Ask HN: 5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Advice? - <AUTHOR> In April, I left my job at a hedge fund. This was, admittedly, not the best time to leave a job in New York, but I needed out because the lack of purpose in my work was starting to affect my health.
Even though we didn't "technically" know ourselves to be in a recession, I knew something bizarre was going on that summer. I had some really surprising rejections. I never find rejection to be shocking, because even if you're really good, you might not be a fit... but I got turned down for in-person interviews at companies that would have been slam-dunks (for in-person interview) in mid-2007.
Anyway, I found my way to a really cool startup and began working there, the only downside being that pay would be deferred until we had funding. I was told that we'd probably have funding by November. I figured January - March was more likely, since PG's essays have educated me on the fact that funding matters are always a lot worse than expected, but I had enough savings from the hedge fund days to hold out that far.
It's January. I enjoy the work a lot more than I have at prior companies. The problem is that I have no control over the funding situation, and it's started to scare the shit out of me the minute we crossed into 2009. I only have 5-7 months of living expenses now (fuck New York's ridiculous housing costs). I honestly have no idea what I'll do if this doesn't pan out. I don't want to go back to Wall Street and might not be able to (there may not be a Wall Street). With an imploded economy, even a traditional job search is going to be risky and time-consuming. I don't have any contacts that could lead into consulting projects, and taking a typical software job (Java to implement some business guy's lame vision) is about as palatable as selling out and getting an MBA. I want to stay in technology, but working on cool projects and using decent languages (e.g. Lisp, ML, Haskell... or Python/Ruby at the very least).
If the startup gets funding, and it probably will, I'm fine. However, I'm worried about that 1-in-20 (?) chance that we don't manage to line up funding in time, in which I need to do a crash job search in an imploded economy and on shaky ground (and I don't want to do any job search, because I really like the startup and the projects I am working on). It's getting to the point where I hate spending money and I'm delaying necessary expenditures.
So, I'm staring down a 1-in-10 or 1-in-20 risk of utter disaster and now that it's 2009 I'm starting to get scared. Has anyone here been through disaster before? How did it pan out? <comment><USER2> _I'm worried about that 1-in-20 (?) chance that we don't manage to line up funding in time_

You should be worried -- and if I were you I'd re-evaluate your odds. My guess is that a startup which would print money would still have more than a 1-in-20 chance of failing to get funding at the moment.

Assuming you definitely want to continue with this startup (and think about that carefully -- sometimes there's a reason why startups don't get funded), I recommend doing everything you can to lower your costs. Yes, including moving out of NYC: While gravitycop makes a good point about location being important for getting funding, it sounds like you're not the person who is going after the funding right now (based on the comment about having 'no control')... and while VCs care where a company is based, they aren't going to care much if a few employees live in the suburbs.

<comment><USER3> Your startup doesn't have a 19 in 20 shot of being funded AFTER you get a term sheet.

<comment><USER4> I realize this is a cheap shot... but... 95% probability of a startup being funded? You didn't work on the software that rated mortgage default probabilities, did you?

<comment><USER3> creditdefaultswap.com baby. Web 2.0 mortgage derivatives.

Elevator pitch: It's like Flickr for collateralized debt obligations.

<comment><USER4> I think you should have just kept that idea quietly to yourself. Forever.

<comment><USER3> Don't worry, when I get rich off of it, I'll tell everyone you inspired the idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Something that I haven't seen mentioned: deferred pay is a huge problem in startups. Essentially, the founders are asking you to take venture risk with your salary, but they're not compensating you for that risk (I'm assuming they're not paying you 30% interest on that deferred amount.)

Letting them defer your pay actually encourages them to wait as long as possible before raising a new round of funding, because the money you're lending them is far cheaper (financially) than the money they would get from an investor. Meanwhile, the longer employees work, ringing up deferred comp, the more desperate they get to have the company succeed in raising its next round.

It's a really, really bad combination.

I think the rule has to be, if you're an employee, you should expect to get paid like an employee (i.e. now.) If you are taking risk like a founder, you should get equitized like one, not simply "repaid" your deferred comp. Put another way: you're basically investing that deferred comp in the business, but you're not getting paid for taking that very large risk with your money.

<comment><USER6> This is really good advice, I think it understates the downside risk of deferred compensation.

The investors may balk at applying their funds to deferred compensation, asking the founders to re-spin the employment agreement to convert the deferred compensation to common (or options) prior to the investment, further diluting and deferring it.

Why would the founders do that? They would be faced with a choice of no funding or new funding applied to salaries going forward.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > I don't have any contacts that could lead into consulting projects

This is the problem! You need to do some networking; and I don't mean in some sleazy marketroid way.

Go to barcamps, meetups, language groups, hacker groups, photo meetups, or whatever floats your boat. Get people's twitter names and keep up conversations with them. Go to the bar with them occasionally. Make friends.

If you do this for 5-7 months I guarantee you'll have plenty of connections by the time you need to get a job, and you won't have to spend any of your work time doing it.

<comment><USER8> Great advice.

Actually, it doesn't even take 5-7 months. Just start e-mailing people working on stuff you like. Go to a bar camp and be above average socially, get a speaking gig there if possible. You'll be good to go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> cut your living expenses...have a car? sell it for a beater. Have high rent? Move to Bronx or Brooklyn or Queens or Jersey City(if your work is close to penn station). Or if your parents live locally, move in with them(I did this). Switch to a ramen diet....stop going out, stop buying shit. Stretch every penny. You won't believe how little you can live on, if you cut out all the bullshit.

Start working on your contacts...you have 7 months to build connections...so that if shit hits the fan, you have somewhere to go fast.

<comment><USER10> It's likely he doesn't have a car, most New Yorkers don't. I'd also recommend switching to a fruits and vegetables diet, instead of ramen. There are enough dedicated fruit stores in New York that make fruits and vegetables cheaper and healthier than ramen. In New York, an example of this kind of store would be "Three Guys From Brooklyn", or "Circus Fruits". With these sorts of stores you can easily bring your food expenses below $60 a month while maintaining a healthy diet.

<comment><USER11> _With these sorts of stores you can easily bring your food expenses below $60 a month while maintaining a healthy diet._

Is that a typo? $60/mo eating fruits and veggies? I live in SF and I have a hard time imagining doing that here, let along NYC...

<comment><USER12> You have to know where to go, what to buy, and what to cook.

I've been a vegan for a number of years now and I could live off $60/mo if I wanted to. The main point is convenience. If you don't want the effort of preparing food then it costs a lot more. Simple staples like lentals, rice, etc supplemented with vegetables is a crazy cheap way to eat.

In SF districts like the mission it's easy to get cheap fresh fruit and vegetables. A lot of it is supply and demand. If you shop at Safeway they have an expectation about your spending and price accordingly.

If you are trying save every penny shop where other people who have no money shop. That probably means neighborhoods you might avoid otherwise.

<comment><USER13> Please, tell me some of your secrets. I'm interested in cheap living/eating. :)

<comment><USER14> Sounds like an excellent topic for a blog post - very hacker related, I would think.

<comment><USER15> Stick to Superfoods!

Quinoa, Lentils, fresh veggies.

Jason Rohrer (of fame with game programmers) eats lentils for lunch every day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What will you do after 5-7 months? If your money did actually run out what would you do?

Whatever that is - do it now, not in 5-7 months.

For example: say you'd stop paying rent, and get evicted, where would you go? Whereever that is - go there now. What else would you stop paying for? Phone? Cable? Pretend you have no money, and act that way.

As a side suggestion to where to live, see if you can live in the startups building (do they have an office they can give you?), and put your stuff in storage.

<comment><USER17> Great advice. A friend was in a similar situation. I started suggesting he go frugal on everything. When you are running out of gas 5-7 months will happen in a jiffy. Ensure you have more run way like get the 5-7 to 10-12 at least and then either do one of these:

a) Leave everything and bet on getting funds

b) Ditch funds and bet on execution to start breaking even on operations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Relax. I have no problem living in New York on $3K/month gross pay. That's 36K/year. Since you are working at this startup for essentially free, you should be able to convince them that you actually can only afford to work there 3-4 days/week as opposed to 5-7 which is what you are probably doing right now. If you free up some time, you will be able to find some temporary/part-time consulting work doing database admin and website updates. Meeting people that need this type of work need is relatively easy - craigslist, twitter, meetup, etc. as other posters have indicated. The only thing that you might compromise on is how much sleep you are getting, but from the sound of it, that's not a major issue for you right now.

<comment><USER19> If he were to take your advice, maybe you could elaborate on the less obvious ways of saving money?

<comment><USER18> I should probably qualify my original post by saying that I don't think I could live on 36K/year in NYC indefinitely. If I didn't have the low-paying job, my runway would disappear in 5-6 months just like the OP. As it stands, I take about $250 out of my runway a month, which means it will last much longer.

I don't really know of "less obvious ways" - what I do seems to me fairly obvious.

1) Rent - I pay $620 a month for a room in Brooklyn that fits my needs in a large apartment where a lot of other people live that's 20 minutes away on the subway from Manhattan (where I would assume the OP works). That's fairly low by anyone's standards, and I intend to keep it that way. I know that if I were to move further out (or, let's say, move out of NYC) I would be able to get a larger place for that kind of money - but the point is that I don't need a larger place, so the "per-square-foot ratio" doesn't bother me at all. I have my own room. Ambient noise coming from the living room or from someone else's room is sometimes an issue (I live with musicians). Earplugs or headphones solve that.

The utilities are split between everyone in the house, the addition is fairly negligible.

1a) This is a somewhat unhelpful generalization, but it has been my experience that someone who was working for a hedge fund in New York is usually not the type of guy that will easily get along with a bunch of pot-smoking musicians that live in a recently gentrified but still somewhat ghetto neighborhood in Brooklyn. However, the OP left and became an entrepreneur, so his soul may still be intact.

2) Food - there was a post sometime ago on how do startups minimize on food expenses. I believe PG's quote was "Rice and beans. There's about 1000 variations".

3) Dating - don't go to expensive restaurants where you are going to lose $150 in one night. A coffee in a local coffee-shop and a walk in the park or on the riverfront - $10, and you are going to have a better time anyway.

4) Sell all your old computer equipment. That old IBM X31 sitting on your bottom shelf that you replaced with the MacBook Pro? You can get around $300 for it on craigslist or ebay.

5) This is an anti-saving tip, but will work in your favor in the end - don't compromise on health insurance.

6) Clothing - I have maybe 2 or 3 outfits that are "date" or "interview" worthy. The rest are crappy t-shirts that I have from college.

There's no silver bullet, to paraphrase Brooks. It's like optimizing your software: you look at what your most expensive expenditures are (profiling) and you try to minimize each one of them in order.

<comment><USER20> Beans and rice are fine for awhile. But when you get hungry for meat, find a park, lay out a net and a handful of that yummy cooked rice. Those city pigeons will gather round. They are very fat and tasty! Yummm! Relevant posts:

[http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/07/does-pigeon- mea.h...](http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/07/does-pigeon-mea.html)

Or, if you don't want to be caught with a net see [http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/127077/a_profession...](http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/127077/a_professionals_guide_to_catching_pigeons.html?page=2)

And here are some posts on trapping, dressing and cooking them: <http://www.survivalistboards.com/showthread.php?p=206758>

One post says pigeons were good city fare during the Great Depression.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Take a deep breath and relax. You've chosen to be an entrepreneur because you can't stand working in the 9-5 slave trade. Good choice. You are taking a big risk. It's exciting, it's scary, it makes you feel alive! What a great feeling.

Let's take a worst case scenario. The company fails, you lose your apartment and car and are unemployed with no money. What then?

Well, you have a million choices. You are young, smart and live in America. You wake up the next morning at your parents house and go get a job at Home Depot or 7-11 to make ends meet (or back to wall street if you can stomach it), you start saving and planning your next venture and work your way from there. You've gained valuable experience and you are _living your dream_ , something that most people _never_ do.

In the mean time, enjoy yourself. Feel the fear, which you will, and forge ahead. In your spare time keep working on improving your skills. Listen to CDs by Anthony Robbins for encouragement and strength. It sounds like you are doing great and remember, the bigger the risk, the bigger the reward. Don't fear failure, that's just part of the ride.

</comment><comment><USER22> You should assume funding will not happen. Follow your intuition here. And then calm down and realize that 5-7 months of living expenses isn't exactly scraping by. Follow everyone else's advice on cutting costs, and look for part-time work.

Your deeper problem is the expectation that someone else will invest in a company with a large team, obligations to cover back pay, several months of development behind it, and no road map to profitability. If your company is pinning its hopes on a long shot instead of figuring out how to get a revenue stream, that is your problem right there. How it gets solved depends on the company. The standard way is called bankruptcy.

<comment><USER23> > You should assume funding will not happen. Follow your intuition here.

That's following your intuition, not his. I agree with yours, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> You say you don't have any control over the funding, and you didn't mention how large the start-up is, but maybe this is somewhere you could take some initiative. Would the founders let you get involved in the funding?

The reason I ask is that I assume from your experience with the Hedge Fund, that you probably have more financial expertise and contacts than the founders. Maybe they even cut you in for more.

</comment><comment><USER25> I can hardly speak for everybody, but I know for sure: 1) life is too short just to work for nothing 2) shit happens 3) may be your business model need to be concentrated on profit now, less on investment

</comment><comment><USER26> Aside from the obvious advice to keep your expenses as low as possible, I think you might consider a change in attitude. You are playing a game with a positive expected value, but the rules of the game are such that payoffs are very large and very rare (if you've read The Black Swan, think Extremistan). Unfortunately, the game of "paying my rent check" and "eating on a daily basis" follows a different set of rules. You've been allowed the privilege of taking a risk due to your savings; once they are gone you will be playing a different game. When that time comes you may just decide that "some business guy's lame vision" is a decent alternative to being hungry on the streets coding Haskell. The choice is up to you.

Also, stop feeling scared and terrified (your words). These emotions are not helping you in any way.

</comment><comment><USER27> Rule 1. Work for people who can pay.

Rule 2. See rule 1.

</comment><comment><USER28> Move to Thailand and chill for awhile. It will help you get your priorities back in line and that 5-7 months (if based on NYC living expenses) could last a few years.

<comment><USER29> What about the visa? My experience is that cheap countries get incredibly expensive if you need broadband and a reasonably secure neighbourhood. Or are you talking about living in a hotel on a tourist visa? That only works for 3 to 6 months and I'm not sure it's possible continue working for a NY startup whilst in Thailand.

<comment><USER28> We stayed in Chaing Mai for about a month, had broadband access. The people we were staying with were renting a large house for about $400 a month. You can take a weekend trip to Cambodia or Vietnam and get a renewed visa when you come back. Or travel around SE Asia in general. You can do that indefinitely and it's quite cheap, even in relatively urban areas. Definitely cheaper than NYC(!)

<comment><USER29> OK, but if you're only staying for a month, the air fare is going to ruin your budget.

<comment><USER28> It's not that bad. I think we flew for about $80 round trip. There's always the trains too. :-)

<comment><USER29> $80 is indeed great but the train is much more exciting ;-)

<comment><USER30> Why not try India instead? The national language is English so it should be of little problem, plus everything there is super cheap. Buy a bicycle for $10 brand new and there's your transportation.

<comment><USER29> How much does it cost to rent a small appartment with broadband in a secure neighbourhood in India?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> You could have mentioned what your startup was. Free publicity. Also, people here might provide some input about whether the odds of getting funding really are 90-95% for your type of startup.

I strongly recommend spending part of your time (one or two days a week) looking for a job to hedge your bets.

</comment><comment><USER32> If your current startup is 5-7 months away from a funding event (which may get less and less likely as the recession grinds on), consider that you may just be in the wrong startup: 3 months could be enough time to jump start something else that could actually be cash flow positive.

The standard answer, to consult, is probably the right one, and you are being wildly pessimistic about your chances of finding a sustaining consulting project. But once you start down that road, your current startup will suffer for it.

</comment><comment><USER33> As everyone else has said, don't bank on funding.

I think starting to put feelers out for consulting work is probably the best strategy. Even though we've got a bit more runway, some customers and some VCs that have approached us, I've been trying to do the same for the _what if_ case.

The upshot is if you can organize enough cash to keep yourself running through the downturn and do just enough consulting to stay afloat and start growing a revenue stream, if your company is still alive on the other side of this downturn it'll have cleared out a lot of the market and it'll put you in a pretty good position to try to raise a round if things are rosier in a year or so or if you can keep costs low to make a transition to living off of the revenue.

That's been the focus of the planning that I've been doing for us at the moment: "How do we make sure that we're alive in a year, and how much revenue will we need at that point to be self-sustaining."

</comment><comment><USER34> Another option is to interview at some companies with the understanding that you'd only be available after, say, March. What are your skills? (I can try to see if people at my work are interested).

<comment><USER6> Interview and get the offer, then you can make a decision about whether to accept.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Finding contract work is not so much work, especially if you are willing to code in Java. Personally I dread the day when I will have to do so again, but it is better as starving. Plus, 3 to 4 months can pay for the whole year.

Just check the typical sites, I had good experiences with jobserve.co.uk (they don't only cover the UK - but I am in Europe/Germany).

iPhone contracting seems to be quite popular atm, too. If you already have a Mac, might be worth looking into. Personally I still shun the investment of getting a Mac+iPod touch.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you use Clojure for the Java work? I'd only do Java projects if I could use Clojure as often as humanly possible.

<comment><USER35> In general I would say no, but you can always get lucky and hit on a "progressive" Java project.

I totally feel with you, but seriously, Java is not so bad that I would rather starve or freeze to death than code in Java.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> 5-7 months savings is above average I would guess. Here's what I recommend:

1 - Get out of NYC fast!! Find the cheapest place you find comfortable and your 5-7 months savings will get you 12+ months. This does not need to be in the U.S.

2 - So you like coding? Ok, but what if for the next 5 years the world won't pay too well for coding? Are you prepared to get into other things?

3 - Don't Panic! Seriously. This is life, stuff happens. Find other things that allow you to be happy. Be positive and start living CHEAP!!!

<comment><USER37> _1 - Get out of NYC fast!!_

How is he supposed to get funding, if he does that?

<http://paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html>

 _2\. Bad Location

Startups prosper in some places and not others. [...] It's an interesting question why cities become startup hubs, but the reason startups prosper in them is probably the same as it is for any industry: that's where the experts are. Standards are higher; people are more sympathetic to what you're doing; the kind of people you want to hire want to live there; supporting industries are there; the people you run into in chance meetings are in the same business._

-

<http://paulgraham.com/startuphubs.html>

 _In addition to the concentration that comes from specialization, startup hubs are also markets. And markets are usually centralized. Even now, when traders could be anywhere, they cluster in a few cities. It's hard to say exactly what it is about face to face contact that makes deals happen, but whatever it is, it hasn't yet been duplicated by technology._

<comment><USER9> that advice is for founders....which he is not

<comment><USER37> OK. I stand corrected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> There's a lot of good advice here from other posters on living frugally which is all good stuff and I highly recommend you take what people have said on board about living cheaper. I'd like to make a comment about your situation as a whole.

You left your job in April, that's May through to January where you've had no salary. 8 months. You're looking at 'another 5-7 months' before funding in a recession. In effect, what you're saying is that you're looking at 12 months of unpaid work and wiping out your savings in the middle of an economic downturn in the hope that you'll find a business investor who has the cash to fund your deferred salaries, anyone elses deferred salaries (and if you're the only one then you need to change that) as well as investment moving forward.

In any economic climate what you're suggesting doesn't make sense to an investor, you need to either write that entire year's salary off or drastically change what you're doing. An investor is not there to fund salaries, especially backdated ones. If you want to move forward, you need to find a revenue stream. If you can't find a revenue stream but want to stay involved then you need to find a job and cut your involvement back.

The suggestion about Thailand makes a lot more sense than it first seems. Moving to somewhere that costs a lot less to live with your current 5-7months of new york money will give you a hefty safety net, you could take interesting projects on as and when and could possibly retain some involvement in the startup working from somewhere like Thailand, Morocco, Mexico or even the mid- west.

I hope it works out for you, if you are determined to keep at this project full time unpaid then you need to move out of NYC sooner rather than later. I would advise that you reconsider your level of involvement as this is not a profitable or revenue generating opportunity, which is what you need right now and over the coming year.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't mean to imply that I'm 5-7 months from a funding event. I have 5-7 months left of savings. I keep hearing that funding prospects look good, but I don't know for sure because I'm not directly involved in the fundraising, which is good, because I'd probably have an aneurysm if I had to deal with that. I'd rather work on Wall Street than be trying to raise money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I'd try to contact other startups and see if they need freelance work done. Instead of looking for another job, continue doing what you're doing and work part-time elsewhere.

Email other startups and ask if they're hiring, tell them about your situation and if you can pull your weight and do what's required I'm sure you'll have a job in no time.

Can't think of any startups off the top of your head? Use startupwarrior.com and map some that are close to you and start calling/emailing.

</comment><comment><USER15> Damn. You must have been making a ton of dough to save that much money. Kudos to you. I think I've got about a 1 month buffer, maybe 2.

You can survive on Lentils and rice, toss in a little Quinoa and a lime and you could go a few years on pennies. Of course, what you are outlining is that you have a life to attend to.

Well, then get a job that pays or demand pay from your current job.

</comment><comment> puzzle-out Are you fearful of crashing and burning financially or just uncomfortable with the uncertainty of the situation? (or both) The startup scene is certainly uncertain at the moment - then again, uncertainty is its defining experience anyhow. Learn to live with uncertainty - balance your work life with things you know you enjoy and that are always there.

</comment><comment><USER40> One thing you could start doing now is lining up potential alternative jobs. You could even start working part-time somewhere else. One good thing about startups is that they can be flexible about things like that. And the founders who recruited you can hardly blame you.

<comment><AUTHOR> How do you find (decent) part-time work in technology? That may be what I have to do, but I have no idea how to go about it.

<comment><USER41> Ask friends. If you don't have friends in the local tech community, find out what tech groups there are in your area and visit them. I don't know about New York, but in Seattle there are dozens focused on every aspect of technology you can imagine (Mac programming, Perl, PHP, security, blogging, computer networking, business networking, et cetera).

I moved to Seattle two years ago and knew virtually nobody. I met a lot of people through local groups like SaturdayHouse, Six Hour Startup, and nPost, got to know people, and even found a job through a friend of a friend.

It can be difficult and take time to find the kind of employment that pays and allows you the freedom to do what you love, but it is possible. I wish you much luck.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I do believe there are minimum wage laws designed to protect foolish people from such situations.

</comment><comment><USER43> Do you have any startup ideas? You could try starting your own thing via NYC Seed.

</comment><comment><USER44> You're an idiot for not staying and saving more money without being certain you had other work available. Sorry, just saying. I have one month of living expenses left involuntarily. Twit.

</comment><comment><USER45> Forget about your start-up and live it up for 1 month!</comment>


Scientists closer to developing invisibility cloak  - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080811/ap_on_sc/sci_invisibility_cloak

<comment><USER2> What we have here is the textbook example of why we don't see many science articles getting voted up on news.yc.

\- Linkbait-flavored, exaggerated, inaccurate headline stolen from Harry Potter.

\- Results presented out of context. How significant an advance is this? What exactly can I do with it? Who else is working on it?

\- Lame, vague description of technology at a level that wouldn't satisfy a curious fourth grader.

\- Reference (but no link) to papers in subscription-only journals that nobody can afford.

What a waste of five minutes.

<comment><USER3> I think we need high quality science posts, not any ones. I think we used to have some of those.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=272266></comment>


Facebook marketing? Don't bother, says new report - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/id/101151565 <comment><USER2> We found Facebook PPC ads to be about twice as expensive as they are worth, and well under-performing Google. We shut it down. But that was based on direct conversions; I guess if you're doing branding you might have a different calculus.

But I'm not surprised to find that other companies don't find it worthwhile either. I'm not putting much effort into the "free" art of FB marketing either.

<comment><USER3> Hmm, this is interesting. What we've found is the direct opposite. Facebook is 4 times cheaper than Google for us. But I suppose the nature of our companies are different. We're in the movie industry and Google search on movies that were released a couple of months ago are almost always queries looking for pirated sources.

<comment><USER2> Interesting. I can imagine how ads on such searches would do poorly!

We sell custom bottle caps, and usually people searching for terms in that area are looking for something like us (or us in particular) and are ready to buy. So search advertising is good for us; but even targeted to home brewers we didn't get much traction off Facebook, where people aren't usually looking to buy. It was worth a try, but not a good fit for us. I do think it has some general branding/awareness use, but that's hard to quantify, and we don't really need that right now, certainly at FB's prices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The big take from this is not the effectiveness of Facebook for marketing, since it can and is done successfully, but rather a rant by marketers on the amount of exposure Facebook's algorithm gives them.

The situation is that brands small and large spent lots of money building up a following, but when they post something it only gets exposed to a fraction of the followers. The argument is, why should I spend money getting 100k followers if you only show my posts to 15k (or less) of them at any given time.

On one side, more brand exposure degrades the Facebook experience from ad inundation, on the other side marketers are not seeing the value for time/money invested.

This has always been the thorn in the side of not just Facebook, but most ad driven revenue models. Since Facebook is a social experience it's a challenge that's tricky to navigate, they can't exactly bend over to marketing products and services, that would be a disaster, but the tools and feedback for marketers leaves a lot to be desired.

<comment><USER5> Indeed. There's nothing wrong with Facebook as an advertising channel, when used effectively and with expectations properly calibrated.

There's a _lot_ wrong with blindly throwing money at a Facebook "fan page" and an ostensible following, expecting miracles to happen and any of those followers to care. (There's also a problem involved in paying for the fans, then reaching a fraction of them with each update -- but that's the nature of how Facebook works, and that shouldn't have been a mystery to most marketers for quite some time now.)

What we're experiencing right now _isn 't_ a "revolution" in advertising, as the article suggests. But then again, it's the marketers' fault for expecting there to have been one in the first place. They bought, traded, and sold the hype. Big brands made relatively blind, multi-million-dollar commitments to Facebook and other social channels before stopping to think about what, exactly, they were hoping to achieve.

What those brands are learning today: there's no such thing as a magic bullet. There's no such thing as a free lunch. There's no such thing as a "revolution" in marketing. Nothing will allow you to grow a fanbase, increase engagement, and sell more products without an ounce of forethought and hard work.

Facebook is a channel, like any other. It can be a very effective channel. But like any channel, it needs to be thought through, analyzed, and used properly. The blind honeymoon is over. The platform's usefulness remains.

<comment><USER6> >> There's a lot wrong with blindly throwing money at a Facebook "fan page" and an ostensible following, expecting miracles to happen and any of those followers to care.

This has actually been by far the worst way of making money off of Facebook in my experience - and I do this full time.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. The whole "fan page" thing can be a total money pit unless a marketer knows exactly what he's trying to get from the investment.

Conversely, I've had _fantastic_ results from targeted ad buys on Facebook. In particular, mobile app install buys. Great results, decent tracking, easy to analyze from an ROI and LTV standpoint.

Just because you can target people by #anything doesn't mean they'll care about your content. Your content has to _fit_ what you're targeting and whom you're targeting. I feel as though a lot of brand marketers -- ordinarily extremely smart people -- lost their senses about this when they first jumped on the Facebook bandwagon. I've seen some very sophisticated AdWords buyers treat Facebook like a Magic 8 Ball, for instance. It blows my mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A few things:

1) Facebook allows you to do some ridiculous targeting, that when combined with retargeting can create some powerful stuff. Check out Marty Weintraub and your head will explode.

2) Our Facebook ads (esp. retargeting w/perfect audience in the news feed) work far better than Google and Goog retargeting.

3) We've found Facebook ads to be great re-engagement tools. People who created an account but have been in-active or didn't complete setup are re- engaging via Facebook ads, leading to more active users.

YMMV of course, and being dumb with any ad dollars is always a bad idea—regardless of platform.

<comment><USER3> Yes, exactly! I'll like to add a few more points.

\- The approval process for FB ads is dead simple. Ads are usually approved in minutes vs Google day(s) long wait. The longest it'll probably take is a 1 to 2 hours (usually as a result of a new image upload). This makes it very easy to iterate and improve upon your result

\- FB gives pricing flexibility. You can choose whether the objective is for branding (CPM) or if you're looking for conversion (CPC, CPA). The ad units lets you focus on your objective

<comment><USER7> Agreed. I also like the bulk uploader and power editor. It's easy to launch 200 variations of ads in a matter of minutes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Their argument that their targeting creates massive value is only correct so long as their competitors don't catch up. Linkedin, though, is building out its advertising tools and API and allows for really good targeting based on more accurate job positions than Facebook can provide, which is often more useful.

If a company pays for their facebook likes through advertising, why should they then need to pay again to advertise to this same group of people with a sponsored post? It really changes the ROI of a facebook like.

<comment><USER9> Google Ads target people who can't tell the difference between search results and ads.

LinkedIn succeeds because they have ads people actually want to click—virtually everyone needs employment, and generally jobs are far more valuable than anything else advertised online. Any given ad for employment will be many, many, many times more interesting to any given person than any given ad on the internet will be.

Facebook has very little worth selling to a young audience that will never click online ads. Who goes to Facebook to find ways to spend money? It's a social network with little relevance to commercial interests (for end users).

Market-specific businesses will almost always beat out the special interests—facebook would probably get more money selling users to specialized advertising customers on demand, or even getting users to pay to make ads/stupid "features" (Games! Anything involving microtransactions! Bugging me to like things I have no desire to like!) go away.

Speaking of which, how is the model of pay-to-remove-ads not more prevalent? Surely it wouldn't REDUCE profits.

<comment><USER10> Well, I think Facebook would have a hard time making the transition from advertisers being their customers to users being their customers. They'd have to listen to their users if they did that. That sounds expensive.

<comment><USER9> > They'd have to listen to their users if they did that. That sounds > expensive.

You know what else is expensive? When everyone hates your brand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Facebook pay per click remains a mystery to me. We are huge PPC media buyers, but we gave up on Facebook a long time ago. We've experimented with it over the last year or so when new features were implemented, but in general, it's at the very bottom of our marketing budget as well. I used to think it was something we were doing wrong, but this report suggests a lot of people aren't finding value there as well.

It really seems that when people are on Facebook, the one and only thing they pay attention to is their friends and personal interests, and it's very difficult for ads to convert that interest.

<comment><USER12> What industry are you in?

<comment><USER11> We think it has a lot to do with our demographic. We're a research and publishing company and our customers are for the most part consumers over the age of 35. With that being said, I find it hard to believe our demographic should be a hindrance, considering FB is massive and now spans the general population. Furthermore, there are tons of options and means to target our specific demographics. Yet FB leads have the lowest conversion rates seen anywhere and in general every attempt at using the system fails. (once again, we are highly experienced PPC buyers)

Either way, we're fine spending our budgets elsewhere and understand that FB is working miracles for others. We've just always been vexed by the FB advertising hype and this report helps to validate for us that not all markets work for everyone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Ha.

I've been an affiliate marketeer for quite some time now, doing FB ads and I can tell you, FB ads DO work: both for the affiliate and the advertiser.

Last month I generated around 50K rev in comisions (around 60% profit) and the advertiser even increased my payout because the leads are converting to paying users.

Of course this is not always the case, but in general they do work and quite good I might say.

</comment><comment><USER6> This report is so wrong it's painful. "Likes" are great, but that's not the most valuable ad type on Facebook. In fact, in our most successful ads, I intentionally exclude people who have liked us (why would I pay to reach people who already know who we are?). Facebook ads have been the single biggest win for us of the past year, as we are seeing 80% of our Facebook customers are new to us.

A useful framework I have used to explain to people the value of Facebook advertising is to imagine the internet as a hardware store. Someone goes to the hardware store because they need a hammer. Google would be the aisles with signs and directions to get there. Once they are there, and waiting to check out, they see things like gum, or energy drinks, or keys, etc., that they needed to be reminded that they wanted. Facebook is more like the checkout stand, as it can remind or introduce impulse purchases that the intent leveraged by Google intentionally excludes.

Facebook is also much more similar to hyper-targeted television ads.

</comment><comment><USER14> Im going to comment on the model for Facebook and how it seems unnatural and forced. With Google, the user has indicated intent via a search or visiting some site of interest. Google associates ads based on the content which is based on the users intent to find information.

Facebook for their newsfeed and ads on the right seemed to inject ads right into content and force some portion of its users to see them. The user likely never wanted or had any intent on seeing anything but friends posts. Thus its not surprising many users may not participate with clicks. Its interesting from the article on bus insider that the click thru rate is high for news feeds. I suspect that forcing ads in the middle of a friend to friend conversation gets the users attention and some clicks. However, is it what a user really wanted to do in the news feed. The user wants friend-to-friend information. Facebook for the news feed ad inclusion reminds me of TV infomercial or tv ads but on a channel that the user themselves value. A bad experience overall.

What can drive real conversions is user intent. A user wants to find information or opts in to an ad channel, then you'll get very good click thrus and conversions. Thats why i like Google's model so much. However, google suffers from a hit or miss approach on actual content and its value. however, as we know, the page rank/etc... tries to make computers get a good match.

i think if we can have a social fabric that is truely social and valuable and not polluted by injected ads that may be very very valuable. I think Facebook could suffer a demise more and more for this ad strategy they have. Ads, promotions, attractions should be a fun and willing experience not a forced one. Perhaps this is an idealist view. comments ?

</comment><comment><USER15> Yes. Facebook marketing is dead. You shouldn't even try it and just go to other places. It's literally impossible to get a positive ROI there so just move along, nothing to see here.

</comment><comment><USER16> Hiring people that have no idea how to market: Dont bother says me.

I know people cleaning house marketing there. Groupon is doing an exceptional job for example.

</comment><comment><USER17> The difference between the top and bottom result in the survey is 0.3 on a scale of 5. Given the small sample size of most survey research my hunch is that these differences are directional only.

Here is the original report:

[http://blogs.forrester.com/nate_elliott/13-10-28-an_open_let...](http://blogs.forrester.com/nate_elliott/13-10-28-an_open_letter_to_mark_zuckerberg)

</comment><comment><USER6> One problem I see with people bashing Facebook ads is that it is definitely easy to burn money quickly on Facebook chasing things that seem profitable. For example, we found some very small targeting groups that generated extremely good CPAs initially, but they were so small that once we saturated them, our overall CPA skyrocketed. Once we established what was risky and what was less risky, we've been able to keep our numbers strong - mainly by using Custom Audiences, lookalike audiences, and competitor segments. Facebook also takes much more active management in terms of turning ads on and off than SEM ads. However, a huge pain point for those of us in places where we seem to have come close to maxing out growth from search. Facebook has helped us address this, since it seems like there is a substantial portion of Facebook users who simply haven't heard of us, and Facebook is way cheaper than TV ads.

</comment><comment><USER18> Facebook marketing is great for some things and horrible for others. It is good for building up a brand that has a cool image. Here is an easy test, would the thing you are advertising interest somebody at a party, or would you promote it to your friends as something interesting or valuable without receiving any payment in return? Is it something that has intrinsic social value, or is it just a product that you are trying to spam people with? I have seen real results in FB advertising for building up artists and musicians and growing their own fan base. But, for selling products it has not worked out for me to be a good ROI.

</comment><comment><USER19> As someone with an array of absolutely massive fan pages (> 3 million fans on some), that are completely legitimate, I'm getting a viewing percent of < 1%. Unpaid marketing on Facebook is useless. It feels similar to extortion that I've built up so many people who have specifically asked to receive information about my websites/products via Facebook and Facebook wants to charge me over $5,000 PER status update just to reach MOST of my fans. I've learned my lesson on investing into the Facebook platform

</comment><comment><USER20> Is Facebook vulnerable to people not taking Facebook and its 'likes' seriously anymore? I've started liking every page that is 'suggested' by Facebook only because I've grown bored with Facebook and was curious what result this would have. I started thinking about the implications of this becoming a trend and it seems Facebook would lose most of its value to brands and companies if Facebook 'likes' stopped corresponding to real world 'likes'.

</comment><comment><USER21> "Everyone who clicks the 'like' button on a brand's Facebook page volunteers to receive that brand's messages — but on average, (Facebook) only shows each brand's posts to 16 percent of its fans,"

This is due to the way EdgeRank works - you get low exposure if you make page posts that do not get viral uptake. I know people that routinely get over 70% engagement because they make content that people, you know, _like_.

<comment><USER3> There is a problem with a focus on getting "likes". It doesn't convert. Neither does it increase sales. It's a vanity metric. I just wrote a post to explain how small of a mileage like actually brings for the effort exerted. [http://thomasdiong.com/post/65443615643/social-media- vanity-...](http://thomasdiong.com/post/65443615643/social-media-vanity- metrics)

<comment><USER21> I've never pushed for a focus on getting likes; instead, it is just one stage in the conversion funnel.

I consider them akin to email addresses, just with a much more variable ROI. You do have to manage your fan base, cultivate it and engage it as you would a large mailing list. They are definitely not a direct revenue driver though.

As an affiliate I've not used FB pages to profit, but I've got a few friends in the industry that have pages with massive followings. They are very skilled at monetizing their followers, but it is also an extremely tough thing to do. It is definitely not for the faint of heart - or wallet :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The problem is user commercial intent: "I need to spent $3600 on a new thing for my thing. I'd better search the web with Google to find it." "I need to find out what my ex-girl friend did last Saturday. I'd better go to Facebook."

The average Facebook cost per click is about $0.80. I would be a buyer at $0.04 cost per click.

</comment><comment><USER23> I would be shocked if those survey results were statistically different from "the same." The spread from the top (YouTube) to the bottom (Facebook) is 0.11 on a 1-5 scale, with a sample size of 395.

If I assume a std deviation of 1 (which seems low), that's 2-sigma, total, top-to-bottom.

</comment><comment><USER24> Facebook retargeting and general CPM advertising works well, but don't bother trying to build your fan page likes/numbers.

FWIW, we spend about $40/month getting to 1k+ likes, and only 35-50 people, on average, see our non-boosted posts.

To be frank, it really pisses me off.

</comment><comment><USER12> Shameless plug, my employer has done pretty well with direct marketing on Facebook, which from this thread seems to be way more common here than it is elsewhere (I guess branding's more corporate?) So if you're curious shoot me an email (it's on my profile).

</comment><comment><USER25> There is no point to making a forecast unless you either say the "sky is falling" or "utopia ahead" since no one will remember your prediction otherwise. Nuanced predictions are only for those not selling something.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is silly. At Perfect Audience, we have thousands of customers making anywhere from $5-15 for every $1 they spend retargeting on Facebook. Yes, it takes work and some testing. But to say "don't bother" is silly.

<comment><USER27> At the risk of "citation required"... Really, you can show "thousands of customers" who generate up to $15 of income for every dollar spent with you?

<comment><USER26> I won't, but I can, sure. Check out this post on our blog about a guitar teacher using us to sell online lessons through a combination of Facebook ads and banner ads: [http://blog.perfectaudience.com/2013/10/24/retargeting- micro...](http://blog.perfectaudience.com/2013/10/24/retargeting- micropreneurs-online-guitar-teacher-makes-13-every-1-spent-perfect-audience/)

We track sales and conversions for our customers pretty carefully to make sure we're producing results.

Also, I said $5-15 in sales. That's a big spread :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> "Give us $499 to substantiate these inflammatory headlines," says new report

</comment><comment><USER29> Our experience has been that FB ads for a particular service/site work well for about a week, and then the cost quickly rises to the point where it's no longer worth advertising there.

<comment><USER6> That's about right. Their ads do have an insanely short shelf life relative to other paid ads. You have to be aware of this and plan for it. However, an engaging ad will continue serving long after you stop paying for it, which helps mitigate this.</comment></comment>


Slow walking at 45 'a sign of faster ageing' - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-50015982 <comment><USER2> This sounds like one of the billion things correlated with having less money.

[https://www.citylab.com/life/2012/03/why-people-cities- walk-...](https://www.citylab.com/life/2012/03/why-people-cities-walk- fast/1550/)

<comment><USER3> And to g, that statistical construct that's most commonly associated with IQ but also correlates heavily with general health and economic outcomes.

<comment><USER4> Tell me more about _g_.

Google is unsurprisingly being unhelpful.

<comment><USER5> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_\(psychometrics\))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > A number of treatments, from low-calorie diets to taking the drug metformin, > are currently being investigated.

Everything I read about metformin is exciting: cheap, simple structure, causes weight loss, reduced all-cause mortality in diabetics (ie: they studied it long enough to make sure it works, not just to ensure it reduces blood sugar), reduces blood sugar without hypoglycemia and might prevent cancer.

<comment><USER7> Yes, I want to find a doc to prescribe me this and also understands the negatives. Why aren't there more docs doing this kind of stuff? Maybe bc it is not so simple?

<comment><USER8> The side effects can be pretty nasty. I took it for 6 months and the stomach pain and diarrhoea never went away. Berberine however acts on the same pathways as metformin and doesn't cause the side effects. As a bonus you don't need a prescription to take it.

<comment><USER6> > stomach pain and diarrhoea never went away

I always wondered if that's what caused the weight loss: destabilization of the digestive system, so you grow to fear overeating/eating crap.

Dunno how one can say they work on the same pathways: we're not really sure how metformin does its thing.

<comment><USER9> Not necessarily as you describe it, but weight loss might be the result of the microbiota changes induced by metformin.

I never felt digestive issues when taking metformin, only a feeling of having less energy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Full article is available at the Journal of the American Medical Association's website:

[https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2752818)

An interesting take-away not mentioned in the BBC write-up is that the researchers found significant effects as early as three years old, suggesting causal factors found in early childhood or a genetic origin. Perhaps sedentary behavior early in life has long-lasting effects for the CNS?

> Lifelong compromised brain health—including poor neurocognitive functioning > as early as age 3 years and childhood-to-adulthood decline in cognitive > functioning—was associated with slower gait at midlife.

<comment><USER11> This is possible but I'd really like to see twin studies to confirm it, with differences in activity levels between the twins as the variable.

I would suspect there is a genetic mechanism at play too, but at this point I'm spitballing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> At the risk of sounding like confirmation bias, I have found many relatives and friends to adhere to this kind of simple rule. The more agile and active you in middle age, the better your sleep quality probably is, and both of these are a proxy for how well you will age, apart from genes.

<comment><USER13> A researcher from the University of California, San Francisco posed this trivia question at a Q&A event on healthspan... At age 65, what single factor most accurately predicts the likelihood you'll live to age 100. The answer was walking speed (faster is better). He said that this has been shown in multiple studies, but they weren't sure why. Sorry, I don't have a source.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> _"Even at the age of 45, there was a wide variation in walking speeds with the fastest moving at 4m /s at top speed (without running)."_

4m/s? That's 14,4 km/hour. They must have met a racewalker ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_world_records_in_maste...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_world_records_in_masters_athletics#5000_metres_race_walk) says the world record for 45 year old for 5k is 20:28:28. That's almost exactly that speed)

I can surely imagine those walking at those speeds to be healthier than average.

<comment><USER15> I suspect they were mixing units and someone got it wrong. As noted elsewhere, the article is now edited, but it's worth noting that 2 m/s (the value now quoted) is a little over 4 mph.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This reminds me of the "surprising" finding that ability to stand from seated partition without using your hands is associated with dramatically lower chance of dying within 5 years. Of course, this is because anyone likely to die of old age within 5 years is unlikely to be that spry.

<comment><USER17> Correlation doesn't equal causation, in either direction.

It's fashionable to downplay the physical these days, but I think it's reasonable to hypothesize that if you don't maintain your muscle, you reduce quality of life AND increase mortality risk significantly.

<comment><USER18> It's much worse if you can't maintain your muscles, rather than just don't. And older people have a lot of reasons that can happen (my dad degraded like this quickly from cancer we didn't know about at the time).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Study link: [https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2752818)

The study was done in NZ in Dunedin. I wonder how much difference/coorelation there is between locales. I've found that Wellingtonians walk very fast in general - I thought I was a fast walker always passing people in San Francisco, but when I moved to Wellington everybody was passing me.

<comment><USER20> It's amazing that the Dunedin Study is still producing results like this. I wonder why longitudinal studies are not more common now, given that these 900 people have been such a deep source of knowledge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> well I walk much slower since I walk with small children and I guess it took its toll on even when I walk alone. what's the point reversing to your regular high speed when later you need to drag with children? it's just easier to get used to lower speed. many people at 45 could still have like 5yo child (2nd) or even younger or was the study done only on childless people?

</comment><comment><USER22> Sounds like it's a good sign that at 45, I am still annoyed by how slowly everybody else is walking.

</comment><comment><USER23> I walk slower because I have smaller legs.

Pff, but then I can swim faster than quite a lot of younger people, for longer, and daily.

And run.

WTF.

<comment><USER11> >I walk slower

I have bad news for you, friend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> So, if you feel older than you really are, walk faster. Problem solved. Got it.

<comment><USER7> correlation vs causation. If you walk slowly you won't be able to figure it out.

<comment><USER24> My point, albeit made sarcastically, is maybe some people just like to walk slowly. I was taught as a young man that walking slowly is a sign of wisdom and confidence. It means you know where you are going, you left on time, and you're not in a hurry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This shit will not replicate. Classic p-value hacking, if not total fiction, dreamt up to pad chum buckets. It is junk science to the core. I'd bet one thousand dollars that another researcher could wrangle contradictory data with a diametrically opposed result.

This trash infotainment has been selected because it is inconsequential to the point of being astrology. No individual can take this "discovery" and apply it to their daily life, but most importantly, it's been selected such that should any moron try it out on their own, they won't be able cause harm. Perfect fodder for the BBC nanny state media.

So... what's your sign?

<comment><USER26> Your whole post is just an empty argument from authority.

Who are you and why should we just believe what _you_ are saying any more then the study?</comment></comment>


Improbable: enabling the development of large-scale simulated worlds - <AUTHOR> http://cdixon.org/2015/03/24/improbable-enabling-the-development-of-large-scale-simulated-worlds/ <comment><USER2> One of my best friends at university dropped out to work with these guys when they were still < 10 people. I was really perplexed since they were living and working in one of the founder's house, and had no product released, and seemed to be working on something vague and pie-in-the-sky involving gaming. It seemed like a self-indulgent vanity project. There aren't too many legit startups in London, so I didn't expect much and teased him mercilessly that he'd joined a cult.

A year or so later, they'd gotten actual offices and had become something of a phenomenon. People were quitting Google to join them. A pretty famous game developer (creator of Day-Z) was in their office working on his next game. It seemed they'd managed to reach their ambitious technical goals, which was really, really strange and unexpected, but it still didn't click with me that they were doing _well_ , and they were among the most rapidly growing companies in London. I liked the people a lot however, and continued to hang around their offices on Friday just to chat, taking very little interest in their technology.

No point to this story, just that spotting a great company can be hard, even when it's right under your nose. Even more so when it doesn't fit your mental image of what a great company should look like (i.e. not in London, not making video games, etc.)

</comment><comment><USER3> The post is a bit dishonest regarding prior funding and risk.

[http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/mar/24/andreessen...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/mar/24/andreessen- horowitz-london-virtual-reality-startup-improbable)

</comment><comment><USER4> > Improbable was started three years ago […]

That sounds like a wonderful project. Alas, not a lot of details on their website/blog. I found this talk on their Facebook page:

[https://youtu.be/1fpaoKLxSE4](https://youtu.be/1fpaoKLxSE4)

</comment><comment><USER5> Any idea how this works, what technologies, ideas they are using for their spatial logic?

Another project with similar ideas is [http://www.paralleluniverse.co/](http://www.paralleluniverse.co/) . Wonder how it compares ?

(pron you around, have you heard of Improbable before?)

<comment><USER6> I do not know the details, but I do have experience designing spatial game/simulation engines like this and a lot can be inferred from what they have shared. They talk about Scala.

Spatial simulations like this are pretty simple to implement on a custom basis, though I would do it differently than paralleluniverse.co. The dynamic resource scheduling on the servers is the hard part. When I designed simulation systems, the code for the spatial part was semi-custom every time because there was little overhead for that part. Simulations/games use cases allow you to take a lot shortcuts and liberties with the spatial processing and representation that do not work for, say, spatial analytics of the physical world using real-time sensor data.

Dynamically balancing real-time spatial skew under load and failure is tricky. This is a problem that has been solved by a few people before but it is not a trivial piece of engineering and is not really found in the gaming world. The seamless nature of the logical spatial world is a necessary side-effect of how you solve the dynamic rebalancing problem while the system is fully online. That said, it is much easier to implement for a game engine use case than the general use case because the load characteristics are more predictable.

It will be more interesting to see how they make money. I looked at starting a company doing exactly what they are doing a few years ago, we had all the tech for it, but no matter how we looked at it the scalability of the revenue model was pretty suspect. I do wonder how they plan to address that.

While they speculatively suggest using it for more traditional simulation use cases, this type of technology has relatively little value there for reasons somewhat orthogonal to the technology itself (something that is not obvious from the outside looking in).

<comment><USER5> Very interesting stuff. Thanks for responding.

I've thought about this stuff, not as much as you, obviously.

But wonder what kind of shortcuts do you mean. Perhaps that a game world is not necessarily completely uniform and entities are clustered in hubs/plazas/cities rather than say an array of sensors that might be distributed uniformly. So then the world is really a graph of large nodes and edges are portal betwen them.

I guess for a uniform static distribution it is easier as can pre-divide the world into a grid and each server is reponsible for an area. But if distribution is dynamic it will sort of be based on some kind density or clustering. Like say during a particular time a lot entities start gathering in one place (a virtual sporting event) so then there would be a lot of small cells with a server responsible for each cell.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > But it is still difficult to write software that makes efficient use of this > abundant computing.

Really? I'm curious. I would think that there isn't much simulated worlds in games because 1) it costs a lot to produce content for such worlds 2) most of the time it's kind-a useless for the gameplay anyway 3) when it's not, it requires actual simulation ideas which are hard to find and develop. In short, "it's difficult to use the available computing resources" would be the least of the problems I think. Is there a game out there using their tech?

<comment><USER8> Players are the ultimate spanner in the works. Ultima Online famously had lofty ideals about simulation, particularly of ecology, which were abandoned when players were introduced and they promptly murdered everything.

This looks interesting from the point of view of not having to roll your own dynamic spatial load balancing and DB backend for an MMO. There's not really enough information around to know what particularly is unique about their implementation other than they are licensing it to other developers.

The game using it with the most public facing information is Worlds Adrift by Bossa Studios.

<comment><USER9> The realistic economy of UO failed pretty much immediately as well. NPC shop keepers kept actual hours and would only buy/sell things as they needed. This didn't go over well with the newbie who just sewed together 5000 skullcaps and needed to sell them in the off hours.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As someone who is working on an artificial life simulation, I'm drooling at the chance to use this.

</comment><comment><USER11> Sounds similar to Lucidscape ( [http://lucidscape.com/](http://lucidscape.com/) ) which is planned to be open source and have run a test simulation with 10 million entities on 828 servers.

</comment><comment><USER12> "Getting the system to work at scale under real-world conditions is a very hard problem that took the Improbable team years of R&D."

Great, it's working at scale? Okay, where can I go join the other million people playing something powered by it? (I'll go easy and assume that scale = 1/10 of WoW MAU)

They're hardly the first MMO middleware company, but they're definitely the first to receive $100M of funding.

Also don't understand why people keep talking about "parallelizable", when the real issue is latency and accuracy of simulation at scale.

</comment><comment><USER13> congrats, their way of hiring is pretty slick. Well done.

<comment><USER14> I had a crappy experience with their hiring. After delaying my application for months (while they worked on a 'standard test'), they eventually sent me a woeful programming task ("implement a single function in a language of your choice and describe how/why you implemented this way").

I did so, and submitted it. They then emailed me back I had been rejected without any feedback at all, and didn't send me any when I asked for some.</comment></comment>


If it's not in Google, it doesn't exist: Why Google is the gatekeeper for offline commerce too - <AUTHOR> http://www.reputationdefenderblog.com/2008/06/09/if-youre-not-in-google-you-dont-exist/

<comment><AUTHOR> The summary is that Google doesn't know that a brand-new $400 million shopping mall exists, and refuses to give directions to the address. It's wild that being in Google is now a prerequisite to offline commerce too.</comment>


Facebook Privacy: Site Confirms It Tracks You After You Leave - <AUTHOR> http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/facebook-tracking-scrutiny/story?id=14960711&singlePage=true <comment><USER2> The part that scares me is that we, as web designers/developers/owners, are complicit in this. We are the ones who are putting social buttons on every page. We love this functionality, but they aren't giving it to us for free. We are trading them our user's information and browsing habits.

I'm not worried about the ethics of Facebook. I don't think a site like Facebook should be prevented from doing this openly. I'm worried about whether I can ethically include all these social plugins knowing that they will, in my opinion, invade my users' privacy.

<comment> mike-cardwell Proud to not be a part of this "we". These social buttons are a plague on the web. They take something which is beautifully decentralized, and then create a single point of failure, and allow companies to create massive databases of private information from it as well.

You can host an image locally, and create a link using it. You don't need to hand over the browser of all of your visitors to one or more AD companies by letting them execute arbitrary JavaScript on your pages.

<comment><USER3> I think your parent post was talking about the Facebook Like/Google+ +1 buttons. In order for those to work, I believe they need to be loaded on the page via an iframe.

Things like Facebook's "share" and Twitter's "tweet" buttons don't execute any arbitrary (i.e. not specified by the developer) JavaScript.

<comment><USER4> Am I the only one who,

1\. Doesn't have a Facebook account.

2\. Runs NoScript to whitelist scripting and site trust.

3\. Runs Cookie Whitelist to whitelist cookies.

4\. Runs BetterPrivacy to wipe Flash/LSO cookies.

5\. Runs Adblock Plus to prevent viewing ads wherever possible.

?

That said, at least some like Heise.de, have put in place solutions that do not add to the underlying problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Big Brother Blue is always watching.

It is becoming more and more obvious that we are nothing more than a pile of data to facebook, they don't look at us human beings who have a need for respect and privacy, but as potential data and revenue. I have always gotten the feeling that they think we are 'too dumb' to catch on, it's only a matter of time until the bubble bursts. They may still be a billion dollar company but the respect and loyalty will shift when something greater is envisioned and realized.

<comment><USER6> +1 I couldn't have said it better myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Facebook has said that it's rooting for an "open web", but it can't even be honest about what data it's collecting, how much tracking is done, and how that data is used by the company.

A scary aspect of Facebook is that most users are completely unaware and care- free. Their friends are on there, so why should they leave? A lot of my friends are leaving for Twitter because of the recent porn spam and the ticker nonsense, but that's a tiny chunk of the userbase (maybe a few hundred at the most).

</comment><comment><USER8> > Bejar acknowledged that Facebook could learn where specific members go on > the Web when they are logged off by matching the unique PC and browser > characteristics logged by both the session cookie and the browser cookie.

> He emphasized that Facebook makes it a point not to do this. " We've said > that we don't do it, and we couldn't do it without some form of consent and > disclosure," Bejar says.

A better title would be "Facebook /could/ track users via the Like widgets, but doesn't do it yet"

</comment><comment><USER9> Would Ghostery be successful at blocking this?

<http://www.ghostery.com/>

<comment><USER10> Yep. It blocks the Like buttons and other stupid widgets, which is how the cookies get sent. That also has the pleasant side-effect of drastically decreasing load times.

I highly recommend it. Be aware that it does block disqus by default, I usually whitelist that one.

<comment><USER2> I had a few problems with the blocking when actually going to the sites in question. I believe I had to unblock Google Plus, Google Analytics and Facebook when actually visiting those sites.

However, I'm happy that most of the time it prevents the annoying features of a page from loading.

<comment><USER10> I've never had that problem. That'd be a pretty big flaw in ghostery if that was the case.

<comment><USER11> I've had problems with Ghostery blocking cookies and web bugs that prevent some Flash videos on YouTube, Hulu, and the New York Times from playing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'd like to think that developers wouldn't implement this kind of functionality on ethical grounds -I bet there are some at facebook who refused- but I also bet there are some there who will do anything for buck no matter how questionable it is.

</comment><comment><USER13> To be fair, Google is doing the exact same thing with adwords and adsense.

<comment><USER14> Doesn't Google Analytics also phone home? Google's tracking is far more widespread than Facebook's if that's the case.

<comment><USER15> Google Analytics seems somehow less harmful than AdSense. Almost every big website has some kind of analytics running. I assume that GA data isn't sold to advertisers, but I'm not sure.

<comment><USER16> I think this might be of interest to you:

[http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer...](http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=87515#0.1.1_1)

GA users can choose to "share" their data with Google, and this page describes the advantages users will get if they choose do to so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Just disable reading and writing of third party cookies. I've been using this option in Chrome for quite some time.

Hint: Facebook is not alone in doing this.

<comment><USER18> Cookies aren't the only way to be tracked, unfortunately. I don't know if it still works, but some sites were using custom ETags to track users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> No Script + RequestPolicy + AdBlock ftw.

This combo makes your browsing a little frustrating, but very educational. Try it, even for a day and be amazed at how many sites load content and scripts from 8, 10, or more unrelated domains.

I gave up trying to keep an up-to-date host file for all the web beacon/scam urls. I just vet requests now as they occur. You wanna believe it has changed my surfing habits.

</comment><comment><USER20> As a side note, according to Ghostery the publishing site abcnews.go.com is using 13 external tracking services, including Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is why I visit Facebook in one browser, G* in another, and everything else in yet a third.

<comment><USER22> There is not much use switching browser. They tracks you using cookies even if you dont login(like button and other plugins) You need to block/remove all the facebook related cookies.

<comment><USER23> Cookies do not cross browsers. If he's using a second browser, Facebook cannot read the cookies set in the first browser. They could use some IP matching logic or something, but it would be prone to a lot of false positives.

<comment><USER24> I believe this isn't always the case. If you're using multiple browsers in OS X all built on Webkit for instance, they share the same cookie store.

Firefox and multiple firefox profiles isolate cookie storage and I also use Fluid on OS X to build site-specific browsers. The paid version offers a feature to isolate cookie storage within each app.

<comment><USER25> Webkits share cookies = ouch.. so you really need a VM.

New browser feature - open this site in a temp VM.

<comment><USER26> These days, most browsers come with a private browsing feature, which will dump your cookies, caches (for etag tracking), etc. when you're done.

<comment><USER11> If users must visit _social_ websites like Facebook in privacy mode in separate browsers, perhaps they should rethink whether they should be using Facebook _at all_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The hypocrisy of news sites decrying Facebook's tracking while putting Like buttons on every page is palpable. (There are no less than five different Facebook widgets on this article's page, plus multiple Twitter and Google+ buttons.) The reality is that website owners are the ones sending Facebook this data.

</comment><comment><USER28> Doesn't it seem like time for a browser to get involved in protecting privacy? Maybe that's a stupid question. This just leaves me thinking I'd really like it if my browser only shared my cookies when I'm actually visiting the site requesting them, else it'd ignore the requests altogether.

No doubt that's either dumb, not possible, or something someone already thought of.

<comment><USER29> There is the do not track initiative[1] but it's kind of a pretty please solution.

[1] <http://dnt.mozilla.org/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is why I keep facebook in a separate browser. The could technically still track me using flash cookies but as the site isn't on my "can play flash content" whitelist this is no issue either.

It means I can't comment on a growing number of sites that use fb for their comments system, but that is no loss to _me_ in my not-so-humble opinion.

</comment><comment><USER31> Question- Would people be more willing to let a platform track browsing activity if there was 100% transparency? Asking this question for the startup that we are working on, where we want to get permission from users to follow their certain activities- which is directly applicable to the platform value.

<comment><USER32> It's hard to say without seeing it. Implementation is everything, but opt-in- wise, it sounds like you're describing browser bars. Maybe it's time to resurrect browser bars for the social age? :) Good luck!

<comment><USER31> When you say 'browser bars' I am thinking of an address bar in browsers today. Is that what you are referring to?

I am thinking of something that does not interact with the user but captures some of their web usage based on their consent. Would love to share it with the community when its ready!

<comment><USER32> Nope, I mean browser bars from the early-mid 2000s. Comet Cursor, HotBar, and other adware companies that were the Groupon of their day. Lots of deal site plugins used these kinds of plugins to do a kind of rudimentary tracking. You got some..."thing"..and they would have this snippet of js that submitted your clicked urls to their servers. Same as it ever was.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Wait, how is this even technically possible?

Sure, Facebook can see sites you visit which use Facebook Connect in some form, but can they actually "create a running log of the web pages that each of its 800 million or so members has visited during the previous 90 days" like the article claims?

<comment><USER34> They can certainly track visits to those sites displaying a Facebook "Like" button or other FB spoor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> It sucks that Facebook can get away with this but services like KISSMetrics and ad networks get sued for tracking users...even though that's what the goal of analytics is, whereas Facebook's job is to provide a social network that protects its users' data.

<comment><USER36> Seems like a distinction without difference. If Facebook weren't doing this on their own they would very likely be working with someone like KISSMetrics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> solution is to install the adBlockPlus extension, open up any page, say, techcrunch.com, then open the extension dialog and block external domains like twitter, facebook, google, google-analytics, etc.

<comment><USER38> Do you need the paid version to block external domains?</comment></comment>


Show HN: PrototypeML, a social visual IDE for PyTorch neural networks - <AUTHOR> https://prototypeml.com <comment><USER2> The paper was submitted to NeurIPS this year: [https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.01097](https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.01097)</comment>


Ask HN: So you started as a software developer.. What are you now? - <AUTHOR> Curious to where people's careers ended up. Did you stay a dev or move to a different role? <comment><USER2> Still a dev after 4.5 years. I don't really know what i want to do, and dev work pays pretty well for not having a lot of hours. I'm also improving a lot over the past year, so I'm going to keep saving money and keep at it until I reach a level where I can "always" fall back on it.

I think maybe a technical sales role could be good. Can interact with people more (I'm social and don't totally look like a developer).

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah that makes sense. I think I'm similar, I'm not a cliche dev. In fact I try to stay away from tech as much as I can when I'm not working.

I'm trying to figure out if I want to move into a different role. I guess that as long as I can build something which would take me to product-market fit then that's all I currently want to get out of being a Dev.

<comment><USER2> Yeah same here, if I'm putting in work and learning while building something that solves a problem... it's like just good enough for now. I only care about talking about tech to solve problems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I stay as a dev, and I'll probably die as one. Love every minute I spent to learn and improve my coding skills.

</comment><comment><USER4> Left that job and am going to be a full-time grad student!

</comment><comment><USER5> A high school teacher and still a software developer!</comment>


The Ultimate Guide to Grunt for WordPress Plugin Developers - <AUTHOR> http://archetyped.com/know/grunt-for-wordpress-plugins/ <comment><AUTHOR> Grunt has really streamlined my workflow when developing WP plugins. Let me know if you have any WordPress-specific resources for Grunt that you think would be worth adding to the guide.</comment>


Apple remembers where you wanted to get drunk for up to 2 years - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/04/apple-remembers-where-you-wanted-to-get-drunk-for-up-to-2-years/ <comment><USER2> Stupid title. Apple remembers _somebody_ wanted to get drunk for up to 2 years - with no idea _who_.</comment>


World's Fastest Random Number Generator from 'Sounds of Silence' - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120413161235.htm

<comment><USER2> Here's the researcher's site: <http://photonics.anu.edu.au/qoptics/Research/qrng.php>

They link to their paper there, but the link is to a journal with a paywall. Here's a free copy of their paper: <http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.4438>

</comment><comment><USER3> "Moreover, anyone who downloaded live random numbers from the ANU website will get a fresh and unique sequence of numbers that is different from all other users." - that doesn't sound very random..

<comment><USER4> They mean with probability 1.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I got a little bored and wanted to play around in various languages, so I'm writing a scraper for this: <https://github.com/pcragone/anurandom>

</comment><comment><USER6> Although it's not clear from the article it appears to be not so much listening to vacuum noise as reading how the known resonant frequencies are being damped by quantum fluctuations.</comment>


Peter Thiel: Gawker suit was 'one of my greater philanthropic things I've done' - <AUTHOR> http://www.recode.net/2016/5/25/11779910/peter-thiel-gawker-hulk-hogan-interview <comment><USER2> For a site like recode.net it's pretty shocking how copied this is from [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/26/business/dealbook/peter- th...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/26/business/dealbook/peter-thiel-tech- billionaire-reveals-secret-war-with-gawker.html). Yes, they link to it, but they lift the quotes in a way that makes it look as if Thiel was talking to them, when in fact they're copied wholesale.

<comment><USER3> Recode is owned by Vox but while fur has been flying on this Gawker-Thiel deal I did some google searching and found a list of websites with names like

nydlnews worldwidenewsbulletin journalismworldnews 24mainstreet redhoticenews

Those I just made up but they were all of a kind: vaguely resembling the names of existing newspapers online or seemingly news/journalist related because buzzwords.

Doubtless some of them are quite real but ...

I found all these websites had the same basic story on the Thiel-Champerty concept with a reference called 'Tip of the Iceberg' in each one (originally this was the latimes).

I suspect that this is a form of astroturfing and that all these websites are owned by the same entity.

If you do a search for this string: "thiel champerty tip of the iceberg" you'll see exactly what I mean.

Even if this isn't intentional astroturfing, it means this motley collection of websites are stealing from the original latimes story that used that phrase. I don't think this is just syndication that newspapers do with each other. I think as you said with Recode they're just taking everything outright.</comment></comment>


Am I getting too old for this (Google instant rant)? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bureau14.fr/blogea/index.php/2010/09/am-i-getting-too-old-for-this/

<comment><USER2> Maybe he -is- getting old. He's already forgotten that most computer-users these days aren't the incredible touch-typists that most IT professionals are.

When people tap a single key at a time, having those instant results could means minutes of time saved when searching for something, especially if they don't really know what they are looking for.

Yes, as an IT professional, I find it useless. But I know many people who would find it a blessing.

<comment><USER3> I think you've got it backwards. You have to be old or an IT professional (interested in usability) to care about people who don't type. Young people regard the inability to type fast as one of those social problems that will inevitably be solved by mortality, like racism (except they're probably right about typing.) (How could you not type fast if you've been writing your school papers in a word processor since sixth grade or earlier?)

<comment><USER4> "How could you not type fast if you've been writing your school papers in a word processor since sixth grade or earlier?"

Carpal tunnel?

<comment><USER5> Judging from some of the articles I seen on-line the answer may, in part, be plagiarism or more politely extensive copy and paste. That seems to simple of an answer though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The young thrive while the old are overwhelmed because the young are more successfully discriminating. I caught myself slowing down my typing and pausing between words to give myself more time to scan the instant results. I think that's the "old" reaction -- new technology slows you down.

I suspect the "young" reaction to Google Instant would be, "That flickery thing Google does before it shows my results? I'm supposed to read that? I don't have time for that. If I ever type that slow, just kill me, because I don't ever want to be that old."

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't understand why anyone complains about Google Instant.

It requires one less mouseclick. If you want to pretend you're using the old Google, you can just close your eyes while you type, randomly click your mouse, then open your eyes. You will have before you the same results that original Google would have returned.

Unless you get confused by the "Instant" feedback along the way (like you somehow get distracted by shiny other searches that Google recommends, forget what you were originally searching for and get "tricked" into some new query), it shouldn't be an issue.

<comment><USER7> I don't understand how you use your mouse when using Google, other than to select a search result? Normally I just press Return.

The problem with Instant is precisely the risk of distraction. It's the same reason I don't use Suggest - and in fact, I now am forced to avoid www.google.com completely, as there is now no easy way of disabling Suggest on the web page. It used to be you could switch between Suggest and non-Suggest; now, your only choices are between Suggest and Instant.

I'm sticking with the search box in the browser.

(Actually, there is a way to disable Suggest: <http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=0> ; but that's impractical except as a bookmark or home page.)

<comment><USER8> I think he's suggesting using your mouse to select a result.

<comment><USER7> I think he's suggesting clicking on the Search button, because there's no difference in mouse clicks between Google Instant and old Google if you press Enter upon entering your query.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm an "IT professional" and, worse, an _old_ IT professional (closing on 40.)

I strongly disliked the idea of instant search when it launched, but to my surprise, I'm actually finding it very useful. I've been able to train myself to avoid focusing on the results pane until I get deep into my query string (3rd or 4th word.) That tends to be where I organically pause anyway, while deciding whether I should tack on another word to my long-tail queries.

By that point in the query process, the noisy and wildly-irrelevant entries have already been weeded out, and I can start focusing on the results pane. Interestingly, on several occasions recently, I've seen a promising result flicker past as I'm in the process of adding that 4th word to my query. When I'm done typing, I see that none of the results are as good as the one that flickered past when I had just 3 words in my query, so I delete the last word and voila. Result that I might not have found without instant search.

I'm still not crazy about some of the larger implications (pushing most users towards the same query strings, etc.) but am finding it surprisingly useful on a personal level.

FWIW, YMMV, etc...

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm constantly make WRONG searches now with Google Instant. Based on habit, I type my searches quickly and hit enter. However, with Instant, the Auto Complete isn't able to catch up and I end up selecting an outdated incorrect SUGGESTED query instead of my ACTUAL search query.

Google Instant actually slows me down since I have to wait for the Auto Complete to catch up.

<comment><USER11> Yup. I turned it off on all my machines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> _Or is Google Instant just too nerdy?_

Isn't it really not nerdy enough? The auto-suggestions steer you towards common search terms and editing your query for instant results is really only practical on short imprecise searches. It seems to be a feature that exists for people who aren't very good at searching.

</comment><comment><USER13> "Visual feedback gives you the illusion of speed, like a progress bar reduces the impression of waiting, but that's all it is: an illusion."

I read an article once about elevators ( [http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/04/21/080421fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/04/21/080421fa_fact_paumgarten) ). It was spun-off the "man getting stuck in an elevator for 41 hours" story.

In the article, the writer cites a particular anecdote about an elevator company installing faster elevators in a particular building. Patrons of the building, however, complained that the elevators were now slower. The company was confused--how was this possible? It turns out, the new elevators lacked mirrors. People couldn't straighten their hair and pick their teeth while standing in it, so the ride felt longer.

People perceive time in odd ways. Google's taking a stab at this perception; the illusion of speed in the eyes of the user counts more than physical speed. The user is the yard stick, not engineers with stopwatches.

The author here casts aside illusion like it's meaningless, but that's far from the truth. Look at the Parthenon, whose columns are tapered to make it look bigger, or magicians, who stun audiences with clever distraction. Casting aside illusion is on par with casting aside mathematics; it may be difficult to understand at times and require a large amount of labor to learn, but neither can be avoided without losing some room to maneuver.

<comment><USER14> Agreed. The illusion of speed gets you some of the benefits of actual speed, user satisfaction in particular.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Google instant is really useful for the unsophisticated users typing URLs into the search box instead of the address bar.

With Google instant, type the letter "f", you'll get Facebook.com as the first link because that many people are searching for it on Google. For almost every letter of the alphabet the first instant search term is a domain name.

</comment><comment><USER16> I don't like this new thing. It is not similar to the old thing, which I do like!

<comment><USER7> And on the other hand, not all shiny new things are an improvement on the old. For a company as allegedly fearful of opportunity cost as Google[1], we should expect that well over 90% of the new stuff they do sucks more than their old stuff.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10895>

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I actually don't have plus or minus feeling about Google Instant. I usually typed pretty fast and the instant result won't come up before I finish typing. Also I often use the browser's quick search on the address bar, which bypasses Instant completely.

<comment><USER18> Not completely...you still land on the results page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> hah, I'm trying to turn it off but finding it is impossible. I save my preferences but it's still there.

As Alex says in Clockwork Orange, "Me Glazzies! I can't close me glazzies!"

<comment><USER20> Yes, Google stores this preference in Cookies (which is wierd). So if your browser clears cookies on exit, 'instant' is again enabled by default.</comment></comment>


IProcessing: open framework for native iPhone apps using the Processing language - <AUTHOR> http://luckybite.com/iprocessing/ <comment><USER2> It looks like this is missing one of the (IMO) most useful pieces of Processing, though: the "one click to run" IDE. Processing is pretty much the only environment around that you can download, open, type in a few lines of code, and have an OpenGL accelerated graphical program running without any sort of configuration or installation, and (again, IMO) this is one of the most compelling things about it, especially for beginners. That would be particularly nice for iPhone, especially since XCode sucks so hard, but I can't be too greedy - I realize that getting things to build for iPhone is a nasty process that essentially must go through XCode, so perhaps there's nothing that can be done.

Even just as a library Processing is quite useful, filling in all of those simple graphical things that intuitively feel like they "should" be in any language by default (line drawing, fills, etc., and especially all the annoying graphical setup and keeping frame rates steady), so I'll definitely be checking this out.

</comment><comment><USER3> That's kind of weird: serendipity made it so that I ended up going back to Processing.org just last night and was wondering on my way to work if there was a way to make iPhone apps with Processing. I guess there is.

(serendipity went like so: a colleague had a stone carving class, I looked at the association site, which had electronic classes including about Arduino, which brought me to Arduino.cc, then to Processing.org because they're using the same base framework/IDE)

</comment><comment><USER4> Alternatively, OpenFrameworks[1] (C++) targets the iPhone. I haven't used OF before, but I assume there's a speed/familiarity tradeoff here if you already know Processing.

[1] <http://www.openframeworks.cc/>

</comment><comment><USER5> Is there a port of Processing to android yet?

<comment><USER6> Check here: <http://android.processing.org/></comment></comment>


The Tetris Challenge, Julia Edition - <AUTHOR> https://discourse.julialang.org/t/the-tetris-challenge-julia-edition/10099 <comment><USER2> Link to demo: [https://juliatetris.com/](https://juliatetris.com/)

The source: [https://github.com/djsegal/Tetris.jl](https://github.com/djsegal/Tetris.jl)

Build around Jupyter: [https://jupyter.org/](https://jupyter.org/)

</comment><comment><USER3> weird, I played for a while and then the game suddenly ended. Maybe there's a time limit? I'm guessing you're supposed to write a Tetris AI in Julia to get a high score, but the scoreboard seems to be just humans so far -- I was able to get 2nd place without too much trouble. :)

One thing that bugged me: the "hold" piece is position directly above the other pieces in the queue, which constantly tricked my peripheral vision into thinking that the hold piece was next. But I suppose a detail like that doesn't matter to an AI.

</comment><comment><USER4> Where are the details of the contest? What is the deadline?

<comment><USER5> I think more details will be announced tomorrow, April 2nd</comment></comment>