Another Open Source project drops the AGPL to avoid being consumed by AWS - <AUTHOR> https://zeebe.io/blog/2019/07/zeebe-community-license/ <comment><USER2> Yet another LICENSE that will end up being declared not Open Source compatible by the OSI.

So much for "open source".

<comment><AUTHOR> The OSI might become irrelevant if all the open source projects end up using licenses that it says are not open source...

<comment><USER2> Plus this kind of "Not on AWS" restriction goes against Freedom0:

[https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free- sw.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html)

"The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0)."

<comment><AUTHOR> It's more "Not by AWS", but yeah - that makes it non-free. Stallman would be rolling over in his grave, if he wasn't still alive to write an email about it in emacs.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Sushi: a tiny, simple hypervisor-based monitoring tool - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/tandasat/Sushi

<comment><USER2> "Sushi is a tiny, simple hypervisor based monitoring tool detecting and stopping some of PatchGuard activities from Ring-1."

I know what a hypervisor is, I know Ring-1 is something like the vital area of the Windows kernel, and Patchguard seems to be a tool to protect the kernel but I still don't understand what Sushi is.

Is it a hacking tool to corrupt the kernel ?</comment>


Ask HN: How are url shorteners making money? - <AUTHOR> I've seen a ton of url shorteners (like tinyurl.com) out there but haven't seen any real business model behind them... but they seem to survive. Are they doing it from donations, advertising or do they have other techniques? <comment><USER2> They don't. To be honest the majority of url shorteners don't make any money at all. I know because I run one. <http://urli.ca>

It costs me nothing to run because it uses next to no resources on a server that I already pay for and I got the domain for free.

//Sidenote, if anyone is interested in using the service, we have a really simple api (as all the services do) <http://urli.ca/api> _note: the urls auto- increment (ie. ab/ac/ad/ etc.)_

<comment><USER3> I run DecentURL.com, and have had basically the same experience. I made a few dollars off some "$7 premium services" for a while, but recently stopped running those as there just wasn't enough demand. Not that I made "selling" DecentURL a priority -- so I shouldn't say too much.

I'm turned off the ads-during-the-redirect thing, but I can see where it might be an effective money-maker.

I like what cli.gs is doing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think I can answer this one, as I own the URL shortener Cligs ( <http://cli.gs/> ).

There are two main approaches to running a URL shortener: a "basic" approach that simply does a redirect and a more advanced approach with value added services (like analytics).

A basic redirect comes in two types:

1\. A proper HTTP redirect (a 30x code, of which only 301 is of proven SEO value).

2.a. A cloaked redirect in which you redirect to a page on the shortening service's website that displays two frames with one frame being the destination page and the other frame being a page you control.

2.b. An interstial redirect in which the initial landing is a page on the service's website that "refreshes" after a few seconds to the destination.

If you do option 1, then you can't make money off the redirects. You can try to make money off the people using your site. If you look at tinyurl.com, that's exactly what they do: find the AdSense block on the right hand side edge of the site.

Both of options 2 offer you a real chance to display advertising. Adjix does that and I have no idea about the kind of revenue they're seeing, but you can see their payout rates at <http://web.adjix.com/AdjixLinkerInfo.html> .

Option 2b is very interesting but the most annoying for the user IMHO. Linkbee allows you put interstial ads (see <http://www.linkbee.com/create.php> ).

The value add services on top of redirection are very valuable. There are two kinds:

a. Services that add value to the short URL creator (i.e. the service user). A great example is analytics which tells you a lot about who's clicking through. Competing on analytics is an effective business strategy ;) There are other kinds of value add services, some of which tie back to options 2a and 2b above (i.e. get the user to earn money from their links).

b. Services that are unrelated to URL shortening per se, but are valuable. I've seen a few comments in this thread about the value of the data gained from tracking traffic. I'll leave this one to your imagination - run wild!

There is a third way to make money: white-label services. I won't explain the business logic behind this, so I'll just point you to my recent announcement on the Cligs blog: <http://cli.gs/MvDp1s> . Cligs is offering for-pay fully branded short URLs with the analytics built right in. I know of at least one other service that will launch with a similar product soon (they're in testing!).

So how can you make money? It's a very competitive market, and the cost of entry is tiny, the user loyalty is almost non-existent, and the traffic can be huge requiring good service architecture. My point from the above is that you will be able to make money as there are ways to create value for your users you can charge for, but expect to get a few bruises on the way.

Finally, a personal note: It's a great market to learn business skills in because it's so competitive and the popular services are run by some really smart people. Can you really value the lessons you learn from competing in this market? It beats any MBA you care to point to.

And yes, you should use Cligs as it's the best around: <http://cli.gs/> :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Pierre for your insightful & open response.

I was considering building a business-class url shortener this week (mostly to learn Metal which comes with Rails 2.3 & Sinatra) and what I had in mind was something very similar to cligs. I was thinking of monetizing it exactly the same way with analytics. Looks like you guys have done a fantastic job with it. Congrats on some solid execution!

<comment><USER4> Thanks :) There is a lot more coming with Cligs soon that will enable me to roll out services to compete more aggressively or respond faster. As I said, it's a competitive market!

But the existence of Cligs or the many other great (and some not so good) alternatives is no reason that you shouldn't create your own. It's a matter of what you want from the project and how it fits with your business/life/CV strategy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> They can make some money indirectly. As background, we made <http://tinyarro.ws>.

For our service, we make money indirectly by mentioning our other services/sites as friendly as possible. We've seen stellar response from that.

It helps that our URL shrinker is new/cute/silly and something people like to show-off on Twitter "the shortest URLs on earth".

But our plan isn't to make any money off of the URL shrinking-- it's simply a toy we want to share because it's a really inexpensive project and a good way to promote our other sites.

</comment><comment><USER6> I understand that some of them make money by inserting their IDs into referral links.

<comment><AUTHOR> hmm... that seems shady... unless they make that clear ahead of time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think there is a huge indirect value for the owners to be derived from the data and trends it shows.

<comment><USER8> Correct, bit.ly knows all the most popular links on Twitter in real time. This is worth a ton, or at least it could be.

<comment><USER9> To who? How do you package that up and sell it to someone?

<comment><USER10> Think: pulling that data into a techmeme.com style aggregator/ranking site for the most popular urls people are linking to. Imagine how dynamic it would be - things that got linked to the most would percolate up to the top. you could watch in near real time as news breaks and gains traction.

I've had a service like this in mind for a while and haven't pulled the trigger because I'm a chronic procrastinator.

<comment><USER9> That's a cool idea. However, it's still basically an advertising business unless you're charging for access to that site. And all of a sudden you have introduced a big incentive for people to spam/game your service.

I guess what I'm getting at is... some data is _valuable_ , but doesn't, at least to ignorant me, seem to have a _market_ for it.

(Edit: BTW, I'd be happy to be proven wrong... for instance, I have this site where the data might be worth something, and the ads aren't worth much:

<http://shoplist.dedasys.com/> )

<comment><USER11> There's an important distinction to make between "advertising business" and "data business." Data can be useful for advertising, but can also be useful for tons of other stuff--news, filtering, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am awfully new to this game, but I do recall seeing a url shortener which enabled additional tracking to the initiating user. For example, showing the time distribution of the clicks along with originating sites. I may be stretching this a bit far, but just for the heck of it, if I wanted to figure out which social networking website had a larger pull for me in distributing information, this type of service would allow me to do that. (don't ask me why? :) )

The way I would build a business model around a URL shortener would be through those types of value add services which would draw users back to the site (ad- revenue, or potentially in-depth "pay" analytics), in addition to the already- mentioned resultant data insights.

<comment><USER13> > I do recall seeing a url shortener which enabled additional tracking to the > initiating user

I think you mean <http://cli.gs> ? :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> well an evil strategy I wouldn't rule out is to make sure that you have loads of links in your system - you now own these links- then after a while insert an advertised page into the flow after a user clicks on one of the links.

wouldn't be surprised if some of the shorteners start doing this at some point.

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't know if I have seen it or not: is there a kind of the opposite service?; a 'de-obfuscator' that takes a meaningless url like someblog.com?p=245 or one of the long corporate url full of numbers and translates it into abetterurl.com/someblog/the_title_of_the_article ?

I know because of SEO a lot of urls are now more human readable but it wold be an interesting idea if it hasn't been done yet (too lazy to google).

<comment><USER16> I thought about the same thing the other day, because url shorteners are really only useful for applications like Twitter or Mobile devices where size matters, but for anywhere else a more readable URL is much more useful if the destination website doesn't have it already.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I have seen some url-shorteners offer paid analytics packages for magazines etc., that use the service in their articles.

</comment><comment><USER18> I don't know about most of them, but since Twitter is gaining more people with each passing day, a lot of website marketplaces have buyers interested in URL shortening services. Maybe they want to put ads on it, maybe Affiliate stuff, but selling your service is definitely a money maker.

</comment><comment><USER19> Tinyurl has ads, but I wonder how effective it is. People can avoid going there altogether since they provide an API. As do most other services. Simply making use of that API in your own services, software means that their number of page views doesn't increase.

Now, it may get annoying, but having a "You are redirecting to [http://somelongurl.com"](http://somelongurl.com) sort of page, would not only be safer for all, but would also provide another spot for ads. (I know one of the services does this already, but I dont' remember which one)

</comment><comment><USER20> There's a lot of tinyurl clones that basically do the same job, only focusing on providing redirects for long urls, but one that does more and that I've liked a lot recently is <http://tr.im> \- it got me to switch after years of using tinyurl, mainly because it carries a history of links you've previously shortened and shows some cool traffic stats for each one. So I can see them adding even more features for a paid pro account.

</comment><comment><USER21> It would seem that, for isntance. tinyurl.com has ads on the homepage. The service probably costs close to $0 to run so any upside is profit.

<comment><USER22> How? It may need little CPU or bandwidth, but at the end of the day it's hardware, it needs to be somewhere, be powered and cooled, etc etc. The cost may be low enough to be paid by the owner personally, but it's not going to be $0.

<comment><USER23> It could be free if it was written on AppEngine, and it stayed within the "free" quota.

(For the record I know TinyURL.com was not, but i'm pointing out that a newer/similar service could be.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Or is it because they are so limited in functionality that cost of server processing is bare minimal?

</comment><comment><USER24> "How do we make money? Simple. One word: Volume."

(edit: i'm referencing this: [http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/clips/first- cit...](http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/clips/first-citywide- change-bank/229045/))

</comment><comment><USER25> Volume?

</comment><comment><USER26> simple. they dont have to make much money. They can run of a shared server as it just has redirects. Also, they get money from paid advertising on their website. DONE!

</comment><comment><USER27> Market research.

</comment><comment><USER28> you could probably run it on a $5 dreamhost account and get away with it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I suspect tinyurl's hosting account costs more than $5</comment></comment>


Shanti Bhavan empowers children from India's lowest socioeconomic class - <AUTHOR> Shanti Bhavan empowers children from India's lowest socioeconomic class to break the cycle of generational poverty through education, leadership, and compassion.
http://shantibhavanchildren.org
We should build and maintain schools like this for better of India and for the world. Please help the cause if and when you can. <comment><AUTHOR> Link to Shanthi Bavan childrens education [http://shantibhavanchildren.org](http://shantibhavanchildren.org)</comment>


Ask HN: if you could follow one person on Twitter who it would be? - <AUTHOR>

In other words: who is the most inspiring / useful / interesting follow for you on Twitter? <comment><USER2> Honestly, if I could only follow one person, I doubt I'd bother. But @OmarKelly, a reporter for the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel is one of my top choices, because he tweets a lot of interesting Miami Dolphins news.

Outside of him, I'd put @NikkiSixx up there pretty high, as well as @kidehen, @guykawasaki, @metadaddy and a handful of others.

Oh, yeah, and, uh, what's his name... erm, @paulg. That guy... he has something interesting to say every once in a while. :-)

</comment><comment><USER3> Ashton Kutcher! @aplusk Ashton Kutcher occasionally promotes social media enterprises by throwing the weight of his celebrity behind them. Previously he helped make Twitter. Now it's location-based network Foursquare. Except this time he stands to make a mint. Look at this article - <http://gawker.com/#!5502924/ashton-kutcher-celebrity-angel>

</comment><comment><USER4> <http://twitter.com/#!/jurgenappelo>

</comment><comment><USER5> chaRLie sHeen</comment>


Intercooler.js: AJAX with Attributes - <AUTHOR> http://intercoolerjs.org/ <comment><USER2> A couple of philosophical essays around intercooler:

"Rescuing REST From the API Winter" \- [http://intercoolerjs.org/2016/01/18/rescuing- rest.html](http://intercoolerjs.org/2016/01/18/rescuing-rest.html)

"HATEOAS is for Humans" \- [http://intercoolerjs.org/2016/05/08/hatoeas-is- for-humans.ht...](http://intercoolerjs.org/2016/05/08/hatoeas-is-for- humans.html)</comment>


Show HN: While teaching a class of kids, I made this programming game for them - <AUTHOR> http://loop-monster.bitballoon.com/ <comment><USER2> This game is a lot of fun, and it must have been cool to implement too! The loop monster is really cute too :o

I don't know whether it's better to give solutions right away, or if they should be revealed via a hint button.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Yeah, I thought about adding hints but decided against it because I'm lazy. Yeah, the game was very fun to implement, as you can see in view source - it's my attempt to get UI architecture "right".

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I way to return to the level you where at would be nice. And tags for your jump :)

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a back button, and lesson index is stored in a cookie so it should stick between reloads. I thought about adding jump labels, but the kids prefer going straight to "if" and "while" after finishing this thing. (Before it, they can't make sense of "while".)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: I was let go from a company again, I'm really depressed - <AUTHOR> I can't keep gigs for more than a month, my longest has been 3 months in probationary trial.
I'm a programmer and I know I have problems with performance, clients have also complained about my performance.
This is depressing me a lot, my self-esteem is also affected. I don't know what it is, am I just too slow?
I know I have issues with attention and concentration, but I'm not sure how to break out of this loop where I don't last on a job.
Please help. :-( <comment><USER2> Hey,

Not sure if this is helpful. There are a couple of things which stand out in your in message: '...I know I have problems... have also complained...' and 'I know I have issues ...' To me, this reads as if you are you parroting what you might have been told repeatedly. Whether or not the statements are factual is irrelevant. What is important, is that you have embraced the language and are defining yourself with it. Unless you are worshiped like a god, you are usually better off using your own language to define yourself.

As a corollary, and possibly not applicable to you, this type of parroting can illicit similar remarks from others, reinforcing this (maybe) incorrect assessment. When someone keeps saying that they have, for example, a lack of attention, people will start to zoom in that feature with laser focus and even the slightest hint of drop in attention will affirm the idea which was placed in their heads. Also, realize that you provide others with an 'easy out' if they are uncomfortable discussing their real reasons for letting you go. Maybe you just have a bo issue, which can be solved by switching cologne?

I am just saying that you should take some distance from this, regain your own language/words/etc. and redefine yourself. I too can be outspoken and direct when it comes to my failings, but I never phrase them as debilitating, shameful, or even 'that big of deal.' By choosing the right words, by framing things correctly, many flaws can be accepted.

</comment><comment><USER3> Accept the fact that you are not great at what you do and promise yourself you'll work hard to be one ! Can you do that? I feel the same sometimes. I started masters degree after more than 5 years in programming and after couple of months I was just depressed. I just could not do anything. It was so much heavy maths. As I write this, I'm looking at another assignment to submit. And it's scary. but I accept the fact that I'm not good at it, but I'm going to be one if I don't quit and keep working hard. People feel depressed because they think they have to be good at it. You just need to say "Yes I'm not good, may be I'm worst but I'm going to change that." Rather than thinking it over and over again and wasting your time, start working towards it. And remember, it takes time. Don't compare yourself to anyone.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is assuming you work in an organization and not freelance:

Before self doubt about self abilities and anyone questioning you on it (in work, life, or in comments here).: I've met a huge amount of people that feel they're not great at what they do, but are actually quite good.

How is your communication about what you're doing?

Do you communicate your tasks back to the person you report to? I mean formally, in the form of a weekly email (preferably on Tuesday or Thursday, as supervisors tend to be busy organizing their week on Mondays and fighting fires on Fridays)?

A lot of managers don't know how to manage. "I'd really like him/her to do this for me they may thing." "Do this, you're qualified" they may say. And you're left "What the hell is this, OK, I'll try, I'm hopeful it will work..." and then several days or weeks later you're in a situation where things don't work. This may or may not be your case. It would probably be the case of a reader.

Email your supervisor a schedule of everything you've done. Task ID, description, request date, expected completion date, actual completion date, and pain points you may be experiencing. Do it regularly.

You're helping them be a better coach. Which they may not know how to do. So help you supervisor be a better supervisor.

If you do that and they don't provide 1-1 feedback face-to-face in a sit-down private environment on at least a twice per month basis, then you're better rid of them. They're bad managers.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been working remotely over the internet, on different timezones, with different people from different countries. Not in a specific organization in my country.

We were using Slack to communicate, and I was communicating on a daily basis with the manager.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Run 3 miles every morning to improve your concentration problems and build confidence. Please try this first.

<comment><USER3> I agree ! Just get out for an hour or so every day and exercise. It just gives you so much positive thoughts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Have you spoken with a psychiatrist regarding ways to address your concentration problems?

Without medication, getting my brain to do what I want it to is like bushing a bolder up a hill. With the proper medication, I gain a lot of control over my concentration.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, I never spoke with a psychiatrist.

<comment><USER7> Have you always had this issue, or only recently? Being burned out or overstressed can cause these symptoms.

<comment><AUTHOR> I could get work done, don't get me wrong, it's just that it does takes me more time to complete than other developers.

Sometimes I could do them faster than others. It depends.

I also believe my problem could be discipline.

I usually work during the night, sometimes in the morning. I choose the night because it's less distraction, but then I distract myself with reddit or IRC, and I get little done.

I remember having some learning difficulties when I was at school, not sure if that was related to attention problems, and I had to go to a special school for that.

These days I don't have much problem with learning, but with attention/productivity.

<comment><USER8> I have to compensate for ADHD, which may or may not be your issue, but it sounds similar.

Few things:

1) Sleep on a regular schedule. Set a "go to bed" alarm. Stick to it. Makes a huge difference.

2) Exercise, even if just taking brisk walks. It directly affects concentration/attention for the rest of your day. That's fairly well-supported by studies/literature.

3) Eat right. Be careful about caffeine and sugar, as the crashes will probably hit you harder than most.

4) In general, _get on a schedule_. Rhythm is the key.

As far as productivity:

1) Underpromise, overdeliver. This is hugely important. If you know you're not as efficient as you want to be you have to stop telling people what they want to hear and start telling them something more accurate. Even if you were ideal, we usually underestimate software tasks.

2) Look into Pomodoro or some other interval work rhythm method. It makes it OK to take breaks by regimenting them some.

3) Use a Todo list. Try to get one impactful thing (or chunk of thing) done each day at a minimum. Look up "Big Rocks" or "Zen to Done" on Google for some good tips there.

3) Find a coach. There are ADHD and productivity coaches out there that specialize in this stuff.

4) If you can't find a coach, at least find a mentor.

5) Go talk to a doctor. You sound like you have issues to actually address. If yours are like mine, meds help. You probably also need to learn some good habits though--there's no magic solution.

You also need to work on making yourself happier and regaining your own trust back. You're way too down on yourself, and you've actually written yourself off as inherently problematic. Objectivity is good, but it can also be how you get defeated before you start.

You actually sound like I did when I didn't feel like I could even be accountable to myself. Your first challenge is to get a grip on how you work and make yourself OK with it while you get better. Everyone's different, and the important thing is to accommodate yourself effectively, not to be perfect. But first, start making yourself happy. One accomplishment a day is a good step towards that.

Last thing:

I listed a lot of stuff. Don't try to do it all at once. You'll flop hard. But start working towards it.

Since you're having work issues in particular, I'd look at sleep, Todo lists, and Pomodoro as some of the first things you try.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Be careful about caffeine and sugar, as the crashes will probably hit you harder than most"

What do you mean with this exactly?

<comment><USER8> Sorry for the late reply.

I mean that caffeine and sugar both have an energy upswing and an energy downswing associated with them. If you're already having issues with motivation, maybe even with lethargy, the downswing will potentially take you from minimally functional to useless. Any sleep or nutrition problems will also exaggerate this effect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Without (a) having worked alongside you or (b) seen the work you produce, it's impossible for anyone here to give accurate advice.

For (a) I would advise asking previous employers (both the manager who made the decision to let you go and former work colleges) for honest feedback. It's difficult to give honest negative feedback, so be clear that you are asking because you are genuinely interested in self-improvement.

For (b), just thinking aloud here, do you have a github repository where you can show us your work? There may be fundamental issues with style, logic etc that could be addressed through training.

</comment><comment><USER10> Hi,

When you say that you have problems with performance, was there any specific concrete examples that you can share?

For what it's worth, everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses. The fact that you can program relates to a great skill that you have. There are millions of people who can't do it. Don't take it too personally - you can definitely overcome any "problems" you have.

</comment><comment><USER11> Learn to work as a "workhorse": find your tempo and don't try to get faster, just commit regularly to your boss/customer; and do not compare to others until the end of the year.

You will be more appreciated than a "race horse" in a few years from now and you will find your working place easily in any large corporation sooner than you think.

</comment><comment><USER12> Would you mind to share more details? So far, there could be many reasons behind what happened.

<comment><AUTHOR> What details would you like to know?

<comment><USER13> \- Do you get along with your coworkers?

\- Where are your shortcomings?

\- Can you actually program?

\- Are you misunderstanding requirements?

<comment><AUTHOR> \- There are times I get along with my coworkers, which happens to be most of the time, there are times I don't.

\- I don't know, I feel performance tends to be one of my problems, especially when working under pressure and being stressed / burned.

I hate working under pressure, and when clients have unrealistic expectations. I don't mind deadlines if they are realistic.

\- Yes, but I tend to get stuck a lot, I try to solve problems and most of the time I can solve them, but it takes time, and what frustrates me the most is when clients don't understand that writing code takes time, and they insist, several times per day... with emails: "How it's going?" and so on, then they might get rude, etc.

This is what frustrates me the most, unfortunately many managers and clients don't understand that writing code is hard work and when I'm taking more than a week on a task they fire me.

\- No, if I misunderstand something I speak immediately.

<comment><USER14> It looks like you are victimizing yourself more than you should.

I was fired from my first serious job, and I felt terrible, but I realized it was my fault and I worked my ass off to eliminate (or lessen) the weaknesses I know (note the tense) I have.

"Hard work beats talent". Discipline is what makes you great, so work towards getting it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Do you do the work?

<comment><AUTHOR> Most of the time I get the work done, yes. But there are other times where the client doesn't have realistic goals, like the last project I've been to, they just say something like this:

"We need to ship this on Monday May 11th, so we need you to aggressively plug away on this. You still need to do X and Y. I'm going to put something together with info on how to prioritize the work."

And this after 2 weeks of hiring me, then they say nothing and fire me, without a word, while I'm getting the work done.

<comment><USER7> Perhaps it's just the companies you're working for. All the companies I worked for were pretty relaxed about schedules and I always ended up getting stuff finished way ahead of time.

If you're working too long hours and getting stressed out about it, it's perfectly normal to have attention and concentration problems. Perhaps you just need to relax a bit more, take breaks, and you might find you get more done. Also don't work for dipshit companies that put too much pressure on you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > I also believe my problem could be discipline. > I usually work during the > night, sometimes in the morning. I choose the night because it's less > distraction, but then I distract myself with reddit or IRC, and I get little > done.

You're right - discipline is a challenge for you. It's a challenge for everyone, but you're the person of concern here.

Work on your discipline habits. This is different for each person. Try lots of things. Keep trying.

As you've described, your current career is a struggle. Many short-term gigs, constant pressure, almost no social capital, and (I pessimistically assume) low pay.

And regular criticism, either direct or indirect.

That sucks! And it's not likely to improve. You're in the midst of a market that runs on people meat. Like a sweatshop, except your mind instead of your body is being exploited.

It's better than a physical sweatshop, but it still sucks. The key thing to remember is that you're participating in a market which places little value on humans. It's easy to absorb that attitude, and devalue yourself.

If you stay in this career, the likely outcomes are:

\- burnout

\- depression

\- resilience

\- aggression

(This is all personal experience & opinion, BTW. It might not match reality.)

In order to survive, and even succeed, you need to minimize your burnout and depression, and cultivate your resilience & aggression.

Aggression doesn't mean rage - it means hunger. It means viewing every single interaction as fuel.

You've shown you can write decently (many people can't speel sipmle word).

For example, this communication:

 _Given the urgency of the project, and the communication problems, I don 't think this is a good first Company project for you. I removed you from the project. So I can make sure you're put in a better position, what's the ideal project for you?_

looks like a solid opportunity. You might reply:

 _" Thanks for taking this action, and for the frank communication. I understand the tight schedule and I appreciate your help in matching my abilities with your needs. You asked what the ideal project is, and we both know projects are never ideal._

 _For me to bring maximum value, I need time. You 're probably familiar with the good/cheap/fast triangle. I work in the 'good' corner._

 _Thanks again for your time. I 'll be happy to talk further at your convenience."_

I bet you can write it even better. (hint: shorter = better)

The fact is, in the cheap-gig market, you'll get to write this response dozens of times. You'll have plenty of chances to practice, until you're either a iron-hard pro, or a mentally destroyed basket case!

(or some strange hybrid of those two things)

Hope this helps.

</comment><comment><USER17> If I was a sociopath or narcissist who wanted to hire people to bully into working sixty-hour weeks, I'd hire you based on how you're talking alone. This might be your problem if you insist on a work-life balance, or have more backbone and resolve than my first impression suggests.

I'd insist on finding a place that has good mentoring. That'd be my primary job-search criteria in your shoes.

</comment><comment><USER18> Keep looking until you find a job where you fit in.

Would you hire yourself?

A lot of programming groups at companies are very picky about your personality type, so don't blame yourself by default.

Address each complaint with a goal or action to resolve or prevent it.

</comment><comment><USER19> Persevere.

[http://wengu.tartarie.com/wg/wengu.php?no=1&l=Yijing](http://wengu.tartarie.com/wg/wengu.php?no=1&l=Yijing)</comment>


SEO keyword research tool for hackers - <AUTHOR> http://tailwords.com/search?searchText=advanced%3ATrue

<comment><USER2> Does anybody else don't believe the adwords prices they list?

I've searched for 'programming', and all the result combinations are supposed to to more expensive than 1 USD. When I experimented with adsense ads on programming pages (ok, that's at least a year ago, maybe 2) I got only a few cents... Somehow that doesn't fit together.

<comment><USER3> They're ballpark accurate for a few searches I have intimate knowledge of, though that comes with the proviso that there is no one price in AdWords.

There are many, many things which could account for you getting very low CPCs. One is that the content network != the search network, and the search network prices are generally much, much higher because they demonstrate commercial intent. Another is that you may have been subject to "smart pricing" -- Google basically has unlimited discretion to lower payouts to you on the theory that your traffic quality is not compelling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> looks like great tool but has many bugs as any search not work also some times strange results. What tool it used for keyword research, wordtracker?

</comment><comment><USER5> 1\. whats the source of their data?

2\. no real "hacker" would do its seo reasearch via a stupid manual form, it does not scale.

3\. what a f*cking linkbait</comment>


Impossible I-1: first new Polaroid camera in 20 years - <AUTHOR> https://us.impossible-project.com/pages/impossible-i-1-analog-instant-camera <comment><AUTHOR> On a tangential note, I challenge you to find a better product video than what Land had Charles and Ray Eames produce for the SX-70.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jaiq_ZZ_eM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jaiq_ZZ_eM)

It was the same team that did the famous "Powers of 10" short a few years later. It included a rousing voiceover by Philip Morrison, an MIT prof who worked on the Manhattan Project but later became a major proponent of nuclear nonproliferation.

This video has a special place in my heart. It effortlessly moves from a commercial to an instructional video to an impressively coherent discussion of how it works before ultimately explaining that the camera is a tool intended to further increase the true potential of humankind.

You can laugh all you want, but years later I cannot watch this without tearing up.

<comment><USER2> That was really, really well done. Thank you so much for sharing.

<comment><AUTHOR> One insight that just now occurred to me is that there's some serious political posturing at work in this video.

Specifically, film in general was strongly biased to favour Caucasian skin tones. It used to be incredibly difficult to take good colour photos of black people.

It's clear that Land wanted to demonstrate that the insanely great dynamic range of Polaroid film was perfectly capable of bringing photography to the black demographic.

<comment><USER3> > _Specifically, film in general was strongly biased to favour Caucasian skin > tones_

I find it odd to call this "biased". It's about physics: due to light intensity, it will be generally easier to photograph (capture on film or digital sensors) objects that reflect moderate amounts of light with some contrast, than objects that reflect very little light with little contrast.

<comment><USER4> [http://priceonomics.com/how-photography-was-optimized-for- wh...](http://priceonomics.com/how-photography-was-optimized-for-white-skin/)

<comment><USER3> Yes, film wasn't sensitive enough for black skin.

Personally, I'm inconvenienced by discrimination against tall people (for instance, in airplane passenger seats).

<comment><USER5> > Yes, film wasn't sensitive enough for black skin

This was not a constraint of physics or chemistry: Kodak knew it, and they didn't care much for black skin. This _was_ bias because they could fix it, but didn't. Fortunately, Kodak _did_ ended up caring for other brown things: _Kathy Connor, an executive at Kodak, told Roth the company didn't develop a better film for rendering different gradations of brown until economic pressure came from a very different source: Kodak's professional accounts. Two of their biggest clients were chocolate confectioners, who were dissatisfied with the film's ability to render the difference between chocolates of different darknesses. "Also," Connor says, "furniture manufacturers were complaining that stains and wood grains in their advertisement photos were not true to life."_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There have been a few of these tried before. I actually bought one and a few cartridges of film a few years back. I took it to a few parties and out one night and it was a lot of fun taking pictures with people.

Result? After the novelty wore off (and it did so quickly) I went back to using my phone to take pictures.

If I were them I'd recognize this and either adapt my marketing to focus on niche retailers, tourist destinations and the holiday seasons.

<comment><USER7> The consumer grade novelty wore off Polaroids much the same way in the 1970's. By the mid 1980's the cameras were available for $12 at the drug store and a standard last minute gift. It as common for the included film pack to be the only film that ever went in as the years whiled away with the camera in a drawer.

The killer app was always scientific documentation with the intent of making sure there was a photograph that captured what would be important later. Putting a Polaroid back on a technical camera was another way of using technical cameras to do what they were made to do.

<comment><USER8> > The killer app was always scientific documentation

Law enforcement and investigations, too. For a while Polaroids were the detective's camera of choice. But they died out quickly, just like consumer usages.

Weren't they big on film sets to check lighting, too?

<comment><USER9> Yes...up until around 2005 I would routinely see them on photo shoots (that's when digital started to replace film for a lot of pros). Now, I think they're used but only on really large shoots...smaller ones do ok with light meters and previews on screens/cameras.

<comment><USER10> I can't think of good reason to use Paranoids anymore; digital works immensely better. There's as much translation between media with Polaroids as there is with digital, and you get both quicker turn-around and the ability to do a decent mimic curve with digital. Polaroids had a narrow latitude and poor contrast, so any density at all in the highlights meant you were well within bounds at the top, and anything that wasn't an absolutely solid block of black meant you had scads of shadow detail in your real image. Colour? Faggeddaboudit - if it wasn't clearly purple or something silly like that, the 'Roid wouldn't tell you anything useful, so you'd have to do some sort of weird interpretive dance across your set with a Minolta Color Meter III and a set of gels if you wanted to avoid surprises coming out of the soup.

Polaroids also tended to have high to extremely high ISO/ASA numbers (compared to the final film, which in my day tended to be 4x5 or 8x10 transparencies at ISO 50 to 100 that cost somewhere between 10 and 50 dollars an exposure when all was said and done). You could make that up (to a degree) with your shutter shooting under hot lights, but with flash, not so much. And studio flash in those days usually only had a two or three stop adjustment range, so ND gels it was, and hope that they were accurate. All in all, a real pain in the sitting-down bits, and if it weren't for the fact that getting it wrong on the transparency meant a hundred bucks or so (two frames minimum per shot, since dust bunnies can easily make their way into cleaned, de-staticked and practically hermetically sealed film holders no matter what the laws of physics have to say about it) and half a day shot to hell by the time you got it back and dried down it wouldn't have been worth it then either.

Did I mention that digital is better in every imaginable way?

<comment><USER11> yes but it's art. most people would use something that's technically better, but some would prefer to experiment and use older, more unique technology and tools. not saying it's better, but some do prefer polaroids and celluloid films over digital sensor. I for example still use 35mm films for my photos, and there is quite a large number of user and labs around the world to use them properly.

<comment><USER10> I was resonding to the idea that people were still using Polaroids for tests on big shoots, not using it for their primary medium. (To my knowledge, only the Type 55 pos/neg was ever really used as a "conventional" film, though there were several people using pull-aparts such as 669 for one-off "fine art" transfer prints. Yes, other Polaroids were used for their particular look, often rephotographed for reproduction. But for the most part, it was all about the "instant", whether that was for mementos, home-made porn or Polachromes for putting together a quick presentation for the boardroom.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a great idea. I work at an electronics retailer and teenage girls go _crazy_ for Instax. I bet this will be even bigger.

<comment><USER13> I agree from anecdotal evidence from family and friends.

I think this is a classic case of HN demographic bias, as (this is just a guess) but I imagine there is a dearth of _materialistic /hip teenagers_ using HN and as a result a lot of the comments here have failed to recognise the importance of such a large market segment in reviving an original format.

'Old-school' and retro devices are somewhat coveted by the youth of today, and therefore I don't think the arguments based on digital format and technical superiority hold much water when a bunch of kids are gonna go nuts over getting a change to use a Polaroid again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Story of "impossible" Polaroid film, bought their factory!

[http://techland.time.com/2012/04/07/the-story-of-the- death-a...](http://techland.time.com/2012/04/07/the-story-of-the-death-and- rebirth-of-polaroid-film/)

</comment><comment><USER15> On a tangent but I just got a small pop-up saying " _You can only ship orders to Tunisia from our EU shop._ ". Why don't all the stores have this? Instead of letting me find out at checkout that they don't ship to my country they could just let me know from the start.

</comment><comment><USER16> It's funny, when digital cameras first appeared I considered them somewhat magic, a brave new world of technology replacing the outmoded analogue. But recently, my kids went round to a relative's house, where they had an old polaroid camera. The sight of this ancient artifact spewing out a self- appearing physical picture blew their minds far more than digital ever blew mine! They had no frame of reference for such a device. I look forward to showing them cassettes and vinyl!

</comment><comment><USER17> I wish there were more shots of the device - that said, I really love the form factor from the front.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm glad, I had a Polaroid once too. They were pretty awesome. The original folding SX-70 was amazing when it came out.

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

</comment><comment><USER19> Will they (and everyone else) ever learn that modal popups cause bounces? I access the page from Europe, and this annoying popup obscures the page and asks me if I'm sure I'm in the right place. Hint taken: hit back.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I have been following the Impossible Project's evolution from the earliest days - even travelling to Enschede to tour the factory with Andre back in 2012.

I just hope that they adopt the Gillette "cheap razor, expensive blades" approach. In my view they would do well to sell the camera at a loss and make up the margin on the film.

<comment><USER20> Really? As a consumer, I hate that approach with a passion. I see how it makes sense from a business-perspective, but I think people are "onto it" at this point.

Instant film is inherently kind of expensive in either case, isn't it?

<comment><USER21> Fucking $23.50 for a pack of 8 films plus S&H I assume. Fuck that shit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nobody is happy about the price of film.

My suggestion is that you consider how - for a lover of the format - $4 a shot is a cheap price to pay for something that realistically should no longer exist, and that every pack is a kind of artistic patronage... a tithe to a barely profitable entity run by a skeleton crew that rarely ever even meet the folks that appreciate their efforts.

It's a specialty item. Unless you lose your mind over banking fees and the price of artisanal chocolate in a boutique, you might be ignoring the bigger picture: no price is too great for something you love.

Shipping new hardware is expensive, risky and very hard... but shipping old hardware is just bonkers because there's no practical upside by any typical investment standard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> On a related note, has there been much progress in the past 20 years in the digital SLR space (edit: for consumers / photographers)? Mirrorless is interesting, Lytro was a cool concept but mostly fizzled out (edit: in the consumer space). Is there much to be excited about going forward?

<comment><USER23> Lytro hasn't fizzled out. They have just shifted their focus from consumer cameras to high-end cinema cameras.

<comment><USER22> You're right, I was specifically referring to their consumer camera model.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't understand why people are supposed to want this, other than nostalgia. "We care about analog..." and all of that sounds nice, but why? Is this like some people still preferring vacuum tubes for certain applications, because there is an objective benefit?

Is this just nostalgia?

<comment><AUTHOR> No: instant photography is genuinely fun and interesting. It leaves a real artifact of a moment. As formats go, the square Polaroid just clicked for people.

Tempted to throw down some cliched McLuhan quotes but instead I'll just point out that Fuji Instax continues to be a big seller with teenage girls who wouldn't know a Polaroid camera if it attacked them.

I guess another answer is that we still have supermarkets and restaurants even though Soylent has been shipping for quite some time, now.

<comment><USER24> I don't see digital photography as the "Soylent" of photography, but maybe I'm missing something. After all, your ability to print a digital photograph is not in doubt.

I didn't know about the Instax though, so whatever I think, there is clearly a market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> c-slice What's interesting is this comes weeks after Fujifilm announced that they would stop manufacturing their polaroid 100 film, which fit larger body polaroid cameras. Really smart move on the part of the impossible project.

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you mean by that?

Radically different format. Still sad to see C100 go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> What's the point of Bluetooth? I'd think part of the appeal of a product like this would be its simplicity.

</comment><comment><USER26> coming soon to bearded skinny pants hipsters everywhere!!!

don't forget your portable mechanical typewriter so you can write your memoirs at the local coffee shop.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am the OP so I can't downvote this, but man you have a crap attitude about the things other people are passionate about. What exactly makes your hobbies more legitimate than someone else's?

I'm a fat 37 y/o serial entrepreneur that hasn't had facial hair since my 20s. I do like decent coffee, though. I guess that brings up my hipster quotient.</comment></comment>


Snapchat Is Mulling Another Huge Round at a $3.5 Billion Valuation - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20131025/snapchat-is-mulling-another-huge-round-at-a-3-5-billion-valuation/?utm_medium=App.net&utm_source=PourOver <comment><USER2> The purpose of these big rounds, usually, is founder liquidity.

Snapchat could easily get acquired, making the founders (and early employees) very rich.

But investors don't want them to sell yet. So investors buy a lot of common stock (from founders/employees) at a big valuation, making the founders (aka the only board members who aren't already rich) rich, so that the founders are less interested in selling.

Some of the money goes to the company. But it's not usual for 20-25% of big rounds to go to founders/early employees.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for this comment. It frames the valuation in a way that actually makes some semblance of sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> HAHA 3.5 Billion Valuation!

Honestly I am afraid that Snapchat will suffer the same fate as MySpace or DIGG once the younger generation finds something new (look at who uses google+, no one and I am not talking about your techy friends). We can already see young teens are leaving facebook. To be honest I stopped using it once my parents and other older adults started joining and that was 2-3 years ago.

[http://mashable.com/2013/08/11/teens- facebook/](http://mashable.com/2013/08/11/teens-facebook/)

<comment><USER4> Down vote all you want. This app was first introduced to me I was told:

"You can send naughty pictures to people and they cant save them."

<comment><USER5> I'm not saying the valuation is justified but naughty pictures have proven to be a very, very profitable industry.

<comment><USER6> You nailed it. Private porn that is safe and secure from the internet, and your mom ever finding out. Snapchat panders to the wanton part in all of us.

<comment><USER7> Except it's not private and it's not safe, at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does anyone else find this valuation incredibly ironic given that in 1999 Yahoo! bought Geocities for $3.57 billion?

I mean, does anyone believe that Snapchat is going to ever be a service that brings in billions of dollars in revenue?

<comment><USER9> This is IMO the wrong way to look at it. Look at this more like Instagram.

Neither Snapchat nor Instagram are creating _new_ traffic. What they are doing is essentially stealing marketshare and user engagement from competing services like Facebook and Twitter.

Their valuation isn't their revenue potential, it's the opportunity cost to Facebook, Twitter, et al for letting them survive.

If Snapchat is stealing $1bn of monetizable traffic from Facebook, Facebook would be wised to pay some amount of money (<$1bn) to either shut it down or bring them into the fold.

There is some _extra_ valuation here in fucking your competitor over. Acquisition of hot social media companies like this is equal parts adding monetizable traffic to your network (traffic they may have taken from you in the first place...), as well as denying your competitors the ability to do the same.

So, say if Twitter acquires Snapchat, their valuation will be some combination of ${traffic_twitter_loses_to_snapchat} + ${traffic_facebook_loses_to_snapchat} + ${value_in_denying_facebook_access_to_this_traffic}

Whether or not that's worth $3.5bn is questionable, but there is some reason behind valuing non-revenue-generating products with a positive valuation.

The main "bubble" part here is whether or not this is at all sustainable (IMO, probably not). It's pretty easy to create something that steals an appreciable amount of traffic from the incumbent social network behemoths. At these valuations the cost to "recover" these eyeballs far exceeds how much the traffic is actually worth in ad revenue.

<comment><USER10> Even in the rarified atmosphere that is Silicon Valley, the Instagram acquisition was unusual. Very much so. Acquired by Facebook just prior to their IPO. Lots of motivations for that, but by no means is Instagram an exemplar of anything. It's probably an outlier among outliers.

<comment><USER11> They were not about to ipo

<comment><USER12> Not sure if you meant Instagram was not about to IPO, but rexreed meant Facebook was about to IPO (acquisition: April 14th, 2012, IPO: May 18th, 2012).

<comment><USER10> Exactly - Facebook was about to IPO and acquired Instagram pretty much right before it. Thanks for posting the dates to clarify.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It really is astonishing how the most idiotic services gain so many users by "going viral." And it just motivates more hackers to work on being the next Snapchat or Instagram rather than putting in the effort to solve the real problems that plague our society.

<comment><USER14> Coca-Cola's valuation is 170 billion. Not only do they not solve any real problems, they actually create them. Same goes for every oil company in existence.

If you want to change the world in a more serious way, SnapChat's valuation should have as much of an impact on your determination as Coca-Cola's.

<comment><USER15> >Same goes for every oil company in existence.

We owe the 20th century and virtually every convenience in our lives to the existence of petro-chemicals. There is absolutely no justification that oil companies "don't solve real problems".

I would go so far as to claim petro-chemicals are the single most important discovery in human history. (There are certainly downsides in the form of global warming, pollution and environmental damage, but you've completely ignored the massive upside).

<comment><USER14> I agree. That sentence was more about how very-valuable companies can not only be frivolous and create economic value (Coke), but can create real problems while creating economic value (Exxon).

It wasn't phrased perfectly, but I'll leave it now since several people have responded.

<comment><USER16> It's easier to nit-pick your post than to disagree with the substance of it.

<comment><USER17> but it wasn't a nit-pik, the post "Same goes for every oil company in existence." is just wrong, however well meaning it was.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The only way Snapchat is worth $3.5 billion is if they have been secretly saving all of the photos and they threaten to post them all online unless the users pay $100 per photo.

</comment><comment><USER19> $3.5B for an app lots of developers could create over the weekend is absolutely incredible. It also has absolutely no income, and very little avenue for actually gaining any. I don't know what they're doing to need seed money, I can only imagine that the service runs itself outside of tweaking EC2 instance sizes.

<comment><USER20> Is it just me, or does this finally scream 'bubble'?

<comment><USER21> People have been screaming bubble for years now. Facebook's IPO was a "bubble." Instagram's aquisition was a "bubble." Pinterest is a "bubble." While we all conveniently ignore that most startups today are generating real revenue and firms like a16z are massively scaling back funding to early stage consumer startups, I hardly think one "bad apple" (if it is, maybe they will come up with some crazy way to make revenue, I'm not a psychic) is a sign of a bubble.

<comment><USER22> I largely agree with this, it seems the only area where valuations are getting really crazy are in the app market. I assume the only real plan they could have is acquisition, and even then I really only see Facebook taking that dive.

<comment><USER19> Facebook have already cloned it.

[https://itunes.apple.com/app/facebook- poke/id588594730](https://itunes.apple.com/app/facebook-poke/id588594730)

<comment><USER23> and failed badly...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I will leave the bubble question aside and ask what is the money raised being used for? Infrastructure to do what? Doesn't snapchat delete the photos after the other party sees them? Or this another ad play where photos are stored and some big data program will create targeted ads.

<comment><USER25> The photo content is not at all relevant to ads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> _" Besides the huge piles of investment dough being poured into [these companies], here's what else [they] have in common: Little to no revenue. That does not seem to have stopped a panoply of venture and other investors from jumping in and ponying up with huge amounts of cash for the privilege of investing in several fast-growing startups, hoping to grab ahold of the next Twitter or Facebook early."_

I don't know anything about Snapchat's internal operations or plans, and therefore can't really judge whether the company will eventually figure out how to make enough money from its self-destructing messages to warrant a $3.5 billion valuation today. What I DO know is that whenever investors start "jumping in and ponying up with huge amounts of cash for the privilege of investing" (in new companies with no revenues), there's a good chance that valuations are getting too optimistic -- and _that_ never ends well.

Maybe this time things really are different, but it's hard for me not to see some parallels with the "dot-com bubble" of the late 1990's.[1]

\--

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot- com_bubble](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble)

<comment><USER21> Are there any examples of any other companies other than snapchat that are raising a huge amount of money with little to revenue, or revenue potential? While its important we don't repeat the mistakes of the past, I'm hesitant to claim that all of Silicon Valley will burn to the ground because solely SnapChat was a bad investment.

<comment><USER27> Ever heard of Pinterest? They definitely fall into that category of companies with little to no revenue, but have a massive valuation.

Here's the thing: While users may not be paying with their dollars just yet, almost all of them are paying with their time. So, it's not completely absurd that certain companies are able to attract such capital if investors continue to recognize huge potential in the long run.

<comment><USER28> The only thing Pintrest and Snapchat have in common is that they haven't started trying to monetize yet.

Pintrest has about a gazillion ways it can monetize. I'm really anxious to see how they do it.

Just today while driving in the car my wife said "Cool, I just got a [push] notification from Pintrest that a fabric I pinned at JoAnne Fabrics is on sale".

Pintrest is a gold mine and my guess is that they've got a rosey future that doesn't end in acquisition.

Snapchat has an engaged audience. I can't imagine how they'll _really_ monetize their user base in a meaningful way. But they're a really attractive acquisition opportunity for a bunch of companies.

Obviously investors might be more bullish on Snapchat's revenue generating opportunities...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> One thing I don't get Snapchat is that if I use an iPhone (Android probably has other way to do so), I can always make a screenshot whenever I open your naughty pictures, right? So what's the point even if the naughties get deleted in a few seconds, if I have a local copy anyway?

I know I don't belong to the targeted demographics, just out of curiosity.

<comment><USER30> Its meant to be like talking. No record by default. Sure you can "hack it" and keep a copy.. but you can tape record a spoken conversation also, right? Just not 100% of every spoken words won't be written down, just like 100% of snapchats won't be saved by the end users.

<comment><USER29> Now I got the social piece. Thanks for the explanation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Like SnapChat's messages, the $3.5 billion valuation is self-destructing as well.

</comment><comment><USER32> I have to say, I'm a little shocked that Snapchat's valuation is only ~10% lower than Pinterest's (3.8bn)

I would think there is a pretty huge difference between their potential revenues

<comment><USER33> I think people are valuing Pinterest more on a per user basis, but Snapchat has a lot more users and is growing faster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> The valuation is based on what I would call "defensive valuation".

Instagram was bought for $1 billion, not because it had any billion dollar revenue generating potential. It, however, had the potential to erode Facebook. So Facebook buys it out as a defensive move.

Snapchat, given its huge user base, could potentially threaten Facebook, so Facebook would be forced to acquire them, purely as a defensive strategy.

Think of it as the cost of defending their empire.

</comment><comment><USER35> This is ridiculous. How exactly does Snapchat plan on profiting from their user base if they have yet to have proven a revenue model?

Sure, advertisements seem like the end game, but how will they be targeted? How can they be implemented without severely affecting application experience and user expectations?

</comment><comment><USER36> Something that always bugs me about valuations, wondering if someone could explain.

A lot of these investors probably have multiples. So if someone $1m in a company for 10%, and the company sells for $5m, they'll get back at least $1m, rather than $500k.

If investors are only putting money in with these multiples, then doesn't it artificially raise these valuations? If so, is there a measure for the valuation of a company that takes this into account?

<comment><USER37> Typically investments in private technology companies include a provision called "liquidation preference" where investors get their money out before other shareholders (managers and employees) get paid on an exit.

A common term is "1x liquidation preference" which is the example you give -- if I put in $1M, I get $1M out before anyone else gets paid, even if the sale valuation is less than the valuation at which I invested.

Sometimes you see 2x or 3x liquidation preference, in which investors get that level of return before other shareholders get paid. This is considered "less common-friendly" and is a worse term if you are a founder or employee.

There are also other variations on this general idea that you see particularly when valuations get high.

So, in a case like the purported Snapchat round, a new investor would actually look at the investment as a combination of financial instruments -- think of it as a call option (participate in appreciation above the entry price) coupled with a put option (get your money out if the company sells at least for more than the amount of invested capital).

The more money involved, the more complex this gets and the harder it is to evaluate the true pros and cons of the investment based on public reporting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> So the investors funding Snapchat at a $3.5+ billion valuation, think it will one day be worth $10 or $15 billion (at least). Yeah....

The Fed has finally done it with their hyper loose monetary policies (for the third time in 15 years). I think it's safe to assume the dotcom insanity has begun again. It's also drastically pushing up dotcom valuations in the public market as well.

</comment><comment><USER38> Just a little tip for my fellow programmers.

Valuations are just numbers that are pulled out of a hat.

/tip

</comment><comment><USER39> Sounds like yet another round of investor hot potato.</comment>


Yelp blames Google for its failed international business - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2017/03/06/yelp-blames-google-for-its-failed-international-business/ <comment><USER2> "accusing Google of manipulating search results to favor its own products over Yelp's."

Is Google innocent of this? They certainly do put their own products at the top of the list in many cases.</comment>


Optimizing for Fan Noise - <AUTHOR> http://prog21.dadgum.com/61.html <comment><USER2> The author makes a point that moving an application from one core to four might look good in benchmarks, but that it will peg all four cores and cause the fan to start running. I'd argue that that is precisely what you want, and that the operating system should provide a user-controlled mechanism to throttle the CPU back. That way, if you want raw performance, you can get it, but if you want a quiet computer and longer battery life you can get that as well. You _should_ engineer your software to use all available resources. It's the OS's job to divvy up those resources.

I know CPU throttling is possible on many notebooks in Linux. Do any Mac users out there know of such a feature in OS X?

<comment><USER3> I recall the GameBoy Advanced SDK docs stating something along the lines of "Even if your game is so simple that it won't strain this tiny processor, please optimize it for speed as much as you can anyway so that you can spend as much time as possible sleeping in low power mode between frames. That way the battery will last longer. Your customers will notice and they will tell their freinds."

I think that sentiment is closer to what the article was trying to get across.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _Doubling the speed of a program by moving from one to four cores is a win if you're looking at the raw benchmark numbers, but an overall loss in terms of computation per watt._

The first time I read this I didn't understand it, but the author has laid a trap here for the unwary reader in the word "doubling". If you can get 4x the performance using 4 cores the energy efficiency is the same or better, but if your program scales poorly and only gets 2x performance from 4 cores the energy efficiency is worse.

<comment><USER5> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_computing#Amdahl.27s_l...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_computing#Amdahl.27s_law_and_Gustafson.27s_law)

Basically, you will never get a linear increase with parallel computing, especially on consumer type apps that are much more synchronous. So running multiple cores, with requisite context switches will get less computing per watt, even if it isn't as bad as the 2x number.

<comment><USER6> Sort of. Herb Sutter shows some examples where executing programs in parallel gives superlinear speed-ups: [http://herbsutter.wordpress.com/2008/01/30/effective- concurr...](http://herbsutter.wordpress.com/2008/01/30/effective-concurrency- going-superlinear/)

<comment><USER7> > Herb Sutter shows some examples where executing programs in parallel gives > superlinear speed-ups

His definition of "superlinear" is a bit tricky. As he explains, you can only get superlinear by "Do disproportionately less work." and/or "Harness disproportionately more resources.". However, his example of the former is actually a subtle instance of the latter.

Superlinear speedups are always due to more effective caching. Sutter uses "disproportionatly more resources" when the added effectiveness comes from larger caches. However, his "do less work" examples are "just" better cache behavior.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The way to measure this is not by fan speed, it's by power draw. To measure power draw, the most reliable way is to:

a) Make sure you can get your machine in a quiescent state (say, 5 minutes after bootup, all unnecessary background tasks and services are turned off).

b) Make sure ambient temperature is the same between runs.

c) Hook your computer up to a PDU with power usage monitoring built in.

d) Run automated tests, measuring power usage by the machine during the test. The automated part is important, because you want them to be fairly lengthy and also repeatable.

e) Compare results before and after. It's important to have a baseline for comparison so you know whether you're making progress or not.

</comment><comment><USER9> Battery life is a fair optimization. Fan noise is a function of your fans. I have a quad-core i7, and when I max it out with 8 threads (it has HT), it does not make any noise. The stock cooler is nearly silent. My case has 140mm fans (!), and they don't make much noise either. They are even mounted via rubber hangers, so the vibration is not transfered to the case (same goes for the hard drives, although those are quite silent now too).

In addition to this, the computer is on the floor, not right next to my ears. So even if it were louder, it would still not annoy me.

So basically, I think your computer is broken if you can hear the fans. It's either designed wrong, or in the wrong position, or both.

</comment><comment><USER10> Based on what I've seen in my experiences with building my own computers, the cause of fan noise in computers is not so much a necessary evil in our age of faster processing (old CPUs like the Pentium 4 ran hot as well), but rather a simple hardware problem due to the fact that many computer manufactures use cheap/noisy small stock fans. Replace a computer cooling systems with a slower-rotating larger diameter fan, and you will most likely have more airflow with less noise. Obviously that solution would be harder in space- constrained laptops, but I imagine with some clever engineering (ex. having large fans blow out the bottom of the computer) the designers could work out those issues if they really had the money and inclination to do so.

</comment><comment><USER11> I completely agree with this article. If there is one thing I hate it is a program which makes my laptop's CPU fan start whirring like a jet engine. Usually with games this is because developers didn't properly program a FPS limiter, or else the game just uses a lot of alpha blending and graphical effects.

However, with modern processors just because they are fast that doesn't mean that programmers have to max out the processor and make it heat up. For example, I wrote an article a while back about how I increased performance in a 2D game and brought processor usage from 99% to 35% using a few graphical tricks such as trying to do alpha blending during the load (precalculated) rather than while rendering each frame:

[http://experimentgarden.blogspot.com/2009/08/sdl-tile- game-w...](http://experimentgarden.blogspot.com/2009/08/sdl-tile-game-with- soft-shadows.html)

</comment><comment><USER12> Personally, I have optimised fan noise right out of all computers, aside from those in server closets, for years.

<comment><USER9> You mean by using fans that don't make noise? What a concept :)

<comment><USER13> I would assume it involves drastically increasing the size of the fans, consequently reducing the RPM (and noise) whilst keeping the same overall airflow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Computer noise is a function of hardware design. It's true that lower-power hardware is easier to cool, but on a laptop space constraints prevent you from implementing proper (quiet) cooling solutions. There, you really are trading performance against noise.

My homebuilt desktop is an overclocked 4GHz 8500 with a 4870 video card. It uses over 300W when pushed, but is still practically inaudible due to its water cooling and 250mm fan radiator tucked away in the corner under the desk.

<http://www.silentpcreview.com/> is an excellent resource for finding low- noise hardware and designs.

</comment><comment><USER15> It's interesting that there appears to be a trade-off between using parallelism to reduce response time and optimizing for power usage, specifically in the use of redundant computations to avoid communication between nodes (as mentioned in the Guy Steele slides posted earlier.) Precomputing information a user might request is another potential power- waster that can be very good for responsiveness. My first reaction: man, I have enough environmental dilemmas in my life already! Will I have to turn on "high latency mode" in my applications just like I turn off my low-flow showerhead while I'm lathering up?

<comment><USER16> When you start seriously optimizing, you're always making a tradeoff. At first, you start moving from sloppy naive algorithms to more specific ones. No big problem there. Then you go from the general-case algorithm to a "tuned" one that biases to your specific situation. Maybe you change to data types that your language can optimize better. Then you start playing directly with memory and you have to think about little things like byte alignments, pipelining and cache size, getting more and more specific to the architecture you are running on.

At each step, the nature of the solution gets a little bit more intertwined with the details.

Parallelization becomes a tradeoff you "feel" much earlier, because you're changing things all the way up at the algorithm level.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> In the end, I took this as a discussion of thermal energy dissipation as it pertains to mobile devices. In other words, battery life.

My conclusion is that we need to vastly improve the energy density of batteries (or consider using carbon-based energy sources to power mobile devices).

Edit: Not sure why this is getting downvoted. The end of the article really does discuss mobile devices and energy dissipation - which I found to be the most critical part. Yes, the author ties it in together nicely with his anecdote of writing out code by hand. So in his day, you optimized for code length. Now, he advocates that we optimize for lower energy consumption. But I would instead, or in parallel, argue that mobile devices also simply have too little energy available to them.

<comment><USER4> The batteries in your devices represent decades of R&D; scientists are spending entire careers looking for 5% improvements. Saying "just use better batteries" appears to trivialize that effort. Also, programmers (generally) aren't qualified to invent new battery chemistries, but they can make software use fewer cycles.

<comment><USER18> Plus Apple has a tendency to capitalize on better battery technology by just using smaller+lighter batteries in later generations and preserving the same runtime.

You do get a nice boost when buying a replacement battery for your 2-3 year- old device...

<comment><USER14> I think you are not giving Apple enough credit. My 1st gen MBP had a runtime of 1.5h new, the current ones more like 6h.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Interestingly relevant in light of recent discussions as to whether or not the "no third-party background apps on the iPhone OS for sake of power conservation" policy is valid for the iPad.

</comment><comment><USER20> My solution: A small wire shelf with foldable legs gets used as our laptop desk. The foldable legs allows our "desk" to be adjusted to two different heights to suit different user preferences. The wire shelving allows adequate airflow around the laptop. It never gets hot like it used to on a solid surface. This solution costs under $10 and can be implemented with one very brief shopping trip.

</comment><comment><USER21> Use a CPU that does not require a fan. The 1 Mhz 6502 did not need a fan. The ARM, Apple A4, and others processors do not need fans. The problem is the Intel architecture has too many fans.

<comment><USER22> Really, I guess all those other cpus are just as fast and have the same cache and cores too huh?</comment></comment>