Bitcoin now 'unit of account' in Germany - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/19/bitcoin-unit-of-account-germany

<comment><USER2> Germany is acting very logically in response to Bitcoin. Their thinking: "if a growing number of people are using it as a store of value or medium of exchange, or as a vehicle for financial speculation, let's regulate and tax its use."

This bodes well for Bitcoin, because other countries are likely to follow Germany's example.

<comment><USER3> > However, companies wanting to use it for commercial transactions would need > permission from the Federal Financial Supervision Authority.

That's not a good thing for bitcoin, though, or for the free market in general. One of the main ideas behind bitcoin is its ease of use compared to exisiting methods. The more regulations and limitations imposed on it, the more it becomes like everything else, in terms of ease of use.

<comment><USER4> It would be a bad thing if Bitcoin could be controlled that way. Luckily, the government cannot influence bitcoin transactions.

<comment><USER5> There is no need to influence transactions technically, it's just clarifying existing law - when doing/receiving Bitcoin transactions, you follow the same rules [or else].

No matter if your income is in Euro, Yen, gold, goats, casino chips, redeemable in-game credits, gems, Bitcoin or anything that may ever be invented - that income is taxable.

If you are offering to hold deposits of value for public, or value transfers to third parties - no matter if that is in Euro, Yen, gold, goats, casino chips, redeemable in-game credits, gems, Bitcoin - you need to follow the financial service regulations.

The only way to avoid that is if (while) your "new money" is useless as money, i.e., you can't buy stuff with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Bitcoin fulfils easily the definition of "electronic money" found in the European directive 2009/110/EC, art. 2 def. 1:

> 2\. "electronic money" means electronically, including magnetically, stored > monetary value as represented by a claim on the issuer which is issued on > receipt of funds for the purpose of making payment transactions as defined > in point 5 of Article 4 of Directive 2007/64/EC, and which is accepted by a > natural or legal person other than the electronic money issuer;

Germany is doing nothing strange, all the EU state will have to do similar things in the future. Bitcoin may be a distributed currency without a politically backed central bank, but it is still a currency, so it is treated as such by any competent tax office.

<comment><USER7> I don't see that it represents a "claim on the issuer" though. Although you could claim it as issued by the entropy of the universe in a double entry system...

<comment><USER6> issuer = miner

You bitcoins are accepted because they are recognized by others to be part of a block originally mined by someone.

Really not that different from how money is "printed" by central banks these days (somebody presses the "generate €1.000.000" key and that updates a value in a DB).

<comment><USER7> Its not a liability of the miner though. I agree it is not much different from money printing, but there is still a balancing entry, so money is a liability of the central bank, although that is meaningless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> that seems weird that germany has to recognize bitcoin as a unit of account to collect taxes on it. surely, if you buy something and then later sell it in the future for a profit you are liable for capital gains on it. surely there is not some massive whitelist of all the goods that attract capital gains tax.

<comment><USER9> There are extra taxes for trading with currencies in Germany (and other countries, it seems; google "forex tax"). So without it being recognized as a currency, you still have to pay VAT, but not forex tax.

<comment><USER10> VAT is never charged on assets (which Bitcoin is), only goods and services.

<comment><USER11> Here in the UK Bitcoins are treated as an electronic service. This means once you're registered for VAT (and you must past ~£70k revenue) you have to charge VAT on sales to:

\- Anyone in the UK

\- Individuals in the EU

And:

\- Reverse charge VAT to business in the EU

Having to charge VAT on Bitcoins is a show stopper if you're intending to sell them unless you close your doors to EU customers.

Bitcoins need to be classed as VAT exempt, or small business in the UK trying to get into Bitcoin will always struggle to grow.

<comment><USER12> No they are not.

There is no official stance on bitcoin by the UK government, or tax authorities. VAT is not chargeable on bitcoin transactions. There was one gy who was advised by his accontants that he should be charging VAT but that was not a legal requirement, more his accoutnants taking a very risk averse position, that way if VAT was ever brought in on bitcoin he would not get an unexpected VAT bill.

There are There are also some goods and services that are 2 types of 'exemption' to VAT:

* exempt - so no VAT is charged on them

* outside the scope of the UK VAT system altogether

Bitcoin is outside the scope of VAT entirely and it would require the tax man/govt making a declaration on bitcoin as to how it is treated under VAT rules. This has not happened, therefore VAT is not applicable to bitcoin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder how Germany expects to be able to tax this? It's very hard to audit someone's collection of BTC wallets. Will this only be to require companies to collect VAT for BTC transactions, or will it also include, say, income tax when you're being paid in BTC?

<comment><USER14> A company pays for work done in BTC. They want to put that into their books as an expense to reduce their tax burden. The other party that did the work is now _on record_ and can be taxed also.

<comment><USER5> And it is taxed even if it's off record; not declaring the income and successfully keeping it off record doesn't mean "not taxable", it means "tax fraud".

If you manage to hide that income for some time but it comes to light a few years later - BAM, you owe the back taxes in triple+interest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It sounds more like a psychological achievement than legal. German government has no means to control BTC, that means BTC is still in the wild.

This is good for the moment, but also begs a question: when the real regulation comes into play how it will be played? But for now - relax and enjoy!

<comment><USER16> No means to control Bitcoin? As long as the German government is able to enforce its tax code it can control Bitcoin. Governments have been collecting taxes on things that are much harder to track than Bitcoin for much longer than Bitcoin has existed.

<comment><USER15> No way for now, still not clear how they gonna assign monetary value to BTC, what exchange rate they will use?

<comment><USER5> Come on - that's not an obstacle. First, it's _YOUR_ duty to report the income and the appropriate local currency value of that income, so picking a rate is your problem, not theirs.

And then, if they don't like your choice rate, then they pick a rate themselves, tax you on that, and fine you for misrepresenting your income.

Afterwards you (and everyone else) begs them to publish some guidelines on what rate should be used, they do so, and everyone is [mostly] happy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So Bitcoins aren't a get-out-of-taxes-free card. Isn't that it's primary practical draw? What volume of Bitcoin transactions involve black-market activity?

<comment><USER18> Bitcoin have different facets. For people leaving in places with a variety of banking choice, some of them may come unnoticed.

Bitcoin is great when:

1\. You want to accept or make payments from a country where CC fraud is high or banking is rare/expensive.

2\. You worry about high inflation rates in your home currency, and your government creates a lot of obstacles to move your money to other currencies (like today in Argentina).

3\. Or you want transact in a grey market tax-free. E.g. a guy selling his IT consulting services.</comment></comment>


H1-B Visa Abuses Harm American Workers - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/16/opinion/visa-abuses-harm-american-workers.html <comment><USER2> But I thought your country owes you nothing, and isn't supposed to protect you from foreign competition. Why should the US help you, just because by mere chance you were born there? It could just as well help someone from India or Bangladesh.

<comment><USER3> Why should we have H1-B and L1-B visas for tech workers only? Why not have LAWYER1-B, MD1-B and CEO1-B visas for cheap foreign lawyers, physicians and management? Surely those professions are also equally unworthy of any form of protectionism, right? Bring down costs of lawsuits and legal advice, healthcare, and reduce the C-level overhead of corporations! Sounds like a win-win to me!

<comment><USER4> Obviously. Except that they have lobbied to pass laws to prevent competition and screw American consumers.

<comment><USER3> Because programmers/developers didn't have the moral equivalent of the AMA or ABA, so we deserve to get screwed?

This doesn't sound at all just, fair or anything to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Another important article pointed to by this Editorial:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/12/us/laid-off-americans- req...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/12/us/laid-off-americans-required-to- zip-lips-on-way-out-grow-bolder.html)</comment>


The Light It Up Contest -- geohot - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iUvuaChDEg

<comment><USER2> Hahaha this is so awesome. Well done dude.</comment>


Google Apps vs. Google Accounts Parity Coming - <AUTHOR> http://smarterware.org/6394/google-apps-vs-google-accounts-resolution-coming Google url: http://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=182174 <comment><USER2> This is a huge deal. I've wasted so much of my life explaining to friends, family and coworkers the difference between a Google Account and a Google Apps account. Nobody ever understands or cares, and why should they? But never again! Out, foul spirits!

</comment><comment><USER3> Might be worth linking to Google rather than this website: [http://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&#...</a>

</comment><comment><USER4> Finally! This was never clear to me until I got a Nexus One and realized that the contacts on the GV app (which are linked to my google apps account) are different from the contacts on the GV website (which are linked to my google account)... At least it looks like I'll now be able to transfer my GV number to the google apps account.

Now I just want to be able to access my Chrome bookmarks from the Android browser and I'll be set.</comment>


Lint recruiter's emails - <AUTHOR> http://lint.sourcing.io/

<comment><USER2> This is actually pretty cool -- would be interesting to see this ported to other kinds of text: essays, letters, etc..

linting for <x></comment>


A template for setting up Node.js-backed web apps on EC2 - <AUTHOR> http://rsms.me/2011/03/23/ec2-wep-app-template.html

<comment><USER2> Personally, I put our main node.js based app behind nginx which is behind varnish. Varnish caches any get requests, Nginx balances multiple instances of our app running (currently 5 instances) as well as handles x-sendfile requests.

<comment><USER3> I'd like to learn more about how your setup works and how one would go about doing it. Do you have any suggestions on where to read up on it?

<comment><USER2> There's really not much to it -

Varnish runs on port 80 - the only real rules here is to make sure you always return(pass) on anything other than GET and HEAD requests.

Nginx runs on port 8080, which Varnish passes all requests through. I set up an upstream cluster pointing to 5 local instances running on the local server (ports in use in this case are 8081 through 8085). By proxy_pass'ing it to the upstream cluster it will round robin through my instances (no need for ip_hash or weighting currently).

My node.js app allows me to send it it's port as a command line option. By using monit I can ensure that each of the 5 instances are running.

One last thing - I was having too many performance issues with having node.js send large files (the application in question is a document management system) back to the client. It does it, but the RPS was too low for our requirements. By implementing XSendfile in Nginx, we can have node.js pass along the appropriate header to Nginx, which then sends the file along. At this point it would also become cached in Varnish. RPS increased to more than acceptable levels, and the system runs a lot smoother now.

If a better writeup is needed, I would be more than happy to try and get something together today or tomorrow..

<comment><USER3> A writeup would be great, I'd love to read more about this.

<comment><USER2> OK, will see what I can do!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice, I'm writing up about EC2 as well, though in a different context ... I'm very fond of it too (for these small projects).</comment>


Face Swapping - <AUTHOR> http://kk.org/ct2/2008/07/face-swapper-privacy.php#

<comment><USER2> I'm one of the authors of the paper. We're planning on releasing an online demo website at some point where people can submit photos and see what kind of replacements are generated. The process is indeed fully-automatic.

The non-real looking photos have mostly to do with the mixups in gender/age/race, that we do not explicitly guard against currently.

Here's the project page describing things in more detail: <http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/CAVE/projects/face_replace/>

The video linked from that page explains the whole process from beginning to end in under 5 mins.

<comment><USER3> Are there details any place about how you went about implementing this? For example did you use any open source software for the face detection (OpenCV?) and are there any libraries that are particularly good for this kind of thing?

<comment><USER4> The paper says they used the OKAO face detection system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Somewhat unrelated, but I realized that Facebook has _tons_ of face/name data from all the tagged photos. Not only do they have photos tagged with names, but they also know who your friends are, thus who is most likely to be in your photos. I imagine Facebook + Riya could be pretty accurate.

So... when are they going to roll out an (optional) auto-tagging feature?

</comment><comment><USER6> It wasn't necessary to swap nixon and elvis

<comment><USER7> "Because it's cool" implies its own form of necessity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> While the site had images of software for this purpose, it didn't provide links to it. Anyone know where one can find it? I'm curious to see how seamless the process is. Some of the ones in the article looked perfect while others looked very non-real.

</comment><comment><USER9> Of course, this has potential uses in porn as a "wish fulfillment" technology.

</comment><comment><USER10> Modifying the faces of Kajol or Rani should be grounds for imprisonment.</comment>


Ask HN: How to set permissions for an android app made using phonegap build? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Stackoverflow is better at answering specific configuration questions of a single software library.</comment>


AWS Session Manager: SSH tunnels with less user management - <AUTHOR> https://blog.symops.io/2020/03/23/aws-session-manager-ssh-tunnels-with-less-user-management.html <comment><AUTHOR> This is a follow up to last week's post on session manager, a bunch of people had questions on SSH tunneling. Last week's post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22592875](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22592875)

</comment><comment><USER2> We offer a simple solution - [https://werbot.com](https://werbot.com)</comment>


Bromite v77 Released - <AUTHOR> https://www.bromite.org/news/2019-09-16-bromite-v77-released <comment><USER2> @csagan5, thanks for such a great project, which is exactly what I was looking for.

I just switched from Kiwi Browser to Bromite and and Bromite SystemWebView, now I'm wondering if I still need to keep AdAway around.

Maybe you can find the time and comment here or in my discussion on reddit ([https://www.reddit.com/r/fossdroid/comments/d88ljd/does_adaw...](https://www.reddit.com/r/fossdroid/comments/d88ljd/does_adaway_still_make_sense_when_using_bromite/))?

<comment><AUTHOR> AdAway uses hosts-based blocking, it is less precise than the one in Bromite but more powerful because it can block access also of any app; it is very similar to an IP-based firewall.

For most users Bromite itself will be sufficient; I see you are also using the SystemWebView, so I don't think you need to run AdAway, you can save CPU usage and battery without it. I suggest you try disabling/uninstalling it, there should be no difference in your experience.

<comment><USER2> Very well, thanks a lot for your advice. I will try it without AdAdway.

I currently have only one app that shows ads (Easy Currency), and it still does it despite of AdAway being up and running, so I assume AdAway is not of much use for blocking ads in apps because they are fed in a different way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> What's the difference between native Chromium adblock engine and Bromite adblock engine?

<comment><AUTHOR> The "Bromite adblock engine" was what was used up to v76 and was originally based on NoChromo engine.

The native Chromium adblock engine is the subresource filter and works with the modern NetworkService; this has already been answered on XDA, but basically it is more efficient and has a bit more features (CSS filtering).</comment></comment>


Simple and Effective Ways to Build Trust - <AUTHOR> http://blog.webnet-it.co.jp/2010/05/03/simple-and-effective-ways-to-build-trust/

<comment><USER2> Good salespeople will create trust by deliberately making promises and then keeping them. So for example, if a client requests some information, the salesperson will promise to send it by a certain time, say in ten minutes, and then send it, even if the information could have been provided immediately. The act of making the promise and delivering on it builds more trust than just responding to a request.

I heard this on a video presentation awhile back. I've forgotten the source but the concept has stuck with me.

Stephen Covey, author of Seven Habits for Highly Effective People, also points out that you can become a trustworthy person by making and keeping commitments, even if the commitments are to yourself. He suggests starting by making a commitment to yourself to rise at a certain hour tomorrow.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great article!

One of the article's points that hits home for me is something I had learned in the first month of my first job outside college where I had to work with customers over the phone and email: Never make a promise you cannot keep. Manage customer expectations; they are the customer's perception.

The article suggests getting things done early for the customer, and that is great, but the customer is also comfortable waiting until the exact time that you specified, too. That early stuff is good bonus cookies, but the core trust issue is doing your thing on time. And if, for some reason you cannot make it, as early as you can figure that out, tell them, and give them a reasonable new time.

As a customer, time is a very important thing to me. For example, when my ISP has told me their tech is going to show up between 8 and 10 AM, 10:15 AM is completely unacceptable to me -- I usually call in for that. If they had told me 8 to 10:30, I would not have had a problem. Even better, if they had called to tell me they were going to be late as opposed to me having to call and find out after the fact that they were going to show up an hour later, I would have been happier.

This stuff is amazingly simple to do, too. I think it relates to an implied point in the article: customers appreciate when you admit your mistakes and arrange ways to resolve them rather than hide/ignore them when they are obvious to the customer.

</comment><comment><USER4> "The amount of trust you build is directly correlated with the difficulty of your situation when you do the right thing by someone. Your short term loss will translate into incredible future opportunities when you're surrounded by people who know you'll do the right thing no matter the situation."

I think this is a very good advice in general. Doing the right thing can be difficult given the constraints that we usually have, but it is definitely worth it. It will sound silly but I truly believe that one way of doing the right thing is to think whether doing it will change the world or not. Once I have that idea on my head, doing the right thing gets easier I think, no matter the context...</comment>


Standardizing Jsoin into Web UI - <AUTHOR> Lets make it a standard to convert json containing real world object into web UI, we can start from the one link shown below:<p>http://shujutech.mywire.org/corporation?goto=json2web <comment><USER2> This is a relatively simple concept, but saves so much time.

There _must_ be libraries for this already.</comment>


The Unexpected Beauty of 'Dog Vomit' and Other Slime - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/16/magazine/the-unexpected-beauty-of-dog-vomit-and-other-slime.html <comment><AUTHOR> Had me at "unexpected beauty" and "slime", didn't need the dog vomit. Bryophytes are my minibiological bag, but mold is right next door.</comment>


Netflix prize competitor: With the best algorithms, metadata becomes worthless - <AUTHOR> http://pragmatictheory.blogspot.com/2008/08/you-want-truth-you-cant-handle-truth.html

<comment><USER2> Metadata is useful when you need to interpret the results, and most people care about why something is recommended to them. Top netflix algorithms are black boxes from the user standpoint, that doesn't help when making a decision to buy or rent based on that recommendation.

Compare that with Amazon's approach when they sacrifice the predictive power for the useful explanation (customers who bought X also bought Y)

<comment><USER3> I wonder if, having used an impossible-to-explain algorithm to arrive at your solution, you could compare your solution against a few very simple algorithms, and offer up the best fit as a rationalization.

<comment><USER4> Fine, but if anyone copyrights normal human reasoning, you're in trouble.

<comment><USER5> Legal nitpick: You meant patents. Patents are for processes, copyright is for instances.

<comment><USER4> You're right. Thanks for the correction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is fascinating. I was aware of one half of what the article talks about: me and my co-author broke the anonymity of the netflix data (see <http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~arvindn/> for paper/press links). Our main insight was that everyone's movie watching behavior is different. The quote "User tastes are infinite shades of grey" in the article just about sums it up perfectly.

What's funny is that I keep arguing for using more meta-data with my friends who are participating in the competition. I guess I didn't realize that data mining algorithms actually capture the nuances of user tastes.

</comment><comment><USER7> This reminds me of some of the spam filtering algorithms I've read about.

You'd think that categorizing spam based on keywords (or sender IP, etc) would be useful, but machine learning algorithms can pick up more subtle nuances of language patterns and act more effectively.

[http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1216017&jmp=cit...](http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1216017&jmp=cit&coll=GUIDE&dl=ACM)

<comment><USER8> In addition it can pick up stuff that you never thought about as properties/clues for classification. PG has written about this in his spam posts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Metadata is in fact useful, though not the metadata that you might expect. One of the biggest wins many teams made was when they started ranking similarity based on edit distance of titles.

<comment><USER10> Edit distance of titles?! Do you have a source? I'm very curious about how and why that would help.

<comment><USER11> Indiana Jones and the _______________.

<comment><USER12> "Heat" and "WALL-E" have a shorter edit distance between them than any Indiana Jones movies.

<comment><USER13> not if you normalize by e.g. minimal string length.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This makes perfect sense; genres and other information about movies is just an approximation of user taste, while the actual taste of users themselves is clearly the best data to train your models on, since that's what you have to predict.

Any good model should be able to derive the relationships between films _without_ knowing them beforehand, solely by using users' choices. And, likely, these relationships will be more useful than any from an external database.

</comment><comment><USER15> I can see that metadata about the movies becomes worthless, because there is already a wealth of data about each movie entity in the dataset. However, metadata about the users should be fruitful since each user has fairly few data points to use for prediction.

Take for example two users who have each rated _only_ Wall-E, and they both rated it a 5. Now, given Jet Li's "The One", what prediction do you give for each user? It is unlikely that two real people with this one data point on Wall-E would have the same outcome on "The One", so any additional data that can help to statistically separate the people can only help your case. For example, is the person male/female? What are the person's favorite genre's (something netflix collects), even things like did the person sign up for 6-at-a-time or 2-at-a-time might correlate slightly.

</comment><comment><USER16> The way I see it is that these people have a set of data that one could say is a line on an xy axis. This line goes up, down, etc, and there does not seem to be any pattern. So they come up with a bunch of algorithms that go as near to the line as possible -> they approximate the line with an algorithm. So from that, they can predict how the next step of the function is going to look like.

Metadata is like placing some dots on this line and saying "this spot is horror", "this spot is comedy". It becomes irrelevant, because you are already near enough to the line, and that dot does not help you any.

If I were dealing with this problem, what I would do is break free of these constraints and concentrate on taking the data as an abstract blob of random, then splitting the individual data (i.e, move data into separate 'dimensions') till I had hundreds of straight lines, and then using those for prediction. But I'm sure they must have tested this already :)

I'm rooting for the team with the two jewish guys and the black guy, afterwards they could get together and make a sitcom. Or a joke.

</comment><comment><USER17> I could see how it's easier to learn user simple preferences from their voting history, but it's shortsighted to say "all meta data is useless".

What about deriving statistical information from scripts, reviews, or online forums?

</comment><comment><USER18> I would guess that an SVD/SVM feature extraction of the movie script could be of predictive value.</comment>


Ask HN: Were you unschooled, or are you unschooling your children? - <AUTHOR> 1. Anyone considering or currently practicing unschooling/self directed education [0]?
2. Were you home schooled/unschooled/practiced self directed education ? What's your story?
I am considering this approach for my children. Just finished reading free to learn [1] and Peter gray makes a compelling case for this approach. Also the documentary "schooling the world" covers some of the chilling effects of compulsory schooling. [2] it has made me seriously question our current education system. A system that seems designed to surpress all of the critical skills one needs for the future.
Would love to hear your story And thoughts?
My daughter starts grade one this year so decisions have to be made on the school. We currently have her enrolled in a Montessori.
I have been doing some research and not think the current education system is the best for the skills that would be needed in the future.
originally started as a comment but think it deserves a full Ask hn.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unschooling
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Free-Learn-Unleashing-Instinct-Self-Reliant/dp/0465025994
[2] https://schoolingtheworld.org
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XLSIgZWNR9M
Edit: If you do not feel comfortable  telling your story here mail me on username at ZyeLabs net. <comment><USER2> I think it is dangerous. While giving children rope to explore and learn at their own pace is healthy, normal, and welcomed, extremist philosophies like Unschooling may result in illiteracy, social isolation, and difficulty to pursue areas of interests later in life (e.g. college).

Traditional homeschooling has been made safer (in terms of outcomes) due to professionally developed programs along with state enforcement of baseline testing. While Unschooling as a philosophy rejects the very idea that children should be measured like their peers (e.g. standardized tests are out), and thus no major homeschooling programs have nor could be developed.

I find it curious and confusing that the stated objective is to help the child develop improved critical thinking skills, while the stated philosophy (Unschooling) seeks to never have the child try anything they don't choose to do (learner directed education). Has intellectual isolation ever resulted in improved critical thinking skills before?

<comment><AUTHOR> "Unschooling may result in illiteracy, social isolation, and difficulty to pursue areas of interests later in life"

Do you have any reading on this? Even anecdata? All the reading I have done seems to indicate the exact opposite.

Granted i have been specially seeking out material that is pro self-directed education. Would love to read anything that actually builds a strong case against it.

"I find it curious and confusing that the stated objective is to help the child develop improved critical thinking skills, while the stated philosophy (Unschooling) seeks to never have the child try anything they don't choose to do (learner directed education). Has intellectual isolation ever resulted in improved critical thinking skills before?"

Inherent in the question posed here is the assumption that the child/learner would be intellectually isolated? However from my reading this is not necessary the case.

Once they have the means learners would seek out others with the knowledge they require or ask for help.

If you can point me to some reading that contradicts the unschooling view and builds a case against it, or expands on some of the points you have mentioned that would be great.

<comment><USER3> I could give an extreme example and show you what's wrong here. Let's say a kid is born. And we have somehow lost all morality. Kid gets put into a room with food, drink, whatever it needs for physics experiments and left alone. Will the kid ever do, say, the double-slit experiment ? No. In fact it won't even learn how to eat. It'll starve to death. We know this, because people have done that accidentally.

Or another "experiment": show a kid only "parents" that walk on four legs. Will the kid ever learn to walk like a human ? After all, the human body is built so that walking on 2 legs is much more efficient. Again, accidental experiment was carried out, in fact many times. Disney made a completely unrealistic movie about it. Answer: no, the kid will walk on hands and feet. They do not find the optimal solution, despite exploring. Despite being forced into the ultimate form of self-directed learning.

But let's work from simple principles. How about we start by assuming that the brain is neither magical, nor can it come up with information from nothing. It must absorb information from the outside.

You can see, given those easy assumptions that the brain cannot be but almost exclusively a behavior copy machine (which is of course why you seek out help in the first place). Then you see "unschooling" if it works, DOESN'T work because of it's stated principles, but because it copies things from the parents, and/or/later teachers. Unschooling, like any other method frankly, will work incredibly if the parents are geniuses, or otherwise regular contact between the child and very smart people can be maintained over a long time, and will fail spectacularly if that doesn't happen.

Second thing to consider is the information content difference between positive information and negative information, and which random (self- directed) information will be. Positive information is showing a particular example that works, for some process. Negative information is showing that a particular way doesn't work. You can easily see that this depends on whichever is less dense in the solution space (in other words: you should show whichever is rare, not the common case). This will in practice nearly always be the positive information. In other words: the correct solution has lots of information, false tries have very little information about the world.

If you just let the child try, all they'll ever hit is the common case (in the extreme example given above: not eating the food). So you can't let that happen. You MUST show them the correct solution, or put another way you must transform the solution space for them so the rare and common case happen 50-50, and not 1-99999 like would be expected. Again rephrasing: It's very easy to fail, and very hard to succeed. So a "self-directed learning" would only ever fail. You must prevent that if you want them to learn anything at all.

AFTER doing that, yes, you can let them try and explore more by themselves, but it's easy to see that a behavior copy machine like the human brain will be able to learn incredibly faster getting shown the above things compared to trying things out itself.

This means in practice self-directed learning requires the brain to process thousands to millions (or worse: trillions) of times more information to arrive at the same level of knowledge. In the overwhelming majority of cases that'll mean it will never happen.

Third problem is that skills converge. Having one skill makes almost any other skill a tiny little bit easier to learn (even in machine learning, an imagenet trained network can learn faster to make music than a random start network, vastly disparate skills, but the ability to recognize squirrels allows you learn to make music faster). The problem with that is that 0.99^1000 is a very small number. So if you let a kid be slower, the damage that accumulates over time is incredible. If you slightly accelerate a kid, constantly, the advantage that builds over say 10 years is not only enormous, but is at that point STILL compounding. Likewise, if the kid doesn't have skills the damage will compound. Are you seriously going leave that to chance as a parent ? Wouldn't you require extraordinary evidence in favor of unschooling rather than the reverse ?

So self-directed learning is a lie. It cannot work. You cannot explore the world in a self-directed manner and expect to learn much. That doesn't make sense when you consider how the mind must work. But ! There are famous examples where it worked ! It must be able to work. Alas, no. Or at least, there's a simpler explanation. Like most "mysterious"/"natural"/"magical" processes it only works when people cheat. It works when there is another form of learning available to those kids (seeking out help, or having some other form of knowledge easily available to them, like a genius parent).

The factor that confuses people, I think, is that Montessori schools can work despite their bullshit method because of the teachers they hire. As long as that method of instruction is very rare and intriguing they will have more money and more interested, more effective teachers. And that can make a big difference, big enough that the disadvantage of their methods is compensated. But traditional instruction works reasonably effectively despite the teachers being underpaid idiots that don't understand the subjects they're teaching. Is it ideal ? No ? Fun ? Hardly. But you can easily see: traditional instruction with actually good teachers vastly outperforms Montessori schools. It also works much better in the practical situation on the ground that will exist in any large society (that practical situation is, in case you're wondering: 50% of below-average performers, and with current teacher pay, teachers will not even be below average 50% of the time, but much more). But as long as unschooling is done only by intrigued smart people, that will be masked.

The literature on it is unanimous: the thing that matters more than any other in education is how smart the parents are. Second thing is how smart the teachers are. Only third is the method of instruction used. People really hate this, because of course it amplifies class differences, makes IQ "inherited", but that doesn't make it any less true.

<comment><USER4> I always considered self directed learning to be less like forcing a child to learn in a vacuum and more like letting the child drive the educatiomobile while you help with the maps.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly. The other metaphor i see used often is you provide the scaffolding while they do the building.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was both unschooled and unschooled my middle schooler through homeschooling.

There's something very powerful about developing "undirected learning."

Maria Montessori's fundamental insight was the way to develop a child's ability to learn was by providing a rich learning environment - books and projects. Montessori toys are a great place to start.

Youtube for Kids is actually a great resource in this regard - lots of easy projects where kids can experience various natural phenomenon.

We are headed towards a project-based, self-directed world when it comes to work. Your instincts are dead on. I founded a company to help college students develop these skills and you can see some of that at: [https://useed.net/spotlight](https://useed.net/spotlight)

I'd encourage you to check out a few other resources:

The Teenage Liberation Handbook (John Holt) Most Likely to Succeed (and anything by Tom Wagner)

There is a fear that if our children are not lockstep chasing the next learning objective, they will fall behind.

This is unfounded. Children who learn to take ownership over their learning experience rapidly surpass those who never do.

My favorite practical teacher on this is A.J. Juliani:

ajjuliani.com

There are schools that provide this experience and co-op groups if you homeschool.

Schools that emphasize self-directed, project-based learning are generally great choices. Waldorf is another model worth looking into.

Today's Montessori schools are much more structured than they were at their founding. They are a good balance, but unschooling provides a unique opportunity for your kids:

For them to see themselves as the agents of their own education.

Once a student sees themselves as the driver of their learning, they have a distinct advantage in any educational environment.

Feel free to connect with me directly about it if you'd like!

<comment><USER6> I'm genuinely curious why my sibling comment was flagged. It was just a statement of fact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was homeschooled for most of my K-12 education, and unschooled in different degrees during that time. At best, unschooling can encourage a child to dig deep for new ideas, and involve them in activities that build on that knowledge. It can also be a great supplement to more typical subject-based homeschooling, and encourage cross-disciplinary thinking.

But unschooling requires serious engagement on the part of the parent as well. I've seen unschooling families get lazy and end up with 18-year old ballerinas who can't do times tables to save their life, or physicists-to-be who might seem advanced to their parents, but get to college and find themselves far behind their peers. The parents' worldview and involvement can easily become a constraint for their child's growth.

I would also caution potential homeschoolers to be mindful of how they frame their choice when they talk to their children. Making it about the child or taking a strong us v. them stance against other options can be very isolating for the child, especially if they ever feel like they're not getting the education they want at home. Be moderate in your explanations, and leave the door open if you can.

<comment><AUTHOR> "I would also caution potential homeschoolers to be mindful of how they frame their choice when they talk to their children. Making it about the child or taking a strong us v. them stance against other options can be very isolating for the child, especially if they ever feel like they're not getting the education they want at home."

Great point. This was one of my concerns I had having spoken to some of the teens who had been educated like this. They all seem to have a kind of "us versus them" mentality against traditional schooling.

"But unschooling requires serious engagement on the part of the parent"

Yep it is much easier to just send your kid to school and make their learning someone else's responsibility.

"I've seen unschooling families get lazy and end up with 18-year old ballerinas who can't do times tables to save their life"

Would you care to provide details on this? Over email if you would like to avoid a public forum.

<comment><USER4> > They all seem to have a kind of "us versus them" mentality against > traditional schooling.

Well, watching a retired public school teacher get huffy and start chomping at your mother about how she's ruining her child can be a polarizing experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I would be careful. As a young child I was allowed to self-direct many aspects of my education (Montessori schools, permissive parents, etc.), and as a consequence I immaturely neglected many "boring" activities like learning math facts and spelling. Especially in math, shaky foundations have plagued me ever since, and I still have deficits in that area, which I _very much regret_.

The problem with letting children self-direct themselves to a high degree is that they're immature and ignorant. The world is a much more complicated place than it was hundreds or thousands of years ago, and many of the skills and activities they need to master are essentially invisible to them, so they need a lot of guidance and some external motivation to gain them. For instance, they might end up finding a lot of joy in advanced math, but they're going to have to slog through some hard stuff to get there. If they don't, many opportunities will be closed to them.

<comment><AUTHOR> "I would be careful. As a young child I was allowed to self-direct many aspects of my education (Montessori schools, permissive parents, etc.)"

Could you provide more detail On this? Did your parents involve you in their day to day activities, were you completely free or did you have a choice out of a set of activities. I know this may be a difficult question to answer as our memories of early learning is always hazy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The few home schooled people I've met were some of the most brilliant, and my bar for saying that is quite high. They were also socially well adjusted. And 100% of the smartest people I've met received substantial, although not exclusive, home schooling in the form of parents who were academics. I would like to home school when I have kids, both for the learning and anti- brainwashing benefits, but it seems impractical unless one does not need to work and is willing to dedicate vast amounts of time to it. Also I think the kids would be missing out on certain special socialization experiences. I think the ultimate solution is send them to a school with sports teams and cheerleaders, have thought provoking conversations with them, and hire college students to tutor them on the side.

</comment><comment><USER10> I was homeschooled K-12. I have mixed feelings about its effectiveness, and I harbor resentment against my parents for many of their choices. Most of it revolves around their strong religious reasonings for homeschooling, and the denial of my wish to attend standard high school. There was also a very strong "us vs them" philosophy that took me years to get over.

The hardest part was simply being "normal" in the real world. Even though we had friends outside of the homeschool groups, it took me literal years to learn normal group interactions so I would stop sticking out like a sore thumb. Lack of socialization is brought up as a downside to homeschooling, and is frequently rebuffed bringing up extracurricular activities and clubs. I believe that no matter how much you think a few clubs and extracurricular activities may substitute, sadly our culture revolves around working in groups and within a bureaucracy. Homeschooling and its ilk are a poor preparation for working effectivly within those systems. I seriously felt mildly retarded when I got out into the real world, and would frequently joke that my first few jobs were my substitute for the social systems of HS and College.

While I do think that homeschooling can offer younger children a lot of benefits, such as accelerated reading and math skills in the early years (I was performing these at a high-school level in early middle school), I don't believe that parents can ever replace the structure specialized learning that formal schools give older children. The option of me attending a public school for high school was never taken seriously, I wish I had at least been afforded that.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm homeschooling a huge family.

Neither unschooling nor pre-packaged curriculum seems right to me. At first I make math worksheets, have them read out loud until they get perfect smooth- and-fluid phrasing, and have them write in cursive. There is a local homeschooling group that goes over history and sort of functions like a book club, and also has a weekly gym class. The next step, starting at age 7 to 11 depending on the kid, is to teach AP Biology or AP Chemistry. I take this seriously, with a College Board approval of my "syllabus" (their misnomer) and plenty of labs and a real focus on the test material. I don't wait for the prerequisite skills to be perfect; one could wait forever for that. I'll even start with kids who struggle to read or do algebra. The test provides a real goal with a measurable outcome. Once a decent score has been achieved, I use that as evidence to get the kid into dual-enrollment at the local college at about age 11 to 15. The deal in my state is that this is free college, and the local public school district will even loan you the books. That gets the kid to an AA degree, which in my state will guarantee admission to a state BS program and satisfy all the general education requirements.

Although my state does mandate that my kids can participate in public school activities and classes, I don't bother except for one kid who needed speech therapy. There is a municipal band here that teaches music for free. BSA scouting provides activities, with the Eagle Scout rank actually translating into valuable things like scholarships and military rank. My state has an online virtual school that I use only for driver education. I almost used it for a language requirement at the state colleges, but taking the language at the college means 2 semesters instead of 2 years. I suggest looking into 4H as well; for me it was a bit too distant.

Be aware that often it seems that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. I have trouble getting my kids to study... but my mom had that same trouble with me in a public school. Getting the kids to study is the most difficult problem, and that fact doesn't change no matter how you decide to deal with education.

Bonus for homeschooling: flexible hours, flexible days, less communicable disease, better quality food, your choice of values, and usually a smarter instructor.

</comment><comment><USER12> I attended public school first grade, home-schooled second grade, private school 3rd grade, home-schooled until 7th grade, home-schooled with a 2-days- a-week co-op 8th grade, public school 9-12, public university. If a coin has 3 sides, I've seen all 3. Ask away.

<comment><USER13> Can you summarize your experiences for all three systems?

<comment><USER12> Honestly, not really. A bad shot at it would be:

Private school wasn't any "better" than public school. Homeschooling didn't make me anti-social. Kids are the reflection of their mentors, the system of education applied to children is mostly a political talking point.

Will Hunting: See, the sad thing about a guy like you is in 50 years you're gonna staht doin some thinkin on your own and you're gonna come up with the fact that there are two certaintees in life. One, don't do that. And Two, you dropped a hundred and fifty grand on a fuckin education you coulda got for a dollah fifty in late chahges at the public library

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Unschooling family here....2 boys ages 14 and 18, always unschooled other than the first couple of months of kindergarten with my eldest when I drank the Kool-Aid and thought we had to follow a set curriculum for them to be normal, happy, successful humans. Happy to share our experience and/or answer questions.

<comment><AUTHOR> Please could you share your experiences? Did you face any of the concerns highlighted in these comments?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Seth Godin recently had a thought provoking podcast on this very subject -- essentially asking, WHAT is school for?

> > [https://art19.com/shows/akimbo/episodes/130767e0-00fa-464f-8...](https://art19.com/shows/akimbo/episodes/130767e0-00fa-464f-8b1e-e21bce1d359d)

Relative to your daughter -- what critical skills do you think she will need? And what's the best environment for her to develop those?

</comment><comment><USER16> Most of the skills I learned to do my job are from self-unschooling (aka side projects) in my spare time from an age of about 7.

That said, I wouldn't be doing very well without the traditional schooling, especially forcing me to read and write well when I naturally wouldn't have gravitated to those subjects.

I didn't realise I liked maths and science until they become hard enough to challenge me.

</comment><comment><USER17> I had an 'alternative' educational life. I attended a Montessori school from K-2nd grade. Was homeschooled from 2nd to 9th (very loose curriculum). Went to public high school (9th-12th). Attended a public state-school for college.

I like to think I got a good view of 'both sides of the coin'.

In general, my homeschooled years were focused on 'real world' type skill building, developing and following personal interests, and having fun. We did some 'regular' book-type learning for math/science/english/etc, but never spent more than 3-4 hours a day on it.

Although I spent a fraction of the time on regular studies that 'normal' kids did during grade school, I entered 9th grade in public school at the normal level. I was above-average at Math and English, but struggled with Science. This, I believe, was due more to my personal interests and learning style than preparedness - but who knows for sure.

The biggest benefit from that time period, imo, is that I really internalized how to a) find and develop my own interests outside of school/sports, b) develop relationships with non-parental/non-teacher adults, c) develop strong auto-didactic skills, and d) have a strong base of 'real-world' skills before I was 14 (cooking/cleaning/shopping/fiscal responsibility/etc).

The biggest adjustment from non-schooling to public-school was the amount of time 'wasted' in my eyes. The amount of material were able to cover in a full day at school was the same, if not less, than what I was able to learn by my self in half the time. This led to some slackerish tendencies and a lack of concern over my grades. I did well, but was never a top-of-the-class type of student.

The second biggest adjustment was integrating socially. Not because I lacked social skills (which is a huge misunderstanding about homeschooling in general), but because of my hometown. I'm from a rural area, and my class size was small (220 graduating class from 6 towns). Most of the cliques of people had known eachother and been forced through the same daily routine since they were 5 or 6 years old. It's really hard to break into social groups like that at age 14. By end of Sophomore year I was able to carve out a little group of friends, but the first two years were quite rough. I think that's more of a testament to location, though.

My advice is this: if you are considering homeschool/non-traditional schooling, try it now. Don't wait. At 1st grade your kid most likely has developed some friendships, and probably doesn't care too much about being 'different' socially. Just make sure you have a well laid out plan for developing social skills / maintaining relationships your kid already has. And, most importantly, take time to re-evaluate. I was lucky that my parents were supportive of my decision to want to attend public school, and didn't keep me from making the choice. Also, really pay attention to the social-needs your kid has. I was pretty much fine by myself for a long time, and therefor resisted a lot of 'normal' social activities (sports, camps, etc) from an early age. If your kid is an extrovert and needs those social interactions to be happy, it will take extra work to accommodate.

That ended up being more of a ramble than anticipated, but I could talk about this for hours, so if you have Q's lmk.

<comment><USER18> > time 'wasted'

From what I gather from my children (13 & 15, mainstream schooled), I find there to be a huge amount of wasted time. I'm sometimes under the impression that the teachers are basically glorified child minders.

I have a friend who home-schools their children, and they're much more aware of the world around them compared to others of that age.

My argument against home-schooling was that the children are missing out on the social aspects - but thinking about it, that's just wasted time which just encourages concern over trivial matters and like you say, cliques. There's also the concern of being around those with a less than desirable influence. Of course, it's not entirely negative.

Now I'm on the fence. In hindsight, I would have at least given home-schooling consideration.

<comment><USER4> My mom was a high school art teacher (masters in art ed.) before she home- schooled me, and one of the reasons she'd often bring up was how she felt much of the time spent in traditional education consists of shuffling kids around from one room to the next, and she wanted something better for me.

As for socialization, that was more than likely the most commonly voiced concern I would encounter. I'd get a lot of "but don't you wish you were with other kids?", and I would think "who the heck wants to be stuck with a bunch of kids?"

<comment><USER19> We homeschooled our kids (for the most part). Whenever we worried about socialization, we grabbed our kids, dragged them into the bathroom, and beat them up for their lunch money.

Just kidding. But the point is, socialization in public school can be pretty awful, even violent. If your kid is the introvert, the less physically developed, and/or the less popular, socialization may not be a net win for your kid. And homeschoolers _do_ get socialization - just not with kids. Instead, they're talking to grownups at the library or the grocery store while other kids are in class. They (often) come out more socialized to the adult world but less socialized to their peers.

Anyway: I'm not going to tell you that one way or the other is the right way. I'll just say that, as a parent, _it 's your responsibility_. You can send them to public school, or private school, or a charter school. You can homeschool, which may or may not look like unschooling. Whatever you do, though, pay attention to how it's working out for your kid. If it's working out badly, _do something else_. (We switched to homeschooling from a very good private school when our daughter said that every day, when she was getting ready for school, her stomach hurt. That told us enough to know that, no matter how good a school it was, it wasn't good for her.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It is a good idea in theory, but the problem comes with the lack of a social group for the child. Unless you somehow have the ability to provide the child with a group of similarly aged peers of at least 5, please just send her to a school and try to support her in whatever she seems particularly adept in by helping her find good resources.

</comment><comment><USER21> I was not quite sure if I could watch Schooling the World off their site.

I chose to send my 5 year old child to Montessori school.

This seemed to match my approach to learning.

What was your biggest takeaway from Peter Gray's book?

<comment><AUTHOR> The biggest take away for me personally is:

We all have an inherent drive/desire to learn. It is why most of us learn to talk, walk, run with out any direct instruction. Yet school is based on a massive assumption which I had never questioned. The assumption that it has to be forced on you. Education that your are not interested in has to be forced. True Learning, which differs from education, is self directed. It happens because you are interested and curious.

Personal anecdata I thought myself coding in high school because I enjoyed it. No one told me to go out and teach myself this. I found myself coding and hacking instead of learning useless facts.

Edit:

Regarding the "schooling the world" documentary I have added two links. YouTube and the documentary website where you can rent it. I chose to rent the documentary to support the filmmakers.

<comment><USER8> > The assumption that it has to be forced on you. Education that your are not > interested in has to be forced. True Learning, which differs from education, > is self directed. It happens because you are interested and curious.

That's a false dichotomy. Sometimes you need the "forced learning" to get to the "self directed education."

> Personal anecdata I thought myself coding in high school because I enjoyed > it. No one told me to go out and teach myself this. I found myself coding > and hacking instead of learning useless facts.

To a small enough child, _reading_ is a "useless fact." After all, an illiterate child has gone _his whole life_ without needing to know how to read. Why waste time learning letters when you could look at animals and plants outside? _None_ of the facts they teach in school are truly useless, but rather the person who judges them useless is just too ignorant to know their value.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great points;

"To a small enough child, reading is a "useless fact." After all, an illiterate child has gone his whole life without needing to know how to read"

"Why waste time learning letters..."

This is the point/philosophy of it. The child will choose to learn when they need and want to. Having spoken to some of these children I found most taught themselves to read without formal instruction.

"None of the facts they teach in school are truly useless, but rather the person who judges them useless is just too ignorant to know their value."

Exactly. So if they are useless to the person it means an EXTERNAL party has made a judgement call on what knowledge is useful. It comes down to who decides what Is useful knowledge and what is not. Who should make threat decision?

<comment><USER8> > This is the point/philosophy of it. The child will choose to learn when they > need and want to.

You're missing the point. A child is ignorant of a great many things and not competent to make many of those kinds of choices. That's not to say they can't have some input, but it's an abdication of your responsibility as a parent to let them make all their educational choices based on "when they need and want to," unless those choices are so highly stage managed that they're not really choices at all.

> So if they are useless to the person it means an EXTERNAL party has made a > judgement call on what knowledge is useful.

What's so bad about that? The whole point of schooling is to benefit from the knowledge and maturity of that "EXTERNAL" party, which allows them to make better educational choices about a great many things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm not qualified to be a teacher. DIY education is not a good idea.

</comment><comment><USER22> Plus its usually a thinly veiled way to teach about jesus

<comment><USER23> Not in my experience.

We homeschool, and use a modified unschooling approach. We were in Charlottesville, VA from 2013 to 2018, and there are far more atheists and hippies than fundies. Here are two distinct groups there.

Now we're back where we grew up: Harrison, AR. It's pretty much the reddest area in the country, and even here, the homeschool co-op that my kids attend has much more of an "anti-authority" vibe than anything else.

For what it's worth, we're Christians, but I go out of my way to ensure my kids get a well-rounded education. Christianity is not at all incompatible with science, and I believe that Man was created as an intelligently being for a reason. Our ability to understand the Universe is not a mistake.</comment></comment>


EFF on the Government's Plan for Vehicle-To-Vehicle Communication - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/05/danger-ahead-governments-plan-vehicle-vehicle-communication-threatens-privacy <comment><USER2> Why bother to identify individual cars? Wouldn't it be enough for a car to say just "I'm a car and I'm panic braking at X/Y/Z coordinates"? That should be enough for every other car to react. Why does anyone else need to know that a particular car is involved?

If all the car is broadcasting is basic movement information, stuff any observer could gather from sound/visual data already in the open, why even bother with encryption? When the car in front of me brakes, it tells me so via its brake lights. I don't need to know anything else. We don't encrypt brakelights because there is no need. That the car is now also broadcasting that same information on a different wavelength (radio rather than light) shouldn't mean it now must be encrypted.

<comment><USER3> But you don't slam your brakes on 100% when you see the lights go on ahead of you, do you?

You are gathering other information to make that decision. Your perceived speed, your actual speed, the rate of closure to the bumper ahead of you, road conditions, etc.

If the safety system is supposed to be gathering that info while you're not paying attention, where is it coming from?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As far fetched as some of the Fast and the Furious series is... one thing that is very scary, and very close to real is the prospect of taking over mass quantities of cars for nefarious, or even malignant reasons...

Shutting down all the "smart" cars on a highway at rush hour... What would it take to overcome that.. if they were all just _brake now_ mode, and stuck... Not even considering steering, etc. But enacting what is likely a safety protocol in even 5-10% of all cars on the road...

The thought of what it will take for car to car p2p communications seems like a really bad thing waiting to happen.</comment>


Ask HN: What's appropriate equity for part time PR person - <AUTHOR>

We're a small bootstrapped startup with no revenue currently flowing, we expect this in the coming months but want to keep burn rate down currently. We have someone where there's mutual interest in helping with PR on a part time basis. What's an appropriate equity stake for helping with mostly PR but potentially some marketing part time? <comment><USER2> None. Pay the PR person instead somehow. Don't give away equity so freely.

<comment><USER3> Right. They might as well take on an investor and get the cash to pay for some PR.

Equity for cash could increase runway as well as allowing them to shop for the right PR person rather than settling for someone who may see this as a chance to "own their own business." That won't end well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Milestone based. Make sure there are deliverables and that you are only shelling out equity in exchange for concrete value add.

Is she going to get you written up in X publications? On X blogs? Is she going to be the sole driver of revenue? You can give her X% based on monthly or quarterly revenue targets.

I think the right mindset is: if she does X she will be increasing the valuation by Y so I will be comfortable giving her Z%.

Hmm wonder why I assumed they are a woman.

</comment><comment><USER5> Less than 3%.</comment>


Show HN: My weekend project - QuotesCube - Your daily dose of quotes - <AUTHOR> http://quotescube.herokuapp.com

<comment><AUTHOR> QuotesCube provides you with a collection of curated and hand-picked quotes and it also helps you print your favorite quote on a T-shirt or an accessory.

Would love to get your thoughts and suggestions.

</comment><comment><USER2> Just checked it out. Great work. A suggestion off the top of my head. Exposing an API to get a single random quote. Perhaps use for display a quote at the start of blogs or a news article.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. That sounds like a good idea. Will try to make a widget for showing random quotes.</comment></comment>


Show HN: BeepEvery - A web app that beeps to your will - <AUTHOR> http://beepevery.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> This was my weekend project and pretty much my first dive into really using Javascript.

Suggestions, comments and insults appreciated.</comment>


Nerdkit - an electronics kit for hackers - <AUTHOR> http://www.nerdkits.com/

<comment><USER2> For beginner hackers. Intermediate use Arduino. Expert build their own. 1337 buy the ones Expert built and claim them for their own.

<comment><USER3> NerdKits goes from beginners to way beyond... We actually publish lots of educational content -- see 18 free videos so far on <http://www.nerdkits.com/videos/> \-- that show off lots of programming and electronics concepts that push the limits of what most hobbyists are doing with microcontrollers. But we are definitely focused on education rather than selling products to professional engineers! (This is Mike from NerdKits)

<comment><USER4> I think you've done a nice job of meeting a real gap in the product space. In ten years of watching this stuff (mostly from the sidelines -- anyone more involved please correct me if I'm wrong), I haven't seen much in the way of an all-in-one kit that includes actual interesting components and well-written / MIT-literate instructional content.

The quality online presence -- forums and video tutorials! -- may even be a killer feature.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here is Austin there is a local company that will make microprocessors for you if you bring in your diagram. That is a real nerd kit!

But this is a great beginner kit and I enjoyed looking through the projects that people have built using it:

<http://www.nerdkits.com/projects/>

<comment><USER3> That page shows some of our projects, but also see the "video tutorials" at <http://www.nerdkits.com/videos/> , and also buried on our forum there are many customer projects. For example: a hamster wheel sensor which graphs how far a hamster runs at night ( <http://www.nerdkits.com/forum/thread/197/> and <https://sites.google.com/site/hamometer/> ), a home-brewed beer fermentation controller ( <http://www.nerdkits.com/forum/thread/61/> ), a tractor sled monitor ( <http://www.nerdkits.com/forum/thread/58/#post1232> ), and a LED tetris game ( <http://www.nerdkits.com/forum/thread/167/> ). (I am Mike from NerdKits)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been looking for something exactly like this. I'm trying to get into the physical side of EECS and this is perfect because it comes with the board, controller, instructions, and everything else you need to make a simple project. All the others cost too much and don't include what this does.

</comment><comment><USER7> Aren't arduinos a fraction of the cost and have a much larger community?

<comment><USER4> I can think of a number of advantages the NerdKit has with regards to certain niches (think linux vs. Mac, or linux from scratch vs. Ubuntu if you prefer), but here's one: marketed in a certain way, a NerdKit is something a non-techie parent could buy and give to a kid as a gift. Gifting an Arduino properly would involve lots of educated shopping and research, and probably hand- holding after that.

<comment><USER8> I already have a Ph.D. in EE and even _I_ don't have the time to choose the proper Arduino and read the basic docs and figure out what to do with the thing. [1]

And, though I love browsing Digikey or wandering the aisles at You-Do-It Electronics -- because I _already know how_ \-- such activity also takes a bunch of time, plus you end up either buying lots of extra stuff or risking that you will forget to buy something, or buy the wrong thing, and need to make one or more repeat trips. This risk is especially huge if you're new to electronics and don't already have several drawers full of miscellaneous capacitors and hookup wire and op amps and LEDs.

So I can definitely see the value here.

\--

[1] One of these days I will just pick some arbitrary project out of _Make_ magazine and follow the little steps. Or perhaps I will buy a NerdKit!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "The purpose of NerdKits is to reduce the risks involved with getting started in the electronics field."

That's great. What you start with doesn't matter so much, because once you've grasped many possibilities that one kit allows, you've also built the confidence that, yes, you can learn and you can do. Then you can explore other areas with that confidence. MM & breadboard can conquer _all_!

I'm one of those weirdos that think that analog is more fun than digital, but it's certainly important to be exposed to both sides.</comment>


Evidence that laptop note taking is no worse than hand - <AUTHOR> https://psyarxiv.com/vqyw6/ <comment><USER2> This study doesn't translate to the real world. I did a similar study in my second year of med school (unfortunately before I understood what an IRB is, so I couldn't publish the results), but of similar power. The findings were clear: of 25 study habits, taking long hand notes was the study habit with the strongest positive correlation with class standing. Use of a laptop to take notes in class had the strongest negative correlation. You were literally better off skipping class.</comment>


Ancestry lays off 6% of staff - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/05/ancestry-lays-off-6-of-staff-as-consumer-genetic-testing-market-continues-to-decline/ <comment><USER2> Lots of layoffs in Utah tech companies lately. Instructure just let go of 10%, other layoffs related to WeWork, and a bunch of other small companies.

Still seems like there is a shortage of developers here and most people should find new work pretty easily, but it is always a little unsettling to have a bunch of layoffs in quick sequence.

<comment><USER3> Every-time a PR comes out like this I see this sort of comment. Is there any evidence that layoffs are engineering based? I always assume the first to go are marketing/admin/etc rather than developers.

<comment><USER4> Yes it was I'm one of the ones affected. I've done mobile engineering both iOS and Android for around ~5 years.

If anyone's looking :)

<comment><USER5> I'm hiring remote mobile developers. Send me an email and I can send you some details.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Companies seem to have a really difficult time taking a moment to acknowledge or thank the workers being laid off. Would be nice to see that change in these corporate layoff announcements. This came close, but it's almost like pr and executives are allergic to expressing actual gratitude.

<comment><USER7> My last company had a couple rounds of layoffs last year (including me eventually), everyone in the executive leadership kept referring to it in such a roundabout way. They'd always call it, "the reorg" and the people laid off were people, "impacted" by it.

So you had to fire a bunch of people for no fault of their own. I get it, that's business sometimes when the times aren't good. But just say it. I do believe our CEO is genuinely a good person and did not feel good about doing it, so maybe there's a component of protecting one's own emotions in there as well by speaking around it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is it a shock to anyone when a company whos business model does not allow for return customers suddenly find themselves less in demand?

<comment><USER9> > business model does not allow for return customers

How's that?

<comment> blaser-waffle You map out your ancestry. That's great: records found, tree built, work complete. Business relationship over.

<comment><USER10> But it's not over, because the Ancestry.com UI is the only place most of that information is usable and navigable. This necessitates an ongoing subscription for access.

In addition, there's almost no "records found, tree built, work complete." It's always pulling additional "leaves" as more records are digitized.

<comment><USER11> The core info can be downloaded in GED format into a free genealogy program such as gramps. There will be some extra proprietary extensions but the basics will be there. Their selling point is that it indexes everyone's tree and it will offer hints when it spots overlap. Can be very time saving, but also misleading. Check everything against official BMD records if possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Everyone should read "The End of the Beginning" by Ben Thompson [1].

[1] [https://stratechery.com/2020/the-end-of-the- beginning/](https://stratechery.com/2020/the-end-of-the-beginning/)

<comment><USER13> That was great, but I don't see the connection to Ancestry's recent layoffs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I hear they are trying to make it more of a family business.

</comment><comment><USER15> My wife subscribes to their service. I can say, you pay a lot for what you get.

<comment><USER16> It's always seemed really expensive for what it is. I've looked up some family members, and all they really have is badly digitized scans of public documents that some library made available.

How little of this type of thing exists in any searchable format other than driving to a library and finding somebody who knows how microfiche works is very frustrating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Incomplete. Its all the DNA business.

</comment><comment><USER18> I suspect some of the recent layoffs may be related to the overall economy.

For example the global debt crisis Dalio talks about.

</comment><comment><USER19> What did they expect? They don't really offer a valuable service besides a one-off test + results. At some point you're going to hit everyone who wants to use the service, they'll use it exactly once, and you'll have no more market.

<comment><USER20> They have subscriptions. It's not just about the one-offs since your family tree expands all the time and in order to access that you need to keep paying.

<comment><USER19> Obviously the value of their subscription service is not compelling enough for their business to sustain itself.</comment></comment></comment>


Staffjoy is shutting down - <AUTHOR> https://blog.staffjoy.com/staffjoy-is-shutting-down-39f7b5d66ef6 <comment><USER2> Startups are hard.

It's even harder to be open and honest with yourself, your employees, your customers and everyone else when shutting down. Perhaps somewhat weird, but I find it refreshing to see posts like these. I think it's the sign of a good and healthy entrepreneur/team (albeit hard to write).

I'm sure you and your team learned a lot, and I love the gesture to open source your software.

Best of luck on the next step!

<comment><USER3> Scheduling is hard too. Every company has different requirements around how their scheduling works. Lots of businesses need their employees to clock-in and -out of their assigned shifts for accountability reasons, not sure if Staffjoy supported that. The shifts can have requirements too, e.g. the maintenance shift can only be scheduled for 8 and 12 hours, but nothing longer/shorter. There are usually payroll and billing implications, so adapting to an existing payroll/billing system would be an additional challenge, and not doing so would be a non-starter for lots of businesses.

If anything, the product surface area they were trying to tackle is really broad. Probably could have focused on a particular vertical and provided more value-adds.

I'm excited to see what gets open-sourced. Schedule visualizations are also hard. :-)

<comment><USER4> That doesn't even count the heavy hitters in the space, and even MS's recent entry add ons for o365.

I do find that the exit, open-sourcing their platform, and not burning all the cash before exiting is very classy indeed.

<comment><AUTHOR> We looked at the Microsoft tool [1]. I honestly think it's more of an upsell play for existing customer than a new customer acquisition play. The pricing is confusing and not competitive [2].

[1] [https://twitter.com/transitorykris/status/820009983601295360](https://twitter.com/transitorykris/status/820009983601295360)

[2] [https://products.office.com/en-US/business/compare- office-36...](https://products.office.com/en-US/business/compare- office-365-kiosk-plans)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thank you for the pragmatic writeup rather than the usual "fantastic journey" blather. Also, returning investor money, rather than wasting it, demonstrates leadership.

<comment><USER6> Is there any feedback if investors would prefer to get some of their money back or see you roll the dice on another pivot?

<comment><USER7> Arguably, if they'd like you to roll the dice on another project, they can always just... invest in your next project.

<comment><USER8> ...with a clean cap table.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Thanks for committing to open source your code! Nobody else has highlighted this in the comments yet, but this helps ensure the money spent on your company didn't end up wasted: At the end of it you will be leaving behind a valuable contribution to the open source community.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, most of the code for V1 and V2 should be online by the end of the week. Two of the repos use applied math libraries that cannot be open-sourced. For one, I think I can drop in an open-source alternative. The other I may not be able to open source.

I'll also be publishing our YCF application and our pitch decks in the coming days.

<comment><USER9> May I ask what these libraries are ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Gurobi.

The pre-V1 algorithms used the Julia JuMP package [1], which allows swapping of the backend solver easily. I don't think some of the functional tests would pass on the open source solver though (precutting and heuristics in gurobi caused a huge speed gain).

The later iteration of the algorithm used the Gurobi python library directly, which is closed source.

[1] [https://blog.staffjoy.com/retro-on-the-julia-programming- lan...](https://blog.staffjoy.com/retro-on-the-julia-programming- language-7655121ea341#.l3t8azsbz)

<comment><USER10> would love to see the solver application (if you are planning to swap an open source solver for gurobi). These class of problems are something I have wondered about, but never truly tried ny hand at.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sorry to hear this. Any lessons learned?

I use WhenIWork for this area, which suits our needs. Not sure what would make me switch, probably not a text messaging. Most of my employees have smartphones, so a mobile app is fine.

Biggest problem for me (as a business owner) is managing schedules to a budget, and making sure we are being as efficient as possible with our staffing spend.

Most tools I've seen have a pretty weak budgeting feature. (You just put your budget in and it tells you how you did)

<comment><USER12> I know some companies are using ML to do this internally - predicting staffing needs, optimizing costs, etc.

It strikes me as a very individualized problem; might be hard to generalize - or the markets you could generalize too aren't that big/don't need a solution all that much.

<comment><AUTHOR> ML is more statistical - good for forecasting. We were doing optimization mathematics with hard constraints for the scheduling.

One of the issues that we encountered was that a generalized algorithm was tough. Different companies had different requirements for an algorithm, and it started to feel like a consulting company. For instance, if a big box retailer would rather be slightly underscheduled at peak time rather than adding additional employees (and being over-scheduled near the peak time). A high-end boutique retailer (like a diamond shop) might be the opposite - each sales brings in so much money that they overstaff at non-peak hours so that they can service customers during peak hours.

<comment><USER13> Sounds like a machine learning problem. The dependent variable is profit, not budget.

<comment><USER14> Not really machine learning.

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

Above is a nice example. There has been some nice contests with the above problem and the ILP solvers work extremely fast and great and solve them to optimality. Although Staffjoy constraints might have been more general.

Either way you could easily attack any custom problem with an ILP solver. It depends how long it would take to get a feasible solution and then how long to minimize the costs or fit the budget.

In order to speed up the solver you might use ML but that would require previous data. Probably the only way to speed up the solver is to learn it through reinforcement learning on a batch of data. Takes time and time and time. Not to mention that your ILP solver has to be equipped to merge with any ML machinery you are using.

<comment><USER13> But deciding how many nurses to have at what time, based on the probability of how many and what kind of patients and the likelihood of a good medical outcome is a different problem.

<comment><USER14> It is, but saying it's machine learning hides the combinatorial issues and combinatorial search that has to happen. Machine learning model can't replace the necessity for search.

Scheduling problem (the general one) maps easily to the vehicle routing problem. Vehicles are routed and service customers. On-demand requirements and scheduling are probably easier to conceptualize in that framework (think Uber but with ride-sharing bus sized cars, or team picking up and delivering food from restaurants to locations, or repairmen doing stuff at people homes).

All needs combinatorial search and machine learning is only one little piece of the puzzle.

<comment><USER13> I usually say it the other way -- optimization is just one part of machine learning.

ML includes optimization/search, dimensionality reduction (aka unsupervised learning), prediction (aka supervised learning), and reinforcement learning. And I'm probably forgetting a category.

<comment><USER14> ML does not include integer linear programming (nothing learnable there) and similar mathematical optimizations. ML can be a part of it but is not integral to it. Just like finding the shortest paths between two points does not include ML. ML can be used to learn the weights through time (traffic sensitive routing) but the search part is separated from it.

IMO, ML is nowhere close to useful in these problems when most of the clients just use pen and paper. It should be fairly easy to beat that with some simple search heuristics.

<comment><USER13> Simple is better than complex. I agree with that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "small businesses still use paper or spreadsheets"

that's usually your first red flag. when management starts going after this market then things aren't looking good. low margins, sales dominated org if you're lucky can keep you afloat for a bit. long work days etc. avoid.

the real money is always in enterprise. liability is a huge issue. ain't no huge corp going to throw down millions on some random scheduling software run by a couple of dudes.

in the rare event that it does happened, raise as much money as possible and hire as quickly as possible. reduces risk and your work load.

they just didn't have the capital to compete. the market is there though clearly they just ran out of dough.

<comment><USER16> I'm currently working on a product with a team and we did a bit of exploration for an idea for SMB's and had that same issue. We were talking to someone who on the surface would be a perfect fit for the product but then we asked how they handled organizing a job. They reached down into their bag, pulled out a file folder, opened it up and spread a few sheets of paper in front of us and went "will this page is this thing, this one is the other thing, and that one is another thing". An entire jobs worth of documentation and info right there laid out in front of us all at once in 3 seconds flat.

That was the moment we realized the reason our target industry was still using paper and spreadsheets. Because they're not just "good enough". In most cases, they're the best possible option. Maybe with enough iterating and testing we could've come up with a UX that could've put all that information in front of 4 people in one shot that quickly. But the odds are against it and even if we did it would've taken a long time to get there.

A lot of startup founders view "legacy" as a four letter word. But sometimes it's simply the best course. Not everything needs a high tech solution. And accepting that can be really tough sometimes.

<comment><USER17> Also spreadsheets (e.g. Excel) in the hands of a smart user are very powerful. They are incredibly flexible and will handle most data management tasks for a small/mid size organization. And with Google Sheets (which has gotten a lot better in the past couple of years) or other cloud storage, the fear of losing everything with a failed hardrive or lost laptop is gone too.

I run a small nonprofit. I get emails at least weekly from some little tech company that has an app for some aspect of my operations. I usually ignore them, but when I do answer it's always some variation of "I can do everything I need for free with Google tools." And to myself I wonder why these companies are even targeting small organizations that have almost no money for technology.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> $1M in cash, and you decided to return the money instead of pivot and try something different?

Why? I might be totally wrong, but I guess those investors invested in you, more than your original idea.

Good for you for not burning the money in something you know eventually won't work, but why not try a different idea?

Man, I wish I had just a portion of that capital to at least validate my own startup.

<comment><USER19> Because the investors gave money to StaffJoy, not the idea one founder had when it because apparent SJ wasn't working out. And it sounds like either the other cofounder(s) either aren't interested in the new idea or aren't welcome to the new team as he says there will be a new founding team. That makes it very complicated especially if it's the same corporate structure moving forward with a different idea, you don't want un-involved prior cofounders sitting on equity.

So they're giving the money back, wiping out the corporate structure and starting fresh with one of the cofounders and what sounds like some but not all of the investors.

<comment><USER20> Sounds like the founders didn't get along and they're trying to exit without losing individual marketability

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Really sorry to see this; your candor is refreshing, and I've been interested in the optimization work you've been doing for some time. Best of luck with what comes next.

</comment><comment><USER22> > So, we have decided to return over $1M in cash to our investors.

That's some nice common sense there!

</comment><comment><USER23> Never heard of Staffjoy before this.

Honestly, the hardest part of a startup is simply getting known and spreading the word that it exists.

<comment><USER24> I think you're right and this isn't the first time for me, there's been dozens of times a startup is announcing they are closing here on HN and it's the first time I have heard of them. Not a criticism of Staffjoy of course, it's just a general truth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is superficial, but what is the successrate of startups that end in -joy? Homejoy and Staffjoy closed shop, are there others that closed or survived?

<comment><USER26> Cratejoy should be concerned, then.

<comment><AUTHOR> Considering the failure rate of startups, I think the data shows that we just have a representative sample :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." \--George Bernard Shaw

</comment><comment><USER28> Like other YC companies that failed, I've never heard of this one and many more are likely to follow.

It's really tough to "make stuff people want" AND _willing to pay you every month_ for it.

</comment><comment><USER29> _> Their biggest scheduling problem was communication, because many workers relied on prepaid phones._

I don't see what's the problem with prepaid phones. Do you mean feature phones?

<comment><AUTHOR> Many workers didn't have access to email, or they were wary of providing it to an employer. Without smart phones, they lacked access to apps. So basically, they had no way to register for an account and see their schedule on other applications.

During user studies, we saw that restaurants would still print out their schedules, and managers would take a photo and text it to employees.

This created problems when the workers treated this channel as two-way. For example, workers running late would text the manager, and the manager would not notice the message promptly while working.

<comment><USER30> Twilio!

<comment><USER31> ...How is Twillio the solution?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Any chance of a postmortem? Failure is part of the journey, but it still sucks. Good luck in the future!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I posted our YCF Application today: [https://blog.staffjoy.com/staffjoys-yc- fellowship-applicatio...](https://blog.staffjoy.com/staffjoys-yc-fellowship- application-5771c8a105cd)

</comment><comment><USER33> One of the points mentioned often by @sama is that founders give up too quickly. What advice did you get from your YC Partner on this conundrum of being cockroaches versus shutting down?

<comment><USER34> From the outside, it seems like the founder saw a bigger opportunity and decided to move on.

So, the primary motivation isn't shutting down _this_ startup. The primary motivation is moving on to the next startup which they believe is a bigger opportunity.

Not too awesome for current employees: hope they are getting taken care of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> The name reminds of those half a dozen home cleaning service startups that a couple of people kept starting.

<comment><AUTHOR> I got the .com for $10 3 years ago, so I've been happy with it :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Can you share any revenue / growth numbers that resulted in your decision?

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's one fun fact: Our three-touch outbound email campaigns to restaurants had a ~0.1% conversion rate.

<comment><USER37> Trying (and failing miserably) to sell to small/medium businesses is almost a rite of passage for new entrepreneurs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Have you considered starting your next company back in St Louis?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've considered making it remote.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> So they launched right after the holidays in the slowest time possible and are shutting it down only after a month? I think we don't have the full story here. It looks like a panic either on the investor's side or startup side, or both.

<comment><AUTHOR> We did outbound for multiple months, and were feature-complete on the product in November. Our first users on the V2 came onboard in early December.

Based on our user research, our primary markets (service and retail industries) freeze all of their software during the holidays. During the lull in January, they evaluate new purchases.

Launch is basically a one-time bump in inbounds that doesn't scale, so we timed it when we thought it would have greatest effect. However, we had been doing more scalable outbound - e.g. emails, canvassing neighborhoods with flyers, etc - for months.

Conversions to signups were remarkably low, and conversions from signups to paid were also low. We basically realized that we were not solving a core burning problem for these businesses. That's more what contributed to the shutdown.

<comment><USER40> I was a partner in a startup a few years ago doing roughly the same thing. After working on an early prototype, the project fizzled out due to involvement in other projects, but a competitor launched with the same idea soon after that called shiftplanning.com. They did literally the exact same thing except they got to market before us and they (from what I can tell), made it big. The market for this type of software is massive but obviously you need to find some key business up front. Maybe you had the wrong investors? At the time we had an investor that wanted to put money in AND have his large restaurant chain start using it; a strategic partner... Something to think about...

<comment><USER20> What startup founders don't realise sometimes is that marketing is more important than having the best product.

I've had the luck of being on both development and marketing ends and high quality marketing can definitely sell a product that's slightly inferior to the competition 10:1

If you need big names attached to your product early the best way is to give it out for free to those first strategic customers. Why would anyone turn down something useful and free.

If you can't tell why another startup beat you out when you had a better product it's garaunteed to be marketing related.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Man they aren't even lasting 2 years nowadays? I think it's official: the startup bubble is over in 2017 officially.</comment>