Advice needed: what's a destitute hacker to do? - <AUTHOR>

First of all I ask that anyone commenting please leave off criticism of how I got into the situation I did. Trust me, I've already thought over millions of times how I must be an idiot to have gotten into the situation I'm in, and if I could go back and make different decisions I would. But right now I'm not exactly in the best shape to handle criticism, and don't need to be convinced of anything. What I really need is advice for improving my situation, or any info about programs or employers, etc. that I don't know about. I never had a course in high school or college on how to deal with poverty, even though that might have been really helpful right about now.
I graduated from a state university in 2009 with a degree in Computer Science. I graduated with honors and a 3.81 gpa. My gpa could've been a lot higher, but I struggled with untreated clinical-level anxiety throughout school which lead to severe procrastination or simply not turning in certain projects. I got a 1520 on my SATs, was a National Merit Scholar and an IB (International Baccalaureate) graduate. Although I never went through with applying to grad school I got a 1480 on my GREs with a perfect quant score.
Now I'm aware that being a good test-taker doesn't entitle me to anything, and if anything I'm more aware than anyone else how test-taking skills or academic success don't really apply to real-life success. I currently clean houses for a living, and am barely scraping by on that. Recently I lost one of my clients for unforeseen reasons, and that put me back in a risky situation just as far as getting by. I can still pay bills and rent, but my food and gas budgets are really restricted. I'm basically eating beans and rice and not doing so well nutritionally, which has been especially apparent these past few weeks as I've had a cold that doesn't seem to be getting any better.
I am also without health insurance. May of last year was the last time I was employed at a job that provided health insurance, and after about 4 months my savings dwindled to where I couldn't afford to make COBRA payments anymore. This wouldn't be such an issue, but I also have anxiety issues that have gone untreated for a while, especially after I decided to cut back on taking some medication I was previously prescribed due to not being able to meet the monthly costs.
I held a programming job back in May, one that I had for 2 1/2 years before finally resigning. I worked at the University I graduated from helping with a research project. When I graduated in December 2008, most of the companies I had spend the past few months interviewing for had put a stop to their hiring programs, and the job I ended up taking was the only offer extended to me. This would have been fine, but over time and especially towards the end I had a great deal of trouble at that job. It would probably be unfair to call my boss emotionally abusive, but the lack of any praise, the high level of criticism, the lack of any process, the expectation of constant overtime, constant coworker turnover, left me extremely burnt out by the time I left that job. That was in May of 2011.
Besides the fact that my boss continually trash-talked on my predecessor, my boss was infuriated with me for resigning when I did (burn-out hit me really hard and I gave short notice after my productivity dropped and my sleeping habits and punctuality became erratic, and so I thought I was actually doing the responsible thing by resigning since I no longer felt competent).
So anyways with my last job since I left I've had a high level of anxiety that any new job I apply for I have basically had no positive supervisor references. Since I left my last job I have applied for a handful of positions, but with no positive results and a sense that grew over time that I was unemployable due to my mixed work history, and my increasing interval of unemployment (at least in tech). Thank goodness a close friend of mine showed me how to clean houses and passed along clients to me, or I might have been even more thoroughly convinced of how unemployable and worthless I was.
Programming has never been a strong passion of mine, though I am fond of tech and read HN on a daily basis. I think I'm pretty decent at programming simply from being quick to learn new skills and learn from my mistakes, but I've never felt a passion to devote large chunks of my free time to it. I don't have a strong interest in doing personal projects any more than an accountant might crunch numbers just for fun on the weekend. I'm very much a people person too, and if I don't spend time socializing away from the screen in my free time I get depressed and generally unmotivated about a lot of things. I know this automatically puts me on a lower rung when hiring for programming talent, since I don't have any open source projects to show off, or have any number of puzzle solutions memorized for easy pseudo-coding during an interview, but I'd hope that this wouldn't make me unemployable.
I've also been pretty content to move away from the tech field, but since I also have a fairly significant amount of credit card debt which I acquiring during unemployment, after my savings ran out, but before I was making regular income, it's extremely hard for me to pay my bills with the generally low-paying work that I'm doing now (well at least after factoring in lots of unpayed commute time, and limited hours).
And paradoxically it seems to take a not insubstantial amount of money to file a successful case for unemployment, which I'd find pretty funny if it wasn't so depressing. Also low-income health assistance programs, food stamps, etc. can carry a pretty daunting set of requirements and lengthy waiting periods, both of which aren't so great for someone dealing with anxiety and situational depression, and also in need of more immediate assistance. I've tried my best to search for some sort of social work assistance, just for some help sorting through my options and figuring out what steps I need to take to apply, with no luck.
I've worked out I need to make $25k a year after taxes to cover credit card bills, living expenses, and have some sort of small savings (heaven forbid my car ever break down or some other unknown expense come up anytime soon, since I have no way to pay for it). This would be peanuts for any decent-paying career-type job, but it's quite depressing how far above the minimum wage this ends up being, and how far out of reach it might be for anyone with a not-so-stellar resume.
Family is no help right now, as they just don't have the resources to help considering their own financial and medical issues. Not every acquaintance I know is aware of my tough financial situation, due to embarrassment on my part, but I haven't had any luck in exploring opportunities the other 50% have proposed, because they are few and far between and the few that actually existed haven't panned out (I live in the Denver / Boulder area by the way, so I'm not sure if it's just the locale, or who I know or what, but networking hasn't made much of a difference)
So I don't mean to just dump some sob story on HN, or ask for handouts or anything. I'd really just like some advice on what to do. I admit I haven't been the most proactive at doing every thing I could possibly do to break back into the middle class, but believe it or not both a bad reference-less first work experience, unemployment, constant financial worry, etc. can feel a bit hopeless sometimes. And sometimes I'll think I'm making some progress improving at least financially, and then I lose a client the same month I have to make the car insurance payment and things seem even worse.
I'm not asking for advice on how to make myself a candidate to break into the top tech companies, or even get a starting position making the $70k+ a year that a lot of soon-to-be graduates seem to take for granted, even after the financial collapse. My next job doesn't have to be stimulating or glamorous. I don't have any travel money or even extra gas money, which I'm sure complicates things. I'd like to hope that even given the current constraints, that maybe there's still some way I can fix my employment situation and not have to worry if I can pay my bills for the month or if I have enough money to buy fruits and veggies.
So I guess my question to HN is basically, what's a destitute hacker to do? <comment><USER2> I live in the same area, and though I do have income, I am always looking for other opportunities. From trolling CL occasionally, I've seen a number of jobs listed that might match with your stated skill-set. Most of them are in Broomfield, Boulder, or Denver, and it seems most of them are being screened by employment agencies. However, quite a few are from small, somewhat- technically-clueless (given the descriptions), shops that just need help with their wordpress or other CMS.

It sounds like you may just be in a funk, so if you want to go out for some beers (I'll buy :), just let me know.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm really just pretty panicked. And although i haven't interviewed tons of places for programming jobs recently, the few that i have either ended up choosing another candidate or just left the position open, which hasn't done much for my self-esteem. :-/

If you have connections and can maybe help if you end up liking me sure I'd like to get together. I'm not the most fun right now given the circumstances but I can do my best. Other than that maybe we can just get together after this personal crisis is over? I'm really not overstating things and don't have much energy for casual get-togethers right now. That's not to say I wouldn't enjoy meeting up at a later date, so don't take this the wrong way! I appreciate the offer of support.

<comment><USER2> I understand. My experience has been that the best way to find work opportunities is through networking (I know it's not always fun). Not to use a cliché, but it _is_ often who you know, not what.

I'm trying to figure out a way (financially) to setup a hackerspace in the area, and I'll try to get a hold of you if I succeed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> When I get in a rut, the best thing is to get some small things done first.

Have you looked at sites like elance, odesk, and guru? You can find small projects there that pay. It could be a good way to get some momentum back. You may have to apply for a bunch of projects to get your first assignment, but don't get discouraged. You have talent. Whatever experience is lacking on your profile, just add your test scores etc.

You mention several different ways that your confidence is low. Let me tell you a secret: the rest of us feel the same way, just that we may have managed to ignore it a little better.

Finally, learning to sell yourself isn't easy but it's no more difficult than learning to program. It's perfectly ok to mess up. Just keep trying and dont take it too serioisly - you will eventually get the hang of it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Do you have any coworkers that you got along with at your previous jobs? If so, go on LinkedIn, look them up, ask them to connect, leave a positive review for them, ask them to do the same for you. If this process is completed successfully, send a personal message to them, "hey, I just figured I'd check in.. enjoyed working with you blah blah blah... hey, I'd be happy to give you a reference anytime, would you mind if I used you as a reference in the future, if so, could you give me your phone number just so I can keep it for when I may need it"?

That's all you need, I have used co-workers for references before and it works just fine most of the time, you don't necessarily have to have your superior give you a reference

<comment><AUTHOR> I could get good coworker references from about 3-4 coworkers at my last programming job. I had one coworker even recommend me for a job at their current company, but I didn't pass their interview process, though they were only hiring for one position and said they wanted someone that was a perfect fit.

I guess I feel the gap in employment in tech is the bigger problem now (almost a year at this point).

That is reassuring to hear that not every employer is interested in a supervisor reference.

<comment><USER5> I had become almost completely out of touch with my already thin network, and was in essentially your same financial and employment situation. I got my current job because a recruiter was trawling LinkedIn.

Use it, it costs you nothing, and works while you're asleep.

You might try CraigsList, I've heard of people getting decent jobs that way.

Follow through on your unemployment, and any other benefits program you run across. Your job is to keep breathing until your job becomes a job.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Your advice is really helpful. I'll see what I can do about making sure my LinkedIn is up-to-date and such.

Craigslist also sounds like a good possibility too!

I don't think I qualified at any point for unemployment since I resigned, or at least that's my understanding. I'll see what I can do about benefits programs, but a lot seem based on income alone, or need paperwork that takes a while to acquire (record of monthly expenses? not sure what would count as a valid record, or birth certificate, which I don't currently have a copy of). Wish there was someone I could meet with in person to work through these things, but I don't know of any walk-in clinics or anything to help people like this.

<comment><USER5> "I don't think I qualified at any point for unemployment since I resigned"

Maybe. Apply anyway.

As for the paper work and all ... it's your job. Do it.

There's probably web sites for every agency that you want to deal with, start there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you are using dried beans and not instant rice you are not really suffering nutritionally. Not any worse than what most americans eat anyway.Do a google search.

Go to a soup kitchen for a meal every once in a while, if you feel guilty about it volunteer at a different one.

Get out of the house.

You have issues other than a job to worry about and going back to the same type of work you do not enjoy is not going to help.

Salvation Army, Red Cross or any 'decent church' should be able to direct and help you with social services.

<comment><AUTHOR> I mean the works alright. It doesn't suck. But work is work, and it's never been a reasonable thing for me to do one thing every possible moment and feel happy and balanced.

Trust me job and money is my biggest worry, and there's not many that are bigger than that. I'll leave the existential stuff until after I have the necessities taken care of.

Good to know the nutrition might not be that bad, at least relatively. ;-)

After reading some other threads on here I'm thinking that I should probably figure out about somewhere in the city to house in so that the car isn't an issue. I live out in the boonies right now, so soup kitchen would be a commute and maybe cost more than the actual food.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Just a suggestion. Have you thought about freelancing? I've seen threads here where freelancers seem to be able to make a decent amount, provided they know the right technology and spend some time carving out a niche / getting to know clients. Maybe you can try searching for those threads and see what technologies are in demand?

Freelancing could be something you try to get into while looking for a job. And it would also be a way to build your resume.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's maybe a route I could take. I guess I always felt to freelance you had to be really good at selling yourself though, that there was a lot of competition, and I'm probably not the greatest at that.

I do have some pretty marketable skills: a fair amount of experience in PHP, Rails, Javascript, SQL, HTML / CSS.

I'd have no idea how to go about getting the first few clients though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Spring is coming, which is really helpful. Try to get out and do things. It's really hard when you're poor, but at least get out and enjoy the natural part of the universe. Even a walk through the neighborhood looking at flowers is better than a day on the couch.

Build something, to help keep your spirits up and your brain engaged. It doesn't matter what, doesn't matter how large or small. Small might even be better. Just build something.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I do try and enjoy cheaper things when I can. Nothing too active though, as that's more calories and higher food expenses (kidding, but only slightly ;-) )

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Programming has never been a strong passion of mine", if you look at the real successful people--the people that are happy, they do things that they are passionate about. If you're not passionate about programming or being a hacker --why put yourself through it? What ARE you passionate about?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm doing it because I can make a living that way. I'm sure that's why most people do their jobs. Not everyone does what they dream of, because society doesn't value all contributions equally, and some not at all.

Helping poor people with odd jobs and cleaning is actually something I'm passionate about, but it's also a good way to be pretty poor and destitute yourself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> buy / borrow these books, and work through them

([http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Over-Mood-Change- Changing/dp/08...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Over-Mood-Change- Changing/dp/0898621283))

([http://www.amazon.co.uk/Overcoming-Anxiety-Helen- Kennerley/d...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Overcoming-Anxiety-Helen- Kennerley/dp/1849010714/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_c))

Find a friend to help give you a poke now and again.

Here's an Australian website that is often recommended.

(<http://moodgym.anu.edu.au/welcome>)

A few weeks work will drastically reduce anxiety.

{Start-up idea: MoodGym but better.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Anxiety is my least worry. I don't want to get caught up in some sort of meta- anxiety about my anxiety. Once I'm done securing a more stable job then I'll see what I can do to fix the anxiety. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> You might contact a contracting / consulting firm. Let them sell you.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know where to find them. Can you direct me anywhere? I know basically nothing about this.

<comment><USER10> I Googled "denver software consulting" (without the quotes) and saw some decent results. Here are a couple:

<http://www.righttimeconsulting.com/career-opportunities/>

<http://denversoftwarepeople.com/>

<comment><USER11> You could post up your LN / resume link in your HN profile. Indeed trawls contract jobs well: [http://www.indeed.com/q-Software-Engineer-Contract-l- Denver,...](http://www.indeed.com/q-Software-Engineer-Contract-l-Denver,-CO- jobs.html)

There is a supposed lack of developers in Denver. Good advice in this thread, wish you well, and eventually, if programming is not your thing, transition into client relations, sales engineer (maybe not your thing re: anxiety), Jr Product Manager, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you this is very helpful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I can't give any advice other than the obvious, keep your skills sharp and never stop looking for work. If your parents can't help you financially, ask them to help you look for work and let you know if they hear of anything. Breaking into the programming industry is extremely difficult, but you have not failed as long as you keep trying.

On that note, if anyone in the Sonoma-Marin-Napa area is hiring entry-level coders or IT staff, I'm looking for work.</comment>


MySpace Might Have Friends, but It Wants Ad Money - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/16/business/media/16myspace.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss <comment><USER2> Get traction, build a large user base, and the money will follow ...this seems to be general startup mantra.

But $1B in revenue even from 118M users is a steep target, and most sites would be happy with $7 per user. In this respect I think that as long as MySpace is profitable, they should not wory so much and focus on building what people want and making it easier to get it. If they create value, they will 'earn' value (at the rate the market determines)?

</comment><comment><USER3> You don't get quotes in the NY Times like this every day:

> "The redesign is intended to address a problem of social networking sites, > which is that many user pages have the aesthetic appeal of a 14-year-old's > high-school locker."

And the situation isn't so bad, MySpace is still trouncing FaceBook in revenue.</comment>


Next big buzzword: Pre-commerce - <AUTHOR> http://yongfook.com/post/27814053498/pre-commerce

<comment><USER2> So by putting your own label on something that everyone knows is a "Big Thing" (kickstarter) you hope to create a self-fulfilling prophesy that it will become a buzzword, which you can then use to crow about how you predicted it, possibly even fuelling some speaking engagements.

Vacuous blog syndication at it's finest.

<comment><USER3> To me, Kickstarter is just one example (or execution) of pre-commerce. I think there was a post on techcrunch recently about this too: Kickstarter is just scratching the surface. Vertical integration is the next step (think Quirky.com) that more startups will/should try.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sounds like a rewording of vapourware, big in the 90's games areana.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporware>

I therefore predict the next buzzword to be buzzocks, when somebody tries to make a new buzzword and overloads the talk variable :).

</comment><comment><USER5> This is similar to what Tim Ferriss describes in 4-Hour Workweek. He'd create one-page microsites (similar to what Launchrock offers nowadays), buy up proper domains, and then test his product idea by purchasing search engine ads.

Not only could he iterate on product idea by tweaking the search ads and reacting to CTR changes, but visitors to the sites were advised to leave their email, so by the time the product was ready to launch, he'd have a great opt- in list.

</comment><comment><USER6> "One example of how an MVP can manifest is dummy landing pages."

This is not a minimum viable product, it is a minimum viable ad. A product implies you have actually built something. Please do not belittle the act of actually building something any more than it already is.

</comment><comment><USER7> Pre-Selling <http://mixergy.com/sam-ovens-snapinspect-interview/>

</comment><comment><USER8> Pre-Commerce : Production = Derivative : Hedge Fund

Draw your conclusions.

<comment><USER9> Could you expand on that please? It's not clear to me what your pseudo- equation means, and therefore I don't understand the reasoning behind it.

<comment><USER8> 'In simple terms, pre-commerce is "buying stuff that doesn't exist yet". In more grown-up words, it's a framework for companies to cheaply establish market demand for a new product idea and acquire the cash flow to produce it.'

[OP]

'Reported earnings on derivatives are often wildly overstated. That's because today's earnings are in a significant way based on estimates whose inaccuracy may not be exposed for many years. The errors usually reflect the human tendency to take an optimistic view of one's commitments. But the parties to derivatives also have enormous incentives to cheat in accounting for them. Those who trade derivatives are usually paid, in whole or part, on "earnings" calculated by mark-to-market accounting. But often there is no real market, and "mark-to-model" is utilized. This substitution can bring on large-scale mischief. As a general rule, contracts involving multiple reference items and distant settlement dates increase the opportunities for counter-parties to use fanciful assumptions. The two parties to the contract might well use differing models allowing both to show substantial profits for many years. In extreme cases, mark-to-model degenerates into what I would call mark-to-myth.'

[[http://www.fintools.com/docs/Warren%20Buffet%20on%20Derivati...](http://www.fintools.com/docs/Warren%20Buffet%20on%20Derivatives.pdf)]

=====

When you make assumptions concerning something's value with no concrete immediate exchange of the goods you are valuing [simply put, you are finalizing transactions for things you are not shipping], you are in fact delaying market's feedback and the possible negative consequences this latter can produce to your assets. By employing Pre-Commerce in your model, you are not getting early feedback. You are just betting you will be able to provide in the near future the value you are paid for right now, and you are selling to your customers a burden-share of risks, along with the product you offer. Sure in some occasions you will be able to meet your users' expectations. But if and when you won't, bad things will hit you [and your company] with much greater impacts.

<comment><USER9> Thank you, that makes much more sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> yo-mf In theory this sounds interesting, but it runs up against a fundamental difference between startups and more mature organizations. Startups embrace failure and accept change; mature organizations reject failure and fight change. Therefore to give power to the consumer in this manner is simply not feasible for a major brand that is invested in its existing research and development programs. Outside of the one off marketing stunt, this mode of commerce will only exist in the fringes and by smaller, independent creators geared towards bespoke development.

</comment><comment><USER10> this has been around for quite some time. why do you think some infomercials offer products that won't ship for 2 months? kick starter has just made it more obvious that it is a presale.

</comment><comment><USER11> Call me a special little snowflake, but why is he eating in the photo? I have a hard time taking the article seriously with a profile pic like that.

Anyone else feel it's a distracting photo, and perhaps even disrespectful to the reader?

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the feedback... never thought it would be taken as disrespectful!

Might change it, not in love with that photo.

But yes as another poster said, I have a history with internet+cooking.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, I found it off-putting and I wasn't as receptive to your message after that.

But then again, I did say I'm a special snowflake. It could very well be only me who is off-putting and has the problem.</comment></comment></comment>


Apple stops development of Aperture - <AUTHOR> http://www.loopinsight.com/2014/06/27/apple-stops-development-of-aperture/

<comment><USER2> Aperture has never been the professional tool it was billed as. I bought a Nikon D3 when it came out and the RAW files it produced was unsupported for weeks if not months with no updates on when support would come. I was forced to switch to Lightroom and didn't look back. Shortly after, they announced a new version and that they had been in a code freeze for new camera support.

Now killing this professional tool (while they say they'll have a migration path to a consumer tool) doesn't seem like the right move.</comment>


Why education is about more than jobs - <AUTHOR> http://lizw.livejournal.com/517257.html

<comment><USER2> I have no experience with university education over the pond, but I have to personal observations about the US system: 1) far too many people go to college and 2) the wrong people go to college.

Political pressures have created a huge demand for colleges while supply remains comparatively inelastic. Consequently, the student population has become dominated by people whose parents can afford to send them to college, but whose intellectual credentials and academic interest are far from stellar. College revolves around teaching the mean -- and I don't like it.

I hope graduate school is different.

<comment><USER2> I should follow this up by correcting myself: obviously, the pressures are not only political. If a college education offers the perception of competence, then market pressures increase the demand that the universities are more than willing to accommodate. I think -- somehow in a way that I do not see -- universities have to just start being more selective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I might just be imagining it, but I seem to be getting an 'anti-college' vibe, or at least 'anti-traditional education' vibe from HN these past few weeks.

Sure, we probably can't afford to send 50% of the country to college. But why not try to send as many as possible, at least of those who want to go?

Dominated by those whose parents can afford to send kids to college? Hasn't it always been that way? After all, if you can't afford it, no matter how bad you want to go, you won't. Not without assistance.

I'm not sure I understand this negative bent on college education - or am I just reading things wrong?

<comment><USER4> Like everything else in politics, there is a nice gray area in education. The internet is very bad at gray areas, and tends toward extremism.

The gray area here is between "pursuit of knowledge, become better citizens" and "career school, what is history for anyway".

Universities used to be #1, and have shifted toward #2 over the years. Now people see it more as the default to be the career school, and laugh at people who are in favor of learning for the sake of learning.

Then the problem is that while both approaches are relatively valid, they lead to different conclusions to the answer of "who should go to college".

<comment><USER3> That makes sense, actually, since I definitely reside solidly in the middle of the two. Prior to college, I was definitely in the 'what is history for' crowd, but college broadened my horizons so much, and I enjoy learning to the extent that I could easily argue the 'pursuit of knowledge' reasoning these days. I went to a liberal arts college for an applied degree, so I guess that's a little of both worlds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think this attests more to the dangers of early tracking in European societies (didn't take the right tests in high school? You're never going to college) than the benefits of education as access to knowledge. In the us, taking classes like this COULD lead to a job, if you were willing to fight really hard for it.

</comment><comment><USER6> If there are _intangible_ benefits, then by all means, have all the _intangible_ support you want.

We can't afford to put 50% of the population through university, it's as simple as that.

<comment><USER7> A modern industrialized society can't afford _not_ to put about 50% of the population through an education that gives them at least something like a bachelors degree.

<comment><USER8> Are we trying to make University trustees rich or have a well-educated and civil society? I don't think 4 years of college are required to teach someone to think critically, be rational, and right/speak well.

<comment><USER9> I don't want my open heart surgery to be performed by a dropout, no matter how passionate and relentlessly resourceful they might be.

<comment><USER10> That's a total strawman. It's not even worth expanding on this reply further.

<comment><USER9> _That's a total strawman._

Not really. It's probably not a terribly popular sentiment on a site for web- based hacker startups, but there are plenty of jobs that actually require some sort of meaningful education. Most of the medical system is composed of such jobs, as are large chunks of the legal system. Government bureaucracy (while the benefits of having a degree in such a job may be questionable) commonly requires them, at least in Canada. The government is not a small employer.

50% may well be excessive, but there are a huge number of jobs out there that demand a degree.

<comment><USER10> Who said "Hey, let's do away with higher education entirely, such that doctors won't have an education?"

Total strawman. Thinking there's too many people going to college is not the same as thinking _nobody_ should go to college, and you're not helping anybody with anything by conflating the two.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> ... from a teacher at open university, apparently.

I'm sure I'm biased as a college drop out myself, but I've never been impressed by abstract ('learn how to help society!', etc) type reasons to go to college.

<comment><USER12> Understanding what you read on the news, being able to communicate clearly and effectively, and being able to spot bullshit and faulty arguments when you see it - great reasons to go to college.

But 90% of people won't be using what they learn to "improve their community" and whatnot, not unless they're specifically going to school to learn that.

<comment><USER13> _Understanding what you read on the news, being able to communicate clearly and effectively, and being able to spot bullshit and faulty arguments when you see it - great reasons to go to college._

It's a pity, then, that these skills aren't very well taught in university (at least on the humanities side). Indeed, if you do a course on, say, Foucault or Derrida then you'll need to _unlearn_ how to spot bullshit and faulty arguments if you want to pass the course since a final essay which says "Derrida in this book says a whole bunch of vague bullshit that doesn't make any real sense" will get low marks.

Interestingly, I don't think spotting bullshit or faulty arguments is that difficult a skill -- relatively uneducated people can easily spot a BS argument when it's used to argue for something they don't want to believe. The really hard part is developing the discipline to be able to spot a BS argument even when it's arguing for something you _do_ want to believe.

I don't think this skill is very well taught, either.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is customer satisfaction enough to justify shpping buggy code? - <AUTHOR> At my previous company, most engineers and upper management insisted on shipping buggy (95% of tests failed) and badly designed (crashes on bad input, no error reporting) software.<p>All discussions about putting more resources to improve the quality of the product were shutdown by showing either Power Point presentations or emails from our customers mentioning how happy they are with the product. <comment><USER2> Here's the thing about software built for a business: that software exists to serve the business's bottom line, NOT some abstract ideal of software perfection.

Is this example a little egregious? Perhaps.

But management has pressures of their own to ship software - many of which are not flexible when quality is at stake, and many of which have hard deadlines. These pressures come from regulators, competitors, investors/the board, or sometimes simply cash flow.

And if you want to fix the bugs after shipping, your job is to make a (preferably quantifiable) case for why and how that will be better for the business's bottom line in the medium to long term than not fixing them.</comment>


Over 200K SF and LA patient records stolen from contractor - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-patient-records-20140321,0,7176884.story

<comment><AUTHOR> Records for nearly 56,000 San Francisco patients, some with Social Security numbers, were stored in computers stolen last month from a medical billing firm in Torrance, said San Francisco's Department of Public Health on Friday. Los Angeles County public health records involving about 168,500 patients also were compromised by the burglary.</comment>


How to use folds in vim - <AUTHOR> http://tuxtraining.com/2009/04/10/how-to-use-folds-in-vim <comment><USER2> Neat. I'm addicted to vim partly because of its great and very flexible folds. For example, you can completely rewrite the way folds _look_. I like my folded code to look like its first line would normally look, without any dashes, preserving indentation. So I just rewrote the function (here's a blog post about it: <http://a-dimit.blogspot.com/2008/07/folding-in-vim.html>)

It really rocks :-)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a really useful article.

Though I've found it's easier to open folds by moving the cursor, e.g. right- arrow while on a fold line, than futzing with "zo".

<comment><USER4> You should never ever touch an arrow key when using Vim. If you are using hjkl for movement, hit 'l' to open a fold.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is the Best Day to Launch on HN? - <AUTHOR> Based on historical performance/data. <comment><USER2> yesterday on HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19853813](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19853813)

<comment><AUTHOR> nice! thank you!</comment></comment>


Ask PG: Points to Pixels - <AUTHOR>

Can I suggest changing the CSS units for fonts from points to pixels? That way HN will look the same on both Chrome and Firefox for me :)<p>On Chrome 10pt HN type is 12px on Firefox it's 13.3333px (Mac OS X).<p>(Apologies if this is not the way to do this! Thank you for HN!) <comment><USER2> Why pixels anyway? REMs are generally considered convention nowadays anyway?

And what does it matter if it doesn't look the same on every browser? It definitely doesn't change the experience.

</comment><comment><USER3> At the bottom of all pages, you'll see the "Feature Request" link.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=363></comment>


Ask HN: I think my co-founder is freaking out about getting sued. - <AUTHOR>

I think have a serious problem with my co-founder and I'm not sure how to handle it. We just launched an adaption{1} of the popular Yo App and we are getting lots of downloads. But now, he is freaking out about getting sued for using a similar name and layout as the Yo app. Mostly he is worried about having Yo in the app title, which I don't see any problem with. However, now he changed the app title in our play store account a second time without telling me so in response, I blocked his access.
His main argument for not using Yo in our name, is that we shouldn't be gaining traction from what others have built. However, I think tries to make up arguments why we should change the name. Also, in my opinion our app is significantly different to Yo and he is simply getting worked up about us getting sued for copyright infringement or intellectual property theft.
Moreover, having yo in the name is crucial for our app to gain traction as it communicates to people that they can do "one-word" communication to their friends similar to Yo, just in a bit of a different way.
I think my question is, is there any way we could get sued realistically? The thing is that we're in German jurisdiction, so there is not much anyone can sue us about outside of Germany and if it goes through, it would take a year or so, wouldn't it?
{1} https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.messenger.labs <comment><USER2> i think it depends on the terms&conditions of google's playstore. just because you are german doesnt meant you cant ge sued by american laws, and i know that german and american laws are quite dirrefent when it comes to compensation (schadensersatz).

suggestions: delete references to "Yo" from your product-name (name it Jo instead); "Yo" is a registered trademark; you wouldnt name a chocolate you created "ritter sport", even if your name was armin ritter

</comment><comment><USER3> a) Not a lawyer, but the worst you'd likely get is a cease and desist letter, not a lawsuit out of the blue. Especially if you're located in another country.

b) It's ok to have a difference in opinion, but your co-founder should not be making major product decisions without you. That, to me, would be most concerning.

c) How should you handle it? Decide on clear roles, and develop the product further so that there's a clear difference between you and other products.

<comment><USER4> Expanding on (c) ...

There will be times when you have a difference of opinion. The person who specifically and explicitly has control has, indeed, got control. It's the other person's job to try to convince them. Working together well means taking the time to listen to concerns, then making a decision. Sometimes that means changing your mind. This is not a competition between you. Changing your mind or not changing your mind is neither victory nor loss.

But for every decision, someone should have control, and their job, in part, is to keep the other person informed. That feeds back to point (b) above.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd be more worried about getting permanately banned from the app store. using your logic why not put imessage in your title?

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm going create an app called "yo2". Where's my million dollars?</comment>


Why does unicef try to promote mobile in developing world? - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/27/mobile-developing-world/

<comment><AUTHOR> shouldn't they be focused on children and programs about children health, safety and education?

<comment><USER2> Mobile improves all of the above. [http://www.chron.com/business/article/Urgent-tweet-in- Kenya-...](http://www.chron.com/business/article/Urgent-tweet-in-Kenya- village-Help-sheep-missing-3332541.php)

<comment><AUTHOR> i certainly agree. but focus for this topic coming from unicef, is kinda interesting to me.

<comment><USER3> Often times the most obvious/direct methods of addressing these problems fail spectacularly. Put a different way, simply dropping tons of food on a population doesn't benefit their ability to become sustainable. I'm not suggesting we cut off food aid, but rather trying to understand how mobile phones make a good investment for an organization like UNICEF.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Soup Map – 277 European Soups - <AUTHOR> https://www.tasteatlas.com/europe/soups <comment><USER2> I can't believe it hasn't listed the Polish "żur" (or "żurek"). It is a soup made of soured rye flour, served in a bread bowl. Utterly delicious. For me it is, by far, the best traditional Polish dish (and soup).

Here you can read more about it: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Slavic_fermented_cereal_s...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Slavic_fermented_cereal_soups)

Edit: I found it on their website, but it's missing on the map: [https://www.tasteatlas.com/zurek](https://www.tasteatlas.com/zurek)

Edit2: Thanks for pointing out that I can click on the number directly. Not too intuitive, but zurek is there!

<comment><USER3> Came here to post the same thing. Żurek is phenomenal and Polish cuisine is among the best, and most underrated.

Recipes online say you need to make a fermented starter liquid called zakwas, which is allegedly sold pre-made in Polish grocery stores. But I could not find it for sale online. There are instant żurek mixes on Amazon, though, and a few packets are now on their way.

<comment><USER4> Polish cuisine really is amazing. My favorite cold summer soup is Chłodnik, a bright pink creamy beet soup with farm-fresh hard boiled eggs and young potatoes on the side. Borowikowa is a hot mushroom soup made from wild Porcini mushrooms gathered in the fall mushroom-hunting season with an incredibly rich taste.

The Poles take ingredient quality very seriously and have so many awesome food traditions, plus are getting much better at reproducing other culture's cuisines, I think mainly due to open EU borders giving a lot of restaurateurs working experience outside the country.

<comment><USER5> Well, this atlas registers it as a Lithuanian dish šaltibarščiai, much to dismay of Polish who believe it's their chłodnik, and Belarusians who are certain it's their chaładnik.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> With a few well-known* exceptions it's a very risky idea to attribute any particular dish to a particular country. I'm from Eastern Europe, and can say almost any attribution can and will be disputed here :-) And situation can be farther complicated by the fact that same names are often used for different dishes.

* - And even those are disputed from time to time.

<comment><USER6> Biriyani, paella and plov is basically same (yet tastes very different).

What I'm interested in is why most soups in Eastern Europe are stock/"bullion" style while in west they are more like goulash/curry/gravy?

<comment><USER5> I believe it's just a classification difference. In some cultures a soup is soup when it's liquid. A gravy-style dish can exist, no problem, but will not be recognized as soup then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love it! But in addition of 'Where to eat' I'd like to know 'How to make'.

<comment><USER8> Maybe I'm wooshing here, but there's a tab called "Recipe" ;)

Edit: Ah - I just noticed, it is only there on some.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Missing lots of very basic but good soups (then again, the search doesn't work well, returning "categories", "events" and "restaurants" rather than soups by keyword):

tomato soup with little meat balls

pumpkin soup

mixed vegetable soup

shrimp soup, fish soup, lobster soup

asparagus cream soup

spinach soup

</comment><comment><USER10> In Romania, we make a clear distinction between Supa, Ciorba and Bors.

Supa (Soup) is the un-soured base, Ciorba is sour (usually soured with lemon) and Bors (Borscht) is soured with an wheat bran based fermented liquid by the same name. :)

<comment><USER2> In Poland we have zupa (soup), barszcz (borscht) and flaki (which is similar to your ciorba I think).

<comment><USER11> Additionally, in Poland, by my count there're at least four different soups made from beetroot - barszcz czerwony (eaten traditionally with "uszka" dumplings, without sour cream), barszcz ukrainski (eaten with vegetables and beans), chlodnik (cold soup, eaten with cream) and another barszcz czerwony (hot soup, eaten with cream). Poland has LOTS of soups

<comment><USER12> And also barszcz biały, litewski, francuski, jabłkowy, ogórkowy and of course, the most important: barszcz do picia :)

<comment><USER2> Oh and then there's also czernina, which basically is a soup made of duck blood.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Borscht classified as a Ukrainian dish. Good. As it should be.

<comment><USER14> What's your stance on rassolnik?

<comment><USER13> The only front of the geopolitical soup wars I'm dying on, is the borscht front. :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Yummy. It would be great to add a filter to show only the ones that include a detailed recipe, though.

<comment><USER16> Also those that can be made vegetarian. So many look delicious and could be prepared with a protein substitute.

<comment><USER17> This one is a pretty solid vegetarian soup:

[https://www.tasteatlas.com/ciorba-de- loboda](https://www.tasteatlas.com/ciorba-de-loboda)

This video, despite the annoying voice, describes it and its ingredients, I think it should be easy enough to follow: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSnXUxXC0_E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSnXUxXC0_E) (it's actually "ciorba de stevie" but it's basically the same thing)

Loboda is this thing: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atriplex_hortensis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atriplex_hortensis)

I Imagine you can use regular spinach if you don't have it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If you are ever in Greece and want a delicious rich soup I reccomend Avgolemono[1].

1\. [https://www.tasteatlas.com/avgolemono](https://www.tasteatlas.com/avgolemono)

<comment><USER19> +10000 (super biased) for avgolemono -- one of those foods that I despised as a child but came to love as an adult.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> As for Russia they would need to add щи/shchi [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shchi](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shchi)

Щи да каша пища наша. Don't know how to translate that one properly:-)

Also there is the wikipedia reference, who would have guessed that soups come in lists? [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_soups](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_soups)

<comment><USER21> It's already on there. Only 2.4 stars though :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Nice idea, but the implementation is not great: many places have multiple soups superimposed, but only one is even shown if you click and there's no way to "expand" a cluster. If you want the full list for a country, you need to browse the pictures by location.

[https://www.tasteatlas.com/europe/soups?orderby=location](https://www.tasteatlas.com/europe/soups?orderby=location)

<comment><USER23> If you click on a number it expands the list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Where is the Turkiye's soups. Tarhana Soup is an Anatolian soup.

[http://www.turkishfoodandrecipes.com/2009/11/tarhana-soup- ta...](http://www.turkishfoodandrecipes.com/2009/11/tarhana-soup-tarhana- corbasi.html)

An other Turkiye's soups are here.. [http://www.turkishfoodandrecipes.com/search/label/soups](http://www.turkishfoodandrecipes.com/search/label/soups)

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm curious how they determine the 'Most Popular'.

<comment><USER26> Based on traffic to the site over a period of time, like pretty much every other 'Most Popular' algo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The iconography is a bit variable. London is represented by the arms of the Greater London Council, which were granted in 1966, and which was abolished in 1986.

The soups look good though!

</comment><comment><USER28> My favorite, the north German "Hochzeitssuppe" (wedding soup) is missing. It even has a Wikipedia entry: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hochzeitssuppe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hochzeitssuppe)

Just the best thing you can eat on a rainy cold November day.

<comment><USER29> It's not missing, the UX is just bad.

Hochzeitssuppe expands if you click on Nudelsuppe while you are at the map's maximum zoom setting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm hungry now

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm not sure many people in Portugal would call "açorda" a soup. The most common variety has the consistency of mashed potatoes and is either a course in itself (when mixed with prawns, for example) or used as a side for meat.

<comment><USER32> I think it's fine to consider these overalapping sets. Then we don't have to argue over edge cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Oh! I thought it would be a map in _culinary space_ of soup varieties. So if wanted a sour winter soup without meat, I'd find a cluster of those somewhere in a 3D space...

</comment><comment><USER34> Very nice product (not just the soups), it's interesting to get a "flavor map" like this , and brings back memories of places once visited!

</comment><comment><USER35> So we got a couple of food chains that are all about soups as main courses and they only manage to find out "Açorda"?

Anyway, nice overview, as starting point.

<comment><USER36> They also think caldo verde was invented after 1935.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Might have been able to include Irish Stew, and Coddle for Ireland.

Both are more stews.. but several other things already on this map are more like stews.

<comment><USER38> They're both there, but under Stews. [https://www.tasteatlas.com/Stews](https://www.tasteatlas.com/Stews)

...I grew up eating Irish Stew and thought of it more as a soup too

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Noted that solyanka spans a big chunk of eastern European countries. E.g. it's a staple in Latvia (probably from USSR influence).

</comment><comment><USER39> Too bad the information on this website isn't open data (like OpenStreetMap). I'd love to contribute otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER40> It's missing green cabbage stew in northern Germany. One of the best things ever

</comment><comment><USER41> Should add Irish Guiness beef stew (also called Irish stew/beef stew?)

</comment><comment><USER42> Swedish ärtsoppa and Finnish hernekeitto are the same thing.

</comment><comment><USER43> this looks interesting, but I just want to say there are a couple dozen variations of fish soup in Italy, I'm not sure why they don't show up :)

</comment><comment><USER44> This is amazing!! Exactly the kind of thing i've been looking for to find new regional dishes. But like others mentioned, it's lacking a lot of entries. Does anyone know how to submit dishes?

</comment><comment><USER45> What's with the low Russia scores

<comment><USER46> Rating is meaningless, that Okroshka is worst-rated soup at 2.3 just cant be right.

<comment><USER47> Okroshka is one of my all-time-favorite summer dishes (I grew up in Russia). So refreshing to have a cold "soup" / "salad" hybrid.</comment></comment></comment>


Crypto for the masses: Telegram's ICO hot but controversial - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/news/business/21736188-encrypted-messaging-app-plans-initial-coin-offering-fund-grand-ambition-telegrams <comment><USER2> I wonder why people continue to refer to Telegram as an encrypted messenger. It offers transport encryption, sure, but I'm not aware of any messenger that doesn't (thank god). Telegram's actually end-to-end encrypted chats are not used by default, rarely used by users (afaict), lock you to the platform that initiated the chat and afaik are not even supported by all official clients (maybe this no longer holds true?).

<comment><USER3> It has much to do with Telegrams intention to stand against demands from Russian mafia-alike "government" ([https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-fines- telegram-app-encryption...](https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-fines-telegram-app- encryption-key/28797424.html)) and being one of the most used app in Iran during unsuccessful riots, till finally banned and then un-banned after riots were crushed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd look into moxies coin over telegrams. If you want privacy and cryptography done right you go to moxie. (Signal)

<comment><USER5> Do you refer to [https://www.gomoxie.com/](https://www.gomoxie.com/) ? Or [https://signal.org/](https://signal.org/) ? I never heard of moxie, but Signal lacks a web client, unfortunately.

<comment><USER6> [http://www.mobilecoin.com](http://www.mobilecoin.com)

<comment><USER5> So he refered to a guy called "Moxie Marlinspike" and meant "Moxie's" instead of "moxies".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What is with the whole "crypto for the masses" thing in the title? There is no such thing on the economist page.

<comment><USER8> It's in red just above where it says "Telegram's ICO..."</comment></comment>


Inside the Home of Instant Pot - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/17/business/instant-pot.html <comment><USER2> I use a Cuisinart pressure cooker like a chain smoker. I cook a vegetable stew that lasts 4 or 5 meals, then cook my next vegetable stew for the next 4 or 5 meals, and so on.

No recipes. Basically what's fresh and in season from the farmers market with legumes (lentils, beans, peas, et), nutritional yeast, herbs or flavoring (usually ginger or jalepenos) and water. Then salt to taste, topped with nuts, and crispy vegetables like onion or pepper.

Actually, here's a video of it -- [http://joshuaspodek.com/20-minute- vegetable-stew](http://joshuaspodek.com/20-minute-vegetable-stew). It's 20 minutes and not that exciting, but it shows how to make a delicious stew from entirely fresh ingredients with zero planning.

I make bread starting with wheat berries in it (grinding them into flour in the blender first). Also fruit stews that are incredible desserts.

Total life changer. Restaurants are disappointing in comparison and I live in Manhattan. It paid for itself in the first use.

<comment><USER3> > I cook a vegetable stew that lasts 4 or 5 meals, then cook my next vegetable > stew for the next 4 or 5 meals, and so on.

I hope you change it up more often than that. Do you get sick of stew all day every day?

<comment><USER4> I'm fairly utilitarian about cooking and I see where OP is coming from... After working a full day I don't want to take more time to cook and clean. I want to relax or do something fun, and cooking isn't that for me. Being able to make a meal that lasts 2ish days is pretty excellent way of not having to spend time on cooking while still getting a good (if repetitive) set of meals.

On the other hand my wife enjoys cooking so she'll end up doing most of that and it's my job to clean up afterwards. Time-wise it works out to about what it would take for me to make something simple. When she leaves town for a few days I go back to my utilitarian ways.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Lots of people seem to be wondering why Instant Pot has become a hit while electronic pressure cookers have existed as a category for quite some time.

I personally think it's a great case of tipping points, networking effects and branding all working together.

The Instant Pot is a genuinely good product, so it didn't have a trouble finding early users. These people then produced recipes, books and videos not for pressure cookers, but for the Instant Pot specifically. There's 1600+ books for Instant Pot on Amazon, everything from how to cook Keto meals to Indian food. If you have a Breville Fast Slow, and I have a Cuisinart CPC-600 pressure cooker, the cooking times, settings and pressure levels aren't transferable between the two, and may produce quite different results. Hence the networking effect of everyone having the same brand and model of cooker, combined with the tipping point of reaching a certain mass of Instant Pot users, causing an explosion of recipes and guides, which again drives further adoption.

So why don't people create "Breville Fast Slow Pressure Cooker" recipes in the first place? I think it's because of the branding. The Instant Pot name itself is already fun and self-describing, and the marketing downplays the pressure cooking aspects. Pressure cooking has a negative association historically from a safety point of view. So while everyone tries to sell electronic pressure cookers, I think most people who buy this product aren't interested in pressure cookers at all, instead they're specifically getting an Instant Pot. And while technically they may be the same, the customers don't necessarily perceive it that way.

<comment><USER6> >I think most people who buy this product aren't interested in pressure cookers at all, instead they're specifically getting an Instant Pot. And while technically they may be the same, the customers don't necessarily perceive it that way.

I don't know how deliberate it was but de-emphasizing its pressure cookerness was a smart move. A lot of people still associate "pressure cooker" with "explosions" and, even if they know intellectually they're not really dangerous, they'll still move on to the next item.

As others have said, the price is also quite reasonable--in fact, a lot of stovetop pressure cookers cost more. $100-ish is around the point where a lot of people will take a flyer on something and won't be too put out if it starts gathering dust after a few months.

<comment><USER7> I have read an interview with the owner where he said he deliberately added & marketed a bunch of redundant safety features because Americans are afraid of pressure cookers.

<comment><USER8> I wonder how one properly make a safety valve that works even when smeared by food, or prevent the smearing from happening. Should the valve be really large in cross-sectional area, so that the force a food clot would have to withstand becomes large?

<comment><USER9> Pressure sensor that cuts off the electricity if pressure gets too high. No more electricity, no more heating, pressure drops. Another one I've seen on my mom's pressure cooker that she's had for probably 40 years or more, is a physical plug that will shoot out if the pressure gets too high and the release valve gets stuck. Of course, not sure what the potential damage from this plug would be (I've only ever seen it shoot into the pot when it was removed from the stove, and cooled too quickly). But better than the whole thing popping.

<comment><USER7> The Instant Pot claims to have some sort of mechanism that will lower the cooking pot and break the seal in an overpressure situation: [http://instantpot.us/benefits/safety- features/](http://instantpot.us/benefits/safety-features/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you actually read this article, there's barely any information in it that warrants that many words. It's basically just an advertisement that goes "lots of people have bought this thing!" with the automatic effect that readers will then go "wow sounds popular I should think about getting one".

<comment><USER11> When anything doubles in sales for 6 straight years I think this kind of article is warranted. When it is a top 5 item across stores on Black Friday. The story is how a small Canadian company has such religiously loyal customers and evangelist. I think it is a far article.

I bought myself one in September. I love to cook and cook 70% of meals. Almost everything is from scratch and takes over an hour. I now use this Instant Pot 3 or 4 days a week. I owned a non-electric pressure cooker my whole life and find this makes it so convenient to just get good tasting food done quickly and with much less prep work.

Also this is about Tech Startup inventor making such a strong impact on appliances. No advertising just Amazon and Internet Word of Mouth.

Edit: Also it is virtually sold out across the internet. Bought one for my parents and it was only found by stopping in at stores and looking for the last one not inventories.

<comment><USER12> I think to OPs point, is not that articles in general aren't warranted. It's just that this one was useless. It doesn't tell me what instant pot did to make it beat out rivals other than some nonsense about sensors.

And sending units to reviewers is paid advertising. I'd like to hear more about that. Was that his plan from the beginning? Make the same device everyone else does at the same price but get blog reviews?

<comment><USER6> The article does get into the viral marketing etc. but, like you, I would like to hear more. I'm honestly not sure why the Instant Pot took off when (admittedly mostly much more expensive) electric pressure cookers have been around for ages. Though, reading the article, it's also not clear to me if the founder really knows why it became so successful either.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, I'd love to know if it was intentional.

<comment><USER13> FTA:

> In 2010, after several months of sluggish sales in and around Ontario, Mr. > Wang listed the Instant Pot on Amazon, where a community of food writers > eventually took notice. Vegetarians and paleo dieters, in particular, were > drawn to the device's pressure-cooking function, which shaved hours off the > time needed to cook pots of beans or large cuts of meat.

> Sensing viral potential, Instant Pot sent test units to about 200 > influential chefs, cooking instructors and food bloggers. Reviews and > recipes appeared online, and sales began to climb.

I really don't know what you are talking about. It spells out exactly what they did, and why they did it.

It also talks about taking advantage of "Fulfilled by Amazon" back in 2010, still early in the program, and credits Amazon with over 90% of it's sales at one point.

<comment><USER6> Yes, but it seems as if it was starting to gather a fair bit of attention on Amazon before they sent out the test units. I suspect that the initial answer was some combination of Amazon + good product + smart positioning + good luck.

Overall, it's an interesting story about a product that succeeded largely through viral marketing but I'd have liked more detail than you're likely to get from a general interest article.

<comment><USER14> There's not _that_ much more detail, but a University of Waterloo article on them ([https://smbp.uwaterloo.ca/2017/03/instant-pot-climbs-the- soc...](https://smbp.uwaterloo.ca/2017/03/instant-pot-climbs-the-social-media- ladder-to-success/)) describes the name of the tactic described above: influencer marketing. It's interesting that they align the fact that cooking is often a social phenomenon, with the fact that influencer marketing seemed to work well for Instant Pot.

I gather from some of the articles linked ([http://refineandfocus.com/when- brand-communities-become-cult...](http://refineandfocus.com/when-brand- communities-become-cults-lessons-from-instant-pots-social-media-success/) and [https://www.ctvnews.ca/lifestyle/from-ottawa-to-world- domina...](https://www.ctvnews.ca/lifestyle/from-ottawa-to-world-domination- the-story-of-the-instant-pot-1.3319793)) that unlike other past influencer marketed products, Instant Pot largely utilized Internet space: big platform social media word-of-mouth to achieve their affects. Given that Internet social media space is growing, I would expect more of these type of marketing stories in the future.

Some of it's probably the product for sure. If I remember right, rice cookers like the Zojirushi models had pretty much everything Instant Pot has, _except_ the pressure cooking part. But that's a pretty big "except", given the dodgy past of traditional stove-top pressure cookers.

<comment><USER6> Modern stovetop pressure cookers are pretty safe these days but some people certainly worry and, as others have said, they can be a bit fiddly. You certainly don't fire them up and leave the house.

Influencer marketing is a big deal in many product categories these days. The details vary by B2B or B2C, product/service area, etc. But reviews by people who may not be full-time writers and reviewers can be very important, especially for product categories that don't have a lot of trusted expert review sources.

With money and goods often changing hands there can be a whiff of payola about the whole process. But most people who have a trusted following really are giving honest opinions. You may be able to get me to write a review if you send me something I'm interested and qualified to have an opinion on. I'm not going to be positive just because because I got some freebie though.

<comment><USER11> I owned a stove top and my wife refused to use it. My wife uses the Instant Pot all the time and the dreaded slow cooker is gone for good.

I still like the stove top 8 qt model for when we have company for dinner and I am making a roast, (I always try to eat a roast all the time so good excuse).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I was under the impression that instant pot was not the inventor of the electric slow cooker / rice maker / pressure cooker hybrid, they were just the ones to import the concept from China and market it to North American audiences. Can anyone who lived in China in the late 90s confirm - was the instant pot style of pressure cooker popular back then, or is the instant pot brand truly the original I nventor of the hybrid pressure cooker concept?

Speaking As a (very satisfied) owner of an instant pot, when I first received it I recall noticing it looked very similar to devices I would see for sale at my local east Asian grocery store

<comment><USER16> It's pretty weird when you consider how food trends go. In China, back in the 90s, my parents use a pressure cooker and a wok for everything. And it's the norm as for most families I know both parent work and they have to come home at 5:30 and put food on the table at 6:30, with no easy option like frozen pizza. Now with supermarkets and food delivery you don't need to cook if you don't want to, and if you do choose to cook it becomes much more fancy(and western) with more time consuming steps.

It seems the reverse in happening in us?

<comment><USER17> I really liked this comparison. You might be right!

Can you say more? For example:

1\. Back in the day, in the US, easy pre-made home meals were the rage. Frozen meals. Microwave dinners. Meals from a can. I don't mean, "yeah, sure, we still have those today." I mean, "This is the new society, this is the future, and this food is delicious and amazing!!!"

Was that ever a trend in China?

2\. Is there a "Blue Apron China?" I don't use Blue Apron, and personally think it's silly — just wondering if there is something similar in China.

<comment><USER16> So i think in both places cooking has become more of a hobby/status signaling thing.

In China there's something similar to blue apron in late 90s or early 2000s. But it kinda die out because it's offered more on the convenience side instead of healthy side.

Baking stuff becomes quite popular in recent years, because it's a western thing, and it's time consuming, good for share with friends in itself or as photos:good showoff material. Whereas the old method of finding whatever is fresh today at wet market and do a quick stir-fry becomes more and more reserved for older genration, and thus is not a fancy thing todo. Pressure cooking also is something you do when you don't have time and worry about fuel bill, not sexy.

Preprepared food is looked down upon in both us and china , it seems. In US i think people feel empowering by the idea of feeding your family in a healthy way without a stay at home mom; in China a stayed at home mom just recently becomes a thing to brag about, and cooking seems to be a important tool to do it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This article glosses over the real story which is how did Instant Pot win when their product is functional similar to ones that have existed for a long time? (And no, it's isn't sensors, they all regulate heat and have a valve that prevents explosion.)

This is the same as when people write articles about AirBnB and act as if they invented the space when VRBO was there for years.

I have no problem with stories about an upstart toppling the existing players (in fact I love em) just tell me how it happened.

<comment><USER18> I only skimmed, but I don't think it does.

As an owner of an Instant Pot that gets regular use, and another pressure cooker that lives in storage now, I think I can take a stab at it:

Compared to stove top pressure cookers, it's just easier. Stove top ones require constant attention and fiddling to manage the heat an pressure properly. With the Instant Pot, put food in, close lid, set time, go watch One Life to Live reruns until you hear beeping.

Compared to other electric models, it's either cheaper, or easier to use, or both. Many comparable models are prohibitively expensive, while the Instant Pot is $100. And the interface is dead simple. Push button, adjust time, walk away. I haven't used another electric model, but a couple friends have them, and, to hear them talk, theirs aren't quite as simple to operate.

(That first step might be more confusing before, probably by the 3rd usage, you realize that all the buttons labeled 'bean', 'soup', 'veggies', etc. all do basically the same thing and are really just there for show.)

<comment><USER12> Idk, my grandma has a similar unit she got a couple decades ago. It was cheap though I don't know how cheap. (I do know my grandma though.) Lots of competition that's similarly priced.

The main benefit of the stovetop units (I have both) is speed. The heating element on the cheaper electric is drastically underpowered and can't even get a good Mailliard. The higher end ones can but they're still much slower than a gas stove, especially when full of liquid. I pretty much go back and forth between the two based on what I am cooking.

<comment><USER19> > much slower than a gas stove

There ya go right there! Electric stoves are "slow" to heat up and "slow" to change temperatures. You're used to the gold standard :)

<comment><USER3> So many people are afraid of gas ranges. It's ridiculous. My wife is literally terrified she'll burn the house down.

Yet we use a giant gas-powered pressure cooker in the basement to take warm showers and somehow that's okay.

We used our gas range even when the power was out, to toast tortillas (that's a bit tricky though, but worked well), and even in a pinch during a multi-day blizzard as an emergency heat source (though it didn't run all night, and was relatively safely monitored, you know, the "don't try this at home, kids").

<comment><USER20> I'm not afraid of them, but I won't ever get one. Induction ranges are superior in every possible way :)

<comment><USER21> Every possible way except being able to take the pan off the heat temporarily without having the range freak out. At least that's my experience with the induction hob that I have (and generally just ignore the electric range).

I'm with you though. Induction is absolutely amazing. But I'd love to be able to lift the pan off to spread my crepe batter around without the hob beeping at me angrily (and shutting itself off if I take too long before putting the pan back on)

<comment><USER3> Wow, wasn't aware of that issue. Perhaps that's why it isn't as mainstream.

<comment><USER22> I think that's an implementation detail, not a standard feature. Certainly in Sweden induction is basically standard in any kitchen done up in the past 3-4 years or so, and I've never seen that problem.

One problem that is real is that they all insist on using resistive touch controls on the cooking surface instead of physical knobs. Which means if you spill liquid on your cooking surface or accidentally slide your pot onto the buttons all the controls freak out.

<comment><USER21> Heh, yes. I've definitely had a pot boil over and had double chaos when the controls started flipping at random too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Nomnompaleo clued me into the Instant Pot about 3 years ago and I've used it at least weekly since. Most appliances go to the graveyard cabinet, not this. Just polished off a turkey stew: Pepper, onion, garlic, mushrooms, bacon & 4 turkey drumsticks. 1 hour to cook 40min to cool 20m prep yields 4 or five great meals. Umpteen substitutions and variations of the above keep bringing me back. The device is still working flawlessly. Glad I bought a second pot and lid.

<comment><USER24> Why do you need two lids and pots? I understand the pot, you can store it in the fridge. But why the lid?

<comment><USER25> I'm guessing one in the fridge and one in the cooker, so once you've cooked multiple days of meals you don't have to have _the same thing_ continuously.

<comment><USER23> Just so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Great in theory, but I've just been reminded that I haven't liked anything that comes out of it. Things turn out kind of weird imho.

For example, carrots we're too soft, spinach was completely crushed and an ugly green. The texture always put me off.

Anyone else have a similar experience?

<comment><USER27> I'd argue that's just how stews are. It's quite rare that they have an interesting mouthfeel or look particularly appetizing. I can understand making a stew out of tough beef but I'd rather rather spend money on a nice cut of meat or just eat chicken.

This is of course 100% subjective, sautéing is to me a much more interesting way to cook food (boiling things that needs to be boiled beforehand), I'll probably get cancer before the stew-heads though.

<comment><USER6> This is probably the reason I don't use my stovetop pressure cooker all that much. I just don't make a lot of the one pot stews and such that they especially excel at. I have a few recipes that I make now and then but it isn't a go to appliance for me. It's also the case that I work from home a fair bit of the time so getting a meal on the table with a short cooking time isn't major consideration.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> another cool kitchen appliance with a cult following is the panasonic flashxpress. its a toaster oven that uses ir light instead of typical heating elements and convection. there are really good, cult-worthy toaster ovens and pressure cookers but unfortunately there are no such bread makers. we really need a better bread maker on the market.

<comment><USER29> What features would turn a bread maker from an ordinary appliance to an extra- ordinary appliance?

<comment><USER28> automatic ingredient dispensing is the biggest one. the second biggest is automatic removal of the bread from the pan.

the other comments are wrong, bread machines make very good bread. ive been basically living off of bread machine bread for months so i happen to know.

the idea of a bread machine is to render bread-making easy. so you can set a timer on the machine and have it start the mixing and baking process whenever you want. however, the bread must be removed from the pan as soon as its done baking or else it will become soggy. this is a pain and almost completely nullifies the overall convenience of the machine because yes you can set a timer but you have to make sure to be around when its done -- this is highly, extremely annoying and also dramatically reduces your ability to make bread spontaneously. automatic removal would be very easy to implement, i have a few ideas myself on how to do it. but nobody does it.

the automatic dispensing of ingredients would be the final key stone is the whole arch of bread making convenience. for simple whole wheat bread, like the bread i make, there arent very many ingredients and all but one are dry. so automatic dispensing is conceivable. i would love to be able to fill a few hoppers with cheap, healthy ingredients and then be able to simply push a button and later on find a fresh loaf of bread waiting for me. but apparently im the only one.

also a bread machine with a nice display and ui would be nice. nobody seems to be able to do it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> My only complaint about my Instant Pot is the plastic sealing ring's tendency to retain smells.

At this point I gave up on trying to clean it and just bought a second sealing ring that I use only for Indian food.

<comment><USER31> We read that this is a common problem when we bought our Instant Pot so we went ahead and bought a couple of extra rings. One thing I've noticed though is that the black ring tends to not seal as well as the semi-clear ring that comes with the IP for some reason. I suspect other colored rings may have the same problem.

That said, it's nice to have different colored rings so that you know "red ring for spicy", etc...

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'm a massive fan of things that improve my quality of living, save me time, and save me money. This little hunk of magic does all three.

I had no patience for my slow cooker, and this lets me experiment with foods I normally would have avoided. Beans? 90 minutes from dry. Real steel cut oats? 20 min. roughly. It has saved countless hours of cooking by letting me make awesome meals for the freezer. Lastly, it has easily paid for itself in the first year of owning it by letting me cook in bulk.

The one thing that throws me is it is hard to experiment with when dialing in a recipe. Between pressure build-up time, and figuring out quantities, etc., it can be challenging to say, toss something in for a few more minutes, because you can't watch the food while it cooks, so you don't really know when it is fully done short of cooking it more, testing it, cooking it more, testing it, etc. And that can take a good 10 minutes per test.

Now I just need to find better recipes.

<comment><USER33> _Real steel cut oats? 20 min. roughly._

They're only 20 min on the stove in a pot. What does this do differently?

<comment><USER34> You throw the food in the cooker, press a button, walk away, and it will be ready and hot for you whenever you decide you are hungry. There's no temperature adjustment, no watching, and no stirring. When I cook grains in the Instant Pot, I pressure steam them in a bowl, which means the pot doesn't need to be cleaned (and the bowl is easy to clean). The Instant Pot isn't much faster than a pot on the stove for many grains, but it's a heck of a lot easier and more consistent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I think the best part of the instant pot is how affordable it is. My mom had a pressure cooker for about 10 years now. It finally broke and we saw these huge sales during black Friday so we couldn't resist. It's crazy how useful these things are. We use it for soup, congee, and yogurt on top of the standard pressure cooking functions! Making your own yogurt is great because you can change the consistency and taste to your liking! You save a couple bucks too. We prefer the stainless pot rather than the non-stick pots that most pressure cooker have.

</comment><comment><USER36> We received one last Christmas. Use it regularly for beans and pot roast. The suggested cook times in the manual were a little too long though--and that matters in a pressure cooker. A couple minutes can make the difference between success and slop.

25 minutes for dry beans and 30 minutes for a decent-sized roast is more than enough time to get the job done.

Fantastic job, Mr. Wang!

edit: I'm just doing black beans. Larger ones may need more time.

<comment><USER37> Also depends on altitude.

<comment><USER38> Why would it depend on the altitude? It's a sealed vessel that holds (iirc) 7 psi on low, and 11 psi on high. It seems like these pressures should remain the same regardless of altitude, unless the outside atmosphere is somehow involved in the pressure release valve, which is hard to imagine.

<comment><USER36> Traditional pressure cookers with weighted regulators would need different weights for different altitudes for consistent cook times.

The sensors/mechanics of the InstantPot are a black box to me, so I'll just have to assume that it makes some kind of difference since they added an altitude setting to one of the models.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> If you get the bluetooth enabled version, you can have delicious steel cut oats ready for breakfast. You just set the time you want it finished and wallah! [https://instantpot.com/portfolio-item/smart- bluetooth/](https://instantpot.com/portfolio-item/smart-bluetooth/)

<comment><USER40> Pet peeve: it's voilà (a French word), not wallah.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I don't know why Instant Pot became such a sensation when pressure cookers have been around for ages....

<comment><USER42> While you can't leave a traditional pressure cooker unattended, with the IP you just put the ingredients in, select the time, and forget about it. Once the timer goes off, the IP will lower the temperature and keep the food warm.

I often prepare stews right before I leave the house, so I can come back to a hearty lunch/dinner a few hours later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> > It is also a testament to the enormous power of Amazon, and its ability to > turn small businesses into major empires nearly overnight.

Lot of people say that Amazon tends to move in on a product which they think has been doing well and start selling Amazon branded stuff. Is there a reason why Amazon hasn't done the same to Instant Pot?

> Sensing viral potential, Instant Pot sent test units to about 200 > influential chefs, cooking instructors and food bloggers. Reviews and > recipes appeared online, and sales began to climb.

I wonder why does the article keeps framing the company's growth as something which _spent almost nothing on advertising, and achieved enormous size primarily through online word-of-mouth_?

<comment><USER44> Question #2: Because they didn't spend any money buying ads, and instead sent test units out to influencers?

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I own an Instant Pot and I wasn't impressed. The rice sticks unlike a real rice cooker and the pressure cooking was slow. I followed some normal pressure cooker recipes and I had to double or triple the time.

<comment><USER46> >> The rice sticks unlike a real rice cooker

Rice doesn't stick only in rice cookers that don't have a non-stick interior pot. My parents have some older generation rice cookers that still work, and they have aluminum interior pots and the rice sticks to them.

The only problem is that the stuck rice doesn't burn a little at the bottom. That is the best part of the rice when mixed with soup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Does anyone else think the instant pot puts out weird smelling food sometimes?

Like almost sour

<comment><USER48> I had to soak the silicone ring in white vinegar for a couple hours to make it lose its awful out-of-box odour. I also ran it on the two minute steam setting with white vinegar. It's been great since then.

<comment><USER49> High pressure and heat capable seals in either rubbers or silicones do leach chemicals when new. Once 'cured' they are OK.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I love this thing. I feel like the whole family is eating healthier since we have it. My favorite food is Risotto, which comes out really great. Has anyone a very good resource for some other great recipes?

</comment><comment><USER51> Help the uninitiated out here -- what's the difference between an Instant Pot and a generic slow cooker? Looks like this thing just has more heat settings?

<comment><USER52> They are kind of the opposite of each other. Slow cookers are just that: set it in the morning before work, come home to a slow-cooked bit of meat and veggies. Instant Pot and pressure cookers in general rely on the fact that water under pressure boils at a higher temperature than at sea level pressure, so it cooks things faster. For example, lentils might take 45 minutes on the stove, 10 minutes in a pressure cooker.

In summary, slow cooker->I've got time to wait, make the meat fall off the bone; pressure cooker->45 minutes for lentils? Who's got that kind of time?

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Been using a rice cooker for some years now, it's already a huge step up from cooking it in a pot. And it seems almost nobody uses rice cookers here (NL). Fun fact, people from Asian countries are rather unlikely to know how to cook rice in a pan.

I'll very likely get one of the IP's, as cooking ribs and other slow cooked meats do take a lot of time now, and pressure cookers are like playing with a bomb.

<comment><USER54> I just don't understand the point of a rice cooker, I really really don't. Cooking rice is the simplest thing in the world - throw rice in a pan with water and some salt, turn the gas on, wait 10-15 minutes. Done. Why would I buy a separate device taking precious space in my kitchen for what has to be the easiest cooking task imaginable? When you say "people [..] are rather unlikely to know how to cook rice in a pan" I just don't understand. It's like saying that someone doesn't understand how to make a cup of instant coffee. The only way to fuck it up is to put it on gas and then forget, but that would ruin any dish.

<comment><USER55> Your recipe only applies to certain types of robust rice. Basmati rice is not simple - if you just boil it for 15 minutes, you'll destroy it.

At the very least, good basmati is steamed - you only add enough water to cook the rice (you don't drain it afterwards), then bring it to the boil before simmering it at a very low heat. It's pretty hard to reliably get right - every time I use a new stove or pan or try to cook a quantity I don't often do is a gamble. If you mess up it's either crunchy or squishy.

<comment><USER56> This is so true.

I usually only buy the one type of rice, a short grain brown rice from SunRice in Australia, and usually only when it's on special.

Anyway, point being: I know I can cook this one particular type of rice to perfection in a saucepan with 1 volume-unit rice to 1.5 volume-units water. Bring it to a rapid boil for one minute, then wrap the whole pot in two dry cotton bath towels (hotbox), leave it for ~45 minutes.

Voila!

Also works with some short grain white rices, with 1:1 ratio and many fewer minutes in the hotbox.

Personally, I can't stand any long grain rice (Basmati, Jasmine, etc).

<comment><USER57> People with their crazy rice strategies. I found the secret to perfect rice _every single time_ and it's as easy as can be. The secret: cook it like pasta. Plenty of water so it won't evaporate away, test it now and then (you don't even have to taste it, you can tell by the texture), and when it's ready strain it. No other strategy has been so consistently perfect, not to mention stress-free. No ratios. Any variety. No problems.

Side bonus: a lot of that nasty arsenic washes away instead of sticking to the rice and going in your body.

<comment><USER46> >> People with their crazy rice strategies.

You're making assumptions that your definition of "perfect" is the same as everyone else's. There are cultural differences with respect to the preference of the actual texture and stickiness of the rice.

For example, my Chinese parents basically don't like the stickiness or texture of rice made by any other culture. It might be close minded, but it does illustrate that different cultures have different standards for what makes rice "perfect".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I thought this was going to be an article about the marijuana industry and the rise of e-cigs. In fairness, there's an interesting article to write there too..

EDIT: Great idea to write an article like this right before the holidays. Sometimes I wonder if the author owns stock in the companies they are basically promoting...

<comment><USER59> The link is already posted elsewhere in this thread but PG wrote about this a long time ago.

[http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Also the most recommended pressure cooker on reddit:

[https://redditfavorites.com/products/slow_cookers](https://redditfavorites.com/products/slow_cookers)

When I made that site I remember finding it surprising that it was the top slow cooker _and_ rice cooker.

</comment><comment><USER46> FWIW, Instant Pot now makes a sous vide circulator too. I bought one on Black Friday, and it works pretty well (although that's from the perspective of a n00b). It's cheaper than the Anova and other big names.

<comment><USER6> It looks to be about the same price as Anova. They're both in the $120-$130 range. It's amazing how these circulators have come down in price. Wasn't that long ago your choices were DIY or about $800 for a Polyscience.

<comment><USER61> I think it is amazing that so many are still so expensive. It is just a heater, a little motor turning a fan, and a thermostat/timer. There seems to be less involved in most of them than a $30 toaster oven.

<comment><USER6> I'll not try to justify the pricing, but they're still relatively low volume niche products. It's also not really accurate to compare the thermostat to a toaster oven. For many applications, sous vide depends on very accurate (less than one degree deviation) temperature control. When I bought a PID temperature controller to do the standard DIY slow cooker thing before the less expensive circulators existed, I paid close to $100.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> I love my instant pot. I don't do anything artisanal as I'm not fancy enough for that. Some chicken breast with some teriyaki sauce and water for 20 minutes comes out great.

</comment><comment><USER28> thats so funny, i was just considering buying one of these after learning about their existence earlier today. these things are great because you can make rice, beans and baked potatoes. if you buy a nice bread machine too, all the essentials are covered and you are all set up to save a whole lot of money. after reading this article and these comments, i will definitely pull the trigger on one of these. the only problem is that there are so many models, i dont know which one to get.

</comment><comment><USER63> I wonder what the statistics for Instant Pot explosions are. Are those independently tracked in any way?

I've considered getting one of those, but have serious concerns about their safety.

<comment><USER64> This fear of exploding pressure cookers seems to be a uniquely American phenomenon. Pressure cookers are used by pretty much every middle class Indian household and I have never heard of an explosion. They all come fitted with a 'safety valve' that pops to let out the pressure before it can reach a dangerous point.

It also reminds me if this: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death)

<comment><USER65> Pressure cookers are quite common in Spain, and most fear from exploding pressure cookers comes from the 70s and 80s, when they had less security features, valves could get stuck, and people were careless ( i.e: opening the lid before pressure venting, forced cooling under the water tap...)

I've checked on Google News for accidents in Spain, and haven't found anything more recent than 2012.

Using modern pressure cookers is quite safe. Just check your valve works, that your ring seal is in proper condition, and close the lid properly.

AND NEVER TRY TO OPEN IT IF PRESSURE HASN'T VENTED

<comment><USER66> My Fissler pressure cooker recommends forced cooling under a stream of water for precise control of cooking time, as an alternative to venting steam through the valve, to prevent loss of flavor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> This is the complete opposite of _Juicero_.

<comment><USER68> I am confused. How so?

<comment><USER69> One interpretation: Juicero is about making you reliant on them (the machine is useless without their packets), whereas this is about expanding what you can do as a home cook.

Technological inventions that fall in this latter category are where the real value for people is, even though the press and investors are a little too obsessed with the former at times.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> Just bought my mom one. Timely article!

</comment><comment><USER71> Does it deal with power failures, as in it remembers it's state and then properly adjusts for delayed start and stop considering the duration of power failure and adjusting process considering the cooking due to already generated heat when power was gone?

<comment><USER72> If your electric power is as flaky as described, this product, and indeed all other electric pressure cookers, are not for you.

<comment><USER71> But it only requires a few minor design changes to make it robust against power failure, and then these could be viable devices in most of the world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> Thought the author's name was Kevin Rose.

</comment><comment><USER74> Don't understand. Friend brought theirs over yesterday, we made tamales and then they cooked them in the pot. Took only 20 minutes! But hey, steaming them in a double boiler takes 40 minutes so that was a savings I guess. If you include the time to pack the tub carefully and program it, maybe it was slower.

And it didn't really 'steam' the tamales. They came out pretty gummy and a little dry. So no fan here.

I'll stick to actually cooking my food thanks.</comment>


Can the FCC really block California's net neutrality law? - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/can-fcc-really-block-californias-net-neutrality-law/amp <comment><USER2> Dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18168925](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18168925)</comment>


Will Apple Open the iPhone? - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/oct2007/tc20071015_258257.htm?campaign_id=rss_tech <comment><USER2> _"Analysts expect that instead of equipping anyone who wants to build iPhone software, Apple will handpick the companies and individual programmers to be given the software-development kit..."_

Great. This is _worse_ than a closed platform. Apple will just keep out startups that threaten them and let in those who are aligned with their interests. If history is any indication, this type of move from Apple would not surprise me.

<comment><USER3> even if that's true how's it worse than a closed platform?

<comment><USER2> At least in a closed platform, only Apple can reap the benefits. The playing field between 3rd party mobile software startups is level when no one else can get in.

In a selectively open platform, companies that are "picked" to develop for the iPhone have a distinct competitive advantage over those who do not. How can you compete if your most feared competitor is allowed to build software for the iPhone and you are not? It is potentially a very unfair situation.

<comment><USER4> It might be unfair for you or for developers on the iPhone, but it will at least be a step forward for the end users. Hand-picked software is better than no software at all.

If there is no competition, the quality of the software is dependent only on Apple's standards, which are generally quite high. I doubt the software that is approved by Apple will be crap.

I still agree with you though-- it should be freely open.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Aplestro - Web App Ecosystem. Split your apps to event sources - <AUTHOR> https://about.aplestro.com <comment><AUTHOR> Creator of Aplestro here!

I would love to hear your feedback. Your vision of security, user privacy, and specific messaging cases between apps is of interest.

I'm looking for developers who would join the early team and help me fill up the App Market so Aplestro can be launched on a wide user base.</comment>


Evernote Database Popped – Usernames,Passwords Potentially Exposed - <AUTHOR> https://www.novainfosec.com/2013/03/02/evernote-database-popped-usernames-email-addresses-hashed-passwords-potentially-exposed/

<comment><USER2> In their defense you can say that at least the passwords were hashed - otherwise it would have been much more of a travesty. Even so, Evernote users (myself included) should prepare to have our Gmail work a bit harder against Spam (i assume the emails'll get sold) the next few months.</comment>


$165B: Food Wasted in America Can Actually End Extreme Poverty Globally - <AUTHOR> http://statspotting.com/165-billion-food-wasted-in-america-can-actually-end-extreme-poverty-globally/

<comment><USER2> wow! Now I understand why even the stray dogs in US look way more healthier than the dogs in the developing countries. Because they get to chew $165B food!</comment>