As a solo developer, I decided to offer phone support - <AUTHOR> http://plumshell.com/2017/11/30/as-a-solo-app-developer-i-decided-to-offer-phone-support-and-this-is-what-happened/ <comment><USER2> I did it for 10 years, but more recently have moved away from phone support as much as possible (or delegated to others to do).

The main reason - I am a solo developer. And the brain mode for 'developer' is VERY different from the brain mode for 'support agent'.

It was basically impossible for me to get into 'flow' state during a normal working day. Even one phone call during the day took me away from my creative, programming mindset and into an empathetic, listening mindset. And the transition between the two were very different. It's like asking a racing driver to knit a scarf each time he came into the pits, before he could go out on the track to drive at high speed again.

It also made it hard to plan blocks of work. Most times it was OK, but there were days where I would plan to do about 5 or 6 bug fixes, but I would get a slew of phone calls that meant I got 0 programming done that day, and would have to move other plans.

I actually enjoyed support, but in the end I had to decide which of the two parts of the job was moving the business ahead more than the other, and pure development work won out.

<comment><USER3> > And the brain mode for 'developer' is VERY different from the brain mode for > 'support agent'.

This is something I can have trouble with even personally. I have noticed that when I get home from a long day of cold, analytical problem-solving, I mbrain bad at shifting my brain to empathetically listen and provide emotional support for my wifes problems.

<comment><USER4> The daily transition from work to home is difficult for many couples and this problem has existed since forever, but it has _nothing_ to do with "being analytical" at work and then having to "be empathetic" at home.

It doesn't matter what your job is or if you're a husband or a wife, there's a period of time after coming home from work that is beset with opportunities for arguments. Lots of people experience this, not just rocket-scientists and developers :-)

There's no sure-fire solution, but a little bit of buffer time seems to work, followed by deliberate accommodation for the needs of the other.

<comment><USER5> > "it has _nothing_ to do with "being analytical" at work and then having to > "be empathetic" at home."

[citation needed]

I doubt you (or anyone, for that matter) can make such a claim with scientific rigor. You are responding to a statement of someone's personal experience - for them, it very well may have something to do with switching from an analytical, critical state to a more empathetic one.

<comment><USER6> For my part, I recognized after I got married that I was coming home and applying the same mental model I used at work in conversations with my wife: I was there exclusively to solve problems. My wife just wanted me to listen while she told me about her day. This _definitely_ increased the surface area for arguments, because in my years I've found that generally, wives want you to shut up and listen and empathize with what they're complaining about, and not rattling off "answers" to the problems. I did have to train myself to adapt to the transition. It _did_ cause problems specifically because of the mental model I brought home from work.

<comment><USER7> It took me a long time to get this right too. I came across this amusing page and realized I wasn't a bad person, because there is a lot of truth to this.

specifically, #39:

[http://showcase.netins.net/web/tash/rules/rules.html](http://showcase.netins.net/web/tash/rules/rules.html)

<comment><USER8> This page is very silly, it basically says 'men get to do what they want when they want'. I like how the longest rule is about being 'single-minded', which is basically just an excuse for not taking part in all facets of your relationship.

Here is another perspective which you may find equally dumb:

[https://english.emmaclit.com/2017/05/20/you-shouldve- asked/](https://english.emmaclit.com/2017/05/20/you-shouldve-asked/)

Note that this comic is coming from a totally female perspective (scary!) but it really applies either way. For instance, in my marriage I am the one who feels like the chore-czar, while my wife is the one who tends to feel like the planning-czar. If we both realize this and try to meet in the middle it makes things go a lot more smoothly.

<comment><USER9> This is assuming they both want the same thing. Society pushes us into marriage and getting kids, not just into gender roles. I think greater equality will lead to more single people, not more men doing house work. Because people will realize they actually have a choice. Most people don't want to clean and administer the same stuff every day. And although nobody would prefer that thir kids were never born, people would not feel like they are losing out if they never get kids. Developed countries have people get fewer kids later in their lives. Maybe it is because of the economy, but kids could help their parents with money, so i dont think so, i think it is by choice. You could call it people getting more selfish, i say it is people getting more rational, or «analytical» if you will.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Working at the Apple Store as a sales person has helped me IMMENSELY in my career, not only in terms of understanding how human beings approach technology but from a sales standpoint as well. In the first startup I was a part of, every single member of the 3 person team did email support for our school teacher userbase. Do it. Everyone needs to do it. Doing this kind of work is very grounding and humbling.

When you box yourself into the "But, I'm an engineer" corner and decide it's beneath you to talk to customers, you limit yourself. Don't do that. Become a more well-rounded person. Talk to your users. Understand them. Empathize with them. It will make you a better engineer. And if you're a solo founder or part of a small team, it's even more critical that you do this.

<comment><USER11> To emphasize "don't think it's beneath you to talk to customers", there's the story of when William from Microsoft took a phone support call:

[https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20091123-00/?p=...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20091123-00/?p=15943)

<comment><USER12> It's easy to have a good attitude when it's not your main line of work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've been doing this for over 15 years with an invoicing app I have and I've got to know a lot users pretty well over that time.

My app is simple and easy to use, and I've made "Training Videos" for just about everything you can do with, and I've had years to work out any bugs that have popped up, so I don't get a lot of calls anymore. But every call is a chance to learn something and improve the app and I pay very close attention to those who call.

My approach is that it's never the user's fault, and I tell them that. I work click by click with them to show them how to do something and I tell them if something doesn't work it's my fault and I will fix it. And I also ask them how they think it should work.

Before I made my first app back in the `90s I read a book Apple put out called something like "Apple Human Interface Guidelines". At first glance I thought it was a waste of money, but since I'd spent it I decided to read it all.

It explained some of the history of the Apple GUI and how and why things were designed the way they were, which was basically on things people were familiar with, like "Radio Buttons" and "Checkboxes", etc.

By the time I was done I realized the genius in the approach. I'm still impressed with it. My goal has been to make web apps that the user doesn't have to learn anything to use. That it all works like they expect it should. After 15+ years I've got pretty close now. I rarely get any calls or emails.

Kind of feel like the "Maytag Man" now.

<comment><USER14> How do you deal with conflicting ideas of how something should work?

I'm sure there are a set of users who wish your app worked in one way, while another set of users feel strongly that it works in an opposing way. How do you reconcile that?

<comment><USER13> If it's something that most users would find handy I will implement it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I created a shareware Tetris clone for OS X in the mid 2000s and provided my cell number in the readme. I'd get a trickle of calls from all over the world at all times of day. That's where I learned never to have a serial number generator that included the number 0 since it looks so close to the letter 0.

It was weird to be out and about and suddenly get a tech support call, but people were usually really nice.

<comment><USER16> > the number 0 since it looks so close to the letter 0.

Just throwing this out there in case the problem comes up again: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base58](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base58)

<comment><USER11> It's also worth skipping out the letters S and number 5, the letter G and number 6, and the letter B and number 8. I also omit vowels to avoid accidentally creating words in serial codes.

<comment><USER17> I autogenerate passwords exclusively using lower case 'L's, the letter i in both cases, the number 1, and pipe characters.

<comment><USER18> There's room for improvement. What about the "!"? Gotta catch those folks with poor eyesight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It is very, very difficult to offer phone support as a solo developer, particularly at low price points (below e.g. $5k per year) and for low tech- literacy customers. You can still _do_ it, if you need someone to talk to, you want to do customer development, or you have a customer who strikes your fancy for non-market reasons, but you probably should not message the expectation that you're available.

<comment><USER20> I always found that my most needy and difficult customers were disproportionate phone users. They also tended to be the lowest value ones so stopping phone support was an easy decision.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> My experience with doing phone support for applications is that it is _excellent_ if well-augmented, and absolute garbage otherwise.

Due to a variety of factors, my previous employer provided about 50-50 phone and email support, often with phone as the first point of contact. That worked because phone calls came in with proper context (essentially providing information about who is calling and information about their account status) and I had tools to guide callers when something wasn't extremely basic: most applications are primarily visually- or textually-rich environments, and verbal descriptions require a high degree shared context on both sides (e.g. you are a competent CCNA contacting Cisco TAC, and both parties share a common verbal language to describe non-verbal tools). Absent that, screen-sharing capability is critical, as otherwise phone support is endless dead air of "I'm looking at things you can't see while you describe things I can't see and have no context for, let's both black box everything and pray for telepathy." My current employer doesn't provide that, so phone support devolves into a push button for customers to say, "this issue is urgent!" while support says "probably, but we can't send you screenshots over the phone, so please go away while we write a response that actually provides useful information--you can remain on the phone if you want, but it's going to just be dead air or us talking you down from panic mode while not actually doing anything to address the problem."

<comment><USER22> Screensharing is absolutely essential. In these days, it should be table stakes. Much as I sometimes hate it in general, it's a huge point in favor of Skype for Business; being able to step into a screenshare or a whiteboard is invaluable.

I cringe when I have to dial into a regular phone bridge. And as much as possible, I try to keep my landline in non-operable condition, so that support requests come in on a more useful channel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I offer phone, email and skype support (as a solo developer). Ratio of support queries I receive is roughly:

90% email 8% skype 2% phone

On my website's contact page I have a few sentences beside the email address saying that you should give as much information as possible about the problem, and that we reply within 1 business day but normally sooner. I think that implies two things: [1] we do actually reply to emails quickly, and [2] email is preferred for support.

Some people just prefer to talk to a human being, at least the first time they contact you. This is either due to them checking to make sure you are responsive and can be contacted, or they are frightened of technology and need a little hand-holding. If I didn't put my phone number of the website I might lose these customers. It doesn't really take much time to deal with, overall.

The only minor issue is that some people (mostly other developers, usually from India) seem to want submit all support requests via skype, and I have to push back at that because [1] it's intrusive and [2] it means I don't have a record of their previous support queries in my email. Unless it's a quick question, I usually email them back. Of course you have to balance the need to provide the support in the way the customer wants to make them happy vs not letting them suck up too much of your time.

</comment><comment><USER24> Man, I did a job that was nothing but phone support for 8 months, and while I think it was great training for designing UIs that won't confuse people you'd have to pay me a lot to go back to doing that. Many people are _not_ kind, patient, or understanding, and they assume you're unintelligent and uneducated (or else why would you be answering phones for a living?). The misery of that experience was the spur that made me abandon plans for a career in Japanese translation and learn IT (and eventually programming) in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER25> Support person (at least for the last few years) here, context switching and the issues it creates is a real thing for other roles - not just developers. Everyone needs headphone DND time, both in and outside for the technology sector - it's called concentration time.

A support agent at most tech companies will have to support multiple products in multiple languages and platforms and be ready to provide a useful response to a customer at any time, these responses could be:

Diagnosing code issues, Diagnosing product issues (internal or external) Writing code for the customer, Developing the customer use case, Working with Engineering, Finding some free time to learn new products, Training new agents

etc etc.

This is no easy task and shifting mindsets is sometimes tough.

I strongly echo the comments that documentation is key, if the product docs are written to be consumed by humans it's very helpful support engineers, we're lucky to have great documentation at the company I work so it makes our life easier.

<comment><USER24> When I did it your absolute maximum unavailable time between calls was supposed to be 30 seconds and if you actually used that time you'd get scolded (even if your stats otherwise looked great).

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm also a solo developer, and I take support and sales phone calls for FormAPI [1]. I found a nice number on Twilio: (856) FORM-API

I have a license for on-site deployments, and I think every enterprise inquiry has started with a phone call.

I also send a welcome email to new customers where I say that I'm happy to have a call to talk about their requirements or questions. I also use Drift [2] for live chat, and I've handled a few support cases on there.

My advice: I don't think this is an optional thing. You don't solve the problem by removing the phone number from your site. If you're getting too many calls, you need to improve your self-help support pages, or hire another person to help with the phones.

[1] [https://formapi.io](https://formapi.io)

[2] [http://drift.com](http://drift.com)

</comment><comment><USER27> Because my startup's tools are used heavily in the dyslexia and ADHD communities, I have found that phone support is a very helpful thing to offer. Some of our users have difficulty reading/deciphering our instructions, but they have no problem once we provide directions verbally on the phone.

</comment><comment><USER28> What a mundane post and simplistic topics. Yet it was outstanding. How come I loved reading it? Nice work Non.

One thing that wasn't a big point, but I hope most people appreciate: Founders/developers/key employees doing some phone support is not tactical grunt work, it can be a strategic, powerful weapon.

In essence, it's white glove, world class customer service. That alone is good, but what makes it so powerful is it's on a very small list of things that AmaFaceGoogSoft and other large companies can almost never match you at. In fact forget beating you, they often do poorly at it. Every know anyone who left angry after dealing with F500 support?

In a past life I've used high six figure "enterprise" support agreements, w/VIP status. Yes, way better than the Windows consumer help line, but hard even then to match your service. 1MM/yr enterprise support doesn't buy a product dev or exec. Ironically, it's easy to lunch with them, but they're not handling your daily tickets.

Your sales person (you I guess :-) should use it as a club against big companies and do your best to beat them to death with it.

Other things you touched on can also be strategic. Gaining valuable insights (admittedly not the only channels for this) that optimizes your roadmap, occasionally is the difference between staying afloat and sinking.

Of course the reality check is, how much time can you allocate when not only is development a life blood role, you probably wear other hats as well? I don't think there's a stock answer, depends on team/company/stage/everything else in the balance.

Anecdotally, I can say one customer relationship built this way turned out to be the connection that led to the acquisition of my company. However as usual, it was impossible to foresee when the contact request email came in.

I mean it as a compliment that you're post seems deceptively ordinary (speaking plainly is good), I hope people will mine the true value of it. Thanks for writing it, best of luck to you going forward.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is a really great way to understand your customer. Think of it as analyzing product-market fit rather than support.

</comment><comment><USER30> Interestingly enough I've found through my own company that it's not so much whether or not you're solo but rather the price of your software that determines if you can economically offer phone support or not.

I wrote about it here: [http://www.followsteph.com/2006/10/10/is-technical- phone-sup...](http://www.followsteph.com/2006/10/10/is-technical-phone- support-a-viable-option-for-a-software-company/)

I then followed it up with an article discussing whether or not companies should charge for support based on my findings in the previous article: [http://www.followsteph.com/2010/10/19/should-software- compan...](http://www.followsteph.com/2010/10/19/should-software-companies- charge-for-technical-support/)

The short version, under the $1000 price point it's very hard to economically offer free phone support as part of your product. If you're product is subscription based then the same metric applies using the total lifetime value of your customer. Under that price it's very hard to do, whether your a solo developer or a company without charging for support.

</comment><comment><USER31> Hats off for trying this, good luck in English.

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm launching an app soon, and was planning on making customer service an available and plentiful commodity, not hiring any employees yet, so therefore I'll be the de facto phone support guy. I hadn't considered the emotional benefit of both urgency from the negative, and encouragement from the positive, I was mostly thinking about hearing first-hand the bugs, use cases, user experiences, etc, and being able to put out any fires asap. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER33> This was very well written. Effective communication with people is far more challenging (and rewarding) than the communication with devices that we developers do on a day to day basis. It's easy to get lost in that cloud, and lose touch with the people we're building for.

In startups, this aspect can too quickly get shunted off to a QA or CS personnel, and problems get abstracted into incident tickets (that are often ignored in favor of the Next Big Feature). That seems to me to be giving up one of the classic fundamental advantages of a small business: the personal touch.

</comment><comment><USER34> Everyone should offer support every once in a while. Say one day a month. Good managers do this themselves - I think Jeff Bezos does this.

</comment><comment><USER35> I absolutely _loved_ doing phone technical support, but I don't do it any more because I can't afford it. I earn far more money as a developer and I can't turn that down. I wish good support was valued more highly , and compensated accordingly so I could afford to keep doing it.

</comment><comment><USER36> Many people admire Steve Jobs, sometimes to the point of mimicking him by wearing jeans and black turtleneck sweaters.

Steve Jobs would sometimes answer to customer support calls. This was in order to understand the customer, their frustrations, and how to work through them with a better product.

</comment><comment><USER37> Great article. An effective engineer needs to know how to work with non- engineers. Unless, you're on a team composed of purely engineers and don't need to interact with non-engineers. But even then, it's a good skill to hone for potential career changes in the future.

</comment><comment><USER38> This reminds me of Word Perfect's unlimited free phone support years ago. Though the call to Orem, UT during business hours was neither free nor inexpensive, the service was excellent and part of the reason Word Perfect was so beloved...reveal codes being another reason.

</comment><comment><USER39> Thank you very much. I am very glad to see this as #1 here.

There is a typo on Voicepaper's description in iTunes. It reads "Voicepaper is a test to speech voice reader..." instead of "Voicepaper is a text to speech voice reader".

</comment><comment><USER40> What I'm curious is how he markets his apps and what kind of revenue target he goes for.

I know just posting something on the app store is not the way to go. As an iOS developer I know it's tough to be a solo app store developer successfully.

</comment><comment><USER41> I'll be interested to read your follow-up post on the differences between offering phone support in Japanese and English. A few of the interactions you described here sounded distinctly Japanese to me.

<comment><USER41> Could one of the folks down-voting this please explain? Did this come across as sarcastic, or offensive? I'm honestly curious, for example, whether most westerners would be as courteous, or whether the taboo against asking about proficiency would feel the same in both cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I recently thought about the idea of holding "office hours" of sorts, which would help with the context switching I've seen mentioned.

Has anyone been able to monetize phone support as an upsell?

</comment><comment><USER43> Interesting. I always thought putting personal phone number in your app is a bad idea, but you raised some good points there. I might consider to do that if I release an app for local market.

</comment><comment><USER44> [http://jillsoffice.com](http://jillsoffice.com) is a pretty good option for outsourced phone support.

</comment><comment><USER45> Does anyone know any good and easy to use service to provide paid phone support? For example, I want to charge something like $1 or $2 per minute.

<comment><USER46> The point here is not what the advantage of phone support is but to provide the service personally. You can outsource anything, but if you read the article, the learnings you get from doing it yourself are invaluably useful.

<comment><USER47> I (mis?)interpreted the GP comment to mean a service that makes it easy to charge for the phone support they provide.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> If things get fixed faster when you make a phone call you will eventually end up with more and more people calling instead of e-mailing etc.

</comment><comment><USER49> Even though I hate phone calls, I think it is a must, specially if you deal with enterprise customers, who are used to make phone calls.

</comment><comment><USER50> I want to know whether he offers the phone support for English customers or Japanese customers

<comment><USER11> The article says he only offers it in the Japanese version:

 _" I wrote my phone number in the help section of the Japanese version only, since I live in Japan and it is a JP number. I might try it in English too in the future..."_

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Inspiring. Maybe I'll have the guts to become an indie dev someday.

</comment><comment><USER52> Phone support is what your "significant other" is for.. xD

</comment><comment><USER53> That's a pretty bad title and I'm not going to click on it on principle.

<comment><USER54> It's a very accurate title. What would you prefer?

<comment><USER53> It used to end with "... and this is what what happened." I would prefer "...and it saved my business" or "...it made me quit." Even removing that clickbaity suffix makes me feel better.

<comment><USER54> "This is what happened" is just an inefficient use of words, not really harmful. There's not anything meaningful you could append in five words. It didn't save or kill his business, nothing so dramatic.

"You'll never believe what happened" is clickbait. "This is what happened" is about on par with an extraneous comma.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Announcing Lamson Advertising Marketing Email Synergy - <AUTHOR> http://zedshaw.com/blog/2009-08-03.html

<comment><USER2> This post aside, the new Lamson HttpMail class is actually pretty neat. Look at this example: <http://dpaste.de/pocD/>, which mixes Markdown, HTML and CleverCSS into valid HTML with inline styles.

</comment><comment><USER3> Personally I think his jokes about Ruby and Rails are getting old and not funny anymore...

<comment><USER4> He's always going to grind that ax.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5>
        Lamson Advertising Marketing Email Synergy
        Lamson AMES
        Lamson AMES High Independence Technology
        Lamson AMES HIT
        L AMES HIT
        LAME SHIT

/joke-explainer :)

</comment><comment><USER6> Nice, all the words techcrunch would not like to read anymore in one paragraph

</comment><comment><USER7> Somebody explain again why it's a good idea not to have downvotes on submissions?

<comment><USER8> I guess it's because some people wouldn't understand the humor in sarcasm.

<comment><USER7> Sometimes people work hard on the sarcasm they completely forget about the humor. Reading this article is like getting served a hollow baked Alaska.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _The entire economy, and especially the advertising industry desperately needs Lamson AMES now, before another major economic collapse destroys the world._

Stopped reading after this line.

<comment><USER6> I think you may have taken him too seriously ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Yeah, I didn't like this. He produced some solid work with Mongrel. He should get back on that train and get over the static. I personally don't care what has been said - I wouldn't even think people at a Ruby conference would care much either.</comment>


Governments are using charges of cybercrime to silence journalists - <AUTHOR> https://sociable.co/web/governments-charges-cybercrime-silence-journalists/ <comment><USER2> I think a fundamental issue is that journalists want to be a protected class with special rights that are unavailable to the average citizen. A journalist should have exactly the same rights as the average citizen. Thus, if the laws are not amenable to an average citizen looking into the affairs of their government, fix the laws, don't try to carve out exceptions for journalists.

<comment><USER3> >A journalist should have exactly the same rights as the average citizen.

It should be the other way around: The average citizen should have exactly the same rights as a journalist. If it were so, then public animosity towards the media would dwindle.

<comment><USER2> I think we are in violent agreement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There has to be a balance, and that balance has to be continually tested in the courts.

So on the face of it, I do think it's appropriate that journalists get charged when they commit a crime. Let a high court decide if indeed the public interest did outweigh the law, or somebody's privacy, or whatever. You can't codify it.

Some will call that a chilling effect, or harassment, but how else do you reliably test things like this?

</comment><comment><USER5> Future crimes: Aggravated tweeting. Seditious live stream.

</comment><comment><USER6> TL;DR: Journalists saying things you don't like? Just tweak the laws (or misapply current laws) to make them criminals. EZ</comment>


Show HN: Using GitHub as a CMS for Techie Notes - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dvas0004/NerdNotes <comment><AUTHOR> I'm already using this for personal use... makes it easy for me to review what I learnt in the past. Wondering if it's useful for anyone else (clone the repo) or if anyone wants to follow my notes and maybe even contribute their own notes (add an issue to the repo... i'll review it and assign it to myself, at which point it will become visible on the site...)</comment>


Ask HN: Any Successful Startups using Microsoft Dotnet Stack? - <AUTHOR>

I am going to start a personal web project and professionally I am an Asp.Net(MVC) programmer. I have been trying Django which is nice and want to learn and use it. But sometimes I am too inclined to just start using Asp.net MVC. Obvious benefits to use are: 1) I am well versed in Asp.net (MVC) and Dotnet framework. 2) I have MSDN license so access to all MS tools. 3) Visual Studio is an awesome IDE. Some reasons not to use: 1) MS lock in. 2) Expensive hosting(??). 3) Not so cool :) <comment><USER2> The costs of Windows hosting has come down a lot over the years, so it's not the hosting costs that will kill you. More likely, it will be the expense of hiring additional .NET developers. The company I work for runs 200+ sites (most through acquisition), and when we inherit a new site that's not LAMP, it's not long before we migrate it to LAMP, just because it's cheaper to maintain. We have a handful of .NET sites, and a few Ruby sites, and I'd bet that the salary of the 4 or 5 guys who work on those sites is more than the combined salary of the other 50 PHP devs.

That said, if you can get the project profitable enough on your own, maybe you can afford to hire additional .NET devs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Inexpensive .net and php devs are not a problem here in India.

<comment><USER2> A very good point! I was referring to in-house development, which is essential during the startup phase. It's tough to outsource the innovation that comes from ramen-fueled coding marathons in a tiny studio apartment.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am based in India. Initially it will be me, a partner(both Asp.net mvc devs) and a UI guy working on the App. Hiring outside devs is far on the horizon but its good to consider that now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> FWIW, the reason I choose Django for my latest project is the admin. For a lot of internal facing stuff, I am running it off the admin framework and it has saved me a lot of time from writing html and JS template/code. I do not know much about .NET.. but if there is such a functionality, I would suggest got for it. What you know is going to make you more productive.

</comment><comment><USER4> This seems like a great opportunity to learn a new language, framework and IDE. Visual Studio is an awesome IDE but it's always valuable to learn something different and be able to integrate that in your day job. To answer your question, a successful site that keeps popping up that uses asp .Net MVC and the Microsoft stack would be StackOverflow.com

<comment><AUTHOR> I know abt StackOverflow.com but I am no rock star like jeff and joel :) ... I am more curious abt the kinda startups which are funded by Ycombinator.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What means "personal"? Do you do it mainly for the fun or for the money? If it's the second, it's a no brainer. Use the tools you know and focus on you problem domain.

If its an experiment or an exploratory project, well, use whatever appeals to you.

<comment><AUTHOR> "personal" means something no one would pay me to do and its sure for money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> So far what I knew are StackOverFlow.com and PlentyOfFish.com

1- The stackoverflow engine is a great example. Also you have the power of SilverLight, if you want to make your application interactive.

2- You are not really locked in, you should just pay the server licenses. Expensive, but that's the price you pay for using MS products. Read Jeff Articles about StackOverFlow, they have mentioned licensing and its matters.

3- Not So Cool? You already said, it has an awesome IDE?

</comment><comment><USER7> To answer your original question, look at Microsoft BizSpark which is a program from MS to encourage startups to use the .NET stack. Plenty of companies that have been successful with it.

But I wouldn't pick it unless there is a large pool of .net talent you can pick into - as startups I have worked with here in the US who have been .net based have found it hard to hire top-quality folk into a .net stack.

</comment><comment><USER8> Writely (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writely#History>), one of the precursors to Google Docs, was written using the .NET stack. [http://scobleizer.com/2006/03/09/congrats-to-writely-for- usi...](http://scobleizer.com/2006/03/09/congrats-to-writely-for-using-net-to- get-acquired-by-google/)

</comment><comment><USER9> A better question would be whether if .NET is the right tool set for the scope of your project not if a YC startup is using it?

If you are looking to explore and are open to learning further, by all means, jump into Django. On the other hand, if .NET access is no problem to you and your collaborators and that it fits your problem scope, go forth.

<comment><AUTHOR> .NET is for sure a right tool and a good one on that and Django has its own merits but here I am more interested in popular technology trends.

<comment><USER9> If you are going for popularity in HN circles, I don't think .NET is a particularly hot shot. Fwiw, I just remembered Loopt (a YC startup :-) used to be on a .NET full stack, but they are moving towards Rails for frontend (<http://www.loopt.com/jobs/web-developer-front-end>).

In general, Rails seems to be really _popular_. That doesn't necessarily mean it's the right tool or the best one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> <http://www.ubernote.com> uses ASP.NET, although it doesn't use MVC.

</comment><comment><USER11> We use ASP.NET at Feedity - <http://feedity.com>

Drop me a message if you would like to know more about ASP.NET in the production environment, automated build/deployment, affordable hosting options etc.

</comment><comment><USER12> plentyoffish comes to mind..but am not sure if they use any MVC framework</comment>


Don't Judge a Substack by Its Cover - <AUTHOR> https://secondbreakfast.co/don-t-judge-a-substack-by-its-cover <comment><USER2> > Lowering the bar for online publishing is fantastic. I am cheering for them.

> But I hope I don't find myself groaning when I click on Substack links.

> Medium became a victim of its own success. Too much noise, not enough > signal. I wonder how Substack can avoid the same fate.

Isn't this a problem of "network effects"? As the network grows, the quality lowers? To remain high quality you need strong filters which ultimately shrinks the network.

Substack is gonna be exposed to a similar problem as medium, and they may be able to solve it, but I don't expect so, because they aren't building a "magazine" but a "publishing platform".

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, that's what I'm wondering. I hope they're able to avoid the same outcome of Medium. I think the paid feature and the email-first feature change the dynamics a little bit. The similar brand matters less when all your subscribers are just getting your posts via email, and the subscribe/pay features can serve as signals to show which Substacks are worth paying more attention to.

We'll see!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > "Oh this person just throws stuff on Medium? Probably not worth my time."

This is just the worst attitude. Someone's not worth your time because they don't have the knowledge or time to stand up a website on their own domain? People who aren't web developers might still have something interesting to say.

<comment><USER4> For me, it's not that they can't stand up a website, but that there's very little barrier to entry. An article on the New Yorker, say, tends to be better than one on Medium not because the writer can make a website but because they have a strong editorial team that only publish content of a certain quality and edit it to improve it. An article on Medium may not even have been proofread.

<comment><USER3> I don't think that's a fair comparison. The New Yorker is a magazine that curates and publishes articles by people who write for a living and stakes its reputation on only publishing pieces of a high quality.

The distinction here really is if someone publishes on joesblog.com or on medium.com/joesblog. Both are self-published rather than selected for publication, but the OP was of the opinion that joesblog.com is an indicator of higher quality of content, which I don't think is true. All it indicates is that someone has been able to set up a website.</comment></comment></comment>


Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 – Mini Android - <AUTHOR> http://freeallsoftwares.com/2011/04/sony-ericsson-xperia-x10-mini-android/ Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 is a windows smart phone designed by Sony Ericsson group. Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 mobile phone has been powered by a snapdragon CPU and also their handset to mount the android operating system. <comment><AUTHOR> nice goodlooking Mobile and latest one</comment>


Show HN: Git-backed Static Website CMS for Jekyll (New Pricing) - <AUTHOR> https://www.staticwebsitemanager.com <comment><AUTHOR> OP here. I want to sincerely thank the whole Hacker News community -- I haven't participated much in the comments lately, but the insight, wisdom and support I continuely gain from this community have been incredibly impactful to me. Thank you, HN, for giving us all the ability to share the work we are all so passionate about.</comment>


Ask HN: Please review our web application (http://thecadmus.com) - <AUTHOR>

Cadmus - http://thecadmus.com
What is it?
Cadmus is a real time service that manages your stream (Twitter, FriendFeed and RSS) by displaying the most relevant content since the last time you checked in. It helps you get caught up on what you have missed. We track trending conversations between your friends and so you can easily see what your friends have been talking about recently.
Who are we targeting?
People that want to get the most out social media services but don't have the time to stay on it all day.
We would love to get the thoughts of the HN community on our service. It is easy to sign in and it takes a few minutes to process your initial set of updates.
More info about how we find top content: http://blog.anomalyinnovations.com/2009/12/cadmus-keeping-you-updated/.
And about the Trending Conversations feature: http://blog.anomalyinnovations.com/2010/01/cadmus-gets-trendy/. <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable links:

Site: <http://thecadmus.com>

More info about how we find top content: [http://blog.anomalyinnovations.com/2009/12/cadmus-keeping- yo...](http://blog.anomalyinnovations.com/2009/12/cadmus-keeping-you- updated/).

And about the Trending Conversations feature: [http://blog.anomalyinnovations.com/2010/01/cadmus-gets- trend...](http://blog.anomalyinnovations.com/2010/01/cadmus-gets-trendy/).

<comment><USER2> I used to rely heavily on the "clickable links" comment until someone put me onto the Greasemonkey script "Linkify Plus".

<http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/1352>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've been waiting for someone to come out with trending topics for friends ('friending topics' perhaps?)... now I just need this integrated into Tweetie and I'll be a happy camper!

Nice clean design, I especially like the background textures.

<comment><USER3> After spending some time using it, I don't think there is enough activity in my stream for the current implementation to be useful.

I would really like to see a list of key topics/hash tags that my friends have been talking about over the past ~24 hours... basically the way the trending topics feature from Twitter currently works, only with data just from my friends.

<comment><AUTHOR> Did the trends for the last day help (<http://thecadmus.com/assets/images/lander/image-4.png>) you?

One of the problems we currently have is that if you login very often and don't have very much activity, the homepage is not very useful. Kinda like what you mentioned. We are trying different approaches to sort this problem out.

Btw, the trending topics (like Twitter) is currently in the works and should be released in the next week or so.

Thanks.

<comment><USER3> I tried them all and not much changed for me... just some reshuffling of tweets and a few new ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This looks neat, really dig the approach. Confused about one thing. It states that it filtered out some relevant tweets for me - where are these displayed? Are they simply the ones that are shown at the top of my timeline?

<comment><AUTHOR> The posts that are filtered out are the ones that show up as related posts. Here is an example - [http://blog.anomalyinnovations.com/wp- content/uploads/2009/1...](http://blog.anomalyinnovations.com/wp- content/uploads/2009/11/relatedexample.png).

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Setup was an absolute breeze!

That is a really nice website design and UI, but your tagline (while great on a 24" Dell Monitor) is barely legible on older 17" Samsungs etc.

</comment><comment><USER5> I like the app a lot.

It would be useful if you can list all the links being shared on my stream since I don't want to go through the tweets one by one.</comment>


Emmy Noether changed the course of physics - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/05/the-female-mathematician-who-changed-the-course-of-physics-but-couldnt-get-a-job/1/ <comment><USER2> Noether's Theorem is something I wish was introduced a lot earlier than it ever seems to be: I think a simple, restricted, but still enlightening form of it can be introduced as soon as students have a basic mastery of derivatives and the idea that a derivative of zero means the function is constant with respect to that variable. You don't need to introduce the idea of generalized coordinates to give a flavor of how powerful this notion is.

Here's a few simple examples: [http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/noetherth.htm](http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/noetherth.htm)

Nothing about this requires math beyond undergrad calculus.

<comment><USER3> IIRC when I studied physics I think they tried to tell us that there was something profound about the fact that time-invariant systems conserve kinetic energy and space-invariant systems conserve momentum, … during the first year, but I don't think anyone was mindblown. Then during the second year we started learning about generalized coordinates and Lagrangians and I think we did learn the Noether theorem then (probably just about one semester later).

However I think I really fell in love with it when I understood gauge invariance.

In general I think you can always try to tell your students things a little early to impress them, but it rarely works until they can work out the math themselves. I remember our professor in introductory quantum mechanics saying something along the lines of: "and now you see why quantum mechanics is just Markov chains in imaginary time", but until another professor showed us the Wick rotation in the context of path integrals nobody really appreciated that even if it could have been in our grasp earlier.

I guess this has come out way denser than I meant it to be, but my point is that you can always try to introduce something a little bit earlier, but you'll often find that your students don't want to learn some diluted crap, they want the real deal!

<comment><USER4> I've never heard of QM being presented like that. Do you have a reference I could read? Thanks!

<comment><USER3> You can start here:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wick_rotation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wick_rotation)

and there was this on HN some time ago

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8377680](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8377680)

Though I didn't find Scott Aaronson to be as clear as the professor who finally showed us the Wick rotation. Unfortunately he passed away a few years back right after having missed being awarded the Nobel prize by an inch.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's my favorite way of thinking about Noether's theorem:

In physics, we have to assume the laws of nature are the same everywhere and for all time. Otherwise, we're wasting our time. Because of Noether's theorem, this means there are some conserved quantities. Whatever these happen to be is what we _call_ momentum and energy. If the laws of physics change (they are still the same everywhere, just modified based on an improved theory), then we have to change our definitions of what is conserved.

If you define kinetic energy as mv^2/2, then when you take into account relativity, you realize that's not conserved any more. However, because the physical law that relatively predicts still does not change over time, then _something_ must be conserved. So we call that energy instead. Until the next iteration, of course.

<comment><USER6> I actually think it may be a little more prosaic than that.

In order for us to have a scientifically verifiable theory, or at least a consequence of a theory that is scientifically verifiable, that theory/consequence must be invariant under translations in space, time and rotation. Otherwise there would be no repeatability of any related experiment.

As such, by Noether's theorem, that theory/consequence must conserve momentum, energy and angular momentum. At the very least.

So any theory that didn't conserve these quantities couldn't be scientifically verifiable. So it's sort of a tautology that scientific theories conserve these quantities.

<comment><USER7> It is nothing of the kind.

It is a matter of perfectly ordinary empirical fact that we live in a universe that, so far as we can tell, is translationally, temporally and rotationally invariant. There is absolutely nothing in Noether's theorem that forbids us from having theories that violate momentum, energy or angular momentum conservation if they happen to describe a universe that has aspects that violate those invariance conditions.

There have been theories that do so, like Dirac's weird large number thing. These are completely legitimate theories, and are entirely subject to absolutely ordinary observational, experimental and inferential verifiability (which is why we know Dirac's large number thing is likely false.)

<comment><USER6> Yes indeed. However, for us to be able to scientifically verify those theories, something about them must be invariant in space, time and rotation. That's pretty much the definition of a scientifically verifiable theory.

My point isn't that there can't be theories without those properties nor that the universe necessarily has them (or not). Just that, if it doesn't, we couldn't verify it scientifically.

<comment><USER8> According to Feynman there once were people saying that since experiments need to be repeatable, to be scientific the laws of physics must be deterministic, by pure logic. Oh, quantum mechanics? Oops.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> She was also very instrumental in the discovery of the functorality of homology in algebraic topology, which led to the explosion of homological algebra. She was definitely a great polymath

<comment><USER10> Also, a class of rings, called Noetherian rings[1], are named after her. Noetherian rings are of great importance in ring theory.

[1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noetherian_ring](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noetherian_ring)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Now, who can explain the Noether's theorem binding conservation law with an invariant better than "Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics"? :)

<comment><USER12> That depends on what you mean by "explain". The proof is simple calculus: [http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/noether.html](http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/noether.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> When these periodic "let's put a woman on a bill" come up Noether is my choice for the subject. Her work had a huge influence on the shape of the world today and few people outside physics and mathematics have heard of her.

<comment><USER14> Unfortunately, she was not American.

<comment><USER13> That's not an issue unless she wanted to be president. She taught in the US, and that's good enough for me.

<comment><USER15> And she's dead and has a name, which is good enough for the Department of the Treasury. That's the only legal restriction I could find on who may appear on US currency and securities [1]:

 _United States currency has the inscription "In God We Trust" in a place the Secretary decides is appropriate. Only the portrait of a deceased individual may appear on United States currency and securities. The name of the individual shall be inscribed below the portrait._

See the FAQ [2] at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing site for some interesting information on how the current choices came about.

[1] 31 USC §5114(b)

[2] [http://www.moneyfactory.gov/faqlibrary.html](http://www.moneyfactory.gov/faqlibrary.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Here's a NY Times article about Emmy Noether from 2012 [0] and the HN discussion [1]:

[0] The Mighty Mathematician You've Never Heard Of [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/27/science/emmy-noether- the-m...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/27/science/emmy-noether-the-most- significant-mathematician-youve-never-heard-of.html)

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3760447](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3760447)

</comment><comment><USER17> Noether made important contributions worth talking about, but I'd reserve the "changed the course of physics" qualification for Einstein and those oh his level.

<comment><USER18> Precisely. She didn't "change the course of physics" at all. Nothing in her work was a massive paradigm shift. She didn't shape the field for decades to come. Einstein did that, with special and general relativity. Him, Planck, de Broglie and all that crowd did that with quantum theory. Noether's theorem is beautiful, powerful and amazingly profound, and she definitely deserves way, way more recognition than she gets. But it's wrong to say that she "changed the course of physics".

<comment><USER5> > Nothing in her work was a massive paradigm shift. She didn't shape the field > for decades to come.

I disagree. Quantum field theories are often expressed as a collection of symmetries. The ever-successful Standard Model is:

SU(3) × SU(2) × U(1)

Everything else follows because of Noether's theorem. And by "everything", I mean, "every phenomena in the universe that we are aware of except for gravity".

<comment><USER19> Well, to be fair, you actually also have to put in some numbers, too: masses, mixing angles, coupling constants, and the Higgs vacuum expectation value. (See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Model#Construction_of...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Model#Construction_of_the_Standard_Model_Lagrangian) .) But, yeah, that symmetry description is incredibly powerful.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


More Ethereum Attacks: Race to Empty Is the Real Deal - <AUTHOR> http://vessenes.com/more-ethereum-attacks-race-to-empty-is-the-real-deal/ <comment><USER2> mind blowing...and so simple!</comment>


Simplify Lets Encrypt Certificates Management for Kubernetes - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/PalmStoneGames/kube-cert-manager <comment><USER2> I've been using this project on GKE for ~2 weeks now in combination with the nginx ingress controller. I have it configured to use the DNS challenge to get new certs so I don't have to expose an extra port as well.

It feels liberating to just get an SSL cert for any subdomain I need and have the whole process abstracted from me.

<comment> psg-luna Sicne a few days ago, ingress objects are now supported directly with the correct annotations. See [https://github.com/PalmStoneGames/kube-cert- manager/blob/mas...](https://github.com/PalmStoneGames/kube-cert- manager/blob/master/docs/ingress.md)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I thought I wanted this for a long time, but `kube-lego` gets me very similar results... without needing to inject credentials for my DNS provider to my cluster.

I'm curious if others have thoughts on this vs kube-lego. (I would agree that I like the approach of this project quite a bit more than kelseyhightower's. This feels more complete, works with far more providers, etc)

<comment> psg-luna You can use http challenges with kcm as well. Which is what ensures you don't need to inject dns credentials.

<comment><USER3> Whoa! This is really great! Thank you for this (and to think I was excited to see the Caddy secret backend, this is way better IMO)!

edit: Oh my, and I can use this for the HTTP challenge and still use it with other Ingress controllers. I'd love to buy you a beer/rootbeer or something, I'm so tickled to have this!

<comment> psg-luna If you're ever in stockholm, prod me on twitter and we can have a rootbeer :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Big kudos to Luna for fusing both of these awesome projects - this was actually on our backlog too and helped a lot!

</comment><comment><USER5> Found this similar project a couple days ago: [https://github.com/tazjin/kubernetes- letsencrypt](https://github.com/tazjin/kubernetes-letsencrypt)

Doesn't seem quite as configurable but looks a bit simpler to implement.

<comment><USER6> Please file an issue if you're missing some configuration option! I explicitly don't intend to support other challenge mechanisms than DNS though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm curious what advantages and tradeoffs it has over the project that it is based upon [1] for a person choosing between them.

[1]: [https://github.com/kelseyhightower/kube-cert- manager](https://github.com/kelseyhightower/kube-cert-manager)

<comment> psg-luna Largely, [https://github.com/kelseyhightower/kube-cert- manager](https://github.com/kelseyhightower/kube-cert-manager) is incomplete

* it does not support subdomains (only root domains)

* it only supports googlecloud as dns provider

* Bugs and PRs remain unanswered/unmerged

Meanwhile the linked project supports http, SNI and DNS challenges, with around 20 or so DNS providers available. It also supports managing certs for ingress objects directly.

<comment><USER8> Does it support multiple SANs on a single cert? I want to streamline things like vanity domain redirections, where every domain I add requires me to refresh the cert.

<comment> psg-luna Unfortunately, not currently, no :< It's trivial to get seperate certs, but getting them all on a single cert is not in yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What are the major difference between this and say kube-lego that might entice someone to switch?

<comment> psg-luna You can manage individual certs with cert objects that aren't used by ingresses.

<comment><USER9> Very cool, thank you!</comment></comment></comment>


Writing better code: it's imperative that you are declarative - <AUTHOR> http://togaroga.com/2010/03/writing-better-code-its-imperative-that-you-are-declarative/ Most C# developers are very familiar with writing imperative code (even though they may not know it by that name). In this article, I will introduce you to an alternative style of programming called declarative programming. Proper declarative code is easier to read, understand, and maintain. <comment><USER2> These aren't really good examples in my opinion. The "condensed" version is not better, because it makes one thing much worse: it is now hard to change the contents of the loop.

Especially when working with larger data sets, you need to be able to do whatever is necessary within a single loop over the data, to avoid lousy runtime. In the article's example, by automatically filtering out even numbers to do ONE operation, it is now very hard to modify that loop to perform other operations on numbers that may not be even.

In my practical experience, a "real" for-loop is almost always more flexible and valuable, and is just as clear.</comment>


Music of the Squares: David R. Hay and the Reinvention of Pythagorean Aesthetics - <AUTHOR> https://publicdomainreview.org/2019/05/16/music-of-the-squares-david-ramsay-hay-and-the-reinvention-of-pythagorean-aesthetics/ <comment><USER2> I've never heard of Hay's theory but it's extremely alluring and interesting on first look. The proposition that generation of the "beauty" sensation in the brain should be the same for different types of stimuli, e.g. auditory and visual and maybe others, too, touch, smell, etc. has a certain Maxwell's equations-like unification grandeur to it.

I don't think this theory is right, though: music generation and appreciation seems to be linked to language, at least in humans. This is not surprising, given its syntactic, temporal nature. I don't think all visual arts work this way, though you can certainly create beautiful patterns based on music-like repetition rules, e.g. Islamic geometrical patterns.

Just a hunch, I know nothing about visual arts and even less about music.

<comment><USER3> Interesting?

Why would you say music is linked to language?

Chimps beat rhythmic tunes on logs. I reckon music predates language.

Birds have different songs for occasions. Mating etc.

Seems to me rhythm thus music comes before talking.

But I'm just like you, no expert in anthropology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The original 1856 Hay book ("The science of beauty: as developed in nature and applied in art") can be downloaded here: [https://archive.org/details/scienceofbeautya00hayd_0](https://archive.org/details/scienceofbeautya00hayd_0)

</comment><comment><USER5> They're quite lovely illustrations in service of pretty bonkers ideas.</comment>


Ask HN: Anybody submitted a proposal to seedrs.com? - <AUTHOR>

I've just submitted a proposal for a funding request to seedrs.com, for a project I'm trying to get off the ground. It's the first time I've ever done anything like this.<p>Has anybody here went and got funding from investors from seedrs.com or a similar site? In your experience, how likely is the funding goal to be reached? <comment><USER2> Hi all,

A few replies to the questions raised.

Difference between Seedrs and Kickstarter: Seedrs is equity investment, Kickstarter is non-monetary rewards. If you invest through Seedrs, you get shares in the business with full upside (and downside). If you contribute through Kickstarter, you get whatever product or other reward the company is offering (no upside or downside). Both great businesses but very different.

Difference between Seedrs and AngelList: Seedrs is a transactional platform where people make direct investments; AngelList is a source of introductions, after which you go and do an investment off-line. Also, Seedrs is focused on idea-stage, pre-revenues companies and open to a wide group of investors; most deals closed following AngelList intros are at the next stage (because that's generally where traditional angels invest) and only involve accredited/HNW investors. Again, both great but different.

As for whether there is a Seedrs equivalent for the US: not yet but there will be lots soon. As of now equity crowdfunding is not legal in the U.S., but as soon as the SEC and FINRA implement regulations under the JOBS Act, it will be, and loads of platforms are lining up to do exactly the sort of thing Seedrs does in the UK.

Hope that's helpful!

Jeff Lynn (CEO and co-founder of Seedrs)

</comment><comment><USER3> Is there a seedrs equivalent for the US?

</comment><comment><USER4> quick question : how different is seedrs from angel list?

<comment><AUTHOR> It looks to me like the only major difference is that seedrs is UK based/focused.

<comment><USER4> also it has a kickstarter-y feel.</comment></comment></comment>


HN is my new Facebook - <AUTHOR> I find myself not checking my Facebook feed as often as before. Instead I check the HN feed more and more everyday. Am I alone? Between VR, AI, Cryptos, etc, I love the technologies of today's world. Very exciting time ahead. Thanks HN. <comment><USER2> This is my first post so here it goes:

I'm a 30 yo self-taught programmer from Romania and I've found this page a couple of months ago... since then this is my point of entry to the WWW, this is really adictive! :D

Great job maintining this!

</comment><comment><USER3> Been a HN user for 6+ years and after all these years HN is still pretty much the only feed I check on a daily basis. (not on Facebook so my example may not be very relevant)

The thing I love about the experience can be summed up as: \- no click bait headlines \- no endless "engagement", notifications, round navigation and noise (incredible quality of content curation) \- amazing community (comments are often more insightful than the source)

Basically there comes a moment when you're up to date - reading done - and can carry on with life afterwards.

</comment><comment><USER4> Beware of echo-chambers.

[http://n-gate.com/](http://n-gate.com/)

<comment><USER5> _Hackernews takes this claim seriously, and has opinions about it._

Delicious irony. Someone "hates" HN enough to spend all their time here and then write a send up of it every freakin week. It does not even appear to be monetized.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I stopped using Facebook years ago and the quality of my life improved notably, I would highly recommend it based on my own experience. I personally found it to be a huge waste of time, and also full of useless information that amounts to brain pollution. Do you really care what an excoworker from an old job ate for breakfast? Do you really want to know a grade school classmates political opinions? Do you really want to see vacation photos of someone you sort of once knew? How much time, energy, brain power, do you devote to any of this? Does it give you any value in your life? Does it make you feel good? etc etc etc

You might think "oh but I like it to stay in touch with people!" but eh... pick up the phone and call someone, or send them a text message. Actually communicate with the people you want to keep in touch with. Casually observing what someone is doing via internet voyeurism is not staying in touch.

</comment><comment><USER7> This only works until it gets too popular. Reddit was pretty awesome back in the day too, specifically because it had an HN-like crowd.

<comment><USER8> reddit can be OK, you just have to invest time into finding subreddits relevant for you and unsubscribe from the defaults.

<comment><USER9> Defaults no longer exist. (Hooray!)

<comment><USER8> Do you just mean the changes to the front page, or do you actually get an empty list of subscribed subreddits when you create new account? (too lazy to create a throwaway :))

<comment><USER9> New accounts now start with zero subscribed reddits.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/6eh6ga/reddi...](https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/6eh6ga/reddits_new_signup_experience/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It is also like Facebook for me. Indeed, these are two first lines of my /etc/hosts and only comment them from time to time:

        127.0.0.1	news.ycombinator.com
        127.0.0.1	www.facebook.com

</comment><comment><USER11> I find that it's a near perfect niche for news. It's slim and dead-simple: there's one feed (two if you count new, then the subdivisions show and ask), no following or friends, direct messaging is even excluded. It was built into a niche, and it expanded to fill it perfectly.

<comment><USER12> "no following or friends"

If you still use an RSS reader, you can follow a specific user's comments:

[https://hn.algolia.com/userfeed/rahimnathwani](https://hn.algolia.com/userfeed/rahimnathwani)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Same here. Facebook will just make you loose your time and fill your brain with useless data.

<comment><USER9> I could say the same about HN...

<comment><USER14> I couldn't. There's plenty of actually interesting and useful articles cited here, and then discussed (esp. if you're a programmer, but there's lots of non-programming topics discussed as well).

I can't say the same for Facebook. At best, you'll see cat photos and videos, which are OK, but not exactly intellectual, and I can get that stuff on Reddit's /r/aww anyway. More likely, you'll see a bunch of insane alt-right- wing "news" and memes and conspiracy theories passed around by your dumb relatives.

<comment><USER9> There's a lot of potential for timewasting on procrastination on both HN and Facebook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm thinking that both Facebook and Twitter has lost that early adopter, frontier mindset that initially drew us to it. Reddit had it for a few years but has lost it now and HS has some of it in a niche way.

I think that there's a huge space, a huge potential for a new social network which we, early adopters, will jump in and love.

</comment><comment><USER16> Yeah, same here. Just don't start posting cat photos or what you ate today.

<comment><USER17> edit: tried pasting grumpy cat ascii art. Didn't work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It would be a lot better without karma.

</comment><comment><USER19> Apples and oranges for me.

I use Facebook to keep up with friends and family. I use HN, among others, to keep up with technology.

I see no reason for dropping one or the other, they don't even intersect for me.

</comment><comment><USER20> Pipe yourself to /dev/null.

</comment><comment><USER21> HN sounds very similar to the FFF forum in Gibson's pattern recognition novel. And I mean it in a good way. Also, if it's not on Hacker News, then it's not news.

<comment><USER15> The FFF forum, to me, was similar to the Unfiction Forums - which was very active at the time the book was released, and both dealt with mysteries and puzzles of online phenomena - with found footage (for FFF) & Alternate Reality Games (Unfiction).

ARG players knew they were playing a game, but there is also a game and excitement about finding out whether an online mystery is actually a game or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I think wherever there's sizable amount of devs, engineers & creators are in a group. Things get pretty meta and discussions run deep in subject and quality. Good to be on HN. May people post really good tech and exciting world happenings and create a multicultural world-view among the users.

Like they say in Canada : "Peace Ooooot"

</comment><comment><USER23> I just hope HN will have an official app in the near future.

<comment><USER24> Out of curiosity, what do you find lacking in the third party HN apps? I use Materialistic on Android and find it to be pretty great.

<comment><USER25> Agreed. When I switched to iOS, I bought MiniHack (paid, but well worth it) and I've been very satisfied.

In addition, it fits the HN ethos to only provide a dead simple website and an API and let the community do the rest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've been getting into Crypto a lot lately.

</comment><comment><USER27> Strange, I'm absolutely jaded on the technologies of today's world. The web and mobile phones have locked us into a shitty content consuming culture. Almost nobody is writing real novel software, they're just gluing together premade parts and managing the plumbing. I don't even blame them, the amount of effort required to just get people to look at something that doesn't open with 1 click is immense.

But shunting data in and out of sql databases and making REST APIs is not novel tech work, it's just a very fragile way of describing and maintaining policy. The tech sites of old had more interesting and novel implementations in a handful of articles than passes through HN in a week, and it wasn't stuck behind a SaaS wall either.

As for VR or AI, one is stuck in a rut of uninspired arcade shovelware and the other is being used for terrifying totalitarian purposes. Welcome to cyberpunk dystopia, population you.

<comment><USER28> My own feeling is that we're now smack dab in the middle of two tech hype cycles, and yeah - it does seem kind of boring right now to be honest.

We've probably hit and passed peak web/app/social but the horizon technologies seem still very immature, with relatively high barriers to experimentation.

I've found this is reflected in my own experience perusing HN. In the past I found something on the first page almost every single day that blew my hair back. Now I'm mostly like "Oh, some ancient civilization used scorpion venom to make birthday cakes..." or "Oh, this React library hit version 8.5.2...guess I'll go...make a CRUD app now?"

I don't think my experience says anything about HN though - this community is as good as ever. I'm probably just getting old. One thing I know for sure is that there's a ton of opportunity out there for those with a prepared mind and enthusiasm for technology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I find medium is my new FB.

</comment><comment><USER30> I use Block site plugin for chrome which redirects facebook to HN :D

</comment><comment><USER31> I don't have Facebook. All the cool people are on HN.

</comment><comment><USER32> same here, opens automatically.

</comment><comment><USER33> Same here.

</comment><comment><USER34> You...do realize that all the news articles are basically product and startup propaganda, right?

Go read some n-gate to put things in perspective.</comment>


Russian/Soviet movie studio Mosfilm posts classic Soviet movies to Youtube - <AUTHOR>

I think this is the first time a major film studio posted full-length films (with subtitles, no less) online for free non-commercial use.
Check it out at http://www.youtube.com/user/mosfilm.
What do you think about this? I doubt any American studios would do anything like it, even for their ancient catalogue - they prefer to wring some few pennies more from it by licensing it to Netflix (while withholding new releases because of cable companies' pressure). <comment><USER2> Oh, they have "White Sun of the Desert" there - <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066565>, <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yia2azQd4GY>

This is the movie that is traditionally watched by all departing space crews on the night prior to the launch. This has been going on since the early days of the Soviet space program and it appears to be continuing to this day. Great movie, highly recommended.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: <http://www.youtube.com/user/mosfilm>

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for the link! I think I'll watch Иваново детство this evening.

</comment><comment><USER4> Awesome! Thanks for letting know.</comment>


Genetic Evidence on the Origins of Indian Caste Populations - <AUTHOR> http://m.genome.cshlp.org/content/11/6/994.full <comment><USER2> Why is the article biased more towards Hindi???? Even Telugu is cited more but there isn't any word about Tamil?? Our history from literacy works says different!</comment>


Ask HN: What new language/framework would you like to learn? - <AUTHOR> I have a significant amount of experience with Ruby on Rails and front-end javascript development (React and Backbone) and a little (< 6 months) professional experience with Go.
I have a new side project and would like to build it using a new language/framework. I am leaning towards Python as I also have been dabbling in Machine Learning but adding something like Java to my skill set would get me more experience with strongly typed/compiled languages.
Recently I've been looking for a new position and I get the feeling that Rails is starting to fade or at least its growth has halted.
My goal with choosing a new language is to learn something new that opens up more opportunities.
What language/framework would you choose if you wanted to break out of your development comfort zone?
P.S. Please ask any questions if you want more details. I'll append my original question with the answer. <comment><USER2> C++ & Python are my primary langs; I also do Java, C#, JavaScript, VB, R, x86 asm. I'd learn Rust if I had the time because I think it's a genuine advance in terms of concurrency. Python is a good option for you as it gives you more webdev coverage, but is also heavily used in other areas like scientific computing & finance. I'd recommend C# over Java, as it will take you into the MS ecosystem.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting, I hadn't thought about C#, though recently I was talking to a recruiter who wanted me to interview for a C# position. :p</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why is Facebook not having a harder time hiring? - <AUTHOR> With all repeated issues the company is suffering with their product strategy, software quality, privacy issues, executive retention, etc., why are people still eager to join the company? <comment><USER2> When you get paid $200k/yr right out of college, who's complaining?

<comment><USER3> Integrity

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A lot of the issues are perceived to be overblown - and in more cases than HN would like to admit, they indeed are overblown.

Quite a few double standards are being applied to Facebook by the media- industrial complex and the uninformed. On the other hand, Facebook has stumbled a lot on their own and deserve a significant portion of the criticism they get. It's a nuanced topic and isn't as simple as "FB bad, pls delete".

Facebook also has an extremely talented employee base and they pay industry- high salaries while also doing cutting edge work.

Smart people want to work with other smart people on interesting large-scale problems.

<comment><USER5> Destroying a society, addicting people/kids, violating privacy, generating inequality consequences -- interesting large scale problems indeed -- FB is working on CAUSING them. REALLY smart people wouldn't do this.

But then, who cares if you make big money. For allowing this the US deserves everything it gets.

<comment><USER4> This is the kind of rhetoric that people shut out. It doesn't work.

Facebook is many things, and has many effects on society. Not all of them are good and in some cases cause active harm but not all of them are bad and in some cases do active good. I think most people agree with this assessment if they're being intellectually honest.

And from there, we can try to identify what aspects are extremely problematic and potential solutions to curb the downside risks.

But the point of your rhetoric seems to be because you want to drive a specific agenda or viewpoint. Everything you said could equally apply to Television, Hollywood, or even Radio and those same arguments were made during the advent of those media too. It's just not interesting rhetoric to engage with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I know a lot of senior data people (read: high demand tech people) applying there right now. A few things:

1\. People who work there are generally happy. Interesting problems to work on, a company where tech is respected, etc.

2\. A lot of those issues you list are common in big tech, see Google. The people I know who are looking at Facebook may want to work at a bigger, more stable company.

3\. As everyone else mentions, $$$. That said, Finance also pays similar rates but I don't see a lot of people fighting for those roles, so that doesn't fully explain it IMO.

</comment><comment><USER7> Because money trumps ethics in our society, and Facebook still looks like a good career move.

But there will be a tipping point soon (next 12 months) when FB stock price begins to legit crash after another scandal finally breaks the camel's back. Hasn't happened yet with the FTC fine, but it will come. When their valuation is no longer up and to the right, the hiring situation will change dramatically.

</comment><comment><USER8> Facebook is today's tobacco company. Tobacco companies need to pay 2-5 times to the "normal" rate to get people to work for them.

<comment><USER4> Why such an extreme comparison?

Does the Television industry hit too close to home to not use as an analogy instead?

<comment><USER9> netflix pays more than facebook

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting technical work, great peers, good comp. If you are a user, it's good to work on something that you use. If you're in the front-end space in particular, its exciting to work on things that have significantly changed the ecosystem.

(Ex-Facebooker. When the Cambridge Analytica stuff went down I wasn't too thrilled, but above all I left because of lack of work-life balance.)

</comment><comment><USER11> Because people like money

</comment><comment><USER12> Because of money obviously. If someone is out of a job for a month, especially if they don't have "deep" savings, they'll take the first or highest offer they get.

Also, how do you know they aren't having a harder time hiring?

</comment><comment><USER13> They pay 250k for someone with 2yoe. And have benefits better than 99 percent of companies (likely more than 99 percent honestly).

Edit:

And, a properly defined career ladder. Competitive stock refreshers and bonuses. Varied projects.

</comment><comment><USER14> Interesting problems (not too many places you can do stuff at that kind of scale/impact), very pleasant environment within the company, and yes, money too. And there are a few who come precisely _because_ of those troubles, to make things better instead of standing in a glass house throwing stones.

</comment><comment><USER15> Why are people taking jobs in governments? In oil companies? In tobacco companies?

</comment><comment><USER16> Because some support FB's mission of giving people the power to build community and bring the world closer together?

Why majority thinks that everything what FB does is necessarily bad? It's not true at all and plainly evil propaganda.

<comment><USER5> Oh, please, you can't be that gullible to believe Zuckerberg's marketing -- a guy who sued 300 people to build his Hawaii mansion.

With people like you no wonder he gets away with all his crap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Also lots of people aren't paying attention to that stuff.

</comment><comment><USER18> Because they get first pick of the good interns and they're still better than a couple of the other big places to work for.

</comment><comment><USER19> Unfortunately, accountability and respect for privacy seem to be a meme these days

</comment><comment><USER20> Show me a big company without those kinds of problems.

</comment><comment><USER21> Because Facebook hires skilled people, not great people.

</comment><comment><USER22> Because they're not suffering with their product strategy, software quality, privacy issues, or executive retention.

Don't believe what you read in the news.

</comment><comment><USER23> $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

I mean really it shouldn't be surprising, they pay really well.

</comment><comment><USER24> Pay > Ethics

They will have to live with the consequenses when they are older. I hope it weights heavily on those that compromised their beliefs for a 'cool job'.

</comment><comment><USER25> Honestly, for that money, I'd sell out. But I'd also make myself a huge thorn in the side after the first year anytime anything unethical was going on. If I got fired, I would ADD IT TO MY RESUME, that I left a job at FB making 150k because I took an ethical stand against nasty behavior. I'd have a big chunk of green in my pocket, come across as a coding saint to future employers, and they would KNOW that my last salary was 6 figures. It's really kinda awesome!</comment>