A View of the Entire Netflix Stack - <AUTHOR> http://highscalability.com/blog/2015/11/9/a-360-degree-view-of-the-entire-netflix-stack.html <comment><USER2> @monsky: (Somehow this got disconnected from the thread below.)

The headline of the slide you pulled that from is literally "Hard Work—Not Relevant."

Netflix doesn't care if you work 100 hours a week, they care how well you perform. If you can do an amazing job in 30 hours a week, they're one of the few places which would actually embrace you.

> I'm not sure how Netflix grades things... but in school B is "Above > average".

So what? Why on Earth should Netflix be targeting "average" workers when they deliberately pay twice the average.

That's about as ridiculous as saying that Harvard should stop admitting A students because "B" is average.

Netflix has a deliberate strategy of keeping their engineering bar very high and paying accordingly. That doesn't mean they want you to sacrifice your life to the company.

Also, Netflix is in no way a startup.

<comment><USER3> The problem about the idea of "doing great things in 30 hours" is that people who are not directly involved with implementation and deployment usually think that each and every 2 day task takes at most 2 hours, because we humans are unable to expect the complexity that most tasks have on this planet. (every time you think about a college, super market employee etc "just do your job man" you are experiencing that fallacy)

And then you as the 30 hours employee are faced with not delivering 40 hours of work in 30 hours (which is possible if you are smarter, more involved, have more experience etc) but no you are expected to do 160 hours of work in 30 hours, because you don't compete with the other engineers but you compete with the expectation of your manager.

We need to accept that most people (colleagues, employees, customers, bosses) will always be disappointed by the results we achieved because they had unrealistic expectations to begin with. And we must excuse them because we do the same the other way around. That is why "40 hour week" is so relevant. Because then you can say after working hard for 40 hours, really doing all you can, maybe even achieving 30% more than your colleagues, that time is up and you need to take care of your children, wife, parents, friends and hobbies you may have.

Now let's assume for a moment that all I said was BS. Let's assume I'm super untalented and for most people it's actually possible to achieve in 30 hours enough to impress their leaders. Now you do it once. You do it twice. Maybe thrice. But at that point your leader will adjust in his head, maybe without realising, what 100% means for you. So the fourth time he doesn't think it's awesome anymore. The tenth time he thinks you are lazy. And now you have to achieve 50 hours of work in 30 hours. It still doesn't work out.

<comment><USER4> > And now you have to achieve 50 hours of work in 30 hours.

Could this argument not be made about the 40hr week?

<comment><USER5> Only if everybody else was working 50 hour weeks.

<comment><USER4> It has nothing to do with everyone else. If you impressed your boss while sticking to a 40hr week, they'll only be impressed so long before it becomes your norm. In which case you bump up your hours to maintain your prestige. I don't buy that reasoning, just saying it goes both ways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Sustained B-level performance, despite "A for effort", generates a generous > severance package, with respect.

You've got to love these startups who basically say "if you're not giving us everything beyond what we expect... go screw yourself. I'm not sure how Netflix grades things... but in school B is "Above average".

Is Netflix looking to employee and develop people or are they looking to extract life from people?

<comment><USER7> Probably the latter. In my view, Netflix (IBM, Amazon, Bloomberg etc) should consider what would happen if they were completely honest to their employees:

"You are a cog in our machine. We do not care for you. We only care for your work. We will pay you insofar as you can execute on our vision. Further, you will be paid according to how hard it is to replace you. If you can be replaced by someone who executes significantly better, relative to your pay, we will tell you to leave."

Needless to say, stating that would make many of their employees, especially the weak-minded and insecure (those who defend their terrible culture), unhappy. I imagine even those in charge of the culture, speaking those words, would feel bad.

And they should feel bad. While such overwhelmingly negative words should almost never be spoken with authority, these decision makers must at least be able to answer the question "What are we _really_ saying to our people?" truthfully. And if the answer is something along the lines of "you're a cog in the machine", then something has gone very wrong[1]

In my non-expert opinion, if a company truly wishes to be a "good" place to work, it should know the distance between their words and the truth, and then focus on minimizing that distance.

Spoken more simply: the more dishonest a company is to its employees, the worse the culture.

[1] Or right, if the company requires joylessness to turn a profit.

<comment><USER8> >"You are a cog in our machine. We do not care for you. We only care for your work. We will pay you insofar as you can execute on our vision. Further, you will be paid according to how hard it is to replace you. If you can be replaced by someone who executes significantly better, relative to your pay, we will tell you to leave."

Isn't this the ideal of wage labor and the reality of 98% of jobs? I've never even suspected that my corporate employer cares about me as a person aside from how I produce, and have never suspected that I'm being paid by them for any other reason that it would cost them a lot more than they pay me to find somebody to replace me. I don't mean to say I haven't had great friendships and working relationships with management, but to the business, I'm a line item. When I notice a business making decisions contrary to the bottom line, I suspect corruption, not corporate affection.

They're a cog in my machine, too. I can only depend on that cog if it behaves rationally.

<comment><USER7> I agree it's the reality for a majority if not the super majority of jobs. I also think it could be the ideal of hourly wage labor: which is to say that the company wants nothing more than what they can motivate you to do with money, and that you want nothing more from the company than their money.

Looking back, I see I made my comment in the context of Silicon Valley behemoths and startups: companies that can both pretend to, and potentially change some fundamental way of doing things.

I think the difference in my mind between "creative" companies and normal ones is the "potential", achievements outside of a strictly defined expectations of contract, for both the business and the employee. Maybe a great insight, a new tool... anything that greatly benefits both the business and the employee, especially if the employee uses the product(s) and believes in the mission.

When you take away that potential (by saying employees are just cogs in a machine), you might take with it the creative spark that these hopeful companies ostensibly rely on. In my mind, that "potential" is the real joy of a job, which is my reason for the (slightly snarky) comment that "cog in the machine" is only acceptable "if the company requires joylessness to turn a profit". If I could, I would edit that post to be more clear/to take into account businesses which do not require any specialness.

At least for my central point, "the more dishonest, the worst the culture"... I believe that stands, especially in circumstances where a person is (somehow) manufacturing toilet paper and their supervisor is telling them they are (somehow) on their way to curing cancer.

<comment><USER8> > If I could, I would edit that post to be more clear/to take into account > businesses which do not require any specialness.

That I'm creative (amongst other things) is why they pay me well. My successful experiments have a record of adding value well above my pay even if aggregated with my many unsuccessful experiments, although I try my best not to keep it that way for long. I'm not sure I've had any technical job with completely "strictly defined expectations of contract", I think that's a red herring. It sounds nice that the most creative and innovative projects/companies give less of a shit about the bottom line; I personally think that the bottom line is the fuel for creativity (didn't have much money when I was younger.) Anybody can sell your product with unlimited money to spill, but doing it with the best profit margin possible is creativity.

I like to think I'm a special snowflake...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This reads less like a technical overview of Netflix's stack and more like an advertisement for working there.

I'll give you my two cents on the matter. Netflix spins a great narrative and ideal -- the rose-colored "meritocratic" dream of Silicon Valley.

I'd suspect the reality of working there is a lot more mundane than the beautiful narrative that they (and by extension, the author of the post) are trying to sell you.

There are probably a wide array of experiences that current employees have, ranging from pure joy to misery, which are contingent upon team, co-workers, management, compensation, etc.

An interesting read nonetheless.

</comment><comment><USER10> Adrian Cockcroft gave a much better overview of their open source projects here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2kKmMyqTfc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2kKmMyqTfc)

It's two hours long but the first hour is sufficient to get an overview of their open source projects.

<comment><USER11> Good call. Thanks for posting. We'll add this to the comments of the original article.

<comment><USER12> You might want to link to the OSS site too - [https://netflix.github.io/](https://netflix.github.io/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Only the UI layer of Netflix is in Node.

Most of the cloud services are JVM-based (as is much of the NetflixOSS ecosystem [1]), and then the Node services connect to the JVM-based services via Prana. [2]

[1]: [http://netflix.github.io/](http://netflix.github.io/)

[2]: [http://ispyker.blogspot.com/2015/10/towards-being-better- abo...](http://ispyker.blogspot.com/2015/10/towards-being-better-about-open- source.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> This isn't a very good article. Judging from the first table, netflix is written in node.js using python and java. :-/

<comment><USER11> Thanks for the feedback. We heard this a little bit through twitter. Can you reference any links? Happy to make the change. It was a little tricky to put together with out interviewing someone. We want it to be accurate and useful. Please post any reference links here and we'll follow up with an edit.

<comment><USER15> Well, node.js implies that at least part of Netflix is written in JavaScript, yet the only listed languages are Python and Java.

<comment><USER16> Someone at Netflix did a talk perhaps it was about Falcor. They use React embedded in browser apps across all devices. So they use Javascript on the front end. They use Node.js as the proxy server / router with a framework called Falcor which is written in Javascript. Falcor queries all the multitudes of services and databases then caches that data in a graph. Falcor reaches out to all the servers and databases, scores or services, that are written in Python and Java.

<comment><USER17> Picking a nit, they don't use React in the browser across all devices. They actually use an internal rendering engine called Gibbon on some devices with client code written JavaScript with React but not rendering to HTML or a browser instead using their internal engine. Interestingly this has become easier with React breaking out React and ReactDOM.

Interesting to note that Netflix must see Gibbon as a competitive advantage, I've been told its not likely to see an open source release.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNC0mRYGWgc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNC0mRYGWgc)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This AWS re:Invent 2015 talk by Dave Hahn is also really illuminating: A Day in the Life of a Netflix Engineer (Using 37% of the Internet)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mL3zT1iIKw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mL3zT1iIKw)

Interesting to me that they use Atlassian Confluence for team stuff. Thinking of testing it out as well...

<comment><USER19> Confluence is pretty cool, but they suck at bullet lists and indenting code blocks... so basically they suck at a couple of basic UI stuff. Apart from that it seems pretty great.

<comment><USER20> Are you aware of the {code} macro which formats code?

<comment><USER19> I am. It does not indent properly though - there is only one level of stable code indentation (the entire block that is; it is possible to indent the code within the block, but I'd like to indent the code frame).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The A (promoted) vs B grade (fired) perf means:

\- No "regularly well performing" employees are kept. You're either promoted or fired. Ensure workforce moves.

\- Doing the shitty necessary work such as fixing tech-debt just gets you fired. But I bet people do it anyway, else Netflix would be in troubles. It's just that they get fired after that. Not really nice.

It also means you've to be only doing stuff that has direct visible impact, and refuse any work that does not/place yourself visually above others.

Not saying this is a bad strategy to get stuff to work, not sure if very ethical though.

That's all I noticed was actually interesting ;-)

<comment><USER22> Exactly--in a work environment when everyone is fearing for their livelihood, succeeding at performance theatre becomes the primary concern. You need to be a top _performer_ , in both senses of the word--but it's human nature that over time the acting sense will take priority.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Not sure if it was left out on purpose, but I'd love to see more details on their transcoding stack (they only mention that it is done in EC2)

<comment><USER11> Hi Kylek - thanks for the feedback. It was a little hard on first try to find information on this. The only thing that seemed clear was that adaptive bit rate was done on the edge and transcoding was done and stored. Feel free to post links here if anyone has any.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is a bit confusing. I don't suspect Netflix is built using primarily node.js, and I don't see how the Netflix Prize (algorithm for predicting what a person is most likely to want to watch) falls under "scaling".

<comment><USER25> This is nitpicking.

<comment><USER26> Honestly, there are enough problems with the article to warrant a critique. However, someone may not want to take the time to outline every single one. It's incredibly confusing to the reader that the article states Netflix relies on frameworks for one language, and then states that all of their code is written in another language.

<comment><USER11> Hey, we got this fixed up on the original post- waiting for Todd to fix the repost on HighScalability shortly. If there are some more problems let us know. We want it to be accurate. [http://www.scalescale.com/the-stack-behind- netflix-scaling/](http://www.scalescale.com/the-stack-behind-netflix-scaling/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I am a bit surprised. Why host Netflix application on Amazon EC2 and not have your own data centers? A startup hosting at Amazon EC2 makes sense

<comment><USER28> Why Netflix chose AWS: [http://techblog.netflix.com/2010/12/four-reasons-we- choose-a...](http://techblog.netflix.com/2010/12/four-reasons-we-choose- amazons-cloud-as.html)

Also Quora answer: [https://www.quora.com/Why-does-Netflix-use-Amazon- EC2](https://www.quora.com/Why-does-Netflix-use-Amazon-EC2)

<comment><USER29> The reason that strikes me as most important is #2 "Letting Amazon focus on data center infrastructure allows our engineers to focus on building and improving our business."

Too many companies roll their own solutions when they could take advantage of economies of scale like this and let another company dominate the problem.

Obviously there are privacy reasons to own your own data but I don't think they outweigh the performance and efficiency implications.

<comment><USER30> aws and performance :) Crappy performance and poor uptime is precisely why people move off aws.

<comment><USER31> So, um, why does Netflix always seem to be up/performant?

<comment><USER32> Because they actually know how to implement fault tolerant scale on AWS. Most companies don't have simian army randomly wrecking infrastructure. Many companies/engineers think they can spin up a few (or few hundred) ec2 instances and think they have solved resiliency.

AWS is a tool, not a bullet made of silver.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I really like that Netflix is constantly open about how their systems are run. In terms of raw throughput not a lot of companies can hold a candle to them, so its cool to see how the big players do things.

<comment><USER34> I would wager because, looking at that technology stack, most of it is commercial paid services? "We use EC2" just pushes the question to someone else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> So which part of this stack is to blame for their slow clunky website? (NB their website used to work well enough on my devices the newer one is the problem.)

</comment><comment><USER36> Over the years, I've heard a few podcasts stating that Netflix relies heavily on Grails/Groovy for infrastructure management tools ([https://github.com/Netflix/asgard](https://github.com/Netflix/asgard), etc). Wonder why that isn't mentioned?

<comment><USER37> They do say: "We are sharing the things we think are most interesting." Maybe a minor use of Groovy and Grails is only interesting to people trying to promote those products.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is this reliance on a variety of external services why Netflix fails so often compared to e.g. youtube.com? I assume so.

<comment><USER11> [http://mashable.com/2015/11/10/netflix-site-goes- down/](http://mashable.com/2015/11/10/netflix-site-goes-down/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Where is the Chaos Monkey?

([http://techblog.netflix.com/2012/07/chaos-monkey-released- in...](http://techblog.netflix.com/2012/07/chaos-monkey-released-into- wild.html))

<comment><USER11> Simian Army Suite [https://github.com/Netflix/SimianArmy](https://github.com/Netflix/SimianArmy)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> As the comment at the end of the article mentioned, they forgot to add Spring. I've met a few Netflix engineers, and they said their Java implementation is done using Spring.

<comment><USER11> hey Steven! Thanks. Do you have any links that reference this? We want it to be as accurate as possible.

<comment><USER39> No links, I got this from actually talking with some engineers. Have you not contacted a single Netflix engineer to verify your article? If not, I find that bizarre.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> It must be really expensive tho (even with discounts). But I guess they don't care.

</comment><comment><USER41> This view is missing some things. For example, Curator (now at Apache).

<comment><USER11> [http://curator.apache.org/](http://curator.apache.org/) "Guava is to Java what Curator is to ZooKeeper" Patrick Hunt, ZooKeeper committer

</comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 Source for the bit on Mesos?

<comment><USER11> check: [http://techblog.netflix.com/2015/08/fenzo-oss-scheduler- for-...](http://techblog.netflix.com/2015/08/fenzo-oss-scheduler-for-apache- mesos.html) and post anything else

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> A word to the author: Please proof read your writing.

</comment><comment><USER42> OMG! Node.js in frameworks folks xD

</comment><comment><USER43> Funny timing given that Netflix is currently down... [0]

[0] [http://www.isitdownrightnow.com/netflix.com.html](http://www.isitdownrightnow.com/netflix.com.html)

</comment><comment><USER44> Why there's so much brag about Netflix while they can't fix even simple bugs and UX issues? After all, it's one of the simplest apps there are. Whole stack could be handled by one guy.

<comment><USER45> Curious what you mean by this, as it's overall one of the more polished products I use on a regular basis. Hasn't always been the case, and the Android app still does some weird UI things, but generally the product is solid and a pleasure to use.

"Whole stack could be handled by one guy" \- comments like like this and similar others ("I could build Twitter in a weekend", etc.) strike me as unproductive.

<comment><USER44> For example, Netflix consistently forgets what I have seen and if I don't watch the ending credits it thinks I haven't watched an item and suggests it in the continue watching section. There should be visual indicator on what I have watched, and if there are unwatched episodes in series. Now I have to open it and go to the episode list, which is unreliable. Also, starting video playback is too slow. It's not possible to open items in new tabs. There are no keyboard controls.</comment></comment></comment>


How to Write a Book - <AUTHOR> http://www.doxsey.net/blog/how-to-write-a-book%3A-introduction

<comment><USER2> Thanks for writing this, I'd be interested to read how you decided who to publish it with (and why you made it freely available too), and how sales went :-)</comment>


SocialSharePrivacy - jQuery plugin - <AUTHOR> http://www.heise.de/extras/socialshareprivacy/

<comment><AUTHOR> TL;DR: Heise released a MIT-licensed plugin for displaying Facebook/Twitter/Google+ buttons with user's privacy in mind (click-to-play). So far in German, English version under way.

See [1] for the English article and [2] for the HN thread.

[1] [http://www.h-online.com/features/Two-clicks-for-more- privacy...](http://www.h-online.com/features/Two-clicks-for-more- privacy-1783256.html) [2] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5394005></comment>


When did dependency management get so complicated? - <AUTHOR> http://wildlyinaccurate.com/when-did-dependency-management-get-so-complicated

<comment><USER2> It depends on distribution and packetmanager, I quit using debian based approaches a long time ago for that and some other reasons.</comment>


Jewish groups decry Black Lives Matter platform's view on Israel (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/08/05/jewish-groups-decry-black-lives-matter-platforms-view-on-israel/ <comment><USER2> Wow. To be honest it's actually Holocaust survivors who had "so much to teach the world about making sure that voices are heard" but the Israeli voice, in that respect, was rather absent. Not only Israel's criminal treatment of the Palestinians, but also it's indifference to the persecution of Muslims in China and Myanmar. Even worse, Israel's implied support of trump administration policies, presumably written by a "Jewish"* white supremacist in Stephen Miller.

* By Jewish I mean Eastern European, and not an ethnic jew.</comment>


Why do dating sites charge? - <AUTHOR> http://luckyapps.com/blog/?p=12 An overview of the business models on the internet today. <comment><USER2> I've often heard an argument for pay dating sites over free ones is that the people on the pay sites are more serious about it. On sites like OkCupid, you can run into people who are just basically trolling profiles (or just in it for the quizzes). It's a lot less likely on ones you have to pay to participate in.</comment>


Argentina goverment fixing the exchange rates - the LocalBitcoins solution - <AUTHOR> http://localbitcoins.blogspot.fi/2013/06/argentina-goverment-fixing-exchange.html

<comment><USER2> Interesting that localbitcoin are offering a 'blue market rate' on their site, but this is short on analysis. Try Jon Matonis' article here (but bear in mind Mr. Matonis is a major BTC supporter): [http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2013/04/27/bitcoins-p...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2013/04/27/bitcoins- promise-in-argentina/)

This is a far more interesting aspect of Bitcoin than those of anonymity, Silk Road and ending dollar hegemony: offering citizens a way around their government fscking with their currency. This is a huge benefit that those of us living in stable Western democracies might have a hard time appreciating, and I'm hard-pressed to see a downside.

Furthermore, the more acceptance bitcoin has for this purpose, the more jurisdictionally-distinct exchanges it gains, and the harder it becomes to shut down.</comment>


Why decision trees is the best data mining algorithm - <AUTHOR> http://zyxo.wordpress.com/2010/09/17/why-decision-trees-is-the-best-data-mining-algorithm/ <comment><USER2> There is no such thing as a "best" data mining algorithm. Almost all the advantages you mentioned for decision trees, a form of recursive binary partitioning, applies to a greater extent to Random Forests, which are bootstrapped decision trees that only consider a subset of features at each node.

Examples of domains where decision trees perform poorly include: -Low amount of data -Domains where you have extra knowledge about the data (such as some features coming from certain probability distributions) that you can incorporate into classifiers.

Decision trees work well in a variety of applications, but that does not make them the "best" algorithm, and it is rare that a classical decision tree provides state of the art performance on any given data set. [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.122...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.122.5901&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> Decision trees are useful for the points enumerated in the blog article.

One disadvantage of decision trees is that they can be slow on large data sets (> 1M examples). They are a batch algorithm, which means that you have look at all examples to build a tree, although they can be trained in an mini-online setting (only look at 10K examples per tree) which is faster.

More importantly, decision tree induction involves combinatorial optimization over splitting features. This is much slower than a continuous optimization over non-linearities. So decision tree induction is slower than, say, stochastic gradient descent over a neural network.

(As hamner points out, there is no "best" data mining algorithm, just like there is no "best" programming language.)

<comment><USER4> They're also easy to overfit, similarly, finding representative training data is often non-trivial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article is weird. It makes an odd point, it includes the words "decision trees" _seventeen times_ , and doesn't have much content. It feels like SEO bait.

<comment><USER6> Plus some flame bait, to attract links like this thread.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Decision trees suffer from high variance. A slightly different sample might give you entirely different splits; using decision trees for data interpretation or feature selection is an art at best (and for some data sets uselessly unreliable).

>Decision trees are weak learners.

This is untrue. They're only used as weak learners in boosting because the tree depth is limited to some small constant.

>Decision trees run fast even with lots of observations and variables

I don't know all the decision tree learning algorithms, but at least some of the common ones run in O(features * samples * splits). That's not terrible, but you can handle much larger data sets optimizing w/ stochastic gradient descent or coordinate descent.

>Decision trees can easily handle unbalanced datasets.

This links to a post about bagging, which is not really specific to decision trees (but can be done with any learning algorithm)

</comment><comment><USER8> No it is not. It depends on the structural form of what you are learning. Check <http://www.pnas.org/content/105/31/10687.short> for some other forms.

</comment><comment><USER9> Decision trees are a learning system, and like all other tools, it has pros and cons. They are designed for state spaces where data can be easily divided up at each branching point, thus, they do not handle stochastic domains very well compared to something like a Bayesian network.

There is no silver bullet in data mining/machine learning.

</comment><comment><USER10> They're nice when they work and when they're appropriate.

Spoilers: that's not always.

</comment><comment><USER11> In this article there's a small screen shot of an application that looks like a decision tree designer ... does anyone know what this is? And is it public domain software?

<comment><USER12> Looks like some sort of Excel plugin. Googling 'excel decision tree' gives you several options.

<comment><USER11> Thanks.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do I need to reincorporate when I move? - <AUTHOR>

If a business is registered in one state, and the owner of the LLC moves to another state, does the LLC need to be reestablished in the new state? <comment><USER2> It depends on the country/state etc., but typically there is a process to "continue" a corporation from one country to another one.

Or one can often leave a corp hq in the old state and register the existing corp as a foreign corp in the new state.

US LLC's are a little more state-specific/diverse, so there'll be some details to look into on that as well.

As they say... speak to a lawyer! Good luck! ;)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the advice! I guess I should have clarified US or international, but at least your answer helps shed more light on both scenarios. Much appreciated, I will definitely speak to an attorney before anything.</comment>


Show HN: A Chrome extension that adds moustaches to every face on the web - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/khaoakmndhjandiaaadnjgnbchillcdj <comment><USER2> This is not that novel of an extension. It's essentially the following (see [https://github.com/forward/mustachio- chrome/blob/master/must...](https://github.com/forward/mustachio- chrome/blob/master/mustachio.js)):

        var i = document.images.length;
        while(i--) document.images[i].src = "http://mustachy.heroku.com/?src=" + document.images[i].src;

I might be more impressed if the author ported mustachio (<https://github.com/afeld/mustachio>) to JavaScript.

<comment><USER3> way ahead of ya: <https://github.com/afeld/mustachio-js>

<comment><USER4> Doesn't that just run on node.js? Replacing the image with a canvas tag that renders the original image + mustache image would require no server.

<comment><USER3> Correct, though there does need to be a server component to communicate with the Face.com API. Face detection is a much slower process than image compositing, so this is really the limiting factor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It works but their poor server must be hurting, tons of 500 and 503 errors.

Tested loading <http://celebrityhairstylespicture.blogspot.com/>

Example [http://mustachy.heroku.com/?src=http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KI...](http://mustachy.heroku.com/?src=http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KI0L4JXyzy8/Tann4CJl_5I/AAAAAAAAA5I/gb7laorTFCM/s1600/Celebrity- Hairstyles-2011.jpg)

<comment><USER6> I just deployed version 0.0.7 that skips any images of less than 45000 pixels (300x150px or equivalent). This will help with the load but you won't see the moustaches on smaller images.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We've also open sourced the code for this extension here: <https://github.com/forward/mustachio-chrome>

<comment><USER7> Any chance you could open source the server bits too? :D

<comment><USER3> en garde! <https://github.com/afeld/mustachio>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A sysadmin could use this to setup a funny prank involving background caching through a squid proxy -- replace all HTTP requests for images with mustachioed versions, for everyone on the network.

</comment><comment><USER9> A capital jape, my good sir - but it is as nothing compared with the monocular terror which awaits us.

<comment><USER10> I think you've just given me a weekend project. Such a thing _must_ be unleashed into the world.

<comment><USER9> I'm meddling with forces I do not understand!

<comment><USER10> My brain has apparently decided to sleep instead, this weekend... oh well. It's still at the top of my list. I'll stick up a Show when I finish.

<comment><USER9> When you get around to it, perhaps there are some viral giggles to be had by using some secret algorithm to select the left or right eye, or letting user selections shift it. I'm on gmail and in SF if you want to chuckle over a beverage, although I don't have any coding chops worth talking about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wouldn't it be better to use a JavaScript face detector? Like <http://liuliu.me/detect/detect.html>

I don't know the details about this algorithm though, no idea if you can get the proper position for the mustache.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah we are looking at refactoring some of the face detection stuff out of the server and into the extension.

We wrote the code in a single hour this afternoon so it's not the most optimized piece of software and we are feeling it right now!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> bookmarklet

      javascript:void(location.href="http://mustachify.me/?src="+location.href)

</comment><comment><USER13> Needs access to all my data on all websites. No thanks.

<comment><AUTHOR> The code for the extension is freely available on github (<https://github.com/forward/mustachio-chrome>), you can see that we aren't doing anything shady with your data.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, I could do that, but to be blunt I'm not going to waste my time analyzing the security implications of installing some novelty app. In my opinion, and I am by no means an expert on writing chrome extensions, the more appropriate thing to do would be to tweak your extension so that it only uses the functionality it requires to work. Surely it does not need access to everything in my browser to do what it does.

Look at it this way, if you were selling this thing for $.99 on the android app store and I wanted to install it, and I saw that it needed such broad permissions, you would have just lost out on a sale. Something to keep in mind should you ever move to monetize this in the future.

<comment><USER2> How else would one edit the image elements in the DOM of every website without access to the websites? That's like being upset that the AdBlock Plus Firefox extension that blocks traffic from ad servers needs access to your HTTP traffic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It would be neat if this was all in JS and required the user to put in his face.com API key. You could add a context menu on an image and then replace that image w/ a Canvas w/ the image and the mustache on top of it.

</comment><comment><USER15> This has turned my Google logo black while searching:

[http://mustachy.heroku.com/?src=http://www.google.com/images...](http://mustachy.heroku.com/?src=http://www.google.com/images/nav_logo83.png)

</comment><comment><USER16> Very cool idea, I so need to do this for <http://laserey.es>! :)

</comment><comment><USER17> hahaha okay props for an awesome idea (:

</comment><comment><USER18> What is this good for beyond wasting your time?

<comment><USER19> I think extensions of this idea -- running a pic modifier with useful information or ads (gasp!) or NSFW censorship (!!!!!) would be the next logical step for various people.

That is, once the tech is there. Face abstraction is a completely different ballgame than, say, product pictures or porn.</comment></comment>


A number that fascinates physicists - <AUTHOR> https://cosmosmagazine.com/mathematics/number-fascinates-physicists-above-all-others <comment><USER2> This so-called _fascination_ and search for meaning or reason behind constants reminds of the anthropic principle [0], which basically goes like this: "things are the way they are because we wouldn't be here to observe them otherwise".

The last part of the article, however, is still quite intriguing. Nobody would expect any of the 3 components of alpha to change, unless somehow the measurements can be affected by the medium (as the speed of light depends on that).

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

<comment><USER3> (I could be wrong about this, I haven't thought about it in great detail)

I think invoking the Anthropic principle only makes sense if we can demonstrate that there are a number of other "places" with varying "conditions". For such a selection bias to occur there needs to be a population to actually select from. For example, the Anthropic principle makes sense regarding the composition of the earth because we know that there are a large number of planets with a distribution of orbits and masses around a distribution of stars. Of course we will be on a planet that supports life as we know it.

To invoke the anthropic principle regarding a constant would imply — to me, at least — that there would need to be a number of universes with different constants. Or different regions of this universe where the constant would vary.

If there truly is only a single universe, and the constant is _not_ changing in time or space, then it would seem we did actually just happen to get lucky.

Edit: of course, at this point we can't say definitely either way about our universe. We don't know if ours is one among many, or if its the solitary universe in existence. We also, clearly, have uncertainty about how constant this constant actually is.

<comment><USER4> I don't see why there needs to be other universes that actually exist in order for the anthropic principle to apply. It seems to make perfect sense to apply it to a set of _conceivable_ universes, even if such universes don't actually exist and even if it's not physically possible for them to exist.

<comment><USER3> Again, I could easily be wrong about all this.

I think this entire discussion is sensitive to exactly what one means by "The Anthropic Principle". If one's definition of the Anthropic Principle in this context simply means that an observed universe will be consistent with a universe that _can_ be observed, then I find it to be trivially true and applicable to a single universe scenario.

I subscribe to a definition of the anthropic principle that invokes selection bias as its core mechanism. I think that, in order to have a selection bias, one needs to actually be _selecting_ from a population. Hence my assertion that you _need_ a multi-verse (with different constants in each universe) or a constant that is variable in space or time [2].

The difference, to me, is this:

If you are _selecting from a population_ the Anthropic Principle can actually help explain _why_ a value is what it is. Under our understanding of planetary bodies, we often invoke the Anthropic Principle to explain _why_ the earth falls in the habitable-zone. Earth falls in the habitable-zone _because_ — we think — life is most likely to arise on a planet in that zone.

However, if you are _not_ selecting from a population, I don't find that the Anthropic Principle explains _why_ a value is what it is. In the scenario where there is only _a single_ value, I think the Anthropic Principle simply demonstrates that _that particular_ value must support life.

Put another way, if _all_ planets we observed were the exact same distance from their star as Earth [1], then we couldn't _use_ the Anthropic Principle to explain why Earth is that particular distance from the sun. We would have to find other astronomical reasons to explain why planets form at that specific distance from a star. In this single-distance scenario the only thing the Anthropic Principle actually does for us is confirm that _such a distance supports life_.

[1] Well, not distance per se, but placed such that they received the same amount of stellar energy in their orbits.

[2] This final sentence of the introduction of the Anthropic Principle also makes some reference to this saying: "Most often such arguments draw upon some notion of the multiverse for there to be a statistical population of universes to select from and from which selection bias (our observance of only this universe, compatible with life) could occur."

<comment><USER4> > If one's definition of the Anthropic Principle in this context simply means > that an observed universe will be consistent with a universe that can be > observed, then I find it to be trivially true and applicable to a single > universe scenario.

It is "trivially" true in a sense. It's a tautology. But it's still useful for thinking about things. I think it applies just as well to a single universe or a multiverse, because even with a single universe you can at least hypothesize about other ways the single universe could behave.

> However, if you are not selecting from a population, I don't find that the > Anthropic Principle explains why a value is what it is. In the scenario > where there is only a single value, I think the Anthropic Principle simply > demonstrates that that particular value must support life.

It might not answer the extremely broad and ill-defined question "why" to your satisfaction, but I find it fairly satisfying. If things were another way, then I wouldn't be observing the universe because I wouldn't exist. So it's not strange that the universe _is_ this way, given that I exist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "When scientists measure any quantity they must specify the units being used."

No they don't. For instance, a simple aspect ratio measures how something is wide relative to how it is long. It has no units.

This here desk I have here is about 1.7 times as long as it is wide. No inches or centimeters required.

There isn't anything amazing or mystical about a unitless quantity.

<comment><USER6> To make things more complicated: the size of your desk isn't fixed because the universe is expanding. So the units you are using are just a convention to relate the size of an object to the size of other objects.

<comment><USER7> So long as the fine structure constant remains the same, your desk (and ruler) won't change size. Rather they will heat slightly as the expanding universe stretches the chemical bonds and those same bonds spring back to average rest length.

/nitpick

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The most fascinating part about alpha to me is the implication that it isn't actually constant, and varies over time and/or distance. I once read a suggestion that perhaps the observed universe is simply the portion of the greater universe where alpha has a value that lets things like stars, planets, and life exist.

<comment><USER9> Being actually a derived quantity, alpha's non-constancy actually implies that one or more of the underlying 'constants' vary non-homogeneously — which is what you said, but slightly different in import... observing alpha is actually just a convenient way of observing the others indexed together.

<comment><USER10> You've got this backward. Alpha is the fundamental physical constant: c, e and \hbar are the derived quantities. I'll quote part of another comment that I left on this thread:

> Now for a piece that's more interesting. The fine-structure constant (alpha) > is the coupling constant that sets the strength of electromagnetism. This > means that its value is the thing that matters in the equation: e^2/\hbar c. > Each of the other values is a derived quantity. Further, to speak a bit > loosely, only changes in alpha matter -- in the sense that if the speed of > light (c) changes, but the other constants (e and \hbar) change in a way > that keeps alpha the same, then you wouldn't be able to tell with an > experiment that anything has changed.

> Contrast this situation w/ a change in alpha -- a table-top experiment would > be able to detect the change (given that it's large enough, and we have > methods of measuring changes on year-time scales that are a few parts in > ~10^-18 (Rosenband, 2008)), as it would mean that physics has changed in a > fundamental way.

> > [http://phys.columbia.edu/~millis/1900/readings/Science-2008-...](http://phys.columbia.edu/~millis/1900/readings/Science-2008-Rosenband-1808-12.pdf)

<comment><USER10> A further layman explanation by a researcher in this field: [http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/~mmurphy/research/are- natures-l...](http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/~mmurphy/research/are-natures-laws- really-universal/) specifically the section titled "Aside: Is it e or c varying?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I thought that -1/12 was amazing, even to Vulcan scientists. -[https://youtu.be/w-I6XTVZXww](https://youtu.be/w-I6XTVZXww) -[https://youtu.be/0Oazb7IWzbA](https://youtu.be/0Oazb7IWzbA)

<comment><USER12> -1/12 is the result of applying zeta function regularization or Ramanujan summation to the sum of the positive integers. It's arguably interesting, but hardly amazing to the vast majority of people who have never heard of those techniques. But the thing that really annoys me is all the people presenting it as the finite limit of a divergent series (this is the default meaning of "=" after an infinite series, if you're using a non-standard meaning you have to specify that!). The first of those videos does this! It's nonsense, and this kind of sloppy approach only encourages contempt for mathematics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > The best known example of a pure number [...] hc/2πe2 [...] leave[s] a pure > number, 137.03599913.

This surprises me. I would have thought pi, the ratio of any circle's circumference to its diameter, is a much better known example of a pure number.

<comment><USER14> Pi is not a fundamental physical constant and has myriad uses. α is only special when observing that it is a physical constant; you need to observe the physical universe to arrive at the conclusion that it's a meaningful number.

<comment><USER13> Thank you for this explanation. The distinction was not clear to me after reading the article, but your comment makes a lot of sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> On non-internet[0] connected computers in my old uni's physics lab, the passwords were often some combination of the phrase "physics" and repetitions of the number "137". Quite the fascination.

[0] why I don't feel uncomfortable disclosing this here

</comment><comment><USER16> The article is so-so. But the physics here is really cool. Essentially, there's growing evidence that the fundamental constants may not be perfectly constant. See [http://arxiv.org/abs/1510.02536](http://arxiv.org/abs/1510.02536) for the gory details.

<comment><USER17> Would you really characterize this Wilczynska, Webb, King et al. paper as an argument that there is "growing evidence", rather than (say) that it's a number-crunching argument that the small amount of observations that suggested a dipole variation to Webb et al. (and King et al.) show a \Delta\alpha / \alpha that's close enough to unity that one can cherry pick and say "oh yes, there's a (small) dipole variation" or "oh no, the data is consistent with no variation" ?

I prefer their earlier slide deck for gory details (it's mostly based on King et al 2012).

[https://www.eso.org/sci/meetings/2012/ESOat50/Presentations/...](https://www.eso.org/sci/meetings/2012/ESOat50/Presentations/Day5/Murphy.pdf)

See especially the "Really?" slide (p 27).

(The previous "What if it's correct?" slide undersells the impact to the standard cosmology of a violation of isotropy and the consequent erosion of the "must be homogenous at scales > 250 Mly" part of the cosmological principle. Also, "what if atomic physics is really obviously different only very slightly outside the horizon?" feels like a declaration of war against the Copernican principle with precious little evidence, and against pretty good theory that has other lines of evidence backing it (cf. Carroll @ [http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2010/10/18/the- fine...](http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2010/10/18/the-fine- structure-constant-is-probably-constant/) who points to Banks, Dine & Douglas @ [http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0112059](http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0112059) who in turn point to other work that shows that you probably can't vary \alpha without varying other constants like the m_e and QCD coupling).

<comment><USER16> Missed this comment until today. Helpful slide-deck and references, thanks!

I mean "growing evidence" in the sense that it wasn't even questioned before, and some very early-stage experiments have asked the question.

I agree with you that it's still _way_ to early to be making any conclusions, and it all may wash away as the experiments improve.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The article fails to explain where the 2*pi comes from, and why 1/alpha is more natural. Does this quantity arise in some context other than unit- analysis speculation?

<comment><USER19> The 2pi comes from the usual method of using hbar, instead of h. Where hbar = h/2pi, and is the Planck constant adjusted to use radians instead of cycles.

This is much more natural when working with frequencies instead of using cycles.

Yes, this constant arises prolifically when looking at the atomic "fine structure", which modifies the usual hydrogen energies to includes interactions between an electron's spin and its orbit (the un-modified ones only include the kinetic energy of the reduced electron-proton and the electric potential energy). There are further interactions that can be added, eg the hyperfine interaction which includes the spin-spin interaction between the proton in the nucleus and the orbiting electron.

And if you use Planck units where hbar=c=G=1, you can do many things easily, for example denote the potential of an electron at distance r as just alpha/r (without all those other pesky constants embedded in Gauss's law).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> From the BSM-SG perspective it's very clear what it is:

[http://www.amazon.com/Basic-Structures-Matter- Supergravitati...](http://www.amazon.com/Basic-Structures-Matter- Supergravitation-Unified/dp/1412083877)

2.9.6.B Fine structure constant as embedded feature of the twisted prisms

12.A.5.3. Hypothesis of embedded fine structure constant in the lower level structures of matter organization

It gets derived later to: α_c = 2 ⁄ [ ( n^2 + 2/2 )^1⁄2 + n ] = 7.29735194 × 10–3

where n =137 results in a very accurate value of α. It is important to understand that the fine matter constant has it's origin in a geometrical organization of the prisms. A very low level building block of matter in the BSM-SG model. It is 1/6th the size of a neutrino (neutral or positive flavor) - those 2 neutrinos are composed of 6 prisms of either large or small prisms an rectangular geometry j but the prisms is itself a very large structure compared with the ultimate building blocks, the fundamental particles.

The prism itself is quite complex in it's internal structure but there is a very logical explanation for its existence. On the first level of organization or you could see it as the first crystallized structure is the Primary Tetrahedron. You basically take a bunch of Fundamental Particles - just very, very small balls, and create a tetrahedron with same length sides out of it.

Very simplified explanation: This tetrahedron has a very complex vibrational mode - like every layer of our physical world. You end up basically with 2 overlaying vibrational modes, where you need n cycles of the small cycle to result in one cycle of the larger one. Alpha is the Energy relation of those cycles. Through alpha, you end up with 2 Energies in the prims, CP and TP.

Alpha is very fascinating feature as it is basically the driving force of most of the complex behavior of nature, it is everywhere in the BSM-SG model.

Funny side-node: In the BSM model, the cosmological redshift is not of Doppler kind (also no space expansion) and you can find the fine matter constant in the periodicity of the red-shift.

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

Please note, that you have to do a proper Doppler correction in the BSM model if you measure galaxies. It also explains the Lyman-Alpha-Forest phenomena very well.

From the standard model perspective: I have no clue what it could be, like most constants.

</comment><comment><USER21> The formula for alpha contains pi. Another pure number being the ratio of two lengths

</comment><comment><USER21> Omega is much more interesting. For informaticians...

</comment><comment><USER22> Why do you need 2pi for the units to cancel out?

<comment><USER23> You don't, it's just that h-bar = h/2pi is the variety of planck's constant that is more useful in quantum mechanics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Isn't π a similar pure number?

<comment><USER25> Pi is mathematically pure, independent of physics. Mathematics is full of pure numbers (obviously).

The fine structure constant is physically pure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> dead link

</comment><comment><USER27> I really, REALLY hate this new trend of having websites swipe left and right for different articles. Argh!

I highlight text on the internet as I read it, but this page moves all over the place when I do! And on NYT it jumps around to different articles as I'm reading. Makes it impossible for me to consume the text on these pages.

/rant

<comment><USER28> Here, voilá

[http://andreapaiola.name/magpie/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcosmosmag...](http://andreapaiola.name/magpie/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcosmosmagazine.com%2Fmathematics%2Fnumber- fascinates-physicists-above-all-others&action=&links=on)</comment></comment>


Gallery as an API - <AUTHOR> http://www.upsta.photo/

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm gathering feedback for new project. I was so disapponted by current state of APIs for accessing Dropbox, Flickr and others that I decided to roll an aggregator.

You can't expose Dropbox/Flickr gallery on your static website, as you'd have to expose your private API key.

UPSTA would do that for you and just provide publicly consumable endpoint.

Would you consider paying for this service ?</comment>


Why It's So Hard to Get Solar in Florida - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/2016/10/florida-sunshine-state-hard-get-solar-energy <comment><USER2> Until very recently, installing a solar system came with a great big helping of extra taxes!

Thankfully that was just fixed by a landslide.

[http://miami.cbslocal.com/2016/08/30/amendment-4-would- make-...](http://miami.cbslocal.com/2016/08/30/amendment-4-would-make-solar- cheaper-for-property-owners-2/)

But all is still not well. Our state government seems determined to protect us from "big solar". If only that were truly a problem! If you live in Florida, make sure to go vote even if you can't stomach either of our partisan candidates for president, if nothing more than to support solar power in Florida.

Its pretty embarrassing for the "sunshine State" to get its ass kicked in solar power by New Jersey.

<comment><USER3> Are you advocating that people vote yes or no? Because the article doesn't really say which would be better for solar.

<comment><USER2> See the comment by dtnewman below. Sorry to be vague, I had that in mind. Amendment 4 was an important yes to kill the extraneous taxes on solar systems. The upcoming vote on 1 is a muddled mess that should be voted against until something reasonable can be introduced.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The proposal (as it will be written on the Florida ballot) starts off:

> This amendment establishes a right under Florida's constitution for > consumers to own or lease solar equipment installed on their property to > generate electricity for their own use.

I wish that the article would have talked a bit more about how misleading this sentence is. It makes it sound like Floridians are gaining the ability the own or lease solar panels, when in fact we (I'm a new Floridian) _already have that right_! It is just a statutory right, not a constitutional one. But reading this, a voter who doesn't know better might think that this is some new right that Floridians didn't previously have.

It seems like this bill has a pretty broad list of opponents. How often do you see opponents such as the Republican Liberty Caucus of Florida, the Libertarian Party of Florida, Sierra Club and the Green Party of Florida all on the same side of an issue?

So with conservatives, liberals and libertarians against this amendment, it seems like the only real supporters are the power utilities who had to fight before the state supreme court to get the misleading wording accepted. But given the misleading wording, I'm wording that this just might get passed.

More about this here: [https://ballotpedia.org/Florida_Solar_Energy_Subsidies_and_P...](https://ballotpedia.org/Florida_Solar_Energy_Subsidies_and_Personal_Solar_Use,_Amendment_1_\(2016\)#cite_ref- quotedisclaimer_3-0)

<comment><USER2> The big problem with it is this:

 _" to ensure that consumers who do not choose to install solar are not required to subsidize the costs of backup power and electric grid access to those who do."_

This is essentially an open door that can later be slammed shut in the faces of solar installations that are leased at a discount to the homeowner on the fact that excess power can be sold back to the grid (net metering). It could also be taken so far as to allow power companies to charge extra fees to individual solar users for not using "enough" power to pay their "share" of the distribution system costs (utility poles etc).

I wish there was a way to vote against this _and_ let them know exactly why.

Its a nearly perfect example of a classic political ploy: Enshrine a common sense right that everyone already defacto has (and would be crazy to vote against) in law, but slip in some weasel words that nullify that right in practice.

<comment><USER5> > a classic political ploy

Letting corporate special interest groups write almost all of the legislation is the key problem here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've seen similar stories in the past, the problem appears to be that in many areas the bill was 100% linked to actual usage and didn't reflect the costs of the connection and infrastructure.

In New Zealand the domestic electricity bill is broken up into a fixed daily charge plus a variable charge. According to this site only around 30% of the bill goes towards generation so it is a bit more closely matching the actual costs of the provider.

[https://www.ea.govt.nz/consumers/my-electricity- bill/](https://www.ea.govt.nz/consumers/my-electricity-bill/)

</comment><comment><USER7> In my view Florida would be better served by deregulating their electricity markets (as 16 other states/territories have done) and allow 3rd party suppliers to compete for business. Then consumers who want solar (or other forms of green power) can buy it directly without having to put panels on their roof that will obsolete in a few years.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think if they added a provision for a fixed fee that needs state congressional approval to change would at least clear things up. In the end, at least here in AZ, roughly half the electric bill is separated to "delivery" fees, which are supposed to cover infrastructure and maintenance. If those were a fixed fee, then it'd be easier to calculate the advantage or not of solar.

Another risk in Florida, is the solar panels are effectively wind sails in a hurricane, and raise the risk of property damage, which is another thing that may be offsetting costs in terms of raised property insurance.

I'm actually more in favor of wind farming than solar currently. The costs to create the panels have other environmental impact beyond the displacement of other resources for fuel used in electricity creation.

<comment><USER9> I had solar pool panels that did fine through hurricane Mathew in west palm beach. They are pvc and plastic I think. I was worried about them flying but they must have been engineered right as far as roof connections (plus the winds remained mostly tropical strength with a few hurricane gusts.)

<comment><USER10> Yeah you get very little hurricane damage if you built outside of the area the hurricane hits. But what if you don't?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Retail solar power is not viable currently. Cheapest reputable panel on aliexpress is about $1.2K for 1KW. Lead-acid on Amazon is about $500 per 1KWH (not counting shipping). Assuming backup of 30KWH it would require about $16.2K without inverters, cables, installation or shipping. And with these it can be 20-30K+.

So it is not surprising that retail solar is not viable without subsidies. Which are in essence wealth transfer from the poor to richer early adopters. On top of that it is a headache for grid operators who have to account for unpredictable inputs from retail solar power users.

Instead of the overly expensive retail solar power it would be better if subsidies went to the far cheaper solar powered ACs, solar panel water heaters, urban and outdoor lightning.

<comment><USER12> Storage is not required for retail solar, just grid-tie. All the non-carbon systems require subsidy.

The solar subsidy has been _hugely_ effective at reducing prices.

<comment><USER10> _reducing_ prices, or _shifting_ prices to the rest of the population, regardless of energy use?

<comment><USER12> Reducing the price of solar for future installations.

Yes, the overall cost of energy would be less with an all-fossil system, but that's no longer acceptable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This article does a terrible job highlighting what you can do about this.

Vote no on prop 1 in November.

</comment><comment><USER14> Why should non Solar users subsidise the grid for those who can install solar panels in sufficient quantities to matter? This probably means people who owns houses gets a subsidy from those who live in apartments, who are typically poorer.

<comment><USER15> Here in Belgium they did make that mistake. They issued green power certificates so people installing solar panels could receive some money.

After a while it became pricey and they needed to halt the program. Still they were obligated to pay those certificates to those who registered under that program. The consequence is that they needed to raise other energy taxes and a lot of families who are struggling are being hit extra hard.

The sickening part of the whole story is that we have big wealthy industrial families who have build complete solar farms under that program and pure for the certificates. Some are receiving 10 millions euro a year (for 20 years) and paid for a part by the poor.

<comment><USER12> What about the bigger, wealthier industrial families who have built coal mines and got subsidies for them too?

[http://www.reuters.com/article/usa-koch-coal- idUSL2N14W1JJ20...](http://www.reuters.com/article/usa-koch-coal- idUSL2N14W1JJ20160112)</comment></comment></comment>


Red Bull Rules - <AUTHOR> http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2014/04/21/red-bull-rules/

<comment><USER2> Red Bull's marketing team is beyond top notch. They sell (basically) a single product and yet manage to portray their image everywhere (sports, music, movies, arenas, events, etc.). It truly is amazing. The brand awareness is everywhere, and is nearly as strong as Apple or Coke Cola yet far fewer people consume their product.

<comment><USER3> It genuinely took me 3 or 4 years to realise that Red Bull formula one had any connection to the drink.

I'm not sure if that's good or bad marketing.</comment></comment>


Indian E-Commerce Firm Flipkart Raises Eye-Popping $1B - <AUTHOR> http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/07/29/indian-e-commerce-firm-flipkart-raises-eye-popping-1-billion/ <comment><USER2> I find Flipkart's valuation very puzzling clearly the investors have seen what I haven't. Flipkart's revenue is extremely less for a population of the size of India. They makes ~$200M in revenues per year with an operational loss which I am told is significant.

Flipkart has managed to scale its revenue but without making a profit. Even this would have appeared as a good opportunity if Flipkart was kind of de- facto e-commerce business in India. Turns out that it is not. Snapdeal, Junglee (Amazon India) are pretty close. Myntra was the leader in apparel and fashion products sale online which was then acquired by Flipkart. (Myntra was not profitable either).

I find it hard to understand why anyone believes that Flipkart would ever make profit in next 5 years or so. I find it hard to believe.

Unlike USA, India has not yet figured out how to build proper usable roads, the cities are not planned and India does not have a proper addressing system. Government regulations have further made life difficult for courier companies. All this has resulted into cities and towns where traveling over few kms is very expensive and time consuming as a result small shops catering to need of local communities have sprung up like mushrooms. Current India is probably resembles more to the A&P days of USA.

My assertion is validated by the fact that Travel Booking and Movie ticket booking websites in India are growing fast and also very profitable.

<comment><USER3> I find people's (especially Indian's) puzzled reaction to news about flipkart's funding puzzling. Flipkart has altered the online buying habits of urban Indians significantly. I would be surprised to meet an urban Indian today who has _not_ heard about flipkart. By urban I mean the tier 2-3 cities as well. So is it just the fact that the _current_ revenue numbers do not add up that makes it puzzling to some (most??) ? If I was an investor, I'd bet on flipkart, solely based on watching the change in spending habits of the urban Indians over the last 5 years. Instead on narrowly focusing on the online business if you take a broad look at the way things are changing the tier 2/3 cities in India you'll understand the investor optimism. You mentioned:

      > Unlike USA, India has not yet figured out how to build proper usable roads,
      > the cities are not planned and India does not have a proper addressing
      > system. Government regulations have further made life difficult for courier
      > companies. All this has resulted into cities and towns where traveling over
      > few kms is very expensive and time consuming as a result small shops
      > catering to need of local communities have sprung up like mushrooms.

...but like almost any other success story in India, flipkart has become a recognizable brand _despite_ this !! ...isn't that reason enough to undestand why the investors feel like this is going to be worth it ?

<comment><USER4> My brain is racing with assumptions right now, but I'll just come out and ask, what's a tier 2/3 city?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For the uninitiated: Flipkart is AMZN of India. They are doing tonnes of sales here. FK is getting so much valuation as India does not have a big enough organised retail (roughly 5%). This means there is a generation which would move on from unorganized retail to online. And hence the astronomical valuations. FK also has some unique ideas. For instance, they launched Moto e, g and x in India as exclusive sellers. They managed to sell 1 million of those phones in last 6 months. This alone would have easily resulted in a $20-25 million rev.

<comment><USER6> 20-25 million revenue? I think you left off a zero there.... Unless those phones only have an average price of $20-25 in India.

<comment><USER7> He could mean net revenue for the retailer as in profit. I don't think these phones would have a margin much greater than $20-$25 ?

<comment><USER8> Then that's called income, not revenue.

<comment><USER7> No need to downvote if you just disagree, that's not how HN is supposed to work :( It appears that you are using a different meaning for revenue.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue)

Revenue normally refers to top-line or gross income. This is why I clarified with the 'net-' addition, it's probably what led to the confusion in the first place.

Flipkart nowadays anyway operates on a 'store' model for the most part so sales margin for this discussion could actually be meaningless anyway. But since they were doing an exclusive, perhaps they were directly selling, in which case it would be pertinent to the discussion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The best part about Flipkart are

1\. They made online selling popular in India

2\. Products got delivered in door steps

3\. I could buy books at 20%-50% discount and foreign edition textbooks easily. This is something we couldnt even dream about, in some parts of India

4\. I could easily get products from lee, nike, puma,... at discounted price too. If you are not in a big city, then its difficult to get branded products and if you get then you need to worry about whether they are original or not

I bought close to 150 books from Flipkart, which would cost some 70$ more if I buy from local sellers.

I have my Toshiba Laptop, Moto G phone, Lee Shirt, Sennheiser Headphone, Reebok shoe all bought from online sellers :)

<comment><USER10> Also:

5) They implemented cash on delivery. A very brave and novel approach. This basically instilled confidence in the indian online buyer

6) Fast delivery. I will go ahead and say probably as good as Amazon or even better in big cities. They built warehouses in the big cities and stocked fast moving items in a lot of places

7) almost guaranteed savings on all things. I have rarely seen anything that is more expensive on FP compared to a store.

8) Good online experience. Little things like checking delivery using your pincode. Responsive site. Product suggestions.

<comment><USER11> How is cash on delivery novel? Where credit cards are not ubiquitous this is the only way to sell stuff online. Pretty much every single online store in my country did this for years.

<comment><USER10> Well..its India..too may practical issues that can dig into your profit

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Flipkart recently moved away from the Amazon warehousing model to an online marketplace model and I've heard nothing but complaints from customers regarding the switch. Even their own presence in the marketplace is unable to keep up the quality of service as it scales, and all kinds of scammy retailers have set up shop now which has made it relatively more dangerous to purchase on their service now.

Time will tell if they pay that billion back.

<comment><USER13> So in other words, they tried to follow Amazon's "affiliates" business model but embraced it too hard because they didn't realize that everybody hates the affiliates and only ever buy from them on Amazon because of desperation or accident.

<comment> barry-cotter Or they saw the way taobao _owns_ online B2C commerce in China and decided they wanted the Indian equivalent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I see 3 reasons.

I. Flipkart is losing money definitely. But so is Amazon which has not reported a profit before last year. However Flipkart's losses are not for the same reasons as Amazon but it should not be forgotten that FK is never afraid to try out models and kill them if they fail. FK is following a lot of Amazon's footsteps but it is coming into its own quite a bit and given FK does not have to do the same mistakes that Amazon had to do for more than a decade, FK has a good second mover advantage.

II. Flipkart has been a trailblazer in the Indian e-commerce space by forcing the users to internalize new habits. Getting them to trust the online e-commerce stores with their money and buying products online without a rethink, Cash on delivery and now 'online only sales'.

Amazon.in is also being forced to innovate at its own pace in India changing its last mile delivery models (IBP stores).

So right now this is anyone's game.

III. Flipkart is simply bulking up its warchest on the impending war with Amazon. Neither of them are going to let go of the massive opportunity that they do not have any more in China. If Alibaba could do a single day $5.7 Bn sales on Nov 11, there is no reason to think why we might not be looking at a similar opportunity just as big in India where the human consumption potential is just as big!

However, the more it looks like India will not be a winner takes all market. Amazon, Snapdeal and Flipkart will have to contend with being 3 players in a huge ecommerce market in India unlike China or US... the rules are just hatke in India :) Of course there are still the pristine south east Asian markets for everybody's taking!

</comment><comment><USER15> Wow. Is this real? Does anyone know anything about this company? Wikipedia has the company's revenue at 200m USD as of January, making an operational loss. They don't sell internationally.

Is there some important part to this story that we're missing? Seems like there must be something worth knowing about here.

On a slightly unrelated note, it's amazing that billions can be raised pre-IPO these days. It almost buries IPOs as a fund raising methods.I realize exit/liquidity was/is the bigger reason for tech IPOs already, but it seems somehow unnatural to completely abandon the role of financing. Not sure where I'm going with this.

<comment><USER9> Indian here. Will give you an idea of whats happening here in India. This online sellers got an impact only 2-3 years back. Now its like local government are formulating rules to curb online sales. This is in part fueled by the influence of local sellers.

Now people have moved to online stores for buying things, with local sellers feeling the heat.

First it was thought that Amazon entry to India will bury Flipkart. Not it seems Amazon is in trouble. Things looks like going in the same way as of China.

Flipkart started by IIT'ans the brightest minds of India. They recruit from top tech schools of India with hefty packages. They have a nice site and customer care. They also bought rival in Apparels, Myntra

There is no reason one shouldn't buy from Flipkart.

*[http://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/society/keralas-o...](http://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/society/keralas-online-shoppers-feel-the-crunch/article6085358.ece)

<comment><USER16> I'm not sure if they can compete with Amazon. They're losing money and competing with Amazon which has deeper pockets.

Right now, their prices are higher and I can find (and have found) better deals on either Amazon or Snapdeal. Amazon has always delivered faster and the sellers are all the same on these sites now.

        Not it seems Amazon is in trouble.

I think Flipkart is in real trouble here. Amazon can discount for long and eat losses (that's what they have always done) and though Flipkart has good ideas, they have made really strange moves (making a Tablet? Infibeam tried that back in 2011. Didn't work.)

<comment><USER17> > Right now, their prices are higher and I can find > (and have found) better > deals on either Amazon or Snapdeal

I have the opposite experience. I check prices over a few days before buying, and Flipkart always comes ahead. Permanently gave up on Snapdeal after returning a pair of shoes (only one shoe in the box!), then its replacement (wrong size), and then again its replacement (wrong model).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like that the Indian start up scene is getting serious now. Entrepreneurs are brave enough to compete with the big players unlike a few years ago when most start ups were basically simple web apps or a tech consultancy kind of thing. As an Indian this gives me hope that a soon the brain drain will stop and a lot of talented Indians abroad (with connections and some money to invest) will come back to India to either start up or work for one.

<comment><USER18> I really hope the same.

There was a story on HN just a few days ago about an Indian from Cornell, who came back to India to do an India centric startup.

Here's the story about why he chose to come back: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8090158](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8090158)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Best of luck to both founders, and this is great news for the Indian startup industry, but I am confused by this statement:

"We are not thinking about [an IPO]. We have not settled on a business model that we can take public,"

Shouldn't the business model be validated by your Series A or max B? Flipkart has taken multiple rounds in the past, and this one looks as large as a Series C.

Edit: Firms involved also sound like series C firms - Tiger Global, DST etc.

<comment><USER20> I think their base model is validated, it just may need more. According to the TC article [1], "In a statement, Flipkart said the 'funds will be used to make long-term strategic investments in India, especially in mobile technology.'" So they are predicting some of these acquisitions to help grow that model before going public.

[1] [http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/29/indian-e-commerce-giant- fli...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/29/indian-e-commerce-giant-flipkart- raises-massive-1b-round/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> And immediately after this, Amazon invests $2B in India.

[http://www.amazon.in/gp/feature.html/ref=amb_link_182486107_...](http://www.amazon.in/gp/feature.html/ref=amb_link_182486107_1?ie=UTF8&docId=1000818573&pf_rd_m=A1VBAL9TL5WCBF&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0MW8ZXJW9DHVBDWC8HRN&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=516940287&pf_rd_i=1592137031)

</comment><comment><USER22> After my family started buying dresses online (average $20 per item), I started paying more attention. Online shopping in India not only provides a vast range across vendors, it also saves the cost and hassle of travelling to a big store - especially for singleton purchases. When discerning dress buyers are happy to buy online that must signal some kind of shift.

</comment><comment><USER23> After Flipkart's 1Bn fundraising, Amazon announces $2Bn investment in India[0]

[0] [http://www.medianama.com/2014/07/223-amazon-2bn- investment-i...](http://www.medianama.com/2014/07/223-amazon-2bn-investment- india)

</comment><comment><USER24> Some computer parts like hardisk's are cheaper on flipkart than the purchase price of an authorized retailer. So when a customer comes to a shop, the dealer says that stock will come in 2 days and he promptly places an order on flipkart.

<comment><USER17> The local dealer I shop with, uses flipkart as the reference price, and gives a discount on it! We browser right in his store and then reach a deal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Huh. Never heard of the company, but what surprised me is that the site is actually really fast and snappy, somehow, for me -- especially considering what I saw when I took a look at the source code.

<comment><USER26> Agreed. Very pleasing on the eye with clear navigation, puts Amazon slightly to shame.

<comment><USER27> You might find it hard to belive - but customer experience is slightly better on Flipkart than on Amazon(US).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Flipkart revolutionized ecommerce in India with the concept of COD (Cash On Delivery).

That is you pay when you receive the product.

<comment><USER29> I used to buy things from eBay India using CoD in 2004. Flipkart was not even founded at that time.

I know lot of people who were afraid to buy things from ebay even though ebay offered buyer protection for long long time.

In my opinion, Flipkart is successful in India because they created trust among people who were afraid (based on false rumors) to buy things online.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> $1 Billion is lot of money in India. Only future will tell what they will build from it.

<comment><USER31> $1B is a lot of money in the US too, even for a company's valuation.

But to _raise_ $1B is, well, astronomical.

<comment><USER32> But then it deals with physical goods; lots of inventory, physical ops, street-level marketing. Is $1B really high for such a company?

<comment><USER33> Yes, very high. Especially if the sales numbers thrown around in this thread are accurate (eg $500m to $1b in sales).

Retail companies historically get relatively low valuations (particularly compared to your typical tech company), in part because the margins tend to be very mediocre in retail.

A software company would typically have margins 5 to 10 times greater than most retail companies. Amazon has been an anomaly in this regard, while they have the terrible margins, they have been rewarded with a massive valuation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> this is big. Indian people believes Flipkart how Americans believe Amazon. Flipkart delivery products quickly with replacement guarantee. This is enough for them to raise the funds.</comment>