Using AWS EC2 instance store vs EBS for MySQL - <AUTHOR> https://www.percona.com/blog/2018/08/20/using-aws-ec2-instance-store-vs-ebs-for-mysql-how-to-increase-performance-and-decrease-cost/ <comment><USER2> Oh, running databases on instance storage is one of my favorite topics! :-)

Here is the start of a chain of comments where you'll find some interesting ideas and alternatives: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17098783](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17098783) (It is just amazing who is on HN....)

</comment><comment><USER3> Doesn't really seem like a fair comparison since it relies on compression for the local storage to be cheaper. Comparing similarly sized EBS volumes + EC2 instance to the local storage instances and it is pretty much the exact same cost.

Obviously local NVMe is going to smoke a networked replicated drive performance wise but that comes with it's own set of trade offs.

<comment><USER4> The whole premise of the article is avoiding IO stalls on large EBS volumes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is Amazon AWS the new reality distortion field? Gosh, just rent two dedicated boxes, one master, one slave, switch over to slave manually in the extreme rare case if the master fails and be done. This entire article screams "right tool for the job _and this is not the right tool_ ".

<comment><USER6> While I agree with you, "switch over to slave manually" just doesn't seem right. Who would monitor when to switch? Why would somebody want to monitor that? Having said that - there're probably solutions that allow switching when database is waiting for I/O

<comment><USER7> RDS doesn't fail over to a slave anyway. You would need to do that manually.

If you mean 'I ticked the multi-az box' that is only in the even that the AWS datacenter crashes - it will move RDS for you to another zone. If you have services that cache ip addresses from DNS, you will need to rediscover the database.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's strange not to mention vanilla RDS (only Aurora is mentioned). Is RDS much more expensive?

<comment><USER9> I was looking into it a bit before. The smallest RDS instance was like 11 dollars per month and can't use spot instances (naturally).

If you do use spot instance with a local postgres on EBS, it comes down to about 4 dollars per month all together. With instance store, that should be around 3 dollars.

These are for t2 micro. If you use bigger instances, the money difference will be huge.

RDS is just way too expensive for small projects.

<comment><USER10> $11/month is too expensive for a small project?

<comment><USER9> It's my private project of trying to build an interesting browser plug-in using aws services. I want to keep the costs super low since I need it running all the time but will only use a handful of computers running my plugins while developing.

I do it partly to learn about aws features, partly because I would like if this plug-in existed myself and it doesn't :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I really think Amazon should come out with a local disk option that uses local attached disks that can survive stopping an instance.

You would reserve parts of that local physical disk on the host for your instance.

<comment><USER11> I think the reason they don't is not to let you get into bad habits of assuming disks and vms don't fail.</comment></comment>


Injecting maven configurations by composition rather than inheritance - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/maoo/maven-tiles

<comment><AUTHOR> For years Maven's import-comfiguration-only-by-inheritance behaviour has limited good, DRY design for build and configuration management for big projects.

Maven-Tiles, by Maurizio Pillitu (<http://about.me/maoo>), brings a long expected game change to the table.

It will let you import build configuration by composition rather than inheritance - which enables much more flexible designs.

The project is still at a very early stage, but you can checkout the code and see for yourself.</comment>


7 entrepreneurs whose perseverance will inspire you - <AUTHOR> http://www.growthink.com/content/7-entrepreneurs-whose-perseverance-will-inspire-you

<comment><USER2> The cynic in me wants to see another article about 7 entrepreneurs whose dogged determination in following something that turned out to be wrong led to despair and ruin.

<comment><USER3> I'd like to see that too. Those would probably be far more useful examples to compare to the plethora of "he stuck it through and was awesome later". I think there are lots of people that get stuck in the equivalent of "I'm a waiter now, but just waiting for my big break" sort of thing for decades in acting/music/startup thing.

I find these type of stories to be useless, because it doesn't separate the difference between "those that stuck to it and made it" and those that "stuck to it and mired in limbo" While both luck and skills play into it, a lot of people lean too heavily on luck and not enough time developing their skills. I think it's important to be persistent, but persistent so you get better at what you do. Be undeniably good, so all it takes is a little luck, not a lot of luck.

Ironically, there's a demotivational poster that says "If all it takes is a pretty picture and a cute little saying to inspire you, then your job is what robots will be doing soon. Real soon."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting how so many of them in this list share the characteristic of being fired from one job or another. Most innovative types don't seem to work so well in stringent environments, or what I like to think of as the SJ mentality of "management by suffocation."

<comment><USER5> > Most innovative types don't seem to work so well in stringent environments

Or perhaps people who don't work well in stringent environments are denied safer high income jobs and so are forced to innovative entrepreneurship.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Charisma seems to be a thread through most of these examples.

<comment><USER7> Charisma is the fume in an otherwise empty fuel tank.

<comment><USER8> Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Larry Ellison, and lots of other people known for using their charisma to motivate other seem to be doing ok despite their, "empty fuel tank."

<comment><USER7> It takes a lot to be a successful entrepreneur. The article focuses on perseverance whereas the original comment mentions charisma. And there are many more, including availability of money.

My experience is that charismatic entrepreneur can accomplish a lot with very little money (hence empty gas tank) if he/she has the right vision and the ability to organize and motivate (hence fume which by the way is incredibly combustible).

<comment><USER8> Ok. Sorry for being a smartass, I totally didn't see your comment as meaning that at first. From first reading it seemed something some smug prep-school- bred i-banker would say when being dismissive.

My bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> one of the best articles of the year

</comment><comment><USER5> "Great Failures" would be an interesting book or article.

There are a lot more inventors and entrepreneurs who struggled for years, successfully produced great things, and then failed to make a dime or achieve any notoriety. They should get more mention. Philo Farnsworth? John Fitch? These guys invested huge chunks of their lives but got nothing.

I suspect detailing what failure looks like is probably more inspiring than all this focus on the payoff. Everyone already knows the "happily ever after" ending. It's the less explored unhappy ending that that holds people back.

<comment><USER7> As someone who has failed spectacularly in my previous startups, I can say with authority that failure sucks. There is nothing inspiring about failure (by itself).

However, I think what is inspiring is how entrepreneurs who have failed managed to get themselves off the floor and eventually achieve success. And I do agree we don't talk enough about recovery from failures.

<comment><USER5> I suppose "inspiring" isn't the right word, but I think a better understanding of what failure looks like and its statistical frequency is important. Behavioral psychology says most people are far more motivated by fear than by greed. I suspect the unknown is worse than what really happens in failure. Well, except for John Fitch; he blew his brains out.

<comment><USER7> I agree 100%. Most entrepreneurs that I know are definitely driven by fear ... fear of letting themselves down, fear of being accused of misleading their team members so they better make this one work, fear of not delivering a working product to their alpha customer who has placed a PO and who happens to be their friend, fear of not returning reasonable upside to their VC's so their reputation might be ruined irreversibly in the valley. And most importantly of all, fear of going home facing their spouse and having to explain (again). Fear is definitely much more immediate than greed (money).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Want a Promotion? Change Your Name | Secrets to Your Success - Yahoo Shine - <AUTHOR> http://shine.yahoo.com/work-money/want-promotion-change-name-213400665.html <comment><USER2> Correlation does not equal causation. My guess is that people with more pronounceable names are more likely to be white due to culture, white people are more likely to be upper class, and upper class people are more likely to obtain a promotion.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Sebatinsky. That's with an S!"</comment>


Spec work: for looser managers and employees. - <AUTHOR> http://www.stevoyoung.com/post/28798619390/spec-work-for-looser-managers-and-employees

<comment><USER2> This ignores a lot of the details of the real world:

> Because you should have enough public examples of your work avalaible for > your potential employer to evaluate. If you don't, for whatever reason, then > take yourself a little more seriously and get some public stuff out there.

Many people don't have this. And why would they: it's hard to evaluate a candidate via bits of random code and half finished projects which took their fancy, that they worked on on their own.

> Employers … you ask for spec work when you are incapable of evaluating a > candidate based on interviews and existing work.

That's right. It's fucking impossible to evaluate someone based on an interview (there have been hundreds of posts to HN on this topic in the last few years). Existing work is hit-and-miss.

I personally feel that spec work is the only way to seriously evaluate people, with the caveat that _we pay for it_. If you're serious about interviewing this person, paying their day rate for a day of their time is a reasonable way to ask people to do this.

<comment><AUTHOR> >"Many people don't have this. And why would they: it's hard to evaluate a candidate via bits of random code and half finished projects which took their fancy, that they worked on on their own."

I do agree with everything here except "why would they". I have tons of old, unfinished, half baked code /designs lying around. I wouldn't show any of it to a future employer. What I would show them is something that I took real time and effort to do. Often time that's something for my self, an open source contribution or refactoring a side project to make it "usable". This takes a lot of time. But if you ever want to be in the position of choosing who you work for this is needed. That's all that I'm suggesting. The alternative is 6+ hours of spec work for every job you want to get. Which is mostly not reusable because it's company specific.

>"That's right. It's fucking impossible to evaluate someone based on an interview (there have been hundreds of posts to HN on this topic in the last few years). Existing work is hit-and-miss."

I mostly agree. I think multiple interviews with multiple people and talking through problems and design/development problems can greatly reduce the gap of it being hit-and-miss. I'm also not suggesting this is cheap to do (for both employee and employer). But hiring someone or starting a new job should require a lot of investment on both sides.

> " ...with the caveat that _we pay for it_. If you're serious about > interviewing this person, paying their day rate for a day of their time is a > reasonable way to ask people to do this."

I wish more folks did this. You obviously take hiring seriously. I bet you have many sold folks at your place.

<comment><USER2> > You obviously take hiring seriously. I bet you have many sold folks at your > place.

Very much. It's easy to get burned. We're young so we just have one employee, but we paid him 8 hours work to do a small project, because we wanted to see what he could do in 8 hours. It was great so we hired him.

> Often time that's something for my self, an open source contribution or > refactoring a side project to make it "usable".

I don't find this to be terribly valuable, personally. Its great to see that you can pick up a strange project and quickly make a valuable contribution, but it says very little about whether you're a good coder.

> if you ever want to be in the position of choosing who you work for this is > needed

I disagree. To do this you need to be a great coder/designer, and there are many ways to demonstrate this. Lots of open source is a good way, but a small amount of open source, or just a couple of side projects you worked alone on, isn't a great way, IMO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> _Can you imagine asking a lawyer or doctor to do spec work before "hiring" them?_

Yes, for lawyers; I can imagine doing that because it is an absolutely routine practice. If you are at all likely to be a serious client, lawyers will give you hours and hours for free. Why wouldn't they? No invoice denominated in single-digit hours is going to move the dials for them anyways.

<comment><AUTHOR> a point of clarification...you (aka employer) do not decide if a lawyer (aka employee) gives you "spec" work. He does. And he only does it if he thinks it will give him a sweet payout or he is guaranteed the $ (win the case). This works well for him because those "sweet payouts" are often in the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. Comparing spec work for designers and developers to a lawyer is, well, not exactly reasonable.

It's more accurate to compare large ad agencies to the lawyer analogy. Which then, makes complete sense.

Back to my analogy. You will never go into a lawyers office and demand he "write a case study and strategy document" for how he plans on dealing with your crazy neighbors because they killed your dog. He will laugh you out of his office, while sending you a bill for wasting his time. But...you can walk in and ask his opinion, get a feeling for his ethics and ask for references. This is akin to the interview for the designer or developer. I see nothing wrong there, on either side.

<comment><USER3> I really don't follow this at all. Is your point that designers should avoid doing spec work for clients that are unlikely to be lucrative? Ok. How about a step further, and recommend avoiding doing _all_ work for clients who aren't lucrative? Life is short.

As someone who has done pretty significant work with lawyers, especially lately: I think you're drastically underestimating how much lawyers will do up front for free.

<comment><AUTHOR> My original point is that if managers took recruiting more seriously and spent more time and money on finding the correct person they wouldn't need to ask for spec work.

My point in this rabbit hole is that doing "free aka spec" work for a lawyer vs designer/developer is completely different. With a lawyer you are talking about possible payouts that can equal to months, or even years of salary. For designers/developers the typical payout for spec work (for freelancers) are more like weeks.

Granted, this whole discussion around lawyers doing spec work vs designers/devs doing it is a bit convoluted. I shouldn't have used lawyer in the example, though I still don't think someone goes into a lawyers office and says "in order to work with me you must complete the following tasks". That's what happens to designers and developers, which I think it BS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Doctors and lawyers do not need spec work because of professional licenses/certifications. The ABA asked your lawyer for spec work when she took the bar.

 _Dictionaries: not for loser bloggers_

<comment><AUTHOR> First off, I agree, my spelling sucks. Oh well, let's move on. Oh and I'm a looser, I'm good with that too. +1 for you, Mr. Cool.

Secondly, saying the ABA ask for "spec work" is like saying college ask for "spec work". You have to do it to be in the profession. It's an exam, it's mandatory to be in the field. Spec work for developers / designers is not.

>"Doctors and lawyers do not need spec work because of professional licenses/certifications."

That's my point exactly, thanks for agreeing with me. Designers and developers lack any real formal "licenses/certifications". Their public work should take the place of "licenses and certifications". That's why you should hire them - not because they got suckered into doing 6 hours of spec work for you.

<comment><USER5> Lawyers frequently work on a purely speculative basis. Either via free consultations or contingent fees (paid only on a win). It works pretty well for them. There is even a marketplace for crowdsourcing legal opinions from qualified lawyers (<http://www.lawpivot.com>).

Offering low-risk initial engagements mean they create a whole new market segment made up of people who previously wouldn't have considered paying a lawyer. Provided this market segment then goes on to actually generate paying work, this works great. This is the case with many industries.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hand picking clients to do spec work that can result in tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars isn't a bad idea (aka lawyers). Someone who can take on spec work with the possibility of making two years salary vs someone taking on spec work to make a few weeks worth of salary is completely different. Taking on spec work makes sense if you need the money (I've been there) or you are vying for a very large contract (ad agencies, lawyers etc)...or I guess, if you are positive you can win the work/contract.

I never said spec work doesn't work. I'm simply suggesting that with more care, attention and commitment (especially to spend $) from folks hiring it isn't needed as much ask people think it is.

...and let's be honest here. Folks coming to your site looking for spec work do not fall into the "committed to spend $ on finding the correct person" category. I'm not suggesting that's a bad thing. As one of my replies above state, I think there is room for 99designs, on both sides of the table.

Thanks for taking the time to reply, btw.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What he is calling "spec work" would be better described as a "challenge project". I think these provide a lot of insight that you wouldn't have the opportunity to receive via the standard portfolio/github and interview process. If you give a job candidate a small project (3-5 hours tops), you're able to see how they solve problems and most importantly, how they interact with your team.

I've asked "A player" candidates to perform challenges, and I have happily performed them myself to get a job. And as a candidate, there have been a couple of time where I've realized via the challenge process, that I wouldn't want to work with a particular group.

It's a smart use of time by both parties to quickly determine if the candidate is indeed a good fit for the position.

Spec work, as in completing a project to receive consulting work, is an entirely different debate.

<comment><USER2> I feel that companies should pay people to complete these "challenge projects". Once I interviewed with 3 different companies that asked for a challenge project, which were expected to take 2 days in one case, a week in another case. If you're paying, I'll do it happily.

<comment><USER6> I feel your pain. Two days to a week is "free work", not a challenge project. I too would respectfully decline if I wasn't getting paid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why do others have to tell designers what they should and shouldn't do? They are smart enough to make their own decisions. I think it all depends on the project, the company, brand, and opportunity. Crowdsourcing and a traditional design process can still coexist.

I wrote a short blog post on this here: <http://blog.fantastic.me/2012/08/is- sepc-work-evil.html>

</comment><comment><USER8> We're hiring - no spec work, and if we did have spec work, we'd pay you.

[http://www.globalgiving.org/aboutus/jobs/software- engineer-f...](http://www.globalgiving.org/aboutus/jobs/software-engineer-for- good.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> The designer revolt against 'spec work' is a byproduct of 99designs and crowdSPRING doing an excellent job of disrupting the way people hire designers. They want things the way they were: high prices and no competition once you find clients who like your work. However that isn't the best system for anybody other than them, which is why people are embracing a better way to do it.

Adapt or die, designers. The market is now a meritocracy. And that's the way it should be.

Now if only somebody would do this with programmers...

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, and this in not meant in the dickish way it's going to come across, the designers / developers who do work for $75+ an hour do not lose sleep over 99designs. I would never participate in 99designs but I recommend it to people all the time.

"Hey I need a logo/website, can you help or recommend someone?" "Sure, what's your budget?"

"$350, but I can spend $450 if I reaaaaaaaalllllly need too"

"Oh, that's great. I'm too busy to take any work on but you might have some success with a site called 99designs.com...(explain how it works).."

"...REALLY? that's how it works, that's fantastic. thanks for the recommendation"

<comment><USER9> Just because somebody responds with a budget that is worth your time does not mean they also should not use 99designs.

The difference between the best designers there and the designers who need to be paid thousands just to open photoshop is not talent or experience - it's just their sense of entitlement.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, they could still use 99designs. But if they are in my target market why would I refer them to a competitor? That doesn't make sense to me...

I agree, some folks have a terrible amount of talent and don't know their value. I see it all the time. But, I wouldn't make a blanket statement and say "all designers are equal", which is essential what you are saying.

You can call it entitlement if you would like. I call it I've worked my ass off for many years and now have the luxury of only accepting gigs that I want. This isn't about being a dick, it's about doing what's best for me and my family.

<comment><USER9> "I wouldn't make a blanket statement and say "all designers are equal", which is essential what you are saying."

I said the _best_ on 99designs and guys who want $5k to do a logo are equal. Not every designer is equal.

"You can call it entitlement if you would like. I call it I've worked my ass off for many years and now have the luxury of only accepting gigs that I want."

This is what overpaid people in dying industries always say and think. The market doesn't care how hard you worked or what you think you deserve. Of course, you know this, which is why you made this post and why you want people to think designers doing spec work are 'one step above useless'.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure how you've manage to make all of those conclusions base on my post. But anyhow, I'll address them since you took the time to reply.

>"This is what overpaid people in dying industries always say and think."

I would beg to differ. The UX design and developer market is no where near dead. I'm not sure where you've been, but the market is in fact booming. I don't consider myself over paid. In fact, I know many folks that are paid more than I am.

>"The market doesn't care how hard you worked or what you think you deserve."

You are correct, they don't care about what I think I am worth. Well, except when pay me for a gig.

>"Of course, you know this, which is why you made this post and why you want people to think designers doing spec work are 'one step above useless'."

Actually, per the first paragraph of my post, I wrote it because a friend was recently being courted by a very large tech company (not by his doing) and then they sprung a 5+ hour "spec" work assignment on him.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Analyzing MOOCs - A SWOT Analysis - <AUTHOR> http://andrewspinner.com/2013/02/05/analyzing-moocs-a-swot-analysis/

<comment><USER2> You forgot the most important weakness: The quality of the courses if often not very good. Even in the few cases when the lecture content is identical to that of the course given on campus the student assessments are not nearly as effective as learning aids.

<comment><USER3> The quality of the courses I have followed was excellent:

Coursera:Cryptography I - Dan Boneh

Coursera:Functional Programming Principles in Scala - Martin Odersky

Coursera:Compilers Alex Aiken

class2go.stanford.edu Introduction to Databases Jennifer Widom

<comment><USER2> I would say Cryptography and Compilers are among the best courses on Coursera (I can't speak for your other examples) and are not representative. The fact remains that even the best Coursera courses are not comparable to the education you would receive from similar courses taken on campus. One important reasons for that is the multiple choice or final answer quiz format is far inferior to long answer. For example, questions of the form "prove that" or "show that" which are staples of a rigorous course are essentially non-existent on Coursera for practical reasons. That would be fine if Coursera had somehow improved, in terms of learning quality, on that method of assessment but they have done the opposite.

<comment><USER3> I fully agree that the evaluation system can not assess reliably the level of the student. This may reduce the value of the diploma, but this does not affect the quality of what we can learn using these courses.

<comment><USER2> Questions are not merely an assessment tool but a learning aid. In fact doing problems is probably the most important aspect of learning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is solid content, but I was expecting a comparison of Coursera, udacity, KhanAcademy, and edX.

Additionally, may want to add a summary chart using one of the four variations to present a SWOT analysis --

[http://i1-win.softpedia-static.com/screenshots/SWOT- ANALYSIS...](http://i1-win.softpedia-static.com/screenshots/SWOT-ANALYSIS- TOOLS-Software_1.png)

<comment><AUTHOR> I would actually like to see a comparison too. However, I have personally not taken courses at each (yet!), and having done so would be the best way to provide such feedback. Hopefully someone out there can share.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Although you may be correct, it seems too early to tell whether this is the case. There's bound to be some issues early on, as they are still so new. They will improve. I believe having that interaction with a professor is so valuable, and something that can't be easily replicated with the way MOOCs scale to the thousands of attendees.</comment>


Why Facebook Buying Oculus Is Positive - <AUTHOR> http://gamasutra.com/blogs/AlistairDoulin/20140326/213923/Why_Facebook_Buying_Oculus_Is_Positive.php <comment><USER2> > Ironically, many of the people venting their frustrations are using Facebook > to do so

And I think we are done here. That is not irony, that is complaining about the Roman Empire whilst watching a chariot race. Bread and Circuses.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the author means people like Notch saying such negative things but they are quite happy to use things like say [https://www.facebook.com/minecraft](https://www.facebook.com/minecraft)

<comment><USER2> Yes, I meant that sitting in the stands, watching Ben Hur, eating the Emperor's bread and then turning round and saying "I don't trust those Octavian's, greedy bunch the lot of them" is rather missing the point.

You can kill the Emperor and take the throne, you can invade Italy and sack Rome, you can grow crops outside her borders, but you cannot change Rome.</comment></comment></comment>


AWS, Microsoft Partner on Gluon AI Tool - <AUTHOR> https://www.datanami.com/2017/10/12/aws-microsoft-partner-gluon-ai-tool/ <comment><AUTHOR> The devil is in the details - hopefully Microsoft/Amazon learns about the shortcomings of Tensorflow and builds a strong enterprise grade product.</comment>


New Research Can Preserve Organs for 10 Days - <AUTHOR> http://singularityhub.com/2010/05/05/harvard-can-preserve-organs-for-10-days-restarts-heart-outside-body-video/

<comment><USER2> Best science story I have seen in months.

I bet this is keying off the exsanguination and Hydrogen Sulfide work we've read about before in places like Scientific American -- where cell damage happens in the transition to a low oxygen environment, not necessarily being in one.

Aside from the far-out dream of cryogenics, of which I'm a big fan, this has _huge_ implications for surgery. If you can take a person into hibernation for a day, working at your leisure, you can do all sorts of things that we couldn't do before.

Huge, huge story.

<comment><USER3> Do you follow a specific set of blogs/publications to keep up with biohacking news or do you just consume what you come across?

<comment><USER2> I'm specifically interesting in hibernation, cryogenics, suspended animation, etc.

I just scan several science sites and look for those terms.

(When my browser comes up, I have 43 tabs for my home page)

<comment><USER3> Would you care to share what they are? (As many feeds as I subscribe to, I'm always interested in new sources)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The part of the article I want to know more about is the post mortem organ harvest. How long after death did they wait before harvesting the heart?

</comment><comment><USER5> This is sure to create a global blackmarket for organs.

Chinese execution harvesters will now be able to export their wares globally.

</comment><comment><USER6> They didn't actually store and revive a heart after ten days. They extrapolated the estimate based on tissue samples taken over the coure of a few hours.

To better understand if and how Somah preserved a heart, Thatte and his group harvested two female pig hearts and placed them in two different containers. One was filled with Somah, the other with Celsior from Genzyme – the standard chemical bath which preserves organs in hospitals today. As described in the journal Circulation, the team took tissue samples every four hours from each heart. They found that the Somah heart had a much lower rate of cell decay, including important cardiomyocyte and endothelial cells which are necessary for the heart to work in a new host. Based on this research they concluded that hearts preserved in Somah should be viable for up to 10 days. Celsior can store the organ for 4 hours. That's an epic difference.

<comment><USER7> Plenty of time for an eBay auction!

Seriously though, this probably complicates organ allocation tremendously. Right now they only have to consider the relatively small pool of recipients that are compatible _and_ close enough to hit the window. There may be scaling issues.

<comment> a-priori Having "scaling issues" would be a nice problem to have. That would be a hell of a lot better than the perpetual organ shortages we have now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> That video is disturbing.

</comment><comment><USER9> It's as impressive as it is creepy.</comment>


Let 'localhost' be localhost - <AUTHOR> https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-west-let-localhost-be-localhost-02 <comment><USER2> Isn't there a problem here? This draft says:

 _IPv4 loopback addresses are defined in Section 2.1 of [RFC5735] as "127.0.0.0/8"._

That's not perfectly true. RFC5735 defines 127/8 as loopback addresses, but it leaves the door open for other addresses to be assigned to the loopback interface. And indeed doing so is a common pattern for network devices, and a less common (but very useful) pattern for services.

So let's say I've assigned 10.1.1.1/32 to a device loopback interface, I'm announcing it in my IGP, and I've bound a particular service to listen on 10.1.1.1:1234. Should the local resolver library be allowed to return 10.1.1.1 for servicename.localhost? Under this draft's (re)definition of loopback addresses, definitely not. So now we've lost that symbolic way to configure a service consumer to connect locally. You're left inventing workarounds such as your own namespace for loopbacks, or changing the service to also bind to, say, 127.1.1.1.

I also find it curious that this draft allows only address queries (presumably A and AAAA) under .localhost. I'd like to know the rationale for that restriction. For example, there may well be applications that _only_ use SRV records.

Unnecessary restrictions can have unexpected & unknowable consequences. "Tools not policy".

<comment><USER3> _That 's not perfectly true. RFC5735 defines 127/8 as loopback addresses, but it leaves the door open for other addresses to be assigned to the loopback interface. And indeed doing so is a common pattern for network devices, and a less common (but very useful) pattern for services._

I don't mean to overconstrain the definition of loopback. If you have a good mechanism for specifying a specific IP range as loopback, and that mechanism can be understood by client software and resolution APIs, then I don't see any reason not to allow it.

The salient distinction from my perspective is traffic within a specific host, and traffic that traverses the network. If you have suggestions for language that make that distinction more clearly than the document currently does, I'm happy to incorporate it. :)

 _I also find it curious that this draft allows only address queries (presumably A and AAAA) under .localhost. I 'd like to know the rationale for that restriction. For example, there may well be applications that only use SRV records._

[https://twitter.com/dbrower/status/781001487157719040](https://twitter.com/dbrower/status/781001487157719040) raises similar concerns. The rationale is simple: I wanted to make the smallest change possible to RFC6761, and item 3 of [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6761#section-6.3](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6761#section-6.3) already contains the address query restriction.

It's probably reasonable to reconsider it, that's just a larger change than the one I was specifically trying to make. :)

<comment><USER4> "If you have suggestions for language that make that distinction more clearly than the document currently does, I'm happy to incorporate it. :)"

Currently where it says "an IP loopback addresses", it may be worth saying something like "any of the IP loopback addresses for the device".

I agree that technically "an IP loopback address" ought to be sufficient, but I have also found it is a _very_ common belief, probably even the majority belief, among people who use networking that "127.0.0.1" is the one and only loopback address. (I've lost count of the systems I've slightly broken just by feeding them 127.1.1.1 or equivalent.) I'm sure people who are the sort to read and write standards know better, but since it doesn't hurt the standard itself to emphasize the point, perhaps it's worth it.

<comment><USER5> Thankfully IPv6 defined a single "localhost" or loopback IP: ::1/128

There is none of this 127/8 mess.

<comment><USER6> that "mess" is great for testing though, you can spin up numerous instances each on their own loopback address.

<comment><USER7> You can use a link local address of your public interface in IPv6.

<comment><USER6> That's just one, adding more require elevated privileges, with 127.0.0.0/8 you have 256³ at your disposal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have had a number of customers who have broken our applications, which have daemons listening on localhost, by editing their /etc/hosts files and removing the localhost entry. I guess various people edit /etc/hosts to prevent applications from talking to licensing servers, and in the process happen to accidentally blow away the localhost entry (since these customers don't know what they're doing). We had this happen enough that we eventually stopped using "localhost" and started using 127.0.0.1 in our code.

<comment><USER9> While some people might edit their host for nefarious purposes, I think it's wrong to attribute all of it to malice.

Personally, I set the host file to use [https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts](https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts) in order to block ads on every computers I touch.

I also often use software that manage the host file and ignore the default physical file.

<comment><USER10> The relevant part of the GP might be "since these customers don't know what they're doing."

<comment><USER11> Relevant (source: [http://catb.org/jargon/html/koans.html](http://catb.org/jargon/html/koans.html)):

A novice was trying to fix a broken Lisp machine by turning the power off and on.

Knight, seeing what the student was doing, spoke sternly: "You cannot fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding of what is going wrong."

Knight turned the machine off and on.

The machine worked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Nice! I'm very much in favor of this change.

I develop my webserver locally, and it has many subdomains. So I have "www.localhost", "files.localhost", "doc.localhost", etc.

I have to add each subdomain to my /etc/hosts file before I can use it, as you can't have wildcards in that file. And even then, if I type a new one into Chromium, it will try and redirect me to a Google search result, unless I prefix the whole thing, eg "[http://doc.localhost/";](http://doc.localhost/";) once I do that and it connects, then the Omnibar will match the actual localhost entry easily going forward.

This should help anyone in a similar situation of testing their server with subdomains on localhost.

<comment><USER13> I wish whoever owns localhost.org (which resolves to 127.0.0.1) configured it so that *.localhost.org also worked. Would help with the browsers too.

<comment><USER14> I use 42foo.com which does exactly that.

<comment><USER13> Thanks! Nice and short, too.

<comment><USER15> I set up Worksonmy.computer to do the same yesterday

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Maybe someone should standardize internal TLD(s) for corporate and other use cases that would make developers less sad, as at least they have alternatives.

<comment><USER17> .local ?

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

<comment><USER18> Like the linked wikipedia article says, .local is used by mDNS(zeroconf/bonjour/avahi/etc.), so you might see weird stuff if you use it for a "normal" DNS environment.

AFAICT current "best practice" for private networks is to use a private subdomain of your real domain. Say, .internal.example.com.

<comment><USER19> Google registered the .dev gTLD for their internal use. So I've been doing the same, hijacking all requests for the .dev gTLD and serving up my own zones.

<comment><USER20> That's fine until Google buys your company. :)

<comment><USER19> I am willing to take that risk. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think for non-DNS experts (like me) it's important to know that in DNS terminology, the notation "tld." is used to donate top-level domains. (Note the trailing period)

So ".localhost." means "every domain within the 'localhost' tld", _not_ "every domain that contains the string 'localhost'".

</comment><comment><USER22> Just so we're clear. All these domains would just go away?

[https://iwantmyname.com/?domain=localhost](https://iwantmyname.com/?domain=localhost)

<comment><USER23> No. This draft describes a change by which localhost becomes effectively a new TLD in which all names map to the loopback address. Names in other TLDs won't be affected.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry to nitpick, but this is technically a Draft, not a RFC.

Drafts are just that: drafts, not standards. They automatically expire after 6 months if not renewed. As stated in [1]: _Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. [...] Internet-Drafts are draft documents, and are valid for a maximum of six months. They may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time._

\- [1] [https://datatracker.ietf.org/submit/](https://datatracker.ietf.org/submit/)

<comment><USER24> The name "Request for Comments" is historical, but still very confusing. IDs are the literal requests for comments now, and RFCs the standards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Maybe I'm overthinking this, but wouldn't a better solution be to say that server1.localhost doesn't have to be loopback, but that it must be resolved by asking the DNS server at localhost (or alternatively defined in the hosts file).

edit: I don't really have any expertise or experience with this at all, just a thought.

<comment><USER26> I think people already hosting their own DNS server at localhost don't need to worry about real domain allocations as they can spoof whatever they want for development.

I think reserving .localhost for loopback would be great for my workflow. Maybe it would check hosts for overrides before going straight to loopback?

<comment><USER27> isn't that the role of .localdomain tho?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It seems like the problem with doing this is that there are multiple localhost IPs. If it was as simple as "every A query for [any].localhost is 127.0.0.1, every AAAA query is ::1" then it would be one thing, but the A query could also be 127.0.0.2 etc.

So for example this would mean that if I put an entry for "server5.localhost 127.0.0.5" in my local DNS server then that entry can't be used, because the client's local resolver API will match *.localhost and it now "MUST NOT send queries for localhost names to their configured caching DNS server(s)" so it likely returns 127.0.0.1 instead of 127.0.0.5.

</comment><comment><USER29> Is there an actual case to be made for pointing localhost to anything other than the loopback device?

<comment><USER30> Chrome on Android lets you bind your phone/tablet's localhost to your computer's localhost. This enables you to test during development, even if your corporate IT people disallow connections between devices on the same WiFi network (or partition personal devices onto a different network than corporate hardware).

<comment><USER29> Hey that's a neat trick. If I'm reading the docs[1] correctly, as far as the application is concerned it _is_ connected to the loopback. The same thing happens when I `ssh -L <port>:localhost:<port> <local-vm>`.

I think it also follows the spirit of the idea since the change is local to the machine you're using.

[1] [https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome- devtools/debu...](https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome- devtools/debug/remote-debugging/local-server?hl=en)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm not very networking-wise, got a question: is the "local machine" alwyas a well-defined thing? I'm thinking about stuff like where hosts are transparently distributed. Maybe there are systems out there that take advantage of resolving localhost to other than 127.* in order to make applications easy to transparently migrate when scaling servers out, or something?

<comment><USER32> No, if your application is distributed, you won't be referring to localhost.

<comment><USER33> And why not?

If we _are_ running distributed services, we know the machine that the code is run on is running. We can even reference this by many languages version of "this" keyword.

localhost is only "this" for IP4/6

<comment><USER29> I think the GP meant that the client won't be calling on the server through 'localhost', at least not as a hard-coded parameter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> On a related note, few things annoy me more than when my browser updates localhost to www.localhost.com.

<comment><USER6> in firefox you can set browser.fixup.alternate.enabled = false

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> There are several "localhost.<tld>" domains in the wild today. What happens to those?

<comment><USER36> > There are several "localhost.<tld>" domains in the wild today. What happens > to those?

nothing. the rfc talks only about the localhost tld.

<comment><USER35> Ah, you're right. Thanks for clarifying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> What if I develop something on localhost, and two months later I decide I want to test/implement a feature on Android/iOS.

Do I have to remap my whole localhost development in order to be able to access my localhost from a tablet?

<comment><USER38> Yes.

Let me try wording this differently for you. "What if I develop something with only local calls between my front and back ends, and later I decide I want to test/implement a front-end feature on Android/iOS which doesn't support running the back end. Do I have to change my development so it is no longer local?" \- the answer is yes.

On the other hand, "remap my whole localhost development" is a REALLY impressive-sounding way of saying "change the one line in the config file that says to connect to 'localhost' to connect to 'api.myhost.com' instead." Or maybe, if you are a sloppy developer, "use search-and-replace to replace all instances of 'localhost' in the code with 'api.myhost.com'." Either way, it is a trivial change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> What happened to localdomain?

</comment><comment><USER40> Couldn't we just define 'loopback' instead ?

</comment><comment><USER41> This seems like a bad idea. It seems to be solving for a problem that doesn't exist while introducing the potential for issues. If you want to prevent latency or lookups localhost should just live in the hosts file.

</comment><comment><USER42> The folks at Tucows are going to get pissed off ;) [https://who.is/whois/localhost.com](https://who.is/whois/localhost.com)

</comment><comment><USER30> How would this affect Chrome on Android, which allows you to redirect localhost requests from a phone to access localhost on the computer it's tethered to?

<comment><USER3> That's done via port-forwarding. That is, Chrome is talking to the loopback interface on a particular port. The server listening at that port forwards the requests across the debugging bridge to the phone, and ferries the response back across in the same way.

It should be unaffected by the suggestion in this document.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I always thought it made sense to address local VMs with .localhost domains in my hostsfile. Apparently not?

<comment><USER43> You can address them with whatever domains you choose; suffixing them with .localhost is no better than suffixing them with .local, .loc, .qwyjibo, or not suffixing them at all: these are merely personal choices you made to give the domains some look and feel, but they aren't intrinsically privileged by the system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Has Theresa May got a role in the IETF as well? :)

</comment><comment><USER45> "Implementation Considerations: This change would make developers sad [...]"

Sad panda.

But it makes total sense.

</comment><comment><USER46> And please make it 127.0.0.1 and not ::1. I've found several instances where localhost resolved to ::1.

<comment><USER47> It resolves to _both_ on most major OSs, and I think it should as long as something isn't horribly misconfigured.

Most networking code on Unix-like OSes should (eventually) boil down to something like a call to getaddrinfo(2), a system call that returns the _set_ of addresses that match a query — typically a hostname. The result set for localhost will often include both ::1 and 127.0.0.1, but the result from the function also includes what type of address (IPv4 or IPv6, essentially) they are: you're supposed to take both the address (such as ::1) and the address family (such as IPv6) and pass them to socket(2). (and if that fails, try the next one in the list)

This mechanism lets you resolve domains that might be IPv4 or IPv6 only, and not even need to care in the code: if the domain is IPv4 only, then getaddrinfo only returns addrinfos w/ IPv4 addresses. Likewise for v6. You forward the information to socket(2) and connect(2), and don't ever need to deal with a concrete addrinfo object.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> -1 from me. 'localhost' is an artifact of a model of network computing that is no longer relevant; it's a special case of the general antipattern of network-topology sensitive design.

Back in the bad old days only a single user on a physical computer could log into a windows domain, because it was possible look up what user (singular) was on a host. Of course domain logins were also exquisitely sensitive to the nature of the network between client and server as well. It was a nightmare. Localhost is a product of that kind of thinking.

One-per-host resources that have to be shared across all users, security perimeters, vms, containers, etc. are an unwelcome headache. Of course, real systems don't actually share a localhost between all of these things, resulting in the even goofier concept of "which localhost do you mean?" That question was exactly why site-local addressing was deprecated from ipv6 [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3879](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3879)

An actually portable standard for resolving well-known local entities would be great, but more special cases to try to fix the doomed localhost idea is a move in the wrong direction.

<comment><USER49> I guess the authors understand that "localhost" is not an ideal authentication mechanism, however, the fact is that many application do use it as such. And the reason why they decided to come up with the RFC, to at least fix this on the level of DNS resolvers.

(And I am not sure this thinking will ever be dead, it's kind of extension of notion of "territory" for physical objects, and you can still pretty safely assume that whatever is in my home is my own.)</comment></comment>


Oresund Bridge, Wonder of Civil Engineering (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://traveltripjourney.blogspot.com/2014/08/oresund-bridge-mega-structure-between.html <comment><USER2> Except the bridge and tunnel itself the project is interesting because it both finished ahead of schedule, and within budget [0]. We've studied it in a project management course as an example of excellent project leadership.

Another interesting tidbit is that Peberholm [1], the artificial island have acted as an interesting experiment ground for biologists.

[0]: [https://group.skanska.com/projects/57321/Oresund- Bridge](https://group.skanska.com/projects/57321/Oresund-Bridge) [1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peberholm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peberholm)

<comment><USER3> Fun tidbit (from the Wikipedia article) that Peberholm is named "Pepper Islet" as intentional joke that it's neighboring natural island is Saltholm ("Salt Islet").

<comment><USER4> "Holm" is a valid, though obsuce, English word. We can quite reasonably translate the two holms as "Pepper Holm" and "Salt Holm".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have crossed this bridge a fair number of times, by car as well as by train. An engineering marvel, I'm sure, and presumably an efficiency upgrade from the ferries, though I actually used to enjoy those. But aesthetically it will never catch my fancy. There's something unbalanced, something visually completely off, by this giant construction solidly anchored to land at one end, and then ignominiously disappearing into a seeming whole in the water at the other. There were good reasons for this solution, yes, I'm aware. But it still looks wrong.

<comment><USER6> It's an _enormous_ efficiency upgrade. It's also an enormous convenience upgrade.

That's odd. I actually like the tunnel part, although it can be troubling to think about how what keeps you from drowning are a few rubber gaskets that deal with expansion/contraction of the tunnel.

I find the bridge itself to be very rough and industrial in its design. I was never fond of raw concrete structures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is this image [1] the same bridge? It looks quite different from the other shots.

[1] [https://charismaticplanet.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/08/253...](https://charismaticplanet.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/08/253-1024x586.jpg)

<comment><USER8> Not the same bridge no.

A lot of stuff seems weird about the article. It looks like the information is scraped from different sources and then stitched together into a badly written article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Was this written by a bot? It's terrible.

<comment><USER10> We changed the URL from [https://charismaticplanet.com/oresund- bridge/](https://charismaticplanet.com/oresund-bridge/), which looks like a spam site, to one that showed up when Googling text from the article.</comment></comment>


The Case for a Carbon Tax on Beef - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/17/opinion/sunday/carbon-tax-on-beef.html <comment><USER2> I was thinking about a more interesting policy around this; let's give everyone a meat quota (at some sustainable level) and allow them to trade their quota for cash or buy more. This would make meat very expensive but would also mean if you are going to bother it had better be good meat and additionally might be a way to supplement the income of poorer families and people... just a thought.

<comment><USER3> Is meat so different than other carbon producers like air travel, electronics manufacturing, or others? I think what you are proposing boils down to basic income and carbon taxes if you take it far enough.

<comment><USER4> It's the difference between a carbon tax on meat and carbon permits (cap and trade) on meat.

<comment><USER3> Ahh, yeah it would be more comparable. Though I think a sin tax is more workable that getting a cap on meat legislated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm increasingly convinced that carbon taxes, as well as cap-and-trade schemes, would end up being gamed like any other tax systems. They would create substantial complexity and harm the economy without reducing emissions by as much as expected.

There are some examples in this article: [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gaming-carbon- mus...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gaming-carbon-must-end-to- solve-global-warming/)

<comment><USER6> If the tax was placed as a fixed cost per pound of cattle product, regardless if its prime steak or pink goo, it would be a hard tax to game: In the end all meat products are packaged and a weight placed on it.

<comment><USER7> That might create odd effects. Consider. What if, right now, cows are raised using feed that's a inedible cast off of food grown for human consumption. If you tax all meat equally the incentive to do that would be reduced. You might as well raise cows on food that _is_ fit for human consumption if it marginally improves the quality of the cow because you're paying the same tax either way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not only is is industrial agriculture a huge part of CO2 emissions, it's also one of the biggest consumers and polluters of water.

<comment><USER9> Don't forget deforestation, which severely amplifies the effects of climate change and the water table, for obvious reasons.

In Australia this is a serious environmental issue and often the cattle industry is fighting to remove or stop land clearing laws being reinstated [1]. It's a disgusting industry on so many levels IMO.

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/05/global-d...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/05/global- deforestation-hotspot-3m-hectares-of-australian-forest-to-be-lost-in-15-years)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Stop trying to manipulate people with morality based taxes. Actually try and solve the problem. These people don't care about the environment. Otherwise they would completely cut subsidization to wheat & corn. Then farmers would stop feeding their cows those things, thus reducing mono-culture pollution.

Make feeding them corn illegal. The cows would be healthier and they wouldn't need to subsidize pharmaceuticals for antibiotics to keep cows alive.

<comment><AUTHOR> This isn't about morality or feeding wheat and corn to cows. It's about the greenhouse gas production inherent to raising beef. There's no way you're going to sustain the current volume of beef production on free range grazing alone. Industrial feeding techniques are required.

<comment><USER10> Yes you can. Stop farming corn. Start farming grass. If we committed to it, it'd be possible. But it isn't BECAUSE of the government. And no this isn't about greenhouse gas production. If they cared, they would stop fracking for gas, releasing enormous amounts of methane and pollution a 1000 times worse.

They just don't care about cows. Or health. Or the environment. Or even science. We've already figured out how to solve this issue. This isn't it. All they've figured out is how to get more taxes.

These are morality taxes based on nonsense that would solve nothing. It blinds us to how we're farming wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why don't we just put a carbon tax on...carbon?

<comment><USER12> Do you realize this would tax people for breathing?

<comment><USER13> Assuming a "Tax" is an extra percentage amount on money paid in exchange for goods/services: no this would not tax people for breathing, unless you know of someone who already pays for the privilege of breathing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There is such a big hoohaa over CO2 emission. We have much more pressing concerns and about things that we cannot control. Yet there are no mitigation efforts even being discussed.

The problem area is the changing magnetic fields of this planet. If any of the scenarios play, even the least problematic, then we are going to be in more trouble, more quickly than we will ever be with CO2 emissions.

The Van Allen belts are a highly protective shield for this planet from highly energetic radiation (solar and cosmic). If these belts ever get destabilised then we (most life will be affected) will being facing more serious health and well-being problems than what we would ever have from CO2 emissions.

All that the CO2 debate is about is distracting the general populous of this planet from more immediate problems. The beneficiaries of any carbon trading or taxation regime are not the general population.

</comment><comment><USER15> OK sure, do we also put carbon tax on wheat, and other vegetables? ~750 million tons of wheat is produced yearly, vs ~260 million tons of beef. Excepting the case of perennial plants, unused parts of vegetables (e.g. wheat straw) have a hefty carbon footprint. BTW, rice is a case in itself.

<comment><USER16> From my understanding (which could be complete and total junk science/quackery)... wheat and other vegetables are carbon neutral. CO2 is extracted from the atmosphere, and used to grow the plants. Even unused parts (wheat straw) are a type of carbon "sink" in that the atmospheric carbon is trapped in organic matter which can be "upcycled" into paper products, etc.

I believe this thought process is why corn-ethanol was so hyped, as it was sold as a 'net carbon zero' fuel.

Not looking for a flamewar here, and I would be grateful if you could correct any misunderstandings I may have. I've got an 8th grade science-fair level of education on this one, so I'm more than open to your thoughts!

<comment><USER17> Not to mention that you need to grow the grain to feed the beef if they aren't grass fed cattle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's worth noticing that animal farming is heavily subsidized in some western country, much more than agriculture.

</comment><comment><USER19> A carbon tax on beef would have exactly zero impact on my consumption. It would sure reduce it at the low-end of the economic spectrum, but beyond a certain point it won't make a difference.

I'm against taxing things because they're bad for us.

</comment><comment><USER20> It'd be a belligerent, regressive tax on the bottom 2/3.

There are other prime carbon tax choices that place the tax burden higher up the income scale. We should be starting there.

<comment><USER21> Many people suggest returning the carbon tax to the people in the form of basic income to prevent it from being regressive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'd suggest trying pork. I've eaten a lot of pork over the past year. It's a tasty and versatile cut & apparently very good for the environment!

<comment><USER23> I didn't know cows could type

<comment><USER24> Clearly you haven't read the kids book "Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type". Rather good, in my opinion, and actually touches on organized labor of all things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm nowhere near becoming vegetarian or biking everywhere, but I have all but given up beef for this reason. Eating a quarter-pounder is similar to burning a gallon of gas, which is shockingly worse than most other meats. Ars Technica had a good writeup awhile back:

[https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/10/emissions- eschmissio...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/10/emissions-eschmissions- how-to-simply-reduce-your-carbon-footprint-in-2017/)

</comment><comment><USER26> We are surely fortunate that the U.S. and Canadian settlers decimated the estimated 60 million head of buffalo ranging North America until the late 1800s. Global warming could have been exacerbated greatly by their continued existence.

<comment><USER27> Considering there are almost 100million cattle alive in just the USA right now, I'd say that 60million 200+ years ago are pretty negligible ;)

[http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/current/Catt/Catt-01-31...](http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/current/Catt/Catt-01-31-2018.pdf)</comment></comment>


Global Tax Deal Targets Multinationals - <AUTHOR> http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/38c6ce56-6ea4-11e5-aca9-d87542bf8673.html <comment><USER2> Good job to OECD for leading the way, as it often does, but these are mostly guidelines. The devil will, as usually, cavort in the details of each country's own implementation and related treaties. I don't have the time to go through all produced material, but if it results in actions similar to the European VAT-mess, they could end up being a lot of red tape for little gain.

There is also a real risk that some of these actions will be used as political capital to spend against the implementation of T^^IP treaties, which could be even more pernicious than a bit of tax evasion.

Of course, there will be the issue of forcing smaller countries to comply -- it took a decade of continuous brinkmanship to (sort-of) getting the likes of Cayman to accept the minimum amount of scrutiny; it's fair to expect larger changes to encounter more resistance.

<comment><USER3>
      which could be even more pernicious than a bit of tax evasion.

Calling "up to $250bn a year in extra tax revenues" a bit of tax evasion is a tad disengineous, don't you think?

<comment><USER2> It's 250bn around dozens of countries, i.e. a few billions here and there -- worth paying attention to, but not enough to sell all our rights for. I'd rather let them get away with a few billions than become (even more of) an indentured servant for Big Corp.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Irish Times has a non-paywalled version:

[http://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/global-tax- deal-t...](http://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/global-tax-deal-targets- profits-of-multinationals-1.2386103)

</comment><comment><USER5> Go there through google:

[https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CBwQqQIwAGoVChMIyJHFodG8yAIVJKqmCh1tCwoe&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F0%2F38c6ce56-6ea4-11e5-aca9-d87542bf8673.html&usg=AFQjCNGn6G0oeWvA-J567r4x7-rXy4gBRQ&sig2=7t2QBw5I8gEVh40bskaQxA)

</comment><comment><USER6> Because I'm sure these governments will spend the extra $250 billion/year so much more productively than the companies they're taking it from... (not.)

<comment><USER2> Considering most of this untaxed money sits idle in some Caribbean virtual bank, yes, even using it to dig holes would be a more productive use.

<comment><USER7> >Considering most of this untaxed money sits idle in some Caribbean virtual bank

It's not idle. Those carribean virtual banks buy a lot of empty condos in big cities with tight housing markets all around the world.

God forbid that money would all be taxed away. Prices and rents might come down and those condos would start to fill up with people... What a _waste_

<comment><USER8> >" _It 's not idle. Those carribean virtual banks buy a lot of empty condos in big cities with tight housing markets all around the world._"

And who do they buy it from? And what do those individuals do with that money?

<comment><USER7> Property development corporations I guess.

<comment><USER8> The point is that it disperses throughout the economy anyways. Money doesn't magically disappear into nothingness when it is invested, as it seemed in the earlier comment. It eventually get's used by someone to buy something.

<comment><USER7> >The point is that it disperses throughout the economy anyways.

The point is that the wealth trickles up and is getting _less and less_ dispersed. That ought to be obvious to anybody paying attention in the last 10 years.

<comment><USER8> Assuming that's true, and you want to social-engineer your populace into some sort of "equality" utopia, then I can see why you might think that to be a problem.

Unfortunately, we can disagree on that latter part as I believe in absolute individual freedom from violence and coercion. That definitely includes state engineering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Fascinating premise, utterly buried behind a paywall. Tried a different browser, tried 'Private Mode', nothing. Please update with a non-paywalled link.

<comment><USER10> I think HN should institute a policy that only links that are actually accessible can be posted. This is the web — and while it is perfectly fine to put things behind paywalls, one should not expect that people will link to them on open sites like HN.

<comment><USER11> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989)

Paywalls are fine; asking for help to get around the paywall is fine; complaining about paywalls is off topic.

<comment><USER10> Oh, I haven't seen that posting. Thanks.

I disagree, but since those are the rules, I'll comply.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Modest Proposal: C++ Resyntaxed [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~damian/papers/PDF/ModestProposal.pdf <comment><USER2> Uh.. isn't that just Object Pascal syntax?</comment>


SkipTheDishes Canceled Woman's Job Interview After She Asked About Pay - <AUTHOR> http://distractify.com/trending/2017/03/16/Z1OKivR/wages-benefits-canceled-interview <comment><USER2> It was a reasonable email asking a reasonable question - and companies need to be called out on this sort of bullshit or it's not going to change. I hate renegotiating my own work conditions/package, but it's the conversation with the single greatest impact on my quality of life.

Neither companies nor candidates should be afraid of discussing salary. It can be awkward, but it's also really really important. As an employee, you trade your time and skillset for remuneration. It shows an incredibly exploitative attitude towards employees to respond in this way to what is effectively a simple question.

"Culture fit" has little, if anything to do with money. More likely, they cancelled her interview because they knew that if they wrote down their intended pay/conditions she'd cancel first. If a company's scared to talk $$ with you, it's the biggest red flag there is. Only sketchy companies like multilevel marketing (and apparently SkipTheDishes) try to pull these sorts of shenanigans.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, she dodged a bullet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is just another random company that has their heads stuck up their arse about culture. Not a single one of your employees cares about company culture, they are the to get paid not to absorb company culture.

<comment><USER3> True, but I bet the company cares a lot about preserving the not-too-bright- with personal-finances culture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Good thing she asked! If that happens, they were probably going to give you an insultingly low offer after you had invested a bunch of time in their interview process.

</comment><comment><USER6> What is the point even taking the time to interview if the comp is not in the ball park? She is 100% right.

</comment><comment><USER7> The companies behaviour makes no sense, who would start a job before knowing what they pay is ?

</comment><comment><USER8> This incident was resolved: [http://globalnews.ca/news/3309437/skipthedishes- says-sorry-t...](http://globalnews.ca/news/3309437/skipthedishes-says-sorry- to-winnipeg-job-applicant/)

<comment><USER4> > As soon as we became aware of it on Monday, we reached out to Taylor to > apologize for the email and reschedule her interview

Yes, I'm sure that interview will go fine and they won't find anymore "culture fit" issues /s

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is pretty typical of Western Canada. I'm not shocked at all. You're talking about an area of Canada that is all about oil, gas, and mining-- natural resources. The tech industry is non-existent out here with the exception of Vancouver. I also heard that this particular company is notorious for letting you go if you don't catch on quickly. If I were her, I'd run far away from this joke of a tech company.</comment>


Computing glitch may have doomed Mars lander - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/computing-glitch-may-have-doomed-mars-lander-1.20861 <comment><USER2> >>>...Then thrusters, designed to decelerate the craft for 30 seconds until it was metres off the ground, engaged for only around 3 seconds before they were commanded to switch off, because the lander's computer thought it was on the ground...

>>...The lander even switched on its suite of instruments, ready to record Mars's weather and electrical field...

It's a shame. But, reading that, I can't help imagining the lander in the role of the Blue Whale from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

"I wonder what this big flat thing rushing toward me is? I think I'll call it 'The Ground'"

<comment><USER3> At least it wasn't a unit-conversion problem. It would be really shameful for an _European_ lander to mix up an altitude reading between feet and meters.

But it's not the case, isn't it?

<comment><USER4> That seems exceedingly unlikely. No-one in Europe would even consider using anything other than metric units even for buying their groceries, let alone a critical engineering task.

That said, _if_ there were any US companies involved then perhaps there might have been complications. Many years ago I worked on guidance software for tunnelling machines and we had a US client who insisted that we reprogrammed the entire system for them to work in "centifeet", i.e. 100th of a foot or approx 3mm.

I well remember the chaos and arguments caused by adopting such a ridiculous chimera of a unit, and was struck by how resistant some people are to adopting something as universal and transferrable as SI units.

<comment><USER5> There are actually a fair few problems with SI units. The candela is fairly ridiculous, the kilogram needs to not depend on a physical object (it's also a little silly to have a prefixed base unit). The ampere is not practical to measure with its current definition, and apparently with the current definitions of Hz and radians, 1 Hz = 1/s = 1 radians/second. Other people take issue with the mole, as well.

SI is an improvement but it is not quite perfect. As long as we have a choice of imperfect systems, we have to pick which is most convenient.

<comment><USER4> > it's also a little silly to have a prefixed base unit

I somewhat agree with that - I had the exact same conversation with my kids very recently.

Re. physical object: well, whatever physical reference artefact is used, to all intents and purposes the physical stuff is water, with the basically sensible equivalence 1L = 1kg = 1000cc. As you point out, it's not perfect because of the somewhat arbitrary scales (kg, cc), and it gets worse when you bring temperature into it (I believe it's supposed to be measured at 4 degrees C, but I'm not totally sure of that).

You're right in that it is not perfect, but at least it is a fair attempt at coherence.

<comment><USER6> _I believe it 's supposed to be measured at 4 degrees C_

Correct; it's because at that temperature water is at its densest: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water#States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water#States)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is software easier or harder than hardware?

Somehow people seem to assume software is easier, but then there are at least as many critical failures blamed on software as on hardware.

Maybe there are different curves: software is easy to get to 90% working but hard to get from there to 99.9%. Hardware is hard to get to 90% working but easy to get from there to 99.9%.

<comment><USER8> > the lander's computer thought it was ...

> led the craft to believe it was...

Don't anthropomorphize computers, they hate that.

As an armchair space explorer, I would have imagined such a crucial part of the mission had serious redundancy.

<comment><USER7> I think the anthropomorphizing in this case is fine. Someone familiar with programming easily takes "computer thought it was on the ground" as shorthand for "computer began executing subroutines designed to activate when the craft was on the ground."

The anthropomorphized version is more concise for someone familiar with and more understandable for someone unfamiliar with the inner details of computer systems.

<comment><USER9> I think it was a joke, seeing as SixSigma proceeded to anthropomorphize computers ("they hate that").

<comment><USER8> A bit of both.

I actually don't think anthropomorphization is helpful in discussions with the lay public but I'm not that serious about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I know this is off-topic, but reading about it's mission has me wondering why (as far as I know) no agencies are sending devices that could return more sophisticated visuals. Even something simple like the 360 YouTube videos would be beyond words, and everyone could experience it. I've really enjoyed the panoramic images. I just wish they'd focus more on trying to get people there virtually since it's a fraction of the effort of getting them there physically, and it could be shared with everyone. Is there some kind of barrier to sending that much data through space? Or should the focus always be on looking for signs of life?

<comment><USER11> this is something I never got: why don't they just chuck a whole bunch of cheap consumer gadgets on these things ? Is it really that hard to attach an array (for redundancy) of gopros to constantly transmit video at 60fps (and sound, even if Mars doesn't really propogate sound) ?

<comment><USER12> > why don't they just chuck a whole bunch of cheap consumer gadgets on these > things

This [0] is an interesting read on some of the considerations for the Curiosity rover cameras.

[0] [https://www.dpreview.com/articles/0353350380/curiosity- inter...](https://www.dpreview.com/articles/0353350380/curiosity-interview- with-malin-space-science-systems-mike-ravine)

<comment><USER11> great link thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I hope they didn't mix up metric and imperial units this time again. Or is it the Agile specter that haunts software made in Europe?

<comment><USER14> Given that it's an European project I'd be surprised if it was a metric vs imperial unit mixup.

<comment><USER15> UK says hi.

<comment><USER16> For what it is worth - apart from road signs and speeds - I've not really seen imperial measurements used for much any more in the UK.

I would be _amazed_ (and saddened) if someone had started a new, large-scale, serious, rigorous, engineering project in the past couple of decades (i.e. since the 90s) and used imperial units (I am sure there are lots of small- scale/personal/etc stuff done in imperial though - I dont count interplanetary space flight as small-scale!)

Imperial is pretty much dead in the UK (or maybe just London?) apart from roads and conversational/casual usage where its often easier to say the imperial equivalent than the metric (e.g. "pint of beer" is easier than saying "568 millilitres of beer", "about a foot" is easier than saying "about 30 centimetres" just because of fewer syllables if nothing else).

<comment><USER15> If you think imperial measurements are dead in london you never had to deal with plumbing in your apartment where you have a mixture of imperial and metric pipes and threads ;) And the best is always finding a metric pipe with an inch thread pitch on it....

Also IIRC technically most engineering schools in the US also use metric these days, it doesn't mean stuff doesn't get screwed up, imperial on it's own is also annoying since you have both decimal (thous) and fractional units which I always found frustrating on it's own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> thruster_test(3000); // todo: add powered descent code

</comment><comment><USER18> Everyone has a plan, until they get hit by a planet.

<comment><USER19> -Mars Tyson

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> They should have used Haskell.

<comment><USER21> I assume this is a joke? Is Haskell suitable for hard real-time systems with things like lazy evaluation and a GC?

<comment><USER22> I think it's a joke. Haskell is manifestly not suitable for writing a Mars lander.

A verified DSL written in Haskell on the other hand ...

[http://ivorylang.org/ivory-introduction.html](http://ivorylang.org/ivory- introduction.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Reminds me of that robocop scene "You call this a glitch???"

</comment><comment><USER24> This was my first thought actually. Faulty ground sensing has doomed many a craft.

</comment><comment><USER25> I was about to suggest n-version programming redundancy, when it occurred to me: aren't we starting to reach a point where deep learning systems are good enough for unmanned spacecraft? How we would generate the learning data would be a question though.

<comment><USER26> You wastely overestimate the capabilities of the equipment we send into space. It is nowhere near powerful enough to power any meaningful deep learning system in an online fashion. Offline has either to high latency, or a problem getting data to seed the initial learning (and even then we have a problem actually running the network).

<comment><USER27> Well than and there just isn't a whole lot of training data to play with. It's doubtful that a simulator could ever model actual landing situations well enough that the whole thing will a) work on Mars and b) not overfit weird behaviour in the simulator. Faulty ground sensing has resulted in the loss of more than one mission, and deep learning isn't going to fix any of that.

Oh, and s/wastely/vastly/ ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> this days, almost every failure can be related in some way to a "computing glitch".

<comment><USER29> Glitch is a strange word to blame everything on. It implies a temporary problem. This sounds more like a more permanent problem, as in it's permanently crashed into the ground.

<comment><USER30> Blasted clipping errors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> It seems no matter the problem there's always someone trying to blame IT.</comment>


Ask HN: Privacy laws: Can a stranger video record you in public without consent? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> It depends on where you live, like most things that are a law.

For the UK and USA it is true that you can be publicly recorded with no real recourse unless you can tie it to something like harassment, sexual or otherwise.

In Sweden it is illegal to record public places with static cameras, and I highly suspect that the Swedish police/court system would side with you if you decided to pursue a punitive measure of some kind to someone who is fragrantly denying a request not to be recorded.

<comment><AUTHOR> Appears to be the same in Germany where there's freedom of panorama: art and architecture that is permanently in public space might be photographed and the pictures published without the artist's consent.

It gets complicated when people are photographed. You're allowed to take pictures of crowds at events, but you are not allowed to take pictures of individuals.

I could never have imagined that calling the police to protect yourself from being recorded could ruin your whole life (you know what I am talking about, ofcourse that's just one part of the fiasco that's been overlooked).

</comment></comment><comment> blaser-waffle In the US and much of Canada you can generally record someone in public, if there is no expectation of privacy -- e.g. someone on the street can see into your yard.

Some of the provinces in Canada have more nuanced rules, and I believe Quebec is the strictest in that you can't have cameras pointed at someone's windows.

</comment><comment><USER3> In the USA, anything seen from a public space, including the air, the street/sidewalk, even aimed at your yard, is legal. In most cases you can even film on someones private property if there is easement. There are exceptions, but rarely. Privacy was assumed, but never protected here.</comment>


Google may be skewing how the public views nanotechnology - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/05/is-google-skewing-how-the-public-views-nanotechnology.ars

<comment><USER2> My guess would be that it is the body of information that google indexes and ranks that has skewed over time, and not that google is skewing the results.

It is also likely that google's ranking algorithms reflect the fact that sensational articles about health concerns get more links than serious scientific articles.

Edit: At one point the author does say "Google may not be driving the trend here so much as reflecting it."</comment>


Have you tried Angular yet? - <AUTHOR> http://basementcoders.com/2011/08/episode-41-interview-with-igor-minar-of-angularjs/ Really cool Javascript framework.  Assumes nothing about your back-end, so long as it can produce XML or JSON.  Open source & being backed by Google.  Has a lot of advantages over Backbone.js <comment><AUTHOR> Sorry HN, my little VPS couldn't handle you! I've reconfigured Apache and splurged on some more RAM. Should be good now.</comment>


Show HN: Keyword based placeholder images - <AUTHOR> https://imgapi.io <comment><USER2> pretty cool stuff Pieter - I currently use placehold.it A LOT, any chance you could do keywords and size? like /coffee-250x250</comment>


Entrepreneurs are largely born rather than made, research suggests. - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/5049288.stm <comment><USER2> Interesting. My personal experience definitely support's this. My brother's an entrepreneur, my dad's an entrepreneur, and just about every uncle on my dad's side is an entrepreneur.

</comment><comment><USER3> Same thing my dad told me haha!</comment>


Rocket Lease: 1 Year Review - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ezliu.com/rocketlease-1-year-review/# <comment><USER2> I always love seeing what the real numbers of a bootstrapped business look like. It's easy to look at a company that's been around long enough to be successful and think, "If I just build a product and flip a switch... I'll be rich." and it really doesn't work that way.

It's a long, slow, slog to get to a certain level of success if you're bootstrapping.

<comment><USER3> This is why I love Gail Goodman's "The Long Slow SAAS Ramp of Death" talk. [http://businessofsoftware.org/2013/02/gail-goodman- constant-...](http://businessofsoftware.org/2013/02/gail-goodman-constant- contact-how-to-negotiate-the-long-slow-saas-ramp-of-death/)

There are no quick wins, it's a grind.

<comment><USER2> Yes, I've watched that multiple times and it's great.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow never heard of this before, but I might consider using this. This is amazing and detailed info on costs of running a business. Thanks for sharing!

A few questions I have, IF you don't mind: 1\. If you're contracted out your dev work, do you mostly work as a manager, ensuring day-to-day operations? 2\. Looks like you're now making a profit but a really small one... for May 2013: $5660 - $2377.23 - $1808 = ~$1500, is that right? 3\. Sounds like your revenue vs costs/expenses scale linearly as well, but more business = more margins, is that right?

Once again, thanks for this detailed post! Very enlightening!

<comment><AUTHOR> _1\. If you're contracted out your dev work, do you mostly work as a manager, ensuring day-to-day operations?_

I spend my time doing marketing and bizdevy stuff. However, I'm still really involved in any major development efforts, we regularly at least 3 times a week discuss code, I still contribute code, and we often pair program.

My contracted developer, Henrique, is really not just a "contracted developer". He's a CTO caliber amazing architect and I consider him a partner in the project.

The current codebase is the 3rd-ish iteration on the same theme. The first and second iterations were built primarily by me, so I had a pretty good sense of how I wanted everything built for the future (incidentally, my "pretty good sense" was totally garbage, and if i started over again, it'd be totally different... again...)

Even the early versions of the current iteration were largely a collaborative code effort between me and Henrique, either hitting milestones by "divide and conquer" or by pair programming.

As the product began maturing, I have been slowly shifting away from code to marketing and CEO/CMO-y stuff. Basically, I am not good at being a heavily involved CTO and marketing. My perspective here is that development _CAN_ be outsourced, though it may not be easy, but good marketing and bizdev can _NOT_. However, we try to be analytics driven, so Henrique is also deeply involved in the marketing and analytics, but we just have a focus on our own individual domains.

 _2\. Looks like you're now making a profit but a really small one... for May 2013: $5660 - $2377.23 - $1808 = ~$1500, is that right?_

Correct.

 _3\. Sounds like your revenue vs costs/expenses scale linearly as well, but more business = more margins, is that right?_

In principle, I can squeeze out a little more edge once I get to bigger scale, but there's a floor on the cost of reports, so I'm more interested in growing the audience size than optimizing the costs here. I'm also below the threshold where reporting companies really want to cut me breaks, so I'll have to wait a little further before that.

The "cost of reports" component scales linearly, but I expect the fixed costs to be pretty static for very large ranges of total users/applications. It'll be stepwise-ish, but I'll probably flat until at least 10x more sales from here.

<comment><USER5>
      > Looks like you're now making a profit but a really
      > small one...

Eric, at what point will you as the sole investor start making a profit, assuming steady growth, etc?

<comment><AUTHOR> oh man, i don't have a good answer for that, but i'll give you the next best thing -- a bad answer. :)

I don't think its fair for me to assume steady growth at my previous 4 months trajectory. I would love that, of course, because, uh, i like money, but it seems improbable.

So the next best thing: last month, RL made ~$1500.

I try to track every dollar I spend, so I just grepped my expenses sheet for every dollar ever spent that is tagged with RL.

$95,225.20

So, at 1500/mo, I'll break even in 63 months, assuming a cost of capital of 0%. :)

However, that number is really tagged based on what my accountant tells me is valid for the purposes of IRS reporting -- meaning, whenever I have drinks or dinner with other founders and we talk business, marketing, strategy, when I park in a parking lot and have to pay a fee, purchases that can be attributed to the business, etc. so the total invested number is probably non-trivially lower than 95k.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Call for action: more posts like this on HN please!

This is exactly the kind of information that is valuable, pertinent, and helpful to star-uppers. Not only that, but I love how the article foregoes mumbo-jumbo and goes straight to the stats and numbers. +1 to you, sir.

Coming from a recent failed bootstrapped start-up, this is both encouraging and motivating! It's hard out there, but it's good to see people achieve even a moderate level of success.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks dvt.

I personally would also like to see more transparency among founders.

I think there's a fear among entrepreneurs that if they post their data publicly, one of two things will happen:

(a) they'll be judged if they're not succeeding wildly -- its easy for startup founders to seem glamorous when there's a fantasy that they're just living the startup dream (which, at least in my experience, most of us aren't just rolling in rooms full of gold coins). without the certainty that they're not succeeding wildly, founders can bask in the adoration of their unknowing peers and reap the rewards of semi-fame without the actual success.

(b) if they ARE succeeding wildly, that competitors will know how much money they're making/losing -- this information has never helped anyone. knowing that RL makes $X doesn't immediately make my competitors make $X. RL has succeeded, I think, mostly because I'm willing to work hard, and not because I'm tricky or smart or have some magic silver bullet.

I, for example, would like to have sex with Heidi Klum. Finding out that Seal is having sex with Heidi Klum does not confer upon me the privilege of doing so. Knowing that a startup is making money won't make it true for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love bootstrapped companies. I was in the exact same position about 6 years ago. My advice: it is time to put a grey hat on. I'd do the following:

1) Buy an email lists of property companies and send some unsolicited emails to people that want your product but don't know it . "Are you tired of dealing with rental application forms?"

2) Use fiverr to contact property owners on craigslist.

Once you get to about $10k/month you can stop doing these things and there will likely be natural organic growth. You can then start spending a few grand a month on "Free Rental Application", "Rental Application Template", etc. keywords. That will drive predictable growth over time with very little effort.

<comment><USER8> Alternatively, and maybe combined with #2, I'd suggest looking at LinkedIn for brokers and property management companies. Sounds like they're your big customers and individuals or small landlords will help but won't make or break your business. Therefore, it makes sense to specifically look for the potentially big customers and go hard after them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great post Eric - Good to see all of the data we've been digging into get out there in the startup community!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Kevin! I didn't even know you had an HN account!

Has been a pleasure working together with you as well</comment></comment>


Show HN: Email finder and email verifier for free - <AUTHOR> https://leadfinder-1bc7fc.appdrag.com/ <comment><USER2> I've always wondered how these kind of services deal with things like CASL here in Canada where the use of the service is basically illegal (well, the point of the service) - I guess you could make the argument that it could be used to find a contact you already had, but that's a flimsy one.</comment>


Show HN: Unlimited Design Tasks for $99/mo - <AUTHOR>

Hey,
My friends and I just started this service and we would love to hear what HN thinks about it.
We promise to deliver good quality in any design task customers submit and at the same time we promise to deliver it under 24 hours.
URL: http://kapa99.com <comment><USER2> Given how many small design jobs happen on Fiverr, I'm sure there's a viable potential business here as well.

The landing page isn't particularly attractive, easy to read, or clear. It might be worth hiring one of the designers you have a relationship with to have it professionally done. Everything on the "how does it work" page should probably be on the front page, which doesn't do a good job of conveying what you're offering or what a buyer can expect for that $99.

The headline doesn't really capture what you're doing either -- "we design so you don't have to" might describe the web design profession, but not you as a middleman offering unlimited design work on retainer.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds like a cool idea, I don't need it at the moment but I do have a few questions:

1) What happens if you don't deliver in 24 hours? Can I bet my business on your promises?

2) What is your copyright assignment language? I'd like to know that before paying for anything.

3) Same deal for NDAs - Where are you located? I can't send certain info overseas for example.

4) "Chicken" is misspelled in one of your portfolio images. If I were you I'd either fix it or remove it because it looks sloppy.

5) Devils advocate here: What's stopping me from arbitrage? I submit a job to you every day for 99designs projects, and then submit your work as my own. Shoot I could probably even write a script for this...

<comment><AUTHOR> pbnjay, great questions.

1) We will deliver in 24 hours and if we don't you can get your money back. We have plenty designers ready to take care of whatever needs to be done. Of course, we work under the premise that we do "Small tasks".

2) The client owns the Intelectual Property, forever. We just do the job, so we will provide a copyright assignment whenever needed.

3) We are officially located in Hong Kong but our designers are all over the world.

4) Good catch! the flyer was made in an other language and we translated it to english, our designers will be working on it, right away.

5) That's an interesting spin-off, but definitely not the nature of the service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The company I work for used to hire a marketing/design agency on the same system (and about the same price, too).

The problem was that the results reflected a total apathy and poor quality, plus they took several days to deliver simple requests.

I'm not sure if "unlimited" is the right offer, it does catch the eye, but it might attract the wrong sort of customer, and you might find yourselves unable to deliver.

</comment><comment><USER5> "DESIGN JOBS FOR JUST 99 BUCKS PER MONTH" sounds like you're paying designers $99/month :) Seems you mean "We do your design tasks for 99 bucks per month"

<comment><AUTHOR> updated!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> ToS link returns a 404.

I might sign up for a 'Pro' plan next paycheck if they're acceptable. Could I use the service as my own outsourced design staff? Or would I be limited to using it for my own designs?

How long is your introductory offer running? I get paid every 2 weeks, so couldn't sign up today, even if your ToS is okay. What happens once the limited time offer is over? Prices go up, or you stop accepting clients?

<comment><AUTHOR> The terms are working for me, could you please check again?

We plan to run this offer for as long as we can fill demand, so it's hard to predict. You could secure your subscription by buying the basic plan now and upgrading later!

Yes the service is indeed set up in a way that customers can use it as their outsourced design agency.

Hopefully we can have you on board!

<comment><USER6> Upon closer inspection, I see now what's broken.

The main page's 'Terms' link goes here just fine: [http://www.kapa99.com/terms.html](http://www.kapa99.com/terms.html)

Toward the bottom of that page there's a link in the text: 'By using this Site, you signify your acceptance of this policy and terms of service.', & when I click on that to see the actual ToS, the link is broken & tries to go to: [http://www.kapa99.com/www.kapa99.com/terms.html](http://www.kapa99.com/www.kapa99.com/terms.html), which of course 404's.

Did you mean to combine the 'Privacy Policy' with the ToS? I don't see much there explaining terms per se- more on Privacy than actual terms.

<comment><AUTHOR> cdvonstinkpot, please check again :).

We would be happy to answer any question you have over here or through email (firstname.lastname@example.com). In fact we plan to use some of the questions here on our FAQ.</comment></comment></comment></comment>