 prices are a comparable commodity. Any recommendations? <comment><USER2> HPC costs vary significantly with the hardware and size of datacenter, if you want to break it down. It's probably best to ask them what the cost would be if you weren't a federal employee. Otherwise, ask them for a total cost of ownership for a server or total cost of operation per year per server, and you can divide that out by compute-hours (cost per core-hour).

Worst case just take the EC2/Google Cloud/Azure numbers, since that's your market comparable providers. Any papers or ROI calculations you can fudge with "approximately" or "at least". I'd guess that your HPC provider isn't as cost optimized as EC2.</comment>


So Long Apple. The Party's Over - <AUTHOR> http://www.javalobby.org/java/forums/t102936.html

<comment><USER2> I never really understood why it was Apple's responsibility to write the JDK for OS X, and not Sun's...

<comment><USER3> Why should it be Sun's?

<comment><USER4> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Write_once>

<comment><USER3> I know about "Write Once", but it seems too much to expect support for every conceivable computing device anyway.

I suspect that Apple did not want to provide Sun to provide the JVM for Apple, though? Otherwise I don't know why Sun wouldn't provide it themselves.

Edit: only just saw that somebody else said exactly that, Apple wanted to do it for themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _unprecedented arrogance of Steve Jobs and company_

Unprecedented?

<comment><USER6> You must admit there's some irony in Joe Random lecturing Steve Jobs on how to run a business and using the word "arrogant" when doing so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Anyone remember this?

"Java's not worth building in. Nobody uses Java anymore. It's this big heavyweight ball and chain..." -- SJ

[http://www.informit.com/discussion/index.aspx?postid=d1e63fd...](http://www.informit.com/discussion/index.aspx?postid=d1e63fde-10d5-404b-8a14-6ff0b92c1ee1&f1=rss&rl=1)

<comment><USER8> In the original context it was J2ME on the iPhone - he was specifically asked about Flash and J2ME support for non apple apps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is really evil. Apple needs to realize that people use the Java JDK for purposes other than writing enterprise Java applications. Some run Python code above the JVM (Jython), for example. I use it to compile Java syntax to native javascript using GWT.

Bad move Apple.

<comment><USER10> Excellent point. I hear a lot of talk about running Rails on the JVM as well.

Rails developers also seem to love apple (and I have a mac laptop for my personal use as well). But when I was first getting into rails, it actually took me longer to get up and running on the Mac, (at the time, OS X shipped with a broken Ruby,though this wasn't a huge factor in my difficulties). Not sure if this is still the case, but I only managed to get it all installed because the rails community is mac-centric enough that there were independent posts on how to deal with the quirks of mac installation.

When Mac went to OS X, a lot of developers came thundering back to Apple. And I'd still much rather remain in a Unix world than deal with windows. But I sincerely hope that Apple values the developer commmunity that they've attracted enough to keep it around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This article would have been so much more interesting if it had said, "Not only did Leopard not ship with Java 6, but Apple, in typical fashion, apparently thinks it has no obligation to its customers to inform them it replaced Java with Haskell" :)

<comment><USER12> so, how ashamed should I be that I just checked for some haskell on my fresh leopard install?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Java is a crappy language. It doesn't bother me one way or the other if it's broken in Leopard. I don't want your nasty Java GUI apps defiling my Mac desktop anyway.

Good riddance!

<comment><USER14> I think they're referring to the JVM, not the language.</comment></comment>


It's Time for a Serious Talk About the Science of Tech "Addiction" - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/its-time-for-a-serious-talk-about-the-science-of-tech-addiction/ <comment><AUTHOR> "At present, tech addiction claims are weakly founded and selling one thing: the alarmists. Their books, talks, consultancy hours, and moral character." [https://twitter.com/dingstweets/status/959074261188034560](https://twitter.com/dingstweets/status/959074261188034560)</comment>


Ask HN: Switch from non-game developer to game developer at same salary? - <AUTHOR> How likely is it for a non-game developer to become a game developer and make the same salary? I've always felt that the two were really different, and even though I've developed minor games on the side, I've never made the jump or tried to seriously develop games with the intent to sell. I have little interest in 3D so would be looking to get into 2D casual gaming. <comment><USER2> You didn't give much background of what your experience has a dev. so It`s hard to say if you you can just switch to the same salary. I personnaly made the switch for 1 1/2 year, I was a backend java dev (jboss, srping, hibernate) and switched to a game job doind backend server work at a similar salary* . So has long you can translate your work in the new job you should be fine, I saw poeple switch from iOs/android apps dev or web dev to game witout losing any salary doing game.

* :my yearly was actually increased but my hourly salary was somewhat the same.

Note that the gaming industry can be rough (even the casual gaming one) with long hour and crazy deadline, be prepare to work much more than the normal 40hr/week you normaly see.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am deep in game development for some years already... And I must say that unfortunately, when I am needing quick money, I always end working outside games, on average the game industry pay is terrible cccompared to other computing industries, mostly because there is lots of wannabe devs queuing to work even for free because they think it is cool.

To exemplify: one of the biggest serious games and advergames company I applied, they offered new developers 500 USD /mo, and they have a absurdly high turnout.

</comment><comment><USER4> An alternative to the "casual" gaming field is the "serious" gaming field, specifically simulations and training. The pay is usually comparable to what you would get elsewhere. You didn't say how much experience you have, but they would be more likely to hire you in a non-junior role as well.</comment>


If You Live 30 Years You'll Live 1000 Years - <AUTHOR> http://m.haakonsk.blogg.no/1456259429_if_youre_alive_in_30_.html <comment><USER2> > According to Ray Kurzweil, as soon as something becomes an information > technology, it starts progressing according to Moore's Law

My field of chemical information - a subfield of cheminformatics - has been an information technology since the 1800s. It was the Big Data of the 1940s and 1950s, many of the pioneers of information retrieval worked on chemical data (Luhn, Mooers, Taube), and the term "information retrieval" and concepts like stop words (as part of KWIC) were presented at chemistry conferences.

The doubling period for chemical information is 15-20 years.

Citation indexing is another offshoot of 1950s information technology. Scientific publication grows by about 5% per year (says [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2909426/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2909426/) ), so doubles every 15 years.

Either 1) those are not information technology fields, in which case, why not? or 2) "according to Moore's Law" means generally "has exponential growth", not the more specific doubling every two years.

With #2 firmly in mind, consider "and that's the main reason why we can expect medical technology to advance exponentially in the future."

How do we measure "advance" in medical technology, how do we know it isn't already an information technology field, and why should we expect the doubling rate of under 20 years?

Finally, here's a quote from someone who "served on the advisory council of [a longevity] organization, along with the chairmen of a number of major US corporations":

> Why has the problem of aging been such an intractable one? Up until > [recently], the prevalent view of scientists had been that the task of > controlling aging was fundamentally impossible. But today, such a consensus > no longer exists. Many researchers now believe that their predecessors > failed, not because their goals were misguided, but because the tools and > the level of sophistication they could bring to the task were inadequate. > Moreover, it is argued that progress has been hampered because funding has > been scarce, and researchers concerned with aging have been too few and far > between. ...

> Growing public and private support for aging research reflects the > scientific community's own increasing commitment. Today, aging research > occupies unprecedented numbers of highly talented individuals, not only > specialists in gerontology, but researchers from other disciplines as well. > These include biochemistry, endocrinology, immunology, neurobiology, > genetics, and cell biology, to name only a few.

Before following the link, when do you think that essay was written? [http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/essays/v6p107y1983.pdf](http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/essays/v6p107y1983.pdf) .

<comment><USER3> One of Kurzweil's fudges is to say in Roman times life expectancy was 25 years or so and so it's increasing exponentially but that's mostly from been from getting rid of infant mortality and the like. I think ageing as in going grey and doddery has always kicked in at the same sort of age.

The immortality technology that seems closest to being doable would be to have AI 'become you' in the way that actors become a character. Not quite sure how that would play out in reality, whether having a robo version of your gran wandering down the street would be a good thing. I was thinking maybe you could have some sort of architectural innovation where there is a physical city for the simulated immortals where you can go visit robogran if you feel like it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Escape Velocity: Why the Prospect of Extreme Human Life Extension Matters Now

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC423155/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC423155/)

The escape velocity cusp is closer than you might guess. Since we are already so long lived, even a 30% increase in healthy life span will give the first beneficiaries of rejuvenation therapies another 20 years—an eternity in science—to benefit from second-generation therapies that would give another 30%, and so on ad infinitum. Thus, if first-generation rejuvenation therapies were universally available and this progress in developing rejuvenation therapy could be indefinitely maintained, these advances would put us beyond AEV. Universal availability might be thought economically and sociopolitically implausible (though that conclusion may be premature, as I will summarise below), so it's worth considering the same question in terms of life-span potential (the life span of the luckiest people). Those who get first- generation therapies only just in time will in fact be unlikely to live more than 20–30 years more than their parents, because they will spend many frail years with a short remaining life expectancy (i.e., a high risk of imminent death), whereas those only a little younger will never get that frail and will spend rather few years even in biological middle age. Quantitatively, what this means is that if a 10% per year decline of mortality rates at all ages is achieved and sustained indefinitely, then the first 1000-year-old is probably only 5–10 years younger than the first 150-year-old.

<comment><USER5> I'm currently trying to write a scifi novel about a post-mortality and post- scarcity society. I say trying because it is hard for me to find meaningful conflicts and disasters. (Yes, i could use war as a disaster, but that would be lazy.)

But my problem raised an interesting concern: When I can't find meaningful reasons to motivate my characters to leave their bed or stop watching tv all day, how does your typically Joe do it in reality then?

In Germany we already have the problem that a significant part of my generation doesn't see a reason to work and instead plans to live their whole life on social welfare.

<comment><USER2> Your viewpoint was not uncommon in older SF, like the Eternals in Zardoz, the Spacers of Asimov, or under the Instrumentality of Mankind of Cordwainer Smith.

You might start by considering how Banks, Niven, Stross, and others have managed to write novels about a post-scarcity future.

I have two observations. First, few novels are written about "typically Joe"s doing typical things in typical situations. The Culture novels have minor characters whose lives concern social standing, who is sleeping with whom, and parties. The main characters are usually special, sometime literally as members of 'Special Circumstances'.

Second, post-scarcity doesn't mean everything will be plentiful. Each human will not be able to be Dictator of the Universe, for example. Plenty of things will be rare for the foreseeable future, like travel to Mars. Plus, humans have a way of valuing "realness". Some people are willing to pay much more for a piece of clothing that famous person X owned than an otherwise identical piece of clothing.

As I mentioned with Banks, social standing is not easily purchased - post- scarcity doesn't mean you have 10,000 admirers, or get invited to all the good parties, or even that people recognize you and wave hello when you walk down the street. Emotional conflicts are still conflicts.

There will still be strong conflicts about aesthetics, law, religion, art, sports, and science, and more. In a post-scarcity world, is abortion legal or illegal? What about suicide, murder, or rape? Taking a crap on the street corners? SWAT-ting?

There will still be religious schisms. There will be fierce rap battles and poetry slams. There will be travel and extreme adventures. Or will no one care about Manchester United's game against Real Madrid, and no one will play the sports? If so, will everyone watch re-runs or will all new content be synthetically generated?

Science is driven in part by prestige. You need only look at the recent CRISPR stories to learn that. Being the first to do X, or think of Y, will always be scarce.

You need only to look at rich people to see that plenty of people who have the money and don't need to work, still work. This includes the children of the rich, derisively termed "trust fund babies", who have no need to work but still do so.

If people are happy and the economics are self-sustaining, then I see no problem with 20% of the population spending their lives on social welfare. Nor does being on social welfare mean everyone is in bed watching TV, or gossiping on the internet. There may _also_ be a flowering of artistic expression, or a boom in amateur athletics, or a repopulation of the rural areas, or any number of other enjoyable, socially acceptable, but non-remunerative and non-GDP- influencing practices.

If you had a guaranteed yearly income of 100000 EUR, would you veg in front of the TV all day? I wouldn't.</comment></comment></comment>


Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/16/17569520/twitch-streamers-zero-viewers-motivation-community <comment><USER2> What I don't understand about Twitch is how anyone has time to consume this content. When it comes to sitting on your butt and watching something, the traditional TV show is moving to an on-demand model. Twitch is a step in the other direction, where if you faithfully consume content from any Twitch channel, you have to sit down and watch for hours every night when the streamer is online. Who does that? I imagine it's mostly students and single young professionals.

<comment><USER3> As a Twitch consumer (married 'professional' in early 30's). I am a huge video game nerd at heart, so I watch streamers that run games that I am interested in however don't have time to play/master. Often it doesn't involve me sitting down for hours at night (although I am sure there's a huge demographic that does that as well). I usually watch when I am laying in bed before I go to sleep. Same time my wife is usually watching some separate but equally mind numbing content to decompress from a long day.

Just another form of entertainment, like tv, but there's nothing I enjoy watching on tv. To each their own.

<comment><USER4> Same boat. I find a chill streamer that doesn't talk much and plays a game I like. I set the TV to 30 minute timer and watch for ~10 minutes before falling asleep. This is similar to people that fall asleep to shows they like -- see [https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurama_Sleepers/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurama_Sleepers/)

<comment><USER5> Something I'm curious about is where that comes from. Why do people like falling asleep to the TV? Why is it preferred over white noise?

<comment><USER4> White noise is better than nothing, but my brain won't stop generating content (thoughts) with white noise. When the TV is generating the content, my brain focuses on that, and it's mindless enough to fall asleep to. I think it has something to do with being a mentally active person forced into a passive role, like shifting the brain into low gear.

<comment><USER6> Check out the Sleep With Me Podcast[1]. Same concept: Dull, meandering talking to lull you to sleep.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Having spent literally hundreds of hours producing video game content for youtube and twitch, I can say this:

It's an incredibly sad, discouraging experience even if you get traction (and I got some traction). It's also utterly hollow: your entire existence is as a wrapper around the content folks actually want to see. The most successful streamers develop their own brand, but these people are the 0.5%, the Felixs and the _sips and the ZachScotts. They're the exception, and even they have specific genres and subjects that if they venture into they risk losing a massive chunk of their audience.

Once I realized this, I had to stop trying to do it professionally. I'd rather go back to doing software product work. At least I feel like a real person with real impact in this field, as opposed to one of a billion interchangeable wrappers around other people's mostly interchangeable content.

But you can of course go see my youtube channel and watch my old minecraft content if you want. Some of the stuff around the middle of my cycle (i.e., D&S play Minecraft, Minecraft the Hard Way, Sunless Minecraft) was pretty solid for the genre.

<comment><USER8> > your entire existence is as a wrapper around the content folks actually want > to see

Yeah, what sets popular streamers apart is that their 'wrapper' is distinctive and entertaining in its own right. Everyone is showing much the same product; what can you put around it that's different?

Kind of like selling fizzy drinks, I guess.

<comment> s-shellfish Sort of. I've been making art for a long time, went to school for it.

People want to see themselves in whatever you produce for them. It's that simple. They want something they identify with.

Artists and content developers can have more fun playing with it because they have different meaning spaces - they see connections across content that is still self identity, it's just across a different set of things. It can be competitive and draining though, so one must use their energy wisely.

Crowds can be fickle in general, so it can as well be exhausting staying plugged into them, producing just for them, without any way of receiving meaningful feedback.

It's not that people are narcissists at heart, it's just that they don't want to pay attention to things to things that don't make sense to them on any level. That's pretty normal.

<comment><USER9> > People want to see themselves in whatever you produce for them. It's that > simple.

Funny thing is comrade Tocqueville hit on that upon looking at the USA for a couple of months almost two centuries ago.

Something along the lines of "democratic peoples want to hear stories about themselves" (instead of the classics), rather early on the pages of his Democracy in America, writing about theater and culture.

<comment> s-shellfish Now that I think about it though, it really depends. If there's no stable reflection of self identity, that's what people seek out. But if there is a stable way to identify with the self, people seek out novelty, something different.

I think the internet introduces both tunnel vision of self identity and complete chaos where self identity breaks down. This seems like it would be an obvious consequence of anonymity, but some things are easily forgotten.

It makes sense with the Democratic process. Identities constantly swapping and merging, playing both sides while being neither fundamentally. It makes sense that communism would have a valid criticism. Stable, forced sense of identity suppresses dissent before it manifests. Until revolution, war happens, that is. Scary stuff!

<comment><USER9> Back in the old days of broadcast TV trying to hit peak audience, the voluntary sameness of the various broadcasters was scary ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I personally know Markipler (youtube, 23M+) as well as follow some other people here and there.

There is a youtuber; BloominBanana I subbed around the same time I subbed to Markipler 2010ish, they both do (did?) the same horror gameplay except Bloomin' has about 12 subs on youtube.

Mark as I knew him was the king of 'going out there' he was never afraid of marketing, publicity stunts and was honestly humble to his huge user base where Bloomin' despised marketing and wanted to grow "organically".

Growing organically isn't possible. You need to do something, you need to bot and break rules on twitch, you need to ask for publicity, you need to make friends with other streamers. Playing a game and being funny doesn't cut it anymore

<comment><USER11> Yeah. Speaking as someone who ran a rather large fansite about NIN in the 2000s (the entity now basically exists as a Twitter account), you really cannot just "grow organically" on today's internet. I like to tell people I have a marketing allergy. Self-promotion feels gross. The "if you build it, they will come" mantra from Field of Dreams is not applicable to a world where so much more content is being created than can possibly be consumed. But I realize that if I want something that I'm doing to gain any traction at all, I have to get other people talking about it, and that there are pretty well established ways of making that happen.

When the internet was a smaller space occupied primarily by nerdy types, you could make something interesting and by the nature of the medium, a lot of people found it. You thought you really hit it big if you made Slashdot, but getting featured on television took it to a whole different level. (For example: The Dancing Baby) You didn't need to have a face or a personality - your content actually could speak for itself. But even back then, taking those extra steps usually didn't hurt, either.

Now, the internet is full of professionals of all stripes, and that means you're fighting for attention against people or entities who have a budget for marketing and PR. I can take the most beautiful photos in the world and put them on Instagram, but if I'm not actively marketing that account, no one will ever see them. Meanwhile, some dope with a fresh set of credit cards rents a Lamborghini for a photo shoot, buys batches of followers, and that will grow a following, and maybe he'll get a free night at a posh hotel out of it.

Maybe Bloomin' just does it for the love of it. Maybe Markipler has been able to quit their job and make YouTube their profession. I bet both of them wish they had aspects of the other's experiences. As much exposure as I got to being a small-beans niche internet 'celebrity' (like, on the level of local weatherman), I wouldn't wish fame on my worst enemy.

<comment><USER12> The question is what can we do about it? Are we stuck in the game of attention engineering forever?

<comment><USER13> >Are we stuck in the game of attention engineering forever?

More or less. As the content generated exceeds limits of human attention, it is our ability to pay attention that is scarce and much sought after. And I don't see that changing anytime soon.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Very interesting article. I have nothing substantial to add I just want to point out how "cyberpunky" the lives of some people have become. Twenty years ago this would have fit right into the storyline of a dystopian cyberpunk novel about poor streamers who spend all day in front of a computer screen trying to become the most popular "gamer in the online gaming community".

<comment><USER15> It's a story as old as the world: trying to get noticed while doing essentially the same thing as the successful kids, but lacking that essential element of luck or genetics, that last second on the chronometer, that "in" preexisting social circle.

It's the life of all those trying to enter into high risk, highly coveted careers that afford celebrity: authorship, sports, politics, music or film. The field might be changing but the game remains the same: humans mostly value what other humans happen to value, the other 99.99% comparable but unknown products are simply discarded.

<comment><USER16> The problem is trying to do the exact same thing as someone else. There has never been a business or method of making money in the history of capitalism that has survived by being an exact copy of another business or method. Even businesses with the same model as a bigger one, eg: small vs large car repair businesses, are able to function by having a different pricing point, location, etc. No one seems to understand that this applies to your job too. You're never going to be as successful as someone else by doing the exact same thing as them, because they got there first. Find your niche.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> You could replace this title with "Programmers who spend years creating a SAAS app that no one uses" and it would be the same article.

All of these streamers who are bothered by not having an audience seem to have started for the wrong reasons. If all they care about are subscribers and viewers, then you're going to get really burnt out when that doesn't happen. Most of the popular streamers who I've come across do it because they enjoy it.

The same can be said for the people who create successful SAAS apps. It's a mix of enjoying what they do, combined with making something that no one else has yet. It's not to get rich quick.

<comment><USER18> It would be even simpler to replace it with "Bloggers who have no audience". There are countless blogs out there and more everyday and few if any ever gain traction.

However we must see it also from the small business perspective. How many start a business versus how many succeed? I remember when coffee shops, cupcake shops, and more, were the fad, and they vanish with regularity.

<comment><USER17> Yes for sure, right after I posted that reply I thought about blogging too. It definitely is the same story.

It took me almost a year of regular blogging before I got some type of readership on my site, and even today, 3 years later, I wouldn't consider it popular. My intent was never to get make money on the site. It was to create documentation for myself (and anyone else who wants to follow along).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I too have met kids who say they want to be a Youtuber or Twitch streamer when they grow up. It makes me sad.

I love watching Twitch, and watch 5-7 gamers regularly (almost every night). From what I can tell, most of them:

\- Are in their mid-20's to early 30's.

\- Live with their parents.

\- Make just enough from Youtube/Twitch/Patreon/merch to fund their gaming rigs, buy new games, buy their own food, and maybe pay for an upgraded internet connection.

These are people who in some cases have hundreds of thousands of followers on Youtube and each Twitch stream attracts over two thousand viewers. It's not a good way to make a living.

I've asked several of them if they make a full-time living (via Twitch chat), and they've acknowledged the question, but didn't seem to want to really answer it.

A couple of them even make a joke out of it every time their sibling starts torrenting and it slows down their network connection.

If I ever have a kid, I'll support their dream of becoming one of these people. And I'll also tell them they're not living in my house past the age of 18. Figure out a way to make money while doing what you love.

<comment><USER20> > and each Twitch stream attracts over two thousand viewers. It's not a good > way to make a living.

To contrast with that, I know twitch streamers whose channel averages out at around 300 viewers a time, and who make a very comfortable living. Having a properly run channel that encourages donations, cash and bits, is a huge part of it.

I've seen streamers who pull an easy $200 a day in donations. Add in 500 or so subs, and it isn't too hard to break 6k a month. Not enough to live in the Bay Area, but a really nice salary in most of the country.

<comment><USER21> You also have to consider that the average length of a "day" for a popular Twitch streamer is 10-12 hours.

And that those streamers have to stream 6-7 days a week to maintain their audience.

Not worth it, honestly.

<comment><USER20> > You also have to consider that the average length of a "day" for a popular > Twitch streamer is 10-12 hours.

carlsagan42 streams once a week for ~4 hours, and pulls in a couple thousand viewers at min, at 6pm on a Saturday.

His secret? He is super entertaining, hands down one of the funniest people and most entertaining people to watch on twitch. His YT videos of his streams then get a few hundred thousand more views on top of that. But yes he is an anomaly, in that he is really damn good at both game play and also entertaining.

Most streamers don't have that killer combo, so they have to work a lot harder.

Plenty of streamers are 9am-5pm, 8am-4pm, or 11am-7pm. Heck I know successful who are 8pm-midnight.

I'd argue that it really depends on the stream and the community. Streamers that build a super strong community can get away with shorter streamers and smaller viewer bases. They won't be pulling in millions, but they can get a steady income stream from it.

My overall point is that streaming is a valid career for people who have the right skills. The barrier to getting started is low, but the barrier to doing to an open mic stand-up is also low. The difference is there aren't a bunch of news articles about people flocking to open-mic nights, although I suspect on any given night there are a thousand or so people doing open mic in the US alone! But there is also a cultural realization that most people shouldn't quit their job, drop out of school, and start practicing their comedy routine 8 hours a day.

<comment><USER21> You can't really compare extreme outliers against the norm. Very few Twitch streamers can have that kind of community you're talking about. I would wager low double digits.

<comment><USER20> > I would wager low double digits.

I know of more than half a dozen who are just Super Mario Maker streamers.

I know, my pure happenstance, of two cooking streamers who have built communities.

I think low double digits is a low ball estimate. There are more successful retro gaming streamers than that, I have no idea what the contemporary game twitch scene is like.

No one ever talks about 300 viewer streamers, they make for lousy news stories. Drama with super successful streamers, and articles like this one that talk about failure at the bottom.

Someone working 9-5, 40 hours a week, pulling in 40-50k a year isn't a news story.

<comment><USER21> Few (if any) of those streamers are making a living wage off of just their few hours/week streaming.

It may be part of their income but not all of their income.

If you run the numbers on what's needed to make ~$1500/wk off of 4 hours/week of streaming, it doesn't paint the picture that you are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I was working from home for about 1.5 years. My daily contact was a morning phone call with the others on the team. Having a twitch stream open for 8+ hours in the background works really well for me as its more like having a radio on then a TV. Its not that you are sitting there watching every thing that the streamer is doing. You are more listening and glancing at it once in a while.

A second aspect that i really enjoy in relation to twitch streams is the chat community and the interaction you can have live with the streamer. Its basically a IRC chat channel that the streamer is the owner of. So even when the stream is offline, you can hang around chatting with friends that you make online. It really remind me of my old mIRC days. Its all about finding a community that you enjoy, not all stream chats are the same. Some can be quite toxic but most streamers have Mods that ban people quickly for hate speech etc.

There are also people that are coding on twitch these days, and i really enjoy having one of those streams open while coding myself. Whenever i get stuck on something, or am thinking about an issue / design I like watching what the streamer is coding for a few min. It tends to help me work out the problems quicker and the designs are normally better thought out.

</comment><comment><USER23> Per Twitch's stream analytics, on one of my data science programming streams on Twitch the majority of my viewers came from the Explore page, under the relatively-less-popular Programming category.

I wonder if there's a bit of game theory in play where it's impossible to be discovered when playing a megapopular game like Overwatch/Fortnite, and it's more advantageous to play relatively more obscure games. It wouldn't be the first time working the long-tail has been effective.

<comment><USER24> Reading this made me curious. I'll probably check out the programming category tonight if I have time. How is the quality of those programming streams? What goes on in them? Do the streamers answer questions about techniques, etc? Is it just shoptalk/circlejerking?

I'm usually a self-starter on learning things, but I can lose interest quickly if I don't get some sort of feedback or have someone to ask questions. MOOCs, forums, etc are a waste of time for me in most cases; too slow and impersonal. And now that I think about it Twitch/streaming would probably be a better suited learning medium for me.

<comment><USER25> The quality is poor. It's mostly gamer streamers trying out something different. They're usually going through a udacity course or hacking a crud web application.

There is lot of blindly looking at the screen, reading tutorials or getting frustrated with compilation errors.

They do not like to be helped.

<comment><USER26> I think this is an unfair characterization, there are some REALLY good programmers, some new programmers, and people at all stages of their programming journey.

A lot are doing game programming, I'm less interested in this, but some are very interesting. For instance...

[https://www.twitch.tv/jessicamak](https://www.twitch.tv/jessicamak)

Really interesting what she does, and an insane attention to detail.

A HNer I watch when he codes... he does an interesting mix of stuff and has 30+ years of experience

[https://www.twitch.tv/nybblesio](https://www.twitch.tv/nybblesio)

there's people coding games with robotic bananas

[https://www.twitch.tv/uselessduckcompany/videos/all](https://www.twitch.tv/uselessduckcompany/videos/all)

.NET devs

[https://www.twitch.tv/csharpfritz](https://www.twitch.tv/csharpfritz)

who also has coding streams with Microsoft Devs

and numerous others doing embedded development, web development, backend dev, security, crypto, Rust, Lisp, C++, F#, Vimers, IDEers, VSCoders, Emacers.... all sorts.

who

<comment><USER25> My comment was based on random visits to /programming and checking out what people were doing.

I didn't know of the streamers you mentioned, but I'd be sure to check them out.

Looking forward to being wrong on this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Normally, when I do play videogames, it's a private sort of thing between myself and my game system.

I just recently ran across some twitch channels via youtube because I was looking for some help with some Dark Souls III content.

It's like a whole different universe with people who live and breath these games every waking moment. I found it very interesting to see that it's a whole way of life with this many people. Now I'm tempted to watch some of these twitch broadcasters even though I'm not interested in the games that they're playing.

<comment><USER28> Come watch some DS3 speedruns and travel even further down the rabbit hole of people who know everything about the game to an absolutely obsessive degree and are insanely good at playing it. It's not for everyone mind you, but I find it hugely entertaining if you take the time to appreciate it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I am a regular of a low viewer count stream, choaslegionkaeru, who is pretty good and talkative. He rarely gets past 10 streamers, and his style isn't for everyone and I don't think he'll ever be a massive success, but I enjoy watching and interacting with him.

I've tuned into other low viewer streams, and a lot of them are just bad. The gameplay is bad, and the streamer isn't entertaining. A successful streamer needs one or the other, either be one of the top in the world for the game you are playing, or be super entertaining to listen to. For the later, the game itself is more of a set piece around a comedy bit.

<comment><USER29> This sounds like the twitter Financial Independence blogging community.

People with 0 new advice, rehashing the same old credit card rewards and budgeting advice.

Its so terrible that there are people claiming 'frugal ways to eat' and claim 50$/week per person for food is frugal. A single google search would tell you that under 30$/week is a good goal.

This drives me crazy because we are eating for 20$/week and actually put hundreds of hours into studying this.

In the end, my website gets hundreds of viewers a day, their blogs arent ranked on alexa.

<comment><USER30> This is tangential, but what's a good starting point for "frugal ways to eat"? I'm not even remotely interested in getting down to $30/week, but my current budget is "not to exceed" $30/ _day_ , and I probably average around $20/day, and I generally cook at least one meal per day at home.

Even in a week where I only at food cooked at home I can't imagine getting under $70/week. I'm curious what I would have to give up to get to $50, much less $30.

<comment><USER31> Most food has 200-600 calories per pound, so you need 4-6 pounds of food per day. (This lines up with Google search.) Call it 35 pounds per week. Therefore, you need to spend an average of $1.50/lb to hit $50/week. Bananas and canned tomatoes or beans are well under $1. Pasta and bread are $1. You definitely don't have to give up all TV dinners or meat, you can eat pretty normal.

<comment><USER30> That does give me some food for thought. To take an example I cook regularly, the absolute cheapest tomatoes are a bit under $1.50/lb, but San Marzano tomatoes are more like $3/lb, and worth every penny. Then, if you're making a basic pasta marinara, add garlic, thyme, oregano, maybe some pepper flakes, olive oil... No one thing is expensive, but it adds up. Then, if you really want to kick it up a notch in the cost department, add some fresh thyme and basil. Now you're at something like $4-5/lb for something that is nutritionally very similar to the $1.50/lb version, but damn is it ever going to taste better.

I guess to some extent I'm asking to have my cake and eat it too. It just seems like you have to give up most meat and a lot of flavor to hit $50/week or lower.

<comment><USER32> You can grow basil and thyme! We have some and we live in an apartment with east-west windows and it's still plenty of herb.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> In the far future when food, shelter, and other necessities are basically free, attention will be the last valuable commodity. There will always be a scarcity of attention.

<comment><USER34> Makes one imagine a very different Star Trek universe.

<comment><USER35> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Callister](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Callister)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Twitch isn't just about playing games. There's a growing community of people like myself who use the platform to teach people how to write software. In my case as an opensource maintainer I use it as a way to break down opensource and introduce people to what the role entails.

Follow me at [https://twitch.tv/geoffreyhuntley](https://twitch.tv/geoffreyhuntley) and [https://youtube.com/c/geoffreyhuntley](https://youtube.com/c/geoffreyhuntley) and [https://twitter.com/geoffreyhuntley](https://twitter.com/geoffreyhuntley)

<comment><USER37> Yes. There is a contest that exists called "Ludum Dare" where a theme is announced, and within 2-3 days people have to design a video game fitting that theme.

One person who took up the challenge was Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson ( [https://www.twitch.tv/videos/38122415](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/38122415) ). You see him coding for 11 hours or so, and at some points (like in the beginning) he talks about what his gameplan for coding the project are. Throughout you see a screen share of him coding, or drawing a tile map, or the like. It's an interesting thing if you want to see how a very successful game programmer that had to put a finished game together within 2-3 days would go about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> > Despite the sometimes psychologically taxing nature of trying to get noticed > on Twitch, some continue to persevere despite the cold indictment of the > zero.

Maybe I'm advocating a bit of a dark pattern here, but couldn't Twitch keep streamers engaged by seeding streams with a few fake AI bots as viewers? This seems like it might be a little of the Empty Restaurant Effect. People hesitate to go into a restaurant if there's nobody else eating there. So provide a few fake diners.

<comment><USER39> Most people who are serious about doing the Twitch thing, even if it's just a serious hobby, pretty shamelessly spoof viewers. Even if you don't want to be dishonest about it, it is in some ways unavoidable. Have the stream open while you're on to make sure that everything's working? That's one viewer. We do group streams and people cycle in and out, so we keep a laptop with the stream open outside the recording room; that's another. People open it on a phone to check chat, that's another.

<comment><USER40> There's a big difference between that and viewbotting, though.

<comment><USER39> Depends on how many phones and computers you've got around.

Plenty of people also pay to outsource it, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> So, I'm just going to say this, even though probably everyone already knows it: there are way, way more people looking to make a living off of producing content (Youtube, Twitch, etc.) for the internet, than there are people thinking, "If only there were more content on the Internet, I would pay some money or put up with some ads for that." There's nothing wrong with putting it out there if you want to, but expecting any kind of financial reward or other validation from the size of your audience seems like injecting yourself into a pretty vicious zero-sum game.

<comment><USER42> I suspect their are far more viewers than people making content. The issue is 1 or even 10 viewers is no where near enough to support a content creator.

<comment><USER43> I find it fascinating that the distribution of resources is almost always NON- LINEAR.

Take capital wealth. Money. That is a heavily non-linear distribution.

Twitch is no different. If you use viewers as a proxy for wealth, it's fascinating that even that proxy behaves in a non-linear way.

I happen to have heard some interesting behavioral theories about why resources distribute in that manner. I'm always curious about what other people think.

<comment><USER41> I agree that the "natural" result will always be something along the lines of a Pareto distribution. That's bad news for my libertarian instincts, because I think it means that, in the absence of any mechanism to (partially) flatten this distribution back out, we inevitably see power accumulate more and more in the hands of fewer and fewer. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> The way people use Twitch makes little sense to me. It might have to do with some age gap, but it doesn't seem like 10-15 years should really make this big of a disconnect. When I think of gaming it is strictly about playing for fun and engaging with friends in a kind of hanging out in a living room together way.

Maybe that is how all twitch channels start off, but once you hit some threshold where the streamer can no longer engage with the audience in any personable way and it becomes more of a job it is no longer appealing to me. It is even as far as off-putting to where I'd avoid it and those kinds of communities.

I occasionally stream to 0-3 people for the fun of it and to talk to people as if we were in a room together as that is more what gaming is to me. It seems that I'm in the very small minority these days though.

<comment><USER45> _> it is strictly about playing for fun and engaging with friends in a kind of hanging out in a living room together way._

For some, Twitch is to playing games as talk shows are to conversation with friends. It gives people a fraction of the mental reward of social interaction without any of the effort or risk of actual social interaction.

It's like a junk food snack for the social center of your brain. I definitely see the appeal and find myself getting sucked into that way of satisfying my need for human contact sometimes, but it ultimately always leaves me unsatisfied in the long run.

For others, I think Twitch is just watching a TV show that happens to be a game. They just want to passively experience the narrative of the game without the effort of playing. Or perhaps they want the meta-narrative of watching the player interact with the game.

<comment><USER44> Playing a game is already an effortless activity that is hard to believe people are even unwilling to do that. I can maybe understand if you couldn't afford it or didn't want to afford it, but there are countless recordings of any video game on youtube without commentary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I wonder how much of the desire for kids to stream has to do with the potential scale. The bar to entry is low, but if you take off, then you're making six figures a month. Once upon a time, mobile apps had that kind of reputation. Before that, it was blogs. Before that, websites.

There always seems to be a gold rush whenever a market becomes democratized. The gold rush seems to end once organic acquisition is no longer viable. I'm curious if that follows some static cost-per-user marketing dollar amount across all of these trends.

</comment><comment><USER47> It would be great to have more programmers streaming their open-source work on Twitch. There's so much informal knowledge out there which can be learned by just watching experts at work.

<comment><USER48> I've toyed with having a "Watch me Linux" stream where chat shouts out things they want to know about Linux and I show them / help people with their Linux problems.

<comment><USER49> I'd like to do some infrastructure streams where I play around with things like my Kubernetes cluster, unfortunately it seems like a pretty bad idea to livestream configuration of something that is connected to the internet.

<comment><USER48> I was going to set up a VirtualBox virtual network disconnected from the Internet to do this - perhaps only allowing HTTPS to a Debian/Ubuntu mirror if I need to install packages. You could do something similar for your Kubernetes cluster.

I was also considering a cheap, pay-by-the hour VPS that I could just destroy after the stream.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I streamed myself programming several times. Just having to narrate what I am doing kept me in focus. As a programmer, it is fairly hard to get "in the zone" and stay there, especially when there are rare interruptions. Streaming helped me keep chugging along creating more and more code and TDD without falling to the seduction of visiting social news sites.

What I am saying, is that I was streaming for myself mostly. Got lots of value from it. It didn't really matter if there were viewers or not.

<comment><USER51> I actually found myself doing somewhat similar when playing digital card games like Magic: The Gathering online and Shadowverse: I would "think out loud" and talk through the lines I was considering them ("Hmm, if I attack like this, then he probably double blocks me, so I don't want to do that...") and also audibly reacting to things that were happening in the game ("...oh, I totally didn't expect that. I got greedy, and my opponent was in a position to punish me. I should have been playing more conservatively.") Whenever I do this, it really forces me to stop playing on "auto-pilot" and actually think about the lines I'm taking, and also better internalize the lessons I'm learning through experience.

The difference is that I don't actually stream myself as I'm doing this: I talk the same way a streamer would talk, but the walls of my home office are the only audience. I actually kind of "learned" this approach from watching Magic: The Gathering Youtubers and streamers, who do the "thinking out loud" approach as a way of teaching strategy, but one of the lessons I picked up is that in the process of thinking out loud, these players sometimes seem to talk themselves out of making inadvisable plays, so I decided to try it for myself, minus the audience, and found that it often caused me to play better and learn better. (Of course, this "skill" doesn't really translate over quite as well to tournament Magic when you're sitting across a table from your opponent, but playing better in online practice often translates into playing better in a tournament setting.)

Third-hand story: friend of friend has a nephew who spends a lot of time playing Minecraft (grade school age), and as he explores the world, he narrates everything he does in a calm British accent. It's kind of surreal that this genre of Youtube videos (Mincraft Let's Plays by Englishmen speaking with a David Attenborough-like cadence) has taught a generation of kids that _this_ is how people play Minecraft. It reminds me a bit of kids I've seen in youth sports leagues who sometimes make a big show of stomping off in a huff or yelling a soft expletive like "Darn!" when something doesn't go their way, not because they're actually frustrated or invested in the outcome of the game, but because they're mimicking the kind of behavior they've seen from professional athletes on TV. (That's not to say that there aren't kids who get genuinely frustrated during these games, but the more time I spend observing kids in "organized recreation," the more I come to realize just how much of their behavior is performative.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> The important thing is enjoying the game and having fun. The number of people watching the stream shouldn't have a negative impact on that.

Lots of streamers seem to approach video games like they're some kind of full time job. They play games, stream the footage then expect thousands of dollars to start coming in every month. Of course the vast majority of them are going to end up frustrated. These people seem to be doing it solely for the money. I get the impression they wouldn't be playing anything if the potential to monetize their "fun time" didn't exist. I've seen _successful_ youtubers force themselves to play games they don't like because of their fanbase, all while complaining about how the game sucks and sometimes even rage quitting. It's cringeworthy.

Why not play the games for the fun of it? It's easier to stream if one starts with that mindset. It costs nothing to stream gaming sessions, so they lose nothing if if nothing comes of it. Even if there's no audience, there are advantages: the stream can be recorded and archived, giving the streamer video footage of great moments they can look back on. People are gonna play games anyway, they might as well stream it.

<comment><USER53> It depends what the stream is for them. If someone is streaming a game they would be playing anyway in their spare time they probably don't care too much. If someone sees it as their ticket out of a job/career they hate I can see where the frustration would come from.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I stream my daily programming routine on Twitch. The key, for me, is exactly this: it's _my_ routine. I don't tailor my routine for Twitch, beyond interacting with my audience.

With that said, since starting at the beginning of 2018, I've done better than I expected. I have 1300+ followers on Twitch with decent monthly growth. My daily average viewership numbers are hovering around 40. The first month was an imposition while I fought with the mechanics of running a stream and programming. Now I don't even notice. I talk to myself regardless, so I figured I might as well entertain some folks while I do it. :)

I will never make any real money streaming. I knew that going in. But I am meeting a lot of nice people and the old man in me wants to help the youngsters. If I can save one person a few hassles on their journey, it's worth it.

Finally, I find YouTube a much harder nut to crack. My channel has seen slow and consistent growth, but slow is the operative word here. Very, very slow. Long form content does not seem to do well. For YouTube, videos <= 15min appears to be the sweet spot.

<comment><USER55> What kind of programming do you stream? Is it tutorials or work related?

I would always be worried that someone would catch a glimpse of a private key or API secret, how do you deal with that?

<comment><USER54> I like to work on low-level projects. I've streamed x86 and ARM64 assembly language, C and C++, and Rust projects.

At the moment, I'm working on a compiler for a programming language I call Basecode.

With one exception -- that I had to terminate for other reasons -- I stream only open source projects that I have complete ownership over. I don't typically have to worry about exposing keys or passwords.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Isn't this similar to posting on SoundCloud with no specific intent or expectation? Publishing content is an easy way to make it available on a bunch of devices, so if you're not concerned with outcomes then what's the difference? Need to read the article I guess.

Edit: OK, some people expect to attract a following and are having trouble:

> attracts over two million broadcasters every month ... Discoverability is an > issue

No kidding.

</comment><comment><USER57> Most people are not interesting enough to watch play a video game.

Which means, most people should NOT be doing this. Or at least doing it with the expectation that people will watch them.

You have to be something that sets you apart. Super good, super funny, or entertaining. Just playing a game and making dick jokes isn't interesting or funny.

<comment><USER58> I think you're underestimating the power of good dick... jokes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> I can't help but wonder why people in this position don't give up earlier. It sounds like you need quite a bit of the right sort of self-promotion to get off the ground floor. Only once you've got enough of an audience will word-of- mouth start working for you.

<comment><USER60> You are playing video games anyways, why not hit "Start Streaming" and if something really cool happens you can highlight it and download it.

This only works if you have a good Internet connection.

<comment><USER61> I'm fairly new to Twitch, and I do this. It didn't hit me until I had decided to take a break and play off-stream, and then something really cool happened, and it made me kinda sad that I didn't have a record of it. I would have had I been streaming...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> every year i participate in the extra life streamathon fundraiser. i usually get a few viewers here and there but for the most part it's just me the whole time. the concept of streaming for nobody is a little disheartening, especially if you're narrating to yourself, but when people come in and i interact for a few minutes it's a lot of fun. i'm looking forward to it next year for sure.

<comment><USER39> I run a decent-sized Extra Life event (not just me, but friends and usually on-location--one of my sidelines is live video production). It helps to do it with other people. Grab friends, find a couch. If you're having fun live, you'll retain the people who do bounce by.

Our first year we raised $3500, our second $6500. We didn't really try that hard--just a little, and I mean a little, marketing (and some Boston-local guests, but those were fairly small bumps in viewership). Last time around we had a minimum of five viewers who were not us/our program feed/etc. even at like 4AM because we kept turning the crank with Twitter, Facebook, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> People who are amazing do grow organically, with just a little PR work. People who are fun to watch turn random introductions into an audience.

You get constant growth for free with <pick your promotion channel here>.... As long as your content is converting watchers to subscribers a low constant growth is plenty to seed the network.

Streamers are not "doing simple things to build their audience" because they don't really want an audience: they want validation. Whatever trickle of exposure they get is enough to signal to them that they're not converting people because they're not winning anyone over. You don't need a lot of data points for that to become very clear.

The only way to break out of that is experimentation. And a lot of streamers aren't really.

</comment><comment><USER64> Isn't it strange to think that on one hand we worry that people are spying on us, on the other hand we are kind of desperate for an audience?

</comment><comment><USER65> Myself I stream to archive my gameplay. It's just good to look back some moments and some interactions later so if I record it then why not broadcast it too? I guess I fall in the same situation because I only have 1-2 viewers.

<comment><USER66> If you're streaming as archiving (which I also do), YouTube is simpler since it automatically keeps all of your VODs without you needing to explicitly save each one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> This article misunderstands or at least downplays the motivations of most of the smaller streamers on Twitch. On HN a good analogy would be the startup scene, where plenty of startups are made out of passion and a desire to solve a need in the community. Streamers are like these small startups, a lot of them set out to make money but many are content with just the experience, similar to a side project. I often browse small 1-4 viewer streams just to see what's happening and you can sometimes find interesting and unique people who are just there for the fun of it.

</comment><comment><USER68> So many kids these days want to be Twitch streamers. I think it's the gamer version of wanting to grow up to be a NFL/NBA/MLB/etc. player.

<comment><USER16> They have e-sports you know. The gamer version of wanting to grow up to be a pro athlete would literally be becoming a pro e-sports athlete in dota or something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> How many of these streamers are just "I enjoy this game" and stream for the hell of it?

Surely a bunch of the people with zero/few followers just don't care?

<comment><USER70> Its a learning experience for them as well. They'll get better at public performance much like practising a speech alone at your house.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> Are these not people who are just deluding themselves that they are doing it out of love, when all they want to do is be famous?

<comment><USER72> Depends. I'd say for example that the primitive technology channel does it out of love. So there are people like that, even if the wast majority does it because let's be honest a career in video gaming sounds great. But the thing is those are also the least likely to attract viewers.

Top spots nowadays are claimed by sponsored players anyway and making it as an amateur is nightmarish difficult. Fame grows exponentially because once a talent emerges companies are quick to sign it up and after that they provide most of the promotion for their talent to grow.

<comment><USER71> But there is a way for the primitive technology channel to be monetized. For him to gain recognition, as opposed to him just building his wooden houses in isolation. Without anyone knowing. It is not as if he's unaware of people making millions off of youtube(or being famous, whatever), or the internet. We can't separate youtube no matter how "primitive" the action being filmed is. He may be doing it out of pure love, but if it was true love, why does he feel the need to film it? To help others? Why do any of us need to know how to do this, and how does a video help? He most likely got good at building a log house from building hundreds of shitty log houses from before.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> Like many (many many many) people, I stream. I don't get a ton of viewers, but I very rarely get 0. Here are the "magic" tricks I use: \- First trick: I didn't start alone. I belong to a small group of friends that were already involved in amateur video productions on YouTube, and had some other friends hanging out and enjoying our videos. We started a twitch channel as a group a established a schedule: 90% of the time, when a member of our group launches a stream, the other members watch and interact on the chat. And so do some of or friends (not 90% of the time though, but it's all right). \- Second trick: we associated ourselves with another streaming structure. We quit a while ago because we both evolved toward different directions, but in our time there we met other streamers, because very good friends with some of them and became part of their community... and they became part of our's as well! We do occasionally organize some common twitch events with them. Not because it might bring us some viewers, but because we like playing with them. \- Third trick: since we are a group, it is very easy for us to keep an active presence on tweeter and facebook. When something really funny happens on our live- stream, there is usually someone available to do a clip and publish it. \- Last trick: we all have jobs, we all have lives. We don't rely on twitch to get revenue nor to get social interaction. In other words: if we fail on twitch, we'll be quite all right.

When we stream we talk, play and have a ton of fun... and sometimes a random viewer discovers us! And when we're lucky, he/she decides to become a regular. While that's nice, it doesn't really matter: we're doing it out of passion, not for the numbers. If success finally comes, good. If boredom comes before, we'll just stop and move on.

(note: I won't post our channel name here, it isn't the point of this post. Besides, we are french, and it turns out that most people in this strange world don't speak french)

</comment><comment><USER74> > _"It's kind of exhausting playing to an empty room day in and day out with > no results," one Redditor wrote on a now-deleted thread on r /Twitch._

Maybe you should play for the game, like gamers did since the dawn of ...well, Space Invaders and Pacman, and not for the audience.

</comment><comment><USER75> Kind of remind me of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Merv_Griffin_Show_(Seinfel...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Merv_Griffin_Show_\(Seinfeld\))

</comment><comment><USER76> I don't see the issue with that. We won't complain when our kids try to make a movie no one will really see, how is this creative process different?

</comment><comment><USER77> I can relate to this, two weeks ago I started streaming from my Xbox and I've been enjoying 1-2 viewers at the time, sometimes 4 when I post the link to Facebook. To me 1-2 viewers is a lot, of course I play a game no one is playing: Battlefield Hardline.

The twitch channel for Battlefield Hardline has 3 streamers tops on weekends and I happen to be one of them. I bet I'd be getting zero viewers if I was playing Fortnite.

</comment><comment><USER78> I'll share my personal use of twitch streams. I really enjoy AOE2. The game might be nearing its second decade, but its very enjoyable for me to watch personally. I will use youtube-dl to grab past broadcasts and play the games back at 1.5x to 2x speed. I can easily skip through parts I find uninteresting. I'll generally watch one or two games per day, but my time commitment is under 30mins.

<comment><USER79> Are they playing against other humans? I got AOE2 HD a couple months ago and it's been my go-to game this summer. But I haven't thought of looking on twitch or for multiplayer online.

<comment><USER78> Yes, there is quite the competitive scene. And many streamers on twitch. However, most of the competitive games are played on Voobly. There are guides out there about playing AOE2HD on Voobly.

There is a 60k tournament underway. Tiny compared to other games, but respectable considering the age of this game.

The game's audience is mainly international. Large player bases in china, Vietnam, EU, and south america. The community can mainly be found at aoezone.net. There is a smaller community also on reddit.com/r/aoe2

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> Sometimes they make a big break though, and they would've been gaming anyways. Seems like risk adjusted reward is extremely favorable.

</comment><comment><USER81> To anyone wondering why people spend time watching people play video games: billions of people spend time watching people play sports.

<comment><USER82> I don't get those people either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> Undergoing a similar type vibe with a recently set up website. Barely has content on it so not expecting much, but the low hit-count isn't exactly encouraging & motivating towards putting more content in place.

Must be far worse for streamers - that's a hell of a lot more personal.

</comment><comment><USER84> There should be a much better way to find/locate the "bottom" bucket streamers, and get them up in front of people's faces.

Sorting by "viewers" is just wrong, lets the rich grow richer...

</comment><comment><USER85> > "According to people who have gone through it, lacking an audience is one of > the most demoralizing things you can experience online."

Um, what about bullying, doxxing, hacking, identify theft, etc?

<comment><USER86> I'd assume that the people who are getting zero viewers aren't generally the same people getting bullied, doxxed, hacked, identity-thefted, and so on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> It would sound absurd to broadcast to zero audience, but they're not simply broadcasting they're cultivating presence on the platform and honing their skills towards that end.

</comment><comment><USER88> like everything else in 2018, live-streaming is overhyped and competes with everything else - work, sleep, netflix, social etc. I also don't think the focus on gaming / live streaming is enough of a differntiator - youtube does livestreams just fine, Facebook is catching up and I think youtube/alphabet have better economies of scale (with their own cloud infra, additional ad revenue etc) and more tightly integrated ecosystem (preinstalled youtube on Android etc.

</comment><comment><USER89> there are hundreds of these dudes. I have one followed that I see streaming all the time with 1 viewer which is probably himself. He's on social aid or something in Danemark.

</comment><comment><USER90> Why not blog tips and tricks about the game, or create Youtube How To videos to build an audience in the first place?

The best way to create an audience out of nothing is still by far a blog.

</comment><comment><USER91> Amazed nobody referenced Pareto's principle (80/20) rule.

20% of the streamers get 80% of the viewers.

</comment><comment><USER92> Reminds me of IRC channels, except located around a nexus of a specific micro- celebrity.

</comment><comment><USER93> rocket league is more entertaining to watch than any other sport

</comment><comment><USER94> Game development streams on Twitch are absolutely addictive.

</comment><comment><USER95> Ok, post your streams and I'll watch a few minutes.

</comment><comment><USER96> The streams I have watched so far are more like extemporaneous comedy shows, with the game as either background noise, or providing something for the hosts to riff on.

I'm sure that for many the game is the actual point, but for me if the hosts aren't entertaining personalities in themselves I wouldn't be interested in watching just for the game.

</comment><comment><USER97> is there a way to see which games people want to watch and compare that to your library and get a suggestion?

</comment><comment><USER98> Nipl</comment>


What Killed Best Buy?  Not Amazon, Apple. - <AUTHOR> http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/32913.html

<comment><USER2> Their sales people _used_ to be pushy when they were all on commission, this is no longer the case though and they're actually too tame now to the point it's clear they just don't care.

If I was a brick and mortar and wanted to distinguish myself with online I'd look towards my people as the number one differentiator and providing the best customer experience possible. If Best Buy (and other traditional stores) want to survive they should do whatever it takes to give the best user experience and bend over backwards to show they care about relational selling and maintaining their customers longterm.

Customer experience doesn't just involve having nice reps that are pleasant to interact with but they should also be knowledgeable on the products they're selling - for this to work commissions and/or increased pay would be necessary and would be a short-time expense for a longtime payout with customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Personally, I still get a little excited walking into a Best Buy but by the time I'm a few feet in I'm immediately frustrated (and generally a little angry) after my interactions with the reps.

<comment><USER3> > Their sales people used to be pushy when they were all on commission. . .

And they still are, for the things they still earn commission on. It's amazing how pushy I've had people in blue polo shirts get about trying to sell me extended warranties.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In my opinion, Best Buy killed themselves. Their prices are high, their salespeople are pushy, and their return policy is an absolute nightmare.

<comment><USER5> Yup. In short, incompetent and evil.

Not a good combination for success.</comment></comment>


Ask HN to Discuss: Privacy in the new modern world - <AUTHOR>

What I found more fascinating than the cute little challenge jacquesm proposed was the very content of onetimetoken's post ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1197027 ).<p>He's articulated rather well the practical demise of privacy. Is it perhaps time for a fundamention revision of privacy itself? In this day and age, where do we draw the line? Identity management is a task that only the technically-minded can successfully pull off, and 'being quiet' isn't a very good alternative either. <comment><USER2> I've actually commented on the original post you've mentioned, but I'll put it here again.

I am not playing the devil's advocate here, but I think that as the internet matures it is the way to go.

Imagine buying groceries on Safeway. People does not seem to have trouble with that. However if a PE/police/ex-GF/stalker come there and wanted to track you down, they could. The cashier would remembered what you are like. The security would point out what you wore. Fellow shoppers can be interogated for your presence. And people do not have any problem with that.

Now, why can't I track a flamer on the message board, neo-nazis on twitter, hate-sayers on IRCs, perverts on dating sites, and paedophiles on MMORPGs?

Animosity does make the internet go round, but it also encourages stupid and illegal behaviour. It also destroys the credibility of the web as a trusted source of information, which is why you can't quote random sites or rants for an academic paper.

I believe the future of the internet is one which identity is not publicly shown, but publicly managed. We'll finally be able to find out which company edited their own Wikipedia article.</comment>


Show HN: CSSStunts.com – Weekly CSS hacks - <AUTHOR> https://www.cssstunts.com <comment><USER2> Great work. Very impressive stuff.

The link to the company website is broken due to a typo [http://www.worskhape.io](http://www.worskhape.io) should be [http://www.worskhape.io](http://www.worskhape.io) I guess.</comment>


Wikirank: New project from Jeff Veen and Co. - <AUTHOR> http://wikirank.com/

<comment><USER2> Interesting stuff. I'm not sure why, but Erlang and Scheme show strong periodic effects with a wavelength of about 1 month [1]. Looking around, I see the effect in other articles to some degree, but nowhere near as severe as these.

[1]<http://wikirank.com/en/Erlang,Scheme#size=3>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Jeff Veen (formerly of Measure Map and Google) and Small Batch, Inc., with some help from Dan Cederholm, launch a site that tracks "what's popular on Wikipedia"</comment>


If Chicken Is No Longer Pink, That Doesn't Mean It's Safe to Eat - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/01/science/chicken-cooking-temperature-bacteria.html <comment><AUTHOR> Use a thermometer. Not that hard.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you negotiate a salary? - <AUTHOR> What is your strategy for negotiating salaries? How do you know when you're asking too much or when you're getting low balled? Do you have any stories that you can share that are insightful, or have you made decisions that you wish you hadn't? Decisions that turned out well? Anything would be helpful, thank you. <comment><USER2> Going to link the obligatory patio11[1] post on this - it's a must read.

[1]: [https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary- negotiation/](https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/)

<comment><USER3> Definitely check out patio11.

Maybe check this out also for better awareness of HR "power dynamics" (most arguments still apply for juniors in the current market):

[https://hiringengineersbook.com/post/trouble- hiring/](https://hiringengineersbook.com/post/trouble-hiring/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 1\. Get information: the employers have lots more information than you do about compensation ranges. Try to get your own information. That can tell you whether an employer is above or below other employers, and also whether their offer is low/high relative to their other employees. Some sources: [https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html](https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html) and [https://h1bdata.info/](https://h1bdata.info/)

2\. Have multiple offers. At least two if you want to have any leverage at all. "I want X" is vastly less effective than "I have another offer for Y, can you offer more". Guessing that you're being low-balled possible, I guess, but it's much safer and easier to actually auction your work. Bluffing might work but having a strong BATNA is way better.

</comment><comment><USER5> Recommendation to read: [https://codewithoutrules.com/2019/01/18/negotiate- like-6-yea...](https://codewithoutrules.com/2019/01/18/negotiate-like-6-year- old/)

</comment><comment><USER6> I had success with the following technique:

Printed a spreadsheet with how much I was earning annually, bonuses, performance, estimated salary adjustment in 6 months, 12 months etc.

Put this physical paper on the table and said: "I want to earn 30% more than this".

Two hours later, got an offer with such number.

</comment><comment><USER7> This post was on HN the other day: [https://blog.usejournal.com/how-i- negotiated-a-software-engi...](https://blog.usejournal.com/how-i-negotiated-a- software-engineer-offer-in-silicon-valley-f11590f5c656)

</comment><comment><USER8> Before you go into negotiations, have a number in mind. Agree if they offer equal or higher, disagree if they offer less.

Your number should be something you're happy (not simply comfortable) with. Like you'd go home all excited to take the job.

Don't be that guy who haggles on everything. In fact, if you encounter a person who haggles on a good offer, reject them. They would be the type who are either unappreciative of what you bring or always looking for more. Those types are dangerous in tech - they're likely to push more responsibility to you (e.g. testing, UI), get you to work after hours for free, manipulate you. They'll often find some excuse to turn down raises, bonuses, claims on benefits like sick days.

Sometimes neither side will name their price first. If forced into showing your hand first, don't highball. Just stick to your number.

</comment><comment><USER9> Buy this book, it's well worth it: [https://fearlesssalarynegotiation.com/](https://fearlesssalarynegotiation.com/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Read the book Never Split the Difference. It has a whole section on the strategy to use for salary negotiation.

</comment><comment><USER11> We'll just ask 20% more than you current pay

If you get it easily, ask for more after sometime.</comment>