Subscribers are the new, new thing in business - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/news/business/21739944-companies-face-fresh-set-difficulties-locking-their-customers <comment><USER2> As a consumer I really dislike subscription services, they quickly add up to a lot of money. I can see how it works for businesses but by definition that means its not so good for me.

<comment><USER3> To be honest the main problem for me is I gladly pay 10$ for Spotify or Netflix but I just can't bring myself to pay 8$ for a todo app or 10$ for Dropbox when my hosting with 500GB and the ability to run my own cloud costs 4.99$. Most of the time it's just to much for just the convince. Besides I despise apps like Dropbox or Evernote that nag people I share stuff with to sign up for their service.

<comment><USER4> For this reason I feel that SaaS services that fall in the $10-$30 bracket are problematic. The price is too much for consumers who compare it to Netflix, whereas for businesses it's often ridiculously small and effectively leaves money on the table.

I like Discourse's pricing model: [https://www.discourse.org](https://www.discourse.org)

Their plans start at $100 / month, which is not a problem for real businesses. For everyone else, the software is full open source and it's reasonably easy to install on that $5/month cloud server instance.

The "free or $100+" model conveniently eliminates the support hassle of $10 / month users who typically are the most clueless and demanding.

<comment><USER5> Interesting. Do you think they miss out on a fair amount of customers at that price point?

<comment><USER6> They probably get customers that they actually want: businesses who are fine with paying >$100/month for their service and individuals who will likely be very, very supportive of their service since they value it enough to pay that much per month for it over other alternatives

<comment><USER7> I wonder if the free tier that appeals largely to enthusiasts and nerds also helps as a lead generation process. People use it and like it, they get jobs where they have a say in procurement decisions, and they advocate for platforms they like when they do.

It's also a good "eat your own dogfood" way to make sure your platform is up to commercial standards for UI/UX and feature sets. A lot of enterprise software is garbage specifically because the people doing the procurement aren't the people using the tools.

<comment><USER8> _I wonder if the free tier that appeals largely to enthusiasts and nerds also helps as a lead generation process._

That seems like a reasonable business strategy. Software companies have long offered heavily discounted products to home and educational users, or simply turned a blind eye to piracy within those demographics. Then everyone leaves school and equates "word processor" and "spreadsheet" with Microsoft Office, "graphics program" with Adobe Creative Suite, etc. These days a lot of those big players seem to be trying to pull in more direct revenue from those markets with lower-priced versions of their subscription offerings instead, but that doesn't mean their previous business model wasn't good for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The real secret in the formula is perpetual billing. Surprisingly few people cancel their contract even long after they stopped consuming the services. Money for nothing!

<comment><USER10> Always use a credit card as payment method. At least, it has an expiration date, which will force you into rethinking your subscription

<comment><USER11> Or PayPal. When NYT wouldn't let me cancel without a phone call, I simply canceled the sub via PayPal. They sent me nasty collection agency-style "your account is past due" emails before finally canceling, 2 months after I stopped paying them.

I now pay careful attention to cancellation procedures when signing up for stuff.

<comment><USER12> > When NYT wouldn't let me cancel without a phone call, I simply canceled the > sub via PayPal. They sent me nasty collection agency-style "your account is > past due" emails before finally canceling, 2 months after I stopped paying > them.

I don't know how widespread problem this is, but definitely affects Germany too: companies have asymmetric requirements for signup and cancellation. We should get legislation that lets consumers cancel with the same method they used to subscribe.

In Germany companies won't accept non-payment as cancellation though, and _will_ send your bill to collections.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> One of the main advantages free market systems have for consumers is ostensibly that you can freely choose, switch and combine products and services as you see fit.

As such it's somewhat ironic that the article sees the main disadvantage of subscription models in that they don't combat "consumer illoyality" _enough_.

<comment><USER14> Because it's written from a business point of view. You and business have interests that are partly aligned, partly in odds with one another. In terms of loyalty, I think it's a little bit of both.

<comment><USER13> Yes, that absolutely makes sense. Of course, from the _providers '_ point of view, subscriptions are absolutely desirable and customer illoyality is a problem.

I think what irked me was that the article somehow presented the advantages and disadvantages as absolute when in reality they only apply to one side. Though yes, of course, this is the "business" section, so maybe that makes sense in context.

<comment><USER15> >from the providers' point of view, subscriptions are absolutely desirable

It's fair to say that businesses mostly like subscriptions but balance against that a few factors.

\- Consumers often do not which can make it harder to acquire a customer in the first place.

\- It's an ongoing revenue stream that can be canceled at any time rather than a larger up-front purchase.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Now that I think about it. I have a lot of subscriptions...

Hulu w/ no ads - $11.99

DirecTV Now - $35

Netflix - $2 (T-Mobile pays the base price. I pay for four connections.)

PluralSight - $30

BackBlaze - $5

Office 365 - $99/year

Amazon Prime - $129/year

Resharper - $10/month

Evernote - $3.99/month (I guess I could just Apple Notes)

My son has a subscription to XBoxLive and Playstation Plus. My wife has an Apple Music subscription.

<comment><USER17> For what it's worth, if you consider that most people used to pay $60/mo for TV, that would easily cover Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, BackBlaze, Office 365, Evernote, and Apple Music. That's a _lot_ of value.

(This is more of a response to the other comment saying that subscriptions get expensive. You just had a nice enumerated list to work with!)

<comment><USER16> It's even better....

The total price of cable for us would be:

\- cable tv with the same subscription level ~$50 a month

\- 5 extra set top boxes (yes we have 6 TVs) - $50

\- various fees (network access, regulatory, franchise fee) - $15

\- HD Technology Fee - $10

The numbers may make less sense if we didn't have unlimited gigabit internet for $70 a month from AT&T. We also have unlimited Internet on our phones (and my iPad).

In total $125 a month just fur TV. That's not to mention that our older son who doesn't live with us also gets to use Netflix and Hulu. Also, my wife has a split shift. When she isn't at the gym, she can watch content on her phone.

I've made back in increased salary more than enough to make the $360 year for PluralSight worth it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "You reached the limit of free subscription"

The irony, now I can't read about subscription addiction.

<comment><USER19> "Learn how this one hacker cured his subscription addiction!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think the thing that is most compelling about subscriptions is that it's much more difficult to extract e.g. $300 in lifetime value in a single transaction, versus over 10 months.

That psychological barrier is really the root of the reason it's so effective, in the same way that free shipping drives online retail and "discounting" drives retail clothing stores.

</comment><comment><USER21> In software, at least, I've argued that subscription pricing is innately deceptive and, long term, deleterious to the quality of the product. It's a market distortion born of the App Store model, where it's difficult to charge for updates. And that, in turn, is an artificial constraint imposed by OS vendors who have an incentive to keep people on the latest OS (without breaking their apps). There's a full-length rant at [https://www.grinchcentral.com/an-open-letter-to- subscription...](https://www.grinchcentral.com/an-open-letter-to-subscription- software-authors).

<comment><USER22> I respectfully disagree, at least that you can't generalize this to all software. For many products, incentives are better aligned for both the customer and the business if usage is based on an ongoing subscription. There are plenty of people who have spelled this out, but the recent switch of Ulysses (word processor) to subscription was one of the nicest explanations I've seen [1]. Sketch App also explained this when they made the switch, though perhaps not as eloquently [2].

[1]: [https://medium.com/building-ulysses/why-were-switching- ulyss...](https://medium.com/building-ulysses/why-were-switching-ulysses-to- subscription-47f80b07a9cd)

[2]: [https://blog.sketchapp.com/versioning-licensing-and- sketch-4...](https://blog.sketchapp.com/versioning-licensing-and- sketch-4-0-8ad98783e9ba)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This trend is fast catching up in India too, esp with the food delivery companies.

Zomato's treats, Freshmenu's freshclub, Zomato's Gold, etc.

Others would be MakeMyTrip's black.

</comment><comment><USER24> With companies that offer a free month such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu and others, yet offer little to no incentive to keep the service afterwards, the only thing that keeps people subscribing is the incredibly slight inconvenience of signing up again and again every month with a new email. Spotify on the other hand does offer a valuable service because remembering history seems to me to be more important in music, where one often listens to the same music over and over again versus Netflix where one is unlikely to watch things multiple times and the few times one does that, it's fairly easy to remember the titles. I wonder if the run-of-the-mill customers will start figuring this out and if so, how these companies will respond. Until then, it'll be easy to get a ton of free services at the slight cost--usually a few minutes--of signing up again and again.

<comment><USER25> It's very easy to stop and start a Netflix or Prime subscription and, I believe, this is one of the ways they've managed to grow so quickly.

I've subscribed to other media services a couple of times and the process of cancelling has put me off even thinking about trying it again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Cached: [https://archive.is/wFAL4](https://archive.is/wFAL4)

</comment><comment><USER27> I like this article but my favorite part was the Economist header subscribe button, a constant fixture of my read.

</comment><comment><USER28> Good to see that the Economist is totally on top of the trends sweeping through commerce in 2014.

</comment><comment><USER29> I don't get the last point in the article. Customers often have subscriptions to multiple, theoretically competing, services, sure. But why is that bad for subscription-based services? Surely that just means market share is easier to come by?

</comment><comment><USER30> Subscription models create a haves / have-nots divide, which is fine for some things, but seems immoral for journalism. Too bad that model's been around since long before the internet.

</comment><comment><USER31> New new thing? Every telco of this world was a subcription service since 25 years ago...

</comment><comment><USER32> Subscription is a long-lasting, predictable revenue stream. Even if one-off sales bring more revenue the subscription system fares much better. I was listening to Sam Harris' podcast recently, and they seem to have discontinued the one-time donations entirely. You don't want to deal with the instability of exceedingly high revenue one month, and barely any in the other.

Another thing I noticed is that with subscriptions in place, you can understand—and grow—your customers in all sorts of ways. For eg, Netflix has analyzed that "if you have watched 15 hours of content per month, you're 75% less likely to cancel. If they drop below 5 hours, there is a 95% chance they will cancel." [1] So, now, they only have to figure out how to hook their users to watch Netflix for that many hours. I don't think it's very much possible in a traditional business setting.

[1]: [https://blog.kissmetrics.com/how-netflix-uses- analytics/](https://blog.kissmetrics.com/how-netflix-uses-analytics/)

</comment><comment><USER33> It's great when this model takes over; no one will own anything anymore. Simply rent. The concept of equity is a thing of the past. Good luck retiring cheaply/at an appropriate age.

<comment><USER34> Are you saying this model is gonna take over real estate in a new way and that we will lose our biggest potential source of equity? Or that we have so much equity to bank on from our old records, tapes, and discs? Or that this a new thing and that people haven't been retiring and using cable, phone or disposable news/media since forever ago?

<comment><USER33> It's more towards Volvo's Care [1] subscription plan than anything else (large amounts of money in return for convenience; a leased car, bundled insurance, maintenance subscription) - but yes - death by a thousand subscriptions.

A subscription here and there isn't going to change anyone's mind, but a dozen or so subscriptions every month as long as you need the service (sometimes lifetime) surely comes out to more cost over time.

[1] [https://www.volvocars.com/us/cars/new-models/xc40/care-by- vo...](https://www.volvocars.com/us/cars/new-models/xc40/care-by-volvo)

<comment><USER34> Didn't see any mention of the Volvo Care thing, but leasing any car is typically a bad idea, Volvo is just packing more crap in for extra lazy people that like paying even more.

I don't see the death of a thousand cuts thing currently. No one needs a dozen subscriptions. Our household has 3: Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Spotify.

\- Netflix is cheaper than buying 1 movie/month.

\- Spotify is cheaper than buying 1 album/month.

\- Amazon Prime is a net savings on shipping and trips to the store plus videos, books and music and whatever else in there...

Comes out to an overall savings from most people's spending habits before these things were around, especially if you cut cable. What else does a typical family need to subscribe to that is draining all of their money?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> We need bundles of subscriptions.

If I pay 10$ for netflix, you can't pay 5 for a todolist.

But i would pay 15 for netflix + todolist + calendard + others things.

<comment><USER36> I don't know about where you are, but here there are two cellular networks that give you a 480p Netflix account for the life of your contract.

I mean it's not gonna cause you to cancel your netflix subscription but you might cut back on the simultaneous streams to save a few bucks.

<comment><USER35> My cellular network cost 25$ a month, I don't see where they would fit the netflix contract cost in there.

<comment><USER36> It's probably cross marketing. Each side takes a couple dollars of loss for the increased in signups.

Like when amazon made a partnership with coin star. If you get an amazon gift card you don't pay the coin counting fee, and amazon pays coinstar half the fee value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Ironic that to read this article I have to subscribe to the Enconomist.

<comment><USER38> And while you can do this online, changing your subscription or cancelling it can only be done over the phone. You can't even change your method of payment online.

<comment><USER39> Cancelling at least can be done by email.

<comment><USER40> I'm not sure about the specifics, but in the EU it's not legal to offer a sign-up method that is not available as cancellation method.

<comment><USER38> Do you have a source for that? The Economist certainly doesn't, cancellation online is not possible but sign-up is.

The email method didn't work for me last time, I just got a reply asking me to call them.

<comment><USER40> Hm, I could have sworn I read about it a few years back that it was introduced. Also, it might have been only Germany? Can't find anything as google has the worst result for that search I've ever seen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I tried to read the article but I hit my max number of free articles a week

Have you ever tried to unsubscribe from The Economist? You have to phone them up!

<comment><USER38> You even need that to change your subscription. I love their articles but the subscription service is the worst I've encountered so far.

</comment></comment><comment> vhost- There's a bright red bar on the bottom with buttons to subscribe to the economist for 12 weeks :-D

</comment><comment><USER42> Website won't let me read the article without signing in.

Thesis proven!

</comment><comment><USER43> It's ironic that I've reached my article limit with _The Economist_. Apparently it's a lifetime limit too, which means pretty soon we'll stop seeing posts from _The Economist_ on HN.

<comment><USER44> Are you sure that the 'tracking' is not simply a cookie in your browser that were you to delete the cookie, would reset the limit back to zero?

<comment><USER43> It probably is, but so what? _The Economist_ has made it clear they don't want me reading their material. So I'm obliging.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Semantics3's IFTTT channel for price drops on products - <AUTHOR> https://ifttt.com/semantics3

<comment><USER2> We built this neat little app using our new Push notifications API. It allows you to set up price push notifications on any product sold online, regardless of retailer. Check it out here: www.semantics3.com/products/push</comment>


Google Talk is down - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/appsstatus#hl=en&v=issue&sid=3&iid=9cb1a82cdfa9e2ce88ca138c4af8915d <comment><USER2> I'm impressed with how good Google's uptime is. I'm always shocked when one of their services is down, even though they provide bandwidth intensive services for little to no cost.

</comment><comment><USER3> Last time gmail was down, I set up my own email server. Now that talk is down, I need my own chat server.

</comment><comment><USER4> Voice is part of talk, so that's down as well.

</comment><comment><USER5> So are google spreadsheets in google docs.

<comment><USER6> spreadsheets working for me for the past 4 hours with no problem...</comment></comment>


Aunt Jemima - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aunt_Jemima <comment><USER2> I happened to have watched the movie referenced in the article. "The Imitation of Life". It's a great movie with many modern sensibilities.

Yes, the Delilah character is a 'mammy' character, but it's not too cringy overall. (Speaking as a non-American far removed from American politics).</comment>


Code_swarm: An experiment in organic software visualization - <AUTHOR> http://vis.cs.ucdavis.edu/~ogawa/codeswarm/

<comment><AUTHOR> This shows the dedication to projects and what it takes to make a language. Guido was pretty much alone for 5+ years early on in Python with Jack of MacPython downstream until at least '95 '96\. Guido put in 5+ years not even knowing where Python would go just that it needed to be.

[https://vimeo.com/1093745](https://vimeo.com/1093745)

<comment><USER2> Interesting. I wonder with github today projects gain contributors significantly earlier, since doing a PR on github is soo much easier than contributing to a project in the days before github.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Another interesting visualizer is gource[0] - here's an example video[1].

[0]: [https://code.google.com/p/gource/](https://code.google.com/p/gource/)

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_02QGsHzEQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_02QGsHzEQ)

<comment><USER4> I highly recommend gource. Since it's at least somewhat maintained (last commit was 9 months ago) where codeswarm hasn't been touched in 6 years...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is from the UCDavis vidi lab [1]. It is a group of software engineers and researchers who work on scientific visualizations like op.

1\. [http://vidi.cs.ucdavis.edu/](http://vidi.cs.ucdavis.edu/)</comment>


Too much jogging 'as bad as no exercise at all' - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/health-31095384 <comment><USER2> What, did they get hit by cars? It matters why they died, to make such sensationalist blanket statements as that article did.

I.e. people jog to increase their fitness and perhaps to decrease obesity. In as far as that is achieved, and increasing your jogging time per week marginally improves that goal, then no its not right to say that more jogging kills you. If its the marginal increase in exposure to accidents that is at issue, then perhaps a better article title would be "be careful where you jog; your bad route choices could endanger your health"

</comment><comment><USER3> Previous discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8988301](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8988301)</comment>


Exponential curves feel gradual and then sudden - <AUTHOR> http://cdixon.org/2015/05/12/exponential-curves-feel-gradual-and-then-sudden/

<comment><USER2> This is why thinking logarithmically is so powerful. If you're not plotting things you care about on both linear and logarithmic plots, you may be missing something useful.</comment>


Why Bitcoin Can't Help the Poorest, Yet - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/10/why-bitcoin-cant-help-the-poorest-yet/ <comment><USER2> The author is ignoring the fact that there are no refunds with bitcoin.

He talks about predatory banking, but the finality of bitcoin transactions and lack of competitive insurance makes it even easier to scam the "unbanked". Bitcoin is also only pseudo-anonymous, and is more complicated to use than cash.

The Bill & Linda Gates backed M-Pesa fits most of the criteria laid down in the article, much more than bitcoin, but seeing as that is a competitor of Freemit (the author is the CEO), I don't think they're going to go into it.

<comment><USER3> >The author is ignoring the fact that there are no refunds with bitcoin.

The author's first point was that "the unbanked want to remain anonymous". Refunds cannot happen while being anonymous.

Bitcoin is a replacement for cash, not an pseudo escrow service which we have come to expect in the western world with credit cards. Transactions are built on end-user trust. Credit card companies introduce a third party into the transaction which costs money. This is not a bug of bitcoin, it's a feature. The services you are referring to can, however, be built on top of the bitcoin system.

<comment><USER2> > Refunds cannot happen while being anonymous.

Preferring anonymity != preferring no payment disputes.

Bitcoins are also only _pseudo_ -anonymous, and every transaction is publicly available making it less anonymous than a closed payments system or cash.

This rhetoric that apologizes for Bitcoins design flaws ("it's a feature not a bug") is detrimental to future blockchain implementations that could design a competitive solution to refunds.

<comment><USER4> That's like saying paper money has a design flaw, or ethernet has design flaws because it doesn't account for serving web pages.

<comment><USER2> Or its like saying an automobile has a design flaw because it can't go in reverse.

<comment><USER4> How is it at all the same thing? Bitcoin isn't a contained technology, it can be built on top of just as the internet is built on top of.

<comment><USER2> Nope. It's even easier to mod an automobile because it doesn't require a consensus from the mechanics (miners) to make a change. See the block chain size debate if you're still unconvinced.

<comment><USER4> There are many companies already building services on top of bitcoin, it doesn't take a change to the protocol and therefore it doesn't take any permission or consensus from anyone. I can't tell if you have a fundamental ignorance of crypto currencies or if this was an intentional straw man, but either way it is so far from being rational I'm not even sure how you would come up with it except for maybe learning about bitcoin through a game of gossip rather than reading or experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why do people assume that Bitcoin is going to revolutionize the banking sector when it cannot even scale? Why would we want to subject the poorest to a system that won't be able to handle at best more than a handful of transactions per second?

Bitcoin is literally a bottom-tier system and suggesting that we use it to help those who are financially not-well-off is insulting.

<comment><USER3> Bitcoin can, and is in the process of scaling.

<comment><USER6> Transactions per second are bound to the block size.

The mining groups in China are against raising the block size because of bandwidth and other realistic concerns.

The core developers, many of whom are employed by a company that has a business model that has a higher chance of success if bitcoin does not raise the block size, can neither agree that the block size needs to be increased, nor how to perform the increase, nor to what size to increase it to. Even if they could agree, the Chinese miners wouldn't update their software, and we'd end up with a forked blockchain.

The primary places where bitcoin is discussed are moderated by a single individual that considers things like XT and implementations of BIP-101 to be altcoins and actively shuts down discussions about them and other block size increases.

It seems to me that bitcoin isn't in the process of scaling at all.

<comment><USER2> It's tragedy of the commons.

Bitcoin is designed for having rational actors as miners. The miners profit less from the larger block sizes, and since they control the block size it's not going to happen.

Bitcoin users who think the miners will do it "for the good of bitcoin" don't realize that the entire bitcoin ecosystem is built on the miners acting in their own best interest, not bitcoin's.

<comment><USER7> I wouldn't call that a tragedy of the commons. I would call that "capitalism" because it is exactly the relationship between the owners of the means of production and everyone else.

"But anyone can become a miner" so it's free as in market and fair as in game. /s

<comment><USER2> It's tragedy of the commons because the miners are trying to reap from a shared resource, with no alignment to the changes that are beneficial for Bitcoin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Bitcoin or its relatives is an excellent way to drive down the cost of sending remittances. The US poor do not depend on them, but in many areas they are a substantial part of the local economy. Initial retail liquidity isn't as much of a problem as you'd think if you have the equivalent of wholesalers making a market.

But yes, in general the existence of new cash-like asset classes isn't that helpful to people with ~no cash assets.

<comment><USER9> Bit coin simply doesn't help with remittances: [https://www.saveonsend.com/blog/bitcoin-money- transfer/](https://www.saveonsend.com/blog/bitcoin-money-transfer/)

<comment><USER10> Bitcoin helped me with servicing my loan in my home country when I was earning in another currency. I escaped foreign exchange fees. Its a use case that a lot of people have but it's unfortunate that the most vocal people telling us bitcoin can't do something are those who don't seem to have that need for its use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What does "bitcoin is illiquid in the poorest countries" mean?

<comment><USER12> It is not easy to exchange Bitcoin for spendable currency in those countries.

<comment><USER13> Specifically, there are several quantitative measures of liquidity, and they're generally correlated. In particular, the average bid-ask spread (the time-weighted or trade-volume-weighted average between the lowest asking price from local BTC sellers and highest bid from local BTC buyers) and the average daily trade volume (add up the number of BTC exchanged to or from local currency in an average day). Low liquidity generally means wide spreads and low trade volumes. As a result, if you want to convert BTC into local currency in the morning to buy chickens in the market and convert your chicken soup earnings back into BTC in the afternoon, you're going to either buy high and sell low crossing the bid-ask spread each time, or you're going to wait a long time for someone else to cross the spread and fill your orders. Of course, you can offer price improvement, allowing a whole range of price-time tradeoffs, but time is going to be expensive all along the tradeoff curve.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Feedback on text-based food delivery concept? - <AUTHOR> Here's how it would work:
1) Receive a text by 5pm each day with the day's 2 menu options (1 veg, 1 non-veg) 2) Text back if you want food (which option & quantity) by 6pm 3) Get it delivered by 7pm (first time you order, card + delivery info recorded)
Thoughts? <comment><USER2> Sounds like Peach: [https://www.peachd.com/](https://www.peachd.com/)

Except peach serves lunch instead of dinner. They appear to have the restaurants deliver the food themselves. Your office needs to have 50 people who have signed up for the service before they'll start offering menu items in that location.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing that! Yes the key difference here on the backend is that we make the food ourselves. But you're abs. right that from the frontend it's very similar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think for online-to-offline startups you have to look at both sides of the equation (maybe inequality is a better term). The interface is less important than the physical fulfillment of the product or service. Cragislist is a perfect example of this. In your example, I'd be more interested in how the food tastes, and how well delivery works.

<comment><USER2> I think that's right. Anecdotally as a user of Peach, the four biggest complaints I've had/heard are: 1) late delivery 2) food at wrong temperature when delivered 3) food doesn't taste good 4) people tired of the same menu options repeated too often</comment></comment>


Glyphosate perturbs the gut microbiota of honey bees - <AUTHOR> http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/09/18/1803880115 <comment><USER2> I find it disheartening that it takes studies of this nature to reshape regulations. Glyphosate (as Roundup) has been the bestselling herbicide on the market since 1980. Among bee-keepers, asserting that "roundup kills bees" is about as controversial as "rain makes things wet."

The US regulatory environment treats artificially prepared chemicals as innocent until proven guilty. A safer approach (recently adopted in Europe) would be to guarantee the safety of industrial, agricultural, and household chemicals before they are allowed to go to market.

On a potentially related note, sperm counts in the western world have been declining precipitously since 1990. I'd bet that glyphosate and/or other common poorly regulated chemicals have something to do with this.

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sperm-count- dropp...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sperm-count-dropping-in- western-world/)

<comment><USER3> > I find it disheartening that it takes studies of this nature to reshape > regulations.

You … find it disheartening that regulations require sound evidence? That's odd.

> Among bee-keepers, asserting that "roundup kills bees" is about as > controversial as "rain makes things wet."

You may be confusing Roundup with neonicotinoids here. The latter are known to harm bee ecosystems by weakening the bee immune system. Glyphosate generally hasn't, _despite previous studies_ (which showed no effect on bees). That's why the new study is actually surprising (if it holds up, and there are already some potential concerns).

> I'd bet that glyphosate and/or other common poorly regulated chemicals have > something to do with [reduction in sperm counts].

There is no evidence for this, and no good reason to assume so (for one, there's no known biochemical connection here, and the general population does not come into contact with glyphosate in noticeable amounts). A much more plausible reason is the presence of residues from hormonal contraceptives in drinking water. But even that is tenuous, and general changes in nutrition are a more plausible candidate.

In sum, nothing of what you've said is supported by evidence.

<comment><USER4> > There is no evidence for this, and no good reason to assume so

I'm gonna invite you to a game called the Pepsi challenge, wherein you're obliged to imbibe a glass full of unknown chemical X and survive 24 hours before you spray it on food that other people eat and/or insert it directly into the foodchain. Wanna play?

It's not scare tactics to be careful with food specifically and the ecosystem in general. You see, we now have the science to actually do experiments and test things for safety before industry belches out thousands or millions of tons of the stuff into the foodchain, whereas 100 years ago we did not. IMO it is actually irresponsible to not do so. What we lack is the political will, and default positions like yours are not helpful.

In my very honest opinion, 100% serious--I think it's entirely reasonable to require proof of safety before _society grants you permission_ to inject your newly designed chemicals into the food chain.

<comment><USER5> A glass of pure caffeine would kill you. Probably any single compound naturally present in fruits and vegetables would kill you if you drank a concentrated, purified cup of it.

<comment><USER6> List of things in fruit that, if consumed pure, wouldn't kill me (a cup):

1\. Water 2\. Fiber 3\. Sugar (that would hurt though) 4\. Protein

Yes, trace amounts of essential oils would kill me if purified and I drank a cup of it. But be precise!

Also, we've co-evolved with essential oils in plants. We haven't co-evolved with synthetic chemicals. Therefore, synthetic analogies can be expected to behave in a similar but devastatingly different manner (nicotine, vs nicotine- like. Natural vs. synthetic insulin, etc)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A critical comment:

Look at Figure 1B. The variation in the gut microbes is large at the start of the study (day 0). Feeding the bees 5 mg/liter glyphosate, they have a statistically significant difference from the control (no glyphosate) in 5 microbes out of 8. But feeding 10 mg/liter, they get no statistically significant differences from the control.

They have no explanation for why glyphosate seems to have an effect at 5 mg/litre concentration but not at the higher 10 mg/litre concentration ("The relative lack of effects of the G-10 treatment on the microbiota composition at day 3 posttreatment is unexplained"). They do give speculations, though.

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't _care_ what glyphosate does or doesn't do. Monsanto has a pile of research showing it as mostly harmless. Maybe that's like Big Tobacco. Time will tell.

What I do care about is what Roundup does. There are many many curious compounds in Roundup, and some of them appear to be much nastier than glyphosate. If for instance all of these stomach problems people have been having lately are caused by application of Roundup to aid in grain harvesting, we need to know sooner rather than later. And it doesn't really matter as much to me which chemical is the culprit. It's the same bad actors regardless.

<comment><USER9> Yes, just like this study shows: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15929894](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15929894)

<comment><USER8> > Surprisingly, Roundup is always more toxic than its active ingredient.

Yeah. I dunno why that's surprising.

We put surfactants in pesticides so that the bugs absorb more. Stabilizers in other things so they don't break down. This is just another Thursday.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Figure 1 looks weird. At day 0 the ranges for the bacterias in the evaluated groups (C, G-5, G-10) differ a lot - Is this noise? Why? If i interpret this graphic right the study did find bacteria changes at lower levels of glyphosate(G-5), but not at higher levels of glyphosate expose (G-10). I am no bee expert but I doubt that bees normally eat sugar syrup all day - which also will contribute to the weird stuff happening in the C-group in comparision from day 0 to 3.

</comment><comment><USER9> Worse, Roundup (what's actually being sprayed) is likely causing even more damage than what these glyphosate (just one "active" ingredient) studies are suggesting since other studies demonstrate a significant difference in effect of the cocktail vs just the "active" ingredient

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15929894](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15929894)

</comment><comment><USER11> We need to invest more into development of gene drives for elimination of agricultural pests.

The recent development of gene drive on doublesex gene for mosquitoes gives hope that it can work for majority of insects.

And if we find a way to use similar technique for plants, the resulting reduction of pesticide use will be helpful not only for the people but also for remaining species of insects and plants.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is a "coffee causes cancer" type of study. The concentrations involved are very high. And as they say, "the dose makes the poison".

But it's a great first study; there will be lots of people looking a lot closer at the link now.

<comment><USER13> No, it's not. Did you read the article?

From the study:

 _Glyphosate concentrations were chosen to mimic environmental levels, which typically range between 1.4 and 7.6 mg /L, and may be encountered by bees foraging at flowering weeds._

They fed the bees concoctions of Glyphosate between 5 mg/L and 10 mg/L, which at the top end is a bit more than 7.6 mg/L, but still quite near normal parameters found in a normal environment.

<comment><USER12> Those are high normal concentrations for glyphosate in spot spraying applications, not for the much more common broadcast applications, and assume that the bees are drinking straight from the sprayer for five days in a row.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Bayer really messed up with their Monsanto acquisition. Right when sentiment against the company reached a breaking point, and people finally began imposing a concerted backlash.

</comment><comment><USER15> Glyphosate is the main ingredient in "Round up". I imagine residential use probably has a minimal impact, but this seems like a big problem considering the rise of "Round up resistant" crops. When whole fields are being sprayed at scale, seems like that could be very disruptive to a bee population.

<comment><USER12> Actually, it's quite possible that residential use is much more harmful than agricultural usage. The study used _very_ high concentrations of glyphosate, and residential usage of glyphosate uses it at a much higher concentration than farmers do.

<comment><USER16> I was about to say that.

From a personal experience (I'm a farmer) the concentrations used in a residential context are exaggeratedly above the recommendation. They are mismeasured and generally high.

Plus, glyphosate preparations need to be corrected in pH (below 5 for maximal efficacy), which is something many people don't do.

The professionals doing weed control in cities absolutely must have training and adequate PPE. The same thing applies to pest control.

I'm not against professional usage of pesticides, but I would be OK with forbidding most insecticides and herbicides for personal usage. The every day insecticide spraying can? That thing is poison. Does anyone use a FFP2 mask or even a simple cotton mask? Many permetrine-based insecticides don't even mention that this active substance is specially deadly to cats.

<comment><USER17> >I'm not against professional usage of pesticides, but I would be OK with forbidding most insecticides and herbicides for personal usage

That is entirely unreasonable as a conclusion. It leads to a world where only people rich enough to hire landscapers and exterminators are able to control insects and weeds.

Of course insecticide is poison. That's literally the point. Don't breathe it, get it on you, or let your pets around it. It's not difficult advice to abide by.

<comment><USER3> You make a good point but I wouldn't banning a potentially dangerous chemical that requires expert use to be safe "entirely unreasonable". In fact the same is true for _most_ such compounds, at least in large parts of Western Europe (less so in the US, I think, but something as harmless as Sudafed is a counter-example): there are many industrial chemicals which you cannot (or only via detours) purchase legally in stores.

I'm generally not a fan of such regulations because most of these chemicals have no common use and the potential for abuse is therefore relatively small. But for many pesticides and herbicides, the potential for harmful misuse is very real.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Maybe some self righteous "skeptics" could take this as a moment to apologize, figuratively or actually, to the people they derided as "quacks" for urging caution about glyphosate.

<comment><USER19> No, they'll just move on to attacking people about other products where the assumptions of safety or efficacy have not yet been debunked. Thanks for the good laugh though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is there a living creature without a microbiome?

</comment><comment><USER21> Is this the reason they have been dying! WOOT! Will we be able to change fast enough to save them?</comment>


Solve your first world problems - <AUTHOR> http://www.firstworldproblems.biz/

<comment><USER2> I am very close to donating! This describes exactly how I feel about the Silicon Valley publicized on HN. Surely there are plenty of start-ups solving _real_ problems, _hard_ problems -- what can we do to make sure _those_ make the front-page more often? I guess all of the Instagrams getting acquired for hundreds of millions doesn't help.

<comment><USER3> A good start would be to name some of them in posts like this -- both those that are being solved and those that should be solved.

<comment><USER4> Hmm,

Small business gets reamed on store fixtures and any sort of furniture.

Creating a market for piece work (people working at home doing small assembly / sewing / Etc functions) with folks who want to do small production runs.

Fasteners on demand, making the kinds of fasteners you want how you want them right now in reasonable quantities.

Inventory management for one/two person shops.

Phone customer support on demand.

Essential network service (DNS/Email/Web/File/Fax/Media) for small businesses. (I did this once before but its becoming more relevant, could be a 'software only' solution these days)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Selecting each one of those things and being redirected was killing me.

Here's a shortcut:

problems = document.getElementById('problems'); for(i = 1; i < problems.length; i++) { console.log(problems[i].innerHTML + ': ' + problems[i].value) }

<comment><USER6> thank you for solving my most pressing 1st world problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> We treated this as a quiz for how familiar we were with various startups. Got a good chunk of them right, too. I may need to spend more time working and less time on Hacker News.

<comment><USER8> Here's another first world problem solved:

<http://getcoldturkey.com/>

<comment><USER9> Just added it, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The entry for app.net is glorious. I should have known what it was just from the title.

<comment><USER11> It's a play on <http://www.ihave50dollars.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Too many smart people spending a whole lot of time, effort & cash solving frivolous problems.

<comment><USER13> Rich people in the first world will pay a lot of money to have their trivial problems solved well.

All business are solving the problem of "we don't have enough revenue". That's the only metric, here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> 'I have $36' - my favorite

</comment><comment><USER15> Hey guys Firehed and a bunch of us put this together. Feel free to submit a pull request if you want to add something :)

<comment> z-factor Did you consider just making it a list of links? If you want to hide the link targets you can do that with JS. Dropdown list is kind of unnecessary, I think.

<comment> T-R If I recall, I think the over-styled but less-usable drop-down list was a deliberate decision, much like the call to setTimeout.

(I'm a housemate of StuieK and Firehed, and also contributed to the page)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Hilarious. Maybe we could add

* Entertain me because I actually have free time -> the movie industry

* Entertain me at home because I'm too tired to go out -> the game industry

* Make me dinner because I'm too lazy to cook -> the food service industry

* Help be get where someplace in comfort -> the auto industry

<comment><USER2> I think you're missing the joke. Most of these apps are some nth-derivative of those industries. Instead of "make me dinner" it's "an app to aggregate apps that help me find someone to make me dinner, plus social networking." At some point the value-add is so small it's truly a "first-world problem."

<comment><USER17> He definitely got the joke. The point is that you could apply this to anything. Most of what we have now went through some kind of value-add process. Isn't that how evolution works? That smallest "value-add" could make room for bigger change later.

<comment><USER18> You're not seriously comparing the usefulness of automobiles to Instagram, are you?

<comment><USER17> I am not. It's more like comparing the second iteration of the windshield wiper to Instagram.

<comment><USER19> Gilette Razor. NOW WITH SIX BLADES.

<comment><USER20> The Gilette Singularity

        The interesting curve is the hyperbolic one, for two reasons: One, it matches the
        real-world data. And two, it goes to infinity in 2015. And how are you going to
        get an asymptotically-accelerating number of blades onto a razor? Why, you'd need
        godlike super-technology to do that.

[http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt/archives/2006/06/the_gi...](http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt/archives/2006/06/the_gillette_si.php)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Mine is "I can't even be bothered to fill out the sign-up forms for all these web sites you redirect me to".

<comment><USER11> Launchrock needs to have a premium membership option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I vote for this as best 2012 HN post.

</comment><comment><USER23> Still no solution for ennui?

</comment><comment><USER24> I would be interested in a third world version of this website.

</comment><comment><USER25> Soon, I don't think even Instacart will be able to help with my Twinkie cravings, considering Hostess just went bankrupt again, and stopped production.

<comment><USER26> In my case, they can't solve my problem because they are only in Northern California. :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The "my high paying job makes it hard to find a girlfriend" one is broken. I think there is a typo in the link: "wwww.sparkology.com".

<comment><USER15> Fixed. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> For everything else, there's www.globalgiving.org

</comment><comment><USER29> I think this should be retitled to "Solve the problems you do not really have using a website that is as useless".

<comment><USER19> Pretty sure that's what it says.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Hey, I think you forgot to remove Techcrunch's favicon.

Otherwise, I really love the concept. Good going!

</comment><comment><USER31> the option value for sparkology.com has one too many ws

<option value="[http://wwww.sparkology.com>I](http://wwww.sparkology.com>I) graduated from a top university but my high paying job makes it hard to find a girlfriend</option>

</comment><comment><USER32> This is funny.

</comment><comment><USER33> I love "I have 36 dollars".

</comment><comment><USER34> Really funny

</comment><comment><USER35> So this is seriously #1 on HN right now.</comment>


Most Common Hotmail Password - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/10/10000-passwords/

<comment><USER2> ... of the people foolish enough to give their passwords away.

<comment><USER3> It included Stephen Fry (Or at least his co): <http://twitter.com/stephenfry/status/4659713168>

Any details of how the scam worked and why so many were caught? I haven't seen any real details on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "123456" - 64 times out of 10,000, i.e. 0.64 percent.

So if you know 200 account names you should make it at least once, right?

<comment><USER5> A bit more than 200, probably over 600 accounts with the same password distribution and you're looking at close to a certain chance of hitting at least one account with that password.

One thing that keeps bothering me about this story and many others based on the same data is that those 64 passwords are such a minute portion of the total set of accounts. Perhaps if they had done some further analysis like comparing password sequences composed on contiguous letters in various keyboard layouts then passwords like "qwerty" or "asdfgh" could similarly be grouped together.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Since many people use the same password everywhere, would it be safe to say that `123456` is universally the top pick?

<comment><USER6> That was also the most common password in a user database that I did anonymized analysis of in my distant past. Depending on your definition of safe, I'd say yes.</comment></comment>


... Artfinder, the LastFM of art - <AUTHOR> http://eu.techcrunch.com/2011/03/01/wellington-partners-reid-hoffman-and-sherry-coutu-invest-in-artfinder-the-lastfm-of-art/

<comment><USER2> Just last weekend at the startup weekend in San Diego I joined a team working on this kind of idea. Having a facepalm moment right now upon hearing this news...</comment>


Operation Payback: 'Twitter will fall next' - <AUTHOR> http://www.channel4.com/news/operation-payback-twitter-will-fall-next <comment><USER2> What are they going to do, hit command-r really fast? That would about do it...</comment>


An oral history of USB, the port that changed everything - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/3060705/an-oral-history-of-the-usb <comment><USER2> Ajay Bhatt on why USB plugs weren't reversible:

> We had looked at [making the plug reversible], but the whole goal here was > to make it very inexpensive, and at that point, we were trying to solve all > the USB problems with two wires. At that point, if you added wires to make > things flippable, you have to add wires, and you also have to add a lot of > silicon. Wires and pins cost real money, so we decided to keep it as cheap > as possible... In hindsight, a flippable connector would have been better.

<comment><USER3> Even if making the connector reversible would have ended up costing too much money, why not at least make it (more clearly) asymmetrical to reduce the guesswork involved in plugging in the cable? Yes, I know the USB logo is supposed to face up and the seam on the connector is supposed to face down, but those seem like half-measures at best. At least they seem to have figured it out with later iterations of the connectors.</comment></comment>


Pragmatic Parsing in Common Lisp - <AUTHOR> http://www.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/Prag-Parse.html <comment><USER2> Thanks for the pointer; I submitted it to the arc forum as well:

<http://arclanguage.org/item?id=15177>

Lower volume but better odds of conversation about certain topics.</comment>


Why So Many People Like Jordan Peterson - <AUTHOR> http://greyenlightenment.com/why-so-many-people-like-jordan-peterson/ <comment><USER2> Jordan Peterson is actually not that popular with the far right nazis, contrary to the article's assertions.

He is very much against "identity politics", which he seems to define as some kind of race/tribe-first political mindest (whether thats white supremacy or black supremacy or whatever). Instead, Jordan Peterson espouses an individual- first world view very much in line with the enlightenment of the 1700s and 1800s.

The Nazis and white supremacists don't like him because he is telling their supporters that the problems in their life aren't because of the color of their skin, nor the color of the skin of their political opponents, but rather that they are themselves the source of their own problems and they need to clean themselves up and get their acts together because no one else is going to do it for them.

His message is resonating because its something that american culture seems to have forgotten in the last 10-15 years and is glad to hear once more.

<comment><USER3> Exactly. If anything, he's a radical centrist.

Although he's person who should be an elitist, he is actually a populist. It's his populism that gets him the disparagement from the elites. The last thing elites want to hear is that they're not as important as they think they are to solving problems.</comment></comment>


My Sudden Trip to Hell - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/my-sudden-trip-hell-mark-attila-opauszky/ <comment><USER3> Stoics would encourage all of us to internalize our own mortality, not for morbidity's sake, but because it helps live in the moment. The wake up call stories like this should be simulated by everyone. Imagine if this were you? Live with a fraction of that pain in your heart and try to internalize it. How does it impact our choices? Things like fingers and walking become amazing. I am always happy people share their stories, it helps us all remember our mortality and make good choices every day. Also, I wish the author a speedy and continued recovery in their journey.

<comment><USER4> > I am always happy people share their stories, it helps us all remember our > mortality and make good choices every day.

Not for me. When confronted to death or intense pain, everything else becomes insignificant and futile. And when things go back to normal, I tend to forget. I suppose that to be fully functional human beings, we need to ignore the harsh reality of life! Is it really possible to "internalize mortality"? I know some people try very hard but are they immune to anxiety and daily worries, are they happier? I haven't met such a person yet.

<comment><USER5> Me too.

After every near miss, it takes me a while to trick myself into rejoining the world of the living, where paying rent and doing laundry matters.

Being a geek has been an asset. I can lose myself in solving problems. Focusing on those thoughts to push aside the other thoughts.

This current cycle, I got a puppy. Total pain in the ass. But he still needs to be walked, so I get up and we walk. Rinse, lather, repeat.

<comment><USER3> I think it comes down to the dichotomy of being human. We have this inevitable end that we know is waiting for us, but we are alive, dammit. For many on HN, that life is full of curiosity, so many things to learn, and so much cool stuff to do and see. Especially for younger people who have not experienced much grief or loss, contemplating this end is especially jarring compared to the vibrancy of life. For others it can be very morbid and bring back bad memories and induce anxiety. I think, ultimately, we should embrace our sometimes unpredictable end and become comfortable with the idea of our end to better celebrate our own lives as we live them. I do think Stoicism is not for everyone and some people just naturally develop a very stoic mindset. Ultimately, a lot of it comes down to controlling what we can and simply accepting the rest as our lot in life as humans (the living and the dying).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > and I would be fully present for all the moments that mattered.

This quote stood out, because as a promise to your family, it really sucks. We never know what the moments that matter to other people are going to be. Big events are nice. But when you think back on your life, how many important moments were from small events? Just having a nice talk, doing a chore with your dad, telling your mom about your day? How many idle comments from friends ended up having a large impact on you?

When dealing with family, you need to be there enough that moments happen, because the scope of their impact on the lives of those around you are not predictable.

<comment><USER7> On of the things my wife insisted on was that we always got together as a family for dinner. That definitely had a negative impact on my career in that I couldn't be the 'last guy to leave', but it gave me a solid relationship with my kids as they grew. I am glad to this day that she insisted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I was going to say "I recall when I had sepsis in my teens", but the truth of it is that I don't - there's a six week hole in my memory, that skips straight from lying in a pool of blood and puss on the floor of the kitchen at school, having a mop thrust in my face, to lying in a bed in hospital with tubes snaking out of me.

The weird thing is, despite being unconscious for over a month, I woke up feeling like I hadn't missed anything, and even now I look back at this with slight disbelief - surely you're thinking of someone else, surely it wasn't that long. I felt like I'd been out longer after a general for surgery a few years ago.

They did run a whole battery of neurological tests on me once I was conscious and eating - they were pretty surprised I had no obvious brain damage - I had maintained a fever over 108 for several days, despite ice baths and the, what, 20g of daily antibiotics? I do wonder if there was some, but rather more subtle than what was being looked for.

Re-integrating was weird. For everyone else I'd been as good as dead - they'd seen me carted off in an ambulance, and then a few weeks later term had ended. I on the other hand basically went straight from the end of one school term to the beginning of the next with zero intervening time, and nobody could figure out why I was pissed off. They kept asking me about what had happened - and I answered honestly that they probably knew more than I did.

It also sucked that I had no soft landing back into classes, and in the time I'd been unconscious they'd started calculus - I came back and had to differentiate and integrate and had no frigging idea what I was actually doing - I remember sitting in an A-level maths exam a year later and _finally_ having the revelation that it was about curves and rates of change.

All this because I had what looked like a zit on my knee. It grew until I couldn't fit trousers over my leg, school offered me a sticking plaster, and said I wasn't getting out of sport that easily. Then my leg opened up one night fetching water in the kitchen, and I lost consciousness. I'll never forget the sight of custard in crude oil swirling over the linoleum - <USER2> that's one side effect of the coma - my last conscious moment is vivid in the extreme.

Anyway, that brush with death didn't change my outlook one bit, but then again I was an invincible 16 year old. The ones since then have definitely left their mark.

<comment><USER9> it sounds like it was the schools duty to get you medical attention far sooner and they failed.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, the house's matron was fired over it - and it transpired that she'd lied on her CV about her experience and qualifications - something that seemed to happen with alarming frequency at the school.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> for some reason I assumed that he would write about how this trauma would give him a new perspective on what was really important in life, but at the end it sounded like the experience didn't really change his perspective on desiring to work all the time on his startup and that he was only stepping down because he couldn't perform 100% and not because this experience changed anything about how he prioritized work/career?

<comment><USER11> Read again: he writes that he decided to prioritize his family over work _before_ all of that happened.

<comment><USER12> He was clearly lying to himself.

If your job is consuming all of your mental space, which is clearly the mindset he describes in the article, there is none left for your family.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A high temperature like 104, combined with pain, definitely warrants a doctor visit. Which doctor (GP, urgent care, ER/A&E)? Let the time, day, and how you feel be your guide.

In the case of one of my relatives, the result was confirmation they had the flu (and too late for Tamiflu or the like to be effective). In my case, it was intestinal perforation that (six months later) led to part of my large intestine being taken out.

Big congrats to this guy for getting through it.

</comment><comment><USER14> Considering the bills for a condition like this, I'd be wondering if it's even worth it to go to the doctor. My life isn't worth the destitution visited on everyone I know necessary to keep me alive, and I can't imagine the moral calculus his family had to go through.

I'm glad this guy could get the care needed to survive, and I wish him the very best in his recovery.

<comment><USER15> He's Canadian I believe; so while I'm not sure how his care in NYC would be billed, I think it would be still covered by OHIP (the public health insurance in Ontario Canada) or maybe travel insurance.

Certainly all the care he received in Toronto would have been covered, assuming he's Canadian.

<comment><USER15> Don't want to spark a healthcare debate, but want to mention that I bet NONE of the non-US readers on HN would have given a single thought about the costs involved if this was happening in their countries.

It's wild to me that the potential financial impact of this was part of the picture for many of the US people reading it (especially the startup founders who are probably without insurance right now, and this would leave absolutely financially ruined for life).

<comment><USER16> Universal Healthcare is generally only a thing in Canada and the EU. It's great if you need to wait a few months to see a doctor, but I know plenty of Canadians and Europeans who come to the US for medical care so they don't have to wait.

<comment><USER17> If you need emergency care, you don't have to wait (UK). My grandfather had a fall recently where he hit his head, and had a brain CT within two hours (he fell about 1am; he was admitted, assessed, treated, and discharged by 6am). A family member had an urgent referral for a mammogram last Thursday, and was assessed and given the results today.

Routine GPs appointments can generally be gotten within a week, and emergency[1] appointments (where we wait until the GP is done at the end of the surgery, and are then seen) if the triage nurse determines you need to be seen sooner can be gotten on the day. You also have the option of speaking to your local pharmacist, many of whom can prescribe medication for certain conditions if appropriate, or otherwise point you at suitable over-the-counter primary care.

A number of places also have walk-in centres for minor ailments where you don't need an appointment, and they generally have long opening hours (8am-10pm, 365 days a year for my local one). Urgent dental care is also available 24/7 in many places.

You may have to wait longer for non-emergency / non-priority / time- insensitive treatments - my routine MRIs have a lead time of about 8 weeks, and a specialist referral can be something in the region of 6-12 weeks (sometimes longer) - but I think that's a fair trade off. You do of course also have the option of paying for private care as well if you don't want to wait (often NHS doctors / semi-retired doctors working evenings in my limited experience).

[1] bit of a misnomer really - urgent but not critical is more accurate

<comment><USER16> My wait for a routine MRI is about 2 hours....

My wait for a specialist referral is 2-3 days and any delay is usually on my end.

There are just some things the US healthcare system accidentally does much better than Europe.

<comment><USER18> So you want to tell me that from the point when you ring your healtcare provider saying "I want to get an MRI done", to you lying down on the table being scanned the time is around 2 hours?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> A friend of mine had her young brother suddenly developing a narrow line on the skin, growing quickly; 24 hours later both his arms and legs were amputated to keep him alive.

I am wondering if having allowed emergency wide-spectrum antibiotics freely for such cases would help? Time seems to be extremely critical in such cases.

<comment> saiya-jin I would consider it a mandatory equipment of the household. Primarily I take them on trips to remote 3rd world countries where you can't rely on quick quality health care, even though most of the time I come back home with them untouched. For me its usually Sumamed, plus whatever specific for destination (malaria pills, stomach/throat, eyes etc.). Just beware of the expiration - they may lose potency and better renew them.

I am not sure I would use them at home in case you describe though - I would just run to emergency if possible. Also antibiotics don't work with viruses, fungus or parasites, so its not a panacea.

<comment><USER20> You really don't want people to have ready to use antibiotics at home. It's already very difficult to contain bacteria resistance to antibiotics.

Very soon people would not only die from rare bacteria related decease but any kind of random bacteria infection.

<comment><USER19> Your points are valid, people are irresponsible with antibiotics, however consider that e.g. 1 hour drive to emergency would cost you an arm, literally, whereas quickly eating 5 pills of wide-spectrum antibiotics would keep the infection at bay and give you time to drive to ER without any adversarial effects on your future life. What would be your choice?

<comment><USER21> The dichotomy is wrong. If you allow people to have antibiotics at home, enough of them are gonna chew them like vitamins to spread antibiotics resistance even faster. Then when you have your emergency, sure you can eat your pills, but it's not gonna do shit.

The only remotely viable solution is improving access to ERs.

<comment><USER22> What about an alternative where any usages have to be reported and measured and incorrect usage has an increasing penalty. It starts small and only ramps up with repeated abuse.

If you don't consent to the rules, that is fine, you aren't allowed the drugs at home (same as today).

<comment><USER23> That is impossible to enforce.

Like the parent said, lots of people will pop those things like candy. In very short order they won't work at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Wow. Mark was the CEO of one of the first startups that I worked at in Toronto. I recall him being very driven and focused. It seems like these qualities helped him overcome this enormous challenge.

Wishing you the best, Mark.

</comment><comment><USER25> Terrifying. Could it be that stress caused the Streptococcus pyogenes infection? It would be the most sensible explanation. I imagine being a CEO of a startup is a very stressful role, causing suppression of the immune system and thereby S pyogenes had a chance to proliferate. I have no idea, just speculation.

<comment><USER26> It was absolutely caused by unconscious emotions (like stress). The following part just made me laugh out loud:

> This mainly involves infection by the Streptococcus pyogenes bacteria and > more commonly affects young, healthy adults. I didn't do anything to get it, > it just happened - like being struck by lightning.

The jarring contrast between medicine's ability to perform surgical miracles, like those described in the article, and it's total inability to understand what _causes_ illness, is just comical. I guess there is money in one and not the other.

<comment><USER27> _It was absolutely caused by unconscious emotions (like stress)._

I cannot imagine a mechanism whereby stress causes a human body to create a bacterium, effectively from out of nowhere. To synthesise it. Do you have any evidence or even a posited mechanism for this amazing claim? Or is your claim that the illness isn't caused by this bacterium?

<comment><USER28> No-one is claiming that stress synthesizes bacteria, that is a laughable strawman.

We are surrounded by bacteria at all times. If stress were to weaken your immune system, then you might be more easily infected by them. This seems completely plausible to me (likely, even). It is not a great leap to describe this link as stress "causing" the infection, even if it might be better to describe it more precisely. Perhaps "stress meant he couldn't fight off the infection as he normally would have"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I am disturbed that he was almost sent away from the hospital if it weren't for the persistence of his business partner that it was something that needed further investigation.

<comment><USER30> It's a common thing due to the fact that doctors see too many trivial, common cases and apply Occam's razor.

I had the same experience in a big, prestigious hospital. After a surgery went wrong they insisted I'm ok and getting better despite my less and less vigorous protests. When they finally accepted to investigate this more thoroughly they realized the severity. The story repeated itself through multiple surgeries. Even just hours before the last one they insisted I should be getting better and again only investigated after several pleas. Which was very surprising considering that when going into this last surgery my chances of survival were under 15%, I was basically in septic shock and already mostly unconscious due to the illness and medication.

I think a doctor's diagnosis starts with assuming basic issues and escalating later rather than the other way around. It might make sense statistically... unless you're among the unlucky few.

<comment><USER31> Would those cases be considered misdiagnosis and incur reliability to the doctors?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This was terrifying.

How does an infection like this happen though? What can you do to prevent it?

<comment><USER33> The thing with this man is that he assumed he had the flu:

> By the time I landed in New York that day in February, I felt a flu coming > on. The next 48 hours was a marathon, so I resolved to push through.

And he also experienced some very non-flu like symptoms:

> by Wednesday night I was running a serious fever and my left leg was in a > surprising amount of pain.

Despite having a high fever and pain, he didn't go to the hospital until he actually collapsed the next day. Had he sought medical treatment as soon as the leg pain manifested, his outcome might not have been as dire.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm not up-to-date on these bacteria. It's shocking to me that at this day and age we still don't have good treatments.

Would bacteriophage have helped?

</comment><comment><USER35> This reminds me of the time that science fiction writer Peter Watts got necrotising fasciitis, and wrote a series of sardonic blog posts with gruesome photos (seriously - _gruesome_ ) about it:

[https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?cat=41](https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?cat=41)

He was never in a coma, though, so got to be a bit more chipper about the whole thing.

</comment><comment><USER36> PathFactory received $15M in funding:

[https://www.crunchbase.com/search/funding_rounds/field/organ...](https://www.crunchbase.com/search/funding_rounds/field/organizations/funding_total/lookbookhq)

Amount of traffic to pathfactory.com is negligible:

[https://www.similarweb.com/website/pathfactory.com/](https://www.similarweb.com/website/pathfactory.com/)

</comment><comment><USER37> It's a sign of what it's like to be an American that the following stood out to me:

The timing of his illness is rather unfortunate, as it caught him in New York, rather than Toronto, which probably cost him a lot of money.

<comment><USER38> Pay for it with taxes, pay for it with premiums and bills. You're paying for it.

No one works for free, the medicine costs money. The money comes from somewhere.

<comment><USER39> The doctors' and hospital administrators' sports cars aren't cheap either.

<comment><USER38> Neither are their 500K student loans nor their delayed work opportunities until 35.

<comment><USER40> Hating on a Dr. for having a nice car is BS, but what you mention are failures of America.

Only America trains their Dr. until they're 35, while having them do nothing towards their medical degree in their undergrad.

Only America saddles then with $500k in debt.

Remove both barriers, and presumably you'd have market forces push more ppl to the profession reducing wages.

<comment><USER38> "Remove both barriers"

How do you train a neurosurgeon? That level of specialization comes from maybe a few hundred in the U.S. With that level of scarcity (and demand), their time is going to be priced accordingly.

<comment><USER40> In school.

But s/he needn't have a B.Arts in management to apply to med school first.

I don't know what you mean by "Maybe a few hundred". Do you mean schools or neurosurgeons?

If 1., there are only 150 med school for all Dr. in the US, contributing to a very low number of Dr. Per capita.

If 2. They study medicine. Do residency. And train on the job for the rest of their lives... just like today [0]

[0] actually one of the reasons for medical errors, a top three killer in the US, is that most Dr. don't update their knowledge one thy finish their residency. :S

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> This kind of stories I find them scary but inspiring at the same time. Quite interesting.</comment>


Ask HN: Easy Screen-sharing for code interviews? - <AUTHOR>

The start-up I'm working at is currently hiring, so we plan on conducting some remote coding interviews. Can anyone point me in the right direction for a simple screen-sharing website that would be good for looking at the same piece of code? <comment><USER2> join.me is a great & free service.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would not use a website for this purpose. I would use a real-time code collaboration tool such as gobby (open-source, cross-platform). Even better, setting up a sobby server can also give your crew a chance to play with code as a team.</comment>