"Lifestyle" CEO bootstraps business to 30 MM unique visitors: The wikiHow story - <AUTHOR> http://www.xconomy.com/national/2011/12/16/how-to-build-a-lifestyle-business-with-30m-visitors-per-month/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> _Even many startuppers, who often work insane hours on the assumption that their options will turn to gold when their company is acquired or goes public, seem to reserve special pity for lifestyle entrepreneurs who haven't won Sand Hill Road money and aren't perpetually "killing it" or "crushing it" in the way Silicon Valley culture demands._

Pity for people who make a good living doing what they love? I don't know who the author thinks he is speaking for, but I highly doubt it's "many" people in the startup community. Replace pity with admiration and then you have an accurate statement.

<comment><USER3> Maybe I overdramatized. My point in the opening of the piece was that in the dominant Silicon Valley mythology, building a "lifestyle" company is seen as a less macho and ambitious path than building a VC-backed company that has a shot at making its founders and investors mega-rich.

<comment><USER4> > in the dominant Silicon Valley mythology, building a "lifestyle" company is > seen as a less macho and ambitious path than building a VC-backed company

To be fair, I think this is not so much about the common mythology in the valley. It's more about how the valley PR sites most commonly talk about.

There's so many bad companies in the tech scene, that we often look at the VC/angel scene as the filter for whats worth looking at.

I'd argue (as a creator a lifestyle business) that there are even more uninteresting startups with that fall into the lifestyle label - by that I mean not very pressworthy - not that its a bad business. The companies that are trying to do big things, usually require capital and that often comes with getting press and attention.

It's also important to note that most "lifestyle" companies aren't really startups anyway.. more small businesses... and they aren't the type of companies that need VC in the first place.

But as soon as any lifestyle business becomes successful, they get a ton of praise. Especially on HN. Just like any acquisition or exit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> WikiHow is a great story, but the word 'bootstrap' doesn't appear in the original article headline or text, because the origin story is a little more convoluted than a simple incremental bootstrap.

Essentially the wikiHow founders bought Web-1.0 also-ran eHow for cheap, turned it around with new content, SEO, and AdSense, and flipped it to Demand Media, keeping the wikiHow sideline as something unique and personally interesting.

There are some scrappy bootstrap elements there, but also, as Herrick is quoted saying in the article, "It was like a microcap turnaround." It's also clear that the "very nice deal" with Demand Media has allowed a patience with wikiHow that might not be available to every bootstrapping team.

</comment><comment><USER6> Minor nit: Zynga has far more than 30mm MAU or uniques. They are somewhere in the range of 100mm - 300mm, depending on how you deduplicate.

</comment><comment><USER7> not to nitpick, but what another poster here calls "Essentially the wikiHow founders bought Web-1.0 also-ran eHow for cheap,", the article specifies as $100,000.

Right, quite cheap, if you have that kind of money kicking around you can live a story that ends up with you bootstrapping to 30MM visitors. Sounds like this guy's story is very different from the kids who really need the $16k they first sell 7% of their company for.

I guess I'm more interested in 'bootstrapping' that happens with a laptop and skype, not already having 100k.

The article doesn't specify whether he got large material support from family background. But from the story of the point he was at in his education when he went off to do rock-climbing with a large 'off-budget' travel fund, all after working briefly as a 23-year-old mgt consultant, it's not hard to piece together.

If someone has links to similar stories that are more in line with not having these things, while bootstrapping/not seeking outside investment, would love links.

<comment><USER8> I was wikiHow's first (I think) intern. Back in 08 their entire company was two guys working in a side room in Jack's dad's office and only one tech guy who was based in Toronto. I don't think that wikiHow was bootstrapped in the traditional sense as I'm pretty sure his family has a decent amount of money (or whatever passes for that in the Bay Area these days). That being said, here's a guy who's passionate about what he's doing and is comfortable avoiding the start-up rat race. Given all that, the numbers he's pulling are pretty remarkable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> wikiHow is a really cool place to "hang out" on the web. There's ALWAYS something new to learn... something interesting / fun / odd to read. It's no wonder that it gets so many visitors! And frankly? Who cares if it's a "lifestyle" company? It's now MY lifestyle to check the site several times per day... which can only be a good thing as far as advertisers are concerned.</comment>


Invest in SMS Marketing in 2020 - <AUTHOR> https://bsg.world/products/bulk-sms/ <comment><AUTHOR> \- No restrictions. Sending info in messengers requires accounts for both the recipient and sender, as well as a free access to the Internet. In addition, it is possible that the client user does not have the necessary software at all. In order to avoid any difficulties, there is the SMS mailing. The information that you want to share with the client will be delivered regardless of the availability of a connection to the World Wide Web. \- Automation using RCS. New transmission standards are not supported by all mobile devices. The RCS function allows delivery of messages regardless of the recipient's device characteristics. The information is converted to the required format, so it is sufficient to check the status of MNP. \- Safety. E-mails from unknown senders are being opened less and less frequently. The desire to ensure security and preserve confidential data causes messages from strangers to be ignored. SMS, in turn, carries no danger. The recipient does not need much time to read it and the message is less likely to be considered spam. \- Minimum amount of time. It takes more time to read an email. Answering managers' calls is not always convenient. For these reasons, SMS is considered one of the easiest ways to communicate. The minimum of superfluous text and the maximum of sense bribe customers, who in 98% of cases will read the message. \- Customization. Soulless texts do not arouse interest. A letter that starts with a personal message is more likely to attract attention, clients like to hear or see their name. In most cases, recipients will provide personal information themselves, so using it can be at your advantage.</comment>


Weekend Book Recommendations - <AUTHOR> https://slbr.substack.com/p/weekend-book-recommendations-3f2?r=69fyj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=hackernews <comment><USER2> So much of the left demurs from the label "Left". It isn't hard to tell that this website is significantly biased, but I appreciate that they're up front about it.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Please give feedback</comment>


What we can learn about UI from the past 18 years - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@stevenbradleyconsulting/what-we-can-learn-about-ui-from-the-past-18-years-5adc7eb5eb57 <comment> java-man so, what _did_ we learn?</comment>


The High-Speed Trading Behind an Amazon Purchase - <AUTHOR> http://news.morningstar.com/all/dow-jones/us-markets/20170326515/the-high-speed-trading-behind-your-amazon-purchase.aspx <comment><USER2> Sounds like a solution looking for a problem to me.

For all of this complexity, Amazon rarely has a significant price advantage versus most retail stores.

From a customer point of view, competitive categories have a flea market quality to them. For a company that is usually optimized for customer experience, this is a weird science experiment.

IMO, they should make price adjustments less fluid. Require merchants to get to the lowest price as soon as possible, and punish stupid resellers that throw up divergent high/low prices by forcing them to live with it.

<comment><USER3> I suspect (here as with the earlier story about imposter goods on Amazon) that the explanation for Amazon's behavior is that it doesn't have the resources to moderate the system its created. Disallowing price adjustments altogether wouldn't work for many categories- sometimes the price of milk just _does_ go up, and retailers can't always just eat the difference. Disallowing _only manipulative_ price adjustments would require either a sophisticated AI (which would be liable to fail in perverse-looking ways) or an expensive team of human analysts (which would at least only fail in plausible-looking ways.) But until these sorts of issues really start effecting Amazon's bottom line, its not going to touch them.

<comment><USER2> It's hard to know how it affects them because Amazon is held to a special standard where making money isn't really a thing.

I know anecdotally that non-techie people whom I associate with increasingly are wary about Amazon after getting scammed by fake phone accessories or gouged by Christmas toy prices.

When you consider that Amazon is moving into new categories where trust is critical, like food, this is going to hurt them. Every grocer peddles trust, "we're good neighbors", etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Once upon a time I worked at an ebook company. We were naively trying to compete with Amazon (i.e. we sold every book we could get our hands on).

Sometimes we'd negotiate a deal with a publisher, and slash the price of a book to a point where no one involved in the transaction was making money, sometimes we and the publisher would be losing money... Without fail within an hour the list price of the content on Amazon would be exactly what we set.

Amazon were/are prepared to eat the loss: I suspect this is the case for all products that are sold by Amazon. It was a very effective strategy for them. My company went into administration after just 9 months.

<comment><USER5> I once read the account of a student who gamed the bots sellers use to competitively price their products in order to get cheap textbooks. The person made a dummy seller account, setup a bot, and listed the books they needed. As they lowered their listing prices, the real sellers' bots auto-price matched. The student then bought all their books at ~1/10th the original price, canceled any orders they may have received, and deleted their store.

<comment><USER6> That sounds heartwarmingly difficult to police...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've used several repricers, it's a must when selling competitive products with a large numbers of skus.

One thing I'll note is that there's up to a 15 minute delay before a price change takes effect.

Also, Amazon will often "suppress" the buy box if no sellers have a good price. You can still buy, but there's an extra step needed. "Other sellers", then add to cart.

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't see what's so special about continuously updating your price as a seller. This happens in pretty much every grocery market in the Middle East or Eastern Europe.

I also don't understand how the supposedly fierce competition between sellers ends up yielding prices that are higher than offline stores. Seems the reporter missed the true story.

<comment><USER9> Is it common to see a guy hawking $1000 tomatoes from an empty stall in such markets?

<comment><USER10> No but that's also not what happens on Amazon. Prices may double but that's also pretty standard for fruits & vegetables when supply doesn't match demand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Amazon's $23M book about flies (2011)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10289742](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10289742)

</comment><comment><USER12> It's interesting to know that products on Amazon might not be the lowest price, or always close. I thought there was more manual price research and setting, like Walmart.

<comment><USER13> Walmart can't change their prices as fast; humans have to re-label things. For now.

Brick and mortar retailers can use radio-controlled e-ink shelf price tags for minute by minute price changes.[1] This hasn't really caught on yet, but the technology is ready.

[1] [http://www.eink.com/esl_tags.html](http://www.eink.com/esl_tags.html)

<comment><USER14> > Brick and mortar retailers can use radio-controlled e-ink shelf price tags > for minute by minute price changes.

How does that even work? You pick up the product and the price changes by the time you go pay for it? Who would like that?

<comment><USER15> That's what you'd think. But with Best Price Just For You!™ technology, you don't actually get the price on the shelf. You get the lowest listed price in the last hour. If the price is raised you Keep Your Locked In Price™. If the price is lowered you get the new better price!

<comment><USER16> IIRC one of the US grocers (stop and shop or Kroger?) actually tried that as an ad for their store card: "you do not even know how much you will pay for many products, but it will be a lower price". Needless to say this didn't run for a long time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Here is a link without a paywall:

[http://news.morningstar.com/all/dow-jones/us- markets/2017032...](http://news.morningstar.com/all/dow-jones/us- markets/20170326515/the-high-speed-trading-behind-your-amazon-purchase.aspx)

<comment><USER18> Sorry for the off-topic, but why is this available free on Morning Star, and paid-for on WSJ? Don't assume Morning Star is ripping WSJ, so is the pay wall a lie (for this (sort of) article)?

<comment><USER19> the author works for wsj.. both wsj and dow jones newswires are owned by news corp. The article was published on dow jones newswires, which morningstar has subscribed to and is paying for.

So the answer is, morningstar has paid for this article.. and they've decided they can make it up using ads or other sources of revenue.

<comment><USER20> Wonder how much morningstar pays to syndicate? E.G. how much advertising revenue until they break even?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I try to put this on all WSJ articles that make the front page. Here is a direct link to this story that will auto-kill the paywall:

[https://m.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Fa...](https://m.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fthe- high-speed-trading-behind-your-amazon-purchase-1490532110%3Fmod%3De2fb)

If you want a draggable bookmarklet that will bypass the paywall for all WSJ articles, go here:

[http://salzeko.com/wsj/](http://salzeko.com/wsj/)

It would be nice if HN would make a change to their link submission code so that it automatically changes WSJ URLs to use the Facebook redirect workaround, since they are the one major site that disabled the Google workaround. But until then we have to do it this way.

<comment><USER22> Or _pay_.

<comment><USER21> Most people on HN are not WSJ subscribers. Given that the purpose of posting links on HN is to be able to discuss them, WSJ links should either a) not be posted here, or b) they should have a paywall workaround automatically built- in. The entire reason that the "web" link exists is because it was assumed that sites would not risk being deindexed by Google for cloaking, and would therefore disable their paywalls when Google was the referrer. WSJ is the only major site that has chosen to brazenly run afoul of Google's cloaking policy (sadly, they have not yet suffered the consequences). So they warrant special treatment here, and by implementation of the "web" link, HN has already shown that it is willing to assist in paywall bypass.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Off-topic: Am I the only who can never load the comments on WSJ articles? This is across browsers (Firefox/Chrome) and platforms (Windows/Mac/iOS), and even with adblockers turned off. This article says it has 36 comments, so it must be working for most, but I can't seem to figure out why it never works for me.

<comment><USER24> Works for me. Sorry that this comment isn't very helpful. Do you still get the same problem on different network/region/country?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Does anyone have a mirror? The article is behind a paywall.

<comment><USER26> [http://news.morningstar.com/all/dow-jones/us- markets/2017032...](http://news.morningstar.com/all/dow-jones/us- markets/20170326515/the-high-speed-trading-behind-your-amazon-purchase.aspx)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is a very unfortunate trend where sellers are selling not based on the value of the item/service, but demand/need of the consumer. It has been a common practice in airline industry, and upto some extent in healthcare. But now this practice is creeping into online shopping too. This can soon fall into unethical territory. Imagine an item, that costs $1. Just because it could be life-saving for someone, or someone needs it badly, you sell it at much higher premium. You are not charging for your service, but exploiting other people need.

<comment><USER28> you've just described capitalism

<comment><USER29> Or price gouging. In capitalism if the price rises too high sellers should be motivated to bring more supply to the market.

<comment><USER30> Assuming the seller lacks a monopoly, that is exactly what happens.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Kaggle wants to turn Rockstar Programmers into the next Roger Federer - <AUTHOR>

Heard of the NetFlix Prize?
If you're thinking of dabbling into data science and analytics, and want to make some money along the way, then I highly recommend you listen to the latest Techzing interview of the guys from Kaggle.
In a 2 hour interview (no boring bits so it didn't feel long), Kaggle share their really interesting story on how they went from a website built and run from Anthony's bedroom to a company whose aim is to turn rockstar programmers into the next Roger Federer - girls, fame and fortune (minus the tennis).
Link: http://techzinglive.com/page/927/166-tz-interview-anhony-goldbloom-and-jeremy-howard-kaggle <comment><USER2> Submit this as an article next time, maybe?</comment>


Google postpones China mobiles after censorship row - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8467491.stm

<comment><USER2> Google says it has postponed the launch of two Android based mobile phones in China following a dispute with the government over censorship.</comment>


Mastering PostgreSQL in Application Development - <AUTHOR> http://masteringpostgresql.com <comment><USER2> As someone that cares greatly about the Postgres ecosystem there aren't nearly enough books out there, so really excited to see this one come to life. Instead of targeting DBAs the focus on app devs is very refreshing so that people can start to leverage more of the awesome in Postgres. I haven't yet read the book myself but absolutely will.

If you're curious to read some of Dimitri's writing ahead of time his blog is also a great resource - [http://tapoueh.org/](http://tapoueh.org/)

<comment><USER3> I think it's to a degree a function of significant volume of high quality material available in the open. It's hard to sell a book when you can go to Bruce Momjian's site [https://momjian.us](https://momjian.us) and get access to a ton of information and that is just one resource.

<comment><USER2> Agreed there are a number of pieces out there in the open, but not many in a consolidated form or that flow from one step to the next. Perhaps it is because there are a number that blog about all things Postgres, but a really common question I hear from people is what book should I pick up if I want to become an expert at Postgres. And while some books are out there, there hasn't been a perfect answer to date, hoping this one helps :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been wondering for a while about the practicalities of using postgres as a replacement or near-replacement for a traditional backend - does anyone have any opinions on how far it's wise to go with this (postgres-only? authentication? direct connections from the client?) and/or how feasible that kind of thing is?

<comment><USER5> Not sure that I would do authentication directly in PG (although it has many different methods [0]), I think it's still doable. You could move whole oAuth to PG through PL/SQL (maybe there is an extension for it?).

I would also encourage to introduce a proxy in between (e.g. pgbouncer [1]) to help you to handle connections and deal with the authentication.

We're using PG as "the brain" of our service since 2014 and it never failed us. The biggest downside is that there are no tools to help to debug or measure the performance of the code you wrote. However once you have functional logic, you can write fairly lightweight application layer around it and change it as often as you want.

You can also scale this setup almost indefinitely thanks to extension like citus [2] and still keep your application layer fairly thin.

[0] [https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/auth- methods....](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/auth-methods.html)

[1] [https://pgbouncer.github.io](https://pgbouncer.github.io)

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

<comment><USER6> > Not sure that I would do authentication directly in PG

I agree. But I am thinking about making a database role for each user. The user becomes that role after signing into the front end, like Apache.

       db.exec('set role to $1', req.remote_user);

Apache 2.4's form-based authentication makes this attractive.

> The biggest downside is that there are no tools to help to debug or measure > the performance of the code you wrote.

Isn't there the explain command ([https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/using- explain...](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/using- explain.html)) and the \timing option for the command-line client, psql ([https://www.postgresql.org/docs/10/static/app- psql.html](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/10/static/app-psql.html))?

<comment><USER5> > I agree. But I am thinking about making a database role for each user. The > user becomes that role after signing into the front end, like Apache.

I figured. If you isolate the data well enough, it could work. I'm always paranoid when it comes to DB.

> Isn't there the explain command and the \timing option for the command-line > client, psql? Yes, there is. This however doesn't help you with triggers and > UDF, which is how you usually create the logic in the DB.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't know how much cross-browser testing you do, but the site looks completely broken in Firefox, renders fine on Chrome.

EDIT, I tried adding https to check (cert is wrong too, however) and it looks better. Be aware the link posted (for some reason) is HTTP only.

<comment><USER8> I'm also seeing broken/missing CSS on Debian/FF 56.0.2.

<comment><USER7> Yep, that would tally, I'm on Ubuntu 17.10

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Launched today, and already has the best sellers package.

<comment><USER10> you must be new to internet marketing

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> @tapoueh what level is this targeted at? It looks like it starts from a relatively basic level and covers pg usage fairly broadly. Would you recommend it to advanced users, or does it not go too deep into advanced usage?

<comment><USER12> The book definitely go into advanced usage. If you're already fluent in LATERAL joins, GROUPING SETS, Arrays, and JSON techniques, you might get bored to some degree.

Every single chapter has some beginner, then intermediate, then advanced topics covered, so I think everybody should have some of the right content, really. I tried and paid attention!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why do you need my email to see the table of contents?

<comment><USER12> So that you can receive updates if I make some. You don't have to, though, read [http://tapoueh.org/blog/2017/11/mastering-postgresql-in- appl...](http://tapoueh.org/blog/2017/11/mastering-postgresql-in-application- development-launches/) where you will find the full Table of Contents, or just buy the book ;-)

<comment><USER14> Best not to sneak an email collection scheme in on people even if it really is only for your newsletter. Most people have more than enough spam in their inbox already, if someone wants to get updates it's very easy for them to just click a button that says "Click here to get updates".

<comment><USER15> Email for updates being a foot in the door for further communications is pro forma and legally regulated. I think you're unnecessarily suspicious.

<comment><USER16> Even if it isn't nefarious, it's often unwanted. I usually turn around if I have to provide my email to see some sort of whitepaper or sample because it means I will have to later unsubscribe from whatever email list I was put on and hope they don't share the list with others (which happens, often).

<comment><USER17> Whenever someone asks for an email, I just type firstname.lastname@example.com, and then I go to [http://yopmail.com/lalelu](http://yopmail.com/lalelu) and click the activation link.

It's a beautiful service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wish there was a discount code for the Dead Tree Edition. I have a lot of trouble focusing on reading PDFs on my computer versus having a physical book in front of me. And I don't have a tablet, unfortunately.

<comment><USER19> FWD15 gets 15% off, which basically negated the price of shipping for me.

<comment><USER18> Thank you kind sir. You dfinitely made me move forward with a purchase.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I have a curiosity: Some new SQL technologies, such as NuoDB, or MemSQL, chose to implement horizontal scaling by separating the data storage and transaction processing machines. I find this awesome because the data storage can scale independently from the heavy lifting of maintaining transactions and running big queries.

Additional machines can be added or removed from processing queries without having to scale the storage, and not have to worry about the complexities of data sharding, and data rebalancing.

Does anyone have experience with this kind of paradigm? Can PostgreSQL do something similar?

<comment><USER21> MemSQL doesn't quite do that. It has 2 tiers, aggregators and leaves. Leaf nodes store the data but they also do computation of local node data while aggregators split up the original query and assemble results with final ordering and filtering.

PostgreSQL can do something similar by using FDW (foreign data wrappers) to child databases, which can be other postgres nodes or different datastores entirely. It's still relatively naive with access but possible, and I'm not aware of any polished product that will do it all for you. The closest is systems like Citus, PipelineDB, TimescaleDB that work as extensions but the nodes do both compute and storage.

However there are now several SQL execution engines that you can use like Apache Spark (SQL), Apache Drill, Presto, Dremio, and others that will run SQL queries and joins over several different data sources, so you can scale each layer independently. It works especially well for data lake/warehouse needs where you can run an elastically scaling group of execution nodes against files in a cloud storage bucket. Not as fast as a focused system but cheap and effective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Looks like a pretty rote implementation of Authority[0], but with a more modern UI. I wish we used PostgreSQL at my day job, this looks pretty interesting! I particularly like the idea of including the Docker container at the highest price point.

Edit: Looks like email sign ups are through ConvertKit, which is Nathan's company. Definitely Authority!

[0] [http://nathanbarry.com/authority/](http://nathanbarry.com/authority/)

</comment><comment><USER23> Just FYI, in the "The Dead Tree Edition" section, "professionally" is spelled wrong:

 _A professionnally printed paperback of 332 pages, with the same content._

<comment><USER12> Thanks, fixed now!

<comment><USER24> "The Full Edition comes with the eletronic book package and an archive with a PostgreSQL dump file ready to be restored in your own instance, plus all the 265 queries as separate files for you to run and edit!"

eletronic is also a typo.

<comment><USER12> Fixed now. I really should have had my reviewer work on the website too, not just the book itself. Thanks guys!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The "dead tree edition." Good play, sirs.

I'm going have to get that one though. I can't seem to focus/finish when reading educational books on my kindle or in PDF form.

I like the "turn thousands of lines of code into queries"... I can't count the number of times I've seen application code doing something a query could do either to appease an ORM or because a backend engineer wasn't fluent in intermediate SQL.

<comment><USER26> Yeah... i'm totally guilty of abusing the 'python can do it' hammer instead of leveraging the DB. Just last week i looked at an old snippet of code that was essentially a 'query data, load in python, process, shove back in postgres' workflow. I was like, AHA i know better. spent 15 mins figuring out how do accomplish the same thing in the database. Now that shitty code is gone, replaced with 1 SQL statement that runs in seconds, compared to tens of minutes!

<comment><USER25> It feels good!

I had a rails/ar based report that I "fixed" at my last job that when it ran it generated 1100 reads (not even N+1, a lot of other crazy aggregates, etc).

It was complicated, but I got it into one query, subquery and a partition.

Went from 45s of app time to process to a <1s query!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Look interesting but I'm not crazy about the fact that to get the source + data, I have to get the $90 version.

<comment><USER28> True and it's unclear how usable cheaper options will be without those files. It's pretty much a de facto standard that source code going along a technical book is available for free. This is too bad because I would have purchased it instantly otherwise.

<comment><USER12> The book contains references for every data source it uses, all of them are available as Open Data. So you can load all the data, and copy/paste all the SQL queries with just the Book Edition.

The Full Edition isn't so much about the code contained in the book (SQL queries) as it is about having the very database used in the book handy to replay the queries.

I understand that the Full Edition doesn't make the same value for everyone, and it's fine. That's why it's not the only option. Given how many are sold compared to the other options, I'm confident it still is a solid option though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've setup an Offer Code for the next 48h guys. Feel free to use it! [http://masteringpostgresql.com/#packages](http://masteringpostgresql.com/#packages)

<comment><USER29> Thanks! That's awesome of you, but when I try to use it (as "hackernews") on the Enterprise Edition, the payment form's telling me it is invalid. What's up?

<comment><USER12> Went to fast and fat-fingered it. Works now!

<comment><USER29> Great, thanks again!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I bought the dead tree edition. The FAQ page says that I should send author an email with the receipt to get the pdf and mobi version; however, I can't find the author's email address anywhere. Any clues?

<comment><USER31> disappointed /u/tomca32... easy as: SELECT email FROM authors;...

dim [at] tapoueh.org per his github: [https://github.com/dimitri](https://github.com/dimitri)

Enjoy your day.

Edit: revised @ to [at] to reflect format in author's FAQ update.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I didn't see any reference to PL/pgSQL in the table of contents. Does your book go into common strategies with stored procedures (e.g. When to LOOP to build a temp table vs. using table joins)?

<comment><USER12> No, I don't address that point in this book.

It gives you plenty SQL techniques to avoid ever having to LOOP in a PL/pgSQL function, and show how to use PL/SQL rather than PL/pgSQL each time it is possible, though.

<comment><USER32> Sweet. I'll give your book a read then. Gaining a more solid SQL foundation to avoid LOOP in the first place is what I need.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Looks interesting, wish I could "preview" before buying. Thankfully before venturing out on my own in the web development world, I was a member on a small business analytics team were we would all regularly write 3+ page SQL queries for reports. Sometimes they's take days to run. It was awesome and horrifying all at once but a good experience nonetheless and has allowed me to do what I do today.

<comment><USER34> I see in the FAQ that Tapoueh promises to refund anyone who isn't satisfied for any reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> It would be nice if I could buy it on Amazon.

<comment><USER36> I agree, I was disappointed not to find this on Amazon, would have bought if there, found another book with the same name though! I do ALL my reading on iPad Kindle app, thousands of books, I can't be arsed to fill out forms to buy a book also other book or pdf readers I've tried have always been crap compared to kindle app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I like the idea of it targeting developers but aren't most developers going to end up using an ORM in the end?

For example SQLALchemy in Python and ActiveRecord in Rails.

Is the book a ton of SQL examples or general theory?

Most of my day to day database activities as a web developer are creating good indexes, data modeling and setting up queries with an ORM.

<comment><USER12> The book covers some theory when it's needed and comes with lots of practical examples, all using real world data sets to make them easier to understand and relate to.

Using an ORM and how to best integrate "raw SQL" in your code is also discussed, and data modelling gets its own chapter too. I think you will like it!

<comment><USER37> Is it aimed at developers from ground 0, or someone with 10+ years of experience?

I've been working with both raw SQL and ORMs for a pretty long time. I'm definitely not at the DBA-tier and really complex queries scare the shit out of me but I haven't ever hit a complete roadblock when it came to modeling and querying data in a reasonably efficient way.

With that said, an ideal book for me would be one that just showed 100+ real world data modeling examples and how to query it in a bunch of real ways. Ideally an expert's thought process would be explained every step of the way. It'd happily pay $100+ for that just because I'm sure using it as a reference guide would save me enough hours in dev time to make it worth it.

<comment><USER12> You know what? Just buy the book and if you don't like it, tell me. I'll refund you. My guess is that you will like it ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> This book seems like an amazing resource however I definitely cannot afford the price tag at $179 unfortunately. :(

<comment><USER39> Keep scrolling. :) The cheapest version, at $39, is way way down at the bottom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Does it cover development in some particular language? E.g python+sql?

<comment><USER12> Mastering PostgreSQL in Application Development is meant to target any development environment, yet it does target some ecosystems: Python, PHP, Java and Go receive a special treatment, and I must confess Python is covered way more than the other choices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Thanks for putting the time and effort into this, Dimitri

</comment><comment><USER42> why do i have to give my email, to even get a look at the table of content?

not saluted

</comment><comment><USER43> tapoueh why are you not using https on your site?

I want to buy the book but not sure if I should enter my card details on a non https site?

<comment><USER12> The payment forms were in HTTPS from the beginning, but the webpages (hosted at GitHub Pages). Now it's all HTTPS with a proper domain certificate, thanks to CloudFlare. Enjoy!

<comment><USER43> Chrome still complains that the payment form is using non secure elements on the page but anyway I bought the book.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Not really feeling sold on this.

It's called "Mastering PostgreSQL" but the site reads like it's trying to convince beginner programmers that SQL iteself is useful.

Even the case made here: [http://tapoueh.org/blog/2017/11/mastering- postgresql-in-appl...](http://tapoueh.org/blog/2017/11/mastering-postgresql- in-application-development-launches/) seems like it would only be convincing to someone who has never had to write much SQL and also has not already had to do a pattern like that in an API call.

<comment><USER12> Yes the book targets more the SQL beginners, which are in my experience developers of all levels, from beginners to experts.

The title is inspired to a great deal by an idea of how to best learn new things, which is very nicely covered in the following Ted Talk: [https://www.ted.com/talks/sal_khan_let_s_teach_for_mastery_n...](https://www.ted.com/talks/sal_khan_let_s_teach_for_mastery_not_test_scores)</comment></comment>


Tesla drops 7% after Goldman Sachs says the stock is worth $180 - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/05/tesla-drops-7-after-goldman-sachs-says-the-stock-is-worth-180 <comment><USER2> The analyst in question, David Tamberrino, ranks 10,337 out of 10,667 on TipRanks, meaning he is one of the worst analysts and has been wrong all the time. Link: [https://www.tipranks.com/analysts/david- tamberrino](https://www.tipranks.com/analysts/david-tamberrino)

Those who keep repeating that Tesla stock is "overvalued" should understand that a stock's "value" is based on the current value of all future cash flows. Ford and basically all the other incumbent car companies are generating profits now, but are stagnant and waiting to be disrupted. Meanwhile Tesla's revenue is $7B last year, will be $10B+ this year, $20B+ next year, and $60B in 2020. Which companies are overvalued and which would you rather own?

There's a reason Wal-Mart's top and bottom lines are both several times that of Amazon, yet Amazon is now worth twice as much as Wal-Mart. It's about growth and future addressable market.

<comment><USER3> To quote Marc Andreessen:

"A few common fallacies about valuation of public and private technology companies: First, ask any MBA how to value tech companies, she'll say "discounted cash flow, just like any other company!"

Problem: For new & rapidly growing tech companies, up to 100% of value is in terminal value 10+ years out, so DCF framework collapses. You can run as many DCF spreadsheets as you want and may get nothing that will help you make good tech investment decisions.

Related to fact that tech co's don't have stable products like soup or brick companies; future cash flows will come from future products.

Instead, smart tech investor thinks about: A future product roadmap/opportunity, B bottoms-up market size & growth, C talent and skill of team. Essentially you are valuing things that have not yet happened, and the likelihood of the CEO and team being able to make them happen.

Finance people find this appalling, but investors who do this well can make a lot of money. Spreadsheet investing is often disastrous. Doesn't mean cash flow doesn't matter, in fact opposite: this is the path to find tech companies that will generate tons of future cash."

<comment><USER4> > Instead, smart tech investor thinks about: A future product > roadmap/opportunity, B bottoms-up market size & growth, C talent and skill > of team. Essentially you are valuing things that have not yet happened, and > the likelihood of the CEO and team being able to make them happen.

This thinking is what led me to buy GOOG(5x), TSLA(12x), NFLX(7x), YELP (ouch) and LC (oucher). I am buying what I believe the company will become, not what the company is. It's risky, and only a portion of my portfolio goes into these high-risk investments. Much of the rest is in mutual funds.

MBAs might do a little better in income investing for dividends. It's a totally different view, but investors need to understand that as well when it comes time to transition from growth to income stocks.

<comment><USER5> You could also invest in the Vanguard Information Technology ETF (VGT) fund, which is an ETF of 365 tech stocks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It is not manipulation. The stock is tremendously overvalued and has been basically forever, but that doesn't mean it will go down. Unfortunately "fundamental value" doesn't mean shit in a popularity contest where you have a lot of retail money investing in whatever they happen to like.

Although equities historically are the asset class providing the best return over the long-run, this is why I prefer bonds. With a bond, if your analysis is right, you get paid at maturity. With a stock, you can be right, and it doesn't matter. Stock is only worth what somebody will pay for it, and that can largely be determined by sentiment.

<comment><USER7> > It is not manipulation. The stock is tremendously overvalued.

This. I was going to say even $180 is still ridiculously overpriced.

Teslas statements are not good by any means when compared to GM and are even poor when compared to a company in problem times like Ford. Tesla even has massively less capital expenditures than both GM and ford. For instance, Fords after tax income was 4 billion, they had capex of 1.7 billion, and an EPS of +0.2. Compare this to Tesla at -0.6 billion revenue, 0.7 billion capex, -4.8 EPS (and they are issuing new shares each quarter for financing). Yet Ford cost $11 a share while paying out a 5% dividend - and this is all from a company in rough patch.

I have no idea why anyone is putting so much money into Tesla. You have to give Musk credit for great marketing and creating a cult around his image and ideas.

<comment><USER8> Listing current financial metrics compared to incumbent automakers kind of misses the point on Tesla. Not that it isn't "overvalued" (might be the most ambiguous word in investing) but Tesla's annualized GM is ~8% better than Fords, they own the refueling network (as opposed to incumbents which outsource it to gas stations), and are poised to control much of the future battery supply. Your Musk marketing comment is spot on in my opinion but at the end of they day these are not analogous companies financially, Tesla's charted a much-bifurcated path to growth and profitability relative to current auto companies.

<comment><USER9> > _[Tesla] are poised to control much of the future battery supply_

"Chinese companies have plans for additional factories with the capacity to pump out more than 120 gigawatt-hours a year by 2021, according to a report published this week by Bloomberg Intelligence... By comparison, when completed in 2018, Tesla Inc.'s Gigafactory will crank out up to 35 gigawatt-hours of battery cells annually.

...

Roughly 55 percent of global lithium-ion battery production is already based in China, compared with 10 percent in the U.S. By 2021, China's share is forecast to grow to 65 percent, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance."

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-28/china- is-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-28/china-is-about-to- bury-elon-musk-in-batteries)

<comment><USER10> Further, the Chinese government can say "fuck you" (as they have done with other companies) and make it prohibitively expensive to obtain the raw materials used for battery production.

<comment><USER11> Incorrect.

China comes number four on the list of lithium producing companies.

Much of the world's lithium reserves seem to come from South America.

[http://investingnews.com/daily/resource-investing/energy- inv...](http://investingnews.com/daily/resource-investing/energy- investing/lithium-investing/lithium-producing-countries/)

<comment><USER10> You need other minerals, which are collectively termed "rare earth minerals":

Rare earth element map: In 2013, China produced about 90% of the world's supply of rare earth element ores. The USGS Mineral Commodity Summary [2] reported production tonnages for Australia, the United States, India, Brazil, Russia, Vietnam, and Malaysia. Rare earth element exploration and/or development is being done in Canada, South Africa, Thailand, Malawi, and Sri Lanka; however, production from those countries was insignificant during 2013.

[http://geology.com/articles/rare-earth- elements/](http://geology.com/articles/rare-earth-elements/)

Further China has already show willingness to ban export of these materials (for example in 2010). At the end of the day the risk to the production of batteries in particular has motivated vulnerable countries like Japan to develop alternative processes:

[http://fortune.com/2016/07/12/honda-rare-earth-battery- hybri...](http://fortune.com/2016/07/12/honda-rare-earth-battery-hybrid/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I just don't see Tesla becoming mainstream before traditional manufacturers fill the potential market opportunity. Volvo just announced they will only produce Hybrids in the future. [1] All the major manufacturers have hybrid programs they are bringing to the mass market.

It's not that Tesla will or won't be successful, it's just that as it succeeds, it's changing the ecosystem around it. Traditional manufacturers offerings are becoming more and more attractive.

I think Tesla is appealing to the tech/gadget market right now. For me, everything about Tesla cars and its buying process feels new and fresh. But..

When it comes time to buy my next car I'll probably end up going to traditional car dealerships, looking around, test driving, and picking something through a traditional channel. It's just the path of least resistance and there's a lot more variety.

[1] [http://www.yorkdispatch.com/story/money/business/2017/07/05/...](http://www.yorkdispatch.com/story/money/business/2017/07/05/volvo- make-electric-hybrid-vehicles/103446460/)

<comment><USER13> > When it comes time to buy my next car I'll probably end up going to > traditional car dealerships, looking around, test driving, and picking > something through a traditional channel. It's just the path of least > resistance and there's a lot more variety.

I believe Tesla is gearing up for the car purchase _after_ your next one. You're currently thinking in terms of a car that you'll be driving. For those cars, you're right, there are other car manufacturers that will be more successful.

However, once cars are fully automated, the entire game will change. Market leaders of today will be up-ended. That's when I believe Tesla, Google, and anyone else who has driverless technology will take over the industry.

That goes double for the taxi companies like Uber, Lyft, Juno, etc.

<comment><USER14> This insidious definition of Uber as a taxi company must be highlighted. Their entire business model is based on them insisting they are not a taxi company and as such the taxi laws do not apply to them. Everyone knows this is horseshit and when there's no focus on it , just calls Uber a taxi company and ignores cheerily the devastating effect Uber has on the rule of law. What would remain of society if every company could pick which regulations they want to keep and which ones they don't?

<comment><USER15> They're not a taxi company. They do not take street hails and as such, their regulation needs are different. For example, there's no need (or at least less need) for the government to regulate fares since people trust the Uber app to give them a fair price (whereas if you're a tourist and you were to just hop into a random unregulated car you hailed, it would be difficult to tell if you were getting a fair price).

<comment><USER16> They are functionally equivalent to a taxi company and should be treated as such.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've been invested in TSLA since 2012. And there's always been people saying it's "over-valued", especially the media or folks who don't believe in Tesla's mission or potential. The best thing I've found is to work the numbers a few years out and see what you come up with. Sure, each person's forecasts will be different, but I base my numbers off of company forecasts and also Tesla's track record.

2020 deliveries: 1M vehicles (according to company guidance) Average sale price per vehicle: 900k Model 3 and Model Y x ASP $42k = $37.8B. Plus 110k Model S/X x ASP $90k = $10B. Total revenue $47.8B

Gross margin = 25% (company guidance is 30%+ for Model S/X and "mid-20s" for Model 3/Y).

Gross profit = $12B

Operating expenses = $6B (note: It's difficult to predict operating expenses 3 years out, but Tesla will likely experience a lot of operating leverage as their sales will grow much faster than R&D and sales.)

EBITDA: $6B

P/E multiple: 30 (note: If targets are achieved in 2020, Tesla likely to be growing 50% year in revenue and would likely fetch a 30-40 P/E multiple.)

Market cap: $180B

# shares outstanding: 185M shares (currently 164M outstanding)

2020 stock price = $972

A few comments:

1\. The above are my forecasts based on my beliefs that Tesla can reach their own forecasts of # vehicles delivered in 2020 and gross margins.

2\. Each person has their own beliefs/ideas of Tesla. So, I'm not trying to convince anyone.

3\. This model can be tweaked based on changes in # vehicles delivered, gross margin, or operating expenses... to name a few factors. So, it's not perfect but it gives the basics.

4\. If you find someone bearish on TSLA and who thinks it's "overvalued", ask them to give you numbers like I have. Chances are they won't be able to.

5\. The Model 3 will be the iPhone moment for autos. A sexy car that redefines transport and brings in high margins. This is why Tesla has potential to be the most valuable company in the world by 2025.

6\. Tesla's moat grows as they execute faster than any other auto company. It's not appropriate to value TSLA based on other auto makers. It's like valuing AAPL in 2007 based off of Nokia and Blackberry.

<comment><USER18> You believe Tesla is going from zero Model 3's to 900k Model 3's in a 3-year timespan?

To put that into perspective, that's more annual production and sales than the Toyota Camry plus Toyota Corolla.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Camry#Sales](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Camry#Sales)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Corolla#Sales](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Corolla#Sales)

<comment><USER17> [http://corporatenews.pressroom.toyota.com/releases/world+mos...](http://corporatenews.pressroom.toyota.com/releases/world+most++popular+model+global+sales+2013.htm)

Corolla sales are above 1.2M per year.

The 900k number is Model 3 and Model Y.

<comment><USER19> Current model assumes one car per person. That's because only one person can drive a car.

How many self driving Teslas could be needed to meet transportation demand for just the US. A lot more than a million.

If Tesla can actually deliver a mass produced self driving car while everyone is still figuring out how to make electric cars with good mileage then they become the next Toyota. Just like Apple became the next Nokia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I guess Goldman knows better how to value a young car company that moves 5 times faster than the rest of the industry, makes mind blowing products that people want to buy without even seeing them, has an unprecedented cult following with many betting their entire 401k on the company, _and_ has survived many near death moments and came out strong... I wonder what gives such armchair analysts conviction to comment on companies like Tesla, Amazon and Netflix who are driven by irrationality and ambition.

<comment><USER21> Excellent point. What's interesting about it is that a stock price contains all sorts of assumptions and information and blends it all together into one number, which is simply the last price that a share traded at based on supply and demand.

Surely Goldman has baked a lot of assumptions about market expectations into this assessment, and surely Goldman is wrong about many of those assumptions and right about others. A more nuanced analysis would be a probability distribution of possible price bands at various future dates.

Surely by Goldman's logic it is irrational to buy (or perhaps even to hold) Tesla stock at above $185. But Goldman's analysis would also likely have discouraged investment in many other successful firms over the years.

One doesn't listen to Goldman because the advice is true, one listens to it simply to reduce the probability of major deviations from the mean across a portfolio.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Something not really mentioned here is that many of Telsa's investors aren't in it necessarily because of what the financial statements show. They're pouring money into a company they fundamentally believe in -- into a movement which they feel obligated to contribute to.

The stock price is probably overvalued by the books, but for humans desperate to embrace a company who's making an attempt to make a better, cleaner world, there likely isn't a value too high. Ecological returns > monetary returns?

<comment><USER23> Typical argument on the Internet:

Well, I like the status quo. If you don't like it, vote with your wallet and quit complaining.

<six months later>

Hey, everybody, look at the stupid people voting with their wallets!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> GS is somewhat notorious for this kind of manipulations: [http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-great- american...](http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-great-american- bubble-machine-20100405)

<comment><USER25> If the manipulation works, was it really manipulation?

<comment><USER26> The SEC generally thinks so, and punishes those found guilty with hefty legal fines.

<comment> FLUX-YOU Pretty sure SEC fines are just cost-of-doing-business territory for the likes of Goldman.

<comment><USER27> No, this is not the approach at any of the large banks.

It's not the fine that kills you. It's when your customers lose your trust and no one trades with you any more. Goldman has a ton of competitors in all their businesses that would pounce on any angle they could use to lure away customers. Committing fraud, etc, is a quick way to lose all your customers.

Plus the SEC and other regulators have a lot of political pressure to nail the big banks for any misbehavior.

Big banks are paranoid about these things and have huge compliance departments to minimize the chance of anything going wrong with a regulator.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Classic unfolding of buy on rumor and sell on news. Before solid news came out, the hype drove the stock high. Now that the Model 3 news has been steadily coming out, it's time to sell. GS is just following the basic sentiment swing.

<comment><USER29> And even if you believe that the stock price should be $500, it pays to sell on something that is widely perceived by others as a sell signal and then buy back in when the stock price is lower. Very little long term information is provided by this short term drop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> For everyone in this "it's overvalued camp" \- I've owned TSLA since a little after the initial IPO when Jim Cramer advised everyone to sell ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nYPhi0LwO0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nYPhi0LwO0)). I have heard analysts and everyone under the run yelling sell over this last 7 year run. It was overvalued at 50. It was overvalued at 100. Oh, so fair value according to GS is now 180?

It's really incredible to me when everyone gets on HN and puts on their equities analyst hats. You guys get it wrong time and time again - and the same applies for REAL equity analysts who actually post analysis that people pay for. Let's not forget AMZN was a junk stock going to 0 in the nineties. In recently memory, CRM, NFLX and FB were all considered stocks that could go to 0 and no one had any business owning.

I'm not even going to offer any analysis of why I'm continuing to hold my TSLA stock in this post - I'll just say that my bull thesis on the company remains true. If anything, Elon has finally kept a promise with Model 3 production. If you want the company's long history of missing promises, go watch Revenge of the Electric Car ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenge_of_the_Electric_Car_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenge_of_the_Electric_Car_)). Once again, the company blew past every imaginable deadline, was left for dead, and is now the highest-valued automaker in the country.

The solaxun comment that was #1 when I posted this is fundamentally correct - if you want to talk valuation, go trade bonds and please leave your BS end of the world market analysis to Zerohedge.

<comment><USER31> Also remember that AMZN went on to lose 90% of its value in the early 2000s.

At what point would you consider TSLA to be overvalued? Do you have an idea of where your personal alarms start buzzing? Anyone can say the naysayers are wrong on the climb but the problem with bulls is their optimism and it would be interesting to see your working that justifies a particular price for TSLA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Tesla is a Benjamin Graham textbook definition of a speculative stock. Very high risk.

</comment><comment><USER33> I love Tesla, but I'm reminded of this quote from Scott McNealy during the first tech bubble:

"[T]wo years ago we were selling at 10 times revenues when we were at $64. At 10 times revenues, to give you a 10-year payback, I have to pay you 100% of revenues for 10 straight years in dividends. That assumes I can get that by my shareholders. That assumes I have zero cost of goods sold, which is very hard for a computer company. That assumes zero expenses, which is really hard with 39,000 employees. That assumes I pay no taxes, which is very hard. And that assumes you pay no taxes on your dividends, which is kind of illegal. And that assumes with zero R&D for the next 10 years, I can maintain the current revenue run rate. Now, having done that, would any of you like to buy my stock at $64? Do you realize how ridiculous those basic assumptions are? You don't need any transparency. You don't need any footnotes. What were you thinking!"

[http://blog.huncap.com/?p=34](http://blog.huncap.com/?p=34)

<comment><USER9> > _At 10 times revenues, to give you a 10-year payback, I have to pay you 100% > of revenues for 10 straight years in dividends_

Or you spend 10 years growing revenues by 10x and then, at the end of your 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th and 15th years, pay a dividend equal to 5% of revenues and earn your investors a 9.3% IRR. Or grow revenues 20x and yield them almost 25% of IRR. (Both analyses assume you close down shop at the end of Year 15 and so represent lower bounds.)

High-multiple plays rely on growth. Whether that growth assumption is rational depends on the context.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I don't see this being mentioned anywhere, but the biggest reason I'd be wary of _any_ consumer vehicle manufacturer's high stock price is that the demand for cars will decline in the following decades as self-driving vehicles dramatically reduce the demand for ownership.

<comment><USER35> And who's building the self-driving vehicles? Who's technology are they using?

<comment><USER36> According to navigant research ([https://www.navigantresearch.com/research/navigant- research-...](https://www.navigantresearch.com/research/navigant-research- leaderboard-report-automated-driving)), it's GM (who bought cruise automation), and Ford (who bought a majority share in Argo AI) who are the most advanced.

<comment><USER19> "who are the most advanced". Any sources for this? As far as I'm aware none of their cars are on the road in the hands of customer.

Also a lot of this companies are betting on Lidar becoming magically cheaper. Buying a company doesn't necessarily mean they'll kill it. Big companies have a lot of politics and red tape before integrations can even happen. I was at MS when they bought Skype and later Nokia. Middle management blew the whole thing up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Maybe it's manipulation so that insiders can get much richer by buying in as the price drops and ride the inbound wealth if the Model 3 is successful.

GS complaining about a price dropping is always a self-fulfilling prophecy and hopefully, Tesla can very quickly bounce back.

<comment><USER32> It's a highly volatile speculative stock, the price is going to fluctuate often because it's based on imaginary value.

<comment><USER36> It's not imaginary, it's just uncertain.

<comment><USER32> The grand vision of Tesla and what's driven the price up does not exist. If you were to ask someone the idea of Tesla and why it's worth so much I'm sure you'd hear an "imaginative" answer.

<comment><USER36> Personally, I don't believe that Tesla will capture the auto market in a way that justifies the current price. It's a great company, with the great product, but the market is overcrowded, and I am sure that the margins will suffer because of this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's back to where it was in June, still almost 2x from where the stock was in December.

I had my entire net worth in Tesla for a while (financial advisors do not recommend this - [http://www.marketwatch.com/story/elon-musk-to-the-guy-who- in...](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/elon-musk-to-the-guy-who-invested-his- net-worth-in-tesla-we-wont-let-you-down-2016-11-17)), and even _I_ thought the current price was a little bullish for my taste. This price is still high but a little more back-to-reality than toying with $400/share was.

<comment><USER38> Unless such financial advisor is Warren Buffet, who said "Diversification is protection against ignorance. It makes little sense if you know what you are doing."

<comment><USER39> Warren Buffett's net worth is spread across many more than 1 equity. (Yes, his wealth is in a single holding company, but that company owns a diverse array of businesses.)

It's also interesting that no one provides a source for that supposed attribution.

<comment><USER3> It is now, but it wasn't when he was younger. There aren't many companies in the world he could have 100% of his net worth in at this point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Ok, two major events just happened that could influence Tesla stock -- the Goldman Sachs report and the Volvo statement about ceasing production of pure fossil-fuel cars. Why is the drop attributed exclusively to the former?

<comment><USER41> Because that's what the title of the article said. (approximately). Anyway, I would have made the same point. Also, delivery numbers kind of disappointing. Also, oil price collapse. Also, the market has been sniping some of the top speculatives lately. etc. I think we rather consistently underestimate the complexity of the market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Tesla has dropped another 6% today. Almost 14% total. Great time to buy. If it drops below $300 price, even more so.

</comment><comment><USER43> I think the real question w/r/t manipulation is whether GS is somehow short TSLA and profits from a drop.

<comment><USER36> Stock manipulation is a federal crime. I am sure, GS doesn't do this, otherwise feds would notice them.

<comment><USER19> Ha! Trump just deregulated a whole bunch of things. What makes you think this is not possible in Trump's America where more than half of Congress is made up of Billionaires or people strongly funded by Billionaires?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Tesla is the new Amazon. Analysts doubt its profitability, but sales & stock price march higher.

</comment><comment><USER45> It's easy to dispute value without looking at all at volume.

</comment><comment><USER46> Well, if Goldman Sachs says so... _eye-roll_

</comment><comment><USER47> bunch of average joe's commenting on Tesla. duh huh..

</comment><comment><USER48> Good. When Tesla stock goes under $200/share, its basically an opportunity for free money.

Take a look at the long term chart for TSLA (5+ year). The stock dips below 200 (often right around 180), then within 6 months its back over 250.

Nothing to do with fundamentals, Tesla's true valuation, or technical analysis. If you have working eyeballs you can see it.

If TSLA gets to 180 (which I doubt), buy some stock, make 25-50%, and thank me later.

<comment><USER49> What you're doing _is_ technical analysis. It doesn't work.</comment></comment>


Show HN: JavaScript by Example - <AUTHOR> https://paradite.github.io/jsbyexample/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi all. I built this simple website of JavaScript built-in features to achieve these goals:

\- serve as the reference for JS developers, reduce the amount of time taken googling how to use them and browsing through long MDN docs

\- provide a documentation that has guaranteed correctness for the JS example execution result (using eval)

Any feedback is welcomed! (Should have posted this earlier)

</comment><comment><USER2> Cool stuff! slice always confuses me. The one example that results in 'banana' I had to look twice.

Would be nice to also mention function parameters and a "randomize" button. See for example the playground API of DataGridXL ([https://datagridxl.com/api/methods](https://datagridxl.com/api/methods))

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, function parameter is a good suggestion.

I'm not too sure what you mean by "randomize", randomly go to a method? That might be good for learning or amusement, not so much for reference. Randomizing parameters might be tricky to implement.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Pactflow, simplifying microservices testing at scale - <AUTHOR> https://pactflow.io <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN!

I'm Matt, co-founder of Pactflow and core contributor of the Pact Testing Framework (pact.io).

Two years ago in front of the inaugural tConf ([http://tconf.io](http://tconf.io)) crowd in Melbourne, we launched a free hosted version of our Open Source Pact Broker to make it easier for developers to get started with Pact and API contract testing.

Earlier this year we finally got our act together and created a company dedicated to creating a commercial offering to progress the needs of our community.

Our vision is to transform the way teams test and release distributed systems, and we saw this as the best way of achieving that.

The initial launch is focussed at existing Pact and Spring Cloud Contract users, providing features above and beyond what is provided in the OSS version, such as:

\- A shiny new look and feel \- Social authentication with GitHub, Google auth and SAML \- API key authentication for all your CI and automation needs \- An improved Webhook setup experience \- Visualisation of test verification results \- Provider-driven contract testing support with OpenAPI Spec (Swagger)

We are particularly excited about OpenAPI support, as it's one of the most common topics and pain points we hear from teams.

We'd love to hear what you think, and what we can do to help you test and deploy your microservices at scale

\- Matt</comment>


1981 News report on the future of the internet - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/video/2014/feb/04/1981-news-report-future-internet-video

<comment><USER2> Any idea why this was shot in San Francisco? Why was technology so popular there, even back then?

<comment><AUTHOR> I suspect it's because WELL and other early systems were there. France actually had a precursor system a couple of years earlier, which was only finally turned off a couple of years ago. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel)</comment></comment>


Quickly deploy a Parse server with Docker and Git - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ArnaudValensi/docker-parse-server-git-deploy <comment><USER2> How easy is it to use this as compared to going with Heroku and Mongolab as the docs suggest in the migration plan? I found NodeChef [https://nodechef.com/parse-server](https://nodechef.com/parse-server) to be the easiest so far. It's fully managed just like the parse.com service.

<comment><USER3> This is exactly what I've been looking for since Parse announced they were suspending their service. I've been taking a wait and see approach to migrating until something easy to use comes out and this looks like it might be it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is SSH just used to get files into the container? Seems like you should just be using volumes for that.

<comment><USER5> Here is a docker stack that using volume: [https://git.io/docker-parse- server](https://git.io/docker-parse-server)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> nice :)

Cheers, Parse Open Source Community in Slack bit.ly/1SxTVIi</comment>