Ask HN: Profitable SaaS? How did you grow your business? - <AUTHOR> Hey HN guys,
Saw this thread from a couple of days ago about profitable one-person SaaS apps. I'm wondering: how did you grow your business to become profitable? What were your main user acquisition channels?
Thanks! <comment><USER4> I have a B2C subscription site for digital nomads called Nomad List ([https://nomadlist.com](https://nomadlist.com)) with about 5,000 paid members.

The main site was always free and that became kind of a lead generation / acquisition funnel to have people sign up and become paid members.

What they pay for is a chat group and forum (and some extra apps I made for digital nomads, like a trip planner on [http://NomadTrips.co](http://NomadTrips.co)). The price now is $75/year.

I simply started by adding little features (like a chat), I charged $5 one- time first, because I was getting a lot of spammers. Even with $5, people kept joining. So I kept raising it, to $25, then $50, then $65, and then in April this year I made it annual and recurring. Sign ups have remained the same and even grow.

Meanwhile the main site that's free ([https://nomadlist.com](https://nomadlist.com)) keeps being covered in mainstream press like Time, Times and HuffPo. I don't do any PR or marketing. So my CAC=$0. It also ranks very well in search as it's linked to by so many other sites. Also not actively worked on that, it just happened because people liked my site.

I've tried FB ads last month but only saw 4 conversions.

So I think organic acquisition works best for me. Which means: Make a cool site, add paid features, make it recurring. Win.

This is B2C though, so probably quite different!

<comment><USER5> That's really cool-- congratulations.

I noticed ads on your site as well. How does ad revenue compare to recurring subscription revenue?

<comment><USER4> Ads are about 25% of revenue, so pretty small compared to people actually paying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Regardless of your market and product, the fundamental equation you need to get right in SaaS is CAC < CLTV, ie your customer acquisition cost needs to be vastly lower than the lifetime value of a customer (= your monthly gross revenue per customer x # of months you'll retain a customer)

The main tip I'd share for getting started _is to think about your CAC first, ie before pricing_. Set up a simple spreadsheet to conservatively estimate how much money you'll need to spend to get one customer (this will work with any channel, really). If you have some empirical data based on your own experiments, all the better.

That estimated (or empirical) CAC will help you understand much better how much you'll have to charge per month (or year) to recoup your CAC within a reasonable timeframe (depends heavily on whether you're bootstrapping or are funded), and you can base your pricing strategy on that.

Many VCs will look for ratios of 3, ie your CAC needs to be 1/3 of what a customer will pay you over their lifetime. VCs specialized in SaaS will have more sophisticated ways of looking at this, of course, but 3x is a reasonable lower boundary.

<comment><USER7> While this is true, if you're a one-person SaaS company you probably won't factor in your time as a cost. Sales (and some marketing) labor overhead _should_ be factored as a direct cost to acquiring customers.

If you are "profitable" as a one-person company; make sure you are paying yourself a market-rate salary or are at least factoring in your time as a cost. If not, your SaaS acquistion metrics could be way off.

<comment><USER8> One thing that's a little unclear for me is how much labor should be factored into CAC in a small team venture where everybody is wearing every hat.

I've done it by doing an all in CAC calculation and then a non-labor calculation and then playing with weighted averages of the two and trying to guesstimate a split. Is there an accepted canonical formula for this?

<comment><USER6> Labor/salaries should definitely be included in your CAC. The standard way to calculate it is to consider your 'fully loaded' marketing & sales spend in a given period, including salaries, which in smaller teams doing b2b sales will usually actually be the largest single item.

Re: wearing different hats, you should still be able to come up with a % of time spend on actually doing marketing+sales and allocate accordingly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I launched a free API 4 years ago, and in January 2015 I introduced paid plans, which offered several benefits over the free service.

I have done no actual marketing, but the website ranks somewhat okay in search queries. It keeps growing every month, and recently passed $10k/month in profits. This is from pretty much word of mouth via stackoverflow or from google searches.

From this experience I can say that if your service is competitively priced, good, and needed by a somewhat large audience, even with no marketing you can turn a profit really fast.

<comment><USER10> Care to share? Since you don't mention the name I guess not, but maybe you simply omitted it out of politeness :)

<comment><USER11> Based on comment history, I'm guessing it's IP-API [0].

[0] [http://ip-api.com/](http://ip-api.com/)

<comment><USER12> If that's the case, the author is some sort of marketing genius. There's tons of competition, including Google.

It actually geolocated me incorrectly by 7 miles. Google, on the other hand, knows my location to like 30 meters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Who is your target group and where do they hang out online?

In B2C, the fun starts once you're beyond the obvious choices. Let's say you're in the _fitness for women_ market. The obvious channels would be fitness-related forums or blogs. They are also easy to copy and that's where everybody else tries to place their products.

In addition to these channels, try to think of _situations in your customers lives_ that lead to choosing your product eventually. Maybe that'd be people who just became vegan. Or women who rethink their birth-control. Or people who just ended their relationship or started a new one. These are situations where people are also open to re-think other choices in their lives and a _fitness program for new vegans_ might fit their needs perfectly and chances are that you're the first one to piggyback on this specific channel.

The next step would be to identify available resources in that area and create marketing material that fits those channels perfectly. Obviously, you should deliver value with your stuff to the people who frequent this channel and not just dump your product name everywhere.

</comment><comment><USER14> When you're just starting out, a low customer acquisition cost, preferably zero, and organic growth is key. A site like HN or Product Hunt may drive a one-time spike in traffic, but people Googling for a solution will drive new customers day after day, month after month, if you're actually solving a real problem. Don't worry about SEO too much, but I will say that the more specific your solution is the better you're likely to do. If you're simply introducing the 57th generic time tracking solution, you're going to have a though time. Time tracking for dentists (caveat: I have no idea if there's demand for that)? Now that is a clearly defined customer base, and you can probably think of numerous ways to reach them straight away.

Other things I've found helpful when starting out:

\- Is there a subreddit that caters to your ideal customer? Be active and genuinely helpful in that community. Don't spam your SaaS, but if people express a problem that your service solves, tell them about it.

\- Is there somewhere your target audience gathers? Think conferences, trade shows, meetup.com, etc.

Remember that being profitable always has two sides to it: You can bring in more revenue, or you can control your costs. Don't be that company with 17 employees, spending $100K to make $9K/mo. Strive to be a WhatsApp, with 55 employees making over a billion a year. If you have the technical chops, validate your SaaS at least to $10K/MRR with just a few persons or even by yourself. Then if you really want, use VC to step on the gas. Because that is what VC is: an accelerant, so be sure you're pointed in the right direction and not at a wall.

</comment><comment><USER15> I convinced patio11 to tell everybody that Tarsnap was awesome but far too cheap.

Well, sort of. Tarsnap was quite profitable by the time Patrick wrote that blog post; but its growth has always been driven primarily by word of mouth, and blog posts like Patrick's are a large part of that. The only sort of advertising I've found to be useful is sponsoring open source software.

</comment><comment><USER16> I run a one man B2B SaaS (www.hrpartner.io) and marketing has proven to be a real mystic art for me. I always thought the programming would be the tough bit, and the marketing the easy part, but it has been totally the opposite in my experience.

My biggest issue has been finding the right channel to market. I've tried Facebook and Twitter advertising (on a small scale - about 5 campaigns at $100 a pop) without much result. I've spent over $2K on Google AdWords with limited success.

In all above cases, I got a lot of people visiting my site, with about one in 20 visitors actually signing up. But after that, very few signups stayed around for more than one or two login sessions, and even fewer signed up for paid plans. (We use Intercom to track conversions and activity)

Don't get me wrong, I am not really complaining as I have a steady core of users who seems to use the app regularly, but I am mystified at the very low rate of converting visitor and initial account creators into regular users.

Next step is to look at specific review sites such as GetApp and Capterra. Our product also integrated tightly with Xero so we just advertised in the Xero User Magazine this month which will be distributed to thousands of users at their US convention soon, so we will see what comes out of that.

My biggest struggle is that because I am still actively developing and adding new features to the app, I have problems putting down the coding tools and building momentum with marketing.

Oh, and as for pricing, I've got a free forever plan for smaller companies (up to 10 employees), with paid plans after that. Expectation was that smaller companies could onboard for no cost, then as they grew, they would upgrade to a paid plan, but because we have only been live for a few months, still too early to tell if that will be a great strategy. I may drop the free plan later this year.

We also built a totally free companion site (www.staffstatus.io) that integrated with HR Partner and made free to ALL sizes of companies to see if we could get some side business (similar to what crew.co are doing with unsplash.com, but so far it doesn't seem to be doing what we intended - <USER2> it is really early days for that too).

Looking forward to keeping an eye on this thread to see what other solo SaaS drivers are doing. Feel free to ask any questions or critique any of my methods.

<comment><USER17> You're doing a lot of things right but drop the free plan ASAP It's all the support and overhead of free customers with none of the financial upside. I presume you need to start generating proper revenue/profits from this site ASAP. The free plan will hinder that.

Adwords is indeed a waste of time and money, Facebook is too. I spent a lot more than you before I realised that, well done for working out it's a waste much sooner than I did! Bing is probably worth your attention.

Capterra will drive good leads initially but they'll fall off after a while. Keep an eye on your spend there and pull it if the conversions dry up. Get App always had too high a cost of entry for me to try.

Stop thinking the next feature you add to the app will grow your client base. There's a lot of shitty HR apps out there with excellent marketing making more money than you :)

Don't make the mistake of thinking that your app can be used in all countries and so why wouldn't we market to the US (or <insert other country here>)? I'll tell you why - there are a lot of large, incumbent and well funded HR apps in the US that you're going up against and you'll lose every time because you don't understand exactly what the US market want.

If you're based in Australia focus all of your attention in what Australian businesses want to see. You probably also need to decide what size of company gets the most value out of your app and go after them - same for industry vertical(s).

"A person who chases two rabbits catches neither".

Work out what rabbit to chase, stop chasing the others, go after that rabbit with all your marketing might. Shape your products roadmap off the back of what that one rabbit needs for you to capture it. Shape your USP off the back of this too. "ANNOUNCING A BEAUTIFUL, EASY TO USE, WEB BASED HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM." is far too generic to appeal to any one audience - <USER3> guess what, it appeals to nobody.

Source: I run a HR software app called [http://www.staffsquared.com](http://www.staffsquared.com). I've been where you are. Good luck!

<comment><USER18> Would love to know more about why you think AdWords and FB is a waste of time and money. Please don't take this the wrong way, but as someone who has managed many accounts of all sizes (up to the multi-million dollar/year range), often times most accounts just aren't setup very well. Not that I can always blame people as there's always work to do, and things constantly change, but the point stands that you may not be able to dial-in a profitable campaign even after spending $5k depending on what your conversion rates are like.

Just as often, the problem is on the website and not the ads as well. For example--and not meaning to knock you here, but perhaps the cartoony graphics are a turnoff to prospects. I don't know, but testing would find that out (which you may have done).

All of that said, sometimes it does not make sense to focus marketing efforts on paid advertising channels like paid search/social, but you can usually do things profitably at a small scale, even if you're just focusing on smart use of retargeting with RLSA or something like that.

<comment><USER17> Good points well made and no offence taken at all.

In our particular industry there are some large (wealthy) incumbents who bid silly prices for the keywords that convert. It's a race to the bottom, with Google the ultimate winner. Our CAC was infinitely higher than the LTV of paying customers permitted on Adwords as a channel, so we had to ditch it.

We did try the usual things, landing pages with unique copy, split testing ads, split testing landing page copy, negative keywords, retargeting and so on but as the OP discovered just didn't convert. I should add that when I say it didn't convert - what I mean is that we have other channels that convert at a much lower CAC, and so we have doubled down our efforts on those instead :) Google doesn't need any more of my money!

Facebook - We probably could have spent more time and money on before writing it off but again, we have other channels that are working and so didn't feel the need to push on with Facebook.

In your experience does Facebook do well for B2B products like ours?

<comment><USER18> Can you give a sense of what size budget you tested with and how much data you collected? Tests that are too small to deliver statistically significant results are something I see quite often.

For FB, think of it as a place to connect with your audience. You probably aren't going to see a lot of click-based performance, but there might be a strong view-through correlation since it is very similar to display in that regard. So if you are trying to raise awareness of HR people for example, you can probably target them pretty easily on FB, and if you give them shareable content, that can help be a force multiplier since you won't pay for the shares. You just have to be clever about your targeting, and even more clever about how you are measuring things from an attribution standpoint. If you are expecting it to perform well on a last-click basis, you'll likely be disappointed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I previously started Roll20, and it is now a profitable SaaS business. It started off as just myself, then very quickly I added 2 Co-Founders, and now we have 8 people total working on it full-time. For that business, we used Kickstarter to get it off the ground, and then just slowly built through word of mouth and a strong built-in networking effect.

I am in the process of starting my next project right now; it's a VR small- scale MMO called "OrbusVR". I've been working on it for about a month now, and I've got a blog up ([http://blog.orbusvr.com](http://blog.orbusvr.com)) where I've been posting development updates at least weekly; I've also been posting frequently to Reddit in places where potential players are likely to hang out (e.g. /r/vive). I have around 50 people already signed up on a newsletter, and every time I post about it I gain another 10-15 subscribers. I plan to launch a Kickstarter for this project as well probably in the next month or two; both to "fail fast" if there isn't going to be a large enough playerbase to support it, and to get a boost to the funding (which is 100% out of my own pocket right now).

So I guess in my experience, the trend has been:

1) Make something people really want already, but don't have.

2) Work on it in the open as much as possible to build up an early evangelist community.

3) Do a Kickstarter campaign or other event to gauge actual "I will spend money on this" interest.

4) Continue to grow slowly via world of mouth until you reach a tipping point where a network effect kicks in and then just grow from there.

</comment><comment><USER7> Meat and potatoes selling.

1) Found a list of potential prospects

2) Called 30 prospects each day

3) Repeat steps 1-2 for 4 years

<comment><USER20> Yes. If you can generate a very large list of prospects, emailing them works too.

<comment><USER7> David Oglivy (ad firm founder) has a great quote:

"If you want action don't write. Go and tell the guy what you want."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The first step is talking to potential clients. It helps if you have something to show, but it's not necessary—you only need to grok the problem, and then keep an open mind, as there might be some things you haven't already thought of.

You keep working closely with that client, listening but more importantly, watching what he does. Then you find another and you try to fit that solution into their work flow. If that doesn't work, keep an open mind and tweak your product. Repeat as needed.

Regarding the customer acquisition channels, YMMV: whether you're selling B2B or B2C, your target is tech saavy or not, and even if a similar product is positioned or not. Next, you might need to check your competitors and their strategies, there might be a couple of clues there.

We have a side project[1] on a similar target group, which helps enterprises calculate a number that's not too easy to do by hand or with Excel. We get a couple hundred visits a day, and we have a small ad in there. It has given us some visits and some sign ups, but we might tweak that a little so we can contact them and offer a demo, which is something that has worked for us.

Also, we just launched a new home page[2] this month, I suggest you invest in your landings so they look good and professional (or whatever you want to communicate). We have also some automated mailings for potential clients, and it has brought us business, altough indirectly, because we have to demo our product. We now are working on a video, as it might be easier to explain how it works.

1: [https://isrmatic.com/](https://isrmatic.com/)

2: [https://www.boxfactura.com/](https://www.boxfactura.com/)

</comment><comment><USER22> > Saw this thread from a couple of days ago about profitable one-person SaaS > apps.

I missed it, can you share the link?

<comment><USER23> Here you go: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11924009](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11924009)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I replaced a crappy tool (think Windows only client) with a web based version.

Emailed everyone in the industry.

Profitable ever since.

(Somewhat simplified, but not really)

<comment><USER25> How did you acquire your email list? Already highly networked, or?

<comment><USER24> 2 ways.

Manually - via emails that were CC'd when sent out to groups, etc.

Scraping - scraped a few industry websites.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Completely depends on where your target audience is. Are they searching for your solution already? If so, where?

Whether you're selling B2B or B2C is also going to make a big difference here.

Our main channels getting started were Google and a review site called Capterra (did paid advertising on both), as well as LinkedIn Marketing. Now we have a few other channels and partnerships but that's how the company got off the ground and profitable (I say we to refer to myself and my business partner)

<comment> gm-conspiracy Can you provide more detail about ad-buy allotment and conversion rates of Google vs LinkedIn, in your personal experience?

<comment><USER27> I wrote a lengthy guide on LinkedIn advertising just a week ago.[0] Conversion rates vary so much that it's better to just run a $250-$500 test campaign and measure your own baseline.

The conversion rates for AdWords (Google) and LinkedIn campaigns are going to be different because the ads are (or should) be different.

On Google, people are searching for a solution, so your ads should promote your product/service. On LinkedIn, people are just browsing so it's more effective to promote a helpful resource (eg, a guide or whitepaper).

[0] [http://www.gkogan.co/blog/the-complete-guide-to-getting- sale...](http://www.gkogan.co/blog/the-complete-guide-to-getting-sales-leads- from-linkedin-sponsored-updates/)

<comment> gm-conspiracy I just finished reading it.

Good information and nice illustrations.

For your illustrations, do you use pen and watercolor?

<comment><USER27> Thanks for the kind words.

I use pen and water-based markers (Prismacolors); they look like watercolors but are much easier and cleaner to handle.

<comment> gm-conspiracy So, after illustrating in color, you scan and convert to grayscale? or, scan as grayscale?

It looks "classy".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> At [http://voucherify.io](http://voucherify.io) (API platform) we try to follow Zencoder's advice

[http://blog.zencoder.com/2012/05/31/selling-to-developers- is...](http://blog.zencoder.com/2012/05/31/selling-to-developers-is- neither-b2b-nor-b2c/)

To put it in a nutshell, this means generating valuable content and implementing helpful libraries and integrations. Then we try to share it with our target (developers, technical product managers, CTOs) through ProgrammableWeb, GitHub and Quora. See e.g.

\- [http://www.programmableweb.com/api/voucherify](http://www.programmableweb.com/api/voucherify)

\- [https://github.com/voucherifyio/coupon](https://github.com/voucherifyio/coupon)

We're a team of 3.

<comment><USER20> Are you guys profitable? I feel like it's super hard to be profitable for any length of time in any developer tools business, because there are many perceived alternatives including build-it-yourself.

In contrast, if you want to build a small profitable SaaS business, I think one of the best pieces of advice would be to focus on an under-served group that can't implement software for themselves.

<comment><USER28> Not yet. We realise there's a long road in front of us. Integrations with bigger enterprises take time. Nevertheless we grow steadily.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'm not yet profitable, but I think I accidentally stumbled upon a way to get there...

My current SaaS app PressKitHero ([https://presskithero.com](https://presskithero.com)) started out as a Shopify App ([https://apps.shopify.com/presskithero](https://apps.shopify.com/presskithero)).

I did zero marketing for the Shopify App. All I did was put it in the Shopify App Store. It gets good reviews, and a steady stream of new installs. About 10% of installs then convert into paying customers. Right now (after 6 months), the app is doing about 800$ in MRR.

I think for solo software developers, who struggle with marketing, the Shopify App Store is a really good place to get started.

</comment><comment><USER30> If you invent something new and novel that people actually love, just posting in Facebook groups alone can grow you to xx,xxx USD MRR. Word of mouth will then carry on from there. If you are making something much less interesting, then marketing gets a heck of a lot harder.

</comment><comment><USER31> I had a marketing application that sort of hacked on the Twitter API. Because of the API TOS, we couldn't really tell anyone how to use it, which made online marketing very difficult.

The solution I found was to host in-person classes on social media marketing. I would give a high level view of the marketing strategies and then plug my tool as one of the options.

This had a few advantages:

\- Everyone had been "on boarded" before even trying the product.

\- Everyone now had expertise on the subject they could share with friends and coworkers.

\- Each class gave me the attention of ~30 genuinely interested people.

\- The income from the classes really helped as I bootstrapped the startup.

Of course - some people were very annoyed by my advertisement. But in all fairness, the information was high value and many people enjoyed it.

<comment><USER32> "Because of the API TOS, we couldn't really tell anyone how to use it, which made online marketing very difficult." \- Can you say more about this? What were you doing that violated the TOS?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I encourage everyone to find a market and a way to gather attention before making a product. It's the opposite order of what many people do, and they could learn on mistakes rather than their own.

</comment><comment><USER34> Direct sales, then customers refer to other prospects. Focus hard on those first 10-100 customers and they will reward with loyalty + referrals.

Also, say no to some deals; can't please everyone

</comment><comment><USER22> What if you have a product which the potential customer doesn't know yet it needs? I guess you can create the need (or let the customer see that it needs the product) by giving away a free version first for some time.

But how would you find the customer in the first place? How would advertising work in such a situation?

Example: mobile phones. In the beginning everybody was on landline; how do you convince the user they need a mobile phone? A similar problem may exist for certain SaaS markets.

<comment> gm-conspiracy If you cannot identify the customer, how do you know the product is something they need?

The recipe for success seems to be to understand a market or vertical and then offer a solution to an existing problem (their greatest pain) that particular market faces.

By targeting a market instead of a solution, you can cultivate your customer list, and up-sell or cross-sell relevant, related solutions.

The other almost-guaranteed path to success seems to be to create an internal tool for your own business pain, and offer that solution to others that are experiencing the same problem.

But trying to sell a product that you have not validated is an uphill battle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> We blog like crazy mofo's.

Educate yourself and your consumer all at the same time, and do it daily for two years straight. You can't _not_ have some level of results if your writing is decent or better.

Combined with excellent technology, it's a nice win-win.

</comment><comment><USER33> Also, Start Small Stay Small book is very useful for this sort of thing.

</comment><comment><USER36> [https://datamantle.com](https://datamantle.com) is ran by a one-man-army. At the moment only advertising on hckrnews as SEO catches up and all.

</comment><comment><USER37> tsurprise.com offers tea subscription on highly competitive market. Primary focus on content to rank, then lead generation with bloggers for PR and coverage. Bootstrapped and profitable in 4 months.</comment>


Ask HN: Are any founders looking for part time consulting work? - <AUTHOR> This isn't a hiring post, I'm just curious if this is something that founders might be interested in (I'm contemplating setting up a free job board for this purpose - probably just a weekend project). This is mostly for founders who bootstrap projects that are pre-revenue, or they're between projects.<p>I'm also curious if anyone would be interested in hiring a technical or nontechnical founder part time/temporarily as a consultant. <comment><USER2> I think a good model for technical people is working as a "fractional CTO". I could personally use someone right now who can write code and talk to clients, but would only need them 10-20 hrs/wk (at a market-rate salary). Hard to find that person at the moment.

<comment><USER3> I'm looking to pick up some work, mind if I shoot you an email?

<comment><USER2> Not sure if you were still planning to get in touch, but you can reach me at email@example.com. Happy to email you if you'd prefer.

We have a few projects starting up and would love the help. Or, if timing isn't right now, let's connect and hopefully work on something in the future.

Thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


Laugh HN: We need this new tag for fun things to bring happiness to HN:) - <AUTHOR> I think it would be cool to add a new tag called Laugh HN: to bring good-natured and clean humor to developers across the globe.  Humor is very important for good well being in my opinion :) <comment><AUTHOR> Today we had an issue on a server and one of our developers said this will solve it...

sudo rm -rf /

LOL it made me think, Laugh HN: is where I would post this if it existed lol! (with a disclaimer NOT to actually do this :P)

<comment><USER2> Ellen Ripley would approve.

"I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCbfMkh940Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCbfMkh940Q)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Agreed. Good idea!</comment>


Our world may be a giant hologram  - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126911.300-our-world-may-be-a-giant-hologram.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news <comment><USER2> Quote from the article, "No one - including Hogan - is yet claiming that GEO600 has found evidence that we live in a holographic universe."

Cover of the magazine, "YOU ARE A HOLOGRAM".

New Scientist is weird. They're like 90% groovy scientific journalism and 10% shitty tabloid.

<comment><USER3> Hmm. I would say more like 50/50 these days sadly. Quite a few of the issues over the last couple of years have had borderline crank science articles as the main feature. They also now have lots of dull ID v. Science articles, plus other non-science columns cluttering up the limited space. The amount of space wasted on consciously artistic illustrations of articles for which a damn photograph would be far more informative is also vexing.

I'm thinking of cancelling the subscription and swapping back over to Nature. The content's far less accessible in Nature but more pithy.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, Nature's great. I really think it's the best general science magazine / journal out there. I feel like they've managed to hit a nice level of accessibility in that if you've got a scientific background you can still get a whole lot of what's in there even if it's in a field you don't know well. I've debated subscribing several times, but can't justify the relatively high cost given the amount that I'd have time to read. I used to religiously read their feature of the week during the years that it was online for download.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As best as I can tell, it says the universe is holographic because all the information on the inside (a volume) is reflected by (or a reflection of) the information on the edge of the universe (a plane). This makes it "holographic" because our 3-dimensional world is also expressed in 2-dimensions.

<comment><USER5> And the contention is that we can observe this because certain high-precision experiments might be picking up anomalies on the scale of a Planck length, whereas we shouldn't theoretically be able to detect anything so small. Therefore, what we're detecting must be an enlarged projection of what's actually there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> At first, I thought this was another iteration of the "You can't prove we're not inside a computer" meme, and thought _Oh, jezus christ, not again with this bloody tripe._

Turns out, it's actually quite an interesting development.

</comment><comment><USER7> The theory seems to suggest that the universe's 'resolution' will be coarser closer to its center. That's vaguely like the physics of Vernor Vinge's 'Fire Upon The Deep'/'Deepness in the Sky' universe -- where you have to move away from the galactic centers to achieve faster computation and FTL travel.

<comment><USER8> Those are some great books, just finished them a few months ago. I really liked the idea that all the higher life forms actually lived outside the galaxy rather than in it as well as the higher technology that only worked well outside it as well. Go too far into the deep and shit stops working, the speed of light is too limiting.

I do wish there were more about the godlike intelligences that emerge. The godshatter idea was pretty cool too.

<comment><USER9> I liked A Deepness in he Sky for its unique perspective on the lifespan of civilizations.

<comment><USER8> I also liked the tines and their group consciousness, and how the minds were connected via sound. More interestingly that the individuals themselves weren't really consciousness because one mind wasn't quite evolved enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Seems interesting that we're seeing several findings all coming out around the same time that revolve around detecting and using quantum-scale principles. The first is the idea of quantum propulsion that was described in a previous link here on HN, and now this. I wonder, if this pans out as a verifiable way to detect the quantum "foam" of imaginary particles if it could also be used to to detect evidence of the extra microscopic dimensions predicted in string theory.

<comment><USER11> Quantum propulsion?

I missed that one. Got a link?

<comment><USER10> And I completely forgot the link, sorry. [http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12429-three-ways-to- le...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12429-three-ways-to-levitate-a- magic-carpet.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle>

And printer friendly while I'm at it: [http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126911.300-our- world...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126911.300-our-world-may-be- a-giant-hologram.html?full=true)

</comment><comment><USER13> Wow. This is a really awesome development! This would change our conception of the universe drastically.

However, I don't really see it impacting our day to day conception of life, because even if we live in a 4 dimensional boundary of a 5 dimensional space, we are still living in the same familiar 3 space plus whatever the 4th is.

Does anyone know if this research group has published yet? I'd like to see the primary source material, and I didn't see a mention of it in the article. I did find this nice link that describes the status of the GEO600 as of 2005 (you may need a subscription):

[http://iopscience.iop.org/0264-9381/22/10/009/pdf?ejredirect...](http://iopscience.iop.org/0264-9381/22/10/009/pdf?ejredirect=.iopscience)

Here is a description of noise in the laser system as of 2007:

[http://iopscience.iop.org/0264-9381/25/3/035003/pdf?ejredire...](http://iopscience.iop.org/0264-9381/25/3/035003/pdf?ejredirect=.iopscience)

</comment><comment><USER14> One of the wildest books I read, maybe ten years ago, is The Holographic Universe.

[http://www.amazon.com/Holographic-Universe-Michael- Talbot/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Holographic-Universe-Michael- Talbot/dp/0060922583)

It's a quick, interesting read, but also gets unscientific, to me, in second half.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, it starts out ok, but then just desolves into a bunch of random ideas and the author saying "See that could be due to a holograhpic universe"

I was expecting a lot more science. Would've been a much better book.

Not to mention if you look up some of the quacks he lists out you'll find most are just charlatans.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> [bad humor contained within, you have been warned]

Hmm, so if the universe is one giant sticker on someone's credit card, then I wonder what the credit limit is on that baby - and if they can lend the auto industry a couple billion bucks to waste too

</comment><comment><USER17> If you break a hologram to pieces, every piece retains the original image.

Sweet, so if you break the Universe... oh wait.

</comment><comment><USER18> You physicists should really read up on your PKD novels. He was onto this years ago.

<comment><USER19> I can't even find words to describe how wrong this comment is.

<comment><USER18> You either haven't got around to reading his VALIS trilogy or even heard of his last work, Exegesis. While you probably dismiss him as paranoid- schizophrenic or a hack of a sci-fi writer, it is this dismissal for why you can not logical contest this statement. PKD was far from a physicist but more of a mystic, much like Einstein whom was physicist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> As opposed to a small hologram? :)

</comment><comment><USER21> You know, if this article was trying to say they had found a possible way to verify Ads/Cft correspondence, really, all it had to do was say so.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maldacena_duality></comment>


Show HN: Alarmism.watch – I made a website that tracks alarmist predictions - <AUTHOR> https://alarmism.watch/ <comment><USER2> Some of these are a little odd. You classify the "Coronavirus pandemic could cause 40 million deaths if left unchecked" as false, with the explanation that though we're still in the pandemic, it will never reach that high.

But the claim was specifically that it could cause that amount of deaths "if unchecked" and no preventative measures were put in place. But preventative measures were put in place? The claim isn't proven false by the current situation since the conditions that the claim was talking about didn't occur.

If I made the claim "If I don't eat today, I will get hungry", ate food and therefore didn't get hungry, I wouldn't say my initial claim was invalid.

<comment><USER3> Or

> The coronavirus could kill millions of Americans: 'Do the math,' > immunization specialist says

How is that failed? Do we have a crystal ball that says it's all over/ this virus can't possibly mutate into something deadlier? I do agree it feels "unlikely" but marking it as "failed" is just a prediction at this point.

what's even funnier is that the next prediction is already marked as "correct" even though we haven't touched 1Million global deaths yet.

> 'We Are At War,' WHO Head Says, Warning Millions Could Die From COVID-19

\--- on a different note, this is also strange:

> 21 Indian cities will run out of ground water by 2020 Link Failed Resources > 2030-40 2019

So it's made in 2019, but is it about 2020 or about 2030-40? Seems unlikely that it really is about 2020 if it was made in 2019.... unless it was all but guaranteed to become true (and then I'd like to know how they avoided it).

<comment><USER4> Similarly

> Coronavirus pandemic could cause 40 million deaths if left unchecked

What data can we base this on? Humanity has taken measures to ensure that the pandemic doesn't get to those levels, so any real-world data is obviously going to be much less than 40 million.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This seems to have a problem of assuming the timeframe for the fulfillment of vague claims. For example, if the claim:

"U.N. Predicts entire nations could be wiped-off if Global Warming Not Reversed by 2000"

was made in 1989, I understand it as "we have until 2000 to work. Afterwards, the nations will be lost at some point". That seems what the source article claims too:

> governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse > effect before it goes beyond human control.

But what is the future point? I have no idea. The website slapped "failed" on this claim, so I guess it's 2000? That's rather useless, it's unresolved at best.

Similar story with "Prince Charles: 'Only 8 years to save the planet'", "French Foreign Minister: '500 days to Avoid Climate Chaos'", "Internet as we know will end if net-neutrality is repealed."

The last one is particularly funny, as all things, as we know them, will end one day. So it's strictly true.

Another issue is not enough claims as "awaited". For example, "'We Are At War,' WHO Head Says, Warning Millions Could Die From COVID-19" is marked as "correct", based on a prediction rather than concrete data.

Another sore one is "'Scottish skiing industry had no more than 20 years left.'" made in 2004 and already marked as failed, together with "Britain to have Siberian climate in 20 years"

On the presentation side, "link" is the most useless way to indicate forther information. Of course it's a link! But what's behind it? Source? Confirmation? Rebuttal? A little labeling would go a long way.

I like the idea, but the execution is a solid 5 out of 10.

<comment><AUTHOR> I disagree. If you're making a claim that we are in an economic bubble, you can't claim victory if there's a stock market crash after twenty years. Similarly, if you're saying that only X years left before things take turn for the worse, you can't say, "Hey, I did say at some point it will." '500 days' is particularly funny since I don't see what climate models give such a definite timeline.

I don't think it hurts to rely on common sense a bit. There's absolutely no scientific reason to think that Britain will turn into Siberia in four years. Global cooling, which was a major fear, has long disappeared from Climate Change discussion.

Besides, there are many stories with definite timelines that portray the sentiments. For eg, food shortages and global cooling were major doomsday fears in 1970s.

<comment><USER5> > If you're making a claim that we are in an economic bubble, you can't claim > victory if there's a stock market crash after twenty years.

What's the timeframe then? If you are the person who decides what the person actually meant, you're no longer evaluating facts. Perhaps it's better to just leave out such vague claims altogether.

> if you're saying that only X years left before things take turn for the > worse

That's not what any of the examples said though. The examples said "we have only X years to take action, otherwise we may pass the implied point of no return, which will become apparent much later". Unless those examples specify what the point of no return is, they are effectively impossible to evaluate as well.

> I don't see what climate models give such a definite timeline

> There's absolutely no scientific reason to think that Britain will turn into > Siberia in four years.

Of course you can evaluate the claims according to your own opinion, but then you will lose the claim to objectivity (at this point I lose interest personally), and then you risk unwittigly making your list political on top of that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair point about objectivity. Thank you! Yeah, I think it's best to assume nothing at all and be completely fact-driven.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> At least make things accurate:

The claim 'Britain to have Siberian climate in 20 years' was made in 2004 (according to the table) and its status is 'failed'. Last time I checked it isn't 2024 yet.

I think it will still be a fail then, but that is besides the point.

</comment><comment><USER7> The mass extinction ones are true by most definitions of "mass extinction", no? Am I missing something that flags the alarming prediction as true, false, or undecided?

I'm on mobile so it might be a display issue.

</comment><comment><USER8> More specific claims have been made and held accountable at [http://longbets.com](http://longbets.com).

</comment><comment><USER9> Think this should show the status as a percentage of the predicted value, not a boolean "failed". 99% would still be marked here as Failed?

</comment><comment><USER10> Not sitting well with the HN hive mind, but I love it. Thanks for a fun and well-executed idea. I predict this comment will be at -4 points by 10am PST 9/2/2020!

<comment><USER10> Update: happy to say my statement was wrong, and that I had no intention of using HN's proclivities against itself to keep the comment score above water.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The idea behind this is brilliant, and I support the sentiment. Unfortunately, for this to work effectively, you really need to be accurate and precise. As others pointed out, a lot of the items lacks sources and/or have questionable verdicts.

</comment><comment><USER12> Mind you, Even a broken clock is right twice a day...and it only takes one alarmist prediction to turn out to be true to make it an utter disaster.

</comment><comment><USER13> Very interesting. However many "Failed" lack of sources.

The links used as proof are usually Think Tank which are far from objectives about information.

</comment><comment><USER14> The list ought to include more of the correct instances of alarmism, and there are plenty to choose from. As they were semi-predictable events (aside from the exact year and severity), it should be possible to dig up roughly correct warnings about the 1929, 1999 and 2008 stock market bubbles, the rise of Hitler, the threat of a major terrorist attack circa 2001, and the severe health effects of adding lead to gasoline.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, thank you for pointing that out. I plan to include more of those.</comment></comment>


An Evolutionary Explanation of Acne - <AUTHOR> http://www.medical-hypotheses.com/article/S0306-9877(03)00355-4/abstract <comment><AUTHOR> For those who think it's because of skin protection. See below.

"Sebum Secretion and Sebaceous Lipids", Stewart et al, Dermatologic Clinics -- Vol. 1, No. 3, July 1983.

Sebum is an oily substance that is secreted onto the skin surface from glands located in the dermis. Although a number of useful functions have been proposed for sebum, proof that sebum performs any of them is lacking. In furred mammals an essential function of sebum is to supply 7-dehydrocholesterol, which is converted to vitamin D by the action of sunlight and then ingested by the animal as it grooms itself. In man, however, the location of 7-dehydrocholesterol has been shown to be the epidermis rather than sebum. Sebum may act as a waterproofing agent for fur, but humans obviously have little need for this function. Kligman has specifically disproved the notions that sebum improves the barrier function of skin, that sebum helps to regulate the water content of the horny layer by forming emulsions with sweat, or that sebum on the skin surface is fungistatic or antibacterial.(21) Kligman regards the human sebaceous glands as 'living fossils' that lost their usefulness to our species as we lost our fur.(21)

(21) Kligman, A. M.: The uses of sebum? In Montagna, W., Ellis, R. A., and Silver, A. F. (eds.): Advances in the Biology of Skin. Volume 4. Oxford, Pergamon Press, 1963.

</comment><comment><USER2>
        Acne's conspicuous localization on the face,
        and its ability to elicit reflexive disgust
        and avoidance...

i think the authors meant to publish this in the _journal of hurting my feelings_.

</comment><comment><USER3> Note that Medical Hypotheses is not the most rigorous journal.

For instance, they have published the following conspiracy theory article: "President Kennedy's death: A poison arrow-assisted homicide" [http://www.medical- hypotheses.com/article/S0306-9877(10)0016...](http://www.medical- hypotheses.com/article/S0306-9877\(10\)00163-5/abstract)

</comment><comment><USER4> _Acne is a normal physiological process ... that functions to ward off potential mates until the afflicted individual is some years past the age of reproductive maturity, and thus emotionally, intellectually, and physically fit to be a parent._

Oh how polite of evolution to provide such a convenient way to ward off potential suitors on your behalf. I'm calling BS. Evolution wants to spread genetics as quickly as possible and isn't going to wait for you to be emotionally and intellectually ready, at the risk of you dying in the mean time.

</comment><comment><USER5> If acne really has an evolutionary role then I would expect that pubescent members of traditional tribes should also experience it.

However, I cannot recall seeing any pictures of tribe members where anyone appeared to have acne. That may have more to do with the photographers'/publisher's preferences but it's definitely a question I'll put to my anthropology friends.</comment>


I Believe In Google Plus - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/22/i-believe-in-google-plus/

<comment><AUTHOR> Is this a contrarian view? I can't even tell any more.

</comment><comment><USER2> I find that post extremely condescending, G+ has more users (active and otherwise) than Foursquare and Instagram combined and then some, yet no one doubts the "success" of these services.</comment>


Why Firefox's strict JavaScript warnings are wrong - <AUTHOR> http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/strictJSFirefox.html

<comment><USER3> I think this guy got it all wrong.

He complains that strict mode warns on `if(document.body.childNodes[10] == e.target)` if it can't resolve `childNodes[10]` for example. But it should! One can check the number of elements before trying to get the 10'th one. Same with other comparisons: he wants to do `e.xxx == this`, but strict mode warns, because it might not exist. Well - that's what `if (e.xxx)` is for.

He mentions the only thing that might be useful is not implemented - <USER2> when using a variable from a parent scope... except doing that is perfectly normal and valid. His whole argument seems to be a complete mistake.

</comment><comment><USER4> _But it does warn you if you do not use the var keyword the first time you assign a value to a variable. In JavaScript that is not really necessary since it will automatically create a variable in the global scope anyway. Still it doesn't hurt to do things properly and declare the variable using the var keyword. But since the only time you are really interested in that sort of error is when you overwrite the variable from the parent scope, it becomes useless for the one thing it could have been useful for._

What about, y'know, _enforcing the non-use of globals_?

</comment><comment><USER5> While not wrong, the author comes off as a self-important dick and I want to _prove_ him wrong because of it. If he's wrong just once, he'll never live it down because of his attitude.</comment>


Chimps too can plan for future - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7928996.stm

<comment><USER2> Someone should slip him a slingshot (catapult).

But seriously, arming him with a Super Soaker will be awesome. He will get stress relief, children will enjoy it and zoo will get more money.

</comment><comment><USER3> He doesn't stash or throw rocks in the off season at the zoo. Says something about zoos, or at least the "look at the monkey" idiots who visit them, doesn't it?

<comment><USER3> In re-reading this comment, I realize I should clarify something. I didn't mean all people who visit zoos are idiots, just the ones who don't know the difference between a monkey and an ape. Zoos are great places to learn, I just wish more people used them as a learning resource while they were there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Squirrels that hide seeds and nuts aren't planning for when they will be hungry in the future? In the chimp's case it's more obvious that this is planning rather than instinctual, but it would be nice if the article described what the experimenters consider the distinction.

<comment><USER5> It would be nice to see documentation of unique days. IE a national holiday when the zoos open early, or when they open late or something. I mean does the chimp still collect stones when the zoo is going to be closed, or is it caught off guard when people arrive in the zoo earlier than he expects.

The mere fact he collects stones before the zoo opens does suggest they anticipate things. However, it would be nice to see that he's anticipating something based on experience. If the Zoo's closed on Monday because it's a national holiday, does he still collect stones? Or is something the trainers doing tipping him off to people arriving?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting, but I've seen footage of chimps in the wild going on military- style raids of neighboring groups. Land grabs, basically. I think that requires at least as much planning for the future.

(The footage was in the BBC series Planet Earth. Amazing series.)

</comment><comment><USER7> That ape should be locked up. Oh, wait...</comment>


Cave Diving - martin-ro I saw (2) submits being up-voted or got plenty comments here on HN about caves and diving them. I do make a living as an "hacker" or "engineer" what ever you like to call it. But my passion is diving. Me and my business partner actually working on a start up focused on that sport. For myself the recreational sort of diving became less challenging for several reasons over time. Now I do caves and/or very deep dives mostly into caves or wrecks. I just uploaded some of my videos to YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB-fZxXha894oN8gPjS_VdA). I had them on my Vimeo (https://vimeo.com/user3271006/videos) channel only before. I found the comments about these stories (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11658110) very interesting. I'm still transferring some of the videos from Vimeo to YouTube. AMA. <comment><AUTHOR> The danger! Do you ever get claustrophobic? The basic diving courses I've taken made me appreciate normal atmospheric pressure, lack of nitrogen build up and ability to breathe naturally much more than previously :) And that was in _open_ water.

I was a pretty fearless kid, but I guess if you get out of the adrenalin habit, or just get old, the fear creeps back in.

What's your take?

<comment> martin-ro Yes, i do get claustrophobic (rarely, but yes). If the effort to go forward is hard, you need to take in account that there won't be space to turn around and swim it head first back. So you need to keep in mind that you might need to "finger walk" yourself back - backwards! That is sometimes an adrenaline accelerator and keeps you from doing stupid stuff.

About nitrogen: probably one of the most impotent parts is gas planing: we transport and switch gases suitebale for the depth.. before every dive there is a lot of math.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for getting back to me. I have vague memories of the logical, reasoned approach helping to squash the irrational fears, so can see a little into how you handle it. Will check out your vids later, excited to see them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Hi, thanks for opening this discussion. I have the advanced open water certification and I would like to try cave diving. first question: with how many immersions is recommended to start in cave diving ? . 2: which places do you consider the best for practicing this ?</comment>