Are Mail-Order Meal Kits Doomed? - <AUTHOR> https://www.eater.com/2019/2/26/18239767/meal-kits-bubble-grocery-stores-blue-apron-hello-fresh-doomed <comment><USER3> I've tried 3 services now, and what they all seem to not get is that they are not selling food. I can get food in the local supermarket. They are selling convenience and peace of mind. Whats the difference? The difference is that if you screw up my order 2-3 times, then I will quit your service and never look back. Sure you deliver food to my door most the time, but you are not providing convenience and peace of mind.

I have never had the issue where going to the supermarket to shop for dinner unknowingly left me without crucial ingredients or return boxes crowding my driveway. I have never had the issue where a supermarket sneaks shellfish into my order even though I am allergic and explicitly did not want shellfish when I entered the supermarket. The tolerances on these services are just much much harder than a brick and mortar store and it feels like none of them take it seriously at all. You need to provide near 98% for every single customer or they eventually drop off as they lose patience with you and switch service, and after a couple they just don't want to bother any more.

<comment><USER4> I wish that there was a meal kit service without the meal kit. Provide curated recipes for X days a week and add the necessary ingredients directly to my Walmart grocery pickup or Amazon foods order or whatever. Would eliminate a lot of waste and shipping issues and give me all of what I like about meal kits.

<comment><USER5> Check out my service Eat This Much ([https://www.eatthismuch.com](https://www.eatthismuch.com))

It's pretty much what you describe, and we offer instacart and amazon fresh integration.

Since we have a big emphasis on hitting your nutrition targets, it's a bit tough to guarantee you'll love the first meal plan we generate for you. It takes a bit of refreshing meals to get everything perfect for your tastes, and it's definitely the #1 thing we're working on improving.

<comment><USER6> Hey! This is yours?

Huge fan for a long time. The app actualy solves problems verses just a fancy design or a wish for how things should be.

Thanks!

<comment><USER5> Glad to hear it! I started it a bunch of years ago as a side project, and now we have a small team working on it. Still a lot of work to do before it's as useful as we want it to be :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I quit Blue Apron for a few reasons.

       1. My plastic trash output doubled overnight when I signed up.
       2. Excessive amounts of carrots and other "cheap, but filling" substances.
       3. My life doesn't need another subscription service to think about and manage.
       4. Going to the store once a week isn't that much of a hassle, the food quality is higher, and it's cheaper.

Edit: The variety was nice though. Trying something different every time was an adventure, though most nights I wasn't feeling adventurous. Most nights, I didn't really feel like cooking something I may or may not like.

<comment><USER8> >> Going to the store once a week isn't that much of a hassle, the food quality is higher, and it's cheaper.

Not sure how common my take is, but not only is going to a store not a hassle -- going to a grocery store is an absolute pleasure. It is a timeboxed task with a sense of accomplishment at the end that takes me away from my computer and gives me exercise (I usually walk.) I tend to do 2x a week to break up the task and do it more often because I like it. Shorter cycles also helps with freshness and error correction.

<comment><USER9> Totally agree, and I don't know why more people don't say this. I actually enjoy going and looking at the food I'm going to buy. Most stores have nice extras like coffee shops and small cafes that can turn the 'chore' into a nice outing.

<comment><USER10> Most people don't say it because most people don't feel that way.

Not sure where the mystery is.

<comment><USER11> The non-bot interpretation of the comment you replied would be that he/she was wondering why more people don't feel that way.

<comment><USER10> Do we really need deep discussions explaining why people have different preferences in life?

I'm sure there are people who wonder why the OP doesn't enjoy spending time shopping for clothes.

Most supermarkets in America do not have nice cafes.

Most people go to a cafe if they want to go to a cafe, they don't go to a supermarket.

Many people have to drag kids along and keep them under control when grocery shopping.

It is a repetitive task.

For most people there is no creativity or joy in it.

Most people do not live within walking distance of their supermarket.

Most people wouldn't walk there anyway, since they are shopping for a family of three or four.

Most people don't see it as a break from other things, they see it as one more thing that has to be fit into a busy weekend (or even worse, an evening after work).

And many more.

Really the entire subthread reads like yuppie single men wondering why other people don't have the same preferences they do and being completely unable to figure it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > That's where making one-off meal kits available at retail locations like > grocery stores and membership clubs comes in; according to Seifer, moving > beyond the mail-order subscription model seems pivotal to meal kits' long- > term viability.

This is the money quote. The people who subscribe to these things and figure out cooking is not hard and just requires a bit of initial guidance are almost certainly going to keep recipes and do their own shopping. And now that it's proven viable and so many supermarkets deliver groceries, they're going to swoop in and eat mail-order kits' collective lunches.

<comment><USER13> I have long thought that there is an opening for local grocery stores to take a lot of this market. Many of my local supermarkets (HyVee, Walmart) allow for online ordering, but they all require the user to input items one-by-one. If they added a feature to add entire recipes in a single click, I think they would do very well for themselves. The additional cost of adding a recipe card would be negligible.

The customer's cost isn't increased over regular online ordering, and there isn't the issue of increased packaging. The food is fresh from the local supermarket and doesn't have to be shipped, beyond at most a local delivery.

<comment><USER14> H-E-B does exactly this in Texas. They have packed-daily boxes for $12 - $30 depending on the serving size.

<comment><USER15> H-E-B is a truly remarkable grocery phenomenon that I can't really quite describe, and I was hoping to see someone mention it here.

But also, yes their packaged dinner meals have saved several of my nights as a night-owl student at Baylor, studying for hours and looking up to realize it's suddenly 1am and everything's closed.

<comment><USER16> H-E-B: similar quality and better prices than Whole Foods on specialty items, similar prices and better quality than Walmart on commodities. Consistently good groceries, physically and financially accessible by just about everyone in Central Texas.

<comment><USER15> I Thought it was a statewide story not just localized to Centex?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> My wife & I used to use some of these services, but switched over to the following process:

1\. cookinglightdiet.com for recipe ideas & meal planning. They are typically quick, simple, and healthy recipes. Costs $4 / mo

2\. Generate shopping list on that site.

3\. Populate my shopping cart on the grocery store's site - we go to Ralph's typically. Pick a time to get the groceries. That service of theirs is called Clicklist.

4\. Pick up groceries at the designated time ($8 fee).

Picking meals is easy, generating the shopping list & filling the cart takes a little bit of time, picking the groceries up takes minutes (way better than spending an hour and a half searching for ingredients yourself). It's like normal grocery shopping some of the perks & convenience of meal kit services. Credit to my wife for coming up with all of this.

</comment><comment><USER18> My only fear is that the podcast market will also collapse without their advertising money.

<comment><USER19> I just heard an ad for "the world's first subscription electric toothbrush". Just startup fee cost more than a Braun one.

There's still lots of dumb VC money to advertise on podcasts left even without the food boxes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Probably. Meal kits may become available in supermarkets, though. They have a big advantage - a cold chain. They can keep something cold from the plant that made it to the moment the user takes it out of the cold case. The mail order people can't do that.

The Doordash/Uber/etc crowd can't even keep things warm.

<comment><USER21> One of the Kroger stores near me has meal kits next to the salad bar.

<comment><USER22> I really think Kroger should just release recipes to their ClickList service. Why limit it to 5-6 pre-packaged meals with dubious produce selections visible through the plastic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm seeing a lot of the negatives of meal kits here, but let me counter with my experience. I have little kids, and delivery meal kits are great for us. Shopping with a toddler and an infant is HARD. The cognitive load of keeping food stocked is hard. With a meal kit subscription, it's set and forget, I can always be sure that I have at least 3 solid meals for that week with fresh food. It takes half of the thinking and shopping and automates it.

</comment><comment><USER24> I also don't think it's interesting long term. It may be interesting to learn cooking but once you know a little you see quickly that going shopping is not that hard. I want either ready made foods or cook from scratch but not this weird thing in the middle.

Is this the "uncanny valley" of food preparation? Almost looks like it but not close enough.

<comment><USER25> >once you know a little you see quickly that going shopping is not that hard

Planning meals is still a somewhat significant cognitive load. I think that's the value proposition here. Getting a bunch of single meal portions is convenient, but not really any better than getting groceries delivered. It's not having to go through the process of finding recipes and then generating a shopping list that's the killer feature.

I think the ideal thing is the ability to click and say I want to make these four meals this week. It adds a list of perishables (meat, veggies, etc.) to my cart and a spits out a list of staples (spices, flour, soy sauce, etc.) for me to check to see if I have. Then I either have it delivered or it can print me out a shopping list.

<comment><USER26> Check out [https://www.eatthismuch.com](https://www.eatthismuch.com). Does exactly what you're describing, and it's brilliant. I picked it up last year, I couldn't believe it existed.

<comment><USER24> Ideally I would like to feed my own recipes into the system. Or even better, have recipe sites use a shared data format for their recipes. We could call it "RecipeML" or "RecipSON".

<comment><USER27> MealLime might be what you're looking for, I think you can add your own recipes but I haven't tried it [https://www.mealime.com/](https://www.mealime.com/)

<comment><USER25> This looks very promising. The only thing missing off my list is integration with online ordering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> All of the ones I tried had a significant drawback - they somewhat forced your selection by grouping meals together, or restricting choice otherwise.

Which... no thanks. There are foods I don't like, and I won't buy them just because you need to get rid of your supplies.

Meanwhile, I'm very happy with freshly - no cooking except "microwave for 3:30", mostly decent food quality. They still have the same last-mile problem as everybody else, though. (Seriously, could somebody just nuke OnTrac from orbit?)

<comment><USER29> I also did Freshly for a bit. The convenience is clearly there because like you said, no cooking. I found them to be even better when you reheat in the oven too.

I eventually cancelled Freshly because I grew tired of the lack of variation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I would pay a LOT for a meal kit or pre-made meal service that placed allergies/intolerances as its priority.

I suspect the reason this is so difficult is also the reason that I would pay a lot for it: it's a huge pain to come up with many recipes when you're allergic to many things. I'm allergic to almost all legumes. That includes soy, peanuts, lentils, edamame, most beans, peas, licorice, etc. However, I'm not allergic to black beans. This combination of allergies is highly unique: I'm sure there aren't that many people out there who share the exact same allergies. Sure, maybe some people have overlap, but it's likely only a partial overlap.

This means that any meal kit service would either have to 1) Provide bespoke sets of kits for almost every allergy combination possible or 2) Provide a limited number of meal sets that hit the big categories. Option 1 is nigh impossible since that's too many combinations to gain the benefits of economies of scale. Option 2 also sucks because my allergies might get lumped into a broader category and I miss out on ingredients. (Eg. I actually can eat black beans, but since they're legumes, they would likely be banned from a 'no legumes' set of meals)

The closest service I've found is [https://paleoonthego.com/collections/aip- bakery](https://paleoonthego.com/collections/aip-bakery)

However, I think they fall prey to my option 2's issues. No nightshades??? What the heck? I love tomatoes! Additionally, I haven't even bothered ordering anything from there because the items are so expensive. Just look at some of the prices: $22 for 4 pop tarts! So in fact, not only did they fall prey to option 2's issues, but they also fall prey to option 1's issues! (lack of economies of scale)

I have no idea if this issue is ever solvable in a way that provides a stable business model. Frankly, if normal meal kit services can't make it work, I doubt one that artificially limits its customer base would work either.

<comment><USER31> So.. I'm guessing it's not as simple as it sounds for the biz to tag each recipe with each allergen-ingredient, and then exclude recipes on that basis for a given customer's list of allergens?

<comment><USER30> Maybe I haven't looked hard enough: but I still haven't found a service that can reliably do that at the level of detail I need. (Eg. Blacklist all legumes, except for black beans which are whitelisted)

Plus I think that unless the business is focused around these bespoke allergy- friendly recipes, then me blacklisting a large swath of ingredients will lead to me missing out on most of / their best meals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> My wife thinks they're fun to make. People get to try new foods and ingredients.

Cheaper than going out, but obviously not cheaper than buying the groceries yourself.

Plenty of people spend $5 at a coffee shop so I can see a subset of the market continuing to pay $8/serving + shipping for this stuff.

</comment><comment><USER33> I learnt about Hello Fresh a few weeks ago, signed up, and have been a happy customer since.

For me, not having to pick a recipe and do the shopping is the biggest convenience. The results range from meh to awesome (certainly sometimes due to me botching the recipe).

Price-wise, the service is between eating out and buying groceries myself, which I think is fair.

Shipments have been on time and usually okay (had rotten tomatoes once).

I'm not sure how long I'll stay with them, but for now, I have no intention of canceling. I have eaten healthier food with more variety, and learnt a bunch about cooking and recipe tuning in the process.

<comment><USER34> I've been with HelloFresh for a year and a half. Before joining, I could only make the most basic meals, spaghetti, grilled cheese. Now, I feel like the training with HelloFresh and I'm a much better cook. The variety of meals has got me to try numerous things (and combinations of spices, ingredients, etc) that I normally would never buy for myself in a grocery store, or order in a restaurant.

I have to say that one thing about HelloFresh meals, they always plate so well. Over the time I've been with them, I've certainly collected a number of favourite recipies. But unfortunately, recipies are definitely repeating now.

There are a number of reasons I am still with them.

1\. Having everything needed just show up is really nice. I waste way less food with HelloFresh (either over buying ingredients that go bad, or making too much due to poor portion control and no one wants to eat left over 3 days after). Having just the right amount of fresh herbs for a meal can really make or break the flavour. I do still go to to grocery store for some basic stuff that I use to supplement some meals with, as some meals are occassaionally small. For example, if the meal comes with 1 potato, I may add a potato of my own. I leave the meat portion alone, and I think this has gotten me to eat smaller portions as well.

2\. Having a constant stream of different meals is nice. Before, my husband and I'd settled into always making the standard rotation of around 10 meals. That gets dull really quick. It was leading us to ordering pizza more than once a week, which is definitely not good (it is tasty, but not good).

3\. I enjoy making the food, and like I said, it always looks great when it is plated, so I take pictures of each creation and proud to show friends and family.

The over packaging issue, so the box and the meals within is cardboard and paper bags, I recycle both. I noticed recently they no longer plastic bag the garlic or shallots, which is just fine by me. The biggest waste right now is all the small plastic bags the sauces and spices come in. I suppose if I wanted, I could recycle those as well since they are plastic. The ice packs are non-chemical, and reusable. I've given many many away to friends and family. Basically no one I know ever has to buy an ice pack again. And even then I have too many of them, so once in a while I cut a bunch open and wash it down the drain (they say it is a non-toxic salt solution, and safe to wash down the drain)

The boxes I've also given away when people want moving boxes, but I recycle most of them.

I think recently some of the meals have gotten a little "meh". I paused my subscription on some weeks when really nothing on the list excited me. I hope that trend doesn't continue. I have not tried other services like BA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I found that Blue Apron did pretty much all I could have expected on their end- better recipes and ingredients that I usually got in my neighborhood and new techniques I hadn't tried. I quit because of the fundamental problem that a subscription food service requires an unknown time commitment (recipes were quite involved)3x a week as well as worry about missing the delivery and having food spoil.

<comment><USER36> This was the same issue for me. Maybe I'm just inefficient at cooking but I discovered quite quickly that cooking complex meals at home multiple times per week is actually _not_ something I wanted to do. I found myself spending what felt like an inordinate amount of time on dinner between prep, actual cooking, eating, and extensive cleanup.

I don't know if this is really Blue Apron's fault. It's more that I thought I wanted their service, then discovered I really didn't.

On the logistics side, there were also numerous times when the delivery time was just not convenient for me. Again, I don't think BA really did anything wrong here per se, but it was frustrating needing to plan around expecting a big box of fresh food to show up sometime on a particular day. This was further complicated by living in an apartment complex where deliveries sometimes go to the door... but also sometimes to the leasing office, which closes before I even get home.

<comment><USER37> > Maybe I'm just inefficient at cooking but I discovered quite quickly that > cooking complex meals at home multiple times per week is actually not > something I wanted to do. I found myself spending what felt like an > inordinate amount of time on dinner between prep, actual cooking, eating, > and extensive cleanup.

The way to be efficient is to cook in bulk so you have leftovers. I typically cook in bulk every Sunday, freeze six portions, and remove a portion from each the six prior weeks from the freezer.

<comment><USER36> This is what I prefer to do, but it's exactly the opposite of how Blue Apron works, which is why I found myself frustrated. BA portions are designed for a single meal (for one or two people [edit: two or four]), so there are no leftovers.

<comment><USER38> > BA portions are designed for a single meal (for one or two people)

Actually, BA portions are designed for a single meal for two or four people, (two people for the regular plan, four for the family plan.)

<comment><USER36> Thanks for the correction. It's been a while since I used it. We used the two- person plan and I wrongly remembered the other option as being for one person as opposed to four.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> BA can execute at 100% and they will still not get around the fact that they are selling groceries + additional food packaging services and neither the grocery business nor packaging has ever had real margins to speak of in the past 30 years.

</comment><comment><USER40> They are indeed doomed. They can easily be replaced by your local supermarket putting a kiosk and you buying it whenever you feel like it, not on a shipping schedule. I've seen it on my local supermarket. Love it.

<comment><USER41> I came here to say the same thing. The supermarket was always the big looming threat to any meal kit business. And they are also providing pickup and delivery service.

</comment></comment><comment> throwaway-1283 I don't necessarily need to eat something different every day, which is what these Meal Kits provide (i.e. variety in cooking).

I actually think meal kits for bulk meal prep would be more interesting. Meal prep has become a "thing" especially for those with some fitness goal - <USER2> getting a shipment that allows you bulk prepare 1-2 weeks worth of 1-2 dishes for lunch and/or dinner that fits a particular diet or fitness goal would be a lot more interesting to me (e.g. for weight loss, keto, bulking up, marathon training, etc.)

<comment><USER13> Does the group of people who meal prep line up with those that don't want to think about meal prep? One of the benefits of these meal prep kits is that you end up with a freshly cooked meal. If you are going to be eating a prepared meal, why not just let the service send it fully ready to go?

<comment> throwaway-1283 I haven't tried a prepared meal prep food delivery service before, but I would imagine that a successful "bulk meal prep kit" would need to be cheaper per meal than one that is pre-made.

I also think a major part of the appeal of meal kits is not really in having a "freshly prepared meal" as much as in helping people more easily achieve a level of satisfaction out of making something homemade. That, and the convenience of not 1) having to go to the grocery store to buy meal prep goods and 2) not having to find decent recipes for meals that fit your nutrition or fitness goal

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Makes me wonder how Gobble is doing.

It seems to be likely that there is a percentage of customers who will try and use these services for the long run. The trick will be for these companies to build up enough profitable customers so that they can spend on marketing to new customers and still make a profit. I'd expect some consolidation and in a few years, a handful of sustainable businesses.

<comment><USER43> I use Gobble and still like it. Unlike BlueApron etc, Gobble is intended to be quick and easy. Like, rather than giving you potato and expecting you to mash it, Gobble gives you the damn mashed potatoes and you microwave them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> First selling most perishable items online is difficult, but to believe home meals are doomed is shortsighted. The market exists otherwise because not everybody wants to play Gordon Ramsey every night. These companies are mostly doing everything themselves when in many cases they should partner with local grocery store chains and create branded meal plans. It's no different than the flower industry, where you partner with local florists who build your bouquet and deliver it under a national brand. It's extremely tough to deliver flower bouquets from a central fulfillment facility, been there did that.

People are lazy, nothing changes there anytime soon. Yet these are the same people who drop $75 for dinner a few times a week like it's no big deal yet will compare that to a meal subscription like it's a ripoff. The audience is out there, just a matter of finding them.

</comment><comment><USER45> I've tried various meal kit programs, chiefly because of their various free offers, and almost all of them start out strong and then their food quality declines overtime. My biggest complaint is not cost but the low quality of most of the food itself.

<comment><USER46> I have also tried various programs, and not only do I find the quality of the food to be an issue, but the menu and variety of food is really lacking. Even with little to no dietary restrictions, I often found that by week 3, meals started to feel the same and there was a lack of variety.

I've kept the recipes that I really liked and just buy the ingredients myself at my local grocery store, no sense in paying for the food to be delivered at this point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Would people here use a similar service, but the ingredients are automatically sourced from your local supermarket and delivered to your door? Almost supermarket prices with still the convenience of not deciding what to eat and buying the separately.

<comment><USER48> "Almost supermarket prices"

This is the problem - it's not going to be 'almost supermarket prices'. It'll be a 10-20% markup, which is _a lot_ for food.

<comment><USER49> But it's not necessarily so much if it saves me an hour of driving and shopping.

<comment><USER48> People don't value their time like that, at least, most of them don't. I mean, some do, but at my hourly rate the time I spend on driving and shopping is much more than its cost and I still balk at paying e5 for grocery deliveries, and I program economic models for a living! (instead I always order a few products that give me free delivery, and/or select a not so popular delivery time slot).

Point being, economic modeling and naively assigning a time value equal to or even just related to people's normal hourly wages is - well - naive, and does not yield accurate representations of real world behaviors.

Here's another example: I used to have a cleaner who I'd pay e10/hour. She'd park across the street from my house, paid parking, e6 per day. There was free parking available at 10 minutes walking distance. So for 20 minutes of walking, she'd save 6 euros, i.e. e18/h, almost double what she could make from her actual work! And yet she continued to pay for parking, even after I did this math for her. Point being: people are sensitive to costs in very non- intuitive (some might say: irrational, but I don't like the connotations of that word) ways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I just stick to a single cultural cuisine for a while and fold my leftovers somehow into tomorrows meal and try not to have too many left overs to begin with. This works pretty good with Mexican, and most cultures know something about leftover management. If I need to be entertained while dining I'll do it at a restaurant now and then.

Picking out ingredients for a random recipe is going to leave you with little surpluses here and there. It can be hard to work it all into what you cook if you vary widely in what you cook. Though I do love cooking a variety of things. It can be wasteful unless your planning is on par with a chef.

</comment><comment><USER51> Does anyone just use these websites for meal ideas and just go shopping on their own?

My issue is finding a good recipe which also doesn't have 15 separate ingredients to buy - these companies I'd imagine would try to have as little ingredients as possible - and have similarities that picking a few recipes means you already have crossovers.

Most recipes I see are sometimes way too much trouble or take too long to prepare (sometimes overnight!) - I thought I'd be okay eating the same thing but when you're living with others and cooking together you want some variety.

<comment><USER52> Try one of Roxanne Gold's cookbooks. One of her Schticks is recipes with just a few ingredients. If nothing else, it helps get you into a mode of knowing that recipes can be pretty simple.

There are also regional cuisines that require more ingredients but there's a core set that get reused a lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Hello Fresh levelled me up as a cook and greatly reduced the amount of waste we generate.

Our bin is emptied once a month now (from twice a month) - it would be once every two months if it wasn't for the diapers.

</comment><comment><USER54> Meal kits are doomed but fully prepared meal delivery services like freshly are here to stay. Even if freshly itself dies I really think Amazon is going to expand into the pre-made meal market.

<comment><USER55> I think frozen meals will make comeback.

I'm thinking about non-cooked frozen meals , which you'll cook at home in some one-click cooking gadget , like an instant-pot or a smart combi-oven, or maybe some basic cooking robot[1].

That way you could get high quality, high-convenience at a cheaper price.

[1]you get pre-cut ingredients.

You put each ingredient in a bin at your home cooking machine.

The machine adds each ingredient to a pot at the right time, and mixes when needed and controls the heat.

<comment><USER56> Might as well buy a Thermomix or equivalent

<comment><USER55> The Thermomix doesn't offer a great amount of value.

If it was, a competitor would be offering it for a mass market price($300-400 or cheaper), and have a hit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> For me, the quality had gone downhill considerably. First, missing ingredients or completely mis-boxed orders. Then, the actual ingredients started becoming low quality. Stuff that would remain on the shelf at the grocery store. Then stuff started coming damaged. And all the sides are cheap (high) carbs. I was ok with the packaging, it never bothered me.

Going to the store, you get exactly what you want, good to high quality choices, and no damage! Plus, endless variety. And its way cheaper. So for me, there was little value left.

</comment><comment><USER58> I subscribed to Blue Apron for a few months and was unhappy with the service. Boxes would come missing important items or with incorrect quantities. Recently, I purchased a Tovala oven (and subscribed for the meals which go along with it.) So far so good! I only use it to supplement meals we cook at home or for lunch when certain dinners we cook won't have leftovers, etc. It's surprisingly good and we use the oven to cook our own food, as well.

</comment><comment><USER59> I never tried any of these services. None of them offered keto-friendly (low carbohydrate) meal options. I probably would have if at least one of them did.

</comment><comment><USER60> I never understood the appeal behind them in the first place, so take my opinion with that bias in mind.

I think that a user-adaptive program to procedurally generate a weekly meal plan, break that down into a unified grocery shopping list, and maybe even forward said list to the picker services that some grocery stores are running now, would remove every last speck of competitive advantage the mail order kits have. Instead of getting a dinner-in-a-box delivered to your door every day, you can park in a pickup spot at the grocery, pop the trunk/hatch, get your order, and take it home. Every night, your phone can alert you when to start dinner, what foods you'll need, and pull up a recipe card or checklist if you need it.

If you know how to make tacos, and like to eat them every Tuesday, you'll get taco ingredients on your grocery list every week, and will likely get frequent suggestions for recipes that also contain cilantro, chiles, lime, tomatoes, sour cream, and green onions, to use up the leftovers. Cilantro-lime chicken. Pad Thai. Crunchy ramen salad. The most efficient meals divide your grocery store haul across multiple meals, so you don't end up eating a whole head of lettuce in one sitting, but can eat a little in every meal for which lettuce makes sense, until it's gone--ideally the night before you pick up your next load of groceries.

But the biggest advantage is that I wouldn't have to think about food until it's exactly the time I need to deal with it. There're no tedious exchanges like: "Whaddya wanna eat? Dunno; whaddyou want? Don't care. Pizza? No, not that. Mexican? Nah. Sushi? Yyyyeah... okay. Sakura or Honada? I thought we weren't going to Sakura any more? Oh yeah." &c. &c. &c.

Remember when Mom and/or Dad said "We're having meatloaf and Brussels sprouts tonight. Siddown, shaddap, and eat."? That was easy. All you had to do was show up. It even worked okay after Mom/Dad got sick of your kid complaints and said, "Fine. _You_ make dinner, and I'll unload the dishwasher." The menu was already planned, and the food ready to cook. So a program that would select a partially randomized meal, composed of stuff that I already told it I like, and can cook, would eliminate a lot of time wasted on thinking about food. The mail-order services do that, but they're not the only ones who _can_ do that.

<comment><USER61> This would be a great service. I'd pay a few bucks a week to have a service that sent me a weekly shopping list, and the corresponding recipes. I hate wasting food, so if it could know that "well, he needs blackbeans for this recipe, but an entire can is too much, so we'll chuck in the other recipe a few days later to use up the beans..."

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> It would be nice if grocery stores had a more descriptive/accessible way of searching for and buying items online. Choosing a recipe, then getting a list of required ingredients - perhaps even delivered automatically to your door - seems like a much more environmentally friendly and practical solution compared to these meal kits.

<comment><USER63> Wegmans (mid-Atlantic and New England) has this in their app and on their website, it's quite nice. Sample: [https://www.wegmans.com/meals- recipes/meals/main-course/asia...](https://www.wegmans.com/meals- recipes/meals/main-course/asian-cauliflower--rice--lettuce-wraps.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> I recently purchased one at a Kroger (store branded). It is good to know that Costco will also stock them soon.

Buying them at local stores has most of the benefits with less of the ecological impact or high costs. In fact the one I purchased had less overall packaging than buying the parts individually, there was still a price premium however.

</comment><comment><USER65> Mealkits haven't worked for me at all (I have tried a few), but boxes of fresh veggies and of meat have been great.

Not naming companies as I'm not shilling, just pointing out the success (for one person!) of a different model.

</comment><comment><USER66> I tried a couple of blue apron kits when they were in Costco. Some nights you have the time and energy to cook from scratch. Some nights you order pizza. Other nights a meal kit is just right.

</comment><comment><USER67> Much prefer the Huel / Soylent route.

</comment><comment><USER68> Too expensive. I make software engineer money and I can't justify it.

</comment><comment><USER69> I've wrote about this some time ago here: [https://medium.com/@giacaglia/the- end-of-the-meal-kit-ffc707...](https://medium.com/@giacaglia/the-end-of-the- meal-kit-ffc707a1957)

</comment><comment><USER70> Long time ago I wouldn't have minded. But cooking itself is an enjoyable process....and those are the people these guys are targteting....

it's not a sustainable model because once you realize you have a measuring spoon and the right beakers, its just following directions, sort of like a series of linux commands you would normally copy & paste

</comment><comment><USER71> I never found these attractive, the amount of trash you generate using them is just heinous, and I'm not even usually a pro-environment person.

<comment><USER72> Not only do they generate trash by requiring a lot of small bags and such for the ingredients, they also create food waste by bundling together ingredients with different expiration times. I spent some time digging around in dumpsters behind a grocery store in Vegas which carries their own meal kit offering. They throw out huge boxes of meal kits with expired meat in them which contain a bunch of food which is good for longer, like rice, herbs, potatoes, etc.

It was great for me because its a lot of clean, unexpired food for free but the amount of waste it created blew my mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> ___

<comment><USER74> Hey, just a suggestion. You asked me to enter my zip code first and then told me that you don't serve my area. Might I suggest A/B testing the following: show us your service areas and ask for our zipcode / email to notify us when the service will be available in our area. This is a bit more transparent with less of a letdown. But I'm not sure if it'll net you more useful data (thus the A/B test).</comment></comment>


Ask HN: People who went from entrepreneur to employee? Why? Was it good or bad? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I went from entrepreneur to employee. Why? Because we ran out of money and had to shut down our startup. Good or Bad? Neither, it just is. I'd rather still be an entrepreneur, but being an employee is paying the bills right now.</comment>


Ask HN: What would you pay $10,000 for right now? - <AUTHOR> What service have you always wanted someone to provide, product have you always wanted someone to build, skill you have always wanted someone to teach you, that you would pay $10,000 today for?
Please don't say random things, especially if you don't have $10,000 to spend right now. The whole idea of this question is to try to potentially discover value and to price out those that want "Snapchat for dogs for $500".
Edit 1: Requests like "Lifetime Access for" also don't qualify as viable responses....for obvious reasons. <comment><USER2> I'd pay $10k to figure out what exactly is wrong with my body. I've had constant injuries or issue with my shoulder, knee, and back for the past 5 years. Feels like I'm falling apart due to old age but I'm not even past 25 yet.

<comment><USER3> I would pay $10k for fixing my health problems or my wife's. I have been sick for nearly 6 months now. My wife has had her symptoms for nearly 2 years now. Both are slowly getting worse over time. But it's not bad enough that doctors care enough

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would pay $10,000 for an API that gives me the Linkedin company updates for any single company.

I would pay $10,000 for an API that gives me real-time Asian news (Korean, Japanese, Chinese) content that matches a keyword.

I would pay $10,000 for an API that classifies an article into a topic such as politics, tech, etc.

I would pay $10,000 for an API that shows me the annual/monthly trends for FB likes, Twitter followers, Instagram followers, and App Store downloads for public companies that are in the equity market so I can analyze these companies and buy/sell prior to earnings.

I would pay $10,000 for an API that gives me a stream of Instagram updates that have a certain keyword.

I would pay $10,000 for an API that gives me the social metrics, given an Instagram handle.

And yes, I work in the social marketing industry :)

<comment><USER5> I don't feel like any of these ideas are worth $10k to most people, to be perfectly honest.

10k for a LI api to a company page? I don't get it.

<comment><USER4> You are most likely right, but OP was asking what was worth $10K to me personally, not what I thought would be worth $10K to others :)

Just giving my domain-specific 2 cents.

<comment><USER6> Also its you as a business who will probably on-sell that info for $500 a month to each client.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is super niche, but a service that takes a video upload (or youtube link) of a professional pool/billiards match and generates overhead shot diagrams for every shot of the match. Why do I want this? Diagramming shots is the most tedious part of making a book where you analyze shots from pro matches -- this has been done by hand before and sells for ~$50 -- [https://www.amazon.com/Capelle-9-Ball-Archer-vs- Reyes/dp/096...](https://www.amazon.com/Capelle-9-Ball-Archer-vs- Reyes/dp/096492045X) . I've played with this a bit, taking photos of a table, doing transforms to get an overhead layout (with OpenCV perspective transforms and Hough detection), but it's never come out quite right. I also want motion tracking of balls so you can generate arrows for where the balls went, but honestly, just the static "balls at rest" diagrams would be worth it.

<comment><USER8> Do you have any contact info? I'd like to give this a shot as a pool player and a computer vision engineer.

<comment><USER7> Awesome, I'll email you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm aware of luxury services that provide similar services, but I would pay 10k for a matchmaking service that could guarantee a lifetime connection with partner.

It could be a service that goes the extra mile in terms of discovery to find someone compatible in terms of values, interests and hobbies, etc.

<comment><USER10> No one can guarantee a lifetime connection. Relationships take work, and people are complicated. They change over time. All one can do is put in the work and appreciate the time when it's going well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I do a lot of freelancing but I have difficulty dealing with clients while doing the heavy lifting of tech work. Programming can be emotionally exhausting, and it's worse when dealing with clients who are manipulative.

I'd gladly pay $10,000 for someone who could just handle sales and customer service for a project that pays $20,000 or more.

<comment><AUTHOR> When you say handle sales, do you mean handle product development for each project that you have landed? So basically an account manager? Or do you mean someone that goes and lines up new sales? Just want to get specifics, so everybody understands what is being discussed.

<comment><USER11> Someone who manages what we promise to the client and how much they pay for it.

A huge part of the role is just deciding requirements. Whether this thing is possible, how much it costs, keeping the client from sneaking in something impossible, and lowering the costs to us when we can't deliver something that is too expensive to build.

The person has to be good at not overpromising things. Or managing client expectations.

Many clients prefer waterfall because it's easy to estimate project costs but it tends to be extremely costly to both parties. So someone who can educate the client in how to work from an agile perspective, suited to their budget restrictions.

There's the legal landmine to maneuver. What happens when things go wrong.

There are also many unethical people, especially in large companies, who are experts at pushing people into those landmines. They ask for impossible things then refuse to pay when those conditions are not met.

So the ideal person or service needs to be good at reading clients and avoiding these kinds of contracts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I would pay $10k for a share in an honest, low fee property investment. I can't afford losing liquidity to buy another whole property, but I'd like to invest a proportion of my savings against rental/commercial properties, as directly as possible, with as few intermediares and with many safeguards for bad times.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, I want to do this as well. When Tesla announced the gigafactory in Reno, I really wanted to pool together with others to buy an apartment complex or something.

<comment><USER12> Did the property prices spike up as expected?

<comment><USER14> I'd say not really. The graph doesn't seem to be linkable, but if you add "Las Vegas" as a comparator, both Fernley and Vegas moved in lockstep. Vegas is way too far away to have its prices affected by the Gigafactory, so I'd say that there was no discernible effect. Or, at least, a very modest effect.

[https://www.zillow.com/fernley-nv/home- values/](https://www.zillow.com/fernley-nv/home-values/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'd pay $10,000 per eye to fix my crappy eyesight, its so bad that Lasik isn't an option for me.

I'd pay $10,000 for a self driving car, because I have crappy eyesight and can't actually drive a car.

<comment><USER7> You should consider flying to Japan/Korea to get Toric ICL if it's an option. It's not FDA approved for the US yet, but I've had friends that did it, and not one of them have any regrets. It's been a couple years since, so I wouldn't be surprised if they had even newer/better options available.

<comment><USER16> Do you have references for doctors there that focus on medical tourists?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> A few things I suppose:

\- A mentor: I guess what Mark Hanna was to Jordan Belfort - I'm an undergraduate and just starting out my career, it would be cool to have a good, close friend who has experience, has a large network, etc, and would be willing to show me the ropes

\- A financial advisor: A bit similar to the latter, a good friend who shares knowledge with me about finance, is open to endless questions, helps me with my finances (investing, etc)

</comment><comment><USER18> Extremely competent, perfectionist healthcare. Ideally the money would directly fund studies and the program would offer opportunities to participate in studies as well. Focus should not just be on acute issues, but the smaller quirks that a lot of people have. As an aside, most medical doctors i've encountered have a very bad confidence/merit ratio.

</comment><comment><USER19> Leads I can resell for $11,000. Sounds like a copout answer, but I basically pay Facebook $XXXk a month to do just that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely a copout :)

Can you explain a bit more....do you have a way of gathering those leads now? A way that can potentially be automated?

<comment><USER19> Zapier for $150 a month solves my needs very handily. My lifetime value to them is probably going to be 10k.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Lifetime unrestricted high speed data plan with global coverage

<comment><AUTHOR> Partially a cop-out. All "lifetime access to" responses, aren't realistic responses.

<comment><USER12> Depends on how you define 'lifetime'. Sadly I've seen many SaaS businesses dia and with htem the 'lifetime' access. Otoh my Plex Pass value is still holding strong. Finally if we're talking true lifetime, it can be averaged out to the median lifespan of subscribers, in my case $10k 'lifetime' it would work out to <$25/month

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Link analysis visualization

<comment><AUTHOR> Care to expound on this further?

<comment><USER22> I believe he used one of those marketing phrase generators when he came up with this response.

<comment><AUTHOR> Lol.....that's why I asked for clarity, because I didn't want to assume :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> A universal flu & cold vaccine for me and my family.

</comment><comment><USER24> 1 BTC.

</comment><comment><USER25> $10,001

</comment><comment><USER26> Farm land.</comment>


ECMAScript 5 Objects and Properties - <AUTHOR> http://ejohn.org/blog/ecmascript-5-objects-and-properties/ <comment><USER3> Can someone explain the benefits of the new lockdown features besides new opportunities for performance optimization?

<comment><USER4> I think 'lockdown' type things can be really helpful when debugging code. Being able to lock something down, and be 100% sure that it can never be changed, by some weird eval(), by any 3rd party libs you're using, other developers code etc is very helpful.

You could also use it to find where a property is being accessed from - <USER2> set it to writable:false - then see where an exception is thrown from.

Also enforcing access - maybe you have a setTitle() function you want to be used instead of directly accessing the .title property. Now you can enforce that.

Just as in Java, the keywords private and protected are a good mechanism for controlling access.

These updates look really cool. Well thought out.

<comment><USER5> Lockdown would be like the final keyword in Java.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Javascript is the most important language of the 21st century.

Master javascript and the web will be at your fingertips.</comment>


Ask HN: Where is the HN Google+ directory - <AUTHOR>

Decided to get on Google+. Tried searching for the HN Google+ directory I see pop up from time to time, but couldn't find it. Anybody?<p>Thanks in advance. <comment><USER2> This page should explain it <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3410859>

<comment><AUTHOR> Had no idea. Thanks for this.

<comment><USER2> Oh and two coping mechanisms: one to keep G+ contacts from blowing up your chat: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3472283> and one to keep it from swamping all other news on your G+ feed: [https://plus.google.com/u/0/115948050407884269063/posts/Nd61...](https://plus.google.com/u/0/115948050407884269063/posts/Nd61YC5CbHJ)

<comment><AUTHOR> also awesome. thanks again</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Any recommendations on convincing wives to let their husbands become entrepreneurs? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I think it's a highly personal situation, and depends a great deal on the couple. Some people actually enjoy working together - I don't think I would (I'd rather hear what my wife did at work that has nothing to do with my job), and the 'hedging' aspect of someone with a steady job isn't a bad thing, either.

I've tried to get my wife to read as many of the really good articles as possible - some of PG's stuff... I tried to get her to read 'founders at work', but have yet to succeed. It would be a great book though.

It also depends on other things like where you are (kids? now? how many years from now?), what she does, what she wants to do, what kind of life she wants to live, what your ideas and her ideas are about how long it will be before you make money.

I think the best thing is to talk all those things over thoroughly.

In terms of "attaining your goals in life", though, I know that having met and married my wife is higher up there than anything else, and I always try and keep that in mind.

<comment><USER3> My wife and I read together most of "Hackers and Painters" by PG. I was surprised -- she really enjoyed it. I think this was partly what got her enthused about microPledge. (Some of the chapters were too techie and not readable-out-loud, like "A Plan for Spam". We skipped those.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you're asking this here, I'd say don't do it. Don't presume you have to go for it, especially right now. Keep in mind she may take on about as much of the risks and downside as you do without the personal satisfaction you get out of it.

Colin Powell may not be President of the US right now simply because his wife is not up for it it. But even though he could push her into battle or steamroll her, he doesn't. Just shows that he's a smart guy and model husband -- two traits not often combined in presidents, as it so happens.

<comment><USER5> Did Colin Powell ever even talk about intending to run for President? Not saying he didn't, just that I never heard about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Well... there's a broad spectrum of startup "types" - everything from "supplement my income, maybe replace it in the future" to full bore "VC funded, have to grow like cancer or we'll die".

If your idea fits in the the former class of startup convincing a spouse should theoretically be fairly easy - just set boundaries on time spent on your idea and make sure she gets plenty of time too; but I can't speak from experience here.

If your idea is closer to the latter or anything like a "typical" startup, good luck. An environment like that is going to be hard on _everybody_ in any close relationship with you. In my last startup, one of my employee's marriage came very close to failing due to the pressure... and he wasn't nearly doing the hours that the founders were doing.

Are you sure you'd want to do that to your wife?

</comment><comment><USER7> I think the prospect of financial security for their (possibly future) kids is the biggest selling point.

<comment><USER2> I respectfully disagree. Consider that:

\- People are risk averse.

\- Most hackers make pretty good money at 'real jobs'.

\- Startups are definitely a risky proposition. As someone else commented, "A startup founder with a successful startup is already a rare exception.".

\- So when you're in the thick of it, and there isn't a lot of money, and you don't know if it's going to go anywhere, that reality is going to wipe out any talk of "we might be rich", compared with the alternative of "making pretty good money and living comfortably".

The "this is what makes me happy, how can we both make it work" is the approach that has best worked for me. My wife likes coming home and finding that I'm so much happier than when I was working for a moron, even if there's no money in it (yet).

<comment><USER7> I'm not saying that the prospect of getting rich is enough to _convince_ wives, just that of all the attractions of a startup-- being one's own boss, working on interesting technical problems, not having to commute to a cube farm, and the possibility of getting rich-- the one that appeals most to wives is the possibility of getting rich. Which is natural because of all the preceding, that's the one that affects them most.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you really want to do it, all you should need to do is make sure she knows that you can't be happy without pursuing your dreams. Your spouse should want that for you, and should be on board, no matter what the sacrifice.

It helps, though, to give something back for her dreams. Marriages are partnerships, after all.

</comment><comment><USER9> How long have you been married?

Is your wife employed and does she have a stable career?

Do you have kids?

Do you have a modest lifestyle that can sustain long periods of no income?

Does your family have health insurance?

Has your wife had any exposure to the entrepreneurial culture -- i.e. have her brother/sister/father/mother been a company founder?

</comment><comment><USER10> dude, if you cant convince the one who decided to spend the rest of her life with you, how are you going to convince people who dont know you to invest in your company?

<comment><USER11> those are two different things because the interests and constraints of your spouse will be quite different from those of your investors or consumers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Include the wife as a co-founder? :) I am trying that, and the biggest advantage I can see is that our interests and intentions are more aligned than can be with other co-founders.

</comment><comment><USER13> "Let"? That kind of pre-existing power disparity already says it's doomed.

You need all your support systems Go For Launch or it's a no go. They all need to be behind you, pushing you FORWARD.

<comment><USER8> You really don't understand marriage. You don't just do things - You work together.

<comment><USER13> Actually I understand only too well. I know the OP's situation is no good because your partner should be supporting your dreams/goals/aspirations and vice-versa. You should never have to ask permission, or convince someone to "let" you pursue your dreams. Nobody who truly cares about you would ever try to stand in the way of it.

"Because I really want to" is reason enough for anyone you're that close to. Bringing in a bunch of unknown people on the 'net to help you plead your case is a defacto admission of a lack of closeness/belief/trust.

<comment><USER8> The act of convincing is an important one. You need to convince your spouse that it's important to you. More important than all the other concerns (that's the hard part).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's a super tough thing. I think the startup founder with a successful marriage and a successful startup is the rare exception. They're both full- time commitments and one almost always loses the battle for attention.

Tom Leykis (much hated LA "shock jock") advises (paraphrasing): _Do not get married until you've achieved your dream in life._

I think that's good advice to take, even if it's tough thing to face. I haven't see much evidence to contradict it.

<comment><USER7> A startup founder with a successful startup is already a rare exception.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> _'... convincing wives to let their husbands become entrepreneurs? ...'_

Find the union of where your expertise domain overlap and complement and work towards an idea from there. Think SixApart (coder, designer ~ blog tools), Fastgraph (coder, game designer ~ games & engine development tools), Flickr (visual design, communication skills) . Lots of startups have spouses in them. It's a matter of finding and aligning skillsets,

<comment><USER16> As a married entrepreneur, I would never recommend having your wife work with you. Relationships are complicated enough without throwing business complications into the mix. My "trick" was to have a startup that grew organically out of and enhanced my "day" job.

<comment><USER17> On the other hand, I run a little online shop with my girlfriend, that is getting pretty respectable income: I handle the technical things, and she handles the customer services/inventory/shipping stuff.

It surely beats working for somebody else: more time to spend together, less grunt work and potentially more income too.

You do not need VC/Angel funding for your startup... it is definitely possible to grow your business, have a life and be rich at the same time. Don't be ruled by the 'Tyranny of Or'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Tell her:

If I fail, we lose the house. If I succeed, I'll get rich and "trade up", if ya know what I mean.

<comment><USER19> Lol. Yeah, the poster must not have Tom Leykis on the air in his town. He'd do well to listen to a few episodes. Or just man up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I more or less hide it from my girlfriend. No really.

It does help that she works long hours as well, and of course we have no children.

</comment><comment><USER21> So my experience from doing a startup. It depends on the wife/girl. \- If they are confident and not risk adverse its OK. My gf practically told me to go get a life and challenge yourself or i'm going to dump you b/c you are clearly doing nothing in your current corporate job. She is still a student though, and there are no family considerations. \- other significant others in the team required more convincing, but most saw how 'serious' their loved one was about it and initially opposed it but eventually said ok.

this is really different from a kid/house situation though. i think there is a different level of responsibility if you have others depending on you for financial security. I think then its really a decision between you and your wife that you sit down and discuss. In geneneral though, you want to sell the story and back it up w/ action.

</comment><comment><USER22> Your wife or your cofounders' wives? I only ask because you phrase it in plural.

<comment><USER22> Whoever downmodded, care to explain? I'm not smartassing or critiquing the writing; I was really doubtful about what the poster meant.

If I wanted to ask what everyone is replying, I'd say "any advice on convincing your wife to let you become an entrepreneur?" All that indirection about 'wives' and 'husbands' makes it look like someone is worried that the wive(s) of their prospect cofounder(s) will prevent them from taking the leap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Promise her riches beyond her wildest dreams?

<comment><USER14> "So when you're rich can leave me for some younger, hotter model?"

<comment><USER13> Time to upgrade the server!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> "Let"? As in .. you have to ask?

Be "the man." Take "the risk." She will follow you. (Otherwise, dump her.)

Also, read "The Way of the Superior Man" (and/or other books) by David Deida. It will be one of the better investments you will make in your life.

PS. There's a reason San Francisco's dead-last in (_heterosexual_) sex, young children and babies per capita: (Hint: can be elucidated from the following article) <http://digg.com/offbeat_news/No_Sex_Tonight_2></comment>


Compiler numbers, and why they don't matter - <AUTHOR> https://briancallahan.net/blog/20200806.html <comment> compiler-guy Author's only analysis is on the size of binaries. And while they are right to the extent of the point they are making, size is only one dimension.

Every compiler, but especially optimizing compilers, makes hundreds of tradeoffs as it generates object code. Some for speed of compilation, some for speed of resultant code, some for size. This is true even at various optimization levels. They all have thresholds and decision points about what makes better code, given the hundreds of dimensions they can be measured against.

The only true answer to this question is to build your own code with a variety of compilers, and see which produces the results that makes the best trade offs for your own project. Fastest running, fastest build, smallest code, smallest footprint, most standards conforming, whatever else.

Your own code and needs are what governs.

</comment><comment><USER2> > 15e2

This looks like 15 x 10^2 to me. I think all caps hex may be able to avoid such problems.

<comment><USER3> I don't really understand why the author chose hex for the file size to begin with.

The first table is all "3b", which I initially interpreted as "3 bytes". Spent a good ten seconds wondering how any executable could be only three bytes.</comment></comment>


Craigslist's Challenger Could Be an App, or Several - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/07/craigslists-challenger-could-be-an-app-or-several/

<comment><USER2> Marketplace data would be best if it were fully decentralized.

At a company I am doing software consulting for we've been building bits and pieces of a distributed scraper and one of the ideas we see as a possible approach to solving these data silos is the equivalent of generalized "bit torrent for API data". So long as your service does not publish the copyrightable content gathered via API data or at least does so in a way that respects the DMCA requirements, you are pretty much free any clear, since a bittorrent approach would completely absolve you from agreeing to any terms of use and the distributed approach would absolve you from a trespass to chattels lawsuit. Between those two and the Feist vs. Rural ruling, I cannot think of any defense a company could mount.

Near as I can tell both Twitter and Craigslist (among many many others) are all vulnerable to this data collection vector.

If this problem sounds interesting to you, shoot me an email (in my profile). I know they are hiring.

<comment><USER3> I think CL abandoned the trespass to chattels argument when PadMapper switched to 3taps. Couldn't CL file DMCA requests given the exclusivity agreement they now have with their users?

I agree that marketplace data should be decentralized. I hope it works out for you.

<comment><USER4> Facts aren't protected by copyright, and PadMapper only distributes facts (# of bedrooms, location and price). It doesn't copy the CL post title, description or photos which would be protected. I don't think there's any copyright infringement to serve a DMCA request against, but I'm no lawyer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Craigslist continues to succeed in part because they define their own vision of success (one which would probably not receive Series A funding) and because that vision aligns closely with the interests of those who use it (rather than Series A funders).

However, its success is in no small part because it has mapped itself onto natural markets (i.e. MSA's) with a simple format that scales up to Denver and down to Dothan. It's reached critical mass.

Sure there are probably enough iPhone users in Boston to create a marketplace from an app. But that's probably not the case in North Platte Nebraska.

Craigslist works because it is community based, and somewhat akin to a public service. People can access Craigslist on the computers at their public library, and no app can compete with that. No app can reach the sort of critical mass to compete with classified ads 1.0, let alone with version 2.

</comment><comment><USER6> One way to disrupt companies like Craigslist would be to build disseminator sites that would allow you to post to multiple places at one. So instead of the system being:

post on craigslist --> data to craigslists servers --> people view it on craigslist

It would look more like:

Post on disseminator --> data goes to craigslist, padmapper, etc. and a public database --> people view it on craigslist, padmapper, or their favourite aggregator.

If anyone's interested in similar ideas, email me! I'd love to talk about it.

<comment><USER4> Most of the real estate listings are already coming through such services. They're no longer permissible under Craigslist's current TOS as you must grant CL an _exclusive_ license to your posting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There are dozens of services better or at least arguably capable of being better than Craigslist, but their stranglehold on the online classifieds market has made it extremely difficult for anyone to snipe their users; I go to Craigslist because everyone else goes to Craigslist.

Another problem is their lack of concern for the bottom line. Craigslist functions off of plenty of revenue, but they aren't trying to maximize it at all. You're not forced to pay for 99% of their service, nor are you inundated with ads on every page.

Craigslist "got there first" and now millions of people like my dad are used to the interface, and refuse to switch.

</comment><comment><USER8> What about Craigslist's model makes it necessary for it to be proprietary?

Is there any reason not to build a classifieds system (or just a classifieds license) that is open and free? Sure, you can make money using that data, but only with a share-alike license that anyone using classifieds from others must also make their classifieds available for use?

<comment><USER6> One reason (playing devil's advocate here) might be to protect people's privacy. Maybe I don't like the clientele at Padmapper or Ebay for whatever reason, and I'd prefer my listings to stay on the site I posted them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> _Why has no upstart knocked Craigslist from its perch, despite its outdated design and failure to work nicely with others?_

Is there a rule that when you read the word "despite" it usually means "because of"?</comment>


Ask HN: Digital nomading within the US? - <AUTHOR> Currently I'm in my second month with a client working as a freelance remote programmer (I have past experience with other remote jobs, though) but it's part time and not enough money to pay for my own apartment. But I am almost age 36 and living with my mom for too long and I gotta move on with my life.
I rented an apartment for myself at age 26-28 and then financial problems forced me to move back with my mom. But I can't be stuck a late bloomer forever. I have a 4-door car I own and outside of just some brake fixes that it needs I'd be set for driving long-distance now.
I know some people work remotely as digital nomads. Is this possible within the US? I am not really considering foreign countries due to having more complications to them.
For budget, I make about $1,300 gross per month and that is about $15,600 gross yearly. That could become more per month if the company I work for decides to give me more work and so far they are happy with it. This comes from only working 10 hrs a week so I have lots of room to grow.
I plan to travel and sleep in my car to save money on housing, occasionally stopping by a hotel or AirBNB. And without getting caught up in analysis paralysis, I just want to wing it sometimes and still not get myself into a serious problem. <comment><USER2> Yes there are people who do this. Example: [https://www.instagram.com/azamatsmith/](https://www.instagram.com/azamatsmith/)</comment>


How many python programmers are there in the World today? - <AUTHOR> http://www.gilesthomas.com/2013/06/how-many-python-programmers-are-there-in-the-world/

<comment><AUTHOR> The estimate here is 2-5million But boy that seems a _lot_ \- am I missing something?

<comment><USER2> Are you sure this is the No of python programmers???

To me sounds like the part of population who know how to write 'hello world' in at least one programming language?!</comment></comment>


New Way to Discover Food Places Near You - <AUTHOR> https://www.makan.pro/en <comment><USER2> What is the range of this? There is little documented. It could not locate the any results for the ten items I tried with my location enabled that I know already exist. Being in the outskirts of Chicago, I am in an area inundated with restaurants of all varieties and this could not return any results.</comment>


Our Game "Charlie's Hard Work Day" needs feedback - THANKS - <AUTHOR> http://scramblermedia.com/charliesHardWorkDay

<comment><AUTHOR> we use node. we sync our servers with dropbox and git. we use hummingbird for real time analytics and mixpanel. we are 2 guys from Costa Rica ([http://www.costarica-discover- it.com/images/caribbean2_nov30...](http://www.costarica-discover- it.com/images/caribbean2_nov30.jpg)). we have been working on this for the last 2 months... thanks!</comment>


My developer has cut off all contact (update) - <AUTHOR>

Hi,<p>About a week ago I posted about my developer not getting in touch for a month or so. It's now been longer than that (obviously) and still nothing. I know he's alive because he's active on here, but won't answer a simple email (and I've sent plenty) I seriously have no clue what to do, and the last email he sent stated that he was going to send an update... but he never did. What the heck should I do? <comment><USER2> To me a few days of non-communication is completely unacceptable and is a huge red flag, especially if this guy (you said he) is on here actively posting which is basically just a huge "FU."

In my opinion, there are 2 routes to take on this -

1\. be assertive and give him some sort of ultimatum. don't trash the guy publicly but let him know you will be writing an honest review of his work on X review site and will not be working with him in the future, or recommending him. let him know the only way to prevent this from happening is to respond with a plan of action and to follow up on that plan.

2\. cut your losses and find a new developer.

I learned a long time ago if you want to be respected in business you cannot always make friends and you can't worry about making people happy. Sometimes this means sending people ultimatums, especially when you money, time and dreams are on the line. There is a lot of talk about depression and anxiety, which are very real things however these are not your problems. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER3> He might be suffering deep depression right now. I have heard about two cases of people cutting off contact with someone they worked for. It turned out that both of them were having depression at the time, due to the continuous frustration they had during the communication with their respective boss. One of the men quietly went back to his hometown in the end.

</comment><comment><USER4> Do you have any mutual contacts? I'd try to get in contact with him every way I can.

</comment><comment><USER5> Find a new developer.

</comment><comment><USER6> pray a lot. miracles happen - sometimes.</comment>


Infiniverse – Augmented Reality Digital World Running on the Blockchain - <AUTHOR> https://www.infiniverse.net <comment><USER2> Really cool! I think we are going to see a lot more dapps like these. EOS opens up so many new possiblities in terms of performance.</comment>


Netflix Chose a New Market Over Free Speech. That Sets a Disturbing Precedent - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/11/opinion/netflix-saudi-arabia-minhaj.html <comment><USER2> [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Netflix%20saudi%20points%3E10&...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Netflix%20saudi%20points%3E10&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0)

</comment><comment><USER3> I think the disturbing precedent would be a large multinational US company disregarding the laws of a sovereign country. Then again, I guess that wouldn't be "setting a precedent" after all.

As much as I disagree with the Saudi government, it is their right to make and enforce laws. Foreign companies wishing to operate there can't only comply with laws that are in line with their own values.

</comment><comment><USER4> Clickbait article.

This isn't the first. It's not a precedent being set by them. Countries all over the world censor the internet.

I don't see China, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, etc. falling under anytime soon because Netflix will take a stand. They'll just get blocked like any other website. They know that too so they just don't bother and comply. Stupid article...

<comment><USER5> The article expresses an opinion you disagree with. I don't particularly agree with it either. That doesn't make it 'clickbait'.

<comment><USER6> There is no precedent and it's not disturbing- sounds clickbait to me

<comment><USER5> It's an opinion piece in the opinion section. The author thinks the particulars are without precedent and finds them disturbing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What precedent Apple has been doing it for years by not allowing apps chinese government disapproves off. Or most media companies censoring parts of movies according to the censor boards of the country they want to play on. Even some european shows/movies have had censored cuts in the US for rating purposes.

</comment><comment><USER8> "By making the episode unavailable in Saudi Arabia, Netflix became complicit with the pervasive censorship that artists, entertainers, journalists and regular citizens have long had to deal with in the Middle East."

Netflix had seemed to be one of the few tech companies that could do no wrong of late. It's built a reputation as a place people want to work and can be proud they work. I wonder how a story like this affects employee retention and recruitment.

Were there reactions from Netflix employees?

</comment><comment><USER9> TV networks in America routinely censor content too.

</comment><comment><USER10> How does it set a disturbing precedent? Business has always pursued money over morality under a capitalist system.

<comment><USER11> Because it's borderline insanity. "I don't like your state's policy on x, so bye." Trying to bully entire governments is not cool.

<comment><USER12> So you'll make business with anybody? Where do you set the line?</comment></comment></comment>


Host can I host a file on a CDN? - <AUTHOR>

Hi, I'm writing a jquery plugin and wondering what would be the best way to host this plugin on a CDN for my users? Thanks, Thomas <comment><USER2> I like/use Amazon Cloudfront. Do you know this size of the plugin and your estimated downloads? Both Rackspace and Amazon will get the job done. You just have to decide on price and which system you want to depend on.

</comment><comment><USER3> Rackspace Cloud (CloudFiles) is what I use. I highly recommend it:

<http://www.rackspacecloud.com/cloud_hosting_products/files>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks looking into it

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Amazon's Cloudfront or Amazon S3 would probably work for you. <http://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront>

<comment><AUTHOR> Have you used it before?

<comment><USER5> Cloudfront works great</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A FIFA World Cup Dashboard - <AUTHOR> https://chart.ly/fifa/dashboard <comment><USER2> Your group sorting is incorrect when 2 teams have equal points.

I'll use Portugal and Spain as an example:

* They both tied with 5 points

* They both tied with +1 Goal Differential

* Spain breaks the tie with Portugal based on Goals Scored.

Source: [https://www.fifa.com/worldcup/news/tie-breakers-for- russia-2...](https://www.fifa.com/worldcup/news/tie-breakers-for- russia-2018-groups)

</comment><comment><USER3> Upcoming match times are in the same time zone?

Mexico & Germany are both at the same time but on the right side show one at noon and one at 10am.

They are both in half time now.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Would love some feedback on this. We are still making some improvements, but would like to hear any ideas from the HN community.

<comment><USER4> First thing that jumped out at me was that England is using the wrong flag :)

That's the United Kingdom flag, whereas the team is England, and uses the England flag instead of the UK flag.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Will fix!</comment></comment></comment>


Guaranteeing memory safety in Rust [slides] - <AUTHOR> http://smallcultfollowing.com/babysteps/pubs/2013.07.17-NEU.pdf

<comment><USER2> Gotta say, I hadn't appreciated the elegance of Rust's type system in preventing modification during iteration scenarios. It's very pretty.</comment>


Feedback on my new project, ShelfMade.net - <AUTHOR> http://shelfmade.net/ The concept is designed for people that check Reddit and YC News 10 times a day. <p>Find a worthwhile article that is too long to read right now? Just shelv it and get back to work. <comment><USER3> The long tail for magazines? Sounds cool but I'm worried about a contradiction... Yes the market for tree based magazines is still HUGELY HUGE and you could make a lot of money creating lots of special interest mags the big guys ignore. But... If your audience is web-savy enough to discover your service, they probably get most of their news from the web and they don't care about magazines.

Your ideal customer would be web-savy but their end subscribers would not be. I'm too absorbed in the www to imagine who that may be, but I'm sure they're out there. On news.yc though, you'll probably get a bunch of people saying "why not just read a blog?"

Godspeed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Understood and I definitely agree - to a point. I get ALL my news and entertainment online. Sometimes I just need to get away from the computer screen.

I read Seth Godin's blog everyday, but I still bought Small Is the New Big. I still bought and read The Long Tail although half the book was online.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not quite sure I get it. What am I supposed to do with all of my magazines? Give them to friends? Sell them?

It would be cool if you could get a contract with Starbucks/Borders to put the most popular magazines in the store each month. That way it would give users an incentive to create. Granted, getting distribution like that would be quite difficult.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment.

Users get paid when people shelv their articles and they spread ideas - <USER2> incentives as blogging.

Of course we would love to be in retail eventually, and it may be possible. I think the cooler aspect is that you can subscribe to the magazine that PG builds (eventually) or you can build a magazine for your employees to read.

Instead of Chris Anderson choosing what articles are important this month, you can subscribe to Noah Kagan's or a friend from college's magazine.

<comment><USER4> To be honest the idea itself doesn't seem especially sexy or exciting to me, although if it's well executed I could see myself using it. It seems novel enough to be worth a try.

That being said, I'm not sure how easy it will be to translate blog posts into print in a way that's visually appealing. A lot of bloggers are big into using whitespace, which would look pretty weird in a print medium. And often there is meaning conveyed by the whitespace itself, so it's not necessarily easy to reformat posts into nice paragraphs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Alex, If I'm understanding you correctly, the answer is that we aren't printing web pages - blogs. We are taking the text, reformatting and putting the content into a magazine layout. We're not simply clicking print and binding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Being the constantly proofreading sort, I'm not sure why you're capitalizing random words and phrases, like "Print" and "On Demand".

Also, I really didn't want to fill in my name, email, and URL, but I clicked the "Yes!" box to see what would happen. Now I have an overlay window occupying the center of my screen, with no way to get rid of it save by entering the aforementioned info. That's annoying.

Now that that's out of the way, one question: Will people actually pay for this? I mean, pretty much the only time I read a print magazine is if I'm really bored at the airport. Otherwise, the Web is all I need.

<comment><AUTHOR> Known and working on it. Sorry.

<comment><USER6> Seems the issue is fixed. Nice Job!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I knew a lawyer once who had a newsletter on gaming laws and casino's would subscribe at a cost of several hundred dollars a month. If you could hook up with these specialized newsletters that have high value and you can give the current newsletter a better presentation (remember the people writing these are not Quark express addicts) I think you could have a good business.

Also another idea is with meetup.com, they have a number of social groups who might be interested in a quarterly magazine that would be great for keeping memories in this digital world where pictures loose there context when stored in a directory, the only thing you have to keep the context is the directory name... and storage medias have a tendancy to fail or in case of media cards get lost.

</comment><comment><USER8> looks good, here are my recommendations:

I like the folded corner in the right to go to the next page, but i have no way to go to the previous page (besides the back button in firefox), maybe you should add a previous folded corner in the left.

Another thing that I'm seeing is some overlapped text, just for curiosity I checked it with firebug and noticed that the footer has a -30 px margin top, you should change it, there is a lot of overlapped text, watch your negative margins and the position absolute of some elements.

Hope that helps.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks gman. What browser were you viewing.

<comment><USER8> Firefox 188.8.131.52

If you need any help with CSS just ask =)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Cool concept if you could get a partnership or two to print just all the highest rated articles each month that could be a cool magazine. I only buy mags when flying. I frequently wish I had some of the best posts printed out just for my eyes or to bring with me while waiting somewhere, reading in bed (laptops aren't comfortable)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is what we are building the site for. Who decides the best posts? To start off, we are giving you the power to do that.

Once this becomes an option (receiving blog posts in print) it changes the way you surf. A 3 page article that looks cool, shelv it and go back to work. Guy Kawasaki interview that you want to read late, shelv it and go back to work. PG essay that you know you want to read again - shelv it.

The Internet become about finding great articles, and only reading the short ones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have no idea what it what it does and I can't be bother to read all that text. You should assume most people who come to your site will be like me and leave without ever even finding out what it is you do.

</comment><comment><USER11> This yellow card inviting me to sign up to your mailing list appears on top of the text I was reading, with no obvious way of dismissing it. So I closed the window.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, fixed

<comment><USER11> Nope, you didn't fix it. The slightly-tilted yellow card image (the one you click to get the actual form) still blocks my reading with no apparent way to dismiss it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Have you thought about the IP issues? Printing out other people's content and putting it into a magazine is an obvious case copyright infringement.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, it is opt in for publishers and we pay them every time someone grabs an article and puts it in the magazine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Ahh, a fellow baker ;-)

</comment><comment><USER14> increase font size, observe breakage</comment>


IronPython in Action and the Decline of Windows - <AUTHOR> http://neopythonic.blogspot.com/2009/06/ironpython-in-action-and-decline-of.html <comment><USER2> Look, I despise Windows and no longer use or program for it, but it is ignorant to say that GUI programming in Windows is still stuck in 1995. XAML adds a declarative interface to WPF control instantiation, and the out-of-the- box WPF controls are more powerful than most other GUI toolkits, including HTML.

<comment><USER3> In my expirience the the mix of XML and code quickly grows into a worse situation than just having a decent programming API in first place.

In Flex, which also sports a declarative layer, most seasoned developers seem to try to avoid it as much as possible - because it gets in the way when complexity grows.

Same story with XUL, which perhaps would feel a little less like broken glass if they had omitted the "X" from the name.

But well, I have never coded a win32 GUI, so quite possible XAML really is a step up from what they had before.

<comment><USER4> _In my expirience the the mix of XML and code quickly grows into a worse situation_

It depends on how you do it. In any environment, there are ways that scale and ways that don't.

We've had very good results (seperation of concerns, plugability, extensiblity, blendability) using the ViewModel pattern, an IOC Container and Command objects.

The good part of WPF is that you can do all this, or other things, if you want. The same is not true of Windows forms. WPF enables some nifty ways to scale that are just not there in Windows forms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> " _Each button in the UI has to be tediously positioned and configured ... Windows UI programming is as tedious today as it was in 1995._ "

Clearly he's still doing Windows forms.

" _When is Microsoft going to learn the real lesson about simplicity of HTML?_ "

About three years ago.

WPF ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Presentation_Foundation> ) has been around since .Net 3.0 ( 21 November 2006 ). The XAML markup, where you don't have to "tediously position and configure" each element is heavily influenced by HTML, CSS and SVG.

<comment><USER5> That .NET 3.0 has been around since 2006 is a red herring. What really matters is the percentage of Windows machines that have it installed.

I know a few companies that write desktop .NET software, and they can't use WPF unless they add ~50MB to their download (or in the installer). That would be bad for their growth rate.

<comment><USER6> That will largely become a non-issue as more people migrate from XP onto Vista or 7; all installations of Vista come with .NET 3.0, and 7 will probably come with 3.5 or maybe even 4.0 if it's out in time. Perhaps they could make two downloads, one for XP users and another for Vista/7 users?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ok, first this is Guido and there is the obligatory "we're not worthy" stuff but this is a pretty bad argument. UI development for Windows in .NET WinForms is not that difficult and you do not generally have to dig into the guts of UI subsystem.

Secondly, Guido brings out the old whipping boy of "clients are dead long live the Web." I think this is not a good view. Why is it either Web or Clients. Personally, if HTTP/HTML the best we're over going to do then I think it's a pretty sad state of affairs. It also seems like a big waste to have these powerful computers with many cores that do nothing but allow you to have more tabs open in your web browser.

The web is a great platform but there must be a world beyond HTTP/HTML/Javascript and the occasional Flash application.

Lastly, I think Guido is either being naive or coy treating HTML as if developing UI in it has no tedious aspect to it.

</comment><comment><USER8> His viewpoint on MS technologies is pretty dated and ridiculous:

"When is Microsoft going to learn the real lesson about simplicity of HTML? Instead, Microsoft is doing the same thing to HTML that it does to anything it touches: adding cruft to the point where the basic functionality is buried so deeply that most people can't even find it."

Has he ever heard of ASP.NET MVC?

"It's no wonder that users are switching to the web as the platform for everything that used to live on the desktop"

People are moving to the web? Hmmm...

<comment><USER7> Well, I agree. Guido is hardly giving a charitable interpretation. Now if we want to shame a Microsoft creation, I think it is fair to start with IE.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I happen to have read both that book along with several on programming in cocoa (never done either professionally, I was just curious, so I claim no authority) and I thought that the systems (both what you can do with ironpython and wpf in general) turned out to be generally comparable in terms features, albeit grounded in differing philosophies and idioms. That said, what is the ideal to which WPF should aspire? If not Cocoa, then QT? Gtk?

I am curious mostly because I see a lot of this sort of nothing-new-under-the- sun critique of WPF, and while I have not worked with it in any great depth, what I've seen has been impressive enough to put doubt in my mind about such statements.

<comment><USER4> I'm not that concerned as to if WPF is novel. I am concerned if it is better than Windows forms. And that it certainly is.</comment></comment>


Dear Mr. Trump: Here's How to Maintain America's Tech Lead - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/2016/12/trump-technology-silicon-valley/ <comment><USER2> I don't know if anybody else visited their website during the election cycle, but it was wall to wall coverage vilifying Trump.

One has to wonder why a politician would pay heed to the words of an organization that evidently hates him.

Brand and Kelly are deeper thinkers than most and it somewhat surprises me that they were blind to the reactionary forces swirling outside the valley's gates. Somebody who focuses on the Long Now has surely understood humankind goes through slow but powerful sociopolitical cycles.</comment>