Ask HN: Which are your favorite subreddits? - <AUTHOR> Mine:

  1. https://www.reddit.com/r/LifeProTips/
  2. https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/
  3. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/
 <comment><USER2> These ones for fun:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/ethtrader/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ethtrader/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/MemeEconomy/](https://www.reddit.com/r/MemeEconomy/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/trebuchetmemes/](https://www.reddit.com/r/trebuchetmemes/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/](https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Mostly used to pass the time.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/ANormalDayInRussia/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ANormalDayInRussia/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Documentaries/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Documentaries/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/itsaunixsystem/](https://www.reddit.com/r/itsaunixsystem/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/KenM/](https://www.reddit.com/r/KenM/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/tiltshift/](https://www.reddit.com/r/tiltshift/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/tooktoomuch/](https://www.reddit.com/r/tooktoomuch/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/UnethicalLifeProTips/](https://www.reddit.com/r/UnethicalLifeProTips/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/youdontsurf/](https://www.reddit.com/r/youdontsurf/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/youtubehaiku/](https://www.reddit.com/r/youtubehaiku/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/](https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxadmin/](https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxadmin/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/shittyprogramming/](https://www.reddit.com/r/shittyprogramming/)

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians) is moderated well and has fantastic answers from very knowledgeable people, just a great community.

Also, /r/BadEconomics is good as well.

</comment><comment><USER5> [https://www.reddit.com/r/Idris/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Idris/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Gentoo/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Gentoo/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/](https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/dependent_types/](https://www.reddit.com/r/dependent_types/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/)

</comment><comment><USER6> [https://www.reddit.com/r/BikiniBottomTwitter/](https://www.reddit.com/r/BikiniBottomTwitter/) as someone who was a huge Spongebob fan as a kid.

</comment><comment><USER7> [https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/](https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/FirefoxCSS/](https://www.reddit.com/r/FirefoxCSS/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/)

</comment><comment><USER8> [https://imgur.com/r/combinedgifs/](https://imgur.com/r/combinedgifs/)

<comment><USER9> or [https://www.reddit.com/r/combinedgifs/](https://www.reddit.com/r/combinedgifs/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I just found out about this recently: [https://www.reddit.com/r/ilikthebred/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ilikthebred/)

The premise is poems written in intentionally misspelled and simple English to mimic animals' inner thoughts. I find them quite whimsical. I wonder if this would be done the same way in other languages?

</comment><comment><USER11> [https://www.reddit.com/r/nootropics](https://www.reddit.com/r/nootropics)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/guitar](https://www.reddit.com/r/guitar)

</comment><comment><USER12> Shameless plug: I hate visiting my various favorite subreddits manually, so I built a service that automatically emails their top content to you everyday.

[https://gitlab.com/whacks/daily- reddit/blob/master/README.md](https://gitlab.com/whacks/daily- reddit/blob/master/README.md)

<comment><USER9> Why not just use reddit as intended, subscribe to only the subreddits you're interested in? Isn't that the whole point of reddit, to aggregate all the types of content you're interested in?

<comment><USER12> Fair question.

1) I dislike the fact that the Reddit aggregator mixes together all the content from the different subreddits. I like having them segregated, with equal "airtime", on a single screen

2) I dislike the fact that I have to manually visit Reddit everyday, in order to "not miss out". If I didn't visit the site yesterday, then I have to make up for it today by sorting by week, instead of day, which will then show me lots of duplicate content which I've already seen. There's no easy way to just get the top content from day-X

3) This is more subtle: Suppose you visit Reddit everyday at noon, during your lunch break, sort by top:day, and then never visit it again for the rest of the day. This means that you will never see any posts which were posted in the couple hours before noon, because they haven't had sufficient time to rack up the votes. You can miss out on a significant amount of content this way

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> /r/whowouldwin

God I waste a good amount of time writing about fake battles.

</comment><comment><USER14> Almost all pokemon related sub-reddits (too many to list).

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Marvel/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Marvel/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/](https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/](https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/justnomil/](https://www.reddit.com/r/justnomil/) (Honestly, some of the most messed up people in normal day to day lives. The mil...)

And a couple of nsfw ones I won't bother naming.

<comment><USER15> Upvote for justnomil!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> 1\. [https://reddit.com/r/consulting](https://reddit.com/r/consulting)

2\. [https://reddit.com/r/android+apple](https://reddit.com/r/android+apple)

3\. [https://reddit.com/r/dallas](https://reddit.com/r/dallas)

4\. [https://reddit.com/r/nyc](https://reddit.com/r/nyc)

5\. [https://reddit.com/r/politicaldiscusssion](https://reddit.com/r/politicaldiscusssion)

</comment><comment><USER17> [https://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy](https://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/books](https://www.reddit.com/r/books)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/anarchy101](https://www.reddit.com/r/anarchy101)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/astronomy](https://www.reddit.com/r/astronomy)

</comment><comment><USER18> [https://www.reddit.com/r/DrugNerds/](https://www.reddit.com/r/DrugNerds/)

</comment><comment><USER19> [https://www.reddit.com/r/IOT/](https://www.reddit.com/r/IOT/) mine!

</comment><comment><USER20> As a British person, one of my favourites lately is:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/CasualUK/](https://www.reddit.com/r/CasualUK/)

With all the doom and gloom in the UK at the moment, it's nice to go somewhere on Reddit and talk about what supermarket has the best meal deal, dodgy crisp flavours, and excellent examples of queuing.

</comment><comment><USER21> [https://reddit.com/r/mechanicalkeyboards](https://reddit.com/r/mechanicalkeyboards)

[https://reddit.com/r/cringe](https://reddit.com/r/cringe)

[https://reddit.com/r/cringepics](https://reddit.com/r/cringepics)

</comment><comment><USER22> I always like to go read [https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/](https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/)

Most of the advice is not very good and is given by students still in university, but it is some entertaining high drama.

</comment><comment> g0tham- Here are the first few that come to mind, enjoy!

r/nosleep

r/battlestations

r/LifeProTips

r/UnethicaLifeProTips

r/PersonalFinance

r/nootropics

</comment><comment><USER23> [https://www.reddit.com/r/InsightfulQuestions/](https://www.reddit.com/r/InsightfulQuestions/)

</comment><comment><USER24> My personal favourite is /r/DepthHub

> DepthHub gathers the best in-depth submissions and discussion on Reddit. You > can use the DepthHub as an alternative front page with high quality > discussion and inquiry. For more on the theory of DepthHub

Follow this multi. You can also create copy and remove sub you don't want

[https://www.reddit.com/user/redtaboo/m/depthhub/](https://www.reddit.com/user/redtaboo/m/depthhub/)

List of all sub in this multi

/r/AcademicPhilosophy

/r/Anthropology

/r/Ask_Politics

/r/AskAnthropology

/r/AskHistorians

/r/askphilosophy

/r/askscience

/r/AskSocialScience

/r/badhistory

/r/changemyview

/r/cogsci

/r/CredibleDefense

/r/DaystromInstitute

/r/DepthHub

/r/Foodforthought

/r/geopolitics

/r/LetsTalkMusic

/r/linguistics

/r/moderatepolitics

/r/neutralnews

/r/NeutralPolitics

/r/philosophy

/r/PhilosophyofScience

/r/Scholar

/r/slatestarcodex

/r/TheoryOfReddit

/r/TrueAskReddit

/r/TrueFilm

/r/truegaming

/r/TrueReddit

/r/WarCollege

</comment><comment><USER25> [https://www.reddit.com/r/WeatherGifs/](https://www.reddit.com/r/WeatherGifs/)

</comment><comment><USER26> In addition to the programming/tech-oriented subreddits:

        r/neutralpolitics
        r/todayilearned
        r/nottheonion

</comment><comment><USER27> r/VaporwaveAesthetics

r/Outrun

r/catastrophicfailures

r/holdmybeer

r/holdmyredbull

r/contagiouslaughter

r/nevertellmetheodds

</comment><comment><USER28> [https://www.reddit.com/r/OSHA](https://www.reddit.com/r/OSHA)

</comment><comment><USER29> /r/golang

/r/oldschoolcool

/r/videos

/r/gifs

/r/the_donald

/r/diy

/r/lifeprotips

/r/nonononoyes

Opening subreddits from memory still the best way to nav reddit..

<comment><USER30> I wouldn't classify t_d as entertainment, more like depressing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> r/Productivity

r/GetStudying

r/Nootropics

r/getdisciplined

I remember this job interview once where they asked me my passion and I told them it was, "Productivity." The interviewers replied, "Bullshit," both at the same time. I guess they should have showed them my Reddit.

</comment><comment><USER32> Yeah right. I appear to be the only one who visit the NSFW subreddits ;/

</comment><comment><USER33> /r/gonewild /r/honesty

lol

</comment><comment><USER34> reddit.com/r/golang reddit.com/r/programming reddit.com/r/funny

</comment><comment><USER35> Reddit.com/r/math

</comment><comment><USER36> r/flyfishing

r/legaladvice

r/AskReddit</comment>


Chinese cash says that a South American tech boom is incoming - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/the-download/610417/chinese-cash-says-that-a-south-american-tech-boom-is-incoming/ <comment><USER2> I work with some amazing folks in Argentina but I was lucky to get them because Exxon was moving all their staff to India. Same with folks from some other employers. There may be a net increase coming but interestingly enough there's pressure to move out of Argentina as well to save costs. Many workers there are unionized and the union's negotiated pay increases linked with Argentina's endemic inflation can create real issues.

As an example if you rent or buy an apartment there it will come with biannual inflation adjustments. Now imagine that the government has decided this year's inflation rate is "only" 20% but your contract says you'll give two 15% increases per year to cover inflation. There are regular protests in Buenos Aires over pay increases and other issues; anyone thinking of hiring there needs to do plenty of research first.

The most aggravating gotcha for me was finding that ATMs limit withdrawls to a small amount but stick you with a large fee for your trouble - it was 92.50 pesos to withdraw 2,000 pesos. Almost 5% ATM surcharge and the locals prefer dollars to pesos anyway. It's no wonder there are people wandering around yelling "Cambio! Cambio! Cambio!" offering to sell ARG for USD.

<comment><USER3> Just curious, has the situation improved in real terms in the 2 years since Macri took over? I visited a couple of times in 2010-11 and the inflation over a 16 month period was evident.

Wonderful, friendly, people but concerning economic stability I'd be more inclined to set up a business in Chile, or perhaps across the river in Montevideo (although the cost of Uruguayan living seemed relatively more expensive.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hmmm... I got a popup that can only be dismissed by swiping from the bottom. There is no X at the top right. Clicking outside of the popup doesn't work. I tried to "swipe" with my mouse, but it just highlights text... Weird UX decisions. I can resize my browser window and X appears in the corner, but I've lost interest.

</comment><comment><USER5> [http://fortune.com/2016/10/21/argentina-tech-sector- boom/](http://fortune.com/2016/10/21/argentina-tech-sector-boom/)

They've been saying this for a long time.</comment>


Tech That Helped Turkish Protesters Save Taksim Square - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2013/07/03/the-tech-that-helped-turkish-protesters/

<comment><USER2> This is an interesting article, it pretty clearly illustrates the threat dispersed messaging systems are to organizations attempting to exert control. And it was one of the reasons I was pretty incensed when BART pre-emptively shut down the cell network prior to an #occupy protest (essentially jamming the digital airwaves).

That said, it is useful to develop technologies that make these systems more robust in the presence of a determined adversary. When I read the article on turning the Raspberry Pi into a micro-cell-site using the SDR kit from Attus I felt like here is a way you could spontaneously replace a cell network "on the fly" as it were. That stuff is still pretty expensive, a recent addon board for the Zedboard (which has an FPGA fabric already) is $3,000.

<comment><USER3> _" BART pre-emptively shut down the cell network prior to an #occupy protest"_

This is not quite false, but potentially misleading for those uninformed. They turned off repeaters they owned; the ground blocked the signals. There was no active interference.

Anyone can, of course, draw whatever conclusions they want given the facts, but (as I understand things) those are they, and hopefully we won't get off on "BUT JAMMING CELL PHONES IS ILLEGAL" tangents.

<comment><USER2> Interesting comment. They explicitly disabled equipment that provided access to the network which they expected to be used by #occupy protesters in the organization of their protest.

They certainly had the 'right' to shut down their own equipment. Their stated intent was to disrupt protests.

Egypt turned off the Internet during the Arab spring by turning off their own routers (which they owned and was their right) with the explicit goal of disrupting the protesters ability to organize and communicate.

The common theme here is the use of existing infrastructure in the organization and coordination of protests. In both Egypt and BART and Turkey's case the infrastructure had a designed non-protest-organizing modality. When the infrastructure gets shut down to cut off protesters it also impacts non- protesters in a potentially severe way.

The lesson here is that it is possible to create infrastructure on demand which does not require all of your participants to be self identifying by carrying some sort of specialized equipment. Had the protesters been using the 'family radio' frequencies, the ones that are so often abused at DisneyLand, searching and removing radios from people allow them to disrupt their organization. Whereas everyone has a phone, so it is impractical to confiscate all phones in order to prevent lawful demonstrations.

<comment><USER3> Yes. I am not saying "therefore it was okay", just pre-empting certain unproductive lines of discussion and outrage. If you feel the actions were nonetheless inappropriate, you (and others) have every right to be outraged for real reasons; in fact, I encourage it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > "A survey of 3,000 protesters found that while 70% had no political > affiliation and a majority had not protested before, _nine out of ten_ > participated due to the behavior of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and > the police."

Future dictators should pay attention.

<comment><USER5> The problem is that they are not dictators... They were democratically elected. Morsi may have lost popular support, but is democracy served by a coup every time a country's leadership's approval numbers drop below 50%? In the case of Turkey, Erdogan still enjoys majority support, and would likely win an election held today.

Calling these protests democratic is incorrect. Instead they point to a larger problem: that majorities of these countries support hard-line Islamist governments. The protesters are merely a reflection that fundamentalists (perhaps of any religion) are incompatible with a free and secular society.

<comment><USER6> Erdogan was democratically elected but so was putin and so was saddam hussein. The problem (and the primary cause of the dictator slur) is that Erdogan sees elections as a one shot thing - you elect me, then you get out of my way.

From day one the protests were not about democracy, but about civil engagement, something that doesn't really exist in Turkey. It is this lack of accountability, a fundamental part of democracy that makes Turkey's political system undemocratic.

Erdogan believes that "democracy is a bus, you hop on, go to the destination and get off". Democracy without engagement in a broken electoral system isn't democracy, it's a rigged game. That's the problem the Turks have, and that's why they're calling him a dictator (which in the view of some may be right or wrong).

<comment><USER7> I think it is factually incorrect to say that the late Saddam Hussein was democratically elected. You are correct that Putin was. (Hitler is another example of an elected dictator, although the thuggery of his National Socialist German Workers [Nazi] Party before the election meant that the election cannot really be called free and fair.)

"In 1968, Saddam participated in a bloodless but successful Ba'athist coup that resulted in Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr becoming Iraq's president and Saddam his deputy. During al-Bakr's presidency, Saddam proved himself to be an effective and progressive politician, albeit a decidedly ruthless one."

. . . .

"In 1979, when al-Bakr attempted to unite Iraq and Syria, in a move that would have left Saddam effectively powerless, Saddam forced al-Bakr to resign, and on July 16, 1979, Saddam Hussein became president of Iraq. Less than a week later, he called an assembly of the Ba'ath Party. During the meeting, a list of 68 names was read out loud, and each person on the list was promptly arrested and removed from the room. Of those 68, all were tried and found guilty of treason and 22 were sentenced to death. By early August 1979, hundreds of Saddam's political foes had been executed."

[http://www.biography.com/people/saddam- hussein-9347918](http://www.biography.com/people/saddam-hussein-9347918)

<comment><USER6> I was actually referring to this[1], which of course was a complete sham.

[1] - [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2331951.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2331951.stm)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


81% of all smartphones sold by AT&T in Q4 were iPhones - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/apple/2012/01/26/crazy-81-of-all-smartphones-sold-by-att-in-q4-were-iphones/

<comment><USER2> I was an at&t customer for 11 years but in Q4 I switched to verizon because AT&T decided they no longer wanted to offer the plan I was grandfathered into. After three years of at&t not getting any good android phones on launch its no wonder the iphone is the only phone people are buying there. You HAVE to go to verizon, sprint, or tmobile to get good android phones without a six month or more wait, or importing them.</comment>


Pilot scheme seeks to produce first 'ethical cobalt' from Congo - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/dcea899a-2f8c-11e8-b5bf-23cb17fd1498 <comment><AUTHOR> Non-paywall link:

[https://archive.fo/tR7Vx](https://archive.fo/tR7Vx)</comment>


How Do Psychics Survive in New York City? - <AUTHOR> http://www.vice.com/en_us/read/how-do-psychics-survive-in-new-york-city-311

<comment><USER2> They way they survive anywhere...by seeing the future.</comment>


Stress Management Tips for Developers - <AUTHOR> https://adrianmejia.com/blog/2019/01/03/How-can-developers-reduce-stress/#.XG6m85-GVXI.hackernews <comment><USER2> I feel as if these are just stress management tips with no unique developer spin

<comment><AUTHOR> It's on the 3rd part: [https://adrianmejia.com/blog/2019/01/03/how-can- developers-r...](https://adrianmejia.com/blog/2019/01/03/how-can-developers- reduce-stress/#Stress-management-for-Software-Developers)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Unsubscribe Gmail Emails in Bulk - <AUTHOR> https://helpninja.com/unsub/ <comment><AUTHOR> We built a chrome extension to unsubscribe Gmail emails in bulk with a single click and its free. Give it a try and Take control of your inbox.

Note: It works on your computer as a chrome extension and no data is sent to our server ever.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Chrome extension link: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/unsubscribe- gmail-...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/unsubscribe-gmail- emails/jljicfihpdcimopabpijdhhjbmenjala)</comment>


Why salad is so overrated - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/why-salad-is-so-overrated/2015/08/21/ecc03d7a-4677-11e5-8ab4-c73967a143d3_story.html <comment><USER2> Part of the issue is iceberg lettuce in particular; there are other lettuces that are (at least marginally) more nutritious, but iceberg lettuce is pretty much just filler, and is much more popular.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is there some evidence that raw food is better for you? It's a lot more _work_ to get through a giant bowl of cabbage than some sauteed in butter, but is it better for you? I imagine that there may be specific nutrients that don't survive heating, but is it significant?

Maybe the problem is the healthy halo on "fresh vegetables" in general.

<comment><USER4> "Better" is not straightforward. In general, eating a lot of raw foods leads to weight loss, not because they are magic, but because they require a lot of work to digest, compared to cooked foods. Which points to one of the problems with the WaPo article - it uses "nutrition" in the narrowest sense of "containing nutrients". Obviously important, but not the only thing to consider. That head of lettuce may contain as much water as a bottle of Evian, and not much more in the way of nutrients, but it also contains large amounts of fiber, which is functionally important to our guts. There's a passing dig at eggplant for being watery and non-nutritious, but that ignores not just its fiber but also its antioxidants - [https://www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/2004/040108.htm](https://www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/2004/040108.htm)

<comment><USER3> Thank you. I completely agree that 'better' is not straightforward and am on record as claiming that 'healthy food' is silly, we should only care about 'healthy diets' (for example, simple salad isn't healthy if you have a protein deficiency).

Incidentally, green leaf lettuce has less than 5 grams of fiber for a whole head. So as far as it's use as a source of fiber, it seems underwhelming.

Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Don't eat salad for the lettuce, it's just water and fiber. Eat salad for the dressing. Traditionally, dressing is about 3/4 oil (olive oil) and 1/4 acid (vinegar), which is nutritious.</comment>


Google's single sign on is now live for everything? - <AUTHOR>

Has anyone else noticed this?
http://accounts.google.com
Feels like a tiny bit of the Google master plan has come into view (though I guess this much is obvious to anyone):
1. Build awesome free services
...
x. Build the largest walled garden the world has ever seen
???
x+2. profit
[EDIT] It looks like this has been around a long time and I was just last to notice when I logged into my gmail account the other day. <comment><USER2> There has been a single sign on for most services for a long time (although the login page was different in some cases depending on which service you were accessing).

The difference now is that they re designed the log in interface to be the same across services and I have also only noticed the new design in the past week or so.

</comment><comment><USER3> This has been live for at least 3 years and probably longer. The exception, I think, was YouTube, which remained independent until 2011. It's simple user convenience: nobody wants to have to type their username and password 10 times to access 10 services they use on a daily basis.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually I haven't seen it on gmail until this week... Maybe I was just the last to get it somehow</comment></comment>


Obama pledges 3 percent of GDP for research - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestandard.com/news/2009/04/27/obama-pledges-3-percent-gdp-research-0

<comment><USER2> Before anyone gets too excited over this proposal, you might want to consider how government funding for science in the year 2009 works in practice. Here is an except from a blog post that describes how the Energy department works from the inside ( source: [http://unqualified- reservations.blogspot.com/2009/01/gentle-...](http://unqualified- reservations.blogspot.com/2009/01/gentle-introduction-to-unqualified_22.html) ):

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-

Basically, my mother got involved with this world by accident. More or less everyone else in Efficiency and Renewable Energy was there because they were true believers. My mother was there because her kids had gone to college, and she needed a job. So she wound up as a budget and policy analyst, working for the true believers.

This drove my mother up the wall. She is basically an honest person. She does not have the skill sets to work effectively as a member of a criminal organization, and she certainly did not expect the United States Department of Energy to be anything of the sort.

Yes: that's exactly what I said. Joe Romm should be in prison. James Hansen should be in prison. Michael Mann should be in prison (and not for making Heat). These people are criminals. Sadly, no one will be arresting any of them any time soon.

What my mother found at EERE was a sort of giant, Potomac-shaped hog-trough, dispensing a billion or two a year to grunting Beltway bandits packed shoulder-to-shoulder around a vast open sewer of hot, juicy, delicious cash. This is, of course, the iron triangle of Washington fame. (I think the triangle should include at the very least the press, making it a square, which would let us add Andrew Revkin to our fantasy arrest list. All you coup plotters out there, listen up. These guys are all buddies - you can probably nab all four at the same Super Bowl party.)

In order to keep said open sewer open, EERE planners (such as my mother) had to go through the following process: they had to analyze a constant flow of scientific and engineering information from the renewable-energy researchers they supported (typically experienced recipients of such grants, which is why they call them "Beltway bandits"), decide which technologies seemed promising and which did not, support the former and cut the latter.

Now: my mother was at DOE in the mid-90s. How many successful renewable-energy technologies can you name that came out of DOE in the mid-90s? Or came out of anywhere in the mid-90s? Or came out of anywhere at all? What are the successes of renewable energy?

For that matter, even today, how many press releases have you seen reprinted in your newspaper of choice, promising that renewable-energy technology X - algae biofuel, perhaps, or Stirling engines, or thin-film solar-panels; the list is endless - would hit the market a year from now, two years from now, five years from now? For how many years have you been seeing these types of announcements? How many renewable-energy technologies have hit said market?

The reason, of course, is that most of these technologies simply don't work. At least, not in the sense of being even remotely cost-effective. Of course, one can still tinker with them, and one never knows how tinkering will turn out. But what would happen at EERE, over and over again, is that some research program would promise result X by year Y, fail, add 1 to Y, and get more money for next year.

My mother's job was not to evaluate renewable-energy technologies. It was to pretend to evaluate renewable-energy technologies - creating the essential illusion of science-driven public policy. Since everyone involved in this process understood that it was a farce, you can imagine the quality of the data. Meanwhile, as usual in Washington, how much money you got depended on how many friends in the right places you had. This tends not to change from year to year, resulting in remarkably consistent budget allocations.

In other words, my mother's work was bullshit in the best Frankfurtian sense. Some might get a kick out of this, but she is just not the type. And at the time, Artificial Global Warming was not the big thing it is now. So the open sewer seemed picayune. A billion here, a billion there. It sounds big to the hoi-polloi, but of course it isn't. What was not obvious in the late '90s is that, if you can steal billions, you can steal trillions. And that is a big deal.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

<comment><USER3> _What are the successes of renewable energy?_

On earth Wind, and Hydro power. In space solar.

It might not look like a major breakthrough, but cost per watt dropped in the 90's in large part due to DOD funding. The sterling solar dish design also comes from that area but it's not really in large scale use at this point in time.

PS: Today Wind in the right area is cheaper than coal which is a major win IMO. And while solar is still pricey it's vary modular so it's useful vary useful for a lot of non grid connected applications. Like solar lighting outdoors and remote weather stations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A few paragraphs down from Eisenhower's warning about the "military-industrial complex", we get this warning about the "scientific-technological elite":

>"Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present -- and is gravely to be regarded.

>Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite."

Also: I get tired of seeing every vaguely technology-oriented Obama article here. There are plenty of places on the web to discuss them. What's the limit on the number of tech advisors he can appoint?

</comment><comment><USER5> GDP in the US in 2008 was 14.62 trillion.

3% of that is $438.6 billion.

From TFA: >To encourage private sector investment in research, Obama said he wants to make the federal government's research and experimentation tax credit permanent.

I love the idea of making it more tax friendly for business who wish to conduct research. I hate the idea of the government taxing people and then dolling out that money to whomever they deem most "worthy."

<comment><USER3> _I love the idea of making it more tax friendly for business who wish to conduct research. I hate the idea of the government taxing people and then dolling out that money to whomever they deem most "worthy."_

That's the same thing as a targeted tax break. If the government gives you money because you do X then I pay more taxes. If you pay less taxes because you do X then I still pay more taxes.

<comment><USER6> No it's not.

With option one businesses choose where they intend to conduct research. With option two the government chooses what research should be funded. It becomes something that can be politicized. But thanks for pointing out the needed general increase in tax.

EDIT: Thank you for disagreeing with me, but I would like to learn why I am wrong. Would someone tell me why my observation is wrong?

<comment><USER3> Politically there is a difference, numerically there is not.

While handing out money for people to research whatever they want would be a non starter, people are happy to have the tax code do the same thing. Granted, procedurally when handing out money the government likes to say what you do with it, but manipulating the tax code is seen as more reasonable even thought the costs are identical.

My point is if we are going to be handing out money through targeted tax breaks we should still treat it as spending tax payers money, because that's the net effect is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Spending money should never be a goal in itself

<comment><USER8> Money is the most concrete way to quantify the level of commitment that's being discussed. Anything less would just be a bunch of hand-waving about science being super important and stuff.

<comment><USER4> On the other hand, you have to discount the results a bit for the inefficiencies of bureaucracy and democratic decision making.

For example, the billions spent on subsidizing research on the hydrogen power car undoubtedly diverted a lot of effort and commitment towards a technology that was never particularly viable. It was, however, a sexy technology to talk about on the campaign stump.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a brilliant and cheap political win for Obama. Consider the economic black hole our government (including the past administration) is leading us down; he can leave alone (or even reduce) the number of dollars spent on research and still claim an increase by percentage of GDP.

</comment><comment><USER10> I find it detestable that the government can just spend 3 percent of the GDP at its fancy. Talk about a runaway system. We've turned our government into a group of thugs and given them free reign.

<comment><USER11> You misread the article.

> the president said his goal can only be achieved through a combination of > government spending and contributions from the private sector. The U.S. > currently spends about 2.6 percent of GDP on research and development, > according to the most recent National Science Board figures, placing it > second overall among the G7 countries, just behind Japan.

When it says "the U.S. currently spends", the meaning is not, to my knowledge, "the U.S. government currently spends".</comment></comment>


Gracefully Restarting a Go Program Without Downtime - <AUTHOR> https://gravitational.com/blog/golang-ssh-bastion-graceful-restarts/ <comment><USER2> This kind of thing is foreign to me because I can't imagine writing an application, to run in the cloud (as I always do) where I care if a single instance has some downtime. I always rely on something at a higher level proxying my traffic to the application, and when I need to push my application I just shoot each instance in the face and start another one elsewhere, usually on a different host:port. When I'm using the cheapest cloud capacity I can buy my application is constantly preempted by higher-paying tenants anyway, so I have to write my systems as if any instance will suddenly stop. Once you have that problem you can forget about graceful in-place restarts forever.

<comment><USER3> You know that some people work on servers that are stateful? Not everyone use REST type of transport where a failed node is ok because the lb will route traffic to another place. Your solution doesn't work for things like game servers.

<comment><USER4> Even stateful services like game servers could be organised to handle losing a node. It's harder to do and you need some state replication in place. (versioned state if you want to do upgrades that way) It may not be cost effective to do so. But the possibility is there.

I worked on a plan to have live migration of multiparty phone calls between data centres in realtime. The tech is available. But your planning outcome may be: it's cheaper to make single node more stable and deal with the occasional failure.

"Stateful" only means you need to care about the state being moved. Things like Java hotswap, Erlang live code reload, and your custom solutions can handle that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What a coincidence seeing this topic today. Just yesterday I released some similar code for upgrading Go servers in-place while maintaining sockets:

[https://github.com/crawshaw/littleboss](https://github.com/crawshaw/littleboss)

</comment><comment><USER6> It is possible to pass file descriptors using os/exec, using the ExtraFiles attribute [1]. No need drop down to os.StartProcess.

1: [https://golang.org/pkg/os/exec/#Cmd](https://golang.org/pkg/os/exec/#Cmd)

</comment><comment><USER7> Fantastic examples. I appreciate that they allude to the (canonical?) example of how Nginx does zero downtime upgrades using SO_REUSEPORT. I had hard of the trick of sharing the FD with a forked process but it's nice to a working example.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's theoretically interesting to hand off a listen socket, but I'd rather take 1/n machines out of service than leave half of my memory unused on every machine.

 _Edit:_ I also remember hearing some out-there stuff about handing off your IP address and open connection state to another machine so the client doesn't even notice…

</comment><comment><USER9> Will Tarreau of haproxy has written an insightful post on the same topic:

"Truly Seamless Reloads with HAProxy – No More Hacks!"

[https://www.haproxy.com/blog/truly-seamless-reloads-with- hap...](https://www.haproxy.com/blog/truly-seamless-reloads-with-haproxy-no- more-hacks/)

</comment><comment><USER10> I like to use a simple protocol: 1) Server receives shutdown signal 2) Server tells all clients to disconnect, and also tells the load balancer to not send more traffic 3) Client's connect to another server or waits for the server to restart 4) server exit

<comment><USER11> How do you tell the load balancer to stop sending traffic? I've done two ways in previous jobs:

\- Refuse all new connections. If you can change the program, this can be done by closing the listening socket (I think) , but I just installed an iptables rule.

\- use the load balancer's API to offline the server(at the time it was F5).

I liked the first solution because it was load balancer agnostic, but required retries by the load balancer or client to avoid disruptions. Curious to hear what other people did.

<comment><USER12> See the lameduck section of this chapter of the Google SRE book. They do frequent health checks on all running jobs. If a health check fails they stop sending that job traffic. The concept of lameduck is you report yourself as unhealthy but are still available to serve traffic, you wait before all of your clients that were loaded balanced to you before you stop a sending traffic.

[https://landing.google.com/sre/book/chapters/load- balancing-...](https://landing.google.com/sre/book/chapters/load-balancing- datacenter.html)

Health checks are part of GCPs load balancer. [https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/load- balancing/health-...](https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/load- balancing/health-checks)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is an excellent write up, very easy to follow. Overseer [1] is a pretty good implementation as well.

"Commonly, graceful restarts are performed by the active process (dark blue) closing its listeners and passing these matching listening socket files (green) over to a newly started process. This restart causes any foreground process monitoring to incorrectly detect a program crash. overseer attempts to solve this by using a small process to perform this socket file exchange and proxying signals and exit code from the active process."

[1] [https://github.com/jpillora/overseer](https://github.com/jpillora/overseer)

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm using socketmaster[1] to do the graceful update or just normal service reload. It is basically another process to facilitate socket exchange between 2 process. Just make sure that the service able to shutdown gracefully.

However this approach need the binary to be started from socketmaster (as child process). I'm not sure what is the real cons tho, except the fact that it alter SIGHUP behavior - which is fine in this case imo.

[1] [https://github.com/zimbatm/socketmaster](https://github.com/zimbatm/socketmaster)

<comment><USER14> [https://github.com/paytm/grace](https://github.com/paytm/grace) The graceful handle on the service side can use this package

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Another reference project: [https://github.com/facebookgo/grace](https://github.com/facebookgo/grace)

</comment><comment><USER16> Seems simpler to do this at the load balancer level. That way you can use the same strategy for any type of application.

<comment><USER17> What if your Go application IS a load balancer?

<comment><USER2> Even in that case you don't need graceful in-place restarts. If you have multiple replicas of the load balancer and ECMP from higher on your stack, all you need is for your balancer process to 1) remove itself as a destination for new flows; 2) stop accepting new connections and complete all existing connections; 3) shut down and restart; 4) add itself back to the set of new flow destinations.

If you don't have multiple instances of your load balancer, that's weird.

<comment><USER18> I don't believe this approach would work for a layer 7 load balancer (where the connection is terminated on the host). This is in regards to the original article, which is discussing how to maintain socket state through a process upgrade.

When you remove the host from the routing table, the ECMP algorithm will redistribute the traffic to the other hosts still in the pool. For TCP connections, this will generate reset's, and drop any active connections moved between hosts. Also, at times I've not gotten clear answers from router vendors on whether they support a consistent hash in their ECMP implementation, which means that connections through the load balancers not being reloaded may also be rebalanced to other hosts and be affected by the routing table change.

Even if we consider going down the stack to a layer 4 load balancer, outside the scope of this article, it may still be desirable to combine approaches and offer hitless reloads (a common case) and not just recover from a node failure (a less common case).

The reason is, that you would need state replication of the load balancing tables to support removing the load balancer from the routing tables, and having another load balancer take over it's work while maintaining the connections through the load balancer. This is under the assumption that the service being load balanced requires an uninterrupted connection of course.

Disclaimer: I work with the author of the article and contributed to it.

<comment><USER2> I've worked with ECMP routers where you can inform that router you'd like new flows to be sent elsewhere while existing flows continue to be sent to their established endpoints. JunOS for example has this feature.

<comment><USER19> Do you recall what option/platform that is? I assume that must have been something like an SRX, not an MX/QFX/EX.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I made a blog post a couple years ago about doing this for a mud in Go using the FD passing approach.

[http://austinhanson.com/slinging-mud-graceful- reboots](http://austinhanson.com/slinging-mud-graceful-reboots)

</comment><comment><USER21> Does anyone have any good articles about the same technique for Node?

</comment><comment><USER22> "modern systems software"

Lol, no. Modern, professional software development uses a load balancer to manage a canary/red-black deployment strategy. Zero downtime deployments to a live server, outside of telecom/finance, is a sign of an amateurish team.</comment>


Bumble Swipes Left on Match Group/Tinder Allegations - <AUTHOR> http://thebeehive.bumble.com/bumbleblog/match-group-response <comment><USER2> I'm a bumble user. They sent this post as an email to their user base. I don't understand what they're trying to accomplish by airing their dirty laundry publicly. Users don't care if you're in an IP battle.

Also, I could have done without the sexist implication that bullying is a masculine characteristic.

<comment><USER3> I thought the same thing. Why bring gender into this? Bullying should be discouraged in all walks of life, whether the victims and perpetrators are male or female.

Interestingly, all of my female friends who use Bumble are actually annoyed that they must act first to open the dialog with their matches. They don't seem to notice or care that the feature is placed there to empower women, nor do they know or care about Bumble's feminist origins. They use it because it has more attractive males than Tinder.

<comment><USER4> 100% consistent with my anecdata as well. My girl friends who use it are all annoyed they have to say something first and mostly default to "hi", which is essentially passing the ball to the guy, who's expected to get creative (assuming similar dating market values).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sigh. I guess I'm not surprised at the negativity here on HN about this, but I'm still disappointed. If you take offense to the effort to dismantle masculine posturing as it's practiced in corporate culture, or see a meaningful effort to rebalance gendered power structures as sexist, maybe you should check your blind spots.

Gender has everything to do with it, because gender is a cultural mode of expression (and it is most certainly not a tribe you have to defend, so just calm down, guys). On many many dating apps, that expression is _extremely_ lopsided, _especially_ in terms of abusive and otherwise unethical behavior toward other people - namely women. I'm personally much more likely to look into this platform now that I know that they take a principled stance.

(Edit: typo)

<comment><USER6> Your comment contains a bunch of suppositions that are by no means widely accepted or indisputable truths.

For example you characterize Tinder's mode of conduct as "masculine posturing". Inherent in that comment is the supposition that there is something toxic about masculinity itself.

Imagine if someone called Bumble's letter "feminine posturing". Irrespective of the content of the letter, could you ever perceive the use of that term as anything but ignorant and misogynistic?

You also claim there is a "gendered power structure", and imply that Tinder is part of it, which is a very serious and broad allegation, that's made without supporting evidence, which is irresponsible.

You claim that "gender is a cultural mode of expression (and it is most certainly not a tribe you have to defend, so just calm down, guys)", but the letter says Bumble is proud to be women-run.

It's not necessarily bad to embrace femininity and celebrate a company being run by women, but be upfront about it, and don't gas light anyone who recognizes it as a form of tribalism.

Instead of trying to cast women as victims, and men as victimizers, I think we should step back from identarianism and recognize that members of both genders are disproportionately afflicted with their own set of maladies (e.g. 92% of workplace fatalities afflict men) and that it would be more constructive to put aside this 'which gender is a greater victim' competition and focus on empowering all individuals irrespective of gender.

<comment><USER4> This is a generalization, but I wonder if what we're seeing, with the job world becoming more evenly split between the genders, is men and women playing to their traditional strengths to advance in their professional goals. Historically women don't pick up the club and physically assault their opponent. They instead often indirectly attack a challenger's reputation (see shaming, guilt inducing etc), which is still very powerful.

Men, when facing a challenge, will avoid complaining, buckle down and try to power through the obstacle. Women, on the other hand, will play the victim card instead of using brute force, and will rely on their cunning to accomplish the same business goal. Both strategies are likely very effective.

I wonder if, as we have more majority-women and women-led organizations, we will see more of these indirect tactics deployed by those organizations. More covert corporate warfare than what we're traditionally used to. Nothing wrong with it per se, but just a shift in tactics people might have not foreseen.

<comment><USER6> I don't foresee the corporate world becoming more evenly split between men and women. The primary differentiator between men and women is testosterone and estrogen levels, and this has a profound impact on life strategy.

With respect to testosterone, the much higher levels found in men drive them to be far more likely to make sacrifices and take risks to achieve more ambitious goals, which manifests in everything from higher numbers of Nobel prize winners, to a life expectancy that is on average 5 years lower than that of women, to a much a higher proportion of murderers, and criminals in general, being men.

This difference in outcomes is not based on gender, even if it correlates with gender, so it won't go away as a result of eliminating any supposed social constructs that promote gender stereotypes. It's based on different behavioural traits associated with sex hormones, that establish a person's priorities, and that just happen to be found at higher concentration levels in a higher proportion of men, or women, depending on the hormone.

<comment><USER4> I buy all of that, but does that preclude us from ever seeing more women-only or majority-women companies out there that behave as a unit differently from the traditionally predominantly-male companies?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > We — a woman-founded, women-led company

I don't know why, but this made me want to stop reading the article immediately.

<comment><USER8> Probably because it was completely out of place and was only inserted to play the victim female card. I'd be surprised if Tinder's attempts at buying them out or sueing them would not have occurred if the founders were male.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Notice the narrative: to attack Bumble is to attack women's empowerment.

<comment><USER9> Ding ding ding

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Undeniable that much of Bumble looks like Tinder.

The fact that the Bumble founders came from Tinder, of course they stole whatever IP and concepts they could. No question.

But there's still a long way to go here. And squabbles like this distract companies from making honest feature advances.

The core issue with Bumble or Tinder is that they aren't designed to help make matches, rather give people the perception of options.

This plays out in that men essentially swipe right on every woman they come across (we're forced to in order to have any chance of making a connection), and women end up bombarded with more choices than they can meaningful sort through.

I matched with 1-2 women a day, but my close friend who introduced me to Bumble matches on 70+ guys a day.

I have to craft witty, funny, and sexy messages... all under the pressure that I only have 2 choices that day.

She gets to disqualify guys if they take too long to write back, write too much, or for any reason she wants... knowing she has 70 more to choose from. (Worth noting that despite all the options, she's still single...)

Anyway, the whole thing could be a lot more efficient... lots of ways to go about this. Dating and finding love takes effort, compassion. These tools should, ideally, help make it less of a numbers game.

# First feature request

Let anyone pre-approve in bulk. "Pre-match me with anyone who is between this age rage in this zip code who mentions hiking..." simple as that. If you really want to go all out, just learn my type from my swipes and pre-match on that -- plus gives me incentive not to just swipe on everyone as it's learning what I like.

# Second feature request

Let users block based on rules. "I don't ever want to match with anyone who works for my company, Dynacorp, and I don't ever want anyone from Dynacorp to see my profile."

# Third feature request

Only show people to me I have the potential to match with. "I liked her... but unknown to me, she only likes guys who are older than me... she'll never see my profile to match back... why did I see her in the first place then?"

# Fourth feature request

Don't show people who have already swiped left. "I see her... but unknown to me, she's already swiped left on me... we'll never be a match, probably best to just not show her to me."

<comment><USER11> > This plays out in that men essentially swipe right on every woman they come > across (we're forced to in order to have any chance of making a connection), > and women end up bombarded with more choices than they can meaningful sort > through.

This is not at all true for all men (I have never heard of this being necessary from an IRL friend).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> To people who use Tinder or Bumble, would you prefer matching yourself or have an algorithm do the matching for you?

<comment><USER13> Well OkCupid already kinda does the algorithm thing. I prefer tinder/bumble because it at least leaves the possibility for some sort of "je ne sais quoi" in the process, or for something you didn't know you liked until you saw it. But that's just me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Tinder : Bumble :: Uber : Lyft

<comment><USER2> Maybe by market share, but Tinder predated Bumble, whereas Lyft predated Uber.

<comment><USER15> But Über predated Lyft (Zimride) by 4 years

<comment><USER16> Sidecar came up with drivers using their own car.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Yumbunny (launched at HN): Crowd-Sourced Matchmaking With Hilarious Results  - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/10/yumbunny-crowd-sourced-matchmaking-with-hilarious-results/

<comment><USER2> Thanks for posting this. Was travelling and was gratefully surprised when they covered us. Thanks guys for all your great feedback.

<comment><USER3> shouldn't be surprised, Arrington is known for reading HN, for early startups to cover

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Congrats on the coverage.</comment>


Amazon's Battle to Break into the Grocery Market - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-03-20/inside-amazon-s-battle-to-break-into-the-800-billion-grocery-market <comment><USER3> If Amazon can't be trusted to sell genuine memory cards, Apple accessories or even books now, I wouldn't buy baby food from them.

[https://twitter.com/billpollock/status/844030960333152256](https://twitter.com/billpollock/status/844030960333152256)

[https://9to5mac.com/2016/10/19/amazon-fake-apple-chargers- ca...](https://9to5mac.com/2016/10/19/amazon-fake-apple-chargers-cables/)

[http://247wallst.com/consumer- electronics/2016/12/05/amazon-...](http://247wallst.com/consumer- electronics/2016/12/05/amazon-memory-chip-scam-may-destroy-consumer-data- photos/)

</comment><comment><USER4> _"It takes a lot of time and experimentation to work through unpredictable scenarios like a child picking up an item or a person wearing sunglasses or a face muffler," he said._

This is funny. Because these aren't unpredictable scenarios at all in a grocery store, unless you are having to write software to deal with them.

<comment><USER5> I'll be a believer when it can handle a Thomas Crown scenario - <USER2> people in the same outfit crisscrossing around each other. While a bowler hat flashmob is unlikely, a group of similar dark jackets etc isn't.

<comment><USER6> Actually, you can't forget the possibility that someone will attack it, for profit or even just the lulz. If you have the idea I can pretty much promise someone's going to try it long before there's a 1000 of these stores.

<comment><USER7> People are attacking regular stores' checkout systems already. We call those people shoplifters. And our normal method of dealing with them (have a human that catches a few of them to deter the more law-abiding citizens) will work equally well in a checkout-less store.

The big new challenge is telling the difference between a shoplifter and a normal software error. But that is only relevent for the most sophisticated shoplifting ideas.

<comment><USER8> Exactly. And, since you have to scan your smartphone before entering, they already have your name, address, credit card details, etc., so shoplifting would be extremely risky. Most teenage shoplifters might be able to outrun a security guard that saw them leaving with unpaid items, but what good does it do you when the store already has all your personal details and can simply send the police to pick you up at home?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Amazon needs to get a lot better at selling people complimentary goods. Once I buy something, I frequently see multiple advertisements for that exact product. Why can't they develop a database of products that compliment each other and so when someone buys a kitchen tool, they start advertising cookbooks.

Example: "On Prime Day, Members purchased over 215,000 Instant Pot 7-in-1 Multi-Functional Pressure Cookers"

[http://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/13/amazon-prime-day-is- biggest-d...](http://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/13/amazon-prime-day-is-biggest-day- for-online-retailer-ever.html)

If you have a database of 100s of thousands of people who all are suddenly looking for recipes and raw materials for a pressure cooker, why not advertise to them?

<comment><USER10> I'm no expert in this area. But I think this is due to the inherent nature of a system where the ads are all pushed by people marketing specific products, rather than a centralized "what is the best product to market to this person right now?" type of system.

It's pretty easy for a toaster guy to say "Amazon, show this ad to people who looked at toasters" without ALSO selectively hiding it from people who just bought a toaster.

It's harder to pin down a pattern indicating the imminent purchase of a toaster. Like for instance, someone seems like they're probably 20 years old, and now they're looking at wedding stuff. They are probably going to be influenced by a toaster ad, but getting it to them would require a toaster manufacturer to set up some _pretty_ complicated shit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I know this discusses a few strategic plays Amazon is making but shortfalls of the self-checkout project (AmazonGo) are interesting:

"In its video touting Amazon Go, the company said it was aiming to open the site to the public in "early 2017," and it hasn't provided an update to that timing. But the technology has been crashing in tests when the store gets too crowded and requires human quality control, people watching video images to make sure customers are charged for the right things, according to a person familiar with the plan."

Not super familiar with image recognition but do you think that's just a failure of the training data set or a much more complex technical problem?

<comment><USER12> Sure, but who'd actually trust Amazon with their food? I know I wouldn't, they've screwed up 3 out of 5 orders in the past year, leading me to have little faith that they won't give me E Coli covered veggies.

They're opening a large, car centric Amazon Grocery pickup location just over in Ballard as a test, but the particular location they picked is a parking lot for 3 to 4 hours a day, and is over 3 blocks from transit (and where they will be putting the light rail in) due to Safeway & Walgreens already owning that prime real estate.

<comment><USER11> Since the article stresses repeatedly that Amazon is all-in on produce... I think this is a big question for their ML approach.

One of the annoying parts of not-really-self-checkout that is available in big grocery stores today is that you have to scroll through a screen, choose the correct brand (i.e. Dole Banana), and then weigh it before it prices your order.

Wonder what their strategy is to price variable weight products (i.e. produce) without introducing new friction into the user experience

<comment><USER13> Yeah. This is one of the reasons why I really don't care for self-checkout in grocery stores. Sure, self-checkout is mostly OK so long as you're swiping small boxes of barcoded stuff. But get to produce and it's a mess. I basically won't use self-checkout if I have any non-barcoded merchandise. (Which basically describes every time I go to a grocery store.)

<comment><USER14> Yes - no bar code? I won't self check, but also the large items that won't fit in the bag. I learned the hard way that it can take too long for them to get the self checkout lane to stop crying about how I didn't put a 10' pipe in the bag. Unless I have one or two well marked, small items, I avoid the self checkout.

<comment><USER13> The particular fascination of big box home improvement stores has seemed a bit odd given the number of items that don't fit with the model. Sure a lot of small purchases do but many don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Grocery net profits are 1.7%.

[http://www.fmi.org/research-resources/supermarket- facts](http://www.fmi.org/research-resources/supermarket-facts)

Amazon barely makes money on retail operations. What is their rationalization in getting into this market?

<comment><USER16> From the article

>"Amazon wants to be the first thing any consumer thinks of when they need to buy anything," said Jim Hertel, a senior vice president at marketing technology company Inmar Inc. "Food is the largest retail category. They can't do what they want to do without grocery and they're definitely not going to give up."

I'd also imagine Amazon thinks they can do much better than a 1.7% margin by leveraging all of the improvements to their approach outlined in the article.

<comment><USER17> 2030: Government breaks up Amazon into smaller companies.

<comment><USER18> Why would that happen? US government appears quite happy to allow massive companies to operate as they please. There hasn't been much "trust busting" since, well, the "trust busting" era, outside of finance anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > Workers at Amazon Fresh, the company's grocery-delivery business, threw away > about a third of the bananas it purchased because the service only sold the > fruit in bunches of five, the student concluded. Employees trimmed each > bunch down to size and chucked the excess.

If anyone was wondering about the bananas, the paper ([https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/99025/9213069...](https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/99025/921306927-MIT.pdf;sequence=1)) says (pg33) that after it was identified, they switched to selling 2lb bags of bananas, which the banana growers were already able to provide, so they scrapped the whole exactly-5-bananas-and-tear-to-make-fit.

> In addition to the obvious financial impact of this, many Associates found > the process frustrating since it was highly repetitive, and they did not > feel they were creating value for the customer

Well, that's one way to phrase it.

</comment><comment><USER20> i'd love it if they could do this in a way that ensures quality. my biggest problem with amazon currently is even with things as simple as cologne or cookware, you can't tell if what you'll get is real or a cheap knockoff.

</comment><comment><USER21>
        It lures inventors and retailers with shopping volume
        and frequency, and then sinks them with low margin.

That is really the only quote you need to read.

Grocery margins are razor thin. Local/Regional competition is insane.

</comment><comment> Jason-Andrade IMO every company's approach to the problem is completely wrong! You don't try to offer online the same items that local stores sell off the shelf. Instead, treat the online outlet as an interactive test-market.

Walmart and Amazon are both in a great position to do this! Setup an online store that allows established customers to suggest items that they are unable to find on local store shelves. Allow them to also flag other submitted items as interesting. You have a curation staff that fleshes out submissions with images and descriptions before they go live. The company's merchandiser evaluates the balance between interest in an item and the difficulty of its procurement. To aid in appropriate pricing, perhaps the system also requires submissions to include a reference to the most similar item that is already stocked on store shelves. Because the company is offering exclusive access to the items the profit margins can be kept high.

From what I've experienced product selection in US stores is in general far better than even the same store in Canada (including Walmart), but there might still be a few items not stocked in local stores that people will pay a premium for!

</comment><comment><USER22> Sort of wish they'd focus on what they already have first. I mean I get it, it's a good market to get into ...but.. how about - making a single login for abebooks fr, uk, com, etc.. that aligns with your main amazon account and - audible account. Why do I need maybe 7 different accounts on services owned by the same company? Better yet, how about taking the databases of books on sale at the various abebooks sub regional sites and put them on the main amazon.com page. I collect a lot of old cookbooks, and old lectures (Rede, Chichele, Ford etc) and often find that to find better deals than what is on amazon.com I have to go on different abebooks sites to find them. Also - have had experiences where I go on amazon fr or ca and order a cookbook easily purchasable on those sites vs .com site. It's terribly aggravating! So I just wish they'd focus on making that easier to deal with before venturing onto other areas. That said, grocery should be decent.. I already hire taskrabbit individuals to do my shopping for me..they are hit or miss.. I never put them in charge of buying seafood..never.

<comment><USER23> > _making a single login for [...] Why do I need maybe 7 different accounts on > services owned by the same company?_

Wasn't this what the HN community was up in arms about when Google did it for YouTube?

<comment><USER24> Not really. The backlash came more from Google trying to push G+ alongside that YouTube rollout.

<comment><USER25> I lost control a YouTube account with over 4 million views due to the changeover, so I am kind of bummed about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> A few things that Amazon could do better compare to Instacart:

\- they bring you huge green boxes and often put only one or two items in each, they are highly unsightly and take up a lot of room, this must be part of their marketing campaign since it has Amazon written all over it, they ask you to return them the next time after their logo has been imprinted on every part of your brain

\- sometimes they put ice bags in said boxes if you forget to take them out they melt and not all the boxes are water proof so water can run through them onto the floor and it can also spoil even if you take the ice out since it leaves the box moist

\- not clear where they source their items, Instacart is clear if I want Wholefoods I select Wholefoods, Amazon seem to have way fewer options and not intuitively clear if I'm ordering from a store that I picked or getting random access grocery (RAG)

\- they mention they have Belcampo as a store when navigating to it they only allow you to purchase sausages!!!

</comment><comment> norea-armozel I'm not sure if Bezos and company know what they're getting themselves into with the US grocery business. It's a cut throat business which has not just some big players but several small to medium sized grocery chains (some as subsidiaries and some as stand-alone companies). And I can tell you as someone who's work in grocery the profit margins are thin outside of the US holidays. Frankly, if Bezos thinks this is going to lead to adding actual profitability to the delivery of their other products I'm not sure I see that possibility materializing under the guise of grocery stores and grocery delivery. I hope they have plans to retreat from that business when (not really if) Kroger and Walmart hammer them on the price. Otherwise, I can see them learning a painful lesson in the near future.

</comment><comment><USER27> So, my problem with this: I can't usually get things delivered in the same day I want them, and sometimes even the next day. There's no slot available and so on.

I don't really think out what I need days in advance. I'm like, "oh, I'm out of... whatever, I'll go to ShopRite today."

<comment><USER28> So if i knew you order toothpaste on average every 48 days, i could put a new one in cheapo snail mail on day 43. who is in the best position to predict this and take it completely off your mind? current grocers or amazon? your scenario presumes you need to invoke the order yourself. Amazon is going to be predicting your needs (poorly at first but improving over time). I'd wager this big picture includes getting audio feeds from your house 'hey - who drank the last of the milk?' 'are we out of eggs?', 'that's a shame, these strawberries went bad before i could use them'. I'm sure amazon has considered trash/recycling services to scan product barcodes to see what you've used up to add to the 'predict you' models.

A big challenge is going to be charging me for product i don't need yet. if i get toothpaste 15 days in advance of needing it because i traveled for 15 days of the period, then i'm not going to like being billed for something so soon. i'll feel scammed, like they're trying to ram product/sales down my throat. for this i'd be curious to see if there's a way to charge when the product begins to be used- so medicine shelf time doesn't cost you. That and no- brainer returns. (think dash button for come pick a product up)

Just my 2 cents

<comment><USER13> Amazon already has subscriptions. Personally, I don't buy anything with a combination of frequency and predictability that makes a subscription make sense but obviously some people do. (Diapers I assume are one thing.) And that becomes harder with with perishables. Customizable but pre-populated (based on prior purchases) would seem to make a lot more sense.

<comment><USER29> My SO has signed is up for subscriptions for certain recurring purchases. Our usage is too erratic to put on a schedule. I have a new job at home: finding a place for all the things we get automagically delivered from Amazon that we aren't ready to consume. I finally spoke up when we had three containers of dishwasher soap and nowhere to put them.

<comment><USER30> They email you before sending you stuff, just skip the delivery if you don't want it.

Personally I set everything to six months and then bring it forward when I need some.

<comment><USER13> Even if there are some small savings, at some point it's just less mental energy to place an order when you need something, which takes? I dunno 2 minutes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> > "Online grocery is failing"

I'm sorry to hear that, because Amazon Fresh is the greatest thing to happen to my family's grocery shopping since we became a family. Seriously, we'll the $40 dash wand to add stuff to our grocery list through the week, then I'll sit down for 10 minutes and add some stuff from my wife's meal planning, then boom - next day (or two, depending on when we want it) we have our groceries.

Never gotten the moldy strawberries mentioned in the article, and with a few odd exceptions, everything is cheaper than both the grocery store and target, which saves even more time With 2 store trips a thing of the past.

</comment><comment><USER32> Physical supermarkets can still be really terrible. It always seems to take me over an hour to do my grocery shopping.

My idea to bring the industry into the 21st century would be take a similar route to Blue Apron et al, where all the ingredients are combined into a single package. The difference is that the work of preparation would be distributed to local restaurants looking to supplement their income, and people would just pick up their uncooked packages there. That would keep the cost down and scale well, while still being convenient for customers and allow them to cook new, interesting meals everyday.

<comment><USER33> I've thought about this in similar ways. The reason I don't use Blue Apron is because it's pricey--$10/meal when you're cooking at home isn't very affordable unless you're a lot of disposable income.

But I understand why it's expensive. Each box of ingredients must be shipped with multiple cooling packs to keep it from spoiling, and shipping to each individual's doorstep also adds costs.

Imagine if grocery stores offered a similar Blue Apron like service, where they came up with good, reasonably healthy recipes, and packaged all the ingredients (which they already have in store) in the appropriate amounts into a box with recipes and instructions, just like Blue Apron, and you could pick up the box at the grocery store. They could easily offer this for less than half the cost of Blue Apron, and the value proposition (at least to me) would be so big (no meal planning, no wandering around a the grocery store for an hour, no risk of buying too much stuff that I then goes bad) that'd be a no- brainer to use it.

<comment><USER34> At Safeway, this is referred to as, "The Deli".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> It's cool that they are trying to innovate here, but it seems like a weird area to focus on.

The high growth areas in grocery are things like prepared foods and produce. Owning the middle of the store to try to out-Walmart Walmart seems like a low- value proposition.

I've been using Amazon Fresh for a few months. The delivery aspect is awesome, but the rest of the business is pretty questionable. They cannot keep anything in stock, and I'm basically getting a week of groceries free every month because they cannot figure out that dropping a cantaloupe on top of a bag of Doritos and loaf of bread is a bad move.

<comment><USER36> >I've been using Amazon Fresh for a few months.

This is an artifact of living in Silicon Valley bubble. The rest of the country don't live this way.

<comment><USER35> I live in Albany, NY. Definately not in a bubble.

They have an arrangement with USPS to deliver groceries. The service itself is fantastic. It's just that they are effectively attaching $20 to each order in different costs and have trouble managing the packing operation.

It's great for us because they deliver early and it reduces our grocery trips.

<comment><USER37> Curious? Do you have an online grocery pick-up nearby. Like Walmart or Wegmans or whatever?

I think there is a race: Pick up or delivery. Both win. If you try pick up at the store it becomes SO easy. And delivery also is easy...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> At some pt I have to wonder, just because you can do something does that mean you should? I don't really look forward to a future where Amazon is involved in every business possible. Especially if it's Weyland-Yutani-esque and involved in cave exploration.

<comment><USER39> Oh come _on_. Weyland-Yutani? It's not like Jeff Bezos has his own space program or something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> All the facial recognition stuff is extremely creepy. Who could think the internet version of privacy is a model for real life?

</comment><comment><USER41> surprised they don't operate the stores so as to sell other amazon items via kiosk or for pickup. similar to how grocery stores have pharmacies

</comment><comment><USER14> I buy a lot on amazon, but groceries? I can't see it happening. I really don't want counterfeit Oreos.

<comment><USER42> two black poker chips stuck together with elmers glue</comment></comment>


The Startup Developer Superstar Detection Quiz - <AUTHOR> http://onstartups.com/home/tabid/3339/bid/3504/Startup-Developers-Telling-Scmucks-from-Superstars-5-min-quiz.aspx

<comment><USER2> My additions, for super-coders:

1\. Have, more than once, wished to stop time, exit society and live on an isolated island so you can figure out this incredible algorithm that you know will change and amaze the world.

2\. Has grasped the importance of concentrating for long contiguous periods of time to work out very deep problems. Probably worked out a very strict, detailed set of priorities to ensure that this can happen on demand.

3\. Focuses more on whether he can beat the hardest unsolved problems than bragging that he is the best coder. Realizes that such a definitive metric doesn't really exist. The point is that by focusing on the science itself, you can always be challenged and won't be held back by the satisfaction of being better than some other bum. Although, this doesn't mean that he doesn't have a strong ego internally, just knows that it can only be proved through code.

4\. Has some deep-seated inspiration.

5\. If forced to stop working on at least something incredible for more than a few weeks, he will go crazy with a large machine gun. If he hasn't had this desire for a good while then he probably hasn't put in the effort to become great. This holds until the day he gets burt out..

<comment><USER3> Sorry, but your list looks like is searching for psychotic people. I know that some great coders are very passionate about what they do, who borderline into obsession.

I also know, that the best coder/engineer I have ever met, is married, very balanced, works 9-5:30, so he can be home with his kids, and is super super productive, and a very great guy to be around.

<comment><USER2> Honestly, he doesn't sound like he'd be the best for a startup. Not the best for an OSS project (which are always done on your own time) either. Certainly not going to make any breakthroughs in mathematics. He's going to live a wonderfully marginal life.

He may be the best around, but what's he going to amount too? Nothing different than a million other good engineers working their asses off in some giant corp in china.

I'm completely certain that some of the best painters where psychotic too. Go ahead and fault them for it if that's what you like to do.

<comment><USER3> He is the kind of guy that wakes up one morning, and writes a interpreter of a 4g scripting language in a couple of days, just for the heck of it. And he is very normal, (maybe, probably boring too you as he doesn't look like a mad scientist, or have thick framed glasses, or hipster looking), but he is much more productive in those 8hrs than any of you heroic "young guns" who decide to sleep on the desk.

Please tell me, you can be very productive more than 8hrs a day on the long run.

Remember, staying longer in office, doesn't mean you work harder. Some of the people that stay longer at work, do it b/c to compesate for their inability to code fast. They have to pull longer hours to keep up with their peers.

BTW, he is smart and some good money during the last tech boom.

<comment><USER2> Not to sound too argumentative, but let me clarify:

> "young guns"

Age has nothing to do with my list.

> He is the kind of guy that wakes up one morning, and writes a interpreter of > a 4g scripting language in a couple of day

fluff talk. You cannot recognize a man who is said to do this by his acquaintances. Almost always, when someone is said to be like this, it turns out to be a gross misinterpretation of their actual ability.

> And he is very normal,

I am not at all saying that such people cannot appear and act so. This is important, _I am talking about what the person thinks, in his head._ NOT how he appears or acts.

> Please tell me, you can be very productive more than 8hrs a day on the long > run.

I'm just talking about being able to get into the zone and stay there for as long as possible. Nothing to do with work schedules. You've really got me wrong on that one. I'm not saying the same amount of work has to be done every day either.

> made some good money during the last tech boom.

Unfortunately, that's not a good metric either because a ton of both morons and smart people got rich.

(Aside: Wow it sucks to not be able to edit comments here now..)

<comment><USER4> The best living programmer I know cut back to a more normal schedule to spend more time with his wife and kids. (I have seen him program a cooperatively multi threaded app that's resistant to memory errors on a 16khz embedded chip with around 380 bytes of ram and 2000 bytes ROM data.)

You can work 100 hours a week but you will never match a 9-5er that's 30x more productive than you are.

<comment><USER2> Where the heck are you guys getting the idea that I said that long work weeks are good? Somewhere this discussion got derailed..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I remember when Guy Kawasaki started blogging, he made a point about having short, bulleted, easy to digest posts to read. And while that's certainly easier on the readers, it's like eating a lots of junk food: too much of it often leaves me feeling full, yet discontent. And I wasn't sure why at first.

While bulleted points are good in moderation, it's one step away from superstar detection quizzes. Reminds me of quizzes in magazines like Maxim and Cosmo. "Are you having enough hot sex?" quizzes.

I find myself hungering for a good readably long article with new information and good support that makes me think when I see too many of these on hacker news.

<comment><USER6> Fair point. I'm glad I didn't use my original title idea:

13 Ways To Tell If Your Lover Is Cheating, But 14 Ways To Tell If You'd Make A Good Developer For A Startup

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Well put. Even a basic quiz like this highlights the difficulty to hire for startups where every idea and effort of every individual impacts success (positive or negative).

</comment><comment><USER8> I was going to rant about this, but their company actually has something resembling an original premise, and principals from MIT, as opposed to the usual social-network-rails-2.0 crap. And it is a very engaging ad which appears to have homed in on a large concentration of its target audience.

Good stuff, and well played -- a case study in low-effort, high-payoff marketing in an unorthodox capacity. Smart guys.

<comment><USER6> Thanks, I think. :)

<self-serving-crap> For the record, we're a bit different from many startups in that we believe in "User Generated Revenue" (what was previously known as "sales"). We're growing revenue (not traffic) at double-digit rates a month and having a pretty good time with it.

And yes, we have a bit of an MIT slant. Not just both the founders, but 7 (over 25%) of the team has MIT roots. This could be partly because we're located right in Kendall square too -- but we like to think it's because even smart people like to make money. </self-serving-crap>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't interview usually but when meeting a fellow programmer - my favorite question is what is your title - e.g. if they say Software Engineer - i ask them if they truly believe software can be engineered.. it's a way to open them up - i like to hear their philosophical views on the construction of software.

</comment><comment><USER10> For some reason test #6 (You've been impressed with someone else's code at some point in your life)

reminded me of this old PG essay:

<http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html>

:)

</comment><comment><USER11> I think I'd consider hiring someone with laser focus who answered no to all but #7 and #14.

Actually, come to think of it some of the better windows programmers I've met are that way.

</comment><comment><USER12> "1. You're more of a pragmatist than a perfectionist. [Yes/No]"

I've always had a problem with this one. Not really sure why.

I hate the word "perfectionist", but I think that's what I am. Perhaps "precisionist" or "maximizer" would be a better word.

Once I started insisting that my app was just right, I was able to move up to the next level of "hackerdom". Some days I write a thousand lines of code and the next day I will agonize over one little construct because deep in my gut, I know it's not what it needs to be. I don't mind being this way.

Of course, I understand the downside of this thinking. You don't want to obsess so much that you never release. But you don't want to release and come back and fix bad stuff too much, either. Experience, and a gut feeling, oughta tell you how far to push.

One of the things that made me feel much better about this was reading about Woz's obsession with making everything just right when he designed the Apple II. Chapter 3 of "Founders at Work" by Jessica Livingston. Which was Woz, the perfectionist or the pragmatist?

(If you don't have the book and haven't read it yet, must reading for all aspiring superstars...

<http://www.foundersatwork.com/steve-wozniak.html>)

<comment><AUTHOR> "Which was Woz, the perfectionist or the pragmatist?"

Over time, I've learned that it's not always an either-or thing. Many -- perhaps most -- people are both, depending on the activity. I'm a perfectionist about writing (code and natural language), but I'm certainly _not_ a perfectionist about fashion or cooking, for example.

<comment><USER8> Another way to look at it -- "the best is the enemy of the good". Which side of that battle you take will depend upon your desired outcome and time frame.</comment></comment></comment>