Ask HN: Reasons to stay in Software Engineering - <AUTHOR> I did my B.Sc. from a fairly reputable university in Electric Engineering. Since I enjoyed programming during my studies I decided to go for it and accepted a full time job as developer ( mainly C / C++ ).
I really do like Linux, OpenSource projects, blogs like e.g. hackernews etc. To me it felt like a passion: So much cool stuff I can read about, all accessible only with a computer and an internet connection. However, I recently decided to do my masters but currently have some serious doubts whether I should focus on software or just completely change my track. The problems I have are:
* Everyone can be a "software developer". Even thought I went through a really though and challenging university degree, which I finished distinctly above average, I have to go through whiteboard interviews. This won't change with additional job experience. For some reason, companies do highly mistrust my skills and degree.
Other jobs, equally well paid, do not require this.
* You have to know _a lot_. Programming languages, Tools, Operating Systems, Tests etc. On top of that, specific domain knowledge is required. Unfortunately, my brain forgets and if I work with different technologies, after 1 year I will not start at 0 but definitely neither at 100%.
* After all it's "just" software. Besides yourself, nobody really cares how you solved the problem. Sure, it's quite appealing to think through a complex system, tune it, develop it etc. but often it includes cumbersome work and decisions are made elsewhere.
So why should I stay in the software domain ? <comment><USER2> Like EE, the exposure to various Fields is potentially huge. It was my favorite thing about software, after software itself.

With my BSCS, I worked in aerospace, telecommunications, finance focused MoM (we are dated by our buzzwords), manufacturing supply chains, indigent health insurance, auto sales, dark pool trading, and medical device manufacturing.

I'm now out of software because I was a B player, and my freshness date expired.

Now I'm a long distance semi truck driver, and I'm currently sitting in my Kenworth T680 as I write this. It's the ultimate experience if you're a loner.

I miss the money, and the software writing itself, but I've never had a meeting since I started truck driving. I don't miss the development practices churn, or what I call work about work.

I do still automate some parts of my personal administrivia, mostly with python and Bash.

<comment><USER3> Could you please shed some light on what made you pursue Truck driving after being a software developer (besides the meetings of course)? Was it out of choice or necessity?

<comment><USER2> Necessity. After leaving a software QA job without the next job in hand, I had one interview in a year. Blame it on whatever you want, that was my reality.

As for truck driving ... "They were hiring."

EDIT: I do enjoy it, it's a big and beautiful country, and the work is pretty easy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Software interviewing has become necessarily (though unfortunately) adversarial for two major reasons; a lot of people are lying on their resume, a lot of engineers have inflated self-worth. If you're competent... don't worry, you will break through. But keep in mind, experience in this trade has a lot of value - and companies can only absorb so many people with 0 experience at any given moment in time.

That said, should you change your track from pure EE?

My personal experience in hiring has been that people with pure CS bachelors/masters are usually a worse fit for highly technical roles than those with another STEM degree. I think this is because it is harder to teach yourself electrical engineering than entry level software development.

A _average_ candidate knows how to program. A _good_ candidate knows has deep domain knowledge in something. A _great_ candidate has deep domain knowledge and can turn that into code.

</comment><comment><USER5> The effort to reward ratio is as good as it gets. Professions with similar or higher reward usually do so only with a lot of effort. Think litigation lawyers or doctors that pull crazy amount of overtime. There's a lot of jobs in the software field that will pull in 6 figures with great conditions and reasonable effort. That's why everyone is fighting each other to enter the field, for better or worse.

And while "everyone can be a software developer" right now because the demand is so high (we're in a middle of a mini-dotcom-boom), it won't always be that way. Expect to see saturation in the next few years. Yes, the self taught person who works their butt off will be able to make it, but it won't be common, or will be limited to entry level positions, which will become more and more competitive. We're already seeing this happening a bit.

<comment><USER6> I've been hearing about saturation for about 15 years and honestly there are no signs of it, not even close.

<comment><USER7> Some time back I wrote this ( [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16148087](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16148087) )

I'd be willing to take either side of a debate for "is there a shortage of people who, when given tight specifications for a piece of software (write a function that takes X as input and provides Y as output) that enumerates all of the corner conditions can produce a program in a language that they are familiar with."

At the same time, the "person who can work with the business user on the software, think about the architecture of it, identify the design necessary, come up with the estimate that actually matches the time frame that it will be done in with a reasonable error... and produce software that takes X as input and provides Y as output while being aware of where the edge conditions may exist and ask for clarification on how it should work"... I believe there is a distinct lack of that portion of labor.

Furthermore, there is also a lack of people who are able to move from the first labor pool to the second, and a lack of mentors who have the time and ability to help that group move to the second.

I don't think its incredibly difficult to hire an entry level person as long as one sets the bar low enough and has people within the origination who are capable of providing the design. On the other hand, it is very difficult to find the people who can give the necessary instruction to the entry level people to allow them to become productive within their ability.

As an aside, I also find that within the entry level group... there are a sizable portion that have the attitude of "I learned language X and that was hard enough, I'm going to stick with it and not learn anything else." That X can be found for all languages and none have the monopoly on it. However, it is disconcerting for me to see those individuals... I started out as a C programmer, and then Perl (full stack web - some JavaScript in there) and then Java (enterprise), and then Java stand alone (swing application)... and while I'm still a Java programmer, I can see other languages looming on the horizon. Java will become the COBOL, and while there are still COBOL programmers out there, its not something that one wants to get stuck in for another two or three decades waiting for that last app server to be turned off before they can retire.

\----

At the "anything past entry level", I still find that the number of qualified applicants drops off substantially. For entry level, the applicant pool is very, very large. I am now despairing that many of that pool don't have the necessary skills to move beyond following someone else's design.

<comment><USER8> > and while I'm still a Java programmer, I can see other languages looming on > the horizon. Java will become the COBOL, and while there are still COBOL > programmers out there, its not something that one wants to get stuck in for > another two or three decades waiting for that last app server to be turned > off before they can retire.

I don't think this will neccessary be the case, Java is far from being in maintenance mode. It looked like it would be some years ago but there now is a lot modernization going on, both inside the language itself and inside the ecosystem. Maybe it might loose its top position, who knows, but I don't see it being practically dead anytime soon.

Sure enough there will definitly be those weired "COBOL like" enterprise things building on top of all of the bad ideas from the early Java days which stay forever and which nobody not already familiar with wants to touch for good reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In my experience: Software engineering will always be frustrating unless we remove all the intermediate layers of people thats sits between software engineers and the end-users/business. So if you can find such an organisation then probably you will find reason to stay in software engineering. Finding such organization would be really tricky.

<comment><USER10> I work in such an organisation, albeit a rather small one (~ 60 people). It is absolutely not easy: some people are not cut out for it and would prefer a strict specification and focus on writing the best code, which clashes sometimes with delivering quick-'n-dirty customer value. Other people are just not that good in recognizing the patterns in businesses. I think our end result is better than that of most companies, but at the same time it is much more difficult to manage properly, so I can see why so few organisation take such an integrated approach.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I was recently speaking with a recruiter who advised me to "prep" for tech interviews. "Read Cracking the Coding Interview", he said. "Do some programming problems so your skills are fresh".

I've never prepped for a tech interview and I'm never going to read a stupid book that's supposed to coach me.

What am I prepping for? I've been a programmer 10+ years. I've had 10+ years of "prep". Is that "fresh" enough for you?

Tech interviews have gotten way, way out of hand.

<comment><USER12> tl;dr:

\- None of us know everything about every environment, even though we often imagine we do

\- If you want a job, and spending a few hours prepping on data structures and algorithms (either to improve your performance, or to verify your performance is in fact perfect) will help your chances of success or your confidence, why not do it?

You might want to consider:

\- Just because you don't want to follow the recruiter's advice, it doesn't mean it's a 'stupid book'.

\- Although the recruiter mentioned 'programming problems', the problems in the book may test a wider (or just different) range of skills than what you (or I) consider 'programming'

\- The fact that you've 'never prepped for a tech interview' may have impacted the set of environments in which you have worked, and it may be hard to know whether you would enjoy working in those places where preparation is 'table stakes' (i.e. necessary but not sufficient) for success.

\- Companies that interview in ways that require/expect some preparation might be (intentionally or unintentionally) filtering out candidates who are not willing to do what is required to achieve their aims. (If you're not willing to spend a few hours with a book to increase your chances of landing a great job for the next 2-3 years, then maybe you wouldn't be willing to learn whatever JS library is required to succeed at your next project.)

You and I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting. But I know other people with 10+ years of coding experience, and the majority would improve their chances of succeeding at a given interview loop, by preparing using 'cracking the coding interview'.

<comment><USER13> > would improve their chances of succeeding at a given interview loop, by > preparing

It seems to me that you're presupposing that "success" equates to ending up with an offer.

I posit that for some professionals, success is actually deciding (ideally mutually) if employment is desirable/beneficial. The decision may well be that it is not, but that would still be a success.

In this latter situation, preparation time might be better spent researching the background of the team on would be joining, the company itself, and technical and cultural environment, in order to ask better questions during the interview, rather than studying so as to achieve what could be, arguably, described as gaming the technical screening portion of the process.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A degree in EE has been a big plus in some teams I worked in, both in terms of getting hired and day to day work.

Be aware of this: 99% of teams/companies out there are not solving quantitative problem. They are throwing chunks of code from stackoverflow at some app. They use every framework, tool, methodology of the year and look for those names on your CV.

Yet, there's a niche where people do data driven development, understand and use statics and mathematical models, and do real engineering like aiming to solve a problem with the minimum amount of complexity and code.

Aim for that. There are teams like this in Google, Amazon, Facebook and other smaller companies. You have to go and hunt for those. Stay away from coder jobs.

</comment><comment><USER15> devs with 20 yrs experience have to go through whiteboard interviews. thinking that this is an insult is wrongheaded.

hardware jobs pay less. many times, much less.

<comment><USER16> In my experience, a web job can net up to 4x salary vs a much more difficult hardware engineering role. I know because I went form hardware to web and the average compensation is much higher. Additionally, web jobs tend to be less stressful.

<comment><USER17> But why?

<comment><USER16> I think, because of smartphones and smart gadgets, the demand for hardware and gadgets has reduced dramatically. A lot of gadget ideas can be built as an app. Plus, most businesses need websites or web apps now so there is much, much more demand in for web engineering.

<comment><USER18> You are right about phones. I saw this a lot over the past years myself. I started in hardware back in the 80's when it was all big components. Then, with smartphones, it became clear that most little pocket gadgets of the 90's were obsolete. However, doesn't someone still need to make the phones and computers of tomorrow? Aren't those people going to be paid well since there will be fewer of them? I'm not saying it's not true, it just seems odd that software would be compensated so much better than hardware. Does anyone else have any thoughts on this?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Why are you getting a masters degree? Are you doing this while working full time? What is your end goal for a masters degree?

The interview process for software developers is as you write, terribly broken at a lot of companies from the point of view of most developers. I do not see this changing in the foreseeable future and it does not matter what software you have written in the past, you will get the _opportunity_ to prove yourself all over again for the rest of your career.

One possible solution is to work for yourself. This solves some of your issues and introduces a whole different set.

</comment><comment><USER20> The interview process sucks, and it probably isn't much better for other careers. I have friends that have master degrees unable to find jobs with no logical way to explain it. Experience and having a good personality isn't a golden ticket to a job.

You really don't need to know a lot. You choose to know a lot probably because you either feel uncomfortable not knowing the whole picture, or because your just curious. I have meet a ton of great developers that their knowledge base was their language and libraries because that was all they needed to know to be great. One guy I know that hires peoples ask one question in interviews to gauge peoples knowledge "You click the address bar of a browser type in www.google.com and push down enter on the keyboard what happens?". There are some people that give 5 min answer and some that could spend a hour just explaining the keyboard interaction with the operating system across 4 different operating systems for a hour. Find what domain you enjoy and just do it.

Everything is "just" something, and their is no way around having to do cumbersome work and making decisions to get some where doing anything.

You should stay in software because you want to. If you need others to validate a reason for you then you probably should get out while you can. Keep it as a hobby, but the second you start questioning something like this you either need to try something new or go on a camping trip and drop some mind altering drugs so you can find a answer. Maybe do some volunteer work in a third world country.

</comment><comment><USER21> First of all, you don't have to stay in the software domain if you don't want to. However, your concerns do not seems to be very specific to the software domain:

* Everyone can be a "software developer". Everyone can also be a [whatever]. Why would you want to have a whole profession for yourself? If you don't have to prove yourself during the interview, you'll have to do it on the job. This is not going to be different somewhere else. In general, is better for you if your colleagues have to meet a minimum competency standard.

* You have to know _a lot_. There is a lot and there is a lot that changes. There is also a lot that stays the same and a lot that you can transfer from an area to another. Once you are a good at design, architecture, Test Driven Development, Pair-Programming etc. you are not going to forget everything just because you have to use a new programming language.

After all it's "just" software. How you solves the problem and write your code internally is going to influence how good it works (bugs, performance) and how fast you can change and improve it. People will care about that. Usually, you are going to work in a team and your colleagues will also care about your solutions.

</comment><comment><USER22> I stay because I love it. Coding is my passion, and I'm grateful every single day to be paid well to do something I enjoy. I'm not entirely convinced that other professions don't suffer from the same negative aspects either (bad management, terrible deadlines, cargo cult-ing, some boring tasks). For me, outside of maybe working in pro audio, I can't imagine doing anything else.

> "For some reason, companies do highly mistrust my skills and degree. Other > jobs, equally well paid, do not require this."

I think if other jobs were able to directly test your technical skills in an interview they probably would. I personally hate whiteboard style interviews as well but, having sat on both sides of the interview process over the years, I see a lot of value in seeing people's code. Personally my preference is a take home coding test, but interactive coding is fine too if the problem isn't too tricky. Probably this is because I am self taught and don't have a degree to lean on that colors my opinion so take my words with a grain of salt I guess.

</comment><comment><USER23> > After all it's "just" software. Besides yourself, nobody really cares how > you solved the problem.

More that once I've come across such crossroads, and the answer for me is:

(i) Find a niche in which you can excel, master your domain and then people will "care".

OR

(ii) Don't worry about how others perceive you as long as you are having fun along the journey. Find a way to stay happy.

</comment><comment><USER24> To avoid repeating what has already been said, also try to look more at the how and not just the what.

If you've got a talent for it, then look at your career in terms of how you can increasingly fulfil that 'how'.

That could be your own business or a company/vision/mission that really sings to you.

You might get a few bad experiences along the way but they would only serve to remind you of that 'how', and give you more resources to do it better.

For me that means blending my passion for proper agile, coaching, and compassion, into my dev workflow such that I will always leave a team or company better than I found it. There have been plenty of situations where I failed to do that but it only empowered me to learn and adapt.

That's not a yes/no answer, it's just another perspective.

</comment><comment><USER25> Start your own company; you are probably highly talented and our industry went recently insane, trying to normalize to the lowest denominator. Build a product with high quality and charge a lot of money for it to dysfunctional companies that are in despair and incapable of their own excellence. Most of them are like that these days. Never put all your eggs to a single basket though. Invest all your income above your needs and some safety margin to both stable investments like index funds and to high-risk investments like what blockchain was recently. In ~10 years you should be way better off than almost anyone you know (unless there is some wide-spread societal collapse that can't be ruled out).

</comment><comment><USER26> Your second point contradicts your first. You don't need credentials to do it but you need to know a lot. People with good word of mouth reputations have much better job security (perhaps spanning multiple firms) than most other fields.

The key question is "Do you like the work?"

<comment><USER27> I think there's also the mistake of assuming having "programming credentials" means you are prepared for every "programming" job. Whereas, in reality, each job is it's own microcosm of domain knowledge (even if you're using the same languages/frameworks between jobs!)

So you have the opportunity to ask "Do you like the work?" under many different circumstances.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I find writing software to be a very tedious exercise a majority of the time, punctuated by moments of intense joy and concentration. However I still do it because I see it as an indispensable tool for turning my own ideas into reality and its hard to put a price on that. If you're worried about interviews and what not, pick a domain your intensely interested in and let your passion glow during the interviews, I know from exp. that many good employers would rather have a knowledgeable passionate hire than a dev who knows "everything" but couldn't care less about the domain.

</comment><comment><USER29> In my experience, whiteboard interviewing is uncommon here in Europe, with the exception of American companies. Non-American companies either don't want you touching a white board at all or give you only basic white board excercises, mostly to see how you comunicate and if you're not a total fraud.

</comment><comment><USER30> For the wage, being a manager is better. If you really like programming, you'll find that boring.

My strategy is to build stuff with other folks, create a value and try to transform that to real money (with a startup for example).

I think your real question is more around what you wanna do with your life.

</comment><comment><USER31> > So why should I stay in the software domain ?

Because you are already heavily invested and is part of the current elite of software engineers, probably. If you still like it, why leave it?

<comment><USER32> > _Because you are already heavily invested_

[https://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/03/25/the-sunk-cost- fallac...](https://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/03/25/the-sunk-cost-fallacy/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> _Everyone can be a "software developer". Even thought I went through a really though and challenging university degree, which I finished distinctly above average, I have to go through whiteboard interviews. This won't change with additional job experience. For some reason, companies do highly mistrust my skills and degree. Other jobs, equally well paid, do not require this._

I don't give any credence to the college someone graduated from when I'm conducting job interviews. I have a computer science degree, but I've seen too many people graduate with a computer science degree that cAn talk theory all day long but couldn't program their way out of wet paper bag. On the "smart and get things done" quadrant, they were completely on the "smart" quadrant.

I have been a software developer for over 20 years, but unfortunately I spent way too long at one company and became an "expert beginner"[1]. So I'll just talk about the last ten. For all intents and purposes, I may have gotten three solid years of usable experience out of my first 12. I've had 5 jobs in the last 10 years - my interview experience.

1\. A semi technical interview. No white boarding. I just described my experience and thought process about delivering results. They were a startup and liked my practical experience delivering code.

2\. I did a pair programming test where they had a project with failing unit tests and I had to refactor the code to make the tests pass. I think they had a written test with some practical questions and a coding part.

3\. By now, my years of experience and practical worthwhile knowledge had finally gotten somewhat in sync. I was applying for senior level roles. They asked technically questions, a whiteboard interview where they wanted me to design a scalable, fault tolerant system and a normalized database system. They quizzed me on my design decisions.

4\. A team lead position where the hiring manager asked me about my 90 day plan to create a software development department and to come up with a migration development plan to move them off of an old Access backed system.

5\. A white boarding discussion about the company's current technical issues with scalability, automation, fault tolerance and suggestions about how I would tackle them.

I did have to do a whiteboard coding exercise that consisted of writing a merge sort. I did it, they made an offer but after seeing the interview process, I knew that was a company I would never work for at the position they were interviewing for. They did make me an offer though.

 _You have to know _a lot_. Programming languages, Tools, Operating Systems, Tests etc. On top of that, specific domain knowledge is required. Unfortunately, my brain forgets and if I work with different technologies, after 1 year I will not start at 0 but definitely neither at 100%._

I consider myself a full stack developer/architect from the web down to (cloud hosted) net ops/Dev ops/development. I can go in with no infrastructure and design a pretty good system at each level. Yes if I am not constantly working on a part of the stack - especially the front end - I do have ramp up time to get at a high level of efficiency. But people do it all of the time.

This is no different than any other high paying profession. You're expected to know a lot about your field or at least be able to ramp up fast.

 _After all it 's "just" software. Besides yourself, nobody really cares how you solved the problem. Sure, it's quite appealing to think through a complex system, tune it, develop it etc. but often it includes cumbersome work and decisions are made elsewhere._

Most software development involves maintenance of other people's code. People very much care about how you implement something.

As far as being able to make your own decisions, the secret is working for a small company. But only do that _after_ you gain some real world experience and can learn from others.

</comment><comment><USER34> Simple. Money, money, money.

</comment><comment><USER35> The money is so damn good.

<comment><USER36> Is it? In France it is just "OK" at best. Guess depends on where you are.

<comment><USER37> Either be a freelancer, or work for American companies remotely. I do both.

French companies pay freelancers not only more than employees, but they are way more annoying with the later. They just give you a better status for some unfair social reasons.

American companies will generally have more interesting projects and higher budgets. They will pay you more than a French company, while it will still feel that it's cheaper for them.

As a freelancer you can still pay for taxes, social security, etc. and yet double what you would had made. Plus you get flexible hours and you can work from home.

The downside is that you can't suck, be lazy, or sick for too long. You have basically no safety net.

<comment><USER36> I'm already in France for with a worker visa (CDI). Changing that to a freelancer status (auto entrepreneur) is a huge administrative pain.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Aiming ultrasound at the brain raises hope of new treatments - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/06/aiming-ultrasound-brain-raises-hope-new-treatments?MvBriefArticleId=9389 <comment><USER2> Jay Sanguinetti in Tucson, U of A, is doing some really awesome stuff with Ultrasound and the brain. Anyone interested should take a look at his research,

[https://www.jaysanguinetti.com/transcranial- ultrasound](https://www.jaysanguinetti.com/transcranial-ultrasound)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGEjmwaIPZk&feature=emb_logo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGEjmwaIPZk&feature=emb_logo)

Ted talk - A Technoboost for Meditation

</comment><comment><USER3> The guy who invented lobotomy won the nobel prize. Hopefully these researchers are less susceptible to the hype train.

Of course as basic research this is great, but articles like this that suggest that everything's value is the clinic and superhuman immortality is the problem with science. Understanding is the reward.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's a welcome change from the rest of medicine that the brain seems to somewhat positively react to all sorts of random interventions: magnetic fields, direct current, LSD, and now, apparently, ultrasound.

While these experiments seem to hint at very specific mechanisms at work, maybe there's also a general principle of (mild) change or challenge being supportive in helping a an errand brain's active return-to-the-mean.

Also please nobody tell DARPA about this. Agreed?</comment>


Don't under think it - A postmortem on building a successful iOS app - <AUTHOR> http://inaka.net/blog/2012/12/06/dont-under-think-it-part-i/

<comment><USER2> "A technology project's odds of success are inversely proportional to the number of customizable settings in version 1 of that product." Great quote, and my gut feeling is that it is true - I'd really love to see some data here, even if it's just a few points (apps). Graph of nr of settings vs number of users for a few similar apps?

<comment><AUTHOR> I would violate all kinds of NDAs to publish that data, but I certainly have it...</comment></comment>


Fluent Java HTTP Client - <AUTHOR> http://www.yegor256.com/2014/04/11/jcabi-http-intro.html?2014-14 <comment><USER2> OkHttp by square seems quite fluent and is widely used. What does jcabi offer that's not available there?

[http://square.github.io/okhttp/](http://square.github.io/okhttp/)</comment>


Ask HN: What does success for a technical book look like? - <AUTHOR> In September I released a small book about programming and security. Like most technical authors, I did it for the experience and professional credential more than the money.
Now I've sold around 300 copies in the first few months, nearly paying off my $2K advance.
I'd like to write more - a lot more - so I'm trying to judge how successful the book is in terms of securing myself more writing opportunities. I've been offered the chance to pitch / write more by the publisher, and the publisher overall seems really happy with my output, but it would be an enormous help to understand what people in the industry / acquisitions editors / etc, use as their criteria for success in technical publishing. <comment><USER2> Serial self-publisher [0] here and loving it :-)

From a number's perspective, I think you can look at anything between $0 - $3000 a month for a popular technical book on Amazon. Maybe there are some even up at $3000 - $5000. That doesn't include what you get from publishing it through other channels as well.

That's only on point of viewing it though. I like more to see success from the recommendation/readers ratio perspective: How many of the people that have read your book would recommend it to someone else. That's where word of mouth comes into play that I find so much more worth than any money. It guarantees your book's success over the long term, not only for the launch. As every startup launch: it's a marathon and not a sprint! So make sure you deliver high quality or iterate towards high quality.

\- [0] [https://www.robinwieruch.de/the-road-to-learn- react/](https://www.robinwieruch.de/the-road-to-learn-react/)

<comment><USER3> I never thought of publishing on amazon, interesting.

Which tool do you use for editing your ebooks?

So far I have self published my ebooks with the leanpub markdown editor.

However it leaves a mention of leanpub inside the book.

Pretty sure it wouldn't be ok to have this for amazon.

<comment><USER4> have a look at pandoc [1], you can convert text files in markdown to ebooks

[1] [https://pandoc.org/](https://pandoc.org/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd published a couple books years ago and the publisher's benchmark was 2000-4000 copies (depending on variables within their business) over any period of time was a commercial success. If you've done 300 in the first few months it seems fairly likely you'll get there. That said, the biggest bar to securing more writing opportunities for technical books is more about proving you can write consistently, so as a second time author you'll already be well ahead of the game. Technical publishers know the business and where there's enough interest and little enough competition to make money, so let them guide you on interesting areas to publish in and you can focus on great writing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you - even seeing that number is really helpful.

Did the topics of your books diverge significantly? One thing I'm balancing is moving out of security and into other areas.

My real, secret, ultimate goal would be to break into general interest nonfiction, which is of course completely different, but I'm content for now just moving on to other technical topics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't think you should be afraid of linking to your book.

For anyone interested, it's "Bug Hunting for Penetration Testers" [0], and seems pretty good.

Also: Packt Publishing has a 5$/5€ sale right now.

[0]: [https://handsonbughunting.com/](https://handsonbughunting.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for posting! Didn't want to come off as a shill.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can you share the book? At least in the profile? I'd be interest to take a peek.</comment>


Show HN: An encoding/decoding tool for Martin David's theoretical S language - <AUTHOR> http://ramadis.github.com/slang <comment><AUTHOR> The S language is a theoretical programming language proposed by Martin Davids in his book Computability, Complexity and Languages. It is composed by labels, variables, and 4 basic instructions, and its used between many things, to prove that there are natural functions (F: N^n -> N) which can not be computed. Awesome!

If you want to see the repo, you can find it in [https://github.com/ramadis/slang](https://github.com/ramadis/slang)

</comment><comment><USER2> Curious if there is material on the web regarding the S language.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, beside the book, there is not much. Maybe you can find some material citing the book in exercises or lectures from a theoretical CS course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Correct link: [https://github.com/ramadis/slang](https://github.com/ramadis/slang)

</comment><comment><USER4> Broken link. Can you correct?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's up again! Remove the cache if you can't access it.</comment></comment>


Climate Change Can Be Stopped by Turning Air into Gasoline - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/06/its-possible-to-reverse-climate-change-suggests-major-new-study/562289/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> The article kind of glosses over the fact that one of the inputs to the process is hydrogen.

That really makes this whole process a way of converting energy stored in hydrogen to energy stored in hydrocarbons. This is pretty desirable - hydrocarbon fuels are much easier to work with, fit in with our existing transport - but not really a new source of energy.

The problem with sequestering CO2 as hydrocarbons is that you need to put a whole load of energy (embodied in the hydrogen you're combining it with) into the ground and leave it there. Fortunately renewables (especially solar) are heading in the right direction. On a sunny day in an area with lots of solar panels, electricity is essentially free. We're still some way from having enough free energy available to be able to put large amounts of it back into the ground though.

<comment><USER3> It's kind of funny, really: through human history, we "gained" a lot of "free" energy by burning fossil fuels; now, to fully recover our atmosphere from the externalities of that energy generation, we would have to _expend_ just as much, if not more, than that total amount of energy we ever "gained", to essentially _un-burn_ those same fossil fuels.

<comment><USER4> > we would have to expend just as much, if not more, than that total amount of > energy we ever "gained", to essentially un-burn those same fossil fuels.

Ironically enough, our renewable electrification process is like a turbo coming up to speed. There is simply _so much_ energy hitting the Earth from the Sun (if I recall off hand, about an hour of sunlight can power humanity for a year, or thereabouts) that if we continue to rapidly deploy solar and wind, we'll have orders of magnitude more energy than humanity currently requires for a first world lifestyle while _also_ having enough energy to sequestor all of the original carbon burned through fossil fuel based industrialization.

"A long way around the block" if you will.

[https://www.iea.org/publications/renewables2017/](https://www.iea.org/publications/renewables2017/)

[https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/4-charts-show- renewable...](https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/4-charts-show-renewable- energy-rise-america)

<comment><USER5> Doesn't this feel like we are shifting the problem somewhere else? I'm not sure it is a sustainable option.

Solar panels take huge amounts of energy to produce, which may not be recovered in the life of the panel.

Its only sustainable if it's possible to have a solar panel factory powered by solar panels... Which seems unlikely

<comment><USER6> The idea that solar panels take more energy to produce than they are able to output would make solar panels economically unviable as the energy cost must be recovered to at least break even. That may have been true several decades ago but the solar panels of today are competing economically just fine.

<comment><USER7> But deployment is slowing in jurisdictions that have decided they can't afford the subsidies and what it does to power prices.

<comment><USER4> Solar and wind are cheaper than coal without subsidies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > The new paper says it can remove the same ton for as little as $94, and for > no more than $232. At those rates, it would cost between $1 and $2.50 to > remove the carbon dioxide released by burning a gallon of gasoline in a > modern car.

If those numbers are true, that's actually a pretty achievable cost to absorb that could be added directly as a tax on gasoline.

<comment><USER9> The problem is that we want to not only put back in our future use of gasoline, but also our PAST use of gasoline.

That's going to be..not cheap.

<comment><USER8> The article mentions this method can also be used to sequester the carbon. So if we can extract more than we consume as fuel we could theoretically solve that problem as well.

<comment><USER10> There's no reason to take the extra step of turning it into fuel for the portion we would just sequester underground.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a terrible article and I am a fan of The Atlantic and would probably be considered a climate hawk.

The new science that Climate Engineering did has nothing to do with making gasoline from CO2. There is technology to do that and a number of companies working on it, its in the $10/gallon range. Some have estimated as low as $4, if they can get their process to scale up, which they haven't been able to do.

There is already plenty of CO2 available for much less than $100/ton, this is not a barrier to making products out of CO2.

<comment><USER12> I read the article wondering why you'd want to do this by sucking in air when you could do it with exhaust from gas-powered power plants that is much richer in CO2 than regular air.

In fact, there was coverage the other day of a new gas-fired power plant that throws off CO2 for storage in oil wells. Why not use that CO2?

[https://www.vox.com/energy-and- environment/2018/6/1/17416444...](https://www.vox.com/energy-and- environment/2018/6/1/17416444/net-power-natural-gas-carbon-air-pollution- allam-cycle)

<comment><USER13> The reason is simple: we've already put enough CO2 into the atmosphere to cause adverse changes over a long period of time. A lot of the IPCC models and their discussion centers around more near-term climate threats over the next 100 years or so caused by continued emissions and overall severity of going ever more "over budget" with CO2 levels, but we're still 100+ ppm of CO2 over the highest average of the last half a million years or more. That CO2 is going to hang around in the atmosphere for quite some time as the natural processes like weathering that lower it are slow, and its presence will add extra heat from solar radiation while it's still there. If we suddenly stopping emitting now, we would still be above baseline but not in the apocalyptic range. If things don't change quickly though, we're going to have to suck CO2 from the atmosphere one way or another because just halting emissions won't be enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wish the article elaborated a little more on where the energy comes from to (re)form gasoline. Gasoline has an extremely high energy density. To force hydrogen to bond with CO2 must expense a large amount of energy. The energy has to come from somewhere and delivering the proper amount cannot be a trivial thing. There is a limitation on how hot things can get without chemical reaction (such as burning fuel). Also, a good chunk (I think over 75%) of hydrogen is created by super heating steam with petroleum based fuel...this would make the whole process counterproductive.

<comment><USER15> _To force hydrogen to bond with CO2 must expense a large amount of energy. The energy has to come from somewhere and delivering the proper amount cannot be a trivial thing._

The reaction between CO2 and H2 to form hydrocarbons is actually energetically favorable (thermodynamically spontaneous). It doesn't require outside energy inputs to force the reaction forward.

See e.g. "CO2 valorisation via Reverse Water-Gas Shift reaction"

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221298201...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221298201730433X)

and "Turning carbon dioxide into fuel"

[http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/roypta/368/19...](http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/roypta/368/1923/3343.full.pdf)

The key issue is, as you note later, producing large quantities of hydrogen without relying on fossil sources.

<comment><USER7> Except the reactions happen at 300C, and the FT reaction is exothermic between H2 and CO, not CO2. taking CO2 apart is endothermic. And then you need to refine the hydrocarbons (because they will look like diesel or wax, not gasoline).

<comment><USER15> Using the standard gas-phase enthalpies of formation, the production of 1 mole of n-octane and 16 moles of water from 8 moles of CO2 and 25 moles of hydrogen is exothermic by 923 kilojoules.

8 CO2 + 25 H2 -> C8H18 + 16 H2O

Energy of products minus energy of reactants:

(-208.7 + 16 * -241.83) - (8 * -393.52 + 25 * 0) = -923

Experimental values are from NIST WebBook.

The hydrogenation of CO2 to CO and water is endothermic and kinetically hindered. The hydrogenation of CO2 to saturated hydrocarbons and water is exothermic (though still kinetically hindered).

There are also hydrocarbon synthesis paths that involve less reforming and purification of high-boiling products than F-T, e.g. methanol synthesis starting from CO2 and H2 followed by Mobil methanol-to-gasoline.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I remember reading something a few years ago that this sort of thing was being investigated as a means of using wind power.

As we know wind power (like most? all? renewable sources) have this undesirable property of not being constant. And I mean undesirable in the sense of the base load of an electrical grid.

So the idea is to store excess power. Obviously rechargeable batteries are one way to do this. But another is artificially creating gasoline as a means of energy storage. This could have pretty desirable properties at places where gasoline might otherwise be expensive to ship in and wind power might be in abundance.

Anyway I can't find the paper but at that time with that process it was looking at still over $5/gallon (which in remote places is still totally fine).

So if this new process is real and scalable to an industrial level, that would be great. As much as EVs are a rapidly growing market, I think we're going to be stuck with ICEs for a long time yet.

<comment><USER17> If there were a lot more electric cars they could act as a buffer to smooth out the variability of renewables.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Does the planet really need more gasoline?

Maybe it's time we consider the opportunity to allow people to convert their private property into dense carbon sinks that support plant and terrestrial arthropod diversity.

[http://www.elegantcoding.com/2018/03/reimagining-suburban- ya...](http://www.elegantcoding.com/2018/03/reimagining-suburban-yard-to- reverse.html?showComment=1520978508113#c5891458890176884648)

Maybe we should be considering every option we have to promote a healthy reduced CO2 environment.

<comment><USER19> > Does the planet really need more gasoline?

Are you just going to buy everyone new cars? Or replace all existing vehicles?

I mean I'm all for electric cars and other modes of transport, but the problem is that we have an existing infrastructure that will take a long time to replace. As an example, the vehicle I drive is from '97\. I still see people driving cars from the early 90's (or even 80's) as their daily driver. (And it is more common for poorer people to drive older cars).

So do we need a new gasoline? Yes, unless you want to either replace 30+ years of vehicles, or wait that long.

<comment><USER20> Electric buses are fast growing in cities, led by China. LA says it will have all buses converted by 2030.

<comment><USER19> This may surprise you, but half of the people don't live in cities like these. My city doesn't have any form of public transportation. And this isn't uncommon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Would this have all the other downsides of regular gasoline - nitrous oxides and particulates? If so, I'm going to keep pushing for getting gas-powered cars off the roads at least in populated areas.

<comment><USER19> > I'm going to keep pushing for getting gas-powered cars off the roads at > least in populated areas.

This technology is more trying to make it feasible to have a carbon neutral form of transportation. Most people do not have the money to buy an electric vehicle. I for one drive a vehicle made in '97.

<comment><USER15> Most people who can't afford to buy an EV can't afford to buy carbon-neutral synthetic gasoline either. I'd expect it to cost $8-$10 dollars a gallon, at least with foreseeable near-term technologies.

People who already own ICE gas vehicles and don't drive them very much might still come out ahead buying $10/gallon fuel vs. acquiring an EV. (I put maybe 1500 miles/year on my car.)

<comment><USER22> Biodiesel is just over $3. Citation?

<comment><USER15> Biodiesel is neither synthetic in the sense that I mean (direct chemical synthesis, no biomass) nor is it presently carbon-neutral. It also isn't suitable fuel for legacy gasoline-fueled vehicles.

My estimate is based on adjustments to the LANL Green Freedom concept for synthetic gasoline from 2007:

[http://bioage.typepad.com/greencarcongress/docs/greenfreedom...](http://bioage.typepad.com/greencarcongress/docs/greenfreedom.pdf)

The authors claim that for profitable operation "the price of gasoline at the pump must be about $4.60/gal." This number incorporated the authors' unrealistically optimistic expectations of low-cost Generation III nuclear reactor construction. It rises to $5.69/gallon, adjusting for inflation[1]. The rest of the cost increase comes from my estimate of using renewable electricity sources instead of cheap nuclear power. (It would be _even more_ expensive if I used nuclear power at actually-observed costs of currently-in- progress American reactor construction.)

[1] Yes, I used CPI, and I know it's not really appropriate for capital- intensive industrial projects. This is just a back-of-the-envelope estimate.

<comment><USER23> Sounds cheaper than gas here in Switzerland.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Call me skeptical. Hydrocarbon fuels have a lot of energy in the chemical bonds. That's why they are good as fuel!

Making hydrocarbons from CO2 will require hydrogen and energy. Where does that energy come from? Maybe solar, or wind, which would actually be a good use assuming this process can stop and start as sun/wind is available, but the amount of solar panels or windmills needed to replace current amount of energy sourced from petroleum would seem to me to be staggering (I haven't done the math).

<comment><USER13> We are going to need a staggering amount of renewable power anyways, but this could at least partly answer the concern of how to store that renewable power since it is variable in its output.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> > "This opens up the possibility that we could stabilize the climate for > affordable amounts of money without changing the entire energy system or > changing everyone's behavior."

If you really want to accomplish something on a large scale, you need something like this. People have been talking about overpopulation dangers for centuries, and human population growth remained high. Cheap, effective birth control gets releases, and population growth is stabilizing.

In general, tech solutions are easier than large scale social solutions.

</comment><comment><USER26> Reforestation, and a limitation to asphalt/concrete that replaces grass, would also take up CO2. I read somewhere that an acre of grass takes up over a ton and a half of CO2 per year. That's a _lot_. If we could revert a million acres a year to grasslands, we'd eventually put the Earth back on an even keel.

There's also the algae in the ocean which generate a significant amount of the world's oxygen -- reduce pollution of the oceans and maintain a healthy food chain, and perhaps this will restore itself as well.

The Amazon rain forest alone is responsible for a huge chunk of CO2-to-O2 work, and they're chopping it down at an alarming rate. Stop destroying the rain forest and restore as much of it as possible.

I think these policies would be far more effective long term than this hokey air-to-fuel thing, and without needing to crack water for the H2 that the plan requires.

That said, it sounds like cool technology and if it became competitive with fossil fuels, using (I suppose) solar energy to obtain the H2, it's a brilliant idea.

</comment><comment><USER27> I was thinking about this and looked into some of the research. We're not quite there yet though. However, if we do have a practical way of doing it, I think it would be best if we use volatile renewables like solar and wind and store the excess as hydrocarbons. That would give use a smooth transition path, reduce the energy storage problem, and provide a source of carbon- neutral fuels.

However, longer term we must still move away from burning fossil fuels even if we make them completely carbon neutral, because while its a slow effect they are not oxygen neutral...

[http://scrippso2.ucsd.edu/](http://scrippso2.ucsd.edu/)

<comment><USER15> _However, longer term we must still move away from burning fossil fuels even if we make them completely carbon neutral, because while its a slow effect they are not oxygen neutral..._

If synthetic hydrocarbons get their hydrogen from water (electrolysis or high temperature thermochemical cycles), their life cycle is oxygen-neutral as well. The extraction of hydrogen from water simultaneously produces a matching quantity of oxygen.

<comment><USER27> That's an excellent point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> They claim to be pulling 1 ton of CO2 out of the air per day. Some older numbers I just found show we are putting 10 Billion tons per year. This only has to be scaled 27 million times to equal it out...

<comment><USER29> I wonder what year it will be that CO₂ ppm in the atmosphere levels off and I wonder what level it will be at then? I wonder what the world will look like then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I imagine a future where an industry exists that is federally subsidized and pulls CO2 from the air.

However, our need for carbon sequestration is ultimately surpassed by the industry's "output", and we end up heading in the other direction.

Because regulators tend to be captured, we end up with one industry generating CO2 (for all the positive reasons we need CO2) so that the sequestration industry doesn't kill off all the plants, etc.

<comment><USER13> Not only would this not be a problem for many decades even if carbon capture is wildly successful, but releasing carbon into the air is much, much easier than pulling it back out. If that were not true, we would not be facing the catastrophe that is ahead of us. You could literally just burn old coal mines or something if in some far-flung future the nefarious carbon-capturers were somehow sucking down too much. We have over 100 years' worth of artificially introduced atmospheric carbon since the beginning of the industrial revolution to work through before this will ever be a problem. Please educate yourself on the actual quantities involved.

<comment><USER30> I don't think you understood my comment was about how people respond to incentives. Anyway, I'm particularly interested in this remark you made:

> We have over 100 years' worth of artificially introduced atmospheric carbon > since the beginning of the industrial revolution to work through before this > will ever be a problem. Please educate yourself on the actual quantities > involved.

Is "100 years' worth" a unit of measure of CO2 I'm unfamiliar with? Are you saying that the industrial revolution was only 100 years ago? Is this the "actual quantities involved" you were referring to?

<comment><USER13> I'm sorry, I didn't realize you were inexperienced with searching the internet for information. Here's some handy links with some numbers:

[https://www.co2.earth/global-co2-emissions](https://www.co2.earth/global- co2-emissions)

[https://www.earth-syst-sci- data.net/7/349/2015/essd-7-349-20...](https://www.earth-syst-sci- data.net/7/349/2015/essd-7-349-2015.pdf)

"The total cumulative emissions for 1870–2014 are 545 ± 55 GtC. These emissions were partitioned among the atmosphere (230 ± 5 GtC based on atmospheric measurements in ice cores of 288 ppm (Sect. "Global atmospheric CO2 growth rate estimates"; Joos and Spahni, 2008) and recent direct measurements of 397.2 ppm; Dlugokencky and Tans, 2014), ocean (155 ± 20 GtC using Khatiwala et al., 2013, prior to 1959 and Table 8 otherwise), and land (160 ± 60 GtC by the difference)"

Estimates may vary on what to count as the start of the industrial revolution, but the internet indicates that it started in Britain around 1760. It did not spread much from there until 1840 or so. Here's a quantity emitted into the atmosphere since 1870: 230 gigatonnes of carbon (GtC). That's 230,000,000,000 tonnes. Not carbon dioxide, just the carbon itself. Multiply that by 3.67 for weight of CO2 gas: 844,100,000,000 tonnes CO2. Note that this is metric tonnes, so 2,204.6 pounds per tonne for us in metric-challenged countries. This is just legacy CO2 without counting other greenhouse gases, starting from a few decades after the industrial revolution went global to close to present day. We're adding around 10 GtC (36.7 GtC CO2) every year to that total recently.

I used this calculator, though I had to remove the commas from the number because there seems to be a character limit. [https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gas-equivalencies- calc...](https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gas-equivalencies-calculator)

So let's take one of the measures from there. It said that that much CO2 could be absorbed by 994,228,504,122 acres of U.S. forest in a year. Let's try that out. There are 57,308,738 square miles of land surface area on Earth (habitable and non-habitable). Multiply that by 640 to get 36,677,592,320 acres. Alright, subtract the entire land surface area of Earth, whether we could grow trees on it or not, from the number of acres of trees we'd need to capture that carbon in a year: 994,228,504,122 - 36,677,592,320 = 957,550,911,802. That's a lot left over. How many planet Earths' worth of land area would we need to clear that much CO2 with just trees in a year then? 27.10 Earths. Okay, well that's easy then. We just need to somehow blanket the entire Earth including mountains, deserts, etc. with trees for 27 years to remove the CO2 backlog! So easy, right? Except we're also adding to that number constantly.

So if we just assume for the sake of argument that this man-made carbon capture works as well as blanketing the entire land surface area in trees, and we somehow started at scale immediately, it would take 27 years to get back to _baseline_. (Let's put aside that there would be 27 * 3.9 = 105 GtC additional in the atmosphere to deal with if emissions were flat, and pray that the land and ocean would keep absorbing the rest) I guess if you're really worried about them overshooting that mark, you can go ahead and panic now about that, and not about the _massive surplus_ of carbon we've got hanging around trapping the sun's heat.

Oh, and I didn't even get into methane or N2O, which are also heating things up.

I know it takes time and energy to google things (each search is about 0.2 grams of CO2 emitted equivalent) but I believe in your ability to do so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The article didn't talk at all about what the limestone is used for. What happens to the carbon in the limestone (CaCO3)? Is the limestone reusable? If we have to keep mining limestone, it just converts the problem, although I assume there isn't really a shortage of limestone at the moment, given how the ocean has been making it for billions of years.

</comment><comment><USER32> Converting CO2 back to fuels to be burnt in combustion engines sounds counterproductive to me. If the goal is to reduce atmospheric CO2, then it would be better to more permanently sequester it in carbon-rich building materials, for instance.

<comment><USER33> Depends. Assuming we keep using hydrocarbon fuels to some extent, and want to be carbon neutral, we have to either (1) create them from atmospheric CO2, or (2) absorb the atmospheric CO2 emitted from fossil hydrocarbons, and sequester it somewhere.

Which we should do depends on which is cheaper and more scalable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Can someone explain to me how any technology or change in mass habit will arrest changes and return us to, as well as hold us at, a perceived equilibrium that never truly existed within our dynamic climatic environment?

</comment><comment><USER35> I once had to pass on purchasing a home because its well had been ruined by the nearby gas station.

Even if they find a way to hypothetically enable a future for the internal combustion engine, why would we want it? Good riddance.

</comment><comment><USER36> The article doesnt mention it takes more energy to recapture than you get out (you cannot violoate the laws of thermodynamics). Solar and Wind are thus key to making this sustainable

</comment><comment><USER37> I hope this is as good as it sounds. Liquid fuels have a lot of pros.

If can see this being useful to nations who want to reduce their dependency on other nations for energy.

</comment><comment><USER38> Very simple question that the article completely failed to address: does the process output more energy in the form of gasoline than it takes in? I am quite certain that the answer is, NO, which means that the factory ends up putting more CO2 into the atmosphere than it is taking out...unless the factory itself runs on renewable energy, in which case who needs it at all.

<comment><USER39> The article does address the question, but I think you're coming at this from the wrong angle. Let me give an example of what I mean by that.

Let's say a person swallows poisons. The poison is going to kill them if it stays inside them with the amount that they swallowed. They absolutely need to vomit or they are going to die. The way your comment is approaching this, you're basically saying that vomiting isn't worthwhile because it takes more energy than it gives back.

In this analogy, taking carbon out of the atmosphere is like vomiting up a poison. If we extend the metaphor a little bit, then using renewable is like eating normal food. So if we take the way your comment is approaching things in an analogous way, you're also implying that vomiting up poisons is pointless if the energy we used to vomit was acquired from healthy food.

The metaphor does start breaking down eventually, but its a lot more obvious why this matters when you realize it isn't whether a question of whether we need to vomit - its just a question of how we do it and what we gain from doing it. This method gives us a carbon-neutral fuel, which is valuable. It's also somewhat cheap. There are other ways to remove CO2 from the atmosphere that don't have those upsides.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I have my doubts. It always seems more expensive to work against the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics than with it.

</comment><comment><USER41> WTF? This is amazing... Please be real! Please be real!

<comment><USER29> Too good to be true I'd say… Still, I admire your hopefulness, me I'm just a bucket of inured cynicism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> > _"This opens up the possibility that we could stabilize the climate for > affordable amounts of money without changing the entire energy system or > changing everyone's behavior."_

Regardless of whether this technology works as promised, the last part (and possibly the first part too) does not show the right attitude to solving this issue, I think. It's not just technology that got us into this mess. It's also _how_ we decided to apply that technology. Silver bullet or not, we need to change that.

It's one thing if the necessary changes don't have to be as drastic and doom and gloom as predicted until now, but if everyone thinks _" oh it's fine, we fixed this!"_ we'll be hit by Jevon's Paradox[0] so hard that we somehow manage to destroy ourselves anyway.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox)</comment>


The Developer Marketing Guide - <AUTHOR> https://www.devmarketingguide.com/ <comment><USER2> Here's how in-depth this link is, presented in (hopefully) easier to understand context for most people here:

"The Web App Development Guide for Marketers"

1) Get a database because they are the where all your data will be saved. "You should have a db if you have nothing else."

\- MySQL book link

\- Relational databases video

\- more intro-to-databases links

2) "Fancy having a frontend?" A frontend is needed because your users will want to use your awesome app

\- HTML link

\- CSS link

3) Do's and Don'ts

\- Have forms and buttons

\- Don't make the forms too long. Here's some research to show long forms lead to lesser people submitting them.

... and so on and so forth.

<comment><USER3> I don't think anyone (including the authors) would disagree that this is a very basic introduction to marketing for developers.

A point that's very separate from whether or not it has value.

There are still way too many developers who are making awesome products and then failing to get traction because they neglect the marketing basics. Something like this article that plainly lays out the basics is very helpful for setting a baseline.

<comment><USER4> > There are still way too many developers who are > making awesome products > and then failing to get traction

Can you give some examples? My experience is that the "Build it and they will come" approach works surprisingly well.

<comment><USER5> It works if you can hit upon the sequence of events to get some viral attention. Hitting HN at the right time of day, or getting some other attention among your target users. That can be a matter of chance but usually requires at least some effort on your part.

Just creating a product and a website with no marketing whatsoever is unlikely to get the attention of anyone.

<comment><USER6> How do you find out / when is the right time of day to post to HN?

<comment><USER7> Google indeed can be your friend here.

One analysis I like is from 'minimaxir: [http://minimaxir.com/2014/02/hacking- hacker-news/](http://minimaxir.com/2014/02/hacking-hacker-news/)

There's also a Quora answer: [https://www.quora.com/When-is-the-best-time-to- post-on-Hacke...](https://www.quora.com/When-is-the-best-time-to-post-on- Hacker-News-to-get-and-stay-long-on-the-front-page)

And wouldn't you know it, a submission on Hacker News itself for a post entitled "Best Time to Post? It's Irrelevant": [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9426040](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9426040)

I'm sure there are others as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Email might not be the most attractive means of communication, but > newsletters are direct and exclusive to customers, a good starting point. > "You should have an email newsletter if you have nothing else... This is the > one opportunity you have to make something just for them that no one else > consumes."

I'd love to see some broad evidence that email newsletters are effective. I've experienced no strong correlation myself between the frequency of sending newsletters and sales.

The strongest argument I've heard for email newsletters is, "it can't hurt, so you should do it just in case it helps." But that ignores opportunity cost.

Can anyone (preferably who doesn't work for a email campaign company) give any strong evidence in favour of regularly sending out email newsletters?

<comment><USER9> Email marketing is ridiculously cheap in terms of retention compared to most other forms of marketing. You 'own' the list, unlike with Facebook and Twitter. You can push to the list, unlike Google.

I can't talk for startups, but I have worked with very big enterprises on email marketing and all their analysis said email was the most cost-effective over the customer lifecycle.

<comment><USER5> Makes sense -- when people subscribe to your email list, they have directly indicated at least some level of interest in your product. That's more than any bio/demo based ad campaign can guarantee.

<comment><USER9> Potentially, someone might have expressed interest by following or liking you. The problem is that the only way of reaching those people is by paying Facebook. The cost increases as your list grows.

When you send an email newsletter, even if your customers don't read it or respond, you're getting your brand name and offer in front of them. The costs barely change as your list grows from 100 to 10 million. That's the real advantage of email compared to just about every other form of marketing.

Compare the costs and sales of pushing an ad to 10 million people who liked you versus 10 million people who bought from you or subscribed to your newsletter. The latter will nearly always give much better value for money.

<comment><USER10> May I ask which service you use where the cost barely grows from 100 to 10 million subscribers?

We use Mailchimp and it's definitely not the case. Might be time for a change!

<comment><USER10> Specifically, with Mailchimp, 100 subscribers would be free.

10 million would be $40,700/month.

[https://mailchimp.com/pricing/high- volume/](https://mailchimp.com/pricing/high-volume/)

<comment><USER9> If you're using Mailchimp to handle a list of 10 million users you're definitely doing it wrong. You need a tool that charges by number of emails sent instead of size of list.

These days I'd suggest buying an in-house email tool and use an SMTP server (SendGrid, Mandrill, SES, Mailgun). Pricing will obviously be more expensive but it increases much more slowly than with Facebook. To send 10 million emails on SendGrid would cost around $5K. Depending on the terms, that kind of budget would cover somewhere between 50 and 50000 users with Facebook or AdWords.

<comment><USER10> Ha! Yeah, well we're not quite at the 10 million mark, and not sure who would pay that amount.

We actually use Sendgrid for transactional emails and should probably revisit for marketing. They didn't have the list manangement features when last we looked and there's a little integration dev that'll need to be done, but you've prompted me to take another look at it. May be worthwhile now. Thanks.

But, even with those guys going from 100 emails to only 4 million (highest quoted on the site), the price goes up a couple of orders of magnitude from $9.95 to over $1600. That's hardly "barely growing costs" and for a bootstrapped startup, the difference may be prohibitive. Hopefully, you've got some revenue or funding by the time you hit that subscriber base. But, don't want to gloss over the fact that you will pay significantly more as your list grows substantially, even if it's less than with other channels.

<comment><USER9> OK I guess I phrased it badly. At a list size of 10 million, email will probably cost around $10K per month to service. With SEM you'll be lucky if it costs less than $250K per month.

So for every SEM placement, you can send 25 newsletters. So you need SEM to convert 25x better than email to get value from it. That might be possible, depending on the quality of your list, but my experience is that all companies eventually use email marketing because it's so much cheaper with big lists.

I would question how you even got a list size of 10 million, or what you're hoping to get from direct marketing, if $10K per month is prohibitive.

<comment><USER10> Points well-taken. Thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This post doesn't go into detail about how to accomplish a lot of these things effectively, so let's share some of our favorite resources.

I'll start: "How We Got 1,000+ Subscribers from a Single Blog Post in 24 Hours" [https://www.groovehq.com/blog/1000-subscribers](https://www.groovehq.com/blog/1000-subscribers)

<comment><USER12> I hadn't seen that post before even though I have heard of Groove. Thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The problem with marketing as a developer is that there is a fine line between helpfully increasing awareness of your product/service and _being an asshole about it_ with modals which interrupt blog post reading and "growth hacking" of unsolicited email/Tweet blasts/etc.

Silicon Valley has been encouraging the latter because it _works_ , to my frustration. One of the reasons people ask for upvotes on Product Hunt is that _everyone else is doing it_ and there are no visible consequences for doing so. (and I've recently found out that people do the same for HN votes on occasion because they assume it's a part of the culture)

<comment><USER14> The line is only moral, at best.

You should perform AB testing and measure what's optimal for revenues.

If spamming the user with popups and emails makes them click and buy more, adding more of it is making the site more user friendly.

<comment><USER15> "If spamming the user with popups and emails makes them click and buy more, adding more of it is making the site more user friendly."

That's a generous interpretation of "user friendly." If a user genuinely wanted those things, then yes it's truly an improvement. If users didn't want them but got the impression pop-ups and emails were required then it's more debatable. Put another way, paying for things is not user friendly, but without doing so there would be less worthy of buying.

<comment><USER14> Let's assume we're talking about short and clear email messages. Nothing shady at all, not using misleading popup to trick the user into clicking adsense ads.

If people buy more stuff when they receive 10 mails per months, is the user to blame?

Additional information: Users really open the emails and don't mark them as spam at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Isn't this a bit ..."basic" ? I mean sending emails and having a blog is not exactly the pinnacle of marketing (especially for developers).

<comment><USER17> Agreed - and feeds a little into the 'Launch and the world will be beating a path to your door' mindset. Just as important as having a blog is being able to mine trending topics and having a proper process in place around content production.

<comment><USER18> are there really trending topics around most b2b topics? most b2b content dont exactly go viral.

<comment><USER19> Yes in the sense of there being industry trends you should keep up with and talk about. One thing with b2b sites is that you don't really need viral content, because you likely have a very specific idea of who your customers are.

Depending on the field, lots of b2b topics aren't super competitive SEO wise, which makes it possible to really dominate a particular topic in search results. Long tail keywords [1] are particularly helpful from my experience.

1\. [https://moz.com/blog/long-tail-seo-target-low-volume- keyword...](https://moz.com/blog/long-tail-seo-target-low-volume-keywords- whiteboard-friday)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is perfect timing for me - I've just finished building my side project ([http://www.artpip.com/](http://www.artpip.com/)) and feel like I've made something people would want to use, but was unsure about how best to get the word out. Thank you!

<comment><USER21> Failed to install on Windows, wish you have a Linux version.

        2017-01-01 13:27:22> Program: Starting Squirrel Updater: --install .
        2017-01-01 13:27:23> Program: Starting install, writing to  C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\Local\SquirrelTemp
        2017-01-01 13:27:26> Program: About to install to: C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\Local\artpip
        2017-01-01 13:27:28> CheckForUpdateImpl: Couldn't write out staging user ID, this user probably shouldn't get beta anything: System.IO.DirectoryNotFoundException:
    `

<comment><USER20> Thanks for the report - I'll investigate. What windows version are you on?

Linux version is in the pipeline!

<comment><USER21> windows 7 that is, 64bit

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> re: retargeting

Before you go off shoving fistfuls of money at display ad retargeting platforms, I'd highly suggest running placebo tests first. The platforms will tell you how you're converting people into paying customers at a $2 rate, but with retargeting, you've previously acquired their attention in some form -- that's how you're able to retarget them in the first place. The problem is that, particularly with display ads and Facebook feed ads, you tend to cookie bomb your audience and you're not getting a fair assessment of how many people actually stayed engaged with you because your ads in some part.

In nearly all my experience, the actual value of retargeting is never what the platforms tell you it is in their ridiculously misleading CPA reporting.

</comment><comment><USER23> Has anyone here gathered a bunch of resources similar to this, especially around early-days bootstrap Marketing for SaaS?

We created our product as a group with engineering backgrounds and now trying to switch some to full on Marketing mode and trying to grab anything I can get my hands on.

<comment><USER24> Here's a terrific list compiled by Patrick Keane:

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tAiya71mDQgtwn_F9-mN...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tAiya71mDQgtwn_F9-mNQhuc7GdsQ5e2_BeG69Cb82A/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> If you're interesting in this topic read everything Patrick McKenzie writes: [http://www.kalzumeus.com/](http://www.kalzumeus.com/).

This is guide is not "a bit basic", it just barely scratches the surface.

<comment><USER26> And do. Doing is much more effective than thinking. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is a good 1000 foot overview but they leave off some specifics that could burn you bad.

Blog content: they say writing anything is better than nothing and there's some truth to this, but compelling content is far more important. One thing that can happen (seen it) is you hire some content monkeys to make you "content". The result is bland and reads like stale Cheerios. Google will knock your site ranking badly if users don't like to read your articles.

When I started writing content for this client my first article got more organic traffic than their whole site with hundreds of pages of "content". This continued with each article I wrote until 99+% of organic traffic to the site came from around 10 articles I wrote.

Biggest thing with content is it needs to be good quality. Long form articles with pictures work the best. The other extremely important point is to tailor the subjects to your readers.

If you sell can openers write content about cans and cooking with canned stuff. Write about ways to open cans when your opener breaks. Write about what to look for in good can openers. Write about how canned food is made. Become the one and only website about anything can related. Google questions your readers are likely to type and get links to your site on the top search results for those questions. Even if you have to pay some site owners it will boost your rank tremendously.

Make sure a human visiting your site would think it was well made and google will to. Use cdn's to make it load fast. The latest and greatest TLS certs. Fully verified email addresses linked to you domain with all the bells and whistles. Make your site seem legit enough that users would feel okay using their credit cards there.

Email: make sure the emails you send are things your customers want to get. Know the demographic of your customers and tailor your message carefully. It goes far beyond subject line content, if you annoy your customers your emails will get binned as "promotions" and nobody will see them.

</comment><comment><USER28> An App Launch Guide: [https://github.com/adamwulf/app-launch- guide](https://github.com/adamwulf/app-launch-guide)

</comment><comment><USER29> 1\. Get Leads. (get a good trigger signal)

2\. Send Emails

3\. Build Landing Page or other.

4\. 1-3 Repeat and modulate landing page and email template as you get more customer conversations.

</comment><comment><USER30> Get a botnet to upvote your blogs/product releases on HN/Product Hunt/Reddit/etc.

</comment><comment><USER31> I love this! I always believed that the best developer is the one that has a taste for business and this thing is in the line of it :D</comment>


Kickstarter passes $1B in pledges - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/1billion <comment><USER2> Congratulations, Kickstarter.

In my opinion, Kickstarter is one of the most important tech startups of the last few years for democratising the process of project funding so significantly. It's started to change the way people do business and create things in such a fundamental way.

One of my favourite examples to give is the way in which games can now be funded. The truth of the matter is that games can cost a _lot_ more than they used to, but for the last 15 years Publishers have had such a strong influence over which games do or do not make it to market and they _know_ that a mass market game is going to be less risky than something like Double Fine's _Broken Age_. So they probably won't fund it, and I can kind of see why.

Now thanks to Kickstarter _et al._ , a developer just has to be able to say to potential fans, "is this a game you want?!" and if they say yes, they essentially pay in advance for their game. It's so direct, it's so wonderful.

Yes, there's still an element of having to sell the idea, but at least the idea is being sold to a bunch of regular folks, who have a little bit of money as opposed to somebody in charge of a large business. The decisions are much easier to make, and the risk is much lower for the investors.

I hope crowdfunding in this way isn't just a flash in the pan. I hope we continue to see projects funded in this way for a long, long time to come. Here's to another billion, Kickstarter!

<comment><USER3> As a backer and project creator who's running a Kickstarter funded startup, I couldn't agree more.

I love your example but I want to point out that the same obstacle you mention with games is applicable to most of the other industries that are funded on Kickstarter. The root problem in all cases lay in a startup's:

1) need for an audience

2) need for capital

What kickstarter has successfully done is build a loyal audience that's massive in size. I came to really appreciate this after seeing more than 80% of my funding come from people visiting kickstarter.com who didn't know about my project beforehand. This was huge. And not only does it give you the visibility and the capital required to execute, it validates your idea to a large extent.

<comment><USER2> Good luck with your campaign! If you don't mind I have a few questions if you happen to know the answers:

1\. Did those 80% of people see it through a "featured campaigns" thing or was it totally organic? 2\. How did the remaining 20% find your campaign? 3\. Can we see the campaign page? :)

<comment><USER3> Thanks. The campaign ended a while ago but here are the answers:

1\. We weren't featured by KS but it was on the "popular projects" page throughout the life of the campaign. It initially got there by a combination of backers finding it through "Recently launched projects" \+ backers who signed up on our website to be notified of the launch (the former being the majority). By the end of Day 1, it was #1 in its category and stayed there for a while. Here is a link that shows the trend of the project funding if you're interested: [http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/yathletics/silverair- odorle...](http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/yathletics/silverair-odorless- athletic-shirts-made-with-pure/#chart-daily)

2\. Remaining 20% found it through our own marketing efforts + other websites/blogs writing about the project

3\. Sure thing - [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/yathletics/silverair- od...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/yathletics/silverair-odorless- athletic-shirts-made-with-pure)

<comment><USER2> Ah, cool. Good advice, and congratulations on smashing your target :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I skimmed over the map to find some interesting data:

* Averages are close to $200 per backer

* USA has $175 avg per backer, but makes 2/3 of that $1B

* The middle east (UAE, Saudi Arabia, Koeweit, ..) spends $400 up to almost $800 per backer

* Antartica has 11 backers @ $337/backer :-) 4th place, after the middle east, After that, Norway ($280), Belgium ($250)

Would be interesting to plot this data against the number of citizens, so you can get a view of the participation rate of a country. (The US would top that probably at around 1%)

Edit for readability

<comment><USER5> I was looking how to skim the data and I couldn't find a way.

Yes, it would be interesting to see the spending per capita & how it correlates to GDP.

<comment><USER6> Now find a way to correlate that to language and project country stats. As far as I can tell all Kickstarter projects have to be in the US/UK/Australia/NZ and of course, the entire site is in English.

UK contribution - 54 million $, German contribution - only 21 million $. Something is obviously off.

At this point I'd focus on horizontal growth - get in as many important geographies as possible, focus on key languages: German, French, Spanish, Chinese, Portuguese, Russian.

<comment><USER7> > UK contribution - 54 million $, German contribution - only 21 million $. > Something is obviously off.

The obvious solution is for people that want to be backed to offer versions of their videos dubbed to German.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> That's pretty impressive. Kickstarter has a 5% fee (and Amazon their own processing fee) which means ~$50m in revenue for Kickstarter and $25M in revenue over the last year. I wonder how long they'll keep with Amazon as payment processor, it seems like they're leaving a lot of money on the table.

<comment><USER9> Isn't the 1bn just for pledged money though? Is there a breakdown of what percent of pledged dollars actually gets funded (when KickStarter takes their cut).

Not saying they didn't do well, but I'd estimate the cut they make is somewhere closer to 30-40mm and not 50mm.

<comment><USER8> Correct, but the total is higher than your estimate:

[https://www.kickstarter.com/help/stats](https://www.kickstarter.com/help/stats)

$859M in successful dollars which comes to $43M, though that doesn't count current pledges for projects that will go on and succeed (there are currently $24M "live" dollars).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I just found out that my uncle, whom I thought very successful, failed to fulfill his responsibilities to his backers. He was working on a 3d printer that I was hoping to get to buy some day, but he never delivered more than a few of them (most of which didn't even work) and now his backers are trying to get together to sue him. A few days ago he filed for bankruptcy so they probably won't get anything.

As much as I love the idea of kickstarter, I have now seen first hand how you can be cheated and just can't trust the system to work (although many have and it has worked for them). After the disappointment of Minecraft when Notch started making a ton of money I have simply stayed away from all crowd sourcing/buy-and-play-during-alpha projects for good. There is nothing wrong with simply waiting until something is finished to buy it.

<comment><USER11> What happened with Minecraft?

<comment><USER12> Notch was very free with his ideas. He'd often just propose them on Twitter. Sometimes he'd say that a certain feature would be in but later drop it because he thought it wouldn't be good. Also, the game has had a huge community since when it was relatively young and it has evolved in a specific direction (meaning people who started when it was new but expected a different end result were displeased). Notch also seems to have become somewhat bored with the game.

These things combined make some people upset with Notch. Apart from this, nothing really happened with Minecraft. It continues to be a highly successful game and frequently gets new features.

Nothing to be done about it, really. You can't please everyone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> These stats can actually be quite useful if you ever decide to create a project on Kickstarter. For example, most of the money is granted on Wednesdays and between 10 and 15th of the month, so you can plan your funding cycle accordingly and increase marketing efforts during this period.

<comment><USER14> Keep in mind that correlation is not causation. :-) (disclaimer: I work at kickstarter)

<comment><USER15> I found it curious that it correlates to the middle of the work week plus basically the middle of the month!

<comment><USER16> Pay-week for lots of people maybe?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> That's a pretty website. I was impressed by the animations. What is the term for these kinds of slideshow-like sites?

<comment><USER18> That was simple one-page website with good transitions.

<comment><USER19> I didn't much like how the first graph built up while scrolling, iirc other sites normally make the graph static to the page while its built up during scroll. This one the graph was moving across my screen as it assembled, quite awkward.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I would love to know what the successful payout total is.

<comment> k-mcgrady That would be a much more useful figure. The only stats I can find are here[1] but it just lists the number of successful projects not how much was pledged to them.

[1] [https://www.kickstarter.com/help/stats](https://www.kickstarter.com/help/stats)

<comment> rkuykendall-com I feel like there are lots of people making sure no project stops at 99%. I know I barely use KS, but even I've sorted by "ending soonest" before and watched a few projects make it safely over to 100%.

That said, I'm glad to head the 20% number :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Tangential.. Kickstarter mentioned influential contributors but for whatever reason didn't give links to their backed project and I was particularly curious about what projects Neil Gaiman had backed. They weren't kidding, he's quite the prolific backer! [https://www.kickstarter.com/profile/108204027](https://www.kickstarter.com/profile/108204027)

</comment><comment><USER22> Wonder how much of this 1 billion actually successfully resulted in backer rewards and wasn't indefinitely borrowed/outright stolen. Just recently a webcomic artist John Campbell who raised $50000 wrote a long screed telling his backers that they will never get the book they paid for. And a lot of projects get completely forgotten about after they get fully funded.

<comment><USER23> I realize it's hip to bash on Kickstarter, but in my experience it works out well all the time. I've backed 28 funded projects: of those only one is currently past their delivery date (the Almond+) and they've been very good about updates. Other projects have also been late, sometimes by six months, but they all get delivered.

I tend to think of Kickstarter schedules like I think of software developer schedules: double it and add 3. Planning is hard, and for a lot of the creators it there first attempt at a large project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It is very interesting to observe that countries who spend the most on kickstarter are the same ones as the ones which spend the most in the Apple app store.

<comment><USER25> Likely due to extreme wealth/access inequality. In countries where the population is split between the extremely poor and the very rich the averages are going to be skewed higher.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Love the price comparison - what you can get for $1.000.000.000.

Also amazed that more money where backed from Antartica then some African countries.

</comment><comment><USER27> The share buttons at the bottom don't work.

</comment><comment><USER28> The country wise breakdown is fantastic, roughly indicates the startup culture present in the countries

<comment><USER29> Or just countries in which kickstarter is popular or even just available.

<comment><USER30> Even a simple color-coding scheme would have helped.

At first, I thought the blue color represented countries with at least one backer. "Huh, North Korea? Really?" Turns out every country is blue. Was disappointed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> That's actually really, reallyyyyy impressive... Congrats to Kickstarter.

<comment><USER32> Congrats to all of us!

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> When will we see crowd equity sites? Ie invest in early startups and get equity in the company.

<comment><USER34> [http://www.crowdcube.com/](http://www.crowdcube.com/), [http://www.seedrs.com/](http://www.seedrs.com/) \- UK companies along those lines

<comment><USER35> Also www.wefunder.com for the US.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> "A million dollars isn't cool. You know what's cool?. A billion dollars."

<comment><USER37> "No, it's not. It's not cool. I think being a wealthy member of the establishment is the antithesis of cool. Being a countercultural revolutionary is cool. So to the extent that you've made a billion dollars, you've probably become uncool."

\- Sean Parker's response to his portrayal

<comment><USER38> Sean Parker, net worth $2bn.

(I guess that he probably knew the implication of what he was saying when he said it.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I live in france, and kickstarter doesn't seem available here :(

</comment><comment><USER40> Off topic but looking at the map, it validates the old libertarian axiom that the more liberties, the more prosperous the economy, the more donations for utilitarian causes.

Who will feed the poor? Liberty will.

<comment><USER41> Or if not the poor, then the people with extra time on their hands and means to create compelling videos for interesting projects, and if not to feed anyone, then to allow allow them to work on creating something people with disposible income find interesting enough to sponsor as an artistic project or product pre-order. But yeah. Freedom and luxury lets some people and society accumulate disposible income and focus it on discretionary products. A billion dollars by 5.7 million people is $350 per person. Great that 0.1% (5.7 million people) have that kind of cash. Doesn't say much about whether 99.9% of people have any, or show that those $350 are a worthwhile cause for the 99.9% of people who aren't donating.

This isn't to take anything away from Kickstarter - I think it's great. But let's have some perspective.</comment></comment>


ASK PG: Can we add a viewport meta tag to HN head? - <AUTHOR>

Hi PG,
Myself and I suspect a lot of other viewers on HN use mobile devices to view the site. Currently the design can already crush down to a narrow width, but the way a lot of mobile devices 'scale the site and zoom', this isn't capitalised upon.
This can be solved by adding a line to the head. Mozilla's suggestion of the following might be a good start:
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, maximum-scale=1">
I wanted to propose that this very small addition to the site head would have negligible if any negative impact but will significantly improve the experience of people viewing the site on a mobile device.
Ali <comment><USER2> Even the much maligned craigslist has a viewport, no?</comment>