Ask HN: How did your startup get traction? - <AUTHOR>

How did your startup get traction? How might we get traction given the details below? (I realize what worked for you might not work for us given certain differences.) What worked for you and why did it work particularly well given your business?
Our website has a modestly useful application that provides results that are slightly better than our well-known competitors. Our results are MUCH better than what an average consumer would get on their own without using us or our competitors.
Customers have offered very strong testimonials after using our service, invoking the name of God or saying that we're lifesavers. Improvements we've made for some of them have been very dramatic.
We are not well known (wouldn't be surprised if you never heard of us), but we have been mentioned in the news (like NYTimes, WSJ, Reader's Digest) in print, on TV, in blogs. We've won a few awards in our industry (like a Best-Of-[year] at an annual industry conference).
Our service is something you'd only personally use one or two times now, and then maybe it would be several months or years before you'd be in a situation to use it again. This might be the biggest challenge facing us. Getting traction seems easier for a site that you'd check every day like facebook or HN.
Because the use of our service depends on whether it applies to your situation, we are offering something that is only applicable to maybe 5% of the general population at any given moment.
The industry is boring. It takes less than 10 seconds or 2 sentences to say what we do, but it isn't something people enjoy talking about. I'm trying to come up with some similar industry for you to imagine -- maybe going to the dentist or refinancing your mortgage.
Edit (reason: collating details relevant to my company's situation here for new readers' convenience) One problem is that some portion of this 5% don't even know that our kind of thing can be done in their situation. But every time I go on a random forum and ask people if they know it can be done, all the smarty-pants reply and say Yeah-I-Already-Knew-That. I mean ... who's going to admit ignorance, really?
Many thanks in advance! (Tis my first post so apologies if I screwed up anything.) <comment><USER2> Similar situation: my customers typically use the product once to twice a year (or lifetime), and if 5% of the country needed it at any given time I'd have kittens. The thing that has worked best for me is organic SEO.

Does your customer, when they're momentarily in the 5% of the population who needs your service, _know_ they need your service? If so, they're searching for it on Google, using a mix of [the most obvious possible two or three word phrase a layperson would use to describe your service] and a long, long tail of various questions, concerns, and whatnot. If you are in a high money niche, and if dentists or insurance were good examples you mostly certainly are, it will be _very_ difficult for you to attack the head of the query distribution like, e.g., "$TYPE insurance".

Is there a scalable content creation strategy in your market? Can you make one? You can leverage your mainstream attention to increase the returns on content creation targeted at more niche concerns within the niche. (You can put your earned NYT logo on a page about something much, much more specific than the NYT will ever publish about itself.)

<comment><AUTHOR> :) re: long tail SEO ... We have had multiple inbound calls from people who think we're some other institution because they searched for that institution, came to our site, got our phone number and asked us about their account at that institution. This happens even though we never pretend to be that institution on our page, we don't use their logo, etc.

One problem is that some portion of this 5% don't even know that our kind of thing can be done in their situation. (But every time I go on a random forum and ask people if they know it can be done, all the smarty-pants reply and say Yeah-I-Already-Knew-That. I mean ... who's going to admit ignorance, really?)

<comment><USER3> _One problem is that some portion of this 5% don't even know that our kind of thing can be done in their situation._

This is a subtle opportunity for strategy that a lot of people don't seem to realize (not necessarily you, but just a lot of people). In regards to organic SEO, you should be optimizing not necessarily for what it is you do, but rather for what it is those people are searching.

<comment><AUTHOR> Excellent point. Will have to check with our guy to see if he thought of this. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I run ThatHigh.com.

I chalked the shit out of the quad at my college. Then I visited another college and did the same thing.

Simultaneously, I put $5 into stumbleupon advertising. Because users liked our site, they voted up and it got a TON of traffic from SU.

Early on I also submitted the site to College Humor's "sitelinks" section, which is basically a big moderated bastardization of something like reddit. It got to the frontpage and despite being just a tiny link in the sidebar, gave us a huge influx of traffic very early on. It basically eliminated the need for me to seed the stories, users, and votes myself (by faking it). From then on, I never had to submit or fake any activity.

Getting involved with bloggers is helpful. There's so much to this, it's difficult to know where to begin. There's much in common with affiliate marketing and the "dark" and "spammy" corners of the internet. A lot of those methods work though, and early on, most people will do anything to get any traffic at all.

Remember: any attention is good attention. Just make sure you are committed, because when attacks come, sometimes they're brutal. Just keep on working and don't give up.

<comment><USER5> You know you're not supposed to have 8 adsense units on a page right? They allow 3.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I know. I'm using google DFP and I've set it to sell my remnant ad space to Adsense, and it does it for me. So technically google is letting me do this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One guy that ran VoIP company that most of you have probably heard of. Here is how he described his experience in similar situation. So he was thinking about how to spin of his project in similar situation. (Most of us dont change phone provider quite often, right?) He was staying at some motel and had his TV on. You know that old weird tv stuff. Then one moment he realized Americans still watching TV A LOT and all these freaking tv ads as well. So he took a credit and ran TV ad campaign. And that was breaking moment for company. Sales just exploded.

So think about making good tv campaign especially if majority of your clients are not tech guys, but like moms, homeowners etc.

Sorry for obvious advice, but just to mention that "old media" still have some power these days...

<comment><AUTHOR> How would you convince the decision-makers to loosen the purse strings for a TV ad campaign?

I imagine the decision-makers asking "Isn't our coverage in several legit news outlets better than a TV ad campaign?" I'm open to reality being different from expectation. Just wondering what folks have found to be the case by experience... Was this VoIP company covered in the news after the TV ad campaign or before?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Forget about it ! You are unlikely to get any traction as you are not even able to explain to this roomful of hackers what you do.

<comment><USER8> have to agree.. there are many different strategies that can be applied depending on the product/service/site and really I'm clueless as to what you do. Generic answer for generic explanation.. run ads

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What's the website ? (why speak in the abstract when you can give a concrete example ?)

</comment><comment><USER10> Is there a natural middle-man you should be dealing with instead of the "consumer"?

For example: if your app was about "going to the dentist", I'd suggest trying to sell to Dentists (to re-brand and sell on to their clients).

Is there an analogue in your industry?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, this might actually be the way we succeed in the end. Is this something your company did? If so, could you share your experience -- getting the middleman's attention, getting cooperation, what worked / what didn't ...

<comment><USER11> I'm hesitant to post this link because I don't have any personal experience in the area, but this interview speaks to those questions and is currently on the front page, so you might benefit from the live discussion:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1671852> [http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/09/sean-murphy- on-t...](http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/09/sean-murphy-on-the- first-1-6-enterprise-customers.html)

>I recently did a Traction Book interview with Sean Murphy who runs a boutique cutomer development firm in Silicon Valley. We discussed (for ~1hr) how to approach getting the first set of enterprise customers. What follows is a slightly edited transcript of the full interview. -Gabriel Weinburg

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What is the product?

</comment><comment><USER13> I've always thought "Ask HN" was akin to asking a group of strangers (mostly) to spend their time helping you. Wouldn't you get better suggestions from the HN community by telling everyone what your site is vs. this riddle of a description? Give us the "2 sentences to say what we do".

</comment><comment><USER3> I had a similar problem with RateMyStudentRental.com.By definition, students are typically only looking for housing twice a year, maybe even only once a year. Your best bet in this case is to optimize for organic SEO.

Over the years, I've gotten RMSR to be #1 if you google "student rental housing" and usually close to #1 if you google any address that happens to be on RMSR. This has been absolutely invaluable for creating _recurring_ traffice, which seems to be the area you're struggling with.

</comment><comment><USER14> Turn things around. Instead of promoting your main product, create and promote related-to-that-area product that refers to your main product.

As an example, you have a hosting service. Open a site with a lot of web based tools like whoise, traceroute, so you will target right segment and use this tools site to promote your hosting.

</comment><comment><USER9> I started out using a mailinglist that I'd built up over the years tangentially related to the subject.

</comment><comment><USER15> 1\. Calculate how much a paying customer pays you, average.

2\. Experiment with a variety of customer acquisition methods, starting with Google ads.

3\. Calculate the acquisition cost versus the lifetime value cost, find methods that bring you profitable customers, scale.

</comment><comment><USER16> Does it target a particular market segment (age or interest)?

Facebook CPM ads are _cheap_ and have pretty reasonable targeting options. You can get a few 100K impressions for well under $100</comment>


Using AR to help build a complex brick wall - <AUTHOR> https://www.archdaily.com/908618/this-is-how-a-complex-brick-wall-is-built-using-augmented-reality <comment><USER2> Could you imagine how this kind of technology might change something as boring and frustrating as Ikea furniture assembly?

Ikea tries hard to avoid using text in its instructions, because the products are sold in so many countries. So its assembly instructions tend to be very constrained 2D illustrations with simple pictograms.

But it would be so much easier if you could just slap on some AR glasses and visualize in 3D what your next step should be!

<comment><USER3> You can also find many fans of IKEA instructions.

Consider how you would deal with written instructions that appear to contradict the picture instructions and you'll see why.

<comment><USER4> All it takes to become a huge fan of IKEA instructions is to purchase and assemble a few items of furniture from other stores.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A similar surprisingly novel case for AR headsets: trimmming hedges into complex shapes.

In an AR headset the final desired design is overlayed within the hedge, and you trim the parts outside. Now try to imagine how you might accomplish something similar without an AR headset. It would be very difficult.

<comment><USER6> People have been doing this longer than recorded history; there's a lot of knowledge about how to take a block of wood/stone/etc and carve away anything that doesn't look like the desired subject.

That said I'm sure there are experts at those methods who would leap at the chance to model their work in more forgiving methods, digital or physical, and use that kind of technology to guide them as they carve!

<comment><USER7> I've done my share of sculpture in my life - the problems you run into when carving an item down to a desired result is often less about being able see what needs to go, and more about the structure of the underlying material, and whether it will break/crack/shatter when you try to take a specific piece off.

AR could still help - if an app could visually inspect the surface of your material, or the branches of a hedge, it might be able to flag warning signs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I realize this is probably being excessively pessimistic, but couldn't this end up making the work of the skilled trades as soulless and boring as routine assembly line work?

That is to say, whenever there is a discussion of the skilled trades on Hacker News it is mentioned that they often take as much thinking and creativity as white collar jobs. It seems like this sort of technology could change that in at least some situations.

<comment><USER9> Good luck running a pass via ar lol.

(Pre edit sorry a pass is a restaurant kitchen serving line).

Pre edit 2: okay that was a bit snarky, but my point is, ar doesn't give you the skills and training, it just helps

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Very neat, but I'm not sure what human "intuition" is needed or being used when brick placements are being displayed in AR for you. Seems more like a human bricklayer is just more flexible and much less expensive than setting up a robot rig (and will be for some time).

</comment><comment><USER11> Is anyone aware of quality forums/email lists/etc. for keeping up to date on AR UI/UX?

</comment><comment><USER12> This is the only space I see _R taking off for a while. The cost of development is still too high for consumers (and developing for them). Using it for training and virtual modeling is where it shines...for now.

</comment><comment><USER13> whats stopping them from installing a rail along X,Y,Z axis around the build area (with a robot arm), and having the robot build up the wall instead of humans?

<comment><USER14> Like this: [https://www.construction- robotics.com/sam100/](https://www.construction-robotics.com/sam100/)

<comment><USER13> wow, thank you for linking that. that is insane

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Nice!</comment>


OpenJK - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/JACoders/OpenJK

<comment><USER2> Amazing, I only recently learnt that Raven published the source of JK games. I loved those games. This engine remind me of OpenMW, which is an open sourced engine for Morrowind: [https://openmw.org/en/](https://openmw.org/en/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Man, I wish I had this when I was a kid. I would've killed to be able to turn on an unlimited force power cheat (I remember binding the middle mouse button to "give all" and just spammed it when I was using tons of force power.)

Now I can just comment out the code that takes the force power away:

        diff --git a/codeJK2/game/wp_saber.cpp b/codeJK2/game/wp_saber.cpp
        index f87736a..a35c235 100644
        --- a/codeJK2/game/wp_saber.cpp
        +++ b/codeJK2/game/wp_saber.cpp
        @@ -7617,7 +7617,7 @@ void WP_ForcePowerDrain( gentity_t *self, forcePowers_t forcePower, int override
                {
                        return;
                }
        -       self->client->ps.forcePower -= drain;
        +       //self->client->ps.forcePower -= drain; //MUAHAHAHA
                if ( self->client->ps.forcePower < 0 )
                {
                        self->client->ps.forcePower = 0;

Ah, simple pleasures.

</comment><comment><USER4> Please be Jedi Knight, please be Jedi Knight, Yes! No! Aww, I hope the original will be open-sourced and ported to Linux some day. It is such a fantastic game.

<comment><USER5> Remember that Jedi Knight was itself a sequel. But I agree, that was a great game (I never played the others). Welding a lightsaber felt just right, using force felt just right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was actually very heavily involved in the Jedi Academy community for several years, though I'm not an OpenJK dev. I created what's currently by far the largest modding/community website for the game.

OpenJK is really, really neat. In between performance enhancements, security fixes, and all the other shininess, I think the devs are doing a great job at it. The community these days is small, but definitely still active, especially when you consider Jedi Academy was released in 2003. At the time of writing this comment, there are several hundred players ingame.

</comment><comment><USER7> I love this! Works better than Wine. And I don't have to install 32 bits libraries.

</comment><comment><USER8> Even seems to have some rudimentary component-entity architecture. Not bad.

</comment><comment><USER9> did anyone else read this as OpenJDK?

<comment><USER10> Why is this even posted here?

I don't have a particular problem with it - this just doesn't seem like HN material.

<comment><USER11> It's a community project. It's opensource. It's HN material.

What is your definition of "HN material".

<comment><USER10> I was under the impression that HN was more startup focused, rather than straight up open-source-without-monetary-goal.

I realize there's some sort of nebulous scale, but OP seems like something waaay down at the other end from true HN material.

<comment><USER12> HN was originally named 'Startup News', but the name changed to emphasize a wider focus. And, the first sentence of the 'Guidelines' linked below is:

"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups."

So many people here are avid gamers, hobbyist game developers, or professional game developers that any source code related to a beloved title may find an enthusiastic audience.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How should we test if our idea is feasible and worth pursuing? - <AUTHOR>

We have an idea for a website but don't want to build it until we know there are interested customers.
We have already gained some early feedback from surveys and speaking to people. However we want a proper demo to gain real feedback. Essentially we want an early MVP to play with.
One idea was to create a short video showing how the concept would work. Then promote via YouTube and/or landing page.
Another was to create a basic sales landing page. Then measure traffic and feedback.
Alternatively build a couple of screens and ask HN users for initial feedback.
If anyone has some tips or strategies on how they validated their early ideas then please share. Thanks! <comment><USER2> Build the product and focus on building 1-2 core features that constitute the unique value proposition of your idea. Then show that to your core customers.

Core Feature. Core Customer. That means don't worry about silly trivial things like spacing between pixels. And don't even talk to friends and see what they think.

<comment><AUTHOR> Building the site with core features will take time. We want to validate our concept before building too much.

Is a website with screens and no working features sufficient?

Why shouldn't we talk to friends?

What recommendations do you have to getting the concept to core customers?

<comment><USER2> talk to people who have the problem you are trying to solve. Get inside their head, and understand their pain point. Then build a MVP to solve that pain point. you find these people thru forums, offline, networking, etc. it depends on what your product is - it is an entreprise app? consumer app?

<comment><AUTHOR> Consumer app. We guess that we need to spend more time on 'getting inside heads' before doing too much more. If we better understand the pain points then we should have a stronger argument for building our MVP.

<comment><USER2> then you will need to validate 2 things: the concept and your marketing tactics. There are many consumer app ideas that many people would love, but if you have no way of reaching that, it'll all be naught. So you need to come up with tactics for marketing, whether it be getting bloggers to write about it, spreading it thru forums, SEO, etc, and test those tactics. See if they are viable long-term strategies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I guess it depends on your niche. If you're solving a reasonably common problem check out searches & potential traffic using Google keyword tool. You need to brainstorm potential phrases used by your customers, see if you've hit on something that is easily described in google search terms

<comment><AUTHOR> We believe the idea is niche but will solve a common problem.

We will check out search terms but feel we need more of a demo to prove the concept and our assumptions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Make some fake screenshots, throw up a 'coming soon' page, collect email addresses.

Consider ~10% of those email addresses sales.

A youtube video would be a plus, but would be hard to demo.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why would a video be harder to demo than screen shots?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You can validate demand with simple landing page and adwords to drive traffic based on features and benefits..

<comment><USER6> What kind of data would you need to validate/invalidate your idea?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> websites are an experience good. build some sliver of your vision to test the water. eventually youre gong to have to build your product, so any time spent doing something other than that is waste.

just do it. youll be happy you did

<comment><AUTHOR> True, but is building the wrong product not a waste of time?

<comment><USER8> You are assuming that it's a binary outcome--it's a right or wrong product-- when it's shades of gray and an opportunity for learning more about your customers' needs. Consider proceeding by a sequence of prototypes that become "less wrong" over time or even "good enough."

<comment><AUTHOR> True. I guess we are trying to find something "less wrong".

Our objective is to i) validate our concept by receiving input from potential customers and ii) with input build an "okay" prototype to take forward.

We want to do the first bit with limited development costs.

<comment><USER8> Values of OK may range from 1% of the final version to 80%; the real test is if the prototype advances your understanding of customer needs by triggering additional insights through conversation. If you are not surprised you are not learning and if you are avoiding conversations for fear of failure you are learning much more slowly than you could by taking some prudent risks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Some good advice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Those all sound like great ideas. You should choose one and the share your results.

</comment><comment><USER10> landing page for SEO and first beta users DB ?

Wordpress & wufoo ? Wordpress and MailChimp ?

<comment><AUTHOR> All helpful tools. However how do we use them to test/validate idea?</comment></comment>


Genymotion: Fastest and Best Android Emulator - <AUTHOR> http://www.codelator.com/2014/10/genymotion-fastest-best-android-emulator/

<comment><AUTHOR> Genymotion is one of the fastest Android emulator which is used for testing applications. It is a very useful tool for testers and developers. It is available for most of the Operating Systems such as Windows 7 and Windows 8, Mac OS X and Linux. Its installation process is hassle-free and is very easy to use.

Genymotion provides complete set of tools for Android virtual environment. It is emerged from AndroidVM project. A company named Genymobile bought AndroidVM and made a new product and named it Genymotion. It is equipped with number of features such as OpenGL acceleration to achieve the smoothest 3D performance, battery level, GPS, camera, eclipse plugin, full screen display, networking etc. You can use multiple devices simultaneously. It comes with bundle of devices such as Sony Xperia Z, Sony Xperia Tablet S, Samsung Galaxy S2, Samsung Galaxy S3, Samsung Galaxy S4, Samsung Galaxy S5, Samsung Galaxy Note 3, Motorola Moto X, Motorola Xoom, LG Optimus L3, Google Galaxy Nexus, Google Nexus 5, Google Nexus 7, HTC One, HTC Evo. Along with that it also gives you an option for various Android versions from Gingerbread(2.3.7) to KitKat(4.4.2).</comment>


Steve Jobs At Home In 1982 - <AUTHOR> http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0712/y_walker08.html

<comment><USER2> I'm so glad to have seen this picture. This picture, more than any of Steve's great speeches, accomplishments, or products, makes me feel that we are in some way kindred spirits. I have spent countless nights enjoying a very similar living situation while starting tech businesses over the past decade. With absolutely no arrogance or pretense, I will say that although I am saddened to see Steve pass, I am heartened to know that the visionary spirit and drive lives on in me and in many others.

</comment><comment><USER3> Be sure to notice the enormous speakers hiding in the background.

<comment><USER4> Those are electrostatic speakers. They are only about 2 inches thick. I think they are acoustat model 3. Probably cost $1000 in 1985. The man clearly liked his music... and not cats, as those speakers were known for electrocuting cats.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for pointing out. I found an image for those speakers (Acoustat Model 3 Medallion).

Image: <http://usr.audioasylum.com/images/y2011/02/45177/TT_032.jpg>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have been looking for a higher resolution version of this photo forever. Anyone have one?

<comment><USER7> Didn't see any larger ones online, but it looks to be from this book of portraits: [http://www.amazon.com/Bigger-Picture-Thirty-Years- Portraits/...](http://www.amazon.com/Bigger-Picture-Thirty-Years- Portraits/dp/B004JU1S8A/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1317901222&sr=8-1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not mentioned in other comments but I think I recall the lamp was from Tiffany.

</comment><comment><USER9> Quite surprised by this unexpected commonality.

I am by no means minimalist, or spartan, in fact unimpeded space does not come cheap. I value empty space a lot, and believe that if something takes up space it should enrich me.

A thin mattress on the floor works just fine, and actually feels kinder to my back than a bed. I like my speakers on the floor or raised a couple of inches above it. That way I can sleep between them, that is usually when they sound the best.

<comment> dorian-graph People often enter my room and say "Man, it's really well organised and simple in here" and I immediately "Yeah, but I wish I could get rid of even more stuff.."

I love this photo.

I spent a while living in a near empty apartment in the Philippines with a mattress on the floor and a small stand next to it, a basic cupboard with clothes, a study desk and a few things in a suitcase. The apartment was near the beach and every night had a cool, sea-breeze roll in... I miss it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Possibly the last hippy that took his LSD experiences and actually changed the world.

<comment><USER11> PCR machine?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> He must have hated that cord between the lamp and the wall. On the other hand it does somehow emphasize the emptiness of the room.

</comment><comment><USER13> The design of his apartment in this is very much like the design of everything Apple ships. What a cohesive life this man led.

</comment><comment><USER14> Possibly contrived but sums everything nicely.

</comment><comment><USER15> Reminds me very much of the scene from film _Stop Making Sense_ of David Byrne singing and dancing with a lamp:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cqg_ZGcuybs>

</comment><comment><USER16> This was returning an empty document for me, but [http://digitaljournalist.org.nyud.net/issue0712/y_walker08.h...](http://digitaljournalist.org.nyud.net/issue0712/y_walker08.html) works.

</comment><comment><USER17> very good photo ! Is there any way to get this in better quality ?

<comment><USER18> I found one today among Diana Walker's favorite photos.

Here's the link: [http://timethemoment.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/11101713001...](http://timethemoment.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/111017130018-bw1.jpg?w=1178)</comment></comment>


SEO should be renamed to 'Social Engagement Optimisation' - <AUTHOR> http://svenduplic.com/post/12286985527/seo-should-be-renamed-to-social-engagement

<comment><USER2> and what about verticals that don't lend themselves to engagement? Insurance is pretty hard to get excited about..</comment>


How copy editing is done at the New Yorker - <AUTHOR> http://www.redroom.com/blog/andyross/copy-editing-the-new-yorker-magazine-an-interview-with-mary-norris

<comment><USER2> 9 years ago there was a small writeup about me in the New Yorker- [http://www.petermaass.com/articles/the_supercool_top- secret_...](http://www.petermaass.com/articles/the_supercool_top-secret_dvd- decoder_song/) \- small as in it was in the "talk of the town" section, which tends to cover trivial things in a column or so.

That one write-up of the incident changed my perception of the media profoundly. I had been interviewed probably a dozen times before the interview with Peter Maass, and had even appeared on TV (some Canadian show I don't remember)- and had been mentioned in 60-minutes.

Most of the interviews were probably 5-10 minutes long and resulted in multi- page articles. The interview with Peter took over two hours and resulted in the 7 paragraphs that you can't even find leafing through the issue because it's so small (not a complaint, btw- I was just super pleased to be in the New Yorker at all).

More importantly, though, in addition to the two hour interview, I received a call from a no-nonsense "fact-checker" the day after. She had a pre-compiled list of every (_every_) fact Peter was going to mention in his article. It went something like this:

"You say you had [x] downloads of the song in [x] days. Do you have logs that can prove this to some degree?"

"You say you are enrolled at the University of Utah but they cannot get us proof before we go to print- do you have proof?" (I didn't, it was nixed).

"You say you were ranked #1 in folk-songs at mp3.com- they have chosen not to comment and say they have no idea. Do you have proof?" (thankfully I had taken a screenshot that mp3.com verified as accurate).

This went on for _3 hours_ and several emails and physical mailings.

Of all the other blogs, tv shows, magazines, newspapers, etc. that talked to me- (btw, I'm embarrassed to say I hadn't really heard of blogs until then)- guess how many did _any_ sort of fact checking? None.

The thought occurred to me then that if they went through that much trouble for something more or less in the gossip section, I could probably trust their more meaty articles. More importantly it showed me that there are definitely worlds of difference between how media vets what they report.

Edit: Now I just read the magazine for the cartoons though because of pressures on my time (:

<comment><USER3> More recently, there was a writeup about me in the New Yorker. Just before publication, I got a similar call from a "fact-checker". The checking was detailed, and (as for jwecker) focused on hard-to-verify matters. I asked the fact-checker about the process, and she said that the job had gotten much easier, since they could now check most facts using the web.

Think of how difficult the New Yorker's fact checking was before the web! The process of fact-checking goes back to the early days of the New Yorker under editor Harold Ross. James Thurber wrote (in "The Years With Ross") of "Ross's later intense dedication to precision. He studied the New York Telephone Company's system of verifying names and numbers in its directories ... He found out about the Saturday Evening Post's checking department, which he said consisted of seven women who checked in turn every fact, name, and date. ... His checking department became famous, in the trade, for a precision that sometimes leaned over backward. ... Ross's checkers once informed Mencken that he couldn't have eaten dinner at a certain European restaurant he had mentioned in one of his New Yorker articles, because there wasn't any restaurant at the address he had given. Mencken brought home a menu with him to prove that he was right, but he was pleased rather than annoyed. 'Ross has the most astute goons of any editor in the country,' he said."</comment></comment>


Instagram's Android push notification server - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Instagram/node2dm

<comment><USER2> Someone should send this to the Facebook Mobile team.</comment>


Small Scale Fission: The cost of regulation to innovation  - <AUTHOR>

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124580572129645069.html<p>This article is a bit dated but I'm curious if any HN readers are up on the current state of affairs.  I thought it might be interesting to the startup types because it seems to be a situation where the technology and the business are aligned but obsolete regulation is creating an unnatural obstacle to important innovations. <comment><USER2> I'm having a hard time with your premise. Your premise is that regulating nuclear fission plants is obsolete? Because nothing could possibly go wrong that might adversely affect society?

<comment><AUTHOR> The premise is that the current regulation is obsolete, not that regulation itself is.

The article describes regulations that were created decades ago and which are no longer appropriate for the class of reactors that these companies are developing.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any free tools (other than pen/paper) to plan application architectures - <AUTHOR>

Background: I primarily code as a hobbyist (with some open-source contributions - I've been coding for over twenty years ) and so haven't really come across any structured tools that could help in planning out how to structure applications, help plan visualize and tweak how different parts of the application should interact etc. Googling seems to result in either books on the topic or very domain specific tools like UI mock-up designers etc. Are there any free & flexible tools to help plan-out application architectures? <comment><USER2> Good news @Sfi81, there are some tools for this. If you want to plan ahead and do that in detail or just sketch around with freehand drawings you have the ultimate zoomable whiteboard at your service which works in every browser. Give it a try at [https://ziteboard.com](https://ziteboard.com) Let me know if you need help with it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! it does looks interesting as I've tried using Prezi for this sort of stuff before but tripped on its "presentation focused" features whereas this seems more flexible

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Argouml [http://argouml.tigris.org/](http://argouml.tigris.org/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - haven't seen UML before & will take it out for a spin. In your experience does it have a big learning curve?

<comment><USER3> A tip for learning UML. If you don't understand what is it talking about, just ignore it. There are some concept which is just too complicated and not quite useful. Only pick the concept you like/understand, that is what you will use.

UML is a design language, but not a computer language. You don't need to follow everything in the standard.

That will learn UML in an easier way.

Personally I think UML is worth to learn. Since it could design an architecture with using some common building block that many people know. And those UML tool can draw and manage diagram to save your time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> check out [https://www.draw.io](https://www.draw.io)

They have many visual tools to draw up the app model/architecture.</comment>


A Math Teacher's Life Summed Up by the Gifted Students He Mentored - happy-go-lucky https://www.npr.org/2019/04/07/707326070/a-math-teachers-life-summed-up-by-the-gifted-students-he-mentored <comment><AUTHOR> This reminds me of a Twilight Zone episode[0] where a longtime professor, now considered obsolete by the younger Dean, is forced to retire and becomes suicidally depressed... until he's visited by ghosts of former students. Donald Pleasance stars as the professor.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Changing_of_the_Guard_(The...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Changing_of_the_Guard_\(The_Twilight_Zone\))</comment>


Statically Typed Languages Encourage Bad Code - <AUTHOR> http://www.python-gazette.com/blog/statically-typed-languages-encourage-bad-code <comment><USER2> I don't see the point in this article. quote: "The developer has to figure out what the return types are for any methods that are called"

The developer has to figure out the return type in Python as well, since otherwise he wouldn't know, if the returned object provides the method he is calling on it next.

fido = puppies[0]

If puppies[0] doesn't return a "dog" the following call will fail. At run time!

Anyway, you can alternatively break up the code in several lines without creating a temporary variable for each step, if it's only about readability:

string fidos_name = spot.get_puppies()

                   .puppies[0]

                   .get_name()

                   .upper() + "!";

</comment><comment><USER3> If you're making (sweeping!) generalizations about static typing, but don't even address languages that do it _well_ , it's a rather weak argument. That's like dismissing dynamic typing as a whole because of bugs caused by string / number coercion in PHP. (Or dismissing jugglers with two arms because they're cheating.)

On the other hand, if someone seriously proficient in OCaml were to criticize static typing (in general, not just implementation details in some given language), I'd be all ears.

Loud ignorance + linkbait title? Flagged. Python is a fine language, it's too bad some of its buzz is so ignorant.

<comment><USER4> Yep. Haskell is a perfect counterexample (everything is inferred).

<comment><USER3> Haskell has a lot of other quirks, for better and worse. Harrrrrdly perfect, but not touching that one.

The main point is that modern static typing eliminates those stupid, tedious, verbose type annotations, _as well as_ the stupid Python "I decided to crash because calcVaule(input) does not exist, but OMFG how could I have _possibly_ known until I got there" errors.

The article is complaining about the problems that have been thoroughly solved for decades. Which is totally cool; if you want me, I'll be here in the corner howling about Nixon and Disco.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> To paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen:

I've seen bad code and that isn't bad code.

I prefer dynamic languages, but come on people. A type declaration makes 'good' code 'bad'. I can't even... I mean... really? And this got 4 points so far? Yes, I'm having a disappointed in the world night otherwise I could ignore those 4 points. Still... 3 people saw this recently and thought that was a valid argument.

Sigh.

<comment><USER3> For all we know, those four points on the new feed could be from bored and drunk/coked up people waiting for more Techcrunch or Apple fanfic. The intellectual rigor often doesn't kick in until after the single digits.

See the flag button? The glowing, shiny, happy flag button?

<comment><USER5> I see the flag button. I like the flag button. It is my friend. Doesn't mean I can't occasionally lash out and say 'wtf do I keep having to use this flag button'. See note about 'disappointed in the world night'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The writer has a good point, but he is also somewhat confused.

His argument is not really about the advantages of _dynamic_ typing, but rather those of _implicit_ typing, which is a more or less orthogonal concept.

Thus, as others have pointed out, Haskell, with its implicit static typing, does not have this problem.

Even C++(0x), with the new use of the "auto" keyword, allowing for implicit static typing, would not have the problem.

And Python, with its implicit dynamic typing, does not either.

But Java, with _explicit_ static typing, does have the problem.

</comment><comment><USER7> There is an inferred point in this post, touched on in the last paragraph: that this tendency to lump a lot of operations into one line is less about bad language design and more about lazy programmers. I never stated that statically typed languages ARE bad, but that they ENCOURAGE (lazy) programmers to write bad code. A lazy programmer might see that as bad code but not fix it because he doesn't want to go through the work mentioned in the post. A lazy programmer may not know the IDE functions that would do the work for him.</comment>


Show HN: A CV builder with real-time preview - <AUTHOR> https://nextcv.net/ <comment><AUTHOR> Whilst I've had some spare time apart from contract hunting and home-schooling my son, I knocked this up.

I have different CVs and was finding them hard to manage individually. Having them in once place is helpful.

It's pure client-side for now. Perhaps server-side saving and presenting will come in the future if there's interest.</comment>


Xfers (YC S15) simplifies C2C payments in Singapore - <AUTHOR> https://www.techinasia.com/xfers-c2c-payments-startup-profile/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone, I'm the co-founder of Xfers. Would love to get everyone's feedback on payments in Southeast Asia.

As online merchants ourselves, we built Xfers as a side project initially to bypass the exorbitant fee imposed by PayPal. Over time, this turned into something substantial, and we have decided to go full force into building a payment solution that will be free anyone to use for C2C E-Commerce :)

<comment><USER2> From the perspective of someone who's only done C2C payments outside the U.S. with PayPal on forums years ago...

Did you build this because Venmo / Google Wallet / Square Cash, etc. aren't available in Southeast Asia yet (ever?), or is Xfers different?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeap! I was inspired by how easy it was to make payments in the U.S.

Apps like Venmo and Square exist due to existing infrastructures that allows innovation to happen, e.g.: There's ACH APIs in the USA, and SEPA APIs in the case of Europe.

For Southeast Asia, there's no APIs like that. We have to build those APIs ourselves from scratch. And the goal is to provide the region with a common way to collect and make payments easily.

Hope I've managed to answer your question :)</comment></comment></comment>


Bootstrappers guide for Denmark - <AUTHOR> http://stakeventures.com/articles/2006/02/02/bootstrappers-guide-for-denmark <comment><USER2> _Why not be an A/S (or ApS)?_

 _Easy. As a startup you need to have a cool DKK125,000 (USD20,000) upfront in cash as share capital to be honoured with the ApS label and DKK500,000 (DKK81,000) to be an A/S. Btw. A/S is pronounced "Ahh. Ess." and not "Ass", you would be suprised the amount of foreigners who make that mistake._

 _There are also lots of other annoying paperwork and rules and regulations and what have you. But the above upfront capital requirement makes it inaccessible for most bootstrappers._

This disease seems to be widespread across Europe. Austria has an up-front capital requirement of €37500 for a GmbH (the equivalent of an A/S or limited liability company), I think Germany requires €10000 in capital, etc. And the governments are surprised at the small number of startups. Sorry, a partnership just doesn't cut it.

<comment><USER3> That just floors me. What a stupid and counterproductive policy.

<comment><USER4> The idea behind it is that since you are not personally liable in a limited company there should be some minimum amount of capital always present in the company, so that potential creditors can get their money. As a potential creditor you know that in maximise Aps. there is at least DKkr. 125.000 and in maximise A/S there is always DKkr. 500.000. This amount doesn't have to be in liquid assets but can take the form of tangible assets too, meaning that any accountant worth his money will be able to value your PC and you office chair at DKkr. 125.000 and you have your reserve for an Aps.

This, by the way, also works if you want to start a limited company - get a registered accountant to value your PC. and office chair at DKkr. 125.000 an you're good to go. Downside of this approach is that you will be income taxed for the 125.000.

Silly? Absolutely.

<comment><USER3> Actually, my initial reaction was that even in Canada we aren't _that_ dumb. (About business, I mean.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5>
      Should you even start a business in Denmark?

       Why don't I just start with the conclusion. The honest and maybe controversial to some Danes answer is: Only if you really, really have to!

The sad thing is, that it's entirely true. Being from Denmark, I wish the environment for startups was better, and the rules were simpler.

<comment><USER4> Agree - I'm from Denmark too.

I find that the biggest problems are that it is hard to find ambitious people, and that the general level of start-up knowledge is pretty low. Also the recognition you get from wanting to change the world is pretty non-existent.

That said the programmers and the girls are worldclass :-)

Maybe we should get together and do something about it?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is Twitter DNS resolving for you? - <AUTHOR> Not able to access twitter and nslookup is failing both locally and from a number of cloud servers.<p>Anybody else seeing this? <comment><USER2> DYN outage: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12759520](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12759520)</comment>