This white powder will kill me one day - <AUTHOR> http://jacquesmattheij.com/this-white-powder-will-kill-me-one-day <comment><USER2> One day about 3 years ago I quit sugar "cold turkey." At the time I was rather highly motivated by seeing a friend nearly killed by necrotizing fasciitis. (Not that his illness was sugar related. It's just that seeing a close friend nearly die puts things in perspective.)

My taste changed within just a couple of weeks. By the third or fourth week if I accidentally drank sweetened iced tea instead of unsweetened I would nearly spit it out due to the awful taste. I also cut out all artificial sweeteners, effectively eliminating any experience of sweetness from my diet. I think previously I had drunk so much Diet Coke and eaten so many sugary things that I had conditioned myself to need that sweet taste on a regular schedule. I think one thing that helped was that I started making tea using high-quality, whole-leaf teas from adagio.com. They have such interesting flavors, I find they don't need sugar.

I'm not sure I can speak to the work-related effects of not eating sugar since I was spending most of the time in the hospital with my friend. I can say that my overall mood became much more stable; there were no more mid-afternoon crashes and I genearlly found I had more energy. Being about 360 pounds at the time, this one dietary change was enough for me to lose 60 pounds over the next 12 months while still leading a mostly sedentary lifestyle.

<comment><USER3> I have just quit sugar cold turkey. Carbohydrates in general, actually. (< 20 grams per day.) One thing that I will highly recommend to everyone who is trying to do this: small amounts of powdered Psyllium supplement. The best known brand in the US is Metamucil. This might set off some mental alarms, as it is marketed as a "laxative." However, it's just a concentrated source of soluble fiber that acts to bulk up material passing through the gut, helping to keep it passing through. This prevents many of the disadvantages of eating mostly foods that are rich in proteins and fats. The instructions on this stuff allow for 1 to 3 doses per day. I'm only taking 1/2 a dose at any one time, so it's acting more as a fiber supplement.

That said, I also cook and eat lots of vegetables. (Green beans are quick and great! Just rinse them, steam them, and don't eat any inedible looking ends. It's best if you don't overcook them.) I never feel run down after meals any more like I used to, though I can still feel a bit tired after a particularly high fat meal. On the whole, I have a lot more energy, though I have been told that I'm a lot more irritable now. Maybe it's time to do some programming "in anger?"

<comment><USER4> There is a major misconception that all carbs are bad. Specifically bad sources: refined sugar, high-fructose corn syrup (much worse than sugar), grains (wheat - gluten, is the worst, worse than sugar; rice, etc...), and legumes (particularly soy beans).

Sweet potatoes as carbs are very good for you; fruit (particularly pears, apples, coconut - very good for you, pineapple, bananas).

The topic is quite complicated and difficult to navigate, but there's a lot of good information out there. Particularly in the primal/paleo lifestyle (which I think is a little bit extreme but the knowledge and rationale is sound).

<comment><USER5> > high-fructose corn syrup (much worse than sugar)

> gluten, is the worst, worse than sugar

These sound like dubious claims to me. Do you have a citation?

<comment><USER6> It's not just dubious it's wrong. Gluten is a protein, not a carb.

And to say legumes are bad when they are actually by far the best kind of carb you can eat is nuts. (Nuts are good too.)

<comment><USER4> Most people think bread is a carb, which there are many carbs coming from it - you also get gluten in that mix. You're right that it is a protein [gluten] and not a carb but this is a classic example of an unhelpful HN comment thread where pedanticism is slowly taking over unless my writing has the quality of oral debate speech followed by scientific citations.

<comment><USER6> Bread is a carb and a protein, obviously.

You think you were helpful and I am not because you believe what you say. But you have not stopped to consider that perhaps you are simply wrong and I am calling you out on it.

Your problem is that you wrote something wrong - doubly wrong. You wrote that gluten is a carb, and that it's bad for you. But not only is it not a carb, it's also not bad for you unless you are sensitive to it. Wheat is what took humanity from weak scattered encampments to full civilizations, it's not called the staff of life for nothing.

And when you added the legumes are bad for you, all doubt I had if perhaps you were right vanished.

<comment><USER4> I never said you weren't helpful! I think you're being pedantic - asking for sources on everything! If you ask for a scientific opinion on why something is bad or not for you; you can come up with sources for both sides!

I'm telling you straight up, STOP being pedantic! This is a discussion forum, not a scientific peer-review!

"...all doubt I had if perhaps you were right vanished." who the hell wants to even have a reasoned conversation with you? I sure don't - I'm willing to be educated or have my mind changed but now you're both being pedantic and throwing insulting sentences into the mix COMPLETELY throwing out my desire to be educated BY YOU.

Fuck off. You're an example of what's wrong with Hacker News IMHO - this used to be a great place for conversation but its devolved heavily into a hostile discussion environment.

<comment><USER6> I asked for sources? Are you confusing me for other people who replied?

And I never said anything even remotely pedantic. (Thinking gluten is a carb is not pedantic - it's wrong.)

You have been told you were wrong from a whole bunch of different people, but somehow decided they were all me. It's interesting to speculate on why you did that. A mental defense against being told you were wrong perhaps?

It's time for you to go restart your eduction on this matter from scratch - and not from me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Buried lede: sugar is bad for you.

While the entry notes some well-known harms of sugar, it fails to note a few thing points:

\- Sugar withdrawal can be modestly severe, but it's _not_ physiologically habituating, and a couple of weeks of abstinence will get you through the worst of it.

\- Quantity, quality, and timing matter. Keeping total carbohydrate low (~50 - 150g day) will minimize much of the effects. Keeping sugars/carbs mostly low- glycemic minimizes the negative impacts. Consuming carbs in the morning or post-exercise (when body stores are naturally depleted) puts them where they can be utilized immediately (liver and muscle glycogen stores, not converted to fats).

\- Much of the sugar in the standard American / standard western diet (SAD/SWD) is in the form of hidden, added sugars in processed foods. A teaspoon of added sugar in tea is minimal. The _10 teaspoons_ in a 12 oz. can of Coke (or any other soft drink) are rather more. Or the sugars in various canned, prepared, baked, or other foods. _Make your own food or eat raw / natural / unprepared foods and you'll greatly reduce your sugar intake._

\- Exercise, both strength training and cardio, change _how_ your body processes sugar, and greatly reduces the negative effects of same.

Something's going to kill you. Need not be sugar.

You have agency.

<comment><USER8> > Sugar withdrawal can be modestly severe, but it's not physiologically > habituating, and a couple of weeks of abstinence will get you through the > worst of it.

Simple carbs spike serotonin levels, and then collapse them soon afterwards. People want to feel good, so they eat more sugar, which leads to another spike. This is by definition addictive!

It is also a vicious cycle. Too much sugar consumption can lead to obesity, which can then lead to depression, and of course sugar is already a person's go to treatment for feeling "down".

Thus the cycle continues.

<comment><USER7> I probably should have said "phyiscally" rather than "physiologically".

Heroin withdrawal can kill.

Sugar withdrawal will not.

<comment><USER9> Actually, as someone who has treated many people over the past week for heroin withdrawal, I would like to add that heroin withdrawal very very rarely kills people unless they have an underlying medical condition like coronary artery disease that can become worse with stress. On the other hand, alcohol, benzos, and baclofen withdrawal are much more common ways that people die.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Off the top of my head, a large part of his problem seems to be the need to overdramatize issues like this.

If he's that biorythmically dependant upon sugar, then the likely problem is that he's not getting sufficient sugar elsewhere in his diet. He could reduce the sugar in his tea while adding fruit and likely achieve the same end more effectively (while upping fibre intake, for example).

But phrasing this as a problem of addiction to a "poison" is a loaded approach that closes off less dramatic and likely much more effective measures. And honestly, if his weight's not a problem, then relax and enjoy your addiction-- you could have it a lot worse :)

<comment><USER11> >adding fruit

Just a sidenote: fruits are carby, so you still have the same problem if you replace wheat/sugar with fruit. They are slightly better for you because of the balance of fiber, but if you just replace wheat and sugar for fruit you are likely to end up similar health issues.

<comment><USER12> Even though an apple might have up to half the sugar of a 12-oz can of Coca- Cola, somehow it affects my body completely differently.

From a Coke, you feel the stimulation and then the drop in energy afterwards.

An apple just makes me feel good. There's no over-stimulation like sugar, and no drop in energy afterwards.

It's well known that the body processes sugars in foods very differently (sodas, honey, fruits, etc.). Unfortunately, not much is known about why or how, from what I know.

But something to keep in mind: humans have been eating fruits, presumably as long as we've existed. Drinks and desserts with concentrated cane sugar is a new thing. It wouldn't be surprising if evolution has adapted us well to the former (in moderation), but not that latter.

<comment><USER13> You don't think that difference could have a lot to do with the caffiene content of the Coca-Cola?

<comment><USER12> Definitely not -- a Coke stimulates for maybe an hour, then leaves you with less energy for around an hour. Like everything else with lots of processed sugar.

Whereas caffeine stimulates for several hours, and I never feel _less_ energy afterwards with caffeine.

The effect is definitely the sugar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The reason that peer pressure to do drugs is so intense is that for those doing the pressuring, you look like a crazy person.

They look at the vast majority of people in their environment who do drugs on a regular basis, often throughout their entire lives, and appear to be fine and happier for it. Then they look at you and, since you are in the minority, immediately conclude that you are overreacting.

I grew up with a few friends who abstained from drugs completely. As they grew older and gained perspective, they slowly let down their guard and most of them fell into familiar patterns of reasonably healthy, occasional drug use. A few others had drug problems.

The fact is that a minority of people have the right mix of personality, circumstances and chemistry to become addicts. To make the decision to abstain from any kind of drug use, you are eliminating the small chance that you could become an addict, which is commendable. But what you don't know is that eliminating that chance comes at a great cost. What your peers were trying to tell you was "dude, trust us, it's worth the risk!" A good friend might have said, "friend, if you never take risks, you'll never experience the full richness of life!"

If I were your friend, I would say, quite honestly, that I cannot, almost as a rule, trust anybody who has not tried a variety of mind altering substances. The insight that they provide is, in my opinion, essential to developing an open mind and a deeper perspective on life. Moreover I would be wary of anybody so, to me, risk averse.

But your argument would still be that I don't properly understand the risks. Perhaps that is true, but here is my point:

I respect your decision to eliminate the risk of your becoming an addict, but I don't think that it is appropriate for you to be indignant. Rather, you should be sorrowful.

<comment><USER15> > I cannot, almost as a rule, trust anybody who has not tried a variety of > mind altering substances.

 _EXCUSE ME?_ I'm sorry, but _give me a fucking break!_

I work hard, hit my deadlines, contribute to open source, am loyal to my friends, ready to help at the drop of a hat, and I'm risk-taking enough to be an entrepreneur, yet, _look out_ , I can't be trusted because I choose not to smoke it up? How does that follow logically?

I've attended many parties through the years (the early ones were what are so commonly called "drinking parties" because, well, they're college and high school kids getting drunk), and I grew up in a family who enjoy with a few beers after work and on the weekends.

And throughout this exposure, I've never once had even the _slightest_ itch to actually partake, despite the incredible amounts of peer pressure. But I attended the parties, I hung out with my friends and watched them get drunk (and later high, as they experimented further), and never once I did think "Hey, these conversations are so stimulating, I should totally do this too to improve my cognitive faculty."

No, I thought "Hey, you continue doing what you're doing. Me? I'm going to go back to playing the piano and talking with whomever is coherent enough to hold a conversation, and tomorrow, we'll laugh about all the stupid shit you won't remember doing."

Instead, watching folks get drunk, and holding conversations with folks who were high has only helped to strengthen my complete lack of desire to do these drugs. Not because of some aversion to risk, but because I just frankly don't like what I see in people when they are under the influence - they're generally just idiots.

And yet, despite all this, I know I can trust the trustworthy and not trust the untrustworthy, and I do not hold it against someone if they choose to enjoy certain recreational drugs. Indeed, despite my teetotalism, I paid for the open bar at my wedding.

Frankly, your almost complete trust-wise dismissal based on such a trivial criterion as "willingness to do drugs" is as closed-minded as I can imagine. At least I haven't completely written off an entire section of the population because of a disagreement in how we spend free time.

<comment><USER16> I don't see any reason to consider all those who haven't experienced various altered states of consciousness to be inherently untrustworthy. That said, if you haven't experienced these things then you probably can't fully understand the large swaths of civilization that were inspired by them: art, language, architecture, writing, film, religion, etc. And the odds are that if you can't fully understand something, then you can't properly value it.

<comment><USER14> What I was trying to express. I can't really have a deep relationship with somebody who doesn't understand these things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Personal anecdote: I just started a ~30-50g carb a day diet 15 days ago. I had maybe 2 days of withdrawal from all the sugar/carbs I used to consume, but afterwards had way more energy than I ever did in recent memory. (Assuming you eat the right amount of fat/protein.) After 2 weeks I've also lost 10 lbs (4.53 kg). I recommend everyone give it a try to see how it changes your daily routine and general sense of health.

<comment><USER18> Where do you get your energy from then? Are you just eating masses of fat and protein?

<comment><USER12> That's usually the case. Colloquially known as the paleo diet.

The same as our ancestors did for tens of thousands of years. Remember, dense carbohydrates like wheat and carb-rich potatoes are a very recent phenomenon in human history.

<comment><USER19> Anatomical modernity of humans is about 200,000 years, flour processing is around 30,000 years. Sorry, I fail to see that as being recent.

<comment><USER12> I'm curious, where are you getting 30,000 years from?

From what I know, any kind of significant flour processing arose together with the agricultural revolution, which produces large quantities of wheat for the first time. The agricultural revolution started around 12,000 years ago (but then still had to spread), and Wikipedia mentions:

"It was discovered around 6000 BC that wheat seeds could be crushed between simple millstones to make flour."

In widespread evolutionary terms, we've only been generally been eating flour for a few thousand years.

 _Homo sapiens_ has been around for 200k years, but that is just the tip of the iceberg of the much longer evolutionary process that led to us. We and our ancestors have been eating meats, fats, fruits and vegetables for millions of years.

So our high-carbohydrate flour-eating diet is certainly a sudden and recent disruption of our diet, and it is reasonable to expect that there's no way that, in just 100-200 human generations, the gene makeup of _homo sapiens_ could so quickly adapt in a healthy way to such a drastically different diet.

<comment><USER19> [http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/10/08/1006993107.abst...](http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/10/08/1006993107.abstract)

But in widespread use probably quite a bit less.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I can see it now; Soft drink cans with sugar will start having to do pictures akin to the smoking ones. First there will be the small label warning, then the larger ones, then the full blown pictures of somebody out of a horror movie type extreme. Heck even a picture of dirty British teeth (I'm a Brit so I'm allowed that one pandering to cliché). It will happen eventually.

But that is only if people start using it irresponsibly, like anything, be it water, any vitamin, in excess will not work out great for you. It is when it starts having a noticeable effect upon many that laws and acts change. That is one drive of change, but probably the first sign will be insurance forms asking how many sugars you have in your coffee and how many per week/day.

But as long as I don't have to hovel outside a fire door in the poring rain to get my sugar fix then I'm not too worried about my addiction, worry causes more ill health than the excess sugar I consume and in that I raise my cup (though I did use brown sugar and I'm talking the supermarket version).

<comment><USER21> Might I recommend spellcheck

<comment><USER20> That I can do, involves copy and pasting but it has been done, I better appologise for my grammer now, though feedback well receieved and thank you for that.

<comment><USER22> Grammer? Appologise? receieved?

Maybe you can set your browser to use English as the default language, then words that are spelled wrong will show up with a red underline.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm kind of surprised to see this one on HN, it definitely wasn't the intention, there is no link to hacking here as far as I can see.

That said, now that it is there it is a great source of feedback, for all those that have made constructive suggestions in this thread and in the comments on the blog post, thank you _very much_ , and I will certainly take some of those suggestions to heart and implement them.

<comment><USER24> I skimmed the comments and did not see this obvious suggestion: you are not really drinking tea, you are drinking tea-coke. Just start drinking the real stuff, a few leaves of green Chinese tea in hot water. I usually go for longjing tea. It is a tad sour with chocolate fragrance. No one would ever add sugar in this dope.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It also sounds like you're addicted to caffeine. You're probably addicted to Gluten as well.

The paleo/primal food lifestyle would probably interest you greatly.

(notably, sugar is my most major vice - I kicked gluten, caffeine, alcohol, and many other substances a long time ago. I still consume wheat here and there, but sugar (particularly in juice) is the worst.

</comment><comment><USER25> You're not alone: sugar is the only thing I'm really addicted to, other than maybe the Internet.

The only thing that has worked for me is going completely cold turkey for my two big sugar vices: candy and soda. I haven't had candy in about a year, and I haven't touched soda in three or four years. It gets easier...I don't really crave either of those things ever anymore. I still eat things that have sugar, but I don't really go overboard with anything other than candy and soda, so it's not a problem.

Quit cold turkey; some of us can't handle moderation for some things.

</comment><comment><USER26> "Extra frustrating because I know just how bad taking in these quantities of sugar is."

Well, the same thing can be said about anything. Drink water in excess and it can and will kill you (the dose makes the poison). These pieces are frustrating because they take something (fats, sugars, carbs, etc.) that is perfectly healthy in moderation and within a balanced diet and position it as a vice when in fact the vice is the person's over-indulgence. A better title would have been: "Something that I consume too much of will kill me one day".

</comment><comment><USER27> "I drink tea, lots of it, several liters per day...If I don't drink my tea my head feels like mush."

Sugar may be a red herring here. That sounds like a massive caffeine dependency.

<comment><USER12> Yeah... several _liters_ a day?? That's absolutely insane. That is not healthy _at all_.

<comment><USER28> AFAIK, there's only been one recorded death from lethal tea poisoning. I think it was something like 14 liters a day.

200 cups a day can be lethal, but the water poisoning will probably get you first.

The real dangers are alcohol + caffeine (the caffeine stops you getting tired, so you can drink more), or caffeine powder (one spoon can kill you).

Several liters probably isn't healthy though.

<comment><USER27> The headline is pure hyperbole. He thinks he has a problem because he gets a fuzzy head when he doesn't drink his tea. That's caffeine withdrawal.

<comment><USER23> I ruled out caffeine addiction already, it's the sugar.

<comment><USER27> I would really encourage you to revisit that assumption. I'm sorry to challenge you on this, but unless the tea you drink has very low levels of caffeine, you are ingesting quite a bit of the drug each day, levels that would cause dependency and addiction. The fuzzy head thing is a typical description of caffeine withdrawal.

Why do you think otherwise?

<comment><USER23> There are many kinds of tea, some with more, some with less caffeine. For a lark I finally tried the lightest in caffeine tea that there is: hot water. And as long as the sugar was there the same kick was present. As far as the science of it is concerned, I have no clue what the exact pathways are but the effect is tangible enough that I think I can rule out psychosomatic effects as well, though it is always hard to be 100% sure of this.

<comment><USER27> Best of luck to you regardless. My opinion would be hard to change on this issue without really exploring the details your caffeine consumption and the particulars of how you became convinced that that's not what it is. I don't want to badger you about it. Maybe just file this thought away somewhere. Caffeine is a drug, and you may be ingesting large quantities of it daily. That will affect you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'm reading this article while drinking bottle of Red Bull and eating chocolate. Through the first paragraph I'm telling to myself "he is going to talk about sugar, he is going to talk about sugar".

Then it comes. He says "Sugar" and I scream "Fuck!!!"

<comment><USER30> You didn't get that from the title? You must be new here ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I too was pretty much addicted to sugar. Mostly dessert-like foods and soda. There are a few things that will help reduce the sugar cravings:

\- Eat a little more protein. No need to go crazy, but just have more protein.

\- Eat more fiber. Very few people eat enough fiber. Eat more fruits and vegetables. Fruits are a great way to get some sugar, but the fructose in fruit is absorbed more slowly than a cookie.

\- Have some cinnamon. I sprinkle a little cinnamon on everything. Occasionally I'll even take a cinnamon tablet. Supposedly helps with cravings.

\- Drink more water. When I pretty much stopped having sugar I was having 3-4 liters (roughly a gallon) of water a day.

\- Eat good fats. Nuts, peanut butter, almond butter, avocados, etc. Helps with cravings too.

\- And of course exercise. There are too many good things exercise does for you.

I have pretty much stopped having sugar (other than in social situations i.e. given a piece of birthday cake). I drink my coffee black, no sugar in my tea, and don't drink any more soda.

</comment><comment><USER32> It sure sounds like he's addicted to caffeine, and just happens to put sugar in his tea.

<comment><USER33> First I thought that, too, but he mentions explicitly that tea alone doesn't work for him. So I tend to agree with what someone else on this thread said, that he might need to simply up his intake of nutrients in his diet. Especially protein and fat which produce more stable energy levels.

<comment><USER27> Unless he's drinking decaf, several liters of iced tea intake a day would almost certainly indicate addiction and dependency.

Replace 'tea' in this article with cocaine. The cocaine alone doesn't do it for him, he requires there to be some sugar in it. And then blaming the sugar withdrawal for his fuzzy head.

That's basically what's happening here. Except that people tend to ignore that caffeine is a drug that can have some pretty pronounced effects when used a lot and over a long time.

<comment><USER34> > that caffeine is a drug that can have some pretty pronounced effects when > used a lot and over a long time.

As an avid coffee-drinker - what are these effects? I've read upon caffeine and I've found no clear evidence for permanent harm or good out of coffee.

<comment><USER27> Dependency is the big one relevant to the OP. Withdrawal can impact energy, mood, cognitive function, and cause bad headaches, among other things, I'm sure. Caffeine use can also compromise sleep, raise blood pressure, and increase anxiety. Caffeine intoxication is an acute state and has a range of effects as well, but that's not really what you're asking about.

The wikipedia article actually has a good summary of some of these issues as well as others.

You'll notice that the higher dosages given in that article as being risk factors for things are within the range of 'several liters of iced tea.'

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Something to consider regarding artificial sweeteners: your digestive tract has the same sweet-taste receptors as the taste buds on your tongue. It uses these to decide when to activate sugar metabolizing/storage pathways. Since artificial sweeteners activate the receptors on your tongue, it is reasonable to assume that they also activate the ones in your digestive tract, thus misleading your body about how much sugar it has consumed and causing it to respond inappropriately, probably causing something like a sugar crash as your body releases insulin to combat an influx of sugar that never arrives.

<comment><USER36> I can only speak for myself, but this is exactly what happens when I consume artificial sweeteners. I get tired, cranky, and hungry about 30 minutes afterwards. I switched from the 'milkshake' style protein drinks after workouts to pure whey isolate and my late night food cravings stopped completely. Too bad the whey isolate tastes, well, awful isn't strong enough of a word.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I can't tell if this article is completely serious or partially tongue-in- cheek. The bit that really stuck out at me:

"If I don't use sugar ... then I simply get ... very low on energy. ... I'm not sure what the link is here, all I know is that without that chemical in my bloodstream for some reason I can't get my head in first gear, let alone second or third."

I found it hard to take that seriously, given that your body will put sugar in your bloodstream regardless of what you eat, and without any sugar in your bloodstream you would quickly die.

Of course, the overall point of the article still stands.

</comment><comment><USER37> Dunno about any one else, but I suddenly went right off sugar, suddenly it tasted foul.

I have no idea why at all. I used to have 2 teaspoons in coffee, like normal coke, sprinkle it over cereal and fruit, and so on. One day I made my usual coffee and it was just sickly. I chucked it down the sink and made a new one with out sugar and its was fantastic. Same for everything else. Weird, but there it is.

</comment><comment><USER38> Try keeping a glass of water by you and drink that whenever you feel like having a cup of tea. If you can swap even half of your tea intake for water you'll start to feel much better within a few days since the caffeine and sugar is actually dehydrating you.

I can't help but wonder if you had acquired a taste for beer as a teenager whether you would have less of a sweet tooth now...

</comment><comment><USER39> Abstaining from sugar, tobacco, alcohol, or marijuana seems kind of silly to me. I know that the culture on HN is to try to empower people to be supermen and do extraordinary things. But, when I think of the dedication required to abstain from all these things given the environment I live in, I feel anxiety.

I think anxiety and stress is something that is much more harmful to me than smoking a blunt or drinking a glass of whiskey. I never understood why some people take such a black and white (simple) perspective on this. I guess the only reason I could see is if someone very close to them died from one of these vices, but that is kind of an irrational reaction. I understand it, but wouldn't advocate anyone reacting that way.

In short, I don't really see how soft drugs or unhealthy foods in moderate quantity are really harmful in the grand scheme of things.

</comment><comment><USER40> Your brain consumes a lot of energy, and it feeds off the sugar. I am not sure what studies have been done about intense concentration and conscious brain activity involved in coding and so forth, but I can see why your brain has developed a habit of relying on sugar.

Sugar is actually more addictive than many other drugs. Rats often preferred it to cocaine and got addicted to it just like a drug.

<http://sarvahealthandwellness.com/?p=402> <http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2008/12/12/22428/>

You might try varying the sugar to brown sugar or honey. Or eat fruits such as grapes which are a source of glucose! Also, apples have been known to wake you up in the morning better than coffee.

</comment><comment><USER41> I have never taken narcotics. I have no interest in alcohol or tobacco. These days, the thought of sex is revolting. Peer pressure means little to me: I avoid people as much as possible, which helps. If I didn't, I might have to listen to self-serving, fatuous nonsense about how I ought to have an open mind about taking drugs or drinking, or at least take the trouble to examine every controlled substance on a case-by-case basis, despite a lack of interest and time. My justification for not doing so: I am rational, according to a cost-benefit analysis I haven't done. (Which is to say, I don't need a reason.)

That said, I've tried to reduce my sugar intake--no sugar in coffee, etc, but this has been difficult.

<comment><USER42> Why do you think it is "self-serving" to suggest that you ought to have an open mind? If you don't want to take the trouble to investigate subjects which are of no interest to you, and for which you are just too darn busy, that is just fine, you don't need a reason.

You might choose to live your life in a cardboard box, after all, as long as you're happy there. Plenty of people will think you are missing out on life, though. But since you avoid people, you wouldn't care, I guess. Have a good one...

<comment><USER41> Why do you think I wrote that it is self-serving to suggest that I ought to have an open mind _per se_ , when I wrote that it was self-serving to suggest that I ought to have an open mind about taking drugs or drinking? When you figure out what led you to distort my meaning, you should have the answer to your question.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Some people much smarter than myself, like Dr. Robert Lustig at UCSF, believe that sugar is the main cause for "diseases of affluence" like diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. I've been on the Paleo diet, which eschews refined sugar, for over four years. I've lost a lot of weight and feel better than I have felt in many years. I know this is just an n=1 study and doesn't vilify sugar in isolation, but I believe it played a huge role in making me healthier. Sugar is just as bad as those other drugs and maybe more so. Eating it is like shooting yourself, but with a very slow moving bullet. It'll catch up to you at some point.

</comment><comment><USER44> Rather than dropping the sugar from your tea, try finding some good coffee and drinking it black. That way, you're not getting almost the same experience but without the sugar. You're getting a radically different experience with most of the same chemicals. Not that this is guaranteed to work, by a long shot, but it seems worth a try.

Edited to add: The above assumes it's mostly psychosomatic, which seems quite possible and worth testing but isn't anything like guaranteed. If there is a nutritional component then eating more, smaller meals may help. I assume you're eating breakfast in the first place?

</comment><comment><USER45> You can buy pure sucralose (the stuff in splenda) online for $10/ounce. It's around 600 times as sweet as sugar, so that's equivalent to paying about 25¢/lb of sugar.

The upsides are that there are no documented negative health effects, it tastes pretty much like sugar, and it has no calories.

The downsides are that it doesn't work like sugar chemically (you can't caramelize it or use it to activate yeast), and that you have to dilute it (I like to just make a very sweet sucralose+water solution to sweeten things with, but you could easily cut it with some other powder like maltodextrin).

<comment><USER18> And what happens after you eat this stuff for 50 years or so?

<comment><USER46> You might be dead. Then again, I expect to be dead in 50 years regardless...

<comment><USER18> What about your children?

<comment><USER45> That's pointless speculation, and you can play that game all day until you're arguing that nothing is safe. How can we really be sure, after all, that trace compounds from sea salt aren't causing slight DNA damage that will turn our descendants 150 generations down the line into eight-legged mutants?

The fact is that there is no more reason to believe that sucralose will have some as yet unobserved negative health effect than there is to believe that it will have some as yet unobserved health benefit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Same could be said about salt — and salt really seems to be way worse. It is everywhere (but you can avoid it if you cook your own food and take care of what you put in it). It's quite an addiction too, as one can feel food to be tasteless when not using it (because we end up using it in excess everywhere).

I wonder how abundance of almost everything we want (foods, variety, condiments and abuse) will affect our (my) generation when we're old…

<comment><USER48> Large amounts of sodium are bad for you, of course, but it doesn't fill you with cheap energy and mild euphoria.

<comment><USER20> Ahhh but if you offset that with cans of diet cola you they will reduce that excess sodium. Salt+soda balanced diets work. Also don't forget a little fat, milk before a meal will also actualy reduce the amount of food you absorb. Whilst were on about eating more then reducing your vitimin D by avoiding sunlight will effect the vitimin C's ability to take on and absorb foods. But a adict can argue anything, even a salt, sugar caffine, never going out addict :-).

Rule of thumb everything is bad for you, some take larger amounts than others so in that everything in moderation works best.

Also worth noting that if you work in a very hot enviroment were you sweat alot then as well as water salt tablets are required, signs of low sodium are headaches, aches, and flu like sympton feeling and generaly feeling shit, too much salt may be bad for you in general in the longterm but not enough can be more detremental.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Why is this on the front page?

<comment><USER50> I actually like these health articles appearing on HN - I understand it's not on-topic, but the majority of people here sit on computers all day so the occasional tip is useful.

I guess you could argue being healthier makes you a better entrepreneur/engineer/etc?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Quitting sugar is hard without a diet replacing it that satiates your appetite on a daily basis. I highly recommend _Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It_. Basically, an Atkins diet. That means eat as much as you want, but low carbs, high protein, high fat (including sat. fats, but no tranfats, etc.), high vegetable diet (and few fruits too, fruits are sugar.)

<comment><USER51> But fruit has fibre, which counteracts the sugar in them, so eating fruit is ok.

But fruit juice is a different matter as the pulp has been removed.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, I'm kind of amazed by people who won't drink a Coke because it's unhealthy, but have no problem downing a 20 oz orange juice.

The sugar in it may be natural, but it's still a mind-blowing amount of it.

<comment><USER52> If you're in the US Coke has corn syrup rather than sugar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Sensationalist headlines! YAY!

And seriously if your head feels disconnected without tea... you could probably use some exercise.

</comment><comment><USER54> I found Stickk and chains.cc aren't bad for kicking habits. I'm currently trying to quit sugar. If I don't, I give $200 to a disliked politician.

It's depending on me not lying, but making that committment has already made it a lot easier.

17 days in so far, and hasn't been hard, after total failure before.

<comment><USER55> Ooh, do you know about Beeminder? Cold turkey is probably fine for sugar but if you want to gradually wean yourself, or if you want to build in some flexibility like averaging at most 2 days of the week where you eat sugar (without pre-specifying which days those would be) then Beeminder's more quantitative approach should work better. Good luck either way!

Danny (of Beeminder)

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Try replacing the sugar in your tea with fat, i.e. cream. Will help you feel more satiated.

<comment><USER57> Or a lemon... that is what worked for me. Now I can no longer drink sweetened tea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Try drinking tea without sugar? Better to wean off the caffeine, though.

</comment><comment><USER59> Use honey or brown sugar. Quit drinking sodas and other crap you don't know how much sugar was poured into. Problem solved.

Quitting carbohydrates altogether is a stupid idea. Don't do it.

<comment><USER60> Brown sugar is no better for you than white sugar. [http://www.seattlepi.com/lifestyle/health/article/Reality- Ch...](http://www.seattlepi.com/lifestyle/health/article/Reality-Check-Is- brown-sugar-healthier-than-1240510.php) Xylitol is my preferred sugar substitute. It's lower in calories, and it has a much lower glycemic index. It also helps prevent cavities.

<comment><USER59> Well, in Brazil you can buy real brown sugar (raw sugar). I don't known the crap they sell elsewhere under this name. You can even buy it in blocks here (google "rapadura").

The problem isn't in the calories, which is equivalent per gram with refined sugar, but the fact refined lacks many nutrients. The article you mention is full of crap and doesn't link to any studies, but I can tell you raw sugar has ~5mg per 100g of Iron alone. Refined sugar has absolutely zero. In a 2000kcal diety, you're consuming 50g of sugar daily. You're getting along 1/4 of daily Iron intake if raw sugar is used, for free. I'm not even going to mention Magnesium, which 70% of the world's population is deficient on. I wouldn't say the benefits are negligible.

About Xylitol... what's the point in using an artificial sweetener that lacks any nutrients just because is has lower calories? Just cut caloric crap from the diet. The only benefit is for diabetics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Try stevia, which (as far as we know) is a totally non-toxic sweetener. It doesn't work for everything, but I think it'd be just fine for tea.

</comment><comment><USER62> Milk & Honey for your tea, folks =]

</comment><comment><USER63> When I go to a restaurant, usually the only non-alcoholic things I can bear to drink are unsweetened tea and water. I really don't know how people can bear to drink the rest of the stuff. Putting sugar in drinks is nasty. Drinks with artificial sweeteners taste even worse.

On the other hand, I hear the Chinese put salt in tea sometimes. That would be even worse. So how can I complain.

</comment><comment><USER42> "I vowed to simply abstain from any drug at all. No Beer, Wine, Spirits, smokes, hash, coke or other dope for me. I wanted to be healthy and to live as long as possible while keeping my body in as good a shape as I could."

Well Jacques, it is quite strange and disappointing to see that you have spent your life following such a simplistic approach to human brain chemistry.

You seem to have accepted uncritically the message promulgated by your local government about the effects of psychoactive chemicals, that is, that alcohol, "smokes", hash, coke, or "other dope" is bad for your health, and will reduce your lifespan.

In the first place, does it seem rational to you to group the effects of such a wide range of different chemicals together? Tobacco and alcohol, for example, have nothing in common chemically or pharmacologicaly. Their effects on your health or longevity are completely independent of each other. What they have in common is that they have a psychologically pleasant effect, like the other varieties of "dope" you mention.

Perhaps you have bought into the Calvinistic worldview that what is pleasurable must be ultimately harmful. Do you not indulge in such temptingly wicked practices as dancing and umm, recreational sex either?

How about an item by item rational, scientific approach to each chemical? I'm not going to attempt to be exhaustive here, as anyone can look up a hundred resources, but, as a first approach, I think that your strategy of "complete abstention" is misguided at best. Of course _anything_ can be overdone to the point of being harmful, even internet usage, so all of my comments below apply only to moderate, reasonable, sensible use.

Alcohol: Legal, moderate addictive potential, overuse increases violence and recklessness. Numerous studies have shown than moderate usage is beneficial to health. Overuse causes liver problems and Korsakoff's Syndrome. Social lubricant enjoyed around the world.

Tobacco: Legal, highly addictive, carcinogenic. Mental stimulant.

Cannabis: Illegal. Barely to zero addictive potential, cancer preventative/therapy. No known overdose. Stimulates creative ideas. Dissolves obedience to authoritarian world-views.

Coke: Illegal. Highly addictive. Mental stimulant. Causes holes in internasal septum and generally manic asshole behavior.

Psychedelics: Illegal. Highly NON-addictive. A large proportion of users say they have caused the most significant experiences of their entire lives. No known physical effects.

Personally, although I agree with you about sugar, I'm really more concerned that you have accepted a bland, timid, dumbed-down, boring, government- dictated life, than that you are taking any serious health risks.

I think you should take a few risks and get out a little, before you die. How about a fat spliff, a hearty Merlot, and an Ayahuasca trip to the Amazon? You never know, you might find that you've been living your life so far in black and white.

<comment><USER23> I don't know you, and I'm pretty sure that you don't know me if you want to suggest that I've been living my life in black and white. Oh, and Colombia is indeed a beautiful country, I spent quite a bit of time there. I couldn't comment on 'fat spliffs' or 'Merlot' but I think that it is quite possible to enjoy life without those. I don't judge people that use this stuff, they govern their bodies as they see fit, I govern mine as I see fit.

Some people need drugs to loosen up, I can assure you I'm plenty loose without that.

> I'm really more concerned that you have accepted a bland, timid, dumbed- > down, boring, government-dictated life

I appreciate your concern, but I promise you that that is not the case.

<comment><USER42> I don't know you, and I can't comment on Colombia, as I have never experienced it. Of course, I can enjoy life without that possibly hazardous trip. I'm only suggesting to you that there are non-governmentally approved,very worthwhile, and perfectly healthy experiences that you are missing out on, as I have chosen to pass on Colombia.

Each to his own. I enjoy your posts enormously. Maybe some day you will have a change of heart and post about a life changing mushroom trip one day. Stay loose!

[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2011/10/03/drug- in...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2011/10/03/drug-in-magic- mushrooms-linked-to-long-lasting-personality-change-for-the-better/)</comment></comment></comment>


B2B referral sales systems – the outbound growth engine most startups never use - <AUTHOR> http://blog.close.io/how-to-do-referral-sales

<comment><USER2> This:

"It seems like we're a great fit. I'm excited. Before we go any further exploring a potential deal I want to bring up that we're fully focused on building world class technology and on servicing and supporting our customers to massive success. What that means is that we're not investing in marketing and sales as heavily because our happy customers are referring us to others who could benefit from our product. Does that sound like a fair arrangement to you?"

What a great way to phrase the ask. Switches from you pressuring them for the referral to making them want to help.

<comment><USER3> This is very typical way of approaching sales and arrangements in the sales world. Sandler sales and a lot of other sales techniques / principles apply this, and I've seen it work wonders

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Steli and I just chatted about this one, and I love it.

I help make YesGraph, a referral recruiting tool. We're just getting started ramping up sales, so something like referrals that keeps the new leads warm is wonderful. Plus the marketing message that we are all about the referrals writes itself.

<comment><AUTHOR> Never seen a case where referral sales makes more sense than at YesGraph :) Excited to see the results you guys are going to get from implementing this!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Fantastic post. I did a rough version of this for a while and it works great. One thing I didn't think of was closing the feedback loop like you suggested. Usually I did that myself through the form of a casual gift (beer, etc) but I can see your way being much more effective.

Its really amazing how well this works too. I recently made the jump from tech to advertising, and I actually built us to ramen profitable doing exactly this. The trick was a bit of pro bono work at the beginning to light the fuse.

</comment><comment><USER6> Hey Steli, quick question: You suggest we should ask for the referral right when the customer makes the purchase. In the case of a SaaS solution (like ours) they haven't experienced the product at all right when they make the purchase...isn't it better to wait until they have experienced the product to ask for a referral (eg when they've had a success on the platform)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah that's what most people think (and sometimes it's the right approach).

For most SaaS apps your customer had a chance to experience the product on a free trial of some sorts.

If they are convinced enough to buy many will be ready to recommend.

Asking for it at that point only shortens the referral sales cycle (you don't have to schedule a separate call for this since you're already talking to them) and once you've closed the positive feedback loop they can start giving you more referrals (and at that point they've probably been a customer for a month or two).

Starting earlier just makes this gain a lot more momentum faster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What do you think about having this process automated? The initial ask can be an automated email and if the person wants to do a referral they can grab an email template via a link included in the email. I'm asking because many businesses don't speak to their customers unless they have an issue or a post purchase question....

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah that's a fair point. If you don't talk to your customers today it might make sense to automate this via email.

Most likely you will have a much lower success rate since the biggest point of conversion in the approach outlined in the post is at the "2nd ask" (which is hard to do via email).

But it's a lot better than not asking for referrals in the first place :)

Would love to hear what kind of results you would see doing this!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> How applicable is this approach for a low-touch B2B SaaS business? We don't have active sales communications with customers, it's more of a value creation during the trial period.

I have noticed that customers referred by their friends (without us asking) move through the process very quickly. They already trust us.

<comment><AUTHOR> You might wanna try sending customer lifecycle emails to customers after a few weeks pitching them on referring you to their friends and see how well this performs.

I don't have first hand experience in automating this via email. My experience has been exclusively with phone sales so far.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> what about referral incentives?

<comment><AUTHOR> oh that's a good point! I need to edit that into the original post :)

I've found that in B2B you don't want to "pay" for referrals and that people are more likely to make them when they feel like they are providing value to their network without any selfish incentives.

Once in a while someone will ask for it and it's up to you to decide if you want to give people a discount or something else for helping you close new business. I personally think that's reasonable when asked but wouldn't offer it upfront.

<comment><USER10> Really interesting insight, Steli. Did you ever offer a discount up front to get reluctant customers to introduce you to a new business[1]? If so, could you share how it turned out?

[1] those who likely know a business to introduce you to and are seemingly willing to do so, based on the maturity of the relationship with you and them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> kind of angry this got found. use this all day everyday as my entire system.

</comment><comment><USER12> Does B2B refer to "business-to-business" in this case?

</comment><comment><USER13> nice one Steli

</comment><comment><USER14> what's the tech behind the close.io app? looks like a thin layer client such as node-webkit running bootstrap or HTML5 of some sort.

I wonder how it's doing the VOIP and Email.

I absolutely loved the demo video on close.io, it's the only demo video where I knew exactly what was going on because they slowed it down.

<comment><USER15> Thanks for asking! I wrote a blog post about it:

[http://blog.close.io/the-tech-stack-behind-close-io-sales- co...](http://blog.close.io/the-tech-stack-behind-close-io-sales- communication)

<comment><USER14> Wow thanks for the answer!

Where do you host the backend? I think Flask is a great choice, it is easier to deal with than writing a backend in Node.js.</comment></comment></comment>


A Kickstarter idea could be on sale in China before fundraising has finished - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/771727/chinas-factories-in-shenzhen-can-copy-products-at-breakneck-speed-and-its-time-for-the-rest-of-the-world-to-get-over-it/ <comment><USER3> > Yet Sherman estimates that he has lost "hundreds of thousands" of dollars in > potential revenue due to copycats.

OK, but how much real money has he lost.

I lose millions of pounds of potential money every time I play the lottery.

<comment><USER4> Idea guys in a nutshell

<comment><USER5> [https://youtube.com/watch?v=DkGMY63FF3Q](https://youtube.com/watch?v=DkGMY63FF3Q)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think alibaba is missing a huge opportunity. They need to create a kickstarter type site where 1-3% of the sales go to your design and anyone can copy it and sell it on his site(s) and you get the design fee.

<comment><USER7> While I like this idea, it still runs into the same issue as patents with respect to enforcement. It would be very difficult to get all the copycats to actually fork over the 1-3% of sales on their knockoff product.

<comment><USER8> The solution to that seems easy: Preferred placement. Alibaba can simply promote the vendors who have signed on to the design royalties system, possibly penalizing those who have not.

The 1-3% IP overhead then becomes effectively a marketing overhead.

<comment><USER9> Why pay the idea guy then? Just have traditional promoted listings and seller/market pocket the money regardless of the origin or design of the items.

<comment><USER8> I don't really see the point of this comment: Above is a proposal to use a tool to accomplish a goal. It presumes the goal is desired by the actor. If it is not, they are free to use the tool for other purposes.

<comment><USER9> Because there are multiple actors required to make the proposal work as stated. How are all the actor's purposes aligned by the proposal such that you get a positive sum for all of the required parties?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Whether or not we see the value in selfie-sticks, we surely must find at least a little value in people that design solutions at least being able to recoup the costs of development?

It's quite likely, that there are solutions that exist that will take a large amount of investment, but yet once created will have little economic moat to protect themselves from duplication.

Not all of these solutions will be as frivolous as a retractable selfie-stick, and with a financial disincentive to investing in designing them, we create a very low likelihood that these solutions will be created.

That said, I guess unless someone can come up with a cheap system to ensure originators get paid, there's very little that we can do other than express outrage.

<comment><USER11> No risk, no reward. Copying, I think, should be planned for, especially in a global market. If a single video is enough to copy it, then maybe don't release a video before you're done making it. What I hate seeing is when an idea gets copied and then the laws made to guard against copying get used against the creator preventing them from even competing on other fronts like quality, marketing, etc.

<comment><USER12> If it gets too bad, though, you have the opposite, "no reward, no risk". Then things don't get created.

If I know that my idea will get sniped, I'm not going to put the time and effort into the design and the Kickstarter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've also seen things in reverse where silly ideas "inspired" by cheap Chinese gadgets would appear on crowdfunding sites.

There is no point to compete with China on cheap accessories, anything that is not service based or is prohibitory expensive or complicated to make will be copied before you get even the initial samples back for evaluation.

</comment><comment><USER14> > Lindtner compares the culture of Shenzhen's manufacturing ecosystem to the > open-source movement among software developers.

This is actually an interesting comparison. There are plenty of open-source "clones" or (more kindly) alternatives to closed-source software, and this is seen as a good thing. What's the real difference between this and these sorts of clean-room hardware clones?

<comment><USER15> In my opinion there are two big reasons. Most open source software are building blocks, versus an end product, so it's seen as helping the ecosystem forward. Secondly, atoms are more costly than electrons to copy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> So create a Kickstarter and then just watch Alibaba for the product to appear. Now no need to worry about design, fab, production, or delivery! It's like a magic AI that makes your product for you.

:)

<comment><USER17> Exactly. It seems to me like the audience on Alibaba crowdsourced the manufacturing of his product. Now he has multiple manufacturers to choose from (something he admits he didn't even figure out yet) and can purchase at a wholesale price ($10). He will still be able to make plenty of profit selling these at the original price of $40.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> loooool

Ever seen an action cam called SJ Cam? It looks like an exact copy of gopro camera. Why do you think they don't sue the manufacturer?

The answer is that they are their original OEM from whom they were buying rebranded products and sold them as hero cameras 1 and 2. They never signed any kind of agreement securing exclusive rights to the design. At the time they wanted to build their next generation cam from scratch, they were unnable to do anything with the fact that SJCam continued selling the original design.

Not only small companies buy off-the shelf designs. Not even biggest brands shy of from banal rebranding: probably more than a half of all notebook designs are off-the-shelf design house products.

Who sold Apple the reference design for the first ifone? It was Taiwanese ODM "First International Computer," and they are trying hard to conceal that fact as it will set their "designed by Apple in california" line in bad light.

If somebody had access to the repair manual for the first iphone, they could've seen many references to the ODM and individual factories making sub- assemblies.

</comment><comment><USER19> You could do a kickstarter that was impossible and see what the copycats comes up with.

<comment><USER20> Good idea, but don't you need a working prototype nowadays with Kickstarter?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> What's the big deal? The discovery in this case is not how to build a selfie stick box, it's the realisation that people want to have such a thing. That shouldn't be patentable, it should in fact be the free-for-all that it is.

It's no different than putting up a picture of a burger with 4 patties made of different meats, with a soft-ice on top and a waffle on the bottom. It's not a mystery how to make it, it's a mystery why anyone wants it. But if loads of people express admiration for it, why on earth should there be any protection for the guy who came up with it? He's not taking the risk on buying the meats, setting up a shop, marketing, and so forth.

<comment><USER22> > why on earth should there be any protection for the guy who came up with it? > He's not taking the risk on buying the meats, setting up a shop, marketing, > and so forth.

In theory the person inventing it is investing time and effort into the invention itself, and the manufacturing company is risking money on a new idea.

Some protection seems reasonable. The current levels of protections - <USER2> years, is weird.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Just checked Alibaba for "Fidget Cube". Several offerings already available even though Kickstarter campaign is yet to close. Several listings even use marketing from the campaign.

Serious food for thought.

</comment><comment><USER24> Maybe they could copy the ZPM espresso machine[0]?

[0] [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/03/magazine/zpm-espresso- and-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/03/magazine/zpm-espresso-and-the-rage- of-the-jilted-crowdfunder.html)

</comment><comment><USER25> The Chinese copy because they have a billion people to get out of poverty.

And years of catch-up.

Makes 100% sense, no need for innovation yet.

Just sucks if you are in a rich country.

<comment><USER26> Add to that the massive manufacturing infrastructure they've built out to meet global manufacturing demand, and it's a recipe for exactly this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> come up with an idea that is predominantly software then you can mod the knockoffs into the finished products.

<comment><USER28> That was my first tought when I read this.

But you might bump into the oposite problem: patent trolls taking advantage of excess of protection for ideas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Did he actually think this idea would make him rich? Was he that naive? I mean it's a damn retractile stick, there's no actual value to it, of course it would be copied to oblivion...

<comment><USER30> I was going to say that I doubt the original inventor thought it would "make him rich", that it was just an idea that he wanted to realize and perhaps make some money off it. That would be the reasonable way to look at it.

Unfortunately, the guy seems to have gotten busy "enforcing" the IP on copycats in China. The only people who will get any enjoyment out of that is lawyers. Sounds like he's embarking on a miserable never-ending game of wack- a-mole. And for what? A forgettable bauble-store item for impulse buyers on vacation?

<comment><USER31> Umm, couldn't he just see which manufacturer made the best quality product, and work with them, and make a good profit margin? It may even be in that manufacturers interest to stop the other copycats.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> i don't see the problem here really

</comment><comment><USER33> I am really amazed looking at how popular selfie-sticks continue to be despite causing injuries and deaths [0].

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_selfie- related_injurie...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_selfie- related_injuries_and_deaths)</comment>


Vapor-master: a high availability ROS 1 master - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/roshub/introducing-vapor-a-high-availability-ros-1-x-master-19d66506cb7a <comment><AUTHOR> We were reading the below old thread and decided to fix some of the complaints. We're just getting started on this and many more things. Stay tuned for whats next.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15530813](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15530813)</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone already using the new GitHub Projects feature? Care to share? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I did.

I personally find it missing a lot of features for working with cross- functional team (e.g. developers + designers + marketing).

I'd love to see this implemented:

1\. filtering cards based on milestone / labels 2\. assigning labels, milestone, labels to note (bcs why the hell should I convert to issue before assigning) 3\. multiple repositories 4\. automatically group pull requests and related issues 5\. automatically move card to "Review" column when PR is sent 6\. automatically move card to "Done" when it is closed

I used to manage with waffle.io and love it so far. (I'm not affiliated any way with them, just a happy user)

</comment><comment><USER3> Zenhub is still the better (more full-featured) option if you want to do project management in Github.

Not to mention that it's also free for small teams.

<comment><USER4> We started using Zenhub for management (migrating from a messy asana-based process) and have really been enjoying it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> While I don't use Github persay...I was using a similar feature on Gitlab. Here's a screenshot[0] of my board.

[0] [https://i.imgur.com/4gcF4Qc.png](https://i.imgur.com/4gcF4Qc.png)

<comment><USER5> Just to add to the above comment...I did try Github Projects and they seem to need time to be as nice as Gitlab's and a long way to go before they come close to Jira

<comment><USER6> Glad to hear you like the GitLab Issue Board. Please let us know if there is anything we can improve.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Kubernetes just started [https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/projects](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/projects)

</comment><comment><USER8> This is a knee-jerk reaction to Gitlab's latest release and in its current state doesn't come close to anything technical teams need. I'm sure GH could build out projects with more advanced features, but in doing so they'd be choosing to kill off their integration ecosystem... when their partners (e.g. ZenHub, Waffle) are already doing it better.

</comment><comment><USER9> Tried using it, will see if we will continue. The idea is good, but the execution not so much. If they want our designer to work with us on github, they need to let them drag and drop images into tasks. Also, no way to migrate current issues into projects as far as I see. Hope they improve it soon.

</comment><comment><USER10> Just had a look, it seems very fresh/undocumented and not up to regular Github standards. I couldn't even find a way to delete the test project I made. I would give it awhile to mature. Right now we just use issues, but we have a small team.</comment>


Strange Things That Have Been Happening in Financial Markets - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-12/five-strange-things-that-have-been-happening-in-financial-markets <comment><USER3> > The number of assets registering large moves—four or more standard > deviations away from their normal trading range—has been increasing. Such > moves would normally be expected to happen once every 62 years.

This is very troubling. It means traditional models are not working to capture the market correctly at the moment. It was a leading indicator for the 2007 financial crisis - 3 sigma events happening with increasing frequency that were ignored because there were profits to be made from poor risk management.

<comment><USER4> So the real question is, if you think the market is gunna go down in flames soon, how do you short... everything?

<comment><USER5> You buy an ETF that shorts the S&P500: [http://www.proshares.com/funds/sh.html](http://www.proshares.com/funds/sh.html)

<comment><USER6> Is there a way to bet that something will grow more slowly than normal? S&p 500 has been growing about 10% per year. How would I "short" it and bet that it will grow 5%? Can such a position be constructed?

<comment><USER7> Straddle option on SPY with K=1.05 x SPY today.

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

If you want to get clever and derisk a bit you can also limit your losses in the tails with way out of the money calls and puts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Strange things happen when interest rates are near zero. Things other than the cost of money start to have outsized effects.

(One argument for a higher minimum wage is that it might cause some inflation, which would bring interest rates up a bit and get rid of some of these strange effects.)

<comment><USER9> Higher minimum wage ??? So you want to punish the job creators for being successful ? Everyone knows that trickle down is the way to go. If it fails to trickle down you need to "inject" more money into the economy until it trickles down /s

<comment><USER10> Oops downvoted before noticing the /s (I assume thats sarcasm)

<comment><USER11> Yes, the "/s" is commonly used on sites like reddit to denote sarcasm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _Editor 's note: This article has been updated to include another strange thing._

Well, I laughed. That's the kind of thing "Cracked.com" won't inform you about on their "Seven strangest occurrences in the financial markets" list. Hats off to the Bloomberg Editors.

But interest rates have been steadily coming down since the early Reagan years, and any reverse is going to be an epochal change. And that's where we are.

<comment> semi-extrinsic There seems to have been a push recently, among the news sites who want to be seen as respectable, to be transparent about edits, updates and even retractions of articles. I, for one, welcome this change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Can somebody ELI5?

<comment><USER14> Basically a regime of very low interest rates alongside tighter regulatory requirements creates things that haven't been seen before. Negative swap spreads for example mean that investors consider credit risk of swaps lower than US treasuries, which are supposed to be the golden unattainable standard of safety. The reason for that is that swaps are collateralized, that is counterparties in a swap are obliged to give each other money they are owing pretty much each day so you are on the hook just for 1 day market movement. Not so with treasuries and faith in US treasury seem to down.

Negative corporate bond inventories happened because new rules make it very burdensome for banks to hold corporate bonds because of reserve capital requirements. So bank sell their inventories and because there are many non- banking financial institutions that seem to have an appetite for corporate bonds, banks sell even more bonds than they have (being "short").

For the same reason synthetic credit is popular. Instead if holding an asset (corporate bond in this case) you recreate synthetic position with derivatives. For example, if you buy a right to buy a bond at a certain price and at the same time sell a right to sell a bond at the same price, it is essentially the same as if you bought a bond (bond forward strictly speaking, but we will omit the difference here).

<comment><USER15> Have you ever met a five year old?

<comment><USER14> OK, I'll bite. Imagine your mom gives you cookies and everyone in your school is willing to exchange cookies for other nice things. Lately your mom was giving you so many cookies that you accumulated lots of them. Your friends now come to you to borrow cookies more willingly than to your mom, despite her historically being more respectable cookie provider, just because she might not have too many left now.

At the same time you friend Tom opened a lemonade stand. He sells cookies with lemonade and this combo sells especially well. He wants to borrow cookies from you, promising he will sell a lot of stuff an then will buy and return more cookies than he borrowed to you (interest).

You see that lemonade stand does very well and you want to do it yourself. But unfortunately your mom forbids you to do so. So you do next best thing: you give Tom all of your cookies, and then some more that you - in turn - <USER2> from mom and other friends, hoping that Tom will turn them around and return even more cookies to you.

<comment><USER16> Brilliant! That just made me realize that borrowing creates surplus which in turn creates larger and deeper networks. That works really well for everyone if supply and demand are stable and no one gets very greedy. But if not, then things can go bad for everyone.

For example if Tom's stall does not work well, then the "cookie crumbles". Your mom, of course, being your mom will still give you cookies, no matter you did not make wise decisions earlier and you will still hold on to your incumbent position as a cookie distributor even though you don't deserve it anymore.

This goes on for a while, till people don't want your mom's cookies anymore because, all their moms have also started distributing cookies generously.

Then a new kid comes to your neighbourhood with an exciting new flavor of cookies and suddenly it seems cool to be having those cookies. Your mom, obviously does not like it and tries to out-law or regulate those cookies. But then, the train has already left the station.

<comment><USER17> "Your mom, obviously does not like it and tries to out-law or regulate those cookies. But then, the train has already left the station."

That couldn't happen while your are living at your mom's house.

Just remember that your mom doesn't accept any other kind of cookies for paying taxes. OK.. maybe we stretched the metaphor a little too much there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The entire thing has become a joke. It's all fake and manipulated and people are making tons of cash for nothing.

</comment><comment><USER19> So what should Joe Investor who is not a sophisticated investor, but likely has a ton tied up in say, an Index Fund, be doing right now?

<comment><USER20> Cash out. Wait for the bust. Buy back in.

<comment><USER19> And what about if the majority of that is in a 401k?

<comment><USER21> Same applies. Change allocation to cash. Then change back after crash.

<comment><USER22> The trouble with switching to cash is then you've got to pay income tax on the capital gains. You'll be buying back in with less (proceeds - taxes).

<comment><USER23> Investment funds will offer a cash investment option. This invests in currencies. Along with government bonds it's considered low growth low risk investment.

Nobody would advocate actually withdrawing from an investment account. Just move it to safer investment options.

<comment><USER22> Moving it incurs capital gains taxes.

Even if you passively invest in a mutual fund, the funds internal transactions show up as capital gains that get reported to the IRS, and you have to pay the tax.

<comment><USER24> Not if it is in a tax deferred retirement account: there are no cap gains incurred by reallocating or NAV distributions unless there's an actual cash withdrawal. This is specific to 401ks & traditional IRAs only.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> So... its time to raise interest rates?

<comment><USER26> I'm quite curious to see whether that'll happen before the elections...

<comment><USER27> Next month. Bet on it.

<comment><USER28> What are the best ways to bet on it, in terms of where to put money now?

<comment><USER29> The actual best way to bet on the event is to use fed fund futures [http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/interest- rates/stir/30-day-f...](http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/interest- rates/stir/30-day-federal-fund.html) which are a futures contract whose value is determined by the fed funds rate (the rate people refer to when they talk about raising interest rates)

<comment><USER30> Their interesting feature is that you can imply the probability of a rate hike in December/January/March/... from the yield curve. It's 66% for December:

[http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/interest-rates/countdown- to-...](http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/interest-rates/countdown-to-fomc.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I wonder if the other factor besides interest rates is the prevalence of algorithmic trading.

When I see these swings and I hear these "flash events" it reminds me of extremely fast decisions made by machines based on very small changes.

I'm curious is there an index where we can see how much trading happens almost unattended on a daily basis via algorithmic systems? I wonder how that would map against the last decade of "systemic changes" in markets?

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm not very well informed on the markets, but is any of this related to the fact that gold is at a five year low and seems to keep going lower at I time that (I assume) people are looking for a hedge against uncertainty (what I thought gold was).

</comment><comment><USER27> Another strange one:

[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CTqP8JhUcAA3Mwz.png:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CTqP8JhUcAA3Mwz.png:large)

<comment><USER25> Any explanation for that?

<comment><USER33> Of course not, that would be ridiculous. It's just a pretty picture made by cherry-picking years to superimpose and imply...something. Maybe there is some seasonality, but if you think the two graphs are impossibly correlated, it's just because you want to see that (and the author chose the data well).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This all sounds important and exciting. But as an outsider, unlabelled graphs etc leave a lot of meaning to guesswork.

</comment><comment><USER35> Good introduction to the importance of fat tailed distributions in financial markets:

[http://aida.wss.yale.edu/~nordhaus/homepage/documents/statis...](http://aida.wss.yale.edu/~nordhaus/homepage/documents/statisticsoftailevents.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER36> Physics has 3 laws that explain 97% of event while finance has 97 equations that explainless than 3% of events.

<comment><USER37> God's a bit better than Mammon at system design ;-).

<comment><USER38> Problem only is, that many today only believe (and follow) in Mammon and not in God any more!

You can believe in God or not, but what is better to believe in, when it comes to build and uphold communities?

<comment><USER39> Neither.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> X-Factor Physical gold is the only reliable asset if the markets collapse in case of a crisis similar to 2008. It's five years low and good time to buy!

<comment><USER40> Not every comment mentioning gold is automatically downvote-worthy. In case of market collapse, gold does tend to have more utility than other assets.

<comment><USER41> If you're looking for a multiple on the gold trade, look into the gold mining sector. When gold moves a little, the gold miners move a lot. GDX and GDXJ are some good basket ETFs. GDXJ is the junior mining companies and has a higher multiple than GDX. It also works in the inverse too though, if gold goes down, these go down even more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Shorting long-term bonds with high modified duration would yield gains when interest rates rise and bond prices fall. Black swans and fractals: we can't predict the future but sometimes Blackswans flock together, e.g., autoregression, feedback patters, volatility of volatility, etc.</comment>


Unsupervised Machine Learning on Rigetti 19Q with Forest 1.2 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/rigetti/unsupervised-machine-learning-on-rigetti-19q-with-forest-1-2-39021339699 <comment><USER2> This machine learning algorithm is implemented using the quantum approximate optimization algorithm [0]. I encourage you to read their research paper [1]. It not only contains some interesting ideas about how to use a quantum computer for machine learning applications; but also some information about their 19 qubit processor.

[0]: [http://grove-docs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/qaoa.html](http://grove- docs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/qaoa.html)

[1]: [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1712.05771.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1712.05771.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> These demos are cool but really highlight the fact that we are decades away from quantum computers that perform useful work.. So far all I've seen are parlor tricks.</comment>


Clojure: partition-by, split-with, group-by, and juxt - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jayfields.com/2011/08/clojure-partition-by-split-with-group.html <comment><AUTHOR> For me, one of the hardest things about clojure has been learning how to mangle the results from one function into the format expected by another: vectors, nested lists, etc.

There are many core functions to help: reduce, apply, map, etc. But there are many of them because each one applies to a different situation. I think that complexity is necessary and even useful, but quick tips like these are helpful.</comment>


Feature branch code reviews - <AUTHOR> http://robots.thoughtbot.com/post/2831837714/feature-branch-code-reviews

<comment><USER2> Reviewing code by writing your comments inline with the diffs is definitely the way to go. I'm averaging one code review a day (about 200+ lines of code) lately and it would take me several times longer if I had to do it in person or even without a good code review tool.

That being said, being on the same page as the rest of your coworkers for what constitutes correctly-styled code is invaluable.</comment>


Some stats on how 15 Popular News Sites track their readers - <AUTHOR> https://snapsearch.online/general/how-15-popular-news-sites-track-readers/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys,

Just to say it out loud: I really made this out of self curiosity!

Was testing the new ad block improvements I made to my app, and thought of trying it on few news publishing platforms. Found it very interesting to see so many ads-trackers-analytics in all, so decided to pick one topic all of them have covered and then compare how many bad requests they each make :)</comment>


Scaling Pinterest - From 0 to 10s of Billions of Page Views a Month in Two Years - <AUTHOR> http://highscalability.com/blog/2013/4/15/scaling-pinterest-from-0-to-10s-of-billions-of-page-views-a.html?utm_source=feedly <comment><USER2> I'm fairly amazed by some of the choices - in particular the single huge user table that is hit on every profile page view to map url to shard. I'm guessing it has hot backups and similar - but wow - talk about a single point of failure. I guess having it like that actually makes it easier. If it fails, it should be trivial to get it back up quickly on a backup machine.

The whole setup seems a lot simpler than nearly every 'web scale' solution I've heard discussed.

EDIT: I'm not saying that is a bad thing - it's a good thing. Most of the articles around scaling on HN often deal with very complex Cassandra style technical solutions. This article is the opposite with a very 'just do it the simplest way' feel to it. One big mysql table for all users (probably with some memcache in front) is the sort of thing you can put together in an hour or two - yet it is the very core of their system.

I (and I bet a lot of other engineers reading HN) try to focus too much on perfect implementations - if someone asked me to design the shard look-up for something as heavily hit as this, I'd probably reach for a distributed in- memory DB with broadcasted updates - and I'd probably be wrong to do so. The mysql/memcache approach is just going to be simpler to keep running.

<comment><USER3> You don't really want to get into the alternatives. It's pretty common to shard everything but the core user data (email, PBKDF2, username) and scale that with slaves and vertical upgrades. SSDs can take you a long way if you're fastidious about offloading everything else off the machine responsible for keeping user accounts consistent.

The alternatives aren't nice.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. Usually it is better to scale vertically on the user data. Even if it seems painful. The alternatives like partitioning are not really that easy either. There is pain involved as well.

I think, of the existing solutions, one is not better than the other. The choice in the end is which one fits best with your team and infrastructure, and specially which disadvantages are you willing to put up with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really like how when you look at it, most of their scaling was _removing_ things from the environment and really honing the platform down to what it needed to be.

</comment><comment><USER5> > _Architecture is doing the right thing when growth can be handled by adding > more of the same stuff. You want to be able to scale by throwing money at a > problem which means throwing more boxes at a problem as you need them. If > you are architecture can do that, then you're golden_

My understanding is that the term of art is horizontal scalability.

</comment><comment><USER6> How does SOA improve scaling? I've never had to build anything as big as pinterest and it seems interesting to me.

I don't quite understand how it reduces connections. If you have your front- end tier connecting to your service tier, you'll still have the same amount of requests going to the database, just with a little middle-man... If I understand correctly?

<comment><USER7> I'm no expert, but hopefully by abstracting out different services from your core app and making them available through some connection protocol (Thrift, a message queue, http, whatever) you can more easily scale up and scale out systems that become hotspots, and consumers of that service will never be any the wiser, since they only interact with it through the published API.

Looking at it another way, when I talk to the GitHub API, I have no idea what sort of database I'm ultimately talking to. Their interface abstracts away all of that complexity. Each request they receive from me might be handled by a different machine for all I know. It makes no difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> 2 questions: 1) What do they do with the Pinterest-generated ID? Do they store it with each row in addition to the local ID? 2) Why randomly select a shard? Shouldn't you do this based on DB size across all boxes, or at least based on physical space left across all boxes?

<comment><USER9> We decompose 64 bit ids to shard_id, type and local_id. We connect to the shard go to the table and read the local_id.

We randomly select a shard for a new user only. Ofcourse we capacity plan this and open new shards and even out users eventually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What is most interesting to me is that in many ways they have reinvented Couchbase. I think that the only reason they didn't go with this technology was the financial cost for their scale was too high.

</comment><comment><USER11> I wonder if their dislike for Cassandra is based on previous versions pre-2.0. From my perspective of looking at it as it stands now, it's pretty compelling.

<comment><USER10> Not if you want strong consistency. Cassandra's performance sucks in comparison with the likes of MongoDb or Couchbase when reading with strong consistency since the clients have no idea of the server topology.

<comment><USER12> umm what? Cassandra is just as fast/faster (depending on both configurations and load) compared to MongoDB with consistant read/writes. Definitely with writes but reads get tricky.

<comment><USER10> Firstly, these sorts of applications are always going to be more read heavy so the reads are more important. Secondly, Cassandra cannot and will not be as good as something like Couchbase since the client libraries are not aware of the server topology so they cannot make direct connection to the server hosting the data. This means that depending on your consistency requirements, Cassandra will be merely okay to occasionally terrible depending on whether you care about 99th percentile. This behaviour was one of the reasons my company moved away from Cassandra

This is probably the best benchmark of Cassandra/MongoDb/Couchbase [http://www.slideshare.net/renatko/couchbase-performance- benc...](http://www.slideshare.net/renatko/couchbase-performance-benchmarking)

<comment><USER13> This benchmark is pure marketing. Cassandra clients can be token aware and can do connections directly to the right node.

If you want a scientific, independent, peer-reviewed NoSQL benchmark, read this: <http://vldb.org/pvldb/vol5/p1724_tilmannrabl_vldb2012.pdf>

Cassandra is a clear winner here.

<comment><USER10> No, the benchmark is not pure marketing. Why would you claim that it is? Apart from Astyanax, which clients are token aware?

That paper is very useful so thanks for posting the link but it has a number of issues as I see it.

1) It considers Cassandra, Redis, VoltDB, Voldermort, HBase and MySQL. It does not cover either MongoDB or Couchbase.

2) Latency values are given as average and do not show p95/p99. In my experience, Cassandra in particular is susceptible to high latency at these values.

3) Even considering average values, the read latency of Cassandra is higher than you would see with either MongoDB or Couchbase.

4) Cassandra does not deal well with ephemeral data. There are issues while GC'ing large number of tombstones for example that will hurt a long running system.

The long and short of it is that Cassandra is a fantastic system for write heavy situations. What it is not good at are read heavy situations where deterministic low latency is required, which is pretty much what the pinterest guys were dealing with.

<comment><USER13> It is marketing, because Couchbase is a featured customer of Altoros, the company that did the benchmark. And the rule of thumb is: never trust a benchmark done by someone who is related to one of the benchmarked systems. Obviously they'd not publish it if Couchbase lost the benchmark. They must have had been insane to do it.

Another reason it is marketing is because it lacks essential information on the setup of each benchmarked system. E.g for Cassandra I don't even know which version they used, what was the replication factor, what consistency level did they read data at, did they enable row cache (which decreases latency a lot), etc.? Cassandra improved read throughput and latency by a huge factor since version 0.6 and is constantly improving so the version really matters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> great talk, inspired me to simplify the tech stack.

Pyres looks like a good alternative for Celery in the Python world when you don't need Celery's cron-like features.

</comment><comment><USER15> Very cool, I thought pinterest came out of nowhere and is now everywhere, but i didn't realize how fast they did it and how large they've grown.

thanks for posting!

</comment><comment><USER16> Does someone now what programming language and framework they use? Still Python+Django? PyPy?

<comment><USER17> From what I've read, it's Python and "heavily modified" Django. I recall one of their engineers saying that, if they were to do it again, they would've gone with a more lightweight Python framework because of how many heavy modifications they made.

<comment><USER18> I have read that also (multiple times actually) and the statement never made sense to me - of course in hindsight you would start with something like Flask because you ran into all of the scaling problems with Django, but there would be no way to fix these problems before they occurred - and if you did try to fix them before they would occurred, it would be premature optimization. It seems like a example of what Taleb's calls the "Narrative Fallacy"

<http://cij.inspiriting.com/?p=364#>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> what happens if 1 shard contains a whole slew of large companies (macy's, gap, etc), or over time users on one shard grow to the point that they cannot be contained within one physical machine? Are they just assuming that this will be very unlikely?

<comment><USER9> No not at all. We already have this problem. Right now we are able to take the DB hit but we will eventually attack this problem from cache perspective. We will have replicated caches for this scenario. In worst case if a shard is overloaded we stop creating new users in it and put it on a dedicated physical machine. I dont think we will let the situation get there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Great article, thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER20> More specifics about the decision to dump MongoDB would be extremely useful.

</comment><comment><USER21> A simply awesome article, that I would refer to back and again, can someone please refine this with his comments as well. I mean it would be really helpful to point out any mistakes Pinterest did, at any point, what I want to know is, what could they have done better. Also, business is a dynamic environment, so somethings might have changed, so can someone please also point out, if something was right when pinterest did it, but now there are better alternatives. Thanks a lot in advance. I would be really reading many of the comments properly.

~Rika</comment>


Google's next big money trick - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@thinkingfacts/googles-next-big-money-trick-6541eb1cb22f <comment><AUTHOR> For the second time, Google is poised to transform a segment of the advertising market that will change it from its current state, to something practical, flexible and affordable to tens of millions of new customers across the globe.</comment>


Ask HN: Starting a small business - <AUTHOR> I've worked in software development for a few years now and want to start my own business. I have an idea, a website/service, that I am building offline currently. When I put it under a domain I would like to have all the business parts figured out. Does that even matter?
What advice can you give me from you own experience and knowledge on how to smoothly create a small business for an online company, that for the foreseeable future will have 1 employee.
I've heard that I should start an LLC for myself and use that to create the online business.
I don't expect to make any money in 2017 - but it's always a possibility.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Make an LLC. They are really easy. In most states you just file articles of organization to the secretary of state. The articles of organization really just say what you have for a name, what the address is, etc. There are many low-cost online services that will also do it for you, like LegalZoom.

Of course it depends a lot on your state.

If your business won't make any money, I'd certainly take that 1 employee down to 0 employees. Once you get the first employee, the tax hassles increase by a couple orders of magnitude. (Payroll taxes include income tax withholding, social security, state income tax withholding, state unemployment tax, just to name a few. It's a huge mess.)

</comment><comment><USER3> LLCs are great to limit your liability, but vary from state to state. In CA for instance, they are very expensive ~$800, but in WI, they are ~$150, and can be done online in less than hour. I believe some states let you create an LLC even if you do not have residency there.

LLCs are passthrough entities, so you are taxed the same as 1099 work. You are not an employee, but an owner. All profit is considered income for you. You have to file one extra form denoting the (profit - deductions) for your business, and then you take that net profit in the form a K1, and pay taxes.

If you make no money in 2017, you don't need to file anything extra for the LLC (though a crafty CPA might find a good reason to do so for deductions).

Once you have an LLC, open a dedicated business bank account and get a business CC. Capital One offers one w/ 2% rewards which is nice. More importantly, all your business income/deductions are well documented and separate from your personal. You will be happy you did this come tax time, and mostly eliminates the need for bookkeeping.

</comment><comment><USER4> Probably a good idea to set things up as a 1 member LLC in order to limit any liability, so that if anything happens, you're not personally liable for anything.

I'm also getting ready to start another small business for a side project, and have had a good experience getting it setup using LegalZoom. Quick and really easy to do.

[https://www.legalzoom.com/business/business-formation/llc- ov...](https://www.legalzoom.com/business/business-formation/llc- overview.html)

Just opt to get the EIN (employee identification number), yourself from irs.gov instead of having them do it for you. It's free on irs.gov and can be done in a couple minutes. LegalZoom however charges like $69 for it, which isn't worth it.

[https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self- employe...](https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self- employed/apply-for-an-employer-identification-number-ein-online)

Hope this helps.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you're an individual, form a sole proprietorship ([https://www.sba.gov/starting-business/choose-your- business-s...](https://www.sba.gov/starting-business/choose-your-business- structure/sole-proprietorship)). Just note that, if someone sues you, you are personally liable for any damages.

If you intend to work on projects that carry risk (e.g software that handles a business process that, if fails, costs a client thousands of dollars in damages), opt for a LLC (where your personal finances will be protected from any lawsuits).

</comment><comment><USER6> Don't worry about the bureaucratic stuff before you have your first customer. Specifically, don't set up an LLC before a customer wants to give you money. Worst case, you'll just end up with a useless entity that does nothing but eat up time and money. I've been through that twice (both with a German UG / Ltd.-style corporation and an American Inc.)

<comment><USER7> Setting up an LLC is a fairly straight forward thing to do, especially with services like LegalZoom. There are direct benefits of setting this up before you do any work as you can run your business costs through the business rather then paying them on your own. When it comes to tax time you'll have business deductions rather than just spending money out of your own pocket

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Unless, you already have clients lined up you should probably create a website or process to generate leads.</comment>


Quantum-Optical AtomChip - <AUTHOR> http://atomchip.com/ <comment><USER2> What is this? They have a super crappy website. If they only sell to military why even bother having a website?

I want one of those 1 exabyte usb drives.</comment>