LinkedIn shares drop 40%, erasing $10B of company's value - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/linkedin-earnings-q4-2016-2 <comment><USER2> A lot of people hating on LNKD here, but this isn't really company-specific. This is a macro shift. LNKD being down by 40% by only guiding down 8% below estimates is a big warning of how the market is about to treat all bloated growth stocks. In 2013, if they reported the same results, the stock would have been flat or slightly down. It's a major shift in investor sentiment.

Bubble bursts always start in the public markets. Next, VC-backed "unicorns" with ludicrous multiples will soon find themselves unable to raise cash at even half their previous valuations. Then those companies will have to tighten their spending which means layoffs and smaller revenue growth which is a vicious cycle towards even lower valuations, bankruptcies and ultimately a much worse job market for tech workers.

I'm expecting a 30-40% decline in S&P 500, 30% decline in bay area real estate values, 30% of bay area "well-funded" startups going bust, and 25% reduction in market rate pay for software engineers over the next 2 years. Hopefully that will turn out to be a gloomy forecast, but it's best to prepare for the worst.

<comment><USER3> > 30% decline in bay area real estate values.

that won't happen. During the 2008 big burst everywhere in USA was felling apart but in SF real-estate was just down 5%-10%.

SF can't expand easily since it's water 3/4 all around. Demand still high and supply very low.

That won't change dramatically, with or without a collapse in the public market.

<comment><USER4> During the 2001-2002 bust, bay area rents fell 50% in marginal neighborhoods. In desirable neighborhoods, rents fell maybe 10%. Prices to buy came down, but not nearly as much. In marginal areas 20%, in desirable neighborhoods, maybe 1%. Small houses and fixer-uppers in the 10/10/10 school districts (ie, Palo Alto) kept going up. One reason is that construction prices fell 30%, so there was allot of tears downs and renovation happening.

<comment><USER5> what happened to the Small houses and fixer-uppers in the 9/8/8 school districts?

<comment><USER6> What's the meaning of 10/10/10 or 9/8/8?

<comment><USER7> schools

ele/mid/hs

[http://www.greatschools.org](http://www.greatschools.org)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Honestly I am feeling a bit of joy watching LinkedIn take a hit. Not because I think their product is terrible but because of the endless spam emails I keep receiving from them, despite how many times I click unsubscribe.

<comment><USER9> Or how about the phony "people you may know". They suggested I may know my 4 year old Niece because somebody uploaded the email address created for her into their system. She definitely doesn't have a LinkedIn account, but they portray a profile-photoless "shadow profile" as-if she does.

<comment><USER10> That happens to me too. But you know who is a thousand times worse than Linkedin when it comes to these things? Facebook.

At this point, I honest /just/ /don't/ /know/ how to stop getting emails from them. In my entire life I've only had a facebook account for a few hours (created one out of necessity a few years ago -- closed it after just a few hours of use at that time). And I still get emails. I've clicked unsubscribed probably fifty times by now, but I still keep getting emails. I just don't know how to stop it. Incidentally this is one of the reasons I cheer for blackhats taking shots at Facebook, I'd love to see the behemoth shot down. They don't respect me or my time, I don't respect them.

<comment><USER11> Anything from a Facebook domain hitting my mail server is bounces them back to Facebook's abuse and postmaster addresses. I know categorically that it is abuse, because I am the sole user of my mail server and do not now and have never had a Facebook account, and have repeatedly asked them in various ways to stop spamming me.

Useless, of course. But just because they ignore internet norms of decent behavior doesn't mean I will.

<comment><USER12> For what it's worth I have a Facebook account and have all the email notification settings off and can't remember seeing an email from Facebook in over a year.

<comment><USER13> I noticed that when I stopped checking my Facebook account, Facebook started sending me FOMO messages ("Hey! You have messages! People are saying things! Please come look!")

<comment><USER14> I noticed them doing that as well, and did what I usually do with companies that get too chatty: First, turn off the notifications, unsubscribe, etc. Then, if they ignore my preferences or keep adding new categories of notification that are enabled by default, I add a client-side rule to throw away everything they send. This way they get to keep thinking that I receive their spam, and I don't have to see it, which is a win-win (though a sad loss for email in general as an obsessively reliable communication system).

This worked out fine for Facebook: I visit their webpage when I want to know what's going on over there, and they never send me email.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> LinkedIn is the king of "dark patterns" UI - every part of their website is optimized to trick you into doing something you have no intention of doing.

<comment><USER16> And I absolutely hate that they track which profiles you view and then display that information in the side bar under "people who viewed this profile also viewed". Unless you're looking at high profile person with millions of views, the "also viewed" list becomes a list of friends and not people in the same field or similar job profiles. If I ever have to click on a LinkedIn link, I always go into incognito mode.

<comment><USER17> I created a dummy linkedin profile exactly because of this. I kept getting notifications that an ex from 5 years ago was constantly looking at my profile.

Linkedin is so scammy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Lots of angry sentiment towards this company here. I understand it doesn't necessarily bring this demographic as much value since most here are probably happily employed and don't need it. There's plenty of others who count on a service like LinkedIn, which doesn't have a good comparison (e.g. Twitter to Facebook).

Personally, I've found value in it from the potential clients I've received (I'm a contractor) and the ability to look up just about anyone I may need to do business with. I use it professionally to get an overview of others like I use Wikipedia to get an overview of a topic.

I do know they have room to improve. I've been using the service since 2006 and have seen all manner of their silly practices. But as a well-known, professional network with a large userbase, I have yet to find a rivaling alternative.

<comment><USER19> The angry sentiment isn't because people don't see potential value. It's because they _do_ see the value - and how the company keeps spoiling what could be a good user experience.

<comment><USER18> My speculation is that without any comparable competitors, there's nothing to force LinkedIn to change the negative aspects of their service. If there were two competing services, we would see users gravitating towards the service they prefer and the other service desperately trying to correct itself. For example, when Yahoo introduced suggested searches, Google noticed and picked up the feature too. Alternatively, when IE6 was king, they let it stagnate and look at what happened.

So from that standpoint, I hope that LinkedIn doesn't fail, but rather a competing service nurtures an environment where LinkedIn has to compete. Then hopefully we can see improvements towards what users really want.

<comment><USER20> The reason a LinkedIn competitor hasn't emerged is the same reason a viable Facebook competitor hasn't emerged: at this point the network effects are too strong, and it's extremely difficult to beat incumbents because of that.

Besides, think about how much flak some HN submissions get for being "just another social network." I think the whole social network market has fully saturated and there will be additional difficulty in convincing people there is room for more social networks (aside from certain niche differentiators such as centralized vs distributed, which 99% of users don't care about).

<comment><USER21> > The reason a LinkedIn competitor hasn't emerged is the same reason a viable > Facebook competitor hasn't emerged: at this point the network effects are > too strong, and it's extremely difficult to beat incumbents because of that.

I'd say LinkedIn actually has stronger network effects than Facebook, or other consumer social networks. Consumer social networks are used more casually, so it's easier to get users to sign up than it would be for a professional social network, where users tend to adopt a more conservative mindset. And we've seen several consumer social networks rise in the post-Facebook era - Snapchat, WhatsApp, and Instagram.

<comment><USER22> The only social network I can reliably guess that someone is on, regardless of job type, is, alas, LinkedIn.

My friend who is a biologist doesn't have a Twitter since nobody in her field uses it, but she has a LinkedIn.

My software developer friends have Twitter, so that's my go-to... but then it's a mishmash of business and personal. Or sometimes only personal, so it feels weird to talk business over it. So then... email, since soft devs - rightfully so - dislike LinkedIn.

I don't know the solution, but it's clear one should be built. Does LinkedIn have an easy "export my social graph" option to at least jump start w competitor?

<comment><USER21> There's an export contacts feature, which was restored after removing it resulted in a user backlash ([http://venturebeat.com/2015/07/25/linkedin- brings-back-tool-...](http://venturebeat.com/2015/07/25/linkedin-brings-back- tool-for-exporting-contacts-after-user-backlash/)). But if a competitor tried to create a one-click feature for programatically exporting contacts from LinkedIn and importing them into their own database, they would probably get banned. And for the vast majority of users, explaining how to export/import a CSV manually is not viable.

<comment><USER23> It gets you five columns - name/title/company/email/location.

Unlike the old export feature, it's also frequently missing your latest connections (30-60 days worth, I think).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Hi everyone,

I'm Joshua Hartman, the lead engineer for all of LinkedIn's consumer products. Thanks for all the passionate feedback here and we really appreciate it. I just wanted to say that we've been hard at work trying to improve the clarity of our products over the last year and this is something that we will continue to focus on going forward. Many of you have spoken of high volumes of emails. In 2015 LinkedIn built a piece of infrastructure called the "Air Traffic Controller" to make sure our communications are relevant. This infrastructure enabled us to cut the volume of email we sent by 50% and reduce customer complaints by 40% in 2015 - [http://blog.linkedin.com/2015/11/10/sending-less- email-is-ju...](http://blog.linkedin.com/2015/11/10/sending-less-email-is- just-the-beginning/). We know we have a lot more work to do for LinkedIn to work really well for the tech industry, and we have heard you and will keep refining the experience.

Thanks! \- Josh Hartman

<comment><USER25> I have a question! I'm a student and have noticed 5 or so profiles that connect with 20+ of my classmates/friends with impressive but beleivable titles at well known companies (Human resources at IBM) [1] and generic job histories. The names only exist on linkedin. Its obvious they are either just scraping profiles or something more nefarious. What are you doing to stop the creation of these fake profiles? Why are my friends so dumb?

[1] Fake profile examples, with 20+ in common connections: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/sonia- bargo-04b09829](https://www.linkedin.com/in/sonia-bargo-04b09829) [https://www.linkedin.com/in/linda- bertoli-48909829](https://www.linkedin.com/in/linda-bertoli-48909829)

<comment><USER25> Due to boredom I did more research. Reverse image searched the profile pic, found it on a yelp profile writing fake 5 star reviews and one of those fake sites that 'let employers fight over you.'

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> All those celebrating this event - don't.

If you think these guys were using shady and scummy tactics before to spam you and steal your contacts, what do you think they are going to do when their share price sinks? Suddenly reform and stop the borderline-illegal stuff?

LinkedIn will get even more aggressive at monetization. So expect even more of:

1) Random clicks that let you "invite" everyone in your address book

2) Incessant daily nag e-mails - "Complete your profile"

3) Blatant Man-in-the-Middle attacks for stuff you browse on your mobile

4) Data harvesting and selling even more stuff about you

5) etc, etc, etc

If ever there was a market ready to be "disrupted" this is it. Google could have done this with G+, Twitter can do this today with proper reorientation, Heck FB could wipe the floor with these jokers (WhatsApp could too).

<comment><USER27> > Google could have done this with G+, Twitter can do this today with proper > reorientation, Heck FB could wipe the floor with these jokers (WhatsApp > could too).

I keep waiting for any of those companies to pull their heads out of their butts and realize this.

Google's product strategy seems to be a random-walk, Twitter's platform is too far from LinkedIn's workflow to make it work, but Facebook? Facebook is the kind of company I'd thought would have figured this out.

<comment><USER23> [https://work.fb.com/](https://work.fb.com/) ?

<comment><USER27> Work is for internal team use, I think, not for personal professional development. Users accounts won't persist across multiple jobs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've been registered on LinkedIn for a long time and found it a fun an useful way to catch up on people moving around and advancing their careers, what used to be done at the occasional cocktail party or celebration could be done faster and quicker by scanning the changes. And that has helped me stay in professional touch with people with whom I might otherwise lose touch.

But that said, I've recognized their maniacal monetezation schemes with trepidation. Is is it really "valuable" to me to see the names of everyone who has looked at my profile? Is it $5/month valuable? No. Is it valuable to LinkedIn that people who don't know me can find me there? Apparently the recruiters think it is. So the place where I feel LinkedIn is suffering is that it makes it painful to stay on the site as one of the 'targets'. And that is getting them into trouble. Because if the only people there are recruiters and nobody else, it won't have any value to the recruiters either.

All of _that_ points to some serious strategic myopia at the top. They need to take their top leadership into a room for a weekend and get on the same page about how to run that business, MySpace is the canonical example of getting the calculus wrong.

<comment><USER29> I paid for premium for about 4 months while job searching. Being able to deep- dive into some companies and directly contact people helped me get my current job. It was definitely a helpful tool as a job-searcher.

Now that I have a stable job, it has no value and I ended my premium account.

<comment><USER23> Serious question - what convinced you to sign up for the premium in the first place?

Job-seekers get like, 5 InMails and 3 useless search filters, plus some vanity fluff that does nothing (who viewed your profile).

5 InMails may be worth the price in some cases, but I've always felt the jobseeker service was somewhat predatory. That you found it worthwhile makes me curious - am I missing something?

<comment><USER29> I was brand new to the market, so had nearly zero connections. I followed the "Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters" system.

A couple replies: \- Who viewed your profile was helpful. I'd send out a "cold call" email to someone, and if they clicked through to my linkedin profile then I knew they were interested. I'd then try to phone them as soon as they saw my profile. It's surprisingly effective. \- The InMails were helpful. I preferred to actually call or email over inmail, but in some cases there was _no_ contact info for the person. In that case, InMail really was the only way to contact someone, and I did get 2 nice contacts out of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Just another reminder to never ever build your company for Wall street. In 2004, Netflix went from 40 to 2 in 6 months. Amazon from 89 to 5. There are entirely zero competitors to Linkedin right now (FB is nowwhere in the space). And while i agree the product has stagnated a bit - this in my view is another example of Wall Street's insanity. (and no, i don't own any shares :)

<comment><USER31> No sure I understand. Wall Street had certain expectations of LinkedIn's growth. That was reflected in the stock price.

 _I was incorrect. Q4 earnings were great, it was the fact that LinkedIn released 2016 guidance that was far below market expectations._

[LinkedIn released their earnings and they were way below expectations, so the stock took a massive hit.]

Does that seem unfair to you?

<comment> rm_-rf_slash Imagine if I bought "stock" in your job. I monitored your performance and set expectations for your work. You fail to meet those expectations, so as the majority shareholder of your job, I have you fired and replaced with someone else. Or you underperform once and I use this threat every single review.

That's how Wall Street ruins good business.

<comment><USER32> Or, worse, you have a Really Damn Good Year, but I ding you at your performance review. Even though you were the best you've ever been, and better than your peers, you weren't quite as good as I was hoping you to be, so ... sorry, no raise this year.

<comment><USER33> On the other hand, you got the raise at the point where I started hoping you'd do great, even if you hadn't yet.

<comment><USER34> Maybe. It's really hard to set a fair baseline for a performance bonus; being given stock options struck at the current price is a very similar exercise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Sounds like the bubble is bursting.

The established companies whose valuation was based on multiples of future _growth_ are taking the hit, getting in line with more traditional multiples of _current_ revenue.

<comment><USER36> [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=bubble%20burst&sort=byDate&pre...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=bubble%20burst&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false)

<comment><USER37> Instead of using an ignorant sarcasm, take a look at facts and formulate an argument:

[http://etfdb.com/etfdb-category/technology-equities/](http://etfdb.com/etfdb- category/technology-equities/)

[http://venturebeat.com/2016/01/18/there-are- now-229-unicorn-...](http://venturebeat.com/2016/01/18/there-are- now-229-unicorn-startups-with-175b-in-funding-and-1-3b-valuation/)

[http://www.bloomberg.com/research/sectorandindustry/industri...](http://www.bloomberg.com/research/sectorandindustry/industries/industrydetail.asp?code=4520)

[http://www.bloomberg.com/research/sectorandindustry/industri...](http://www.bloomberg.com/research/sectorandindustry/industries/industrydetail.asp?code=4510)

<comment><USER38> The fact is that LinkedIn isn't a "Unicorn" startup, which is kind of their point of the overuse of _tech bubble_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Linkedin is a terrible company, I've always resisted making a profile there because I think that to support a company like that in name is to give them a free pass on their despicable behavior. No matter though, I still receive their spam on a daily basis, but that's nothing a filter rule can't take care of.

<comment><USER40> Some examples? I can't remember any big scandals...

<comment><USER15> Really? They just settled a lawsuit for $13 million for spam: [http://time.com/4062519/linkedn-spam- settlement/](http://time.com/4062519/linkedn-spam-settlement/)

<comment><USER41> i almost wish they spammed me so i could get some free money. i don't get hardly any mail from them.

<comment><USER42> You could only get money if you managed to get your address book stolen and all your contacts spammed.

$10 is very little consolation for hundreds of people you know now thinking that you are, ehrm, _not smart_ , for giving your address book to LinkedIn, or worse, thinking you're a spammer because each of your contacts got _three_ annoying e-mails "from you" with no opt-out button.

If they had to pay even one dollar to each person they spammed, they'd probably be bankrupt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> LinkedIn is full of people trying to get people to pay attention to them... but the people they are trying to impress aren't really on LinkedIn (they have a profile but that's it... they don't use it as an actual social platform).

In that sense LinkedIn is mostly a wasteland.

<comment><USER44> To me it looks like a wasteland of recruiters. I used to think it was neat when some recruiter would contact me about a job, but now I realize they are just spamming everyone with (your framework here) listed in their skills. The over-saturation of recruiters, connections with everyone you even slightly know, and people endorsing you for skills they don't know you have has made it all meaningless.

<comment><USER45> If you were an outsider in need of a job, you'd appreciate the recruiter spam.

<comment><USER44> But I don't feel like any of it is authentic. Submitting my resume directly to the company would probably accomplish the same thing.

<comment><USER23> In some cases, that might even be true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> My real estate agent endorsed me for OCaml.

<comment><USER47> Someone who didn't pay me for some outstanding invoices for contract php work in 2002 just endorsed me for iOS dev. I haven't spoken to him since 2002.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I miss the old days of LinkedIn, when they had a Stack Overflow-esque Q&A subsite, Groups were at the forefront of your feed, and it was the ideal forum to hold discussions with like-minded professionals (i.e. other developers).

Today it seems like it's an endless stream of garbage posts, many from recruiters (why did I connect with so many?), Groups is now relegated to the background, buried away. Every few months they roll out an updated UI that seems less intuitive. It all feels like a cheap imitation of Facebook, underwhelming and having little value.

(P.S. Someone asked if they ever found a job on LI, I did, not from a recruiter but a developer colleague. so there's still value there.)

</comment><comment><USER49> The idea that LinkedIn has enough market value to be able to lose $10B of it makes me sad.

<comment><USER50> Yeah, I would like to see someone justify the market value of LinkedIn. They seem to be losing money, and they have over 9000 employees (doing what exactly?).

<comment><USER51> Umm, did you read the earnings report? They are hardly losing money.

<comment><USER50> I might be reading the wrong, but they seem to have been losing money the first three quarters of 2015: [http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:LNKD&fstype=ii](http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:LNKD&fstype=ii)

They would need to make a pretty good profit the last three month of 2015 to make up for it.

Again I might just not know how to read financial statements, but adding up all the "Net incomes" gives you around $108 million in lose.

<comment><USER52> They have posted a small loss ($8mn) in the fourth quarter. But if you ignore a number of costs you can easily convert a $166 million loss into a $373 million gain. See the last table in the press release:

[http://investors.linkedin.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=95...](http://investors.linkedin.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=953507)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> When I first joined LinkedIn I thought it was an amazing idea. But as I slowly used it overtime I noticed almost every single person I know accepts EVERY SINGLE request to connect and gives people skills that they never even had. What's the point of that?

I had countless managers who've literally never looked at my code then vouched on my LinkedIn profile that I was an expert in multiple technologies they wouldn't even recognize if it was sitting in front of them.

So we have a network which, granted, still has utility but it's loaded with spam, no way of really validating an identity, and everyone's connections have been distilled into people who have sent them invites and nothing more. It's such hit and miss trying to really network with people on there that I typically login once every 6 months or so just so I can clear out my inbox.

Now if they turned LinkedIn into a more verified network with capabilities to have more meaningful conversations and introductions I would be interested again. Right now it's just a shitty clone of Facebook with job ads and resumes.

</comment><comment><USER54> Not super surprising. The majority of their revenue comes from recruiters, and I expect the majority of paying recruiters are in tech. So any downswing in tech will be substantially felt. Especially for a firm whose earnings are negative, losing growth is bound to be a problem.

On a related note, how much of Facebook's mobile revenue is for mobile apps? Should we expect a similar decline as the economy declines further?

<comment><USER55> I'm sympathetic to your post, except the last bit. Where do you see the [broad] economy declining, only sector I know declining is energy.

<comment><USER54> I'm not clear if we're in good or bad shape. Exporters are in trouble: strong dollar, failing overseas economies, etc. Declining S&P500, bonds prices rising, etc.

Market prices are still overvalued, as well =( [http://www.multpl.com/shiller- pe/](http://www.multpl.com/shiller-pe/)

IBM, Intel, HP, etc are all declining, as well as retailers like Wal-Mart. Obviously the jobs report is welcome news, so maybe I just have an overly pessimistic outlook.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> A lot of LinkedIn hate, but no comment I've read acknowledges that LinkedIn (in some fields, and growing) has replaced the resume.

It's almost a universal format — there's a lot of value in that. I can just give someone this standard URL instead of creating some crazy word doc with weird indentations.

<comment><USER57> That's ridiculous. I have literally never applied for a job where I could just give a Linkedin link instead of using a resume or filling out a form.

<comment><USER58> Seriously? Where do you live, out of curiosity?

<comment><USER59> My experience too with companies in SV and several other States. Even if they accept a URL they insist on a file upload too. As an interviewer I like LinkedIn's format. It's far easier to read and easy to click through to previous employer's, recommenders, etc. compared to a resume.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> I'm not an expert, but LinkedIn doesn't seem that awful a company at $14 billion market cap, especially given the following:

\- The have $3 billion in cash [0]

\- They are cash-flow positive, and have a $3 billion run rate. (So taking the cash out of the picture, their market cap is less than 4x revenue)

\- Many business people (high value customers) use them many times a day.

\- May people pay for the service. (I've paid as both a job-seeker and hiring manager)

\- They have a stranglehold on executive search, with enormous pricing power.

\- They have done this on the back of a dated product, without much evolution. This isn't the negative that it sounds like. It highlights their market strength. (Bloomberg and Salesforce are similar examples)

While the lack of future growth may warrant a price drop, I think they're taking a lot of heat for the industry as a whole. If they deserve a 40% drop, many others deserve much worse.

[0] [https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ALNKD&ei=oIa2VuGwD4WK...](https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ALNKD&ei=oIa2VuGwD4WKjALz75XACw)

</comment><comment><USER61> LinkedIn is turning into such a mess.

There is no etiquette. Recruiters just spam random people for connections. Users share stupid things that belongs on Facebook. Groups are almost unusable. I'm not even getting into all the dark patterns to crawl users' mailbox and contact list, deceiving "connect" links that actually invite a person who is _not_ even on LinkedIn, etc.

I don't think I ever got a single job through LinkedIn.

</comment><comment><USER62> Hoping to also receive 40% less spam from them too. LinkedIn's an ugly company who's primary business model is social engineering and active exploitation of their user base - sharing the bottom rung on the social ladder with recruiters (aka Customers) and their widespread indiscriminate spam and phishing attempts.

</comment><comment><USER63> I'm going to endorse them for "Creating Value for Shareholders."

</comment><comment><USER64> I'm not surprised. If LinkedIn disappears one day, will we miss it? I probably won't.

As far as I'm concerned, LinkedIn's only purpose is to lookup a contact's name and check his/her profile to learn a bit more before/after a first discussion. I'd venture thinking that this could easily be replaced by static web pages hosted anywhere, and some Google search.

Would you miss LinkedIn?

Edit: In the beginning, LinkedIn used to offer a fair deal to its users: you spend time filling your profile, in return we host your profile for free and for everyone to see (as your public and official resume on the web). But LinkedIn changed this policy a few years ago and, since then, only members close to you in terms of connection can see your profile. Others have to be paying members. In my opinion, it was the beginning of the end for LinkedIn.

</comment><comment><USER65> Am I the only one that likes getting email from people who want to give me a job? I use a separate email and filter the messages out of my inbox. I go in there every week or so and see what's around. For recruiters I think are genuine and are working on cool projects I just politely say I'm not interest right now but feel free to reach out again later.

It's good to see there are people interested in my talents and want to give me money to use them. LinkedIn allows all of that communication to flow from one place.

<comment><USER66> I always respond to thoughtful recruiters. The ones who look into me a little bit and present a job that matches me in some way. They are always welcome and appreciated.

But I've never once gotten that from a recruiter that contacted me through LinkedIn. I'm surprised to hear you have. Recruiters from LinkedIn just spam everyone they can get a hold of and see what sticks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Years ago after reading this I was so disgusted at LinkedIn I closed my account.

They have a pay for placement scheme with both employees and employers. They tell employers, "hey pay money and we'll give you top candidates", then serve candidates who have themselves paid for placement.

[http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/ask-the- headhunter-...](http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/ask-the-headhunter- is-linkedin/)

<comment><USER68> I also deleted my account, they are the worst company that is almost required in todays job market. I'm protesting it haha.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> "It projected full-year revenues at $3.6 billion to $3.65 billion, versus $3.9 billion expected."

Call me naive, but where has that $3.6 billion been going? I realize they just released a new app (which is pretty nice), but that seems like an incredible amount of money for a company whose main business is a cloud application.

<comment><USER70> First of all they have multiple apps, and they have a ton of products that a normal consumer-facing user just doesn't see. It sells to enterprise just as much as it advertises to causal users of the website.

Ask a recruiter or a sales driven org and they'll tell you that LinkedIn is invaluable for getting leads (through products tailored for this segment).

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> Here's an anecdote. My little company was spending roughly $10k per month on PPC directed at mental health pros. Seems perfect for LinkedIn right? We thought so too. So we ran, or attempted to run a bunch of adds regarding our HIPAA compliant software. Unfortunately, LinkedIn's automatic system doesn't allow all caps except for acronyms. In order to get the add past the automatic gatekeeper, I had to use the highly amateur looking 'hipaa' which is ridiculous when used with a professional, educated audience. Yet other acronyms such as IRS or IT or even AMA would work just fine.

I emailed support, posted on their forum and still no action. Not even a response until I posted a nasty recap in their public forum. The response: "email support, this isn't appropriate for a public forum."

While frustrated with the inability of a 'professional' social network to allow such a significant acronym (at least in the health world,) we persisted in advertising.

However they still seem to have a manual ad approval process. So my ads got stuck in approval purgatory time and time again -- often for days.

Then in an attempt to optimize cost given specific response rates, when I adjusted my bids, the exact same ad had to be approved again -- taking at minimum two days before the exact same ad would start running again. Change a keyword? Reapproval. Change scheduling? Reapproval.

With Facebook and Google, all of this stuff can be done in near real-time meaning we could adjust campaigns almost on the fly. While the FB and Google interfaces can be daunting, they don't hold a candle to the crap that LinkedIn calls ad service UX.

Needless to say, LinkedIn lost the entirety of our business, with Facebook gaining the majority. Facebook also resulted in a massive conversion rate: several percentage points different, which in the ad world, is massive.

I am one person and $10k per month isn't groundbreaking, however, it doesn't surprise me that Facebook posted record earnings last quarter and LinkedIn took a dive.

</comment><comment><USER72> No matter what you guys think, I found my current job, which I really enjoy so far, through LinkedIn connection. It's still the most efficient professional social tool I've used to land a job in market.

</comment><comment><USER73> Hey all, Steve Johnson here with LinkedIn. I've read through this thread and wanted to make myself available for anybody that wanted to discuss some of the product and design issues that have been raised. Please feel free to send me a message via LinkedIn (linkedin.com/in/esjohnson) or respond in this thread and I'll keep checking it. I look forward to the conversation, thanks much.

</comment><comment><USER74> To all the people with LinkedIn accounts who are complaining about the spam and the dark patterns here's an idea: don't have a LinkedIn account. Simple.

I've never had one and never will. I've had a few contact requests but they go right in the bin. From the number of calls/spam emails my coworkers receive via LinkedIn it makes me wonder why people are on the site at all. Sure if you want crappy low quality job offers from lazy recruiters then its good, but otherwise...

</comment><comment><USER75> LinkedIn posts suck, just now I see somebody posted about a job that a friend of mine could be interested in, I see no way to forward that or copy the link, went to the poster's profile to see if it's there and I can send his profile's link (not there), upon coming back the post doesn't show up anymore, Linkedin deletes posts from view "randomly" (other posts are still there).

</comment><comment><USER76> It's a crummy product. My homepage is filled with useless crap like word puzzles and simple math equations, I'm inundated with with spam from recruiters, and I get daily connection requests from people I don't know without any explanation of why they want to reach out to me.

It _could_ be a useful network that helps me address professional needs, but they seem to have no interest in building that.

</comment><comment><USER77> Over the years I've been either a freelance IT consultant or the head of an IT consultancy. I never got a client from LinkedIn, no one that worked for me ever got a client from LinkedIn, and more broadly, no one I know has ever got a client from LinkedIn. I'm sure they have some purpose (public resume database?) that I'm not clear on, but their value from my perspective is 0.

<comment><USER78> I've never gotten a job from LinkedIn, though I'm connected to lots of people I know IRL and have loads of IRL recommendations. Most of what I see is generated by recruiters, even agency recruiters. I get loads of contact requests from recruiters looking for a "rockstar"/"10x"/"ninja", and I ignore all of them.

OTOH, I've gotten several jobs via Twitter. Anecdotal, but Twitter is a more powerful business-oriented social media service if you're looking for a job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> Wonder how this guy feels with 5% of his families investments being in LinkedIn [http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/02/01/3-reasons-l...](http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/02/01/3-reasons- linkedin-corp-stock-could-fall.aspx)

<comment><USER80> About 40% poorer I reckon.

<comment><USER81> 2% poorer?

<comment><USER80> In the context of all his wealth, yes. Most definitely 2% poorer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> Tableau down 50%.

HN Discussion here. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11042482](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11042482)

<comment><USER64> LinkedIn, Tableau, Atlassian: is there something going on today?

<comment><USER83> It's earnings season.

[http://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/earningsseason.asp](http://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/earningsseason.asp)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> Good. Terrible website. Extremely over-valued.

</comment><comment><USER85> "erasing $10B of company's value"

No, not at all. $10B of the company's _valuation_ was erased, but the _value_ did not change at all.

</comment><comment><USER86> The best possible long read article on the subject of what's happening in the markets and from a global macro economic POV is here: [http://seekingalpha.com/article/3860226-sell-stocks-risk- ass...](http://seekingalpha.com/article/3860226-sell-stocks-risk-assets-buy-u- s-treasuries-deflation-coming)

What we're seeing the the beginning of a massive deleveraging as excess debt gets worked out of the system. It's possible that asset classes of all kinds (including startup valuations, real estate, stocks etc.) are 30-50% above par value. We'll see...

</comment><comment><USER87> At a 20 billion valuation that still seems quite high. I think to justify the valuation they would at some point need to generate $1.5-$2 billion in FCF and at the current growth rate that isn't happening.

</comment><comment><USER88> "We are pleased to give you a free trial of Premium Job Seeker." Proceeds to ask credit card info.

</comment><comment> nevi-me LinkedIn has had a recent trend of forcing a search result to their login page. Maybe a new privacy setting that people switch on? Every time I come across that page I discard what I was searching for, and move on.

I can no longer remember what it was about LinkedIn that made me delete my account in the first place, maybe it's been long, but I've grown to strongly dislike the whole thing. As others have commented, perhaps they're running out of e-mail addresses to mine now.

</comment><comment><USER89> Certainly a lot of hate for Linkedin here - curious, what would people like Linkedin to become? Or what would it take for a new service to be interesting? And given that people are unlikely to pay for a service like this means that advertising and recruiter services are likely the only sources of revenue - are you comfortable with that?

The opportunity I'm surprised Linkedin has not tackled is to create their own CRM system. I think they are the only company that can really challenge Salesforce.com. Imagine getting a CRM system and having everyone in already - a marketing/sales dream. I imagine they thought of this, but may have said it was beyond the pail as it may have driven users away. Interestingly, Hubspot's CRM was offered with data.

To me, the most interesting part of the announcement was highlighted here:

[http://adage.com/article/digital/linkedin-shuts-ad- network-1...](http://adage.com/article/digital/linkedin-shuts-ad- network-12-months-opened/302559/)

They're shutting down their external ad network that they purchased when they bought Bizo. Having tried this product, I'm not surprised - it was a piece of sh*t.

</comment><comment><USER90> What does this mean for Connectifier, the company LinkedIn acquired hours before markets closed yesterday (and before after-hours trading caused LNKD to slide 40%)?

<comment><USER91> Depends on the term of the merger agreement. But if the price was paid in stock and the exchange rate was fixed before today (which would be typical), then yes, they would have taken a big hit too.

<comment><USER90> As someone who previously worked for Connectifier, that's really unfortunate. Hopefully LNKD recovers...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER92> I think that's spot on.

Real Estate: The core Bay Area cities, the pinnacle of which is San Francisco, have not seen substantial real estate slumps in either recession in recent memory (the dot com bust and the mortgage bubble). For outlying areas, like Antioch, the picture was pretty ugly, however. Location matters.

Tech jobs: As someone who joined the Bay Area tech workforce in February 2000, just a few months before the market peaked, my observation has been exactly what you describe: * employed people won't see their salaries drop much, they might even see slight increases * some perks will be cut * income from equity packages will be much lower * there will be some layoffs at established companies * some startups will go bust, others will see their valuation drop and fundraising will be a lot harder * there will be fewer tech people employed overall * new arrivals in the job market (eg new grads) will have a harder time and see substantially lower starting salaries compared to their peers just a year prior. Timing matters.

</comment><comment><USER93> I like LinkedIn, it helps me get in contact with hiring managers and gives me a platform to say nice things about my colleagues.

I also prefer it to résumés for getting an idea of who I'm working with.

I don't like that it tries to trick me into doing things I don't want to do. I hate to think that people might be sent unsolicited email just because _I_ decided to interact with it.

I honestly think that they should stop trying to be a social network, and instead: perfect the résumé; help people find talent without having to resort to shotgun InMails; discourage boasting in the unstructured parts of the profiles (Summary specifically).

I think that if they fire some people and chop off a few limbs, they could emerge a company that people actually respect.

</comment><comment><USER94> Anecdotal, but I've gotten more legitimate job leads from my Twitter account than I have from my LinkedIn account. At least it's Engineering Managers or other Lead Engineers inviting me to interview on Twitter, I only see recruiters on LinkedIn.

</comment><comment><USER95> LinkedIn reminds me of an online dating site. You're only on there long enough to get what you want. When you've finally gotten it you stop using it until you need to get it again.

<comment><USER23> How is that different from Amazon?

</comment></comment><comment><USER96> I can't say that I feel bad for such a sketchy company. Even after I deleted my LinkedIn account, they kept spamming on a daily basis. Then I just added the domain to the spam filter.

</comment><comment><USER97> The story behind the collapse of LinkedIn is not yet public, here you go: [https://goo.gl/EE5h6Y](https://goo.gl/EE5h6Y)

</comment><comment><USER98> _request_

I use a Chrome extension that removed the ability to see the news feed on facebook called News Feed Eradicator.

Since installing it I've saved a lot of time because I can still use Facebook messages and view groups that I am a part of but I don't get caught in the mindless scrolling trap.

I would pay for a similar extension for linkedin. I have to use linkedin for work but I find myself scrolling mindlessly way too often. Does anyone have the ability to put something like that together?

<comment><USER99> Just add the classes/ID's to your adblock filters (very easy with ublock origin since you can just click the element and view the tree to find the element to nuke).

Done that on all newspapers and youtube to block comments, they hardly ever add anything.

<comment><USER100> Yeah

! [https://www.linkedin.com/](https://www.linkedin.com/) www.linkedin.com###ozfeed

does it for me (click the name at the top in uBlock Origin to open the dashboard, stick that line in 'My Filters')

<comment><USER98> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER101> I never put a lot of value in the data on LinkedIn.

Where else can I get "endorsements" for random technology keywords like SOA from people who cannot possibly know what SOA means?

<comment><USER102> I really want to see the code for how that works. My great aunt did not endorse me for python, because she has no clue what that is. I'm curious if they trick people into clicking that? or if they just purely make it up.

<comment><USER103> They send emails to your contacts/dig through your email list to find people you know and ask them to endorse you for xyz skills through one click. Your great aunt was probably thinking she did you a solid. Scummy by the company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER104> And they said I was a fool to short it a couple of weeks ago.

</comment><comment><USER105> For me, LinkedIn jumped the shark when they started sending me birthday notifications for my contacts.

Explain to me how that belongs in a business network?

</comment><comment><USER106> Every time I see something like this, I have to wonder -

Did anybody actually _lose_ anything? It's not like LinkedIn is more or less intrinsically valuable than it was yesterday. The only thing that's happened is that their baseball cards dropped in resale value.

Anybody who thinks a non-dividend non-voting stock is anything other than a baseball card is kidding themselves.

<comment><USER107> Employees whose compensation included stock units (if that's a thing at LinkedIn and I assume it is given the industry) certainly lost something.

If Google's stuck took a hit like that I'd be out a significant part of my compensation.

<comment><USER106> Is there any truth to the 'you can't lose something you never actually had' idea?

When LI's stock price dropped, it's not like somebody showed up and plundered the shareholders' bank accounts. It's never safe to treat stocks like money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER108> Hopefully, when they close the site, our personal data will not be given to the third party. Or... what was in that small script?

</comment><comment><USER109> First Twitter, and now Linked In. I've called unicorns and specially those without business model a bubble.

What we are looking is a shift...

      -Happened from real state to oil
      -Oil to IT unicorns

Now the question is where is the money being transferred to? I'm still wondering how has Facebook done to avoid all this happening to them.

<comment><USER110> I don't interpret this shift as money being transferred anywhere, so much as a systematic de-leveraging of investments.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER111> I'll go in for a few shares. Most adjusted analyst price targets are in the neighborhood of $180. Anyone else buy?

</comment><comment><USER112> I can't believe they are worth even a tenth of current price - they have added no value to my career and for some time have just been annoying. It really started going backwards with the endorsements - there is no validation of the competency of the endorser to endorse you, so it is totally pointless.

</comment><comment><USER113> I have always considered LinkedIn a spammer.

</comment><comment><USER114> no value was destroyed. it didn't exist in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER115> Well, since everyone's bearish on the markets, predicting widespread unemployment for all, doesn't this mean that people will be back on LNKD looking for jobs and such? This could only mean good things for LNKD no? Sounds pretty recession-proof to me.

</comment><comment><USER116> "Apple is like a ship with a hole in the bottom, leaking water and my job is to get the ship pointed in the right direction." \- Gil Amelio

Seems similar for Linkedin but I don't think they will be able to find a "Steve Jobs" kind of strategy.

</comment><comment><USER117> Just a friendly hint for resident Smarty pants young things:

 _This is it_. Competition in the field is (intellectually, conceptually, practically) ground level ho hum regardless of names/numbers. Be fearless. Think Uber for people.

('it' being the next google scale market).

<comment><USER23> If the trend continues, though, I'll get my flying car first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER118> A bunch of "well meaning" super wealthy, corrupt individuals can manipulate the world economy as a show of power to Presidential candidates they don't already have in their pocket but soon may...

I like conspiracy theories and I cannot lie...

bleepin' hell

</comment><comment><USER119> LinkedIN's utility is really negligible now. It's become a constant stream of spammers trying to sell software engineering or recruiting services. Virtually everyone who is on LinkedIN is also on Facebook, twitter etc.

</comment><comment><USER120> From the advertising standpoint, it seems to me that Facebook has a database of people's job titles which is almost as good as LinkedIn's, without requiring advertisers to pay a minimum $2.00 per click to reach them.

<comment><USER121> From our experience targeting job titles, LinkedIn is actually much more comprehensive than Facebook. ie targeting "Operations Directors at Company X". Facebook doesn't provide that level of granularity, and our audience sizes are much bigger on LinkedIn.

<comment><USER120> Interesting. Do you find $2+ cpcs justifiable? Can you really get a good ROI with that?

<comment><USER121> A 50k month reoccurring revenue from a lead sourced via a $2cpc is justifiable yeah

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER122> Makes you wonder how private social media company valuations are doing.

</comment><comment><USER123> Well, can happen if you want thousands of unknown people that do not use a copy of your products, to decide what to do with share value.

Is it statistically a good idea be a public company?

</comment><comment><USER124> Linkedin needs a really good competitor, this service can honestly be improved in every way. Not to mention user experience at profile level.

</comment><comment><USER125> Seems to be a lot of hating on LinkedIn today. I think it's a great site to use for your business contacts. Way better than collecting business cards.

<comment><USER126> Hater News really really really realllllllllly hates LinkedIn, this is pretty light compared to normal 2 minutes' hate on LinkedIn posts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER127> I just don't understand why they don't manage to bring more value with the wealth of data they. It seems like there is so much they could do...

</comment><comment><USER128> and the vultures are showing up looking for a carcass [http://www.marketwatch.com/story/shareholder-alert-levi- kors...](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/shareholder-alert-levi-korsinsky- llp-announces-an-investigation-involving-possible-violations-of-federal- securities-laws-by-the-board-of-linkedin-corporation-2016-02-05)

</comment><comment><USER129> This could be symbolic, given that LNKD's IPO was one of the first big events of the current boom. Opened at $119 I think.

</comment><comment><USER130> Whether or not it's a correct assessment, I think it's crazy to suggest that the Facebook At Work announcement isn't a huge factor here.

But look: at the end of the day, LinkedIn is _awful_. It's a thinly veiled spam marketing scheme. So the fact that it lost $10B of value seems bizarre only because LinkedIn already seemed worthless.

I have also been off of Facebook for a couple of years now. Not sure what, if any, social networking platform to adopt.

</comment><comment><USER131> What are your favorite parts of linkedin? what do you want them to be doing better that they are not?

</comment><comment><USER132> anyone delete their linkedin? I just got sick of strangers adding me and messaging me but I also found out my ex-boss who I had a great deal of respect for unfriended me on linkedin and lets just say he needs to worry about another competitor SaaS soon.

<comment><USER133> Yes, I believe a hosted personal site is better, since it's also under my control. Anyone can search your name online and get that as a top hit.

You can delete LinkedIn, but if your profile was public, good luck getting all the data scrapers to remove your data as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER134> LI having less value than a wild valuation is not a surprise to me. It is still overvalued.

</comment><comment><USER135> LinkedIn never made sense to me with their premium model. It was a bold idea though.

</comment><comment><USER136> Ouch, I just feel bad for my friends and all the others who work at Lynda.com.

</comment><comment><USER137> +1 for not focusing on users

</comment><comment><USER138> Also known as 1 $TWTR down.

</comment><comment><USER139> So... good time to buy?

</comment><comment><USER140> We all know Nasdaq has been a bit inflated...

</comment><comment><USER113> I have always considered LinkedIn a spammer!

</comment><comment><USER141> You know how people say, "No press is bad press." This is the counterexample. I feel really bad for everyone at LinkedIn today.

</comment><comment><USER142> The whole market is inflated with VCs & wall street pricing models. Ultimately the public pays the price of all this.

</comment><comment><USER143> That's roughly the market cap of Twitter. Let that sink in...

<comment><USER144> But, I _like_ Twitter. I think LinkedIn has plenty of room to fall farther.

</comment></comment><comment><USER145> Along with dozens of other companies who's stock is down.

</comment><comment><USER146> Who cares?

</comment><comment><USER147> And nothing of value was lost.

</comment><comment><USER28> Startup CEOs are getting pretty young these days, has your niece been hitting you up for a seed round?

I'm thinking an App that is Uber for Lemonade Stands, people in the neighborhood just press the "I'm thirsty" button and one of her "mixologists" nearby makes a lemonade and brings it by. She doesn't make the lemonade or sell it, she is all about connecting thirsty people to industrious people who are putting their otherwise unused lemons to work.

<comment><USER148> I would be interested in seeing how this plays out, considering cops occasionally shut down lemonade stands for not having permits[1]. This was not an isolated incident[2].

1: [http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/11/politics/lemonade-stand- shut-d...](http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/11/politics/lemonade-stand-shut-down- texas/)

2: [http://www.lemonadefreedom.com/category/selling-lemonade- is-...](http://www.lemonadefreedom.com/category/selling-lemonade-is-not-a- crime/)

<comment><USER149> That's ok, the mixologists would be independent lemonade service providers using their own lemons.

As independent contractors, they would certainly be responsible for compliance with all lemonade regulation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER150> wow, it is literally crashing

</comment><comment><USER151> Because of Facebook Work I think.

[https://work.fb.com/](https://work.fb.com/)

<comment><USER152> I don't think Facebook for work competes with LinkedIn's core business at all. It's a different product.

<comment><USER151> What is the difference?

<comment><USER153> FB for Work looks like a competitor for Yammer i.e. an internal social network for companies offering internal communication with notes, status updates, etc...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Side Projects Kill - <AUTHOR> http://fr.anc.is/2012/07/13/side-projects-kill/

<comment><USER2> Meh. I do side projects the way other people read a book or learn a musical instrument: to unwind in an intellectually stimulating manner.

You can't be head down in your business 100% of the time; that's just plain unhealthy. You need time to step back and focus on something else for awhile, so that you can come back fresh and full of new ideas.

The good life is all about balance. You can be the jackrabbit who's always first in line, but I'm still going to get my slice of pie, despite stopping to smell the roses.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am a father of 2 kids, any side project will mean time away from them, and I don't care what anyone says, I prefer to have a balanced life any day. I also find my ability to work during normal hours (9am to 9pm, as I am freelancer) during the week is enhanced by my down time with the family!

<comment><USER4> Do you know if there are family-friendly startups out there?

<comment><USER5> Yes, mine! ;) I'm father of one kid, additional twins expected in december. :)

I think it depends on the type of work. We're developing software, and this can be done practically anytime. Personally I go to office very late (to have some time with my kid in the morning), and often return early enough to also play in the evening. Then, after putting her into bed, I can work again until 02.00 AM. But it's also important to mention that your wife (or spouse) has to tolerate this, too! :)

And to side projects: I think they're even more important the more time you invest into a certain single project, to look beyond one's own nose. They keep you open-minded, and sometimes even integrate into your current main project.

<comment><USER4> Looking at your profile..do you make webapps in cpp, or am I reading it wrong? Wana plug your company?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I totally disagree.

Side projects are a way to experiment and broaden your knowledge of technologies. Focus is good, but prolonged focus can lead to boredom and resentment.

Giving employees the chance to vent their creativity with new and fun technologies (via side projects) often leads to much happier employees. There is also a built-in feedback loop that allows that knowledge to flow back into the company with better practices, architecture or just the use of better tools.

Let me summarize it this way: Side projects are the best form of training you can provide for your employees.

And that's why Google has 20% time.

<comment><AUTHOR> I never said side-projects aren't great for experimenting & broadening your knowledge. In fact, I'm painfully aware of that. It's just that in a startup setting doing side-projects quickly becomes lethal. Maybe us entrepreneurs should get a traditional job once in a while so we can afford side-projects again?

<comment><USER7> I find that working too many hours outside of 9 to 5 quickly becomes lethal too. And working on side projects as a cofounder feels very much like cheating on a spouse for all the reasons you mentioned.

One approach is to look for future needs and do quick startup related R&D projects in place of true side projects. This doesn't have all the benefits of real side projects though. And it has some real disadvantages too. It still feels like work and can lead to resentment and burnout if you aren't careful. But this the best compromise I've found.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Haha, I was just thinking the same thing today. There are two voices I have to listen to here.

Hacker: Scratch your itch, build something!

Freelancer: That itch will cost you money! You could be working during that time.

Compromise: Build something on the side (rather than client work) which will bring in cash. This is good for me because it diversifies my income.

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem with building something on the side _that makes money_ is that most of the time it still means you need to spend time promoting it.</comment></comment>


SVGjs 3.0 Advent Calendar – Day 6 - <AUTHOR> https://codepen.io/fuzzyma/pen/zMVWRd <comment><AUTHOR> You can find the whole calendar at twitter (@svg_js): [https://twitter.com/svg_js](https://twitter.com/svg_js)

</comment><comment><USER2> That site is very cool. First I have seen codepen. Thank you for the share</comment>


Why I'm Not Coding   Yet — Medium - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/what-i-learned-building/f4528ce84505 <comment><USER2> Reminds me of [http://www.appsumo.com/wantrepreneurs-business- blueprint/](http://www.appsumo.com/wantrepreneurs-business-blueprint/) and how you should first be focused on testing/validation rather than actually BUILDING a product. Great stuff!

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a wonderful piece of satire!

I like how the author, who himself writes marketing content that masquerades as meaningful articles, wrote a bunch of marketing content that is masquerading as a meaningful article about a meaningful company.

I love way that that this article asks the question, "are we not all susceptible to marketing media?", even us technorati at Hacker News?</comment>


Amazon Cloud Drive CLI and SDK - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/alex-phillips/clouddrive-node/tree/master <comment><USER2> this is great!

Under Windows, i had to manually create the directory, c:\users<user>.\cache before it would work.

Also, directory upload doesn't work too well and globbing would be nice to have.

eg upload *.jpg remotedir

Nevertheless, a CLI interface is highly welcomed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! I tried to include support for Windows along the dev process, but I have not actually tested/ran it under windows. Pull requests are more than welcome.

As far as the cache directory, I'll add in support for creating the directory if it doesn't exist.</comment></comment>


Facebook still auto-generating Islamic State, al-Qaida pages - <AUTHOR> https://apnews.com/3479209d927946f7a284a71d66e431c7 <comment><USER2> Follow the money. How much money does these orgs give FB?</comment>


How to Launch Your Startup in 16 Easy Steps (Infographic) by Rob Walling - <AUTHOR> http://pavelpichardo.com/2011/02/how-to-launch-your-startup-in-16-easy-steps-infographic-by-rob-walling/ <comment><USER2> Point up for raising awareness of fiverr.com

Well, _I'd_ never heard of it before, anyway.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this satire? The suggestion for meta-tags in particular is totally off and most of the items are about your business model and do not pertain to launching a startup as the title ostensibly claims.

<comment><USER4> Assuredly a satire.

<comment><USER5> i know its satire, but I would suggest any launch to try take most of these steps maybe except hiring a pr firm.

<comment><USER6> this is why you're comenting on HN instead of running a business

<comment><USER5> i can see you fall under the same category

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Haha the last one was great</comment>


The OKCupid data release fiasco - <AUTHOR> https://socialmediacollective.org/2016/05/18/the-okcupid-data-release-fiasco-its-time-to-rethink-ethics-education/ <comment><USER2> I think there are two important points, first that there is no longer a clear distinction between public and private spaces. To pick the immediate example, I am currently sitting in my bedroom, but on the other hand I am writing in a public forum. Plus there are conceptually less clear examples, for example chat rooms which are basically public, but I still have the expectation that everybody present belongs to a small community.

The other important point is, that there is a shift to questions instead of answers. Technology moves just too fast to give good guidelines in terms of rules. It would perhaps help to define a questionnaire that researches have to fill out, just to demonstrate that they thought about the question. For example, the question "Which groups are especially vulnerable to a leak of the data?" may prompt filtering of said groups and prevent some damage. (That obviously does not help against black hats, but would probably helped in the current OKCupid case.)

And lastly I think that there is a mismatch what "reasonable expectation of privacy" means, most people do not have any idea what "big data" means, they believe that Facebook reviews flagged comments, but do not understand that they can (and I would guess do) analyze each and every interaction with Facebook. (I don't mean to single out FB, it is just they are the most obvious example due to their size and the sort of private nature of the network.)

<comment><USER3> Sorry, but neither point is convincing to me.

First, I don't get why sitting in one's bedroom and writing in a public forum illustrate the clear distinction between public and private spaces. You already noted the forum is public. IT IS PUBLIC. If you put up your web page on the Internet and only search engine would ever come to your page, well, your page is still the public domain. Being in a small community, take a cult, well, if you show up in the public and doing your activity in the public, I would expect that to be a public demonstration. In fact, if you try to run naked with your cult in the middle of the street, you are going to get arrested and charged for public misconduct. If you are running naked in a cult house, well, that's private. The distinction is very clear in these examples. I am not arguing there aren't examples that would illustrate a blur, but your example is too weak.

My response to the second suggestion. Well, leak of data is a big deal. So if my research somehow harms people with AIDS, am I allowed to collect the non- AID patients? Another way to put it, filtering doesn't do any good and provides no meaning. From an ethic standpoint, people aren't concerned about what groups will be harmed from the outcome of the research - because the whole point of research is to either validate or invalidate some hypothesis. Research ethic should be about the treatment of data and the process of conducting experiment.

However, I do agree that some users aren't aware of what online service do with their application.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wrote and posted a statistical analysis of the OKCupid dataset, but took it down immediately once the information about how the data was obtained came to light.

The problem here is that the data included in the release (answers to questions) can _only_ be accessed by logged-in users, and the scraper they used utilizes a login, in which case the researchers blatantly violated the ToS and a DMCA takedown of the dataset was a valid response by OKC.

However, almost everything else in an OKC profile, including username, city, and sexual orientation, is _public to logged out users by default_. (see this analysis of mass-scraped OKC data: [http://yakamo.org/?p=112](http://yakamo.org/?p=112)). That makes things a grayer area than usual, and serves as a reminder that nothing online is private.

<comment><USER5> > [http://yakamo.org/?p=112](http://yakamo.org/?p=112)

"I setup 7 servers with mpi4py and it took 48 hours to scrape 3.2million profiles. Now i was ready to get the answer and find out how many profiles where public."

I think that works out to around 20 requests/sec. At a certain point it becomes borderline DoS?

<comment><USER6> 20 requests per second per 7 servers so it comes out to 3 requests per second. Not even close to a DoS attack.

<comment><USER7> It's 20 rps -- not sure why you divided by 7. A DoS attack is measured by total, not per server.

<comment><USER6> Well if you are going to total might as well add in the traffic from all the other users. And in that grand scheme 20 requests per second won't matter.

I only divided by 7 because I thought he wasn't running all the 7 servers simultaneously, come to think of it, I was wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> tuna-piano I did some work for an organization, who, after the Ashley Madison leak, downloaded the entire leak and searched through it to find out if any of their employees were in the dump.

I wondered, wasn't the data still technically private data that was just stolen and released? And wouldn't it be against the law to then download a copy of that data yourself? But it was actually the legal department that downloaded the dump, so I didn't have much to say.

<comment><USER8> Wouldn't it have been against the law for the company to have _acted_ on that information? What were they planning to do, fire people who were having an affair?

<comment> tuna-piano Well, it was only for people using their work email addresses in the leak. And I'm not sure, but I assume since most employees are 'at will' \- they can be fired at any time for any reason?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I understand the issue there, but if it has been done by researchers. Hasn't this been done/ will be done by some entity with more defined agenda.

It was certainly unethical for the researcher to release the data, but the public really really really need to be educated about putting information on a publicly available and searchable database.

</comment><comment><USER10> It makes sense that people are upset that this data is collected and released in this manner - yes it is public but serving it via the API (Not allowing a user to scrape) lets its access remain under the control of the service(and user, to some extent).

It seems, though, that this discussion is overlooking the fact that there are companies out there which are gathering this exact same data(And then some) to sell to other organizations who want to identify their users.

</comment><comment><USER11> Is it time to think ethics education? Maybe we just to spend a little more time and effort on ethics in education. The author is right, just because it is legal, doesn't mean it is ethical. That is why we have ethics. As far as data being public, I would claim it has to do with expectations of privacy. Phone numbers in the white pages are public and really accessible. Relating that information doesn't change anything. On the other hand the license plate of the car parks in the parking lot is also public information, in the sense that anyone can go down there and record it. But the owner has a certain expectation of privacy. Plus that data isn't really accessible (will before license plate cameras) so releasing that info changes is accessibility. The issues with big data aren't really new. People have to consider that the data they have involves real people.

<comment><USER12> No, people don't need to understand anything about "data they have", because it is not people that have data, it is corporations, and they don't "understand" things, they make profit. What people need to understand is that they are data and that data is a product that can be used against them.

<comment><USER13> Corporations are people. And I mean that not in the legal sense, but in that they are made up of people. Real people that make real decisions, both ethical an unethical, about real people, not "data".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't see how site scraping is a "data release".

<comment><USER15> Because a lot of this information was previously only available to logged in users of a particular service. Would you be okay with someone placing recording devices under the tables of restaurants and then putting the recordings and transcriptions online? Any conversations they pick up happened in a public place where anyone could have overheard them.

<comment><USER12> Another bad analogy. 1) In public places I usually speak at the volume level at which others can't hear me; if I start yelling in a public place I should expect things that I yell to appear on youtube, in the local newspaper, in the police log 2) I come to the restaurant to eat. If after eating I fill out a survey which includes lots of personal possibly identifying questions, would I have the right to be surprised if next day I find my answers on the website of the restaurant? Have I read the fine print on that survey?

<comment><USER16> How do you feel about sites which build "shadow profiles"?

<comment><USER12> I dislike them as I dislike all human activity which doesn't produce useful good or services; probably more so as these are probably harmful and parasitic. But I'm not sure how this is related to the subject at hand.

<comment><USER16> Just pointing out that there are more ways to get data about you into a service than you giving that service the data. Would you still accept it as a "painful lesson" if it happened to you?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't understand the problem. It should be fucking apparent by now that no site on the internet can / will / wants to protect your identity. That's on you.

Anyone accessing websites with their names, emails attached to their names, emails attached to their phone numbers attached to their names, birthdays in their handles, handles that aren't random strings, identifying passwords, avatars in use on other accounts, images also hosted on flickr, g+, insta, etc. should take it for fucking granted that there is now zero reasonable expectance of privacy.

We had the chance for the internet to be a beautiful, anonymous playground, but a few too many people showed up dead on the chan and now the crybabies with body image issues have managed to make all of the above borderline required in the name of stopping "cyber-bullying" and "terrorism."

(try to sign up for an account, say a meetup account -- requires an email. Burn emails are blocked for "spam." So you need a gmail. Gmail requires phone number. SIM requires passport identification in europe... > meetup.com requires passport identification... a few alternatives still exist, mail.com for example doesn't require phone verification... yet. Facebook requires an actual scan of the passport if you put in estimably fake information.)

And with that thought paradigm, that your ID is a requirement of internetting, comes stupid people getting butthurt by shit like this "oh, but I put forward all this identifying information with the expectation that I would be anonymous, oh, oh, oh".

All this because some bitch on youtube can't handle the fact that obesity is not in fact a disease, and because something that kills less people than accidentally suffocating in bed has become an excuse to usher in the police states of america.

There was a better way, where this this would never happen. But we as a people opted to go this new direction. Wear a fucking jacket if it's cold and remember _you_ wanted to vacation on the baltic beaches in march, not me.

<comment><USER18> Please don't post like this on HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> IIRC, this data was all simply scraped from profiles, not socially engineered out of people. While it might be morally grey, you need to half expect stuff like this will happen when you post it. If you don't want things like your sexual preferences to be public, then don't put them on a free public dating website profile.

<comment><USER16> If you didn't want the bank to let someone else have all your money, you shouldn't have put your money in a publicly-accessible bank anyone could visit. And you _certainly_ shouldn't have trusted the bank's promises that it would impose rules on who can access money and how.

<comment><USER12> Terrible analogy. You are putting your money into the bank in order for the bank to preserve the money and perhaps pay you interest on it. When you use a website like OKCupid, you are getting a service from them in exchange for ability to mine a sell personal information about yourself. And, amazingly, this will lead to... people getting your personal information. The lack of public understanding of this is precisely what makes a dump like this ethically gray. Sure, it's bad that people's information leaked, but at least it wasn't for profit and overall public is better off because more people understand how data works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> OK can someone ELI5 what is the fallacy of the "it's already public so it's ok" argument? I definitely understand that legal != ethical; but i suspect this is not clear cut at all in this case. I think it is similar to the responsible disclosure vs immediate disclosure. Sure, people get hurt by this and it is real and is a problem, but on the other hand could the educational benefits outweigh that impact? People need to learn that they are being watched and understand how stuff works, and m.b. that lesson needs to be painful. Is it perhaps better if the data is just accessible to everyone and everyone knows about it then if it is only accessible to the highest bidder and you don't even know about it.

<comment><USER20> It's unlikely that I'll convince someone who feels a "lesson needs to be painful," but here goes.

This is all about what tools enable.

This issue is critically important to people who have a much higher privacy need than the average person. Consider an abusive ex tracking down their victim in an unknown new city.

If the profile is indexable, the abuser is trying to either use OKCupid's search (which returns results with a high degree of randomness), or using things like "site:okcupid.com $interest1 $interest2", which is noisy, to say the least. This task looks hopeless quickly.

But if someone provides a database of profiles, the job gets much more tractable. Suddenly, you've enabled the attacker to filter by people who have 1,2,n interests of their ex, search with photographs of their ex, hell, even use facial recognition. Some of these things were kind of possible before, but with a database they are likely. If someone builds a "find your ex" web frontend on this database that uses facial recognition technology, it becomes accessible to everyone, and maybe even popular.

Saying that this lesson should be educational is theoretically nice, but doesn't match how users interact with products in the real world. Anyone who has worked on a product with millions of users knows that the average user (a) doesn't know that there are settings (b) they don't know which things are controlled by settings (c) they don't know how to find the settings, and (d) they don't know how to change them. This is so common that I no longer believe that users are responsible for the implications of default settings (and OKCupid's defaults are, inconveniently enough, Public).

Tools usually are capable of both good and bad things, but a database of profiles has limited upside, and a huge downside. Like, this thing had better be curing a minor fatal disease for the amount of trouble that it will cause.

<comment><USER12> So i read your response and everything you say reinforces my feeling that it is better to publish this than not to. At least this was done not for profit. If the data is collected and the data is for sale (and it is, because i understand it was purchased legally), there _will_ be someone who builds the service for aggregation and searching like you describe. And it might be very expensive, but that crazy ex will pay that $1000 to find the person she is after. In other words, saying "it's unethical to make access to public info easy" is useless; if information is public, someone will access it and someone will make it easy to access. It's better if this is done in a public way and for free, than if someone sells it quietly.

<comment><USER16> The problem still comes down to your "lessons should be painful" approach, and how disproportionate it is relative to the perceived error here.

To take an analogy: if a child plays with matches, you teach the child not to do that, explain how fire is dangerous, etc. You don't light a fire and hold the child's face down on it to burn them and make the lesson "painful". Yet when it comes to deliberately making sensitive/intimate data about people public that basically _is_ what you're advocating for: the potential emotional harm that can be done to the people involved is off the charts.

<comment><USER12> Frankly I don't understand what are these terrible secrets that people are comfortable sharing on a public web site for everyone to see, but not comfortable with everyone seeing them. I just fail to see the pain. Discomfort, sure, but pain and suffering?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Victory for tech giants on EU data laws - <AUTHOR> http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/5ad18e46-3d8c-11e3-9928-00144feab7de.html

<comment><AUTHOR> TL:DR if you don't want to signup:

Google, Facebook and other US tech giants have won an important victory against EU efforts to restrict the sharing of customer data after UK Prime Minister David Cameron persuaded the bloc to postpone the introduction of tougher privacy rules by at least a year.

The climbdown is a blow to advocates of stricter data protection standards, especially as it comes amid an international scandal that has seen the US accused of snooping on EU leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and millions of European citizens.

The delay will give US companies – as well as the Obama administration, which has been frantically lobbying for the reforms to be watered down – the opportunity to make their case more forcefully once the attention shifts away from the US spy scandal, said some EU officials and privacy advocates.

"It looks like we won," said an executive at a large US tech company. "When we saw the story about Merkel's phone being tapped and that 35 leaders' phones were also compromised, we thought we were going to lose . . . Britain's common sense prevailed."</comment>


The Legend of Zelda meets the real world - <AUTHOR> http://www.getwayfare.com

<comment><USER2> This tells me nothing of Wayfare. From the tagline, I assume that this service is some kind of gamification. Do you really want your target audience assuming much about your company?

</comment><comment><USER3> Why should I invite friends if I have no idea what this is?

To be honest I'm not a gamer, but I have a handful of friends I would have invited... had you shown me what the heck it was.</comment>


Nginx-1.3.15 development version released, featuring experimental SPDY module - <AUTHOR> http://nginx.org/ <comment><USER2> Oh so you don't have to patch it manually anymore?

Patch was very stable, no problems and spdy just works.

Apparently work on the patch/module was sponsored by Automattic (WordPress, Matt Mullenweg) so thanks to them and whomever worked on it! Some background here [https://barry.wordpress.com/2012/06/16/nginx-spdy-and- automa...](https://barry.wordpress.com/2012/06/16/nginx-spdy-and-automattic/)

ps. REMEMBER you need openssl 1.0.1 - previous versions will not work with spdy and distributions like CentOS do not come with the newer version. You can switch to the IUS repo in that case <http://iuscommunity.org/pages/Repos.html>

         rpm -Uvh http://dl.iuscommunity.org/pub/ius/stable/Redhat/6/x86_64/ius-release-1.0-10.ius.el6.noarch.rpm
         yum install yum-plugin-replace
         yum replace openssl --replace-with openssl10

<comment><USER3> I tripped up on the NPN module when building openssl from source - great tip with the yum replacement installation. Note: you also need to have EPEL installed for the above to work:

        rpm -Uvh http://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/fedora/epel/6/x86_64/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm

<comment><USER2> Ah I may have had epel enabled already, I think Centos6 even comes with the repo file, you just have to edit to enable it. If not, they run their own mirror so you don't even need to specify one.

       rpm -ivh epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A few caveats: "Current implementation of SPDY protocol does not support "server push".

Processing of requests from SPDY connections cannot be rate limited."

<http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_spdy_module.html>

<comment><USER5> And SPDY doesn't support caching per default. Well, it's hard.

<comment><USER6> Can you clarify this statement? Perhaps there's missing context, but as it reads, it seems like a false statement. When I look at chrome://view-http- cache/, I see a bunch of <https://> resources for google.com (which are served over SPDY).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For a moment I thought this was the stable branch.

Note to all: This is a development branch release.

<comment><USER8> "..1.3.x is usable for production anyway (though might break some 3rd party modules due to API changes introduced from time to time)" -- nginx dev team lead at [http://mailman.nginx.org/pipermail/nginx/2013-February/03755...](http://mailman.nginx.org/pipermail/nginx/2013-February/037552.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How real is this interest for Google's non-standard anyway?

Is anyone going to switch their production setup to run software in development merely to support a "internet-protocol" entirely controlled by a single company known for developing things behind closed doors?

SPDY on the open internet makes no fucking sense.

This is Microsoft and MSIE all over again, but people are evidently too blinded by Google-fandom to realize it.

<comment><USER10> The HTTP 2.0 draft is using SPDY as a starting point for "asynchronous connection multiplexing, header compression, and request-response pipelining, while maintaining full backwards compatibility with the transaction semantics of HTTP 1.1"

So while Google may have come up with SPDY, we may get it as part of HTTP 2.0, from a standards organization. So it's not totally in Google's hands. It's being used as a starting point for a standard.

<http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-httpbis-http2/>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_2.0>

<comment><USER11> > we may get it

Which I think is the key statement here. This is all fantastic work, from both Google and those working on the draft, but this is _years_ from being standardized properly and _years_ more before it's ubiquitous on all browsers.

Also, while its performance is very impressive when comparing against vanilla HTTPS, I haven't seen any impressive numbers of it vs vanilla HTTP?

<comment><USER12> > _This is all fantastic work, from both Google and those working on the > draft, but this is years from being standardized properly and years more > before it's ubiquitous on all browsers._

Just like CSS3 and HTML5. But you can start using it now, all the same, and many people do, all the same.

> _Also, while its performance is very impressive when comparing against > vanilla HTTPS, I haven't seen any impressive numbers of it vs vanilla HTTP?_

It's not supposed to be used with HTTP. And the web of the future is not supposed to have much HTTP without S, either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Are there any ecommerce sites using SPDY?

<comment><USER14> Google Wallet: <https://www.google.com/wallet/>

      window.chrome.loadTimes().wasFetchedViaSpdy</comment></comment>


An Ingenious Video Game That Looks Like It Was Designed by a Third-Grader - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2186848/

<comment><USER2> I'm a huge fan of this sort of game. If interested, you should also check out Phun: <http://phun.cs.umu.se/wiki>

Not crayony or goal-oriented, but a lot of the same physics sandbox concepts. Oh, and you can download it right now.

<comment><USER3> To see Phun in action, do a search on youtube. The (mostly) Japanese rocket makers are especially fun to watch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This game kinda reminds me of Sierra's "The Incredible Machine" back in the 90's, where you created a ridiculous Rube Goldberg thing to solve a puzzle. I spent hours on that game. This is like that, except it has realistic-looking physics, and you can create all the parts of the machine by drawing them. It looks cool!

</comment><comment><USER5> There's also a version for the jail broken iPhone. There's a nice level where the objects on the screen will slip and slide around as you twist and turn the iPhone.

</comment><comment><USER6> I applaud the author's innovation, but I have to take issue with the recent trend of physics-engine-as-gameplay. I'm not sure if I'm too cynical (I can enjoy this game for a while) but I just don't find them fun in general. Phun (no pun intended) isn't really a "game" to me, it's more of a software toy.

I think it might be because realistic rigid-body physics are still fairly novel in games, and seeing realistic reactions in-game is inherently satisfying for some reason. I think we'll see a continuing rise in the number of "physics-based ______" formula games, followed by a sharp decline.

</comment><comment><USER7> It looks very similar to the MIT whiteboard physics sketching app. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZNTgglPbUA>

</comment><comment><USER8> This game looks simple on the surface, but it must have some interesting physics code inside.

This reminds me of a tool that was developed by ParaGraph back in 90s (the same company that developed handwriting recognition for Apple's Newton). Their app allowed creating TrueType characters by drawing a simple raster image. This is _stunningly_ impressive if you consider that TrueType is essentially defined by geometric splines. Converting raster image into a set of curves is an _extremely_ unobvious thing to do, but on the surface the whole thing looked quite ordinary and trivial.

Same thing with Crayon Physics - trivial on the surface, but complex on the inside. And _this_ is what's impressive about it.

<comment><USER9> > it must have some interesting physics code inside.

You can check it out for yourself: <http://box2d.org>. You can also download several of the Game Developers Conference presentations given by the original author here: <http://www.gphysics.com/downloads>

An enterprising chap has also ported the original C++ code to Flash: <http://box2dflash.sourceforge.net>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Gears of War II will take several years, hundreds of people, and tens of millions of dollars to create."

I read that it was actually 10 programmers working on the Unreal engine and tools and 20 artists doing something with their efforts for 2 years. They did have a $10 million budget, though.

</comment><comment><USER11> I loved it personally. Inspired actually. Submit more links like this.

<comment><USER2> I submitted it a while back, but it didn't get as good reception.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=122548>

I think adjectives are necessary in the title to convey how cool it is, maybe.

<comment><USER12> Plus the Slate article explained it well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It looks like a crayon version of working model 2d from a decade ago.

<comment><USER14> But will probably cost a few thousand dollars less. <http://workingmodel.design-simulation.com/WM2D/index.php>

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Nice and moody. The problem with gameplay seems to be: You have to move your circle around my drawing boxes half-way on top of it, thus launching it. Not too clever.

</comment><comment><USER16> I played the beta a while ago on my tablet PC; it was clever, a good concept, but kind of buggy and not that fun. Maybe it's gotten better since then.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've played it on the iphone and it's unexpectedly addictive.

</comment><comment><USER18> Very cool. Reminds me of the LineRider game.</comment>


Rap Genius' Co-Founder Apologizes To Zuck - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/01/rap-genius-co-founder-apologizes-to-zuck-then-says-theyll-be-bigger-than-facebook/

<comment><USER2> I chalk this business up under the "no idea how it got funded" category. 16 million bucks? It almost seems like a joke. What exactly is their business model? I get it, they want to annotate 'stuff', but how does that make money?

If I want to read a quick summary of a news article, I read the top comment on reddit, or the first paragraph of the article. The meat's right there -- that's how journalism works. If I want to read summary of a book I read Cliff's notes, or an amazon review. What value are these people adding besides TechCrunch drama? It seems nonexistent.

</comment><comment><USER3> /facepalm</comment>


Albert Hofmann's archives shed light on the dawn of the psychedelic era (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8xpmzb/the-worlds-first-ever-acid-trip-actually-kinda-sucked <comment><USER2> It's a pity that Hofmann never actually experienced a full-on psychedelic, "cosmic" trip, complete with a sense of unity, love, and perhaps ego dissolution, but only ever had a bad trip and some relatively minor effects from a few low dose trips.

I'm sure he was aware of the much more profound effects that were possible on LSD, given a high enough dose and the right set and setting, but for some reason he never chose to explore those. I wonder if he'd tried truly psychedelic doses of any other substances.

<comment><USER3> He's actually tried out a myriad of psychedelics and had a big role to play in synthesising psilocybin (I think he named that himself as well). He talks about all of this in his book which is pleasantly surprising and very well written. Would recommend.

<comment><USER4> The book is LSD my problem child.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> They should fact check the article...

 _On the morning of April 19, he synthesized 0.5 milliliters of the compound, dissolved it in 10 cubic centimeters of water, and at 4:20 PM took 250 micrograms—0.000025 of a gram, the smallest dose he thought he might conceivably notice._

Synthesized 0.5mL? It's not a liquid.

And 250 ug is 0.00025, they have an extra zero in there.

<comment><USER6> > Synthesized 0.5mL? It's not a liquid.

Do you think it's synthesized directly into blotter form?

<comment><USER7> LSD is a solid (I think) so giving a volume probably means a solution which is a weird thing to talk about since it doesn't really mean much.

<comment><USER5> Exactly. LSD is a solid.

It's as if I said I had 0.5 mL of salt. It tells you nothing other than you have water with salt in it.

<comment><USER8> the state of matter is a function of temperature and pressure.

LSD is a solid, sure -- below 175 F. Then it's a liquid, but it decomposes into simpler molecules before it boils, so it doesn't really have a gaseous form at STP.

<comment><USER7> It probably decomposes before it melts, it's a _very_ fragile molecule.

A more reasonable assumption is that it's a saturated solution at NTP but that's still quite an assumption.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google Continues To Buy Its Way Out Of Privacy Problems, Consumer Watchdog Says - <AUTHOR> http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/newsrelease/google-continues-buy-its-way-out-privacy-problems-consumer-watchdog-says

<comment><AUTHOR> Link to the $17M settlement (PDF) - [http://www.ct.gov/ag/lib/ag/press_releases/2013/20131118_goo...](http://www.ct.gov/ag/lib/ag/press_releases/2013/20131118_googlesafari_avc_executed.pdf)</comment>