Seriously? Ads? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dinkevich.com/seriously-ads/ <comment><USER4> > _Fraud. Paypal and others use complex algorithms, special teams and God > knows what. But Facebook has an unique and unparalleled data base of a > user's history, friends, activities and what not._

The author seems to confuse credit risk and fraud risk. Credit risk pertains to the probability of you being unable or unwilling to honour your commitments. Fraud, within this context, pertains to the unauthorised use of funds. Facebook's data may be a uniquely valuable to evaluating the former, but to fighting the latter it is less important than existing transaction history databases.

Financial fraud is an _immensely_ complicated problem. An estimate quoted in _The Economist_ recently put the fraud loss rate at approximately 0.35% of transactions and up to 1.8% for online payments [1]. Cross-border payments are a niche unto themselves - even with margins as high as 10%, the fraud risk still poses a high enough barrier to entry that even the banks handle just 5-10% of remittances [2].

It's 11AM and so far Visa and American Express already have 1-3 data points of swipe activity on me. Over the day they'll get 5-10 swipes apiece (+1 NYC). Facebook has a tremendous amount of value in its dataset, but think for a moment about how much Visa, Mastercard, American Express, _or_ your primary bank know about where you live, what you spend on (and by virtue when and where you spend it), and, by aggregating that data, who you tend to spend with. That is what's valuable for anti-fraud and by proxy payments processing.

[1] <http://www.economist.com/node/21554743>

[2] <http://www.economist.com/node/21554740>

<comment><USER5> "The Economist recently put the fraud loss rate at approximately 0.35% of transactions and up to 1.8% for online payments"

For the ~$2 trillion[1] going through online payments, bringing down the online fraud loss by every 0.1% is equal to $2B, if over time Facebook can reduce that online fraud rate by 0.5% or more there is your $10B.

Using your real identity to make online payments could reduce that to real world levels.

If this is the case then reducing the fraud rate from 1.8% to 0.35% in online payments (a reduction of 1.45%) would calculate to a savings of $29B for this industry.

Thus, if Facebook is able to be a major part of that reduction by using real identities then they will get much of this transaction business. If they are able to pull this off there is no stopping them...

Feel free to rip me apart, but there is some validity to may arguments :)

[1] <http://www.edgardunn.com/uploads/100012_english/100385.pdf>

<comment><USER6> _Using your real identity to make online payments could reduce that to real world levels_

How many of your friends have had their facebook accounts stolen? For me, it's a few percent. _"Oh look, another random acquaintance is stuck in Abu Dhabi and needs me to wire them some money"_

Facebook security isn't nearly good enough to be handed my wallet. Actually it's not _my_ wallet that's the problem, it's the wallet of everybody who uses "password" as a password.

<comment><USER7> > Facebook security isn't nearly good enough . . .

Pretty sure most cases where people's accounts get hacked have nothing to do with the security of the website, except inasmuch as the site fails to provide an authenticator. Most "hacking" involves getting a computer virus or entering your password into a site that is not actually Facebook.

<comment><USER8> This is true. On the other hand, online banking security _starts_ from "the client computer is compromised", and a new service that says "you're fully liable if your machine is hacked" will have... problems getting traction.

<comment><USER5> "online banking security starts from 'the client computer is compromised'"

Facebook currently (or did) reset the password by having you identify the names of your friends using their pictures. I could see this as a way to authenticate a transaction.

<comment><USER9> Really? None of your friends have pictures of cats or their babies or grainy shots of them and four other friends as their profile pictures? Because sometimes it feels like half of mine do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've been on FB since the beginning. And I've never clicked on an ad. What makes you think I will to actually buy something?

I barely trust Paypal, you think I'm gonna trust FB with my CC details. You gotta be kidding.

There are a few steps FB must do before I'll trust them with anything other than bs about what games I'm playing now:

1\. Convince me they take my security and privacy seriously. 2\. Convince me they aren't selling my personal data (statistical or not) without my permission. 3\. Allow me to export (backup) ALL my data to my drive easily. 4\. All me to cancel my account (not that I would). And by cancel I mean remove all my data. No questions, no sales pitches to stay - just delete everything in my profile (and off their, FB, drives). FB says they do this, But there are plenty dead folk with active profiles. Despite families begging FB to delete them.

Until all this happens, FB gets nothing from me except an occasional post about my Skyrim adventures. Oh and commenting on the latest high school gossip (the latter being funny. I mean, there's a reason I left town 25 years ago and hardly kept in touch. But here we all are, FB friends.)

<comment><USER11> > _I've been on FB since the beginning. And I've never clicked on an ad. What > makes you think I will to actually buy something?_

FB has several billions of revenue from ads.

What makes you think you are not an insignificant outlier and that this move or any other doesn't concern you?

Just think people, if everybody did what I do on FB, would FB still exist? If the answer is no, then what you might or might not do, doesn't matter with regards to FB.

<comment><USER12> Despite the fact that FB makes money off of ads, do you think people would prefer to have ads on Facebook, or to not have ads?

I think the answer is obvious: people prefer no ads. "Advertisement" is a dirty word. People want a free, ad-less product, despite the fact that it's economically unfeasible.

That's a problem. What happens when it becomes more widespread or easier to install things like adblock? What happens if a browser comes along that blocks Facebook cookies and ads by default, but still allows the basic functionality of FB? Don't say it can't happen. We're just getting to the point in society where having everything about us on someone's server is "normal". Wait until there's a disaster of some sort, a major security breach, and see how fast people change their habits. It can happen overnight.

<comment><USER11> > _I think the answer is obvious: people prefer no ads. "Advertisement" is a > dirty word. People want a free, ad-less product, despite the fact that it's > economically unfeasible._

Well, the answer might be obvious but might not mean much. For example a similar question would be "people prefer to pay for things, or get them for free?". I think the answer would be obvious here too.

> _That's a problem. What happens when it becomes more widespread or easier to > install things like adblock? What happens if a browser comes along that > blocks Facebook cookies and ads by default, but still allows the basic > functionality of FB? Don't say it can't happen._

Then the Ad industry will turn RIAA on the users, and will lobby the government for the disallowance of things like AdBlock ("our content is a package deal, you cannot see it, and thus benefit from it, without also seeing our ads").

And it might be successful too, because they will have the support of ALL other industries -- as ads are a crucial element of over-consumption on which they thrive. By leaving it to our "needs" and "wants" only, consumption would drop very low (IIRC, they have studied the effects of a prolonged (a week?) mass media strike during the seventies, and that was the result. That was short term though, long-term should be even worse).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why not, it worked out so well for Google with their deep search history, world-beating teams of big data specialists, deep pockets and massive Gmail/Gapps userbase... [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-21/google-said- to-reth...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-21/google-said-to-rethink- wallet-strategy-amid-slow-adoption.html)

<comment><USER14> Google Wallet is actually fairly useless. To load it up you need a credit card. If you have a credit card, you could just as well, uhm, use a credit card.

<comment><USER15> I think your parent was being sarcastic. We need a sarcasm tag in HTML.

<comment><USER14> I was aware of that. But parent did raise an interesting point. Google Wallet isn't doing too great. Why?

<comment><USER16> the sheer number of possible answers is overwhelming, but pretty much everything Google does fails, except for search and email. (I can't be the only one who's afraid to find out what their cars are like.) so I'm going to say the reason Google Wallet failed is because it was neither search nor email.

I guess you could say Android is only half a failure, because the constant catch-up game they're playing with Apple isn't going as badly as the constant catch-up game Google Plus (and Wave, and whatever they called the other one) plays with Facebook.

but seriously, business failure can happen for so many reasons, it doesn't really mean anything at all, unless of course you see a string of people failing at the same thing.

<comment><USER17> Woah. Google Wallet failed because they didn't already have accounts for everyone when they launched it. Paypal was the only competitor but they didn't offer anything paypal didn't already offer, and everyone was already on paypal.

> pretty much everything Google does fails, except for search and email.

I can see that you're having some difficulty with google recently, but you can't actually believe this. What about Maps? Saying that maps is search because it has search built in means we can call GMail search too. What about Calendar?

> I guess you could say Android is only half a failure, because the constant > catch-up game they're playing with Apple

This is where the snark starts to bother me. Let's acknowledge that Apple made a phone with a big glass touchscreen before Google. What, since then, has been a great innovation that Android has rushed to rip off?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Are online payments such a big unsolved problem? It takes me all of 10 seconds to type my CC number and associated security codes. Sites that I use a lot tend to allow subsequent purchases without re-entering them anyway.

If everyone's facebook account has CC details attached and a 1 click "pay now" button you are only 1 XSS vulnerability from fraud on an unprecedented scale.

<comment><USER19> Credit cards suck for many reasons other than just convenience of use. Credit card companies are big cartels with hefty fees to retailers, slow and unpredictable turnaround between when a payment is made, and when it gets to retailers bank, and infrastructure that's not well suited for micro payments, or peer to peer payments.

<http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/02/ff_futureofmoney/all/1>

<comment><USER20> >Credit card companies are big cartels with hefty fees to retailers, slow and unpredictable turnaround between when a payment is made, and when it gets to retailers bank, and infrastructure that's not well suited for micro payments, or peer to peer payments.

The consumer doesn't give two flying fucks about any of this. This is a very important point.

<comment><USER21> I think you're wrong.

Ever had to buy stuff you didn't want to meet a minimum spend on cards? Cause over here many shops have a minimum of £5. And this is why.

Oh yes, the consumer cares, they just blame the shop owner instead of the cartels.

<comment><USER22> At least in the US, every major credit card has rules against minimum transactions. Reporting a minimum transaction requirement will cause the CC company to investigate the retailer and possibly punish them.

Many small businesses still do it, of course. What keeps people from reporting them is a mixture of not knowing the regulations and wanting the small business to stay afloat. But regardless, minimum payments actually _are_ put in place by the business.

<comment><USER23> Please see [http://blog.visa.com/2010/09/02/minimizing-confusion-over- mi...](http://blog.visa.com/2010/09/02/minimizing-confusion-over-minimums/)

Minimums are now allowed on CC

<comment><USER22> Interesting. I'll admit it's been some time since I checked the regulations. Thanks for the update.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This thread is interesting in that some people are arguing they wouldn't trust Facebook with their cc. To me this makes no sense as the likelihood of fb doing anything funky with your cc details once obtained seems highly unlikely.

If something does go wrong cc have very good insurance on them. The problem does seem to be a general resentment and paranoia of large companies. I dont think fb are going to cook up a half baked solution for anything like this, there's every likelihood they will do it as securely as the next especially with the strict laws and regulations around implementing such systems.

Everyone with a cc has probably used it in far less secure environments than fb could ever be, for example pubs, bars, resteraunts, independent shops etc.

If fb did a payment system it would annoy me briefly as another payment system I'd inevitably have to register with at some point but that's realistically as far as the problems would go.

<comment><USER25> It's not about FB deliberately doing something funky with it - it's about one of the million and one apps that have requested access to your FB account at some point doing something funky with it. You may trust them to do it as securely as the next person, but at least partly based on their past reputation around privacy, I don't.

<comment><USER24> Do you think facebooks payment implementation would be naive enough to allow anything like this?

<comment><USER25> I don't see a great deal of evidence that they wouldn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Just plain silly. People who see a big user base and jump to the conclusion of "payments!" as a future business don't have the slightest clue what they're talking about. Facebook isn't competent at tackling that problem, they don't have the expertise, experience, or relationships.

It makes about as much sense as looking at facebook with their billion users and saying "You know what all these people have in common? They eat food!" And concluding that facebook should become a grocery store.

Payments is a non-trivial business to enter. Paypal has a nearly 15 year headstart, 100 million active accounts and does a tremendous amount of business in a great many countries, yet it is still only a $4 billion a year company.

<comment><USER27> Facebook's potential advantage in this space is not that they have a billion users, it's that they arbitrate the _identity_ of those users. And payment is inexorably linked with identity, especially WRT avoiding fraud.

Certainly it is a difficult market to enter, but a few billion dollars can buy you a lot of expertise, relationships, and time to build experience.

The reason Facebook should go into transactions is the same reason Willie Sutton robbed banks: "because that's where the money is".

<comment><USER26> The problem is that it isn't where the money is, not much more money than Facebook is already making anyway. Not unless facebook intends to commit theft. The money today is in selling digital goods which have a near zero transactional cost. Music, movies, games, books, etc. Not that it makes sense for facebook to get into that business either, necessarily.

<comment><USER27> I don't have the statistics in my hands, but I'm willing to bet that the transaction volume of nondigital goods is at least two orders of magnitude larger than the transaction volume of digital goods. A 1% cut of _tens of trillions_ of dollars worldwide is worth quite a lot more than 30% of a few billions.

Granted, a worldwide payment scheme is a Very Hard Problem To Solve for many nontechnical reasons... but this is exactly the kind of problem that large, ambitious companies with lots of street cred should try to attack. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.

<comment><USER26> Real world examples don't bear those numbers out. Look at Visa. 2 billion cardholders, $4 trillion in transactions a year, 80 billion transactions a year. And their revenue is only about twice Facebook's. Unless facebook becomes a merchant bank and convinces millions of merchants to use them they aren't going to see much higher of a per transaction profit margin. The math just doesn't add up.

<comment><USER27> If the business proposition was simply "make another Visa" then sure, the proposition would be uninteresting.

On the other hand, 2-3% of that $4 trillion is being consumed by the payment processing chain. Only a portion of it goes to Visa; the rest presumably go to banks and other layers of the service. Facebook potentially could, by virtue of being a trusted holder of identity worldwide, subsume all layers of this chain.

Look at it from this perspective: It currently "costs" 2-3% of a transaction to make a CC purchase. That's a huge dead weight loss. Is Facebook capable of using its brand, reach, and identity database to create a more efficient system?

<comment><USER26> 2-3% isn't a dead weight loss, it's paying for very valuable things, especially fraud protection. You can't just magic it away.

Also, as I said, if facebook wants to step into the payments middle man role (which they could) they could maybe make as much as Visa does. If they completely reinvented themselves and turned into a global merchant bank AND managed to convince at least a tenth of all merchant account holders on Earth to switch to them THEN they could make some serious money. But the likelihood of that is precisely zero plus or minus a teeny, tiny margin of error.

In answer to your last question: no, no they are not.

<comment><USER27> Fraud is a massive problem in the existing payment system only because the architecture is horribly broken. The trust model is completely wrong. Nobody would design this system; we tolerate it only because of inertia, and because merchants are contractually required to hide these fees from customers. There's also an enormous regulatory burden to overcome. I'm not saying there still isn't a fraud issue, but it could be cut to a tenth just by changing the trust model.

My point is that Facebook is in a position to try building a new system, and the payoff is potentially enormous. Having a definition of _identity_ that extends beyond a name and a cc# goes a long ways towards limiting fraud.

However, I tend to agree with you as far as Facebook's technical competence. This doesn't mean they shouldn't try.

As far as the chicken-and-egg problem goes, FB might do well to bootstrap a payments system in lesser-developed nations where Visa & Mastercard don't have such a lock on the market. A truly global payments system stands a good chance of eventually winning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It's a possible but hardly compelling:

Facebook: ~ 1 billion customers

Visa: ~2 billion cards out there.

Facebook: ? merchants.

Visa: > 10 million merchants.

Facebook: potentially disruptive to the existing market

Visa: 50+ years experience with electronics payments processing, fraud detection, government relations and consumer credit marketing

Facebooks main competitive advantage is(was?) relatively cheap capital.

<http://corporate.visa.com/_media/visa-fact-sheet.pdf>

Edit: Corrected years, added reference

<comment><USER29> Who works for Visa that Facebook couldn't hire?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> It would be very convenient for someone, somewhere, to establish a widely accepted micropayment system for the Internet.

I sure can just whip out the CC, type in the 16 things, the special code, the expiration date, maybe a second screen the CC vendor presents to get my address or phone number for additional verification...

But I would never bother for a 3 or 5 cent article. And I firmly believe that's why there is no way to pay 3 or 5 cents for a view of something.

But there is a lot of cool stuff we could make or do with this. It should just be easy. Why doesn't it exist? There might be a big business answer that my fellows and myself don't get as we rant over coffee.

<comment><USER31> Micropayments haven't taken off because people don't want to pay 3 to 5 cents for anything. The perception of value is so low that even a one-button form is too much friction in the user experience.

If your article is only worth 3 cents, just show it to me for free and put an ad on the page.

<comment><USER30> If the transaction processing costs were 0, do you suppose this payment system would still continue to not exist?

<comment><USER32> There are very few things that are worth 5 cents that you'd get me to pay for that I couldn't just do without.

<comment><USER33> That wasn't the question; what percentage of the economy is from purchases that fall into the category of "I could do without"?

The question is, the NYTimes article linked on HN with 120 comments... would you pay 5cents to read it?

<comment><USER31> The decision to buy can definitely be irrational, but that can cut both ways. Buyers might decide against purchasing even when the product is clearly affordable.

Consider the Facebook social reader apps like the Washington Post. If you click through from your Facebook news feed, you need to authorize the app to read the article. It's a one-button form, it's totally free, and you could revoke the app whenever you want. And yet, a huge percentage of people cancel out of it.

Would I pay 5 cents to read a NYTimes article from Hacker News? Maybe yes, maybe no, depends on the article. The point is that I would be forced into my "purchase mindset" every time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I really don't want that to happen. Sure, it may be a good idea for them, but I'm already tired of services that won't let me register without a Facebook account. When it comes to payment, they better have a good alternative available.

With credit cards we have a number of "hidden alternatives". We've got multiple processors, multiple card companies, etc. It's a number of layers there. With Facebook and Paypal... you're not able to pay when they say you're not able to pay (or be paid). They're not even controlled banks, so there's little you can do about some issues.

Think about all the problems when Google cut someone off and didn't provide any way of contacting them. Do you have a good way to contact Paypal, or Facebook now? (besides forms that result in canned responses) What are the incentives for changing it?

<comment><USER35> I definitely don't want it to happen either. But from Facebook's standpoint it's not a bad space to start looking at. The reasons you listed above worry me as a consumer, but unfortunately the average user isn't as scrupulous. If FB made paying for things as easy and simple as "liking" something, I'd be very surprised if it wasn't successful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Right, because the main obstacle to international online payments is having a strong brand.

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm surprised this got so many upvotes. Does the author really believe that Facebook hasn't thought about this? Or that the ways they make money now are the the only ways they ever will?

<comment><USER38> I wonder if votes are an expression of interest in the (payments) product.

That aside, I not only assumed Facebook had thought of the idea of payments, they might even be working on it. It seems like an extension of the "Like" button they already have on so many sites.

Certainly Facebook is certainly thinking about new ways to make money, but they did disclose that ads are a risk factor in their S-1, with special concern for increased mobile device use, where they don't currently display ads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> 100% spot on, Facebook could see massive profits if it pulls off any or all of the following:

\- Upon logging in Facebook lets me know my favourite band is playing in a few weeks, tickets are $25 and I can purchase with one click.

\- A new episode of Dexter comes out, Facebook knows I love dexter and thus notifies me and allows me to watch instantly in my browser for just $1.

\- A games company (steam, humblebundle, blizzard, whoever) is running a sale on games similar to ones I've already liked on Facebook, I can view and purchase the bundle through Facebook.

All of this is taken care of in one click by my credit card being linked up to Facebook, just like iTunes. They can basically combine the best bits of iTunes + Amazon + All the data they have on everyone on Facebook and build the ultimate relevant shopping directory completely personalized to me.

Sure there are sites that already cater for this but it's about the convenience and instant gratification. 50% of their users log into Facebook daily and won't even bother checking out other sites for these things if they're already right there in front of them available with one click.

They don't even have to do it themselves initially, just hook into Amazon / Ticketmaster / iTunes data and this shouldn't take too long to develop.

This is where the future is and if Facebook does this there's no reason they can't be the most profitable web company in the world.

<comment><USER40> I reckon most people would quickly turn off this feature after it would produce more than a few bad predictions/recommendations in a row.

<comment><USER41> People wont be able to turn it off unless they install adblock.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I think that "be a payment provider" is a much easier thing to think than it is to do.

While it may be easy to build the customer side of the equation you've got to build a vast network of merchants willing to accept payment and that's hard work. Especially if you're trying to convince them to re-price in Facebook Credits?

Sure, you could charge 1% but people have added credits to their Facebook account at some point and it probably cost you more than 1% to allow them to do that. How do people buy credits right now? All those cost Facebook more than 1%, right? I buy $100 of credits, it costs F8 a couple of bucks, I then spend $100 of credits and they recoup $1 of it in merchant fees? Doesn't sound like a good business model.

Beyond the need to create a financial model that makes sense and then go out to find merchants and convince them there's a massive risk of merchant fraud.

Fraudulent merchant X signs up for a F8 Merchant Account. Fraudulent customers A, B, C buy something with stolen credit cards for $100 each. Everyone disappears after merchant X receives settlement. F8 is out of pocket to the tune of the original $300, another $300 in reversals to their bank and then $30-$60 of chargeback fees. If that happens enough then F8 might even have its merchant account revoked... though they're probably big enough to avoid that.

It's an excellent money laundering channel too and there's a lot of financial regulation to navigate around that.

I know that this stuff can be overcome but it is hard to do and would be a major piece of work. This type of thing nearly sank PayPal back in the day.

Perhaps I'm missing the point here though?

<comment><USER43> Well there's interesting ways to do that with Facebook though. A la you can't start selling large amounts of goods unless you have x number of likes on your page. Same thing, on the user side. You can only buy $10 worth of credits if you have a new account, accounts can be flagged, etc. I agree it's a pain in the ass to do, and much easier said than done. But it's definitely doable and hugely profitable. They can easily take more than $1 in merchant fees, and credit card companies will beg them for their business and give them great rates. Shoot, they can do a Visa or Mastercard exclusive and get even better rates at the beginning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> The second biggest social network in The Netherlands (Hyves) introduced something like this in 2010. They mainly intended it to be used to pay back (small) debts to friends or relatives, but also made partnerships that enabled you to order food online or order drinks at a bar.

As far as I know, it did not really lift off, but this could be because Facebook overtook Hyves as the most popular social network shortly afterwards.

</comment><comment><USER45> Facebook has demonstrated a completely utter disdain for interacting with their users. If something goes wrong with your "friend wall" or whatever, it's an inconvenience. If something goes wrong with your money, you want to talk to a human. Everyone knows you can't reach fb humans. When it's money, that matters. The work involved in turning that perception around is a huge hurdle to this idea.

<comment><USER46> The whole approach of Facebook at its core is a disdain for the users, because Facebook profits from users' profiles. They can argue that users are willing to trade off their privacy for the "free" service, but it's just a sneaky way to get users information to monetize on. Given that, why do you think they should have more respect in other kind of interactions?

<comment><USER45> There are lots of reasons they /should/ have more respect. But my whole point was that I don't think they ever /will/. Putting a high touch endeavor like financial dealings on top of a no touch venture like a social network is dumb. Basically, looks like you and I agree.

<comment><USER46> Yes, we agree. Really Facebook is not fitting to be a social network, but at the same time it has such a huge number of users at the moment. Hopefully real social networks like Diaspora which are built for social interactions and not for ripping users off on their privacy, will eventually gain more traction.

<comment><USER45> You inspired me to write a little blog post. <http://www.sherrod.im/81/just- give-them-their-money/>

<comment><USER46> Commented there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Aside from the points the author makes, this would also improve Facebook's advertising model a lot. They would have purchasing information from basically every segment/product/niche/market out there.

You put an ad on Facebook. People click on it an buy with FB-pay. You then get a ton of marketing data to better aim your ads. Tine of purchase, day, credit card type, marital status (confirmed versus Fb status), income information, billing address, etc.

All in one convenient place. How much would businesses pay for that? A lot. Evidence? Call your local mailing list broker and ask for a quote.

Of course, this will set off what I call "the privacy wars". Where the government will step in after some single mother of three is scammed and the story is picked up by some mommy-blogger who then sells the story to the huffington post, who then sells the article to CNN, who then puts it on TV. Then FOX makes a deal out of it, republicans notice, and make some lobbyist- impregnated bill that includes the "single-mommy law for online privacy".

But, we've had this coming for a while.

</comment><comment><USER48> This makes very good sense to me: CC payments are expensive (up to several percent), merchant accounts are difficult to come by, accepting international cards is annoying.

This is partly because of the fraud risk, partly because of VISA and MasterCard's duopoly. Facebook is pretty well situated to deal with both IMO.

And it's not just online payments: The current state-of-the-art in mobile- phone POS payments ("It's _exactly_ like a credit-card! Except it's in your phone!") seems like a dead-end to me. Facebook is in a unique position to move into this area.

</comment><comment><USER49> These articles make me wonder why everyone with a blog thinks they know better than the massive teams of engineers running these companies...

Do you really think Facebook doesn't have reams of data and analysis on this exact idea? I bet they've been analyzing the crap out of it for years and for whatever very good reason they have they haven't done it yet.

Now, I predict the company who will make a trillion on payments is Apple. They're set up quite nicely to tell the credit card companies to take a hike.

</comment><comment><USER50> Dammit, then I'd have to reactivate my Facebook account.

And then Facebook would know everything I buy.

<comment><USER51> What if I refuse to use facebook, would be unable to pay?

<comment><USER18> It's in a companies interest to make sure that there is a way to give them money, they are unlikely to want to throw away good customers just because they don't have a FB account.

What I would expect to see however is discounts offered if you use FB payments and allow your purchases to be automatically shared with your friends.

<comment><USER52>
        allow your purchases to be automatically shared with your friends.

This is one of the creepiest feature one can get. I already hate these social readers which automatically share what you read (I've stop reading stuff on FB because of that, even if many of them are of my interest). However I'm hoping they would provide some reasonable privacy options with that.

<comment><USER18> I don't imagine it would become compulsory. After all people need an avenue to buy their porno and health related products in privacy.

You would get something like "10% off for you and 5% off for all of your friends, if you allow us to repost on your wall"

The problem of course becomes spam, if FB ever gets to such a poor signal/noise ratio then people will simply stop using it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Too late, I think.

Facebook has scared off a lot of the "moms" out there by their bad bad bad privacy history. Do you really want to pay for things using their service?

<comment><USER54> While I tend to agree, they could throw in an RSA fob or a smartphone-based two-factor equivalent.

They probably should already.

<comment><USER32> I like two-factor authentication too, but casual users don't care about this sort of thing until it's too late.

<comment><USER54> There's a large and growing number of casual users who've dealt with or watched a friend or family member deal with fraudulent charges.

I think a sufficiently streamlined phone app and pitch could net quite a few. Say, demonstrating the feature by showing someone making an Amazon purchase and then getting a phone notification to approve the charge and approving with a simple PIN entry.[1]

[1] Said notification ideally showing merchant, amount, scan location, warnings if it's a card not present transaction, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> It's worked well for Walmart (well, okay, aside from the whole "bribing people in Mexico" thing.) But people seem willing, and even eager, to bank with companies they know and trust.

The real problem is regulation. It is so, _so_ much easier to sell ads than to navigate the international financial markets.

</comment><comment><USER56> > People will think twice about losing their 'Facebook Credit Score' over a > few $ for an online presence they spent (literally) years building and > cultivating.

Which keeps them from using that hypothetical service, because they don't want to risk losing the account over a transaction that went wrong.

Or maybe not. Who knows?

</comment><comment><USER57> Seriously? Linking your checking account with Facebook?

It would definitely be the next step in user lock-in, but you'd start competing with banks and everyone else who offers a way to pay.

Now, I wouldn't complain if they bought some "bypass the credit card companies" service like Dwolla...

<comment><USER12> > _"bypass the credit card companies"_

I have both an American Express and a Visa (because Amex just isn't accepted some places). The customer service has been nothing but amazing, even when dealing fraudulent charges. And the cards are accepted everywhere.

What I'm saying is, I don't feel any need whatsoever to bypass my credit card company to pass my information off to a start up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> With 1/6th of the world population Facebook can very well release it own currency.

</comment><comment><USER59> I think FB does not have to be a PayPal, and there are many good reasons outlined in these comments already why that is a bad idea.

However, it can become some kind of market place. It already knows user locality, it already has people flocking to it. It already has big brand stores sharing discounts and coupons to consumers.

All it needs to do is finish the last mile and allow those brands to actually have a "Facebook-only Sale", for example.

Also, it can become a great "local market place", and can help local businesses to sell to local customers.

TLDR: not just ads, and not necessarily a payment gateway, but a niche market place could be it.

</comment><comment><USER60> I wouldn't trust or use something like this.

1) I don't trust Facebook to transact payments quickly or safely.

2) I don't want Facebook to take my money. I'm guessing Facebook would capitalize on this by exacting a higher rate than other options. Because they can. I want the max amount of money to go to the creators of a product, not to Facebook.

3) As it says, Facebook already knows everything about people. Should they really have access to our credit cards as well?

</comment><comment><USER61> I fully agree. For a lot of people facebook is their identity, linking their identity to paiement is a logical step.

They could first allow people to exchange any amount of money with friends for free, add it to their mobile app so that everyone has it anytime. Other apps are doing that, and that's very useful.

And they should buy Stripe, bind everything together, displace amex, visa and mastercard.

Or may be that's the plan, but it's best to be silent ?

<comment><USER62> I always thought this would be Apple's next plan as well. "Pay with your Itunes account" or something like that.

<comment><USER61> That doesn't seems very Apple like move, they don't like to mess with ugly systems and integrate their products with anyone.

They have a good place to do that, but I doubt that they'll go that way.

But Steve isn't there, and Apple moves might be unexpected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Its not possible to solve for everyone, the whole of web-communities !

Nerds and Geeks never trust facebook, but their moms and sisters do !

</comment><comment><USER64> I heard through some friends that Swedish start-up Klarna is actually using your Facebook profile to evaluate probability that you are a real person. If you pay online using an e-mail address that has lots of friends on Facebook then the overall risk of the transaction is considered lower.

</comment><comment><USER65> I agree with most of this article, except, if I was Facebook I would bill via the mobile networks.

Not really viable on the desktop, but certainly on phones.

There's no reason that I can think of why I can't be identified by my own mobile network and either charged at the end of the month or via my airtime.

</comment><comment><USER66> Well, it would be GREAT also on mobile! All my friends have Facebook, if I could pay them with my phone and only their name I would do it all the time. (Like what PayPal tries to do, but there is not enough adoption)

</comment><comment><USER67> Why not buying RIM and make a serious move into the smartphone market. Last time I checked RIM's market capitalization is a bit over $5bn and Facebook has tons of money in their pockets after the IPO.

</comment><comment><USER68> I commented on another submission that was similar to this. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4040519>

</comment><comment><USER69> You know you don't actually have to click an ad for FB to make money? Companies pay money just to get that ad in front so many eye balls!

</comment><comment><USER70> There is no way facebook has a billion active users. Official numbers are always very optimistic.

For example, a lot of brands and agencies register many,many pages on facebook, and even post content there. And Britney Spears is not really on Facebook, she just has someone have post stuff for her.

I'm sure Facebook is huge. But if they say a billion, it is probably closer to 500m.

</comment><comment><USER46> > To fight the money game you need extremely deep pockets.

Not really. You just need different kind of priorities. For example Diaspora challenges Facebook on the grounds where FB is the weakest - privacy. Facebook can't compete on privacy no matter how hard they try (and they simply won't even try since the whole FB is built on selling off privacy).

</comment><comment><USER71> I can't take this article seriously because it's so terribly written.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> why stop at credit card processing how about a Facebook Credit Card !

<comment><USER72> Cannot tell if serious. If so: a credit card would be picked up by a tiny number of people worldwide in comparison to the numbers who would use a "pay with Facebook" button, and the latter is already an area of expertise for Facebook (or at worst a logical extension of their current expertise).

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> Had a similar idea for this - We'll probably play around with this at Kout as soon as we've sorted out our payments infrastructure - Here's a mockup I made a little while back using Twitter - <http://bit.ly/Kd0ugW>

= Inital Idea = You're perpetually logged into a social network, why not pair up a payment method and leverage that connection. Always be connected to a payment method/global checkout - authorised by a 4 digit pin.

There's an array of pro's as cons for this.

= Issues for Facebook (and Twitter) =

The hurdles to get setup as a Payment Service Provider, and have the capability to preform cross-border, cross-country transactions, dealing with multiple currencies, as well as boarding merchants outside of the US, is a complete bitch.

It would be completely out of Facebook's internal focus to build and maintain this - outsourcing/partnering is a different story.

= Facebook's Cut =

Facebook takes a 1/3 cut from developers for FB Credits. They can't take a 1/3 cut from credit card processing.

They'll realistically take 2.75 - 3.5% and that would just piss off their developers who are being charged a 1/3, unless FB reduce their 1/3 cut - <USER2> I doubt they'd do.

Facebook would (probably) make more cash using FB Credits than processing credit cards - The margins are rediculously low with card processing (varies on card type) - It's game of volume.

Unless you're PayPal who charge you 2/3% for sending money between PayPal accounts. When all they're doing is ACH transfers between "dynamic bank accounts" they've setup, which costs them under 5 cents to preform.

= The trust factor = with Facebook (Guy/Girl's in Social Commerce take notice here).

Consumer's/Users whatever you want to call them simply would not trust Facebook with their super sensitive data (Credit Card & Billing Information). They don't have the best reputation when it comes to users data.

They might experience some success and sign up a few tech savy users - <USER3> ultimately - even if they sort out all of the technical & logistical issues they will constantly face this one.

This is why social commerce isn't full circle, or shouldnt be. When was the last time you entered your credit card details into a Facebook app? would you?

Social Commerce is really the discovery of products, but when it comes to facilitating the transaction, consumers need to be out of the ecosystem where "public" data is flowing, their friends are talking to them, or irrelevant social data is distracting them.

Consumers feel incredibily uncomfortable entering sensetive data into a platform which they use with the mindset of "sharing".

Unless of course it could be masked under a "Pay by Facebook" option which doesnt require the user to type in and sesntive information - ha.

Those are just my thoughts, and of course you have risk, disputes, charge backs, being the ultimate target for russian hackers etc.

I could be completly wrong, but I think a third party needs to step in here.

Facebook and a Dwolla/GoCardless partnership - now that would be intresting - you can fake a credit card but you cant fake a bank account.

</comment><comment><USER74> $10 billion? I don't think so.

VISA: $3.36 billion profit | DFS: $2.2 billion profit | AXP: $4.9 billion profit | MA: $1.9 billion profit

That's Visa, Discover, American Express, and MasterCard.

That's a $12.4 billion profit, if you take every aspect of all their businesses away from them across the board and basically acquire a complete monopoly in transactions. Their businesses go far beyond processing of course, so you'd really need to not only take over all transaction processing but then double the business.

Facebook processing payments is maybe a billion profit opportunity for them. Not chump change, but very far away from $10 billion.

<comment><USER75> Revenue is multiples of those numbers though. Because Visa manages to have insanely bloated overhead doesn't mean Facebook would.

<comment><USER74> I agree that Facebook could try to be less bloated, however that's not very likely. The history of tech companies is gradual bloat, whether you're talking about Microsoft or Google or Apple.

Visa has a $80 billion market cap, $9b in sales, and $3.6b in profit with a mere 7,500 employees. One of the best ratios of any major company. In fact, it's better than Facebook's current employee to sales ratio (and it's worth pointing out that they're nearly at a $10b sales run rate, and $4b in annual profit).

Visa has around a 40% net margin, that's beyond extraordinary. There's almost zero chance Facebook can be any less bloated than what Visa is already doing.

Discover also has a stellar ratio, 11k employees to $8.5 billion in sales.

Ditto MasterCard, with 6,700 employees and $6.7b in sales.

<comment><USER75> The _only_ reason these companies have such high margins is because these businesses are unbelievably profitable. Being the guy who takes money from someone, puts some of it in his pocket, and hands the rest to another guy is a very very sweet place to be.

I think Facebook could tack on a payments business with relatively little additional hiring or resources, and maintain far higher than 40% margins. Whether they would try to be that efficient or not is another question.

Most tech companies don't bother with being particularly efficient. Google could have stuck to their search engine and advertising and had > 80% margins if they wanted to.

<comment><USER74> You're absolutely right, payment processing is incredibly profitable, but I don't see what that has to do with Facebook attempting to be even more efficient than Visa.

Facebook has already shown they're not even as efficient as Visa; despite being so young they're more bloated than Visa already. And that lends credence to the notion that they wouldn't be any better at payment processing than a company that has specialized in that for a very long time and is the best in the world at it.

Certainly a company like Microsoft could have just published Windows and had 90% margins. But no mega company ever does that, so it's not a realistic scenario. They don't do that because they're seeking growth, which is something shareholders always want to see.

Companies that had extremely lucrative margins and dominant positions, that didn't sit still: Cisco, Microsoft, Apple, IBM, Intel, Oracle, Samsung, Nintendo, Sony, Google, and on and on.

I've not aware of any major tech company that has ever just created one extraordinarily profitable product, and then did nothing else but collect their 85% net margin. Facebook isn't likely going to be the first.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Beginners Guide to PPC - <AUTHOR> https://www.discosloth.com/beginners-guide-to-ppc/ <comment><AUTHOR> tweeted out by Rand Fishkin [https://twitter.com/randfish/status/1002251331355136001](https://twitter.com/randfish/status/1002251331355136001)

<comment><USER2> It's been a while since I've seen a manual written in vanilla HTML! Looks useful though. I'll peruse.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What Will You Build? - <AUTHOR> A thread to take a break from politics or criticism of megacorps to shift to builder mindset.
You are given 50k USD seed round and 270 days to build 1 Million USD ARR business. What will you build?
Post below your idea and how will you scale the business from 1 employee (yourself) to potential 1 + n ( n >= 0) employees. <comment><USER2> A centralized exchange that makes it easier for people to exchange crypto for gold so that taxes and regulations can be easily avoided (not evaded). The 1% fee would be taken out without explicitly informing the parties involved of the calculated amount.</comment>


PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel invests in radical science innovation - <AUTHOR> http://dailymaverick.co.za/article/2011-11-21-paypal-co-founder-peter-thiel-invests-in-radical-science-innovation

<comment><USER2> This page is broken in Chrome?

<http://www.breakoutlabs.org/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting concept.

It is true that most government research funding is conservative. And private big co. R&D funding is rarely focused on basic research.

This aim to specifically fund high risk science is a very interesting idea. What worries me is how they will tell real high risk science from charlatanry?

</comment><comment><USER4> I really wish more of the wealthy had the foresight and ingenuity to focus their philanthropy on high risk high reward areas like Thiel does.

</comment><comment><USER5> The single most anti-science stance in government and industry is the prohibition on hemp. The chemurgists of the 1920s and 30s had figured out that anything made from a hydrocarbon can also be made from a carbohydrate. This knowledge, combined with George Schlichten's decorticator (the cotton gin of hemp), was about to revolutionize both agriculture and manufacturing (as detailed in this 1938 article in Popular Mechanics: [http://books.google.com/books?id=e9sDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA238#v...](http://books.google.com/books?id=e9sDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA238#v=onepage&q&f=false)) when industry, using its power via its control of the American Congress, outlawed an entire plant.

The anti-science attitude starts in the worlds of entrenched business and government interests that have little to no wish to see humanity progress beyond those interests.

<comment><USER6> What makes hemp unique vs other plants in this regard?

<comment><USER5> Hemp produces more biomass per acre than any other plant. 1 acre of hemp can also produce as much if not more cellulose than 5-10 acres of trees over a 20-year period.</comment></comment></comment>


Canada is the leader in the size of seed stage deals - <AUTHOR> https://sologub.substack.com/p/canada-is-the-leader-in-the-size/comments <comment><USER2> Can someone validate this source? A Canadian here trying to raise money has been much harder than the USA. I haven't seen deals or valuations anywhere what the graphs imply. Plus it says per project US but lists the amount in Euros....

<comment><AUTHOR> Data taken from the Pitchbook tool. The report was prepared for a client from Europe - I see no problems with the euro.</comment></comment>


Travelly - Map the places you've visited and the places you want to visit - <AUTHOR> http://travelly.co/

<comment><USER2> No Facebook account, so no chance to evaluate.

</comment><comment><USER3> Impressive.</comment>


Ask HN: Dr. Dobb's Jolt Awards current alternative for technical books? - <AUTHOR> The list of books that won Jolt Awards can be seen here<p>http://speedydeletion.wikia.com/wiki/Jolt_Awards <comment><USER2> Off topic: I really miss Jolt :( and I love that Dobb kept using their name post-bankruptcy

</comment><comment><USER3> have you seen this [http://toptalkedbooks.com/stackoverflow/all](http://toptalkedbooks.com/stackoverflow/all)

<comment><AUTHOR> I have not, thanks for sharing it is nice that also collects links from Reddit.

Other similar websites

Most mentioned in StackOverflow [http://dev-books.com/](http://dev-books.com/)

Most mentioned in Hacker News

[http://hackernewsbooks.com/top-books-on-hacker- news](http://hackernewsbooks.com/top-books-on-hacker-news)

[http://ramiro.org/vis/hn-most-linked-books/](http://ramiro.org/vis/hn-most- linked-books/)

Recommended books by guests in Developer on Fire podcast

[http://developeronfire.com/book- recommendations](http://developeronfire.com/book-recommendations)

Personal lists

Jeff Atwood: [https://blog.codinghorror.com/recommended-reading-for- develo...](https://blog.codinghorror.com/recommended-reading-for-developers/)

Joel Spolsky: [http://new.joelonsoftware.com/navLinks/fog0000000262.html](http://new.joelonsoftware.com/navLinks/fog0000000262.html)

DHH: [https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3375-the-five-programming- boo...](https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3375-the-five-programming-books-that- meant-most-to-me)

Steve Yegge: [https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/ten-great- books](https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/ten-great-books)

John Sonmez: [https://simpleprogrammer.com/2015/03/23/the-ultimate-list- of...](https://simpleprogrammer.com/2015/03/23/the-ultimate-list-of- programming-books/)

<comment><USER3> nice, thanks for the list!</comment></comment></comment>


Visual Website Optimizer is hiring Engineers in Delhi - <AUTHOR> http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/careers.php

<comment><USER2> Paras is my role model for the growing Indian Startup scene.

# Bootstrapped

# Good challenges at work.

# Pays his engineers well because of Day 1 Cashflow.

I sincerely hope he attracts the best talent; he deserves it.

I cant say the same for the rest of the so-called 'startups' in India. Equity/ownership is unheard of in most places.

Note to Indian 'Founders': The word 'startup' is not an euphemism for 'pays peanuts because we are small'. ;)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for your kind words! Yep, plan is to pay at par with best companies out there. Startup shouldn't mean less salary!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Opening for an intern, Paras?

<comment><USER3> Hey, definitely. Please get in touch (if you haven't done already).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hey, a friend of mine from university works there. Hi Sparsh! (It's Howard)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Howard.. Good to see you here.

<comment><USER5> hehe, I didn't even notice you were the submitter on this!

Anyway, Visual Website Optimiser has always struck me as a really great product. I keep pushing to use A/B testing for our stuff work, it's where the future is!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> admirable. you guys are doing very well. Keep at it

</comment><comment><USER7> What is extreme javascript programming?

</comment><comment><USER8> A post for one job opening in Delhi makes front page?

<comment><USER9> You probably don't know who Paras is and looking at your account details, you are probably trolling.

<comment><USER10> For the ignorant, mind explaining who's Paras?

<comment><USER9> One of the most helpful and active members of HN, who's helped out a lot of people here and is an inspiration to a lot of us for having built a successful business from scratch in a space ruled by Google.

See <http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=paraschopra></comment></comment></comment></comment>


First funeral held using 'living coffin' made of mushroom fibre - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/sep/15/first-funeral-living-coffin-made-mushroom-fibre-netherlands <comment><USER2> A problem with local cemeteries (in the US) is that they require vaults in order to prevent collapse of graves, simply because it's a maintenance headache. You can even leave the bottom open to speed up decomposition, but you still need the vault.

A friend told me that in the past, before concrete vaults were standard, cemetery workers would routinely fill in collapsed graves with soil. Seems like you'd need to do that for this coffin — or even for a wooden coffin without a concrete vault.

I wonder if we could go back to that? Find a middle ground between giving people time to grieve and reusing land once nobody cares anymore. Have a periodic petition to preserve certain graves, but anything over a certain age by default can have its space reused.

<comment><USER3> I thought the vast vast majority of people in the West are cremated? Are normal people still being buried?

<comment><USER4> In the US it is about 50/50

<comment><USER5> Looks like the state with the highest rate of cremation is Nevada at 75.9% and Mississippi has the lowest at 19.7%.

It turns out Japan's cremation rate is 99.97% (2014) which actually lead to the appearance of "corpse hotels" where the body can rest until a slot opens up.

It seems countries where buddhism and hinduism are prevalent have some of the highest cremation rates, and unsurprisingly there is an overall trend of higher rates in denser areas (even in countries where the average rate is on the lower end).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder if that won't cause more bioluminescence when the body decomposes? I seem to remember modern coffin are pretty good at limiting these effect.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will-o%27-the- wisp#Natural_exp...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will-o%27-the- wisp#Natural_explanations)

<comment><USER7> You never hear of a chemical and then it pops up twice in a week! Now I'm wondering what sort of ghosts they have on Venus... .

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I mean... why even use a coffin at that point? Just bury the body under dirt and pile some extra dirt on top of the hole for when the body decomposes and things settle over time so it is eventually level.

<comment><USER9> The mushrooms absorb heavy metals from the body, so the mushroom coffin should make the body "healthier" for the environment.

<comment><USER8> How many heavy metals are actually in the body? And wouldn't the dirt absorb them just as well as the mushrooms? Wouldn't the mushrooms eventually degrade and turn into dirt? Aren't coffins commonly made out of metal anyways? And who exactly is trying to plant shit on top of graves anyways?

<comment><USER10> I sort of love the username posting these totally relevant, well-conceived questions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> How green-friendly is cremation at this point?

I'd personally prefer not taking up space. Just give me a web page memorial in case people want to "visit" with me and I can even curate it before I die, and I'm good.

</comment><comment><USER12> What's wrong with just burying the body without coffin? The west needs to learn a lot from Islam.

Dying shouldn't be so expensive. Think of all the real-estate wasted by preventing the body to decomposed.

<comment><USER13> Biohazards I would guess.

I would think that cremation is the most effective means of burying the dead to prevent the loss of key real estate.

<comment><USER12> I feel cremation would be hazardous to environment.

Is there any resource on biohazards of burying? I will look into this sometime.

<comment><USER13> I mean. I guess a furnace does use energy, but humans have all sorts of disease you don't want getting into your groundwater.

<comment><USER14> A pine box isnt going to stop that either.

<comment><USER13> Agreed, which is why I think we should always cremate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Death by Quorn.</comment>


Users You Don't Want - <AUTHOR> http://themacro.com/articles/2016/08/users-you-dont-want/ <comment><USER2> Hmmmm. It probably depends upon _how much_ money were talking.

If the customer is throwing around a couple million dollars of NRE, it's probably worth bolting something on and pocketing the money. If the customer is only moving a couple hundred thousand, it's probably not.

This seems more like a software-only startup issue. We have hardware and have these hard-nosed discussions all the time--generally about volume.

Customer--"We want X and we want 100,000 units and we're going to put the NRE on this payment schedule."

Us--"No, you're going to put all that NRE up front and it's <2-5 million dollars depending upon change complexity>. And you're going to front the first 10,000 units which is <generally a nice chunk of a million>. _After_ that, we can put you on the royalty schedule. We can't put ourselves in the position of losing the company because your volume never materialized."

Customer--"<choke> <splutter> That's preposterous."

Us--"No. It's the reality of hardware. We know our costs _really_ well."

Side comment: it's always 100,000 units and 100,000 units is generally hardware death--big enough that you have all the volume problems but small enough that your profit sucks.

<comment><USER3> NRE = 'Non-recurring engineering', for those as ignorant as I was.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non- recurring_engineering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non- recurring_engineering)

<comment><USER2> It could also be "non-recurring expense".

Sometimes things have a "setup charge" that you have to pay once, but then don't have to pay again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Been through this at medium sized companies struggling to sell. This kind of customer is alluring but poisonous. Company: We sell Product X! Toxic Customer: I don't want Product X, I want Product Y. If you're willing to bolt Product Y onto one of your menus I will pay you this stack of money for it! Company: $$$!

Bam! The company just went from being a product company to a custom engineering service. You will have to drag Product Y along with your product forever as a big lump of technical debt. After a few repeat iterations of the above, you will have a franken-product with random features hanging off of all ends, confusing to general users and impossible to maintain.

If you're a Product X company and one customer wants Product Y, stand your ground and tell them to go find Product Y somewhere else. If tons of customers want Product Y, maybe pivot and become a Product Y company and ditch Product X.

<comment><USER5> But what if selling Product Y allows you to become ramen-profitable?

<comment><USER6> You can

* decide that you want to be an engineering consulting firm that charges only ramen, which will make your customer _very_ happy

* become ramen-profitable on product Y without it taking all your time, build and market product X, then dump your customer and product Y (make sure you don't sign a contract saying that you have to keep supporting product Y)

* say no and find another way to become ramen-profitable

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The "Uber for babysitters" example is interesting, because Uber's current $50B+ business is exactly the "users they didn't want". They started out as a black car service, where rich people (and it was envisioned only as a service for rich people) could hail a limo, completely legally. And according to this video [1], the reason they moved down-market into "ridesharing for everyone" was because they were getting C&Ds and fines _anyway_ , and so it didn't matter that they'd conceived it as a service for rich people, the only way the could survive was to make it big enough and useful enough to ordinary people that they could get the laws changed.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54NIcx3HJSE#t=1170](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54NIcx3HJSE#t=1170)

<comment><USER8> I totally agree with you that often times your first set of users aren't the users you end up serving at scale. There are so many examples of this that they are hard to count. What is great about your example is that Uber made a strategic decision to open up to a new user base. Pivoting and serving new users/usecases is totally okay. Where startups get in trouble is when they move from niche usecase to niche usecase blindly based on a customer request.

<comment><USER9> What I think the parent poster is saying is that in hindsight, you can _easily_ say which customers you were right to pivot for and which your were wrong to pivot for, but going in from the front _no one, and I mean NO ONE can actually, really tell_ which customers are weird customization cases and which customers are revenue-bridges that will lead you to better market fit.

There are always obvious cases in this mind of thing, but the larger point is that we could easily have been looking at an alternative history where Uber was on the scrap heap, and we would all stand here, wagging our beards, berating them for "moving from niche use-case to niche use-case" instead of doubling down and building something of long-term use and value, of executing on their vision. Instead, we're saying that Uber was an instance of a GOOD pivot, but at Uber, at the time it was happening, anyone could've made the argument, "Hey, aren't we just filling a really niche use-case here, of regular people who are willing to trust their lives to unlicensed strangers for a ride?"

<comment><USER10> Yeah, what scares my reasoning in such discussions is that anyone can be simply under survivorship bias _of the other company_. How does one extract the real truth from here?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Posting an article called "users you don't want" and then using a developmentally challenged teenager as the example of a user that you don't want is so spectacularly tone-deaf that I am left somewhat speechless.

I keep thinking this will be the year that the valley types wake up and realize this kind of mentality puts them in existential danger from mobs with pitchforks, but it keeps not happening.

<comment><USER12> 2017 is the year of mobs with pitchforks on the Developer.

<comment><USER11> The developers might be OK. If I was a VC type though I might be looking over my shoulder.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _> Now, what happens if someone with an infant or developmentally challenged teenager signs up? Their needs present an entirely new set of problems, problems that could be solved by a startup but not necessarily by ours. Remember you don't have to pivot your business because a customer needs something that you don't offer._

If you open a restaurant, you bet that there are certain building codes you'll have to follow in order to accommodate e.g. people with disabilities.

Right now, as the article points out, it's not something that most tech companies have to worry about unless they choose to, but perhaps it should be.

As startups disrupt entire industries with little regard for the existing legislation, entire niche of users could find themselves marginalized. For instance, hotels have to build a number of accommodations for people with mobility problems. Airbnbs don't. What happens to that segment of the population when/if Airbnb completely kills off hotels in a particular geographic location?

The web is already hell when it comes to accessibility concerns; and it seems like tech companies with a foot in the real world are just carrying this trend over. This is what people mean when they talk about the need for inclusiveness when designing tech products and companies; otherwise, you're just building a world where parents of developmentally challenged teenagers are even more excluded than they already were.

I agree with the core point of the article, but the example chosen to illustrate it couldn't be worse. Yes, it isn't your responsibility to solve everything for everyone, but that doesn't mean you can just choose to ignore the social contract altogether.

<comment><USER14> This is a good point. Same with Uber. Most Cab companies are required to provide access to wheelchair bound and disabled members of society at no extra charge. Not sure if Uber has the same requirement - and if and when it starts moving cab's out of business it will definitely prove to be a problem.

<comment><USER15> > Not sure if Uber has the same requirement

It doesn't. I've a friend (who might be popping on this thread here soon) who's been working with adapt.org on pressuring Uber on this issue.

In theory, ridesharing should be much better for PWD than trying to hail a cab and cheaper than government services like the MBTA's The Ride. However it very much does not look like it is the case right now.

<comment><USER16> Uber has wheelchair vehicles at the same price as UberX: [https://newsroom.uber.com/canada/uberwav/](https://newsroom.uber.com/canada/uberwav/)

<comment><USER15> Oh wait they are rolling that out? I had thought they were just doing a perfunctory trial run in philly that they then cancelled. Huzzah!

<comment><USER17> A new "Access" option containing UberWAV appeared in my Uber app today in san francisco, with a popup telling me about it. So I guess it just rolled out to SF.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > Now, what happens if someone with an infant or developmentally challenged > teenager signs up? Their needs present an entirely new set of problems, > problems that could be solved by a startup but not necessarily by ours. > Remember you don't have to pivot your business because a customer needs > something that you don't offer.

Meanwhile on Tumblr:

"Startup says they don't want developmentally disabled people as customers."

<comment><USER19> > Startup says they don't want developmentally disabled people as customers

That's not exactly incorrect, is it? The title of the article is "Users You Don't Want" and the author gives a developmentally disabled person as an example.

<comment><USER18> No, but it's funny how many people are ignoring the main point of the article to get angry about the hypothetical example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> >In the case of Justin.tv, pivoting to serve video gamers was the right move. Our video game broadcasters always represented a small but consistent group of users. It tooks us 4-5 years to realize how important they were.

This stuck out at me as an avid Twitch user/follower (and sometimes a streamer). I think they need to re-realize this.

The pivot result (extra effort and focus in Twitch) is being re-pivoted with the introduction of more general-content streams, like Creative, Music, and Social Eating:

[https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Creative](https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Creative) [https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Music](https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Music) [https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Social%20Eating](https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Social%20Eating)

And then there are the streams that push the limit:

[https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Poker](https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Poker) [https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Games%20%2B%20Demos](https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Games%20%2B%20Demos)

I wonder why they didn't say 'No' to the users that these streams provide for, and revive/rebuild Justin.tv.

Edit: Formatting...?

<comment><USER21> Does it really matter what the content of the stream is, as long as it is bringing in viewers? They've built the Twitch brand around games, but it is also the largest streaming site of any kind.

<comment><USER20> Kinda, sorta.

I, personally, want it to matter because Twitch's mantra and goals are still focused around being 'for gamers.' As a user, I feel like the "purity" of the space has been diluted. I am not alone in this.

From a business perspective, I guess anything goes as long as it gets eyeballs on ads, people buying bits (Twitch fun bucks), and more channel subscribers but simultaneously balancing the friction that new features have with the established userbase.

>but it is also the largest streaming site of any kind.

Youtube Gaming, Afreeca, and many others still exist; hopefully Twitch doesn't rest on what they have in regards to streaming. Twitch is also no longer just a streaming site; it's a software and wiki/database company now with the acquisition of Curse. Curse definitely brings in it's own conversation of "Users You Don't Want."

Edit: Added Curse stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> We definitely experienced this starting Open Listings. We thought that to begin with we would only be serving the 2/3 of transactions made by experienced buyers, but it turns out that over half of the buyers we attract are first timers. In retrospect, this makes sense: our savings is appealing to young families, and first timers don't have attachments to the status quo of getting driven around by a realtor in a Cadillac. Rather than saying no, we embraced these clients and have retooled our product to be more educational and broadly accessible. It's working so far in terms of ramping up revenue, staying default alive, and we're stoked to make homebuying more affordable to people who really need it the most. Our finding is that first time buyers don't actually need more service but they do need slightly more education and reassurance, which we try to accomplish mostly through UI and documentation.

</comment><comment><USER8> Hey folks - slightly different piece today - trying to get away from investor/fundraising posts as of late. Would love your thoughts/comments/questions. I'll check in a couple times over the course of the day.

<comment><USER23> I enjoyed the piece, thanks Michael.

Sorry for the boring feedback, but the post feels like it needs a bit more proofreading. Some of the syntax is a little confusing and I noticed a couple of definite typos:

> So what should to you?

Should be:

> So what should you do?

And:

> Does this user represent an even better opportunity for you to grow your > business.

Should be:

> Does this user represent an even better opportunity for you to grow your > business?

<comment><USER8> thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I feel like this point could have been made without referring to infants and developmentally disabled teenagers as "hijacker users."

I hate to moralize, but this essay helped me realize that there is, in fact, a baseline level of humanity we hold one another to in this community. And it is pretty inhumane to reduce the weakest members of society to mere obstacles to your business success. Choose another example and you will make your point more effectively.

<comment><USER25> Oh, I think they're making their point quite effectively, given that this is how "disruptive" companies like Uber and AirBNB actually operate. You're right that perhaps a more euphemistic example might've been better PR though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Just don't say no on principle because you read on HN it was cool to do so.

The same goes for saying no to feature requests. Just because it has an Applesque feel to it doesn't automatically make it right.

</comment><comment><USER27> Most startups never make it past their first year, but for those that do I think this is the biggest problem they encounter. Especially if there's a sales team, the temptation to say yes to prospective customers is enormous.

A lot of founders get tripped up by needing to show hockey stick growth as soon as they can, because they're usually top performers that are used to knocking expectations set on them out of the park. Saying yes to lots of people is an easy way to show the hockey stick in the first year, but it'll turn into linear growth pretty quickly. Congratulations you now own a consulting company, and your product team is groaning under the weight of enormous technical debt.

Your company is probably going to die now, because you're top engineers probably hate your product and vision.

I don't blame people though, because there really isn't a full proof way to avoid this. Sure, anchor customers can help, but how do you know when you really have anchor customers and when you're just saying "yes" to lots of ideas? In the end, IMO, it's totally subjective (building a great product). You just have to have a sense for it and be willing to fail quickly.

In my experience the best founders actually don't take as much signaling, at least explicitly, from their customers as you would expect. They have a maniacal vision, and they are following it. Their customer help give form to the sculpture, but the basic outline is set. If real hockey stick growth follows, so be it.

</comment><comment><USER28> Related: [https://m.signalvnoise.com/bigger-prices-bigger- problems-728...](https://m.signalvnoise.com/bigger-prices-bigger- problems-72820249456f)

</comment><comment><USER29> Reminder: Justin.tv announced that they were shutting down and then shut down _on the same day_. They certainly did not want those users.

[https://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2014/08/05.html](https://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2014/08/05.html)

</comment><comment><USER30> This is great advice, but when a customer is asking for something already on your roadmap, or fits with your product vision, then it can provide an opportunity where a feature can close new business _and_ add equity to the business overall.

At Cronitor, we call this technique the _JIT Startup[0]_. There are dozens of instances where we've delayed writing code for something until it's actually requested, from boilerplate like PDF invoices to product features like being able to tag something in the UI. We always planned to build them, but working on these things (tertiary to your product) before anybody has even _asked_ for it is a low-leverage use of you time.

[0] [https://blog.cronitor.io/the-jit-startup- bb1a13381b0#.2w5dvo...](https://blog.cronitor.io/the-jit-startup- bb1a13381b0#.2w5dvo4jg)

</comment><comment><USER31> The is literally what every consulting firm does when they come in.

They create a "Whale" chart, aka "Cumulative Customer Profitability".

See [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and- feat...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and- features/masters-of-illusion-the-great-management-consultancy- swindle-1788556.html) for a, umm, insider view of it.

and [http://www.magesblog.com/2014/01/whale-charts-visualising- cu...](http://www.magesblog.com/2014/01/whale-charts-visualising- customer.html) if you want to see some sample code :-)

</comment><comment><USER32> Define your right target audiences is always a difficult challenge for startups. Totally agree with "Remember that being good at customer service doesn't mean serving every potential customer."!

</comment><comment><USER33> I think what is missing here for me (and in a lot of these types of posts) is a discussion of volume.

 _Now, what happens if someone with an infant or developmentally challenged teenager signs up? Their needs present an entirely new set of problems, problems that could be solved by a startup but not necessarily by ours. Remember you don't have to pivot your business because a customer needs something that you don't offer._

Is he literally saying that someone would be tempted to pivot a product based on a single instance? Or is that loose language for some, say 1% of the user base.

</comment><comment><USER34> I wish I could apply this to my 'internal customers', aka departments I don't want to work with.

</comment><comment><USER35> So a variation of the 80/20 rule? 20% of your users/customers cause 80% of the headaches/effort that aren't productive? This does hash out some 'stock characters' like I was "taught to identify" at a certain blue and yellow colored big box, because we were supposed to target them to "meet their needs" \- gamer, Mom, audiophile, etc.

I have a few qualms regarding the avenue Justin.tv took as used for an example, in that yes I'm sure 90% of the user-licenses allow for game broadcasting - claimed publicly[1] - but IP is a slippery issue and willful infringement is potentially quite costly. I'm a former gamer so I also have first-hand experience with, ahem, demands that gamers can sometimes put forward which may or may not be grounded in the reality of IP law. In other words, I'm pretty sure they got lucky with right-place-right-time-right-market which takes some sheen off the innovation, execution, etc type narrative.

[1] [http://www.cnbc.com/2014/08/11/after-twitchs-music- copyright...](http://www.cnbc.com/2014/08/11/after-twitchs-music-copyright- crackdown-what-about-games-themselves.html)

</comment><comment><USER36> That's a good argument against "accessibility". You're probably not getting significant revenue from the screen-reader people.

<comment><USER7> The benefits of accessibility are largely PR-related: nobody wants to be the company that makes blind peoples' lives more difficult. There may be ADA- compliance issues as well when you get big enough.

That said, accessibility is something you do when you're a big company. When you're a startup, work on making it useful to the easy customers, and then only once you have something that lots of screen-reader people want to use is it worth investing time in making it usable.

<comment><USER37> I'm not sure about the US but in the UK what you're suggesting would I think be illegal. You shouldn't make things accessible just when you're a large company, that's a really disappointing approach.

<comment><USER38> This is just another reason why the US has a healthier startup culture. There are a lot of things that take effort to do that US companies can get away with not doing until forced to by law or the market, or when the opportunity costs diminish that they do it out of the goodness of the individuals' involved hearts.

<comment><USER37> > This is just another reason why the US has a healthier startup culture.

I think we would heavily disagree on the "healthier" status.

<comment><USER38> Probably. My argument for healthier would mostly be on the second-order effects of having a better economy that can generate new sources of wealth. With a step back, until momentum and inertia are all that remain of the US' current dominance in startups that grow into world-changing companies providing value to all (including disabled people who benefit from accessibility), I'm default-skeptical of tinkering with the ecosystem with a top-down legal approach, especially when the approach is something like importing laws from countries without such dominance. In a way this is just "well we've kicked ass this far even though we do [morally reprehensible thing]", which by itself isn't a great argument, but paired with noticing that social systems are complex it's enough to give me a lot of pause. Even something that seems bonehead simple like saying "no more doing [morally reprehensible thing]" can have unwanted second order effects that end up with the consequence of a state worse than the previous one that included [morally reprehensible thing]. Full analysis is required by the people most capable of seeing all the effects, one of the worst outcomes is some group kicking up a stir to get some mandate passed on good intentions without thorough analysis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> A version of this problem I've seen is that often customers (particularly enterprise customers) want you to make solutions specific to their exact needs rather than the broad needs of their whole category. Even if they want the same problem addressed that you do they will want you to make the product suit their needs EXACTLY. That won't scale and backs you into being a services company instead of a product company. Strategies we've used to fight this are to listen to feedback from all users and only build what everyone agrees is needed, and also offer an API so we don't have to flat out say no. Instead with an API we can say, you're welcome to do whatever you'd like... Finally, when we do have to say something like "no" instead we just put a astronomical price tag on it and let the customer decide no for themselves. ...or maybe they'll say ok and then we'll know our thinking might be flawed if some feature is worth a hefty premium. Hope that's helpful to others!

</comment><comment><USER40> > _In the case of Justin.tv, pivoting to serve video gamers was the right > move. Our video game broadcasters always represented a small but consistent > group of users. It tooks us 4-5 years to realize how important they were. > Serving them didn't change the costs of the business too much: our major > costs were salaries and bandwidth and we didn't care what video was being > streamed as long as people were watching and chatting. Also it opened up > monetization avenues that were very interesting: online video advertisers > would prefer to advertise against video gameplay than general UGC content._

It also happens that UGC pertaining to video games is a huge category of content on YT and represents a very lucrative audience (25 year old males with disposable income): [http://www.tubefilter.com/2014/12/19/15-percent-youtube- vide...](http://www.tubefilter.com/2014/12/19/15-percent-youtube-videos-video- game/)

</comment><comment><USER41> As for me, it often comes down to a question of who needs who. If a client provides more value than you could possibly anticipate in the foreseeable future and as long as it isn't too depleting(and only you can determine this and only for a limited period), then you should oblige. It's easy to say, say no, but when times are tough you should trust yourself when coming to a conclusion on such an issue since there aren't any unbendable rules after all.

</comment><comment><USER42> ... Only one of the cases he listed, the developmentally-challenged kid, would result in a lawsuit if he didn't accommodate.

That's one where you throw money at the problem. You hire a custom operator to handle ADA-requests (and similar) and you pay the price difference for someone who does manage this. Legal compliance issues, you often turn into a mega- expensive non-engineering one-offs.

Or you get slapped with a DoJ investigation, and lose the business.

</comment><comment><USER43> If you get the same request for a feature over and over again, but you don't want to implement it directly, there are a few things you could do:

* Offer an API for third-party integrations that could implement it

* Come up with affiliates that serve this particular niche

* Realize that your opinions might change, and collect email addresses (and consent) to contact folks again if you ever do implement it

</comment><comment><USER44> I think this article only makes sense in the context of the bad example given. An actual good idea for a startup wouldn't have such an obvious "hijacker" subset of consumers that just destroy your business.

<comment><USER45> here's a few that come to mind

       o the US govt will have a laundry list of features so
         specialized that you really end up working just for them

       o companies that are big enough they want everything
         running on their internal infrastructure

       o health care providers with hippa requirements

       o nation states (including the US) that want to impose
         monitoring or censorship requirements for you to serve
         their populations

       o customers who want their children to use your service
         or software and have you be responsible for censorship,
         controlling harassers, etc

       o any minority community, say classic music lovers want
         you to accommodate additional metadata that doesn't
         show up in a service targeting popular music

basically any time you have a feature request you need to think about the ongoing cost vs reward. if you let sales drive this process you can easily end up chasing your tail just to land them their commissions.

i don't think its that unusual. you have to say no sometimes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> the bob dylan line "it's only people's games that you've got to dodge" comes to mind.

</comment><comment><USER47> And what if I want only Nigerian princes because they have the most money?</comment>


Facebook's Onavo Protect Shares User Behavior with Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://choosetoencrypt.com/privacy/facebooks-onavo-protect-vpn-collects-data-even-turned-off/ <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16530002](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16530002).

</comment><comment><USER3> If this is free, you are the product being sold :)</comment>


My Love, Hate, Love Again, Affair with Paul Graham - <AUTHOR> http://www.gicleelife.com/love_hate_pg.php

<comment><USER2> Damn...make sure you don't miss the breakup letter he sent to his ex-gf: <http://www.gicleelife.com/email.php>

My summary: You're kind of a pain in my ass and I can't waste time on your Emotions if I want to be a Success. Let's be friends, cya! ;D

I hate to judge people on their personal matters, but this was published and prominently linked, so it's fair game: that's some real cold stuff. I'm all for ambition and wanting to succeed, and it's true that I know nothing about the relationship (there may be plenty of other factors that change things), but to me it's still important to maintain some level of compassion and decency in your human interactions, especially outside of business - at least without context, the lack of tact and general bluntness seem to indicate a real sensitivity problem.

To me that's an entirely inappropriate way to end what you once considered a serious relationship, not to mention the inherent cruelty of an e-mail breakup, and the further salt-in-wound damage you inflict by posting the letter online...

Am I alone here?

</comment><comment><USER3> Reminds me of: [http://daniellefong.com/2008/04/11/one-response-to- rejection...](http://daniellefong.com/2008/04/11/one-response-to-rejection/)

People take this way too seriously.

</comment><comment><USER4> i think people are going a little overboard about this. it was a humorous essay, reflecting real events probably but told in an exaggerated style. (i do admit that the part about the dad and girlfriend pushed the humor into something a bit awkward.)

i thought his observations about paul's essays were pretty spot-on, and i'm surprised few people have mentioned this.

</comment><comment><USER5> Um, early April Fools joke? Oh and did you go to the homepage: <http://www.gicleelife.com> ? I'm laughing, anyway.

<comment><USER6> Looks like you could add Tim Ferris to this guy's list of "heroes"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seriously, he broke up with his GF in an email?

<comment><USER8> He also posted her picture, which is (1) somewhat inapprpropriate, and (2) makes him look even dumber, because she's absolutely gorgeous, and it sounds like there was nothing wrong with the relationship.

If you have to dump a good relationship with a beautiful girl, _you're doing it wrong_.

<comment><USER9> Because her beauty is really all that matters in a relationship.

<comment><USER8> It's not, but it's all the information I have in this case. I don't know anything about her aside from her picture, included with the essay, and what's contained in the breakup letter.

Let's recap: he was with her for a year and thought he was going to marry her. She's very attractive, and they look happy together. I'd argue strongly that he'd need a very strong reason to break up with her, and the email doesn't provide one (although it does provide her with good reason to break with him).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> >> PG says all you need is a copy of K&R and a Linux box

Did PG really say this ?

<comment><USER11> _"[3] Learning to hack is a lot cheaper than business school, because you can do it mostly on your own. For the price of a Linux box, a copy of K &R, and a few hours of advice from your neighbor's fifteen year old son, you'll be well on your way."_

\-- <http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html>

<comment><USER10> Ah. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> this is how good people are made into cult-figures; please do not idolize hackers, they don't care if you do.

<comment><USER13> I'll play devil's advocate and say that it's not making the guy into a cult figure, it's writing about one person's relationship with his writings. That ought to happen with any good writer and thinker: they should build relationships with people on the basis of their work alone.

I have a similar relationship with PG's essays, though mine's not a particularly strong one. My cofounder, on the other hand, quotes PG essays a lot, looks into a lot of the things he recommends, and definitely has had his mindset changed a few times over the course of reading his archives. That's what's so cool about writing! When you make an essay you're putting a part of yourself - your opinions along with your personality - out there for anybody to see. It builds a connection with people, _lots_ of people, on the fact of its sheer existence.

That's not a cult. That's good writing.

<comment><USER12> Maybe we work differently, but I certainly associate with ideas rather than their originators. The fame of a successful work should eclipse the fame of its author in hacking, unlike other fluffy fields of work like management and self-help industries (hint: the "Linux Torvalds" effect.)

I don't know if it's the intention of PG to become a "Get Rich Quick" guru, but to me he is the author of ANSI CL and On Lisp, a decent human being in the same league as Norvig, Kent Pitman and Dick Gabriel. Actually, I like Paul Graham more than "PG", thanks to all this idol-worshiping.

Whatever that guy wrote in his blog should have been a private email. Better yet, a personal diary entry in _paper_.

<comment><USER13> Why? Making that stuff public should be totally fine. (I get some flack because on my blog I write literally everything I think of, whether it's personal relationships, religious philosophy, web design, or what ever; I get emails regularly asking me to at least tag my various posts for easier consumption and I refuse, because for me that's not what my blog is.)

I find a fascination with people: why they build what they do. So while I love books, I tend to love the authors of said books just as much.

<comment><USER12> First of all, go to the root of the website and see the promotional weight- loss program therein (no comment.)

Secondly, go through the essay again and you will find someone who is attributing his life choices, good or bad, to someone else who he has never consulted, met in person or even corresponded with:

> "Alone in my room I rolled on the carpet and screamed "I love you, Paul > Graham." "

This is after reading "A Taste for Makers"

>"Over the next three years I must have read A Taste For Makers at least twenty times."

Biblical exegesis?

>" I felt bad because your writings had more influence on me than my own father."

Completely unwilling to accept/admit that his life choices, influenced by an external input (in this case PG's writings), are still his own.

> "Admittedly I am a nobody compared to you but a part of me was a tad jealous > of your success. "

No comment.

>At this point I figured you had completely lost it. Your stature as a guru was toast!

See, he wants a guru.

<comment><USER13> Oh. I kind of thought he was being ridiculously over-the-top for the sake of it. Taking this at face value makes it really creepy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Recent related thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=527064>

</comment><comment><USER15> I actually don't know why people knock on "You weren't meant to have a boss", even the original, stronger version.

</comment><comment><USER16> Wonderful satire!

</comment><comment><USER17> Jesus christ. I guess this is the downside of being famous - random crazy people start fixating upon you as their leader/friend/saviour/nemesis/soulmate and reading all sorts of crap into every aspect of their life, when all you were trying to do was write a decent essay. What do you even say to people like this.

Dude .. I don't know what you are looking for, but it is almost certain you will not find it in PG.

This kind of thing scares me, it really does. Intelligent person .. good writing, obviously can express himself well .. but this search, this willingness to devote himself to something, someone, anything .. this is a serious bug in man's programming. I don't know the answer.

<comment><USER18> _"Jesus Christ" ... "random crazy people start fixating upon you as their leader/friend/saviour/nemesis/soulmate and reading all sorts of crap into every aspect of their life"_

You may be on to something bigger than what you meant.

<comment><USER19> Call me crazy.

<comment><USER17> I regret using the perjorative term "crazy". I'd change it if I could, and I apologise for any offense caused. Unfortunately, on a rapid-fire discussion site like this, speed is king, and we (well, I) often say things which, after time to reflect, come across as needlessly judgemental, insulting, or inflammatory. By then it's too late to take back one's words.

I've known many religious people, including my own sister, and while I find serious, fundamental flaws in their capacity for logical reasoning, ability to distinguish between reality and unreality, decision making processes, moral worldview and attitude towards others, I wouldn't call them _crazy_ , so I apologise again.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Thermodynamic magic enables cooling without energy consumption - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2019-04-thermodynamic-magic-enables-cooling-energy.html <comment><USER2> I am having trouble visualizing how this works. It sounds like a simple experiment that would not be overly expensive to verify if we had a howto on it.</comment>


World watches nervously as Japan struggles with nuclear reactors - <AUTHOR> http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/12/japan.nuclear/index.html?hpt=T1

<comment><USER2> See also: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2316371>

</comment><comment><USER3> I thought we are not supposed to post stuff here thats reported by ordinary news channels.</comment>