HN: Name a problem, any problem, you'd like to see someone solve - <AUTHOR>

What's a problem that bothers you intensely? Any problem, as big or as specific as you'd like.
Who knows, maybe one of these ideas will turn into a YC company!
A continuation of a question I asked HN 3 years ago -- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=442571 <comment><USER2> Here's a problem that I just realized bothers me way too much. I despise the SEO industry. It is polluting the web with useless content that shadows actually useful one. Places like odesk/freelancer.com are bombarded with requests for "article writers" to churn out "articles" with a level of writing lower than the average highschooler. Massive amounts of fake facebook accounts with fake friends, fake twitter followers, fake +1's, and fake links are manufactured every day.

How do you make it unprofitable for SEO's to game the system?

/rant

<comment><USER3> Maybe the new semantic Google update will solve your problem: [http://www.seoconsult.com/seo-news/google/algorithm- update-g...](http://www.seoconsult.com/seo-news/google/algorithm-update- google-focusing-on-semantic-search-technology.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> An alternative to incarceration or a better experience while incarcerated. Something more humane, less costly or better yet, an alternative to the current prison system that has a net positive effect on society and the economy. Apparently, there's a lot of talent locked up - what a waste: [http://www.quora.com/Prisons/What-are-some-aspects-of- incarc...](http://www.quora.com/Prisons/What-are-some-aspects-of- incarceration-that-could-not-possibly-be-guessed-at-by-someone-who-hasnt- experienced-it/answer/Eric-Phil-Phillips)

<comment><USER5> It's _astounding_ to me that the US prison system is such a snake pit. The inmates rule everything but the surface. It should be all but impossible for murder and other major crimes to happen in prison; we already know where the criminals are!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Substantially increased battery life. Seems to be one of the major factors holding back energy solutions and a true explosion of mobile device use.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think wireless power -- rather than more efficient batteries -- is the long- term solution.

<comment><USER7> Graphene seems promising too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Finding users.

I'm constantly brainstorming ideas, and rapidly prototyping them, but without being able to find the early adopters to begin the feedback loop, the ideas die. What's the best way to find early adopters for my ideas? I'm based in Australia, so meetup groups tend to be very lean around specific interests/technology, but geolocation shouldn't be relevant to internet startups.

<comment><USER9> <http://betabait.com/> sends their newsletter subscribers (early adopters) a daily email with a new beta invite to an internet startup or app. I am a very busy college student but it's the only email I actually skim through every day. I can't speak to the effectiveness completely since I don't have a smartphone and only use the web apps but, it seems to be built around a community of willing participants. Hope that helps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Search - I'm even going to pay for it. Search for the damn terms I enter into a search field. The "app" may at most have a CSS style sheet, 1993 look. No Javascript, no images. Give me options to limit my search to date ranges, domains, urls, languages, etc.

HTTPS basic auth. No cookies, no tracking, no country detection, no redirect to see what I clicked, no guessing unless I add a flag in the search field.

There was a company once that provided something like this for "free". Then they turned to SHIT.

<comment><USER11> It's not EVERYTHING you want, but I started using <http://duckduckgo.com/> about a week ago and it's probably the closest you're going to get to a useful search engine nowadays. Full keyboard usage and zero tracking. Simple and clean. I'm enjoying it thus far.

<comment><USER5> Love ddg.

As you become accustomed to using their bang codes, you'll find yourself trying/guessing a new bang code because "that's what it should be," and sometimes it works. That's how I discovered my pinboard tags are behind !pb

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Fluid/continuous education. For the first two weeks of my junior year of high school, I was learning the same version of the scientific method in 3 classes. I learned it again in two different classes my senior year of high school.

I would like to see education that is based on a knowledge map so that a person never needs to learn something that they already know.

<comment><USER13> my opinion on re-learning - there were multiple subjects that I took in college which went over same content that I had learned in High School. I actually enjoyed re-learning them because the content was presented in a different way, so it made more sense to me that it had before. It is one thing to learn something once, but when I learn some concept over and over again, I tend to discover something new about it or related to it. Even small concepts can have greater meaning to it that I did not saw at first.

I have similar experience with movies - Dark Knight - I watched it 4 times and each time I find it more fascinating because I saw new details in the movie.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Here's a tiny thing:

The UK uses the concept of "units" for public health when talking about alcohol. These aren't well understood. There's concern about binge drinking. But there's also concern about non-typical groups.

Make a little web-app game. Display a variety of glasses, and wine bottles. Include the ABV (alcohol by volume) rating. "pour" a glass of wine. tell the user how many mls are in the glass. (125 ml at 8%ABV is one unit. It's rare to see glasses that small, they're normally 175 ml or 250 ml. And wine is usually much stronger.) Then ask them how many units are in that glass. Give them a score. (and show them how much of that glass is just one unit) Repeat for 5 glasses. Show them the difference between what they guessed and true. Link to some alcohol awareness sites.

"Drinking "just a little more than they should" puts people at risk of serious illness including heart disease, stroke and cancer, the government is warning." <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-16869618>

Nice chart: [http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Units_of_alcohol_char...](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Units_of_alcohol_chart.svg)

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-16886547>

Young people, especially women, with alcohol related illness. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7092347.stm>

Rise in Cirrhosis. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17513505>

Baffling numbers. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3303805.stm>

Record numbers. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-13559455>

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-16443240>

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-15114325>

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4581530.stm>

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-15997695>

</comment><comment><USER15> 1.) The average computer users fear of their own computer. It hurts me on a deep level (Deeper than just seeing a business opportunity.) to see the bicycle for the mind being marginalized in it's potential by people trying to sell things. (Microsoft, IBM, and co. Have probably done permanent damage to humanity by spreading the meme that computer knowledge is for 'nerds'. Whatever those are.) As we move further into the 21st century, and computers become ever more ubiquitous, it seems that computer knowledge becomes ever more scarce. (I'd have to run the numbers to be sure, but while the number of computer literate people has objectively gone up, I would think that the percentage of people with any sort of understanding deeper than the surface of point and click has gone down.)

I'm not even sure if it's a solvable problem. But if someone did it would be a great service to humanity.

2.) I'm 99% sure that this can't be solved by an external third party. But my 1% nagging doubt is enough to make me list it.

Quite simply, I have problems getting things done. It's not necessarily that I'm lazy, it's just that It takes more effort to figure out what I should be doing right now than it does to just keep procastinating on the same task. To- do lists help, but are ultimately inadequate. A pen and paper to-do list always seems to evade my attention when I try one. Writing it out in a text file usually works better, but it's still not a surefire thing. It's not necessarily that I need better _to-do list software_ so much as it is that I need a better way to manage my time in a way that either:

A] I don't have to manually write down and erase tasks as I do them. Besides an erase shortcut I don't think that this is really feasible. Computers can't read my mind yet.

B] It will make or convince me to habitually update and read it in such a way that it's not annoying or somehow feels out of sync with my workflow.

Maybe I'm alone on this one, maybe I'm not. Maybe it's solvable, but I doubt it.

I'd just like to remind anyone who's read this far that not every problem is best solved by a start-up or business. If you feel strongly about anything in this thread you should at least consider the possibility of other methods of achieving your goals. (But being able to potentially make sizable sums of money while you do is a sweet bonus.)

<comment><USER16> Really like this post; articulating something I experience and something I see a TON of entrepreneurs quietly struggle with.

I share your intuition that it's not entirely a machine-ready problem; productivity tools (using that term WIDELY) have certainly improved, corrected in innovative ways for all of our typical human tendencies, and in some cases work really well for "some" people.

I've been consulting lately on a project focused on providing human coaching to this specific problem for big-thinking tech entrepreneurs. Also definitely not for everyone, but after chatting with a number of investors about how they might 'enhance' their influence on their portfolio founders, this was something that always seems to be a "lightbulb". It's most surprised me that entrepreneurs themselves seem to be very much interested in the idea: "Yes, if my investors provided me with a productivity/well-being coach I'd take full advantage".

Thoughts?

<comment><USER15> I'm far too young to be of any help demoing products for entrepreneurs. However, I think that this and other problems are near or on what I like to call the "Deviation barrier.".

Basically it goes like this: Theres certain problems that seem solvable from your perspective, but the _real_ problem is that the way in which the problem manifests itself deviates largely enough from one person to the next that it makes any solution non-portable to someone else's instance of the problem. As computer science techniques get better I would wager that this barrier gets thinner. I know that if I spent enough time on it _I could solve this problem for myself._ But solving it in a way that would help others too? That's a tall order.

There's a lot of problems that right now are near or on the deviation barrier. I like to think that as that barrier hypothetically thins that computers will be able to help us with more unique aspects of our lives and account for individual quirks.

But talking right here right now; I'm not sure that you would be able to find effective productivity coaches. Feel free to prove me wrong on this.

<comment><USER16> I agree this is a problem that's near the "Deviation barrier". I also agree it's narrowing, and admit that what I was suggesting is a 'low-tech' solution. I suppose I was simply offering that I'm seeing empirical evidence that this is a pain point in a particular market that's large enough that people look willing to pay to try and fix it.

<comment><USER15> > I also agree it's narrowing, and admit that what I was suggesting is a 'low- > tech' solution.

That's not in itself a reason to reject an idea. A lot of the time the best solution is decidedly "Low Tech". Thinking that added complexity has any correlation with the usefulness of a system is a fallacy.

(Example: [http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Classic-WTF-Lock-and- Key.asp...](http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Classic-WTF-Lock-and-Key.aspx))

It's not even that your idea is _bad_. It's not. I'm just skeptical of the availability of individuals who can make a difference without being out of the price range of just about anything that could be defined as a "startup". In fact, I'm skeptical of the availability of such individuals at _any_ price range.

And I'm afraid that if you're serious about the idea that the onus is on you to figure these things out and prove their worth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> In North Korea, there are oppressed people who are brutally killed in actual concentration camps. They are taught by the government that the American people are evil. Is there a possible strategy for the U.S. to free the North Korean people from the North Korean regime without killing most of them?

</comment><comment><USER18> I would like to see our health care costs go down by an open source "health care menu" system being created - where people can enter, for example, "gastroscopy" into a field - tell where they got it, how long it took, how much it cost, and a theory as to WHY...and then an opportunity for other people to input their information on the healthcare costs...create an open market so lower cost providers will steal business from more expensive ones...and so we can actually LOOK at why a 30-minute procedure can POSSIBLY cost $3,000.

</comment><comment><USER19> Make television and entertainment an on demand system - I don't need Lifetime, but want Longhorn Network and can't get it. I should be able to subscribe to channels one by one. Similarly, why doesn't someone with a track record of making quality entertainment (Mike Schur, Dan Harmon, Tina Fey) bypass networks and middlemen, make a show, sell ads on it, and deliver it through the internet

</comment><comment><USER19> Introduce coding to public school curriculum at the middle school level. Advanced middle school students can handle the basic concepts, and honestly, they won't be any more disinterested than they are in poorly taught foreign languages. It may even intrigue some who otherwise would not have gotten the exposure. Also, I love what Codeacademy is doing, but it's hard to delete all your work and start from scratch (which I find I need if there has been a long layoff between my coursework.) Also, there aren't enough exercises/concept. For me, I need 5-7 exercises to drill a concept into my memory, I get that it's new, but they should consider adding more exercises at each stage as they grow. I'd also love to see a brick and mortar Code Academy that offers some form of certification after taking classes and passing tests (a more traditional education approach). For those of us who have only learned in the traditional classroom for 20+ years, I think some would rather pay to attend a school like that.

</comment><comment><USER5> I would like short url encoding to be an RFC, and every browser implement it in the browser, encoding and decoding the url locally without having to query some random .ly site.

In fact, if short url encoding were an RFC, you could compress all links on your site to short, and the browser would expand them for display.

Other uses would probably reveal themselves.

</comment><comment><USER20> How to acquire masses of medical data from patients' records for use in medical research without causing concerns over privacy issues.

<comment><USER18> I don't know, but it's a brilliant idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Music genome project for food. There should be a restaurant genome project where restaraunts and food types are linked in a way similar to how the music genome projects works. That data should be available through an API, which others can incorporate in to their foodie apps.

Speaking of foodie apps, I travel a lot, and while apps like AroundMe are great, they have limited utility when I'm in central Georgia, driving south, and want to know what's along the way. Do I stop now, or do I keep driving to find something better than Chick-fil-a? What I'd really like is an app that knows my route, and the time of day, and recommends restaurants based on where I'll be at lunch/dinner time (give or take an hour).

I'd put considerable effort in to providing feedback to an app that provides that level of utility, even at the expense of loss of privacy. I don't really care if an app knows my dining preferences. I have nothing to lose and a lot to gain.

<comment><USER22> To piggy back off the restaurant genome project idea, it would be great if food allergies and restrictions were incorporated as well. My girlfriend is gluten free so we don't often eat out (or explore) because most restaurants can't accommodate her needs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> When I'm in the grocery store, looking for an obscure item (cheese cloth is the one that made me think of this). Build me a mobile app to search and get info on where in the store the item is.

<comment><USER23> Solving a problem is often about finding the right approach / fudging the problem into something you _can_ solve. And there is actually a disruptive solution to this: online shopping. Amazon has cheese cloth.

<comment><USER19> The problem is that it was a spur of the moment decision to try to make ricotta, needed it then and there. Amazon solves this if you regularly need cheese cloth, but not if you have never heard of it and all of sudden find out you need it that night.

<comment><USER16> This is a problem we've assessed a bit at <http://foodtree.com> \- there are some efforts in this space but none seem to have the penetration to make it useful at scale. Our approach is to help grocers "spread their great story" as an incentive to start mapping their inventory, both in the "where it's from/who made it and how" perspective and the "what store near me has OBSCUREITEM available right now" perspective, which is your problem but only to store level. Getting to that level right now is tough with food retail chains, but they're moving in the right direction.

So that we don't have to wait for them, we're trying to enable crowd-sourcing as well; "I saw OBSCUREITEM here in case you're looking for it in town".

Again, very aware this is only your problem at the store's front door, but maybe it's nice to know someone's working on it? :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Free will, longer life span etc... :)

I would like an Android application that delays all notifications by a set amount a time.

So if I want to do an hour of work I could set it to an hour and it wouldn't notify me at all. After the hour is up, all the notifications appear as they normally would.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'd like to see a home server. A central computer hooked to everything shouldn't be a pipedream. It should be hooked to the media center, handheld devices, thermostat and security.

Why shouldn't cable tv go to my computer, which then controls my dvr for the home, and also incoming video/video/audio calls through the media venter, or handhelds, as preferences determine.

Stream a desktop or any media to any hardware you have or buy with a login and password.

(The deaf community already uses third party set top boxes for video calls. I bet there's room for a platform agnostic solution there alone. Maybe a good open source project for someone.)

</comment><comment><USER26> Why is it so hard to choose health insurance? And then, once you're in the system, why is it so hard to keep up with all the paperwork, etc. I grew up in Canada and after living in the States for 10 years, it's been so frustrating to navigate the health care system, and I'm a healthy person. I can't imagine how people who are sick have time and energy to put towards getting better when they are consumed with just "getting through" the system.

<comment><USER27> On this note, as someone who just moved _from_ Canada with a special-needs child, and let me tell you, the US is light-years ahead of Canada. You mentioned you are healthy, so I can only assume your experience is fairly limited. Myself, and mostly my wife, have experienced both of these systems (coming back to the US just last year), and she absolutely loves the American system. Having seen the results myself, I can't describe the Canadian system as anything better than outright child abuse.

<comment><USER26> Hi there :) I wanted to clarify, I'm not talking about the quality of care. I'm talking about just the act of choosing which health care you should get and then keeping up with all the paperwork once you're sick. I've been outside of Canada for the past 12 years, but when I've gone to the doctor in the states for something as simple as stitches or a bad cold, I've always been amazed at how complicated it is in terms of bills and co-pays etc. I know that everyone things the system is so great, but I agre with you, it's not. It's ugly. People wait months for critical cat scans. Surgery is often cancelled or bumped. And patients regularly abuse the system rather than be proactive about their health. So in summary (sorry this got so long!!) neither system is perfect, but when I came to the states, I felt like I was just totally blind as I was choosing which insurance to get. I'd love to see someone fix the issue of helping people choose the right health care that's best for them, make best use of the FSA system, and manage bills / paperwork in a more efficient way.

<comment><USER27> Gotcha. =) I have a knee-jerk reaction when someone starts promoting Canada over US healthcare. I blame Canada for that, not the person.

As for the health care in the US, a lot of that is based on your carrier. Shop around! You aren't stuck with a single health care provider, and you can choose your doctors. My wife was amazed that after she went to one doctor, she was asked if she wanted to continue to see that doctor, or wanted to try someone else.

She's the one that deals with this on a day to day basis, so I trust her in this department. She also mentioned that here, people are so much more willing to help with any paperwork that might arise. And considering all the paperwork she's done to get my son the care he needs, she knows what she's talking about.

That's not to say things couldn't be easier.

> I was just totally blind as I was choosing which insurance to get.

So many choices! Yep. It can be overwhelming. My wife abused the help line of our insurance provider, and our companies rep the first few months. She'd call at least once a week with questions. However, she found that generally, they were more than willing to walk her through everything, and in some cases, did it right over the phone on her behalf.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> 1) I would like my car cleaned and refueled while I'm not using it, without my intervention. During the night for example, or while at the gym.

2) I would like a unified api for events that happens and my computer can recognize: pc turn on/off/sleep, received email, a rss feed updated, someone from my contact list is online or goes offline, dusk/dawn, my presence in front of the computer, the presence of someone else in front of the computer, etc...

3) I wrote some scripts to scrape particular image-boards and blogs. I'd like a tool that identifies duplicates and could categorize pictures, maybe with some training (for example meme/macro images should not be too difficult).

4) a music tracker tool (like renoise) with some particularities: notes and durations are not absolute values but relative to a root note, patterns are per-instrument (like in buzz), patterns are zoomable or non-linear in size (some parts have 1 note per measure, others 64 per beat)

5) a file system where I could simply indicate the redundancy I want for a specific file or directory (like a per-file raid).

</comment><comment><USER29> A controllable, smartphone-based car entertainment system.

Any smartphone could be plugged in via a USB-like cable which transfers I/O, audio and power. The car's up/down/left/right "radio" buttons would then control like/dislike/next/previous for Pandora-like apps running on the phone. Throw in another 2 buttons or so for other functions. There would be an open "key-mapping" standard which would be implemented in the OSes which music apps could tap into. There would be a standard set of programmable-per-app buttons (not unlike video game controllers)

Voice is unusable when music is playing and touchscreens are too dangerous. Mobile and digital entertainment technologies move so fast, yet I only change my car twice in 3 decades or so - I don't want to be constrained by what technology was available when I bought it.

<comment><USER30> I'm not sure if this is exactly what you would be looking for, but this popped up on Kickstarter a while ago and it's a good start.

Dash: [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/devium/dash-the-smart- ph...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/devium/dash-the-smart-phone-car- stereo)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> A proactive security tool to protect computers from malware, perhaps using a combo of Artificial Life, Genetic Programming and Artificial Immune systems, with social networking and swarm computing thrown in for good measure.

cf. our current reactive approach of applying antivirus updates post hoc.

<comment><USER32> This sounds both useful and futuristic. However, I think it's more like a new field of research than something you could realize in a startup. We're not even close yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Is there a way to stop this flood of accelators, incubators, and web startups that add little value to the billions of people on this planet who don't care about social media, apps, or tablets? Alternatively, why don't we focus on overpopulation, cures for cancer, and real alternative energy?

</comment><comment><USER34> The major challenge for any photobook creation is the following:

An user has for example 100 images from vacation. Some choose nearly the same object, if this is he case some will be better than others (sharpness, contrast, and so on).

For an automatic creation process of a photobook without the need for the user to "choose" images it is necessary, to identify images with similar objects. Some attributes can be Location (if GPS Data available in the EXIF data) or Time (if multiple images was taken within less than a minute), but this kind of information are not very offen available or accurate. To analyse images to identify similar images and find the "best of the image" with less risk of false positive is a challenge.

<comment><USER35> There's a guy who's working in this area on HN.

I believe his web app is called Inapic.com

<comment><USER34> Thanks, seems to be the right think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> How to disrupt enterprise software? Even with all the startups coming up in cloud, enterprise sales is still largely relationship based and takes forver to close... How does one convert the long sales cycles to rapid close?

</comment><comment><USER37> Stock room inventory/management for the small and large business.

Must include Point of Sale recipe management/tracking. Counting is worthless without knowing what is leaving the store.

The problem with current "disruption" is that they think the cash register is the problem. The ability to scale and integrate back of the house management with front of the house interfaces is the only real way to disrupt the POS industry. Anyone who thinks otherwise is an industry outsider that will never really break in. aka Taking credit cards on an iphone is not disruption.

</comment><comment><USER38> Why is it still so hard to drop a file on a LAN from one laptop to another (except for Apple's AirDrop goodness)??? I mean the easiest way to get a file from my Mac to your Win7 laptop is still a USD stick. Sucks.

</comment><comment><USER39> The technology exists, so why aren't more companies manufacturing motors that don't require oil or electricity. Most of the machines we use can run on solar, magnetic, or some form of hydrogen power.

</comment><comment><USER40> Facebook filter:

Situation: I have over 1,000 friends and ff several hundred twitter feeds. I end up seeing too much bs (spam ads, useless topics, and miss out on important info. Good events, interesting posts) I want something that can sort out my twitter feeds and facebook feeds and show me whats important while de- emphasizing od even junking the rest. Sort of like a spam filter for facebook and twitter

</comment><comment><USER41> The archival of digital photography is unsafe. Photographs that are 100 years old and made out of glass are more resilient that a photo that has been updated to Facebook. I'd like to see a more secure form of digital archiving - better than cloud computing as that is still data and moving parts.

</comment><comment><USER14> I want to pay when I've read a great article. I might even want to subscribe to that newspaper / magazine / journal.

But I don't want a print edition mailed to me. I only want an online subscription.

I want someone to make it easy for me to pay a dollar or so for a great article.

</comment><comment><USER19> A software that _successfully_ generates correct Bluebook citations (for lawyers and law students - law students would pay at least $100 each to avoid doing this, there are software's out there, the problem is they don't give correct citations).

<comment><USER42> This intrigues me, since it looks like some of the offerings are pretty good (e.g. Citrus _looks_ quite powerful).

Would you be willing to chat over email? Mine is in my profile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Creating a substantial and culturally diverse world that runs without money.

<comment><USER5> Could you break that down into a few sub-problems?

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> p = np? haha, just kidding. Actually, my issue is this: how do we get the average Joe to understand (formal) logic and probability (so that we can get people to understand the aspects of risk better)?

<comment><USER45> Participate in, promote, and fund skeptical societies and skeptical outreach groups. This is one of many topics that these groups try to cover.

For example, these two podcasts have had positive influence: Skeptics Guide to the Universe Bad Astronomy

This is actually one of those problems where an established solution (outreach/education) with time and money would actually work well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> A way to automatically change double byte romaji characters to single byte

<comment><USER47> Try this in Python?

        import codecs

        fin = codecs.open('input.txt', 'rb', 'shift-jis')
        fout = codecs.open('output.txt', 'wb', 'utf-8')

        try:
            fout.write(fin.read())
        except ValueError:
            print "Not encoded using Shift-JIS!"

Not sure if that's what you mean - feel free to clarify, if not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I would like researchers to publish their results instantly so that they are freely accessible through natural language. Like: give me all the proteins that bind this molecule!

</comment><comment><USER49> Yahoo! Pipes for web scraping. Don't have to write a line of code, just a GUI that can even do complex things.

There's a lot of information out there that should be freed.

</comment><comment><USER50> Political concentration camps in North Korea. I'm serious.

Mind you, I do have an idea for this. If anyone is interest (even you Ben), hit me up on email.

<comment><USER51> Well... there's no email to hit you up by on your profile

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> A mobile app to share resumes, so you don't have to carry paper resumes to jobs fairs (thought of it at the SxSW Tech Career Expo)

<comment><USER11> Powered by NFC. _tap_ here's my resume.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Why ate we still ok with resumes and degrees when we can instead have a full- breadth breakdown of skills and accomplishments?

</comment><comment><USER53> Convince the general population that eSports are 1) an actual careeer and that 2) is a legitimate sport.

</comment><comment><USER19> Anyone with ideas about how to solve the issues I proposed feel free to reach out to me to discuss.

</comment><comment><USER19> Build on the Sporcle app and make it head to head - Words with Friends for Sporcle.

</comment><comment><USER54> a just in time computer. just load what i need when i want it.

oh and help mohammad rahimi teach the afghan women how to use computers for life skills and education

</comment><comment><USER55> Solve hatred violence corruption and war.

<comment><USER56> Hatred leads to violence and war so if you could make a dent in the first, it might pay off in the long run. What about a an app like chatroulette (text only) that paired up people across the world from each other and translated text into their native language? It might be interesting to get to know someone from Iran and see their perspective on things.

Corruption - An anonymous whistle blower site would be interesting.

<comment><USER57> Wikileaks?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Port emacs to clojure

</comment><comment><USER59> How women's brain works?

</comment><comment><USER60> ok check it out i have bank accounts and the money is mine my grandpa had passed away and he had left all is fundings to me ad my family had tkin the papers adn destoyed now i ae all th information too get into the account like routing number etc i jjst cant transfer the funds because i guess he needs to approve whatever i am totalyl looking for some one who is a little more advanced on the hacking into bank accounts i guess you can say welli willt otaly apreciate if someone got back with me thank you lmuch bonnie</comment>


Largest Bitcoin mixer, Bitmixer.io, closes down - <AUTHOR> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2042470.0 <comment><USER2> He probably made so much money that he said "Hey, why risk it by continuing to run this business when I may someday face jail time. I know I am aiding criminals". Smart move to shut it down on your terms and look like a good guy rather than to continue profiting from criminal activity. Whatever your on opinion the various issues at play here there is absolutely no doubt that running this sort of service is extremely risky from a legal / political standpoint.

I wonder if the shutdowns last week played any his decision? Maybe he saw a large drop in volumes after the darknet markets were shut down and realized those use cases were much larger than he imagined.

<comment><USER3> It's really harmful to the cause of privacy when people equate enablement of privacy with criminality, as you're doing.

<comment><USER4> You can't even sell _gift certificates_ on the Internet without having built a business that will probably have criminals as a plurality constituency. The idea that a Bitcoin mixer was most used for legitimate purposes is pretty hard to swallow.

As a positive claim, rather than a normative one, it has to be possible to observe that services like this have their great practical impact on criminals. Making such a positive claim can't "hurt the cause of privacy". If the cause of privacy wants to be taken seriously, it will need to grow up and stop demanding that people accept false sets of facts.

<comment><USER5> If you run an online store that doesn't validate credit cards correctly you _will_ become an API for fraudsters to check the validity of Visa numbers.

<comment> _-david-_ What is the proper way to validate credit cards?

<comment><USER6> MaxMind's minFraud[0] was the most popular last time I checked. You give them the credit card info, the IP of the user, their email etc[1] and $0.005 (per credit card transaction you want them to check) and they tell you the probability that it's fraud.

At my company we use Stripe as our payment processor, which has their own fraud detection called Radar. But still, a bit under .1% of our transactions are fraudulent.

Credit card fraud is honestly a great business, even if they know you're doing it, the police wont do anything, and the merchant has to cover the cost and pay $15 for the privilege of being defrauded.

[0] [https://www.maxmind.com/en/minfraud- services](https://www.maxmind.com/en/minfraud-services)

[1] [https://minfraud.readthedocs.io/en/latest/](https://minfraud.readthedocs.io/en/latest/)

Sorta related, turns out there are anti-fraud services for fraudsters [https://krebsonsecurity.com/2013/11/anti-fraud-service- for-f...](https://krebsonsecurity.com/2013/11/anti-fraud-service-for- fraudsters/)

<comment><USER7> isn't this the kind of service that will flag a legitimate user behind a VPN as a potential threat because his ip has been used in multiple transactions? Should a user switch off his VPN to do shopping?

<comment> GuB-42 If that VPN IP range is known to be used by fraudsters then yes, for good reasons. And if your VPN is affordable and "privacy oriented" there is a very good chance that a bunch of crooks are going to use it.

Professional VPNs are probably fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For those of you who don't understand how monetary privacy can be useful outside of illegal activities, see this talk by Riccardo Spagni of Monero: [https://youtu.be/pTgadb7M47E?t=58s](https://youtu.be/pTgadb7M47E?t=58s)

<comment><USER9> I just posted a comment saying "I don't see a single use for Bitcoin other than illegal activities." Will be watching the video.

<comment><USER10> >"I don't see a single use for Bitcoin other than illegal activities."

A decentralised currency for world trade that doesn't allow an arbitrarily chosen country to profit by simply printing notes and skimming off the top?

A payment system that doesn't pick an arbitrary corporation to rake in all the profits by nickel-and-diming every transaction in an economy?

<comment><USER11> That's one side of the coin. I can spin it the other way: bitcoin is a currency that can't be regulated or seized by democratic governments and justice bodies. The entire point of the Bitcoin design is to evade all regulations, the ultimate free market. In many places (in particular in America and the EU) what you call an "arbitrarily chosen country" is effectively a "democratically elected government". It's not perfect of course, there's corruption, there's lobbies but at least there's some amount of accountability.

It's also a currency where 75% of all possible coins are currently in circulation and in the hands of a tiny amount of people who are bound to become the new one-percenters (if not 0.01%) if it truly becomes the "world trade currency". With the added benefit to be almost impossible to trace and therefore to tax if the holder is even a little be clever.

I'm not saying that it's all white or all black but I'm a bit tired of the cynical libertarian cryptocurrency kool aid. "The current system is flawed, let's break everything and see what happens". And let's make a quick million while we're at it, a new sucker is born every minute.

<comment><USER12> But if there is no accountability or regulations the new one-percenters can't become as powerful as the old one-percenters, that rely on the authority of "democratically elected governments".

<comment><USER11> You'll have to give me a more detailed case for that. If we make money harder to tax and regulate the very rich will become less powerful? Won't that just make it even easier to concentrate riches?

Given how easy it seems to evade taxes nowadays when you're super rich I can't imagine how it'd be when anybody can basically generate a new untraceable wallet for any transaction. Corruption will never have been so lucrative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Despite the huge profit we earn, we are closing our activity. [...] But we never had any government or legal pressure [...]"

Sure? I think most would find this hard to believe. That was such an odd way to start the announcement.

<comment><USER14> _Hi all! Despite the huge profit we earn, we are closing our activity. Let me explain why.

I'm bitcoin enthusiast since 2011. When we started this service I was convinced that any Bitcoin user has a natural right to privacy. I was totally wrong. Now I grasped that Bitcoin is transparent non-anonymous system by design. Blockchain is a great open book. I believe that Bitcoin will have a great future without dark market transactions. You may use Dash or Zerocoin if you want to buy some weed. Not Bitcoin.

I hope our decision will help to make Bitcoin ecosystem more clean and transparent. I hope our competitors will hear our message and will close their services too. Very soon this kind of activity will be considered as illegal in most of countries.

Cheers, Bitmixer.IO_

If you take what he says at face value, it's that he's no longer interested in supporting Bitcoin because it didn't live up to his privacy expectations.

Edit: commenters below are right and I was wrong. He's really saying that he no longer feels like the Bitmixer service is needed because he no longer believes that Bitcoin should be anonymous.

<comment><USER15> > You may use Dash or Zerocoin if you want to buy some weed. Not Bitcoin.

Sounds like when TrueCrypt shut down and they recommended Microsoft's BitLocker.

<comment><USER16> The story of truecrypt and Paul Le Roux is one of the, if not the, most fascinating stories in technology there has ever been.

[https://magazine.atavist.com/the- mastermind](https://magazine.atavist.com/the-mastermind)

<comment><USER15> That's crazy. I imagine that's not the only crazy thing going on around us that most of us will never know about unless it's published in a magazine. And for every story that's uncovered, there's probably many more that will never be. Just imagine all the drug networks and such that must be operating in the United States, and to think that's in a developed country - what about all the lesser developed countries? There's crime everywhere that most of us will never see.

It's unfortunate that such crime exists, and it's also fascinating that we can operate as a civilization with such crime going on. It's also unfortunate that such criminals will most likely adopt cryptocurrencies. Criminals are innovative, but that doesn't mean all innovations come from criminals or are used for criminal activities. Just like criminals use cash; that doesn't mean all cash is used for crime, and if criminals use cryptocurrencies, that doesn't mean all cryptocurrency is used for crime.

I suppose that's a conundrum that crypto creators face: knowing that criminals will use your work to protect their criminal activities. For some people, something should be avoided if it allows for even one single instance of the smallest crime. Other people understand that if you want something good, you have to accept that some people will use it for evil. Like the First and Second Amendments of the US Constitution; Free Speech and the right to bear arms can both be used for good and bad.

Thank you for sharing the link, that was a very interesting read.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Owner says: "Bitcoin has no future with drug/weapon traffic or any other illegal activity."

Cash and gold trade has done well for thousands of years. As another commenter put it:

"If you truly believe in bitcoin as a currency then it should be used to buy anything and everything good or bad."

The most likely explanation is government pressure coming from side channels, but nothing specific. Likely has a warning shot fired across his bow and he's getting out of it with these idealistic words as his message.

<comment><USER18> That doesn't mean he has to work to make it easier to be used for those things, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't see how these bitcoin laundering services worked. Since it costs money to use a bitcoin tumbler, it's slow, and there's a non-zero chance that the operator will simply steal your money, there is very little reason to use a coin tumbler unless you're trying to hide the proceeds of crime.

In which case, you are just mixing your coins with other criminals, as there's going to be very little 'clean' money going into the mix. So your coins that were 'tainted' by buying weed online are now possibly associated with arms dealing, fraud, child porn or any number of serious crimes. Doesn't seem like a great benefit.

<comment><USER20> There's a non-zero chance, but if enough people are using a service, it's probably OK. And you can just put a bit through at a time, so you never risk a ton. The fees are 1-3%.

It provides privacy. Why should Coinbase be able to see where my money went?

As far as clean, if a criminal is cleaning their own money but gets other "dirty" coins, that's fine, since they're not connected to any crimes they committed. Plus, presumably, the other dirty coins will be spread over so many users that it just does not provide a real return on investment for LE to follow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've never understood the focus on explicit services for Bitcoin mixing. I made a comment on a different post a while ago and I'll paste it below:

You're implying that mixers and tumblers are ONLY dedicated malicious services.

What you're forgetting is that hot wallets used on popular bitcoin services also serve as tumblers. The distinction between a "malicious tumbler" and a service's hot wallet is just the dedicated use.

For example, if a bitcoin shopping site had a wallet you deposited coins into, you'll be recording that you have <number> of coins and they will show that. Your coins will be mixed with their hot wallet and who knows how long they keep them in there.

If you wait a few days and withdraw, chances are that most (if any) are NOT your original coins.

Not to mention, if you blacklisted these coins, then users who receive these coins wouldn't be able to legitimately use them.

TL;DR: Tumbling services are just dedicated to tumbling bitcoins. Most semi- large bitcoin services with hot wallets inadvertently tumble their user's bitcoins.

<comment><USER22> What other pooled wallet service doesn't keep records on purpose or has no need to? Gambling?

<comment><USER23> To have worked in Gambling, it is heavily regulated.

To be allowed to operate in X country, we had to specifically store a replica of customers accounts in their jurisdiction, so that all servers and data could be seized by the local law enforcement should the need arise.

The stories goes that these requirements raised after some shady gambling companies left with all their customer funds.

<comment><USER22> So how do those offshore online gambling companies work then? Do they all have KYC type records or are there some places where they don't?

<comment><USER24> Years ago when I worked for this type of company we moved our prod game servers to Indian reserves in Canada. That was very costly, later moved to Costa Rica.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've never understood the purpose of Bitcoin mixers. The use-case seems to be half-assed money laundering. You're concealing the source of money[1], without bothering to invent a plausible alternate source. It's at best like a petty criminal who "launders" his money by simply claiming to have found it.

[1]-Poorly at that -- do we really think the people who catch launderers of actual money will be stymied by the transaction log of your average tumbler? It makes way more sense to launder money by renting BTC mining hardware and electricity from someone who doesn't care where the money came from, taking a loss but effectively trading your "tainted" BTC for brand-new BTC.

<comment><USER26> It's not money laundering, it's vanishing with the traces of to where went that amount of money someone could be tracking.

That kind of service is not needed if you're dealing with cash.

Money laundering, if you need that, is a different step that must be taken after the "mix".

<comment><USER25> That step is needed if you're dealing with paper assets like wire transfers and real estate. It is considered money laundering in those cases, and they catch people doing that with some regularity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This reads to me like someone writing while a gun is pointed to his head.

It makes absolutely no sense, and it doesn't feel natural.

My guess is that they have been chased by some government agencies and now they are closing down and putting this message to show good faith.

<comment><USER28> It sounds to me like someone who was poor and believed in privacy, and is now rich and does not. It is funny how conservative you can become when you get a lot of money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> So it makes them huge profits but they simply don't want to keep it going? Time for someone to step in and take their profits.

<comment><USER30> Yeah, who would have guessed that money laundering could be profitable?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Theory: Operator (who seems European) was also purchasing/selling in quantity on Hansa. Given the amount of information gathered by the Dutch Police, it's possibly a risk-based decision by the operator to clean house.

</comment><comment><USER32> It's funny because a bunch of people in a forum are saying that: "People are free to use whatever coin for whatever they want" and "people do have the right to enjoy..." but it's "stupid/crazy" that they're shutting down. Seems like "freedom" is selective.

</comment><comment><USER33> Warrant canary?

</comment><comment><USER34> Well, at least they aren't exit scamming ...

</comment><comment><USER35> To anyone reading this, I wouldn't infer that privacy and fungibility in Bitcoin are not improving. The recent activation of segwit enables practical lightning networks, which do provide a layer of privacy, and also makes it easier to add a feature called schnorr signatures.

Schnorr signatures will lead to something dubbed by some as "incentivized privacy". [https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/the-power-of-schnorr- th...](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/the-power-of-schnorr-the- signature-algorithm-to-increase-bitcoin-s-scale-and-privacy-1460642496/)

</comment><comment><USER26> The declarations make no sense: "Bitcoin is not anonymous, so I'll shut down the service I was running to help people overcome this non-anonymity, which I created for this exact goal."

Where is the new information? Every reason he is giving was already there and already clear at the beginning.

</comment><comment><USER36> Let's hope that other services stay up and running. FoxMixer.com has been the mixing service that I used so far. Had no issues, but who knows if they continue operation or if they also shutdown. I don't hope so.

</comment><comment><USER37> You can simply use SatoshiDice or any other gambling site to mix small quantities.

<comment><USER20> Doesn't SatoshiDice send back your win to the same address (chaining off the previous output, so they can do it immediately)? Or has it changed?

<comment><USER37> I haven't used it in a while, but last time I did you could use a different address.

<comment><USER38> Dice gambling services provide zero mixing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Is there still a market for a mixer/tumbler now? I think there are still plenty of ideas out there, that haven't been done, to help ensure anonimity.

</comment><comment><USER40> Could this simply be related to the 1st of August potential bitcoin fork? Something like cashing out, before all the bc of the mixing service are worthless?

</comment><comment><USER41> Why do you need this kind of service? how is it different than selling your BTC on a major exchange, than immediately buying the same amount seconds after?

<comment><USER42> The exchange most likely has KYC/AML information, so could be coerced into helping to trace your money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> So it goes. We still have Bitcoin Fog and Helix, so whatever.

</comment><comment><USER16> It is trivial in todays market to do this anyway, if you were so inclined. shapeshift.io allows you to exchange a crypto for some other crypto, and it doesn't even require a login. Peer-to-peer across blockchains. When lightning is deployed trivial will become less than mundane.

Pop! The genie is seriously out of the bottle. If you don't know about how these things work, you should probably take some time to at least start to understand it.

<comment><USER44> Why would people need mixers if you can use shapeshift and monero ? Monero is anonymous, it solves the problem i guess</comment></comment>


Show HN: Grow your professional network during Coronavirus - <AUTHOR> I'm working on a startup and we're working on a feature aimed at helping you expand your professional network during the Coronavirus. We think that now is the best time to grow your network and meet new people from anywhere, virtually. Fill out this form and we will connect you with someone you'll find interesting.<p>https://vuybe.typeform.com/to/DsNVZQ <comment><USER2> Just now commented on [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22605028](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22605028).

Based out of the Bay Area. So, yeah looking forward to it.</comment>


Employees at Practice Fusion got nothing as execs pocketed millions - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/23/practice-fusion-workers-got-nothing-in-deal-as-execs-made-millions.html <comment><USER2> The company played some nasty mind games with their employees regarding equity. They did a 7 (I think?) for 1 split, and then had the recruiters telling employees that they had "never seen a company give out so many shares before." They sent out spreadsheets with calculators that would let you estimate the value of your shares, and just casually let you know that Apple was trading at ~$700/share. iirc, they even pre-filled in the line for potential value with Apple's current share price (so, 5000 shares * 700 Apple- level share price = 3.5M). At every company meeting, they'd get really pumped about how they were going to IPO. They would throw parties celebrating their 100 millionth patient life covered, even though it seemed pretty obvious those numbers weren't real. No 401k match, since you're not going to need it after we IPO.

There was even a second market offering to let Ryan sell enough shares to pay his taxes and maybe buy a nice house in South Park.

I don't feel bad for the engineers, since they were generally exposed to enough information that they should have been able to call bullshit. I feel bad for the customer success team, who were often given a tenth of the amount of shares as engineers but would still frequently talk about retiring when we IPO. Hopefully the exec bonuses will be voted down, and there'll be a class action lawsuit.

This is a problem that faces a lot of startups. We should all be more wary of information that's given out, and be more demanding of transparency. Learn a less from all of us PF employees: the more a company talks about their IPO, the less likely it's going to happen.

<comment><USER3> here's the share calculator spreadsheet they sent me: [https://imgur.com/IR7Boha](https://imgur.com/IR7Boha)

<comment><USER4> thanks for sharing, and sorry for your horrible experience. just want to confirm you scrubbed numbers like the number of shares so there's no way someone can deduce your identity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sure, these founders went too far, but the basic problem of Founders >>> Employees is there at every startup. When even employee #1 at typical SV startup signs on for 1% and employee #4 already for half that, why do "employees" still think there's anything equitable about equity?

Listen up, prospective employee: if your founder makes several million, you'll get zilch. If founder makes tens of millions, you might get enough for a modest car. If your founder makes over $100 million, you might have enough for a down payment on a house. Then you can go to the next startup and work super hard all over again to try to mint another mega-millionaire.

<comment><USER6> This fatalist attitude is just as bad as the overly naive attitude that I'm sure left many employees of this company feeling screwed.

Employees have agency. Founders don't have some magical power over you with which to screw you. You choose to work for them in exchange for money, stock, whatever. If stock is a sizable part of your compensation, you probably should be asking a lot of questions about it. How many shares will I get? How many shares do you have? How is the company doing? What are the future plans? When am I going to get liquidity? Do your own accounting. If they won't give you the information you require, don't join! If the company isn't hitting its benchmarks, leave! There are _lots_ of other companies out there to join, including many publicly traded ones so you'll always have the full financials (and liquid stock).

If you do your homework and are serious about continually evaluating the company at which you work, you will not get screwed. Your time is the investment, and every 3-6 months you should re-evaluate whether the company is the best place to work. You don't owe the company anything! They need to keep proving to you, quarter after quarter, that what compensation they are giving you is worth you continuing to work there. Are you guaranteed to be successful? Of course not. Being an employee of a startup is risky, and you might make the "right" move that ends up not working out. Just from this article it seemed to me there were many clear warning signs this company wasn't all it was cracked up to be, and some employees didn't evaluate the company's trajectory properly and ended up getting screwed. It's a lesson learned but I'm sure many of them could have pointed out in retrospect where they went wrong.

And I'll also add that being a founder sucks, and being an employee is comparably much easier. First, getting companies off the ground is really really hard and founders have to do that themselves. As an employee you can look around and join a company that already is showing some traction, saving yourself a bunch of time and frustration. Additionally, as an employee you can and should leave if the company starts falling behind its benchmarks and you think there are better opportunities elsewhere. As a founder you can't really do this, you basically have to stick it out until the end.

So basically, being a founder isn't any better or worse than being an employee, they are different paths with different expectations, and each one of them has to be done with care to get the most out of it.

<comment><USER7> Evaluating the worth of a company and stock options is very hard and usually requires several skill sets the employee doesn't have, as well as information the company is reluctant to give out.

If I asked the founder for all of the financial documents the company has signed so I could know it's obligations, I can't imagine that a majority of the founders/CEOs would say "sure here you go". And even if they did, the cost of a lawyer to go over all of that paperwork to make sure you didn't miss anything would be expensive.

<comment><USER6> Learn the skills!

Financial literacy is a very important skill. Yes, startups are complicated. To be an informed employee you need to deeply understand how stock options work, you need to deeply understand how startup financing works, and it wouldn't hurt to have a general understanding of business. And look, if you just want to be a software engineer, then you don't have to learn these things, but then you can't complain if you get screwed. Or take a job at a publicly traded company and use the stock price as a proxy for how the company is doing.

And as for the availability of the documents and financial information, the main ones you care about are: revenue, expenses, total burn and cash in the bank. Any company that will not reveal those is being shady, full stop. These figures should be so top of mind the CEO or CFO should know them off hand without even having the look. A good company will share all of these with the full company every month or quarter, because they are really important indicators of how the company is doing and what the overall strategy should be.

You don't need a lawyer. You are not auditing the company, you are just getting a sense for the company's trajectory. Your job is actually really easy. If things are going well that is normally obvious. Revenue going up. Burn going down. Fundraising rounds at higher valuations. If these things aren't happening or you suspect something shady is going on, leave! You don't need to break the case, just get a better job at another company that is doing better.

<comment><USER8> "the main ones you care about are: revenue, expenses, total burn and cash in the bank"

That's part of it, but not all of it. Total number of outstanding shares (including warrantable shares!) can change the complexion of things a lot. And then there's the question of preference -- deals that a company made years ago can make for a big difference in share value.

Unless a company has an incredibly clean cap table, a rank-and-file employee will never really know how much their shares are worth until they are either worthless, or have a cash-in-hand buyer. What you're talking about is the general case of "things are moving in a pretty good direction", and that's important. But to really gauge value of a stock option is much, much more complex (and is constantly changing!). Even if an employee were able to come to a reasonable estimate of common stock value, one bad month can wipe that away (an emergency $5m round to make payroll? a loan backed by stock? a long- term lease backed by stock?).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Recently happened to me. Founders raid the series c for liquidity. Take out a predatory note to keep the company afloat. Sell the company in a fire sale and reap transaction bonuses, RSU grants, etc. Common stock wiped out and those that built the company left with nothing. Lesson learned? It rarely pays to be an early employee at a startup.

<comment><USER10> Which company, if you don't me asking?

<comment><USER11> Looks like Quri ([https://angel.co/quri-1](https://angel.co/quri-1)). All you had to do was Google OP's handle and dig into where they worked recently that had their characteristics

<comment><USER12> If the OP chose not to say, it's unreasonable to doxx them

<comment><USER13> Posting company names isn't doxxing

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Yeah, as an "investor" and an employee of several startups, I generally wound up on the losing side of the equation, to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars.

Stuff that amounted to, "Oh, we extinguished those shares, sorry about that," when the corporation was worth several billion.

This stuff is broken. You are _far_ better off working for a mature company with decent management; if you are any good, you won't necessarily have "fuck you" money at the end of ten years, but you'll probably be ahead by several million dollars, and the value of "several" might be pleasantly surprising.

<comment><USER15> "Surprising several" is at least 3 million over ten years. Which companies pay to "any good" engineers enough to pocket $300k per year, after tax and living expenses?

<comment><USER16> there are plenty of senior devs at FANG making that. not just machine learning/data scientist magician but just good devs that have been there for 10 years

<comment><USER17> You'd have to be making 700k+ a year to be banking 300k after tax. Perhaps the valley slipped away from me but I find it hard to believe that there would be average employees in that range.

<comment><USER18> Your tax math is bad. The pre-tax figure, even with California income tax, is closer to 500k than 700k.

And some of that 300k/year difference is coming from growth of invested savings, not just W-2 income.

<comment><USER15> So "any good" engineers are making $500k now?

I haven't been on the market in a while, seems like I fell behind the times.

<comment><USER18> I never made that claim, and you're ignoring investment gains.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I worked for a company that offered me 2000 shares when I was hired. I asked two questions,

How much is the company worth? What is the number of shares outstanding.

Both of which they wouldn't give me. I told them the stock was worthless, that I wanted a 25k pay bump, which they granted.

Years later they ended up getting acquired for a hefty sum (950+ million) and people who were in the employee 5-50 range and worked there for 8+ years literally only received enough for a good used honda civic. Only two people in eng made over a million, 1.5 and 6, but that was only because they were managers that kept the cattle inline.

<comment><USER20> The game is pretty rigged in this regard, and investors are sophisticated enough to know how to maximize what they get at the cost of the common shares.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> If I had a dollar for every time an XO, Sales VP, or board investor (I'm looking at you Todd Rulon-Miller) said we were expecting an IPO filing in two years (bless thier optimistic little hearts) and sold for executive bonuses and a common stock price for the parts then I would have 3$. Best exit I ever had was an XO who's singular prediction statement was "I think we have a chance at building and contributing to this technology and I think that might be valuable to this software enterprise segment, do you want to go find out?". Buyer beware, contributor beware; it's just how the game goes. Look for the humble introspective and you increase your odds, there is no guarantee, you only control your investment. That's a tough break for those that were over exposed you have to cap your liability to your comfort level. bummer for those that caught the bill.

<comment><USER22> How does an engineer protect themselves against this sort of outcome? Just never work for startups?

I currently find myself in a similar situation, where the books look dire but the executives keep saying that we're so close to profitability. I'm 85% certain that my stocks will be worth nothing, but I stick around because I still see an ounce of promise. Am I just a sucker?

<comment><USER23> I think for early stage companies you should see the startup as a 1) learning opportunity first and chance to work with a great team driven by a passion outside of pure money, and 2) an out-of-the-money call option / favorable lottery ticket. Also, the new tax bill got rid of AMT for incomes under $500,000 for individuals ($1m for couples). It's difficult to go over that amount with ISO's as the FMV of your shares is valued at around 10-30% of preferred. You could exercise your options once every year for example to stay under that limit.

If you've already exercised and paid AMT, try to invest your other savings and if you need to take a loss you can offset it against those capital gains.

While it might not be something you're passionate about, I would also add that reading about startup law, discussing with your peers, and knowing your rights, and even asking (getting in writing) the terms of the investment rounds, is invaluable and certainly something you should do if you want to understand your full package.

<comment><USER24> Can you elaborate or point to any references on how this works? Does this essentially mean if I have some amount of options I want to exercise, and the combined total of that + my income is <$500k, I don't need to pay taxes on the options at all?

<comment><USER25> I believe they're mistaken - 500k/1MM are the new exemption phaseout points.

<comment><USER24> So how does it actually work though? I'm not really familiar with this stuff, so any basic info or good links to learn more would be much appreciated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> "Planning for potential acquisition exits also includes having bonus pools for key employees (which include founders and current executives) that align their incentives with company stakeholders to achieve value upon an exit."

That has too be a joke right? They are arguing that the terms that will lead to only the executives and founders getting a cash out are necessary in order to align their incentives to achieve value for stakeholders.... who will receive nothing in the sale?

Seems like the only thing this bonus structure is incentivising is their orchestration of a quick and dirty last minute exist so they can get their bonuses while the rest of the company burns down. Hopefully it will get voted to hell, and a new structure will be put in place where the key employees don't make a dime until the ensure that all stakeholders make money.

<comment><USER9> See my previous comment. This is exactly what happens.

The sale doesn't get voted to hell because the voting shares (i.e. preferred stock) have liquidation preference and get paid _back_ first, in some instances multiple their initial investment, before the rest of the pie is sliced.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> > CNBC talked to three former employees who lost between $40,000 and over > $100,000 each because they exercised their options in previous years and had > to pay tax based on their heightened value at the time.

Interestingly, the recently passed tax reform bill seems to make this type of loss less likely - though it would seem to be too late for these employees.

[https://www.towerswatson.com/en/Insights/Newsletters/Global/...](https://www.towerswatson.com/en/Insights/Newsletters/Global/executive- pay-matters/2017/12/What-the-final-tax-reform-bill-approved-by-House-Senate- means-for-compensation) (see section Private Company Equity Grants)

<comment><USER28> How is this a loss? They paid taxes on gains? Not sure what the badness is here. They cashed out and paid taxes.

<comment><USER27> If this is an honest question... an employee who left the firm after 2013 and wanted to exercise their stock options needed to pay taxes up front on shares they received, based on the company's then $700mm+ valuation. But now the price of those shares is significantly less, based on the $100mm sale price. So they ended up paying more in taxes on their stock than they can receive now from the sale of their stock.

This article explains the dynamics well: [https://www.recode.net/2016/1/19/11588918/gilt-groupe-is- a-c...](https://www.recode.net/2016/1/19/11588918/gilt-groupe-is-a-cautionary- tale-for-startup-employees-banking-on)

In this case, one of the controversies is that company leadership may not have taken such a low sale price (given that they initially had offers of more than twice that) had they not been compensated with personal payoffs outside of the equity structure.

<comment><USER23> Right, but the $700m valuation was preferred, and the employees likely paid AMT tax on the FMV (about 10-30% of that value). It's certainly sad but at least they can write off the AMT loss against capital gains if they have any and wish to, or take the $3,000 credit every year.

<comment><USER29> But that is the nasty part. The taxes were paid up front while the credit will be applied over years. Odds are they had to liquidate something else, borrow money, etc so it's not just the lost equity but the opportunity cost.

There's always the "they knew they could lose it!" line but if the leadership was lying internally and externally, I hope they get sued into oblivion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is a pretty common scenario when a venture funded company doesn't reach a valuation that exceeds the various preferences accumulated in investment rounds. The company is ultimately sold, all of the sales proceeds are taken by the preferred shareholders, who carve out set-asides for founders and senior management to keep them onboard and not scare the acquirer off with internal strife.

</comment><comment><USER20> Sometimes people see this and start thinking that options or stocks should be regulated harder by the sec so employees dont get shady deals and screwed like this.

But there is a much simpler way to prevent this from happening altogether: let employees trade the shares they got from openly in the market. That way, you would get a market signal on stocks on startups and shady deals like this would get whistleblowed on the market long before they are signed.

</comment><comment><USER31> This is pretty crazy. I'm surprised no other news outlets are picking this up. The company says it is normal to pay management fat payouts to drive the company into the ground? Why should they get paid for selling for $100M when they took over and it was worth $700M?

<comment><USER32> I have no particular knowledge of this specific company, and it's quite possible that their manager payouts are overly high.

But: Somebody's paying $100M for this company. That's much less than the company was hoped to be worth, but it's still a huge chunk of change. The buyer is trying to get something for that investment. That means they need the company to perform in some way. Maybe just shut down in an orderly fashion while they monetize the client list in some manner, but for $100M, I'd guess that they want to operate the company somehow.

For that, they need the cooperation of the senior managers. So they pay them to cooperate. It kind of sucks, but you have to give the managers of the company some incentive to stick around and help you do whatever it is you want to do with the company instead of saying "Fuck you we're out of here."

If it helps, I'm certain that $750k - $7M was much smaller than the payout those execs were hoping/expecting to get from a more successful outcome.

<comment><USER33> > ...but for $100M, I'd guess that they want to operate the company > somehow....For that, they need the cooperation of the senior managers. So > they pay them to cooperate...

I'm not sure how much cooperation I'd want from "senior managers" who managed to manage a company in to 1/7th of what it was valued at. If it was intentionally fraudulent... you want those people around and making decisions still? If it was incomptence... you want those people around and making decisions still?

Yes, I'm oversimplifying, and no doubt there's always other factors to consider, but this thinking bothers me along the same lines as "we needed to pay those large bonuses to keep the CEO around - we couldn't get anyone else as capable and experienced!" while the company is simultanesouly tanking.

<comment><USER34> I don't know anything about this company.

But, just because the valuation went down, doesn't mean it's the management's fault. Maybe the old valuation was based on wishful thinking, and over time it sunk in [to everybody] that there are core problems with the product/biz.model/etc that they can't solve. This I've seen multiple times are startups. There's some fundamental problem which is masked by growth. Management keeps hiring people and hopes somebody eventually magically fixes the problem. After ~5 years the company accepts the problem. OR a new competitor emerged, etc.

Even a shitty management team is a management team that keeps the company running.

<comment><USER35> "But, just because the valuation went down, doesn't mean it's the management's fault."

Yes, it does. The justification for the extremely high salaries and bonuses that execs get is because they are the ones who are "taking risks" and "are responsible for the company." Here, they are literally being rewarded for failure, and at the expense of people who were actually doing work.

<comment><USER33> > Here, they are literally being rewarded for failure,

Because who else would 'risk' so much - like only getting a $400k bonus instead of an $1m bonus? It takes special character and fortitude to steel yourself for such challenges!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> For those who want to gain some context on how such a thing could happen, I recommend the book Venture Deals by Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson [1]. There's a good section in the book that talk about share preferences and the order in which the pile of money is cashed out.

[1] - [http://a.co/aeI2gqq](http://a.co/aeI2gqq)

<comment><USER37> I second this recommendation. This article reminded me of the Venture Deals section where they break down the different kinds of capitalization and payouts in different scenarios. While the examples are written for founders, it's also useful for any employee with shares trying to figure out their value. Most importantly for employees joining a company to get the info to make the decision whether to join. Or for employees thinking about how to treat their options or limited shares.

I'll add that for a few companies, when I asked the necessary questions then hiring manager or founder either couldn't or wouldn't answer. So, like another commenter's advice, I valued the shares at zero. This meant sometimes I didn't join, but sometimes I did. Almost always my zero valuation was accurate, but once I got a pleasant surprise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Part of me wonders why this is even surprising. Aren't the execs the ones with all the control over the power-levers? Why do employees expect to ever get something in situations like this? (I'm trying to look at this from an outsiders perspective.) What levers can employees even affect to shift the balance of influence in their favour? Coalitions and complaints I guess is the only thing that comes to mind. So in a sense, this article is not really a neutral reporting of the facts. In a sense, the article is one of a fairly limited set of tools that underdogs can use to shift the balance of power more in their favour.

</comment><comment><USER39> Is this really that news-worthy? My impression was that this happened all the time.

Something similar happened at the last startup I worked at. Employees were compensated with stock options over larger salaries. When the company got acquired, I along with every other employee walked away with nothing while the founders became multi millionaires. This pretty much killed my friendship with one of the founders, who later tweeted a picture of himself in a Ferrari and another toasting to his new status as a self-made millionaire. I'm not sure you can get much more obnoxious than that.

The least employers can do is hide it when they throw employees under the bus for obscene amounts of personal profits. Maybe even act a little benevolent about it by saying you plan on donating a portion of it to charity?

</comment><comment><USER40> Pretty much the only reason why you should join a startup as an employee vs working at an established company is learning and opportunity for more responsibility. The thing is that working at a startup doesn't at all guarantee you'll learn more than at a larger company and your learning is going to be much more self-directed since there will be a smaller focus on professional development.

If you're not learning then leave.

</comment><comment><USER41> I was thinking about this the other day. As I see it, American companies and probably many companies in the world have a really f'ed up attitude about how employees fit into the mix. I don't see how the cost of entrepreneurship could be nearly as high as it is. Sure, from the point of view of an _average_ person, starting a business is risky and should lead to potentially high reward. But how many average people are able or willing to start a business at all nowadays? In reality, the sorts of people who end up starting businesses are those for whom starting a business is _not_ as risky e.g. people who are wealthy or whose families are wealthy or who are just burning VC money. The risk is lower and so the cost of entrepreneurship should be lower. Also, it seems there's a lot of talk in tech about wanting to use the great wealth accumulated to help the world or whatever. So then why not just start with the actual people in tech and not just the founders? Why act so uncharitable to the people directly working for you?

</comment><comment><USER42> _Founded in 2005, Practice Fusion competes in the crowded electronic medical records market and discovered a niche by offering free software that was popular among small and solo physician practices.

Instead of charging for its software, Practice Fusion generates the bulk of its revenues through advertising to doctors._

Oh what could go wrong....

<comment><USER43> Silly.

Doctors could just use OpenEMR, free and meets most of the regulatory standards.

[http://www.open-emr.org](http://www.open-emr.org)

<comment><USER44> I've met exactly 2 doctors who have actually used OpenEMR and they were both researchers. It is quite nice, but the last time I looked it wasn't trivial to set up and run. I think it one of those "it's free if you time is worth nothing" kind of things. And, there are some other EHRs out there that are nice and won't break the bank.

<comment><USER45> > there are some other EHRs out there that are nice and won't break the bank.

In fact, due to the various "pay for performance" models out there, a good EHR will make you money (making it easier to prove you are meeting various thresholds for the quality measures in question).

<comment><USER44> Yeah, quality measure reporting is key, the good ones do that well for sure. However I think they're missing the ability to monitor quality on a day to day and week to week basis for the most part. It's also really hard to track quality trends.

<comment><USER45> I'd be interested to hear more about what you think could be improved. In the vast majority of cases, new data points only occur during a patient visit. "Day to day" or "week to week" tracking aren't really useful in those cases, "visit to visit" is as good as you're going to get.

<comment><USER44> Shoot me an email, and I'll happily share my thoughts. My email address is in my profile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> The year before the dot com collapse in March 2001 the new CFO at my company told us we'd all be millionaires in the next year. We didn't believe him though despite the market as it sounded stupid, and 10 months later we went Chapter 7. Never ever trust execs when they promise the moon.

</comment><comment><USER47> This is an extreme case but the issues are not that uncommon in tech. Most employees with "equity" are not in a good place to know what that equity might actually be worth... and it's very common for it to be worth far less than one thinks. All the covenants with founders, early investors, debitors and others are often not known by the common minion employee options/share holder. Yet those details typically determine if said employee will make a lot, a little or nothing at all at a liquidity event.

</comment><comment><USER48> If I understand the situation correctly, the important term here isn't "employees", but "shareholders".

It seems that management acted in it's own interest, disregarding the interest of company's shareholders. Is my understanding correct?

If so, doesn't US have laws against such behaviour?

</comment><comment><USER49> It seems simple to have a 1x payback clause for all shareholders. Investors get this, so if you are a common stock holder you should too. Maybe the solution is that investors can have 10x voting rights but the share value is otherwise the same. So the preferred price = the common price. Or just some clause saying pay all shares out at 1x first and then distribute some other way if you want. At least you're not being a jerk then.

</comment><comment><USER50> This is the reason that I plan to either work at Big N companies, where my equity is given to me in RSUs, or start my own company. Working at a startup in any role that's not a founder or an exec seems like a total scam, unless you have an incredible amount of confidence in the founders, and their integrity.

</comment><comment><USER51> I wouldn't join any start-up involving Peter Thiel at this point. Palantir is another prime example. Biggest grifters in the valley, the paypal mafia

</comment><comment><USER52> I have the opposite question.

As long as deals are legal and meet generally accepted ethical standards, it seems that founders and investors have no interest in favoring employees in negotiations that restructure cap tables.

So why do employees make money in a good fraction of successful exits?

<comment><USER53> Do you have any sources for your "good fraction" comment? I was under the impression that a "good fraction" of startups outright fail before IPO.

<comment><USER52> I don't know what percentage that is. It is more than 0, however.

So my question is, "So why do employees make money in X% of successful exits, where X is more than 0?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Stories like this are extremely common nowadays. Startups are going to have to come up with some other way to attract talented workers, as most people know that equity is a joke, the hours are extremely long, and the pay is crap.

<comment><USER54> During the dotcom bubble I knew that VCs were kicking themselves every time some 'secretary becomes a millionaire' story came out because this meant they left money in other people's pockets. Over the last 20 years investors have refined their game and this never happens now, indeed, it's the opposite.

I think the only reason to go in other than as a founder in a startup is as someone right out of school for experience. Otherwise they have to be treated like any position, on a straight cash comp/benefits basis, ignoring the likely worthless equity scrip. In my experience, the best play is to go in on a contract basis once a startup is in the "burn baby burn" phase and you can bill market rate for all of those hours.

<comment><USER55> My experience with startups has actually been quite positive.

I negotiate compensation on the assumption that anything stock-related has zero value.

Then I just enjoy the other great perks of a startup I care about: influence over technical issues, and camaraderie.

<comment><USER56> So do you try to get a fair market salary + enough to cover equivalent benefits at a mature company - if the stock-related stuff has zero value?

<comment><USER55> I'd say total compensation has worked out roughly the same.

It's a little hard to compare since I've sometimes worked remotely, and with companies headquartered in Silicon Valley, Cambridge (MA), and in less techy regions.

The non-startups were actually located outside of Silicon Valley and Cambridge. If I adjust for the different regions' cost of living, the (salary+benefits) dollar value were about the same across the board.

One caveat: The non-startups in SV and Cambridge gave me stock grants that vested over a number of years. If I'd stayed long enough for them to vest, the total compensation for those non-startups would have been about $7k-10k/year higher (pre-tax) that the compensation I got from startups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Equity in a startup is worth roughly as much as a jar of farts. Plan your career accordingly.</comment>


RIM Is Hurting, But It's Not Dead Just Yet - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/01/rim-is-hurting-but-its-not-dead-just-yet/ <comment><USER2> They have a hardware phone ready for a operating system that wont be around until next year. That in itself is not a good situation to be in and one that is being overlooked on the back of this delay until 2013.

That in itself will mean they are lined up to take a hit on hardware and this is a operating system that wasn't new. QNX has been aroudn for a while and they only had to add a few bits and in that they have failed and failed and failed adding delays and delays until everybody has lost faith. They were struggerling to embrace there developers on the old platform and alienated so many.

Who would develop for a platform that is constantly being delayed and has a development enviroment that is so behind other options that you are in effect limiting yourself to developers who have sado masacistic tendancies and are in no rush to see there product released.

Apart from some from of TAX write of I cant think of any reason to develop for RIMs new OS.

I also have to wonder what they have been doing to get into this state as they have not inovated in any way since 2007. How many wasted hows have they spent on developers in house who have failed to deliver, how many hours and people as the results they are showing are akin to a single person doing all the work. Even then I'd put a single person against what they are producing in the timeframes involved.

Sad part is they will eventualy do BBM as application for android and apple.

Only one thing going for them, or at least was and been overlooked by RIM's marketing and that is this question: If you have all the standard protection available enabled - what phone would you feel comfortable loosing with all your data? Would you feel your data is safe on a iPhone or a Android or a Blackbery, which one would you feel safest?</comment>


Why front-end developers are so important to the future of businesses on the web - <AUTHOR> http://www.paulcarvill.com/2009/09/why-front-end-developers-are-so-important-to-the-future-of-businesses-on-the-web/

<comment><AUTHOR> I get pretty annoyed when I see people dismissing client-side engineering as being somehow less challenging than server-side development - on the server, you only have to get it working on one platform (and for all but the most high traffic sites you can write code as badly as you like without much penalty). Client-side engineers have 5 different rendering engines to deal with, need to think about performance, accessibility, resizing, legibility... and that's before you even get to the huge domain that is modern JavaScript.

<comment><USER2> Apologies for the slightly off topic comment: Whats the 5th rendering engine? Text only, like lynx? Or mobile phone browsers? Or am I missing a popular one? I'm counting WebKit (Safari, Chrome), Trident (IE), Gecko (Firefox) and Presto (Opera). What am I missing?

Thanks!

<comment><USER3> You have to seperate the IE's.

Plus, 5 is a little lo when you also take into account screen readers and other user agents.

<comment><USER2> Yeah and mobile devices and so on. I was curious as to which 5 were meant though. Thanks.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A New California Privacy Law Could Affect Every U.S. Business–Will You Be Ready? - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/allbusiness/2019/09/07/california-consumer-privacy-act-could-affect-your-business/ <comment><USER2> It's not a federal regulation, so I'm still not sure how they will go after businesses not in California.

The result will be businesses leaving california.

Recommending a business get an office and hire multiple people for the sole purpose of dealing with these draconian regulations is ridiculous.</comment>


Show HN: Tranquility Calendar - <AUTHOR> https://anoopelias.github.io/tranquility-calendar/ <comment><USER2> This seems like a rebrand on the International Fixed Calendar[1] proposed in 1902. The idea was to shorten every month down to 28 days create a 13th month, and have the last day of the year be an international "Year Day" holiday.

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fixed_Calendar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fixed_Calendar)

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly!

Please note Tranquility Calendar itself was proposed in 1989. This is just a web representation of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> But it's a _solar_ calendar!

If you are going to make a calendar that's all about the moon, find a way to make it lunar or lunisolar!

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point!

When this was proposed in 1989 [1], I think the intention was to get people to use it a bit! So it helps being close to Gregorian Calendar.

Though it didn't catch on, still an interesting proposal.

[1] [https://www.webcitation.org/6WtW38bAU](https://www.webcitation.org/6WtW38bAU)

<comment><USER4> I would have enjoyed Newton for one of the months, maybe replacing Archimedes.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would have liked Newton on it too. Nothing against Archimedes though.. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I see that this calendar repeats the Gregorian 'mistake' (at least as some people see it) of having no year zero.

</comment><comment><USER6> I know that complaining about typos is boring, but Neil Armstrong is consequently spelled Amstrong. Is this intentional? He's in the center of the whole calendar.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for that! Fixed now. :P

Not intentional, I guess I had it always wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is great! Reading the Wikipedia article on the calendar helped my understanding of what's going on a lot. Glad you added the Gregorian calendar option for translating between our dominant calendar and this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

> Glad you added the Gregorian calendar option for translating between our > dominant calendar and this.

Guess I couldn't do that well a justice to the mobile layout.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I could see this taking off if month names are closer to local particularities.

</comment><comment><USER9> Yung doesn't belong on the calendar.

</comment><comment><USER10> Too bad the original proposal didn't include references to Russian astronauts, even when Russians were first to many achievements. Guess it was impossible at the time to think about including the USSR in anything, or they'd risk being seen as communists.

</comment><comment><USER11> How the fuck people have so much time on their hands?</comment>